Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees • Hacker News Board

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#311

Post by snotrockets » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 7:44 PM UTC

Aarostotle wrote: post #288

Johnny555 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep pointing to Armstrong's $110M house like it's some sort of injustice. If you think billionaires should exist at all, then that's one of the least-bad injustices imaginable Ok, I'll admit it, billionaires should not exist at all, there should be a heavy wealth tax that makes it hard to become a billionaire. Will a CEO work less hard if he (and his peers) can only ever gain $100M in net worth before a wealt…

That's up to the CEO. Recognize that you — and everyone else — are relying on him to work just as hard, to take on just as much responsibility, while sacrificing more and more for every incremental dollar of value he creates . Your question implies a hope that the CEO will continue to take on massive responsibility and produce massive wealth, even when the main beneficiary of his productiveness will be the government…

That's the beauty of it: the public benefit would remain the same.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#312

Post by MisterBastahrd » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 7:44 PM UTC

namanaggarwal wrote: post #2

Genuine question: At what point do we actually declare that we are in recession. Do we wait for GDP figures out these signs are enough to assume we are in bear markets now.

When growth actually slows. The stock market has little to do with whether we are in a recession. If it fell by 10K points tomorrow, most stocks would still be wildly overvalued.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#313

Post by criley2 » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 7:44 PM UTC

pojzon wrote: post #255

criley2 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically it was much, much worse. The only way you can make an argument for saying inequality is greater now (when global poverty/subsistence farming is at the lowest % since human settlement 12000 years ago) is to point to the sheer amount of wealth we generate compared to any other period and nit pick about it's allocation. That's fine, but if you want to go back to farming for your life, like most humans for m…

Thats completely true, tho a peasent was working for his master a lot less than we currently do for our masters. When we get 3days work week and 4 days of „time for my stuff” we can go back to discussing that.

The subsistence farm does not wait for your days off. You will live your life according to its schedule, and it does not care about sick days or vacation.

To claim that an impoverished serf working land "had 4 days off a week" is nonsense. They worked hard af for all sunlight hours for some seasons, and had plenty of leisure in times like the winter. On average, maybe that's 4 days off, but let's not pretend that working the land is not back breaking work. It's not leisure. If you really think some 40 hour wfh coding job is harder work than farming for your life, then there's no law saying you can't buy some land and go off grid. You're welcome to subsist. Hell you could land a few million subs on youtube airing the experience, that category is all the rage these days

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#314

Post by jonathankoren » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 7:45 PM UTC

Aarostotle wrote: post #288

Johnny555 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep pointing to Armstrong's $110M house like it's some sort of injustice. If you think billionaires should exist at all, then that's one of the least-bad injustices imaginable Ok, I'll admit it, billionaires should not exist at all, there should be a heavy wealth tax that makes it hard to become a billionaire. Will a CEO work less hard if he (and his peers) can only ever gain $100M in net worth before a wealt…

That's up to the CEO. Recognize that you — and everyone else — are relying on him to work just as hard, to take on just as much responsibility, while sacrificing more and more for every incremental dollar of value he creates . Your question implies a hope that the CEO will continue to take on massive responsibility and produce massive wealth, even when the main beneficiary of his productiveness will be the government…

Lol. CEOs aren't some sort of demigods. In fact, most of them are just dumb shlubs that got lucky.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#315

Post by Petersipoi » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 7:45 PM UTC

pineaux wrote: post #211

toephu2 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there should be a heavy wealth tax that makes it hard to become a billionaire Why does everyone want to tax the billionaires? What are you going to get out of it? Do you think taxing the billionaires is actually going to help the poor people? If so, riddle me this: Name one efficiently-run government organization.

Well, its easy then: dont give it to government organisations, just give the money to other people directly in the form of a basic income. Set up a commercial bank owned by all the people of the US of A (you get one share when born and the share is non-fungible/non-tradeable) then let this bank fund small and medium bussinesses only. They are responsible for the majority of the work anyway. Tax land as well. Profits…

I actually like the idea. Unfortunately it will never happen, because ultimately the government decides what happens, and this plan doesn't help the government. Maybe make the current president the CEO of this bank or something and it could get some momentum. But then we have whatever idiot got elected most recently using the bank as a political weapon.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#316

Post by ausbah » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 7:46 PM UTC

sillysaurusx wrote: post #15

I think if employees feel slighted by being fired, they're fooling themselves. The best mindset is that you could be gone tomorrow. It gives you clarity and purpose. It also happens to be the truth. Coinbase was also extremely generous with severance. 12 weeks plus two for every one year at the company, I think. I've had the experience of being let go without notice and without severance. Devs seem a little more griz…

>I think if employees feel slighted by being fired, they're fooling themselves. The best mindset is that you could be gone tomorrow. It gives you clarity and purpose. It also happens to be the truth.

sorry but this reads like you drank the whole bowl of US corporate kool-aid. the insecurity and stress the comes from not knowing if you'll have a job tomorrow in literal insanity. 14 weeks severance shouldn't be seen an some benevolent gift from a god-brain billionaire, it should be the bare minimum if they still have the right to fire me in a whim

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#317

Post by nickjj » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 7:47 PM UTC

oh_sigh wrote: post #70

DoubleDerper wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coinbase is notoriously poor at customer service, so this doesn't make sense. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27653022

1 employee per 2000 customers seems like it makes perfect sense as to why customer service would be bad.

It doesn't need to be.

For example I do personal customer support for ~40,000 folks who take one of my video courses (programming and tech related).

I often write personalized multi-sentence responses to their issues and follow up to reply back to them as many times as needed to get it fixed within minutes or hours of a request coming in.

I think the big difference there is it's my business. The best possible customer experience outcome is the only option in my mind, if it would even hint at being anything less then I wouldn't have this business anymore.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#318

Post by MisterBastahrd » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 7:47 PM UTC

elefanten wrote: post #175

flashgordon wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok let me take a stab at it. I actually am on the fence on this so purely a thought exercise for me. Plus as someone getting into midlife crisis this has been on top of mind for me. How about take (in no order): 1. 1 or 2 fancy cars/suvs 2. Be able to travel business class (say once a month) for vacations and stay in decent hotels 3. Nice education (say 2 degrees at a top college) 4. Nice house (say 2 rooms per famil…

Add social expenses -- what it takes to fit into a society or community. Add a buffer for risk and uncertainty about the future. And then consider what role location has on the whole package. If you want proximity to one of the global hubs / power centers, then you're looking at doing this all in a top-tier cost market. Then you easily push into tens of millions. Breaking a hundred million to super thoroughly check t…

Breaking into a hundred million is an absurdity given the criteria GP set.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#319

Post by mbg721 » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 7:48 PM UTC

tomcam wrote: post #310

philodelta wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worry about the unaccounted soft power of someone with that much money. Through lobbying and market consolidation, the extremely wealthy hold disproportionate political and economic power. At least with corrupt politicians, in a liberal democracy there is some amount to which they are accountable to the people. The power of the wealthy is without account except through government action. laisse-faire capitalists li…

How much money should people be allowed to have?

Tree fiddy, certainly.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#320

Post by criley2 » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 7:48 PM UTC

RyanHamilton wrote: post #249

criley2 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically it was much, much worse. The only way you can make an argument for saying inequality is greater now (when global poverty/subsistence farming is at the lowest % since human settlement 12000 years ago) is to point to the sheer amount of wealth we generate compared to any other period and nit pick about it's allocation. That's fine, but if you want to go back to farming for your life, like most humans for m…

What source are you basing that on? You can find countless sources that show the 0.1% owning an ever greater share: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/nov/13/us-wealth-i... "Over the past three decades, the share of household wealth owned by the top 0.1% has increased from 7% to 22%."

I'm basing that on global numbers, not national numbers. Sure, I don't doubt that in developed economies inequality is getting worse.

But in the past 4 decades, I'll remind you that around 800,000,000 Chinese (that's eight hundred million people) were lifted above the global poverty line and were able to stop subsistence farming. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/l...

So to say that global inequality is getting worse, when billion+ have been lifted out of abject poverty in that time, it's not correct to me. Things were worse 40 years ago when billion+ more humans were below the global poverty line, even if today billionaires are even richer than the middle class.