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Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

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Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will probably never be read, but I'll say it anyway. Not an employee or shareholder, but a Coinbase user here. The CEO responding to petitions like this on Twitter in a childish and heated manner is reducing my confidence in Coinbase as a company. The same might be true for other users who are watching. You are the CEO of a public company, and will have to see many such petitions over the course of your career i…

Also not an employee or shareholder, but a Coinbase user. I don't know that Brian's set of tweets does anything to my confidence in Coinbase as a company. These tweets are trivial. The biggest threat to my confidence about Coinbase is the structural parts of it, the fact that they are a growing centralized for-profit company responsible for a large amount of assets. On this trivial (to me, maybe not to Coinbase) Twit…

I really don’t see a lot of dirty laundry in this post. Seems par for the course for a large company.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#412
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2 MB of logs per minute of user streaming time. 2MB/minute is 33KB/second. How is that impressive?

i think you and the above poster are in vehement agreement. ingesting 2 MBs of logs per minute is impressive in its pluperfect unimpressiveness. maybe the presentation was called "Timmy's first named pipe" or "Sally explores /etc/logrotate.d"

[deleted]

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#413
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried working at a company with non-technical founders and leadership. I'd never do it again. It was like a poison when upper management didn't know how to hire competent engineering leaders. It seeps down into middle management and into the code and system architecture. When you're an optimistic new hire you hope that things can change and you can be a part of it, but over time it becomes increasingly hard to imag…

This seems like it could be handled by hiring ONE engineering leader for the engineering org - which is one spoke of the multi-spoke wheel that runs a modern day tech company. The HN crowd is biased, but it seems to overinflate the importance of IC engineering contribution vs the contributions of the collective - eng and non eng.

But that was my whole point, that in practice, successful companies seem to be run by the engineer, and not by some business type and a good CTO of some sort. I even forgot Mark Zuckerberg in my original post.

So it seems that at the top level, you need to understand the engineering part to be successful.

My guess is that the leader needs to have a vision for the product, market, but also the development. And if the last part is lacking, you cannot make up for it in the lower levels.

Or maybe it's because an engineer better understands what can and can't be build, and so has a more realistic vision for the product to build. A non-engineer always needs to backtrack with an engineer how possible something is.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#414

Responded here https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/15353049437284147...

>Second, if you have no confidence in the execs or CEO of a company then why are you working at that company? Quit and find a company to work at that you believe in! This comment is really, really tone-deaf. People can believe strongly in the vision and mission of a company while also feeling strongly that upper leadership is steering it in the wrong direction and/or making decisions that negatively impact the compan…

Yeap. This is the usual response when you criticize the US. "Then move to Canada, Europe, etc."

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yikes. Insulting your employees is not a good look. > We praise in public and criticize in private But you’re criticizing employees in public right now? As the CEO and founder I think you need to be receptive to criticism and take it on the chin. This tweet reads as if it was written in a frustrated, spontaneous episode. That’s also not a really inspiring look for outsiders or investors. Best of luck, I’m moving over…

He ends his whole thread with: >If you're unhappy about something, work as part of the team to raise it along with proposed solutions (it's easy to be a critic, harder to be a part of the solution). Yet all his thread does is criticize this petition without trying to understand and work with the person who wrote it. I understand that a CEO would be very unhappy at something like this and I can't fault him for feeling…

The petitioners publicly called for the ousting of senior executives, while airing confidential dirty laundry. The idea that this deserves to be met with a receptive and empathetic response is absurd. If you want collaboration, approach collaboratively. You might not get what you want, but at the end of the day, a company needs to be led by somebody, and I would much rather be led by a designated leader than by public pressure campaigns brought by whatever employees are most willing to escalate their grievances to the public square.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He ends his whole thread with: >If you're unhappy about something, work as part of the team to raise it along with proposed solutions (it's easy to be a critic, harder to be a part of the solution). Yet all his thread does is criticize this petition without trying to understand and work with the person who wrote it. I understand that a CEO would be very unhappy at something like this and I can't fault him for feeling…

The petitioners publicly called for the ousting of senior executives, while airing confidential dirty laundry. The idea that this deserves to be met with a receptive and empathetic response is absurd. If you want collaboration, approach collaboratively. You might not get what you want, but at the end of the day, a company needs to be led by somebody, and I would much rather be led by a designated leader than by publi…

> while airing confidential dirty laundry

I mean, being silent about company dirty laundry is not exactly virtue.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#417
post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too bad Mr. Armstrong didn't choose to keep his mouth shut for a bit longer, to verify if the claims were from actual employees. Alternatively, he could have made a single tweet: "I am aware of the open letter published today that was claimed to be from Coinbase empoyees. We will do our best to verify this and also respond to those employees internally to try and solve any issues they have with the direction of our c…

Yes, that seems like a better approach. This is where a marketing or a PR person is helpful.

I’m an autistic engineer and even I know how to phrase things better, so it’s not the lack of marketing, it’s a lack of maturity and leadership.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#419

Responded here https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/15353049437284147...

> if you get caught you will be fired Retaliation?

> if you get caught you will be fired

I dare him to do it, no I double dare him to do it.

But I bet all the tea in china he wont do it.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#420
post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The petitioners publicly called for the ousting of senior executives, while airing confidential dirty laundry. The idea that this deserves to be met with a receptive and empathetic response is absurd. If you want collaboration, approach collaboratively. You might not get what you want, but at the end of the day, a company needs to be led by somebody, and I would much rather be led by a designated leader than by publi…

> while airing confidential dirty laundry I mean, being silent about company dirty laundry is not exactly virtue.

There is a middle ground between saying nothing and raising it to the general public. The public square is a terrible place to litigate what are effectively unsourced, one-sided allegations.
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