Coinbase employees petition to remove execs • Hacker News Board

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#51

Post by jackweirdy » Fri, Jun 10, 2022, 7:59 AM UTC

fathyb wrote: post #10

Initiatives like the Dot Collector and the Performance review system that has led to a toxic workplace culture I was curious about that "Dot Collector": Dot collector was an application invented by Ray Dalio’s hedge fund and Bridgewater Associates. The application has set its foot in Coinbase since the start of the year and has been in use by the HR and IT teams of the company. The user interface of the app is quite…

I think this idea must have been taken from Miaow Miaow Beans https://youtu.be/CI4kiPaKfAE

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#52

Post by systemvoltage » Fri, Jun 10, 2022, 8:01 AM UTC

spade wrote: post #45

systemvoltage wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On surface, it sounds like 360 feedback which is pretty standard, am I missing something? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/360-degree_feedback

360 feedback usually happens a few times a year while Dot Collector feedback seems like it's for every meeting [0][1]. This reminds me of the Black Mirror episode "Nosedive" where everyone is rating everyone for every social interaction (e.g. saying "hi" or paying a cashier). [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/coinbase-asking-staff-rate-e... [1] https://qz.com/1071749/bridgewater-associates-ceo-ray-dalio-...

> This reminds me of the Black Mirror episode "Nosedive"

I shall check it out!

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#53

Post by Teknoman117 » Fri, Jun 10, 2022, 8:02 AM UTC

thematrixturtle wrote: post #28

boeingUH60 wrote: post #24

Interesting that they mention the Chief Product Officer, Surojit Chatterjee. I remember reading about him as the guy who got over $600 million [1] in compensation for 15 months of work (factoring Coinbase’s high share price at the time of its direct listing)…mind-blowing 1 - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-14/google-ex...

If it's any consolation, that compensation was in Coinbase shares and options at the IPO valuation of ~$320/share, meaning it's been slashed to under a fifth of that at the current $64, possibly less if the options are under water now.

Either way, if I ended up with $100 million ($600 million * stock crash) I’d probably retire. It’s mind boggling to me when people with such wealth want even more. Take the guy who stole tech from Google and went to Uber. Google gave him enough to live out his days doing whatever he pleaded for the most part. Yet obviously he felt like he wanted more - whether that was money, recognition, etc. and lost it all. It’s crazy to me.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#54

Post by achow » Fri, Jun 10, 2022, 8:02 AM UTC

thematrixturtle wrote: post #25

This is a pretty vague and poorly thought out petition. It leads with the collapse of NFTs, which has little if anything to do with Coinbase or its execs; it complains about infra/tech debt but says nothing about why that's bad, much less the execs' fault; fluff like "a generally apathetic and sometimes condescending attitude" is not actionable; and much of the phrasing like "the wisdom of the crypto industry" (lolwu…

Following seems to be squarely the responsibilities of C-Suite (including CEO).

- The over-prioritization of certain products, which has led to a lack of focus on other important issues like infrastructure

- Not being able to output any higher or better quality products and services despite aggressively hiring more employees

- A generally apathetic and sometimes condescending attitude from the CPO, COO, and Chief People Officer

- Initiatives like the Dot Collector and the Performance review system that has led to a toxic workplace culture

> ..fluff like "a generally apathetic and sometimes condescending attitude" is not actionable

Feedback like 'apathy' and 'condescending attitude' are very legit for employees and even to the interview candidates. Why fluff and not actionable in this case?

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#55

Post by PhillyG » Fri, Jun 10, 2022, 8:07 AM UTC

mimsee wrote: post #36

fathyb wrote: post #10

Initiatives like the Dot Collector and the Performance review system that has led to a toxic workplace culture I was curious about that "Dot Collector": Dot collector was an application invented by Ray Dalio’s hedge fund and Bridgewater Associates. The application has set its foot in Coinbase since the start of the year and has been in use by the HR and IT teams of the company. The user interface of the app is quite…

Isn't this exactly what was made fun of in the show Pied Piper? Piper score or metrics if I recall correctly.

The show was called "Silicon Valley" but yes they did explore/mock that concept

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#56

Post by trompetenaccoun » Fri, Jun 10, 2022, 8:10 AM UTC

locallost wrote: post #4

Considering they are likely all shareholders, I see nothing wrong with that.

As a shareholder I support them and 100% agree with what they're saying.

edit: That said I don't see any proof that this was written by Coinbase employees. Will treat it as unconfirmed although that doesn't change anything about the criticism being correct.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#57

Post by tsimionescu » Fri, Jun 10, 2022, 8:11 AM UTC

fathyb wrote: post #10

Initiatives like the Dot Collector and the Performance review system that has led to a toxic workplace culture I was curious about that "Dot Collector": Dot collector was an application invented by Ray Dalio’s hedge fund and Bridgewater Associates. The application has set its foot in Coinbase since the start of the year and has been in use by the HR and IT teams of the company. The user interface of the app is quite…

> how well they demonstrate the 10 crore Values at coinbase

I wonder if these are the 10 core values, or Coinbase actually has 10 crore (100,000,000) values they want employees to think about... Doesn't seem impossible given some HR departments I've seen.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#58

Post by parineum » Fri, Jun 10, 2022, 8:12 AM UTC

otikik wrote: post #44

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, it only asks for a thumbs up or thumbs down - unless I misread it - which is a lot less invasive or "ratty" than most employee review systems I know. I prefer human feedback to be honest. And I've only ever given negative feedback on a direct co-worker once, who was a right smug prick.

I think "Black Mirror S03E01 - Nosedive" gives a good perspective on how such a system can go wrong, but on a country level. I think that the same would apply in a company though: it would exacerbate the misalignment of incentives instead of improving the situation.

I think the Dunbar Number plays a significant role in why those situations are different.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#59

Post by tomlockwood » Fri, Jun 10, 2022, 8:13 AM UTC

Sounds like those employees that took exit packages to leave after their "apolitical" pivot 2 years ago, got a good deal. There was a lot of congratulatory posting here then, about how the company was going to come out of that a lot better, and with less of the fat. Now it doesn't look like that really happened.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#60

Post by highwaylights » Fri, Jun 10, 2022, 8:14 AM UTC

jpgvm wrote: post #47

jen729w wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m fascinated by the idea that, once a company reaches a certain size – let’s say 100 – then it is, by definition, average. Any claims to be above average may be summarily dismissed. This exhibits most clearly in large IT integrators. I know, I work for one. The marketing spiel makes me feel sick. If I were ever to start a company – I probably don’t want the stress – I’d want to keep it small. It is for this reason…

Netflix for many years was an outlier because of the stupidly high bar they kept for engineering hires. Obviously that all fell apart a few years ago and have since diluted their talent pool into mediocrity but I still think it's a counter-point for the argument that you can't maintain a high quality team into the ~200 engineers range.

I can't speak to whether your assertion is true or not (I've no experience of Netflix or it's hiring), but it kind of makes sense that this would happen if you think of the Netflix journey to date.

They transitioned from a mail order DVD system to online streaming, building that as they went, then moved the lot to the cloud while keeping everything up during it's exponential growth period.

There are a lot of really hard engineering challenges just in that sentence that would need some really good people, but now that they've built out a planetscale video delivery system their needs are a lot different (they just need to keep the lights on and the engine running).

I'm sure some really clever engineering still happens at Netflix but mostly the hard problems appear to be solved at this point, so you don't need incredible resources. Also, it would follow that most of those people would want to seek out new challenges rather than stick around for maintenance over the long term, but I've no idea if this actually happened there.