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

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#51

Post by dcow » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 6:08 PM UTC

Johnny555 wrote: post #45

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…

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…

If it's hard then it's still possible and where do you think the extra resources will have to come from to realize the new generation of billionaires?

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#52

Post by bombcar » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 6:09 PM UTC

JamesSwift wrote: post #30

raesene9 wrote: post #16

I see they cut off access for staff before telling them. not an atypical move, but I wonder if they were actually able to revoke all access, given there's systems like Kubernetes where some auth. types can't be revoked once granted.

I would expect there to be a VPN in place with revokable login

Which is why even with zero-trust and such, things like a VPN can be useful as a "catch-all".

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#53

Post by JumpCrisscross » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 6:09 PM UTC

ssharp wrote: post #26

m00x wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bold claims like this is what make people look like idiots when things turn around. With experience though, you can tell that people who make bold claims like this were always idiots gambling away their credibility, hoping the 50/50 lands in their favour.

I'm struggling to find a good analogy to these crypto boom/bust cycles, where the market continues to survive/thrive after the busts. The closest I can come up with is real estate, but there is a core underlying value in real estate in that people need space to live/work/shop/whatever -- so when speculative bubbles burst, there is pretty significant underlying demand. I have a hard time drawing that parallel the cryp…

> struggling to find a good analogy to these crypto boom/bust cycles

Casinos. Seriously [1].

[1] https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.13.3.173

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#54

Post by unicornmama » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 6:09 PM UTC

m00x wrote: post #17

willturman wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto is dead.

Bold claims like this is what make people look like idiots when things turn around. With experience though, you can tell that people who make bold claims like this were always idiots gambling away their credibility, hoping the 50/50 lands in their favour.

No post body was provided.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#55

Post by shrimpx » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 6:10 PM UTC

ssharp wrote: post #26

m00x wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bold claims like this is what make people look like idiots when things turn around. With experience though, you can tell that people who make bold claims like this were always idiots gambling away their credibility, hoping the 50/50 lands in their favour.

I'm struggling to find a good analogy to these crypto boom/bust cycles, where the market continues to survive/thrive after the busts. The closest I can come up with is real estate, but there is a core underlying value in real estate in that people need space to live/work/shop/whatever -- so when speculative bubbles burst, there is pretty significant underlying demand. I have a hard time drawing that parallel the cryp…

It’s like betting and gambling. The losers keep coming back thinking they can time it correctly this time around. The game is basically putting money in to get it higher, and timing the top. Crypto being largely meaningless in terms of value is a perfect medium for the game.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#56

Post by raesene9 » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 6:10 PM UTC

JamesSwift wrote: post #30

raesene9 wrote: post #16

I see they cut off access for staff before telling them. not an atypical move, but I wonder if they were actually able to revoke all access, given there's systems like Kubernetes where some auth. types can't be revoked once granted.

I would expect there to be a VPN in place with revokable login

As long as their cluster API servers aren't on the Internet.... which is a default for AKS, EKS, and GKE :) (there's 1.3M servers identified as Kubernetes directly on the Internet according to Shodan's latest stats).

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#57

Post by izzydata » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 6:12 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 don't think billionaires should exist, but I also don't think these employees have been wronged. That is a pretty generous severance package.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#58

Post by greggsy » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 6:12 PM UTC

hintymad wrote: post #20

Why they need these many people for an exchange is puzzling. I’m sure there are many things to do, but shouldn’t they grow their headcount organically and slowly?

They have a few different service offerings, ranging from compliance to web3 infrastructure: https://www.coinbase.com/cloud/blockchain-infrastructure

They also presumably have hefty cyber, legal and financial audit teams to protect their assets, and position themselves in preparation for any changes in the landscape (which has been pretty rocky to say the least).

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#59

Post by jstummbillig » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 6:13 PM UTC

julianlam wrote: post #27

hintymad wrote: post #20

Why they need these many people for an exchange is puzzling. I’m sure there are many things to do, but shouldn’t they grow their headcount organically and slowly?

When you have obscene amounts of money, your perception of what is normal goes out the window.

Do tell.

On a more serious note and the likely answer to the question: customer support for 100000000 customers (as has been pointed out elsewhere in this thread)

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#60

Post by thebean11 » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 6:13 PM UTC

dkural wrote: post #32

TameAntelope wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An equally as irrational position as, "Crypto is the best thing ever!"

Was there an Enron turn-around? Crypto does some mildly useful things, which could justify perhaps 1% of the resources going into it.

That's about as useful as pointing to some equally unrelated thing that did turn around. The truth is nobody here knows either way, and if you did you'd be in the process of becoming very wealthy on that knowledge. Let me make a wild guess that you will not actually be putting your money where your mouth is on this?