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

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#501

Post by paisawalla » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 9:03 PM UTC

whimsicalism wrote: post #383

smsm42 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not btw? I mean, why is it worse for somebody to have power because he worked and invested for decades and made optimal decisions (and probably some luck) than for somebody to have power because he was born into the right family, knows all the right people in The Machine, has nice hair and is able to conceal his rampaging cocaine habit long enough to make himself too big to fail? I get that "wealth gets power" is…

There's no such thing as too big to fail in democratic politics and it is not a deterministic process of knowing people in "The Machine." FWIW, most wealthy people are wealthy because of inherited holdings and 60% of all wealth in the US is inherited.

There is significant income mobility in the US, which is why "the one-percent" discourse consistently fails to resonate with Americans. When 73% of Americans have spent at least a year earning a top 20% income [0], focusing on the inherited wealth of others comes off as whining. As long people feel that the pie grows, and that they can move themselves forward, these observations are at best statistical curiosities. They feel very much of a piece with the deboonkers on Twitter who tell the truck owner/operator facing 50% higher gas prices that technically there's no recession.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/opinion/sunday/from-rags-...

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#502

Post by int_19h » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 9:03 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #336

jerry1979 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not settled on this yet. I'm from the USA, and one thing that concerns me is the geopolitics of billionaires. What happens when USA taxes billionaires out of existence? Russia and China still have billionaires. Does that do something to the power relationships in the world? Is there such a thing as "our" billionaires? The other question I have has to do with feudalism. If we let "our" billionaires exist, does tha…

Also, billionaires' wealth isn't parked in a vault, right? It's invested in companies, so it's working in the economy whereas it would otherwise go to the government. It's not obvious to me that the government is going to provide more value for the public in general than industry, but I would like for that to be the case (an easy solution for inequality that doesn't shrink our economy overall).

The government could, for example, issue loans at minimal interest rates to smaller businesses.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#503

Post by sytelus » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 9:03 PM UTC

I don't understand why Coinbase is feeling such a crunch. They are just middleman in buying and selling. Their advantage is supposed to be that they make money whether crypto goes up or down. How can they screw this up?

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#504

Post by baq » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 9:04 PM UTC

thethimble wrote: post #382

babyshake wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if doing huge amounts of hiring during good times and quickly pivoting to doing large layoffs during bad times is ethical, it sure does seem wasteful and not indicative of great leadership. Although it does seem to be the norm now, if recent years are any indication.

Well it’s not clear that anyone could have predicted the timing of this downturn. Just a few months ago people were painting a very rosy picture for the future. In that context, metering investment can have a huge opportunity cost as well. I’m not advocating for CB - just suggesting that it’s harder to predict the future than you are implying.

Exact timing? No. General direction? There are people who made that call in November, plenty more joined January-February. Note the question is where does this end and those same people are the first to admit nobody knows, because the fed doesn’t know - and the answer is, when the fed pivots.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#505

Post by formvoltron » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 9:04 PM UTC

what the heck did all those people do!?

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#506

Post by manicksurya » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 9:04 PM UTC

hmm. looks like the total mentality of an entrepreneur changes when the company becomes public. with VC funds, the entrepreneur focuses on execution and builds and with IPO, its ok for entrepreneurs to lose vigor and can buy millions worth property and also lay off employees.

In the end, it has nothing to do with open society or for the people. its all about money and its just greed.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#507

Post by int_19h » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 9:05 PM UTC

IMTDb wrote: post #464

yellowapple wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does that hurt anyone? Because those yachts were bought with money skimmed off our labor.

Ah yes the famed 0 sum game. If that was the case, it should work both ways: when Bezos "lost" $20 billions of May 1st, how many skimmed labourers suddenly were able to afford $1 million houses ?

The notion that employers are unfairly collecting economic rent from their employees doesn't require it to be a zero-sum game.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#508

Post by its_ethan » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 9:05 PM UTC

pojzon wrote: post #441

criley2 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wor…

> To claim that an impoverished serf working land "had 4 days off a week" Well.. noone said that. If you mind reading the comment again. But its true that peasents had a lot more time to work on their own stuff than on what master told them to do. Either way most peasents worked for higher tier peasent because landlord often has hubdreds of hectars of land.

No post body was provided.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#509

Post by Johnny555 » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 9:06 PM UTC

epicide wrote: post #340

tomcam wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who determines excessive? How do high risk ideas get executed when there are no billionaires?

Perhaps part of the problem is that we incentivize high-risk ideas too much.

I think it's the opposite.

I'm not talking about "Let's start a social media app for Aardvarks!" kind of ideas, but actual scientific research. We used to have pure research orgs like Bell Labs, but companies aren't funding pure research any more, so we need more investment from government. Not every idea should have a path to monetization before it's funded.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#510

Post by Dma54rhs » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 9:06 PM UTC

uncomputation wrote: post #271

daenz wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why shouldn’t those people be given money? They were given money: their compensation that they agreed and accepted as being fair payment for their labor.

Let’s be conservative and say Armstrong has just a net worth of the house he bought: 150,000,000. If the average employee’s salary is 150,000, Armstrong makes 1,000 times more than them. Does this seem fair? Does he deserve higher compensation for his entrepreneurial skills? Absolutely. But 1,000? It’s hard for us to imagine the scale of 1,000 times greater than something but it seems excessive (and remember, this is…

Programmers wages in America are for the vast majority of the world obscene as well. It depends where do you draw the line, American programmer is most likely the 1% for the world.