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Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

blog.coinbase.com

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Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#591

Post by antisthenes »

q1w2 wrote: post #572
hhmc wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What were they emailing themselves, IP?

All sorts of things. Sometimes it's code or documentation/guides they wrote that they believe they're entitled to... Sometimes it's personal things they kept on their work computer/account.... Sometimes it's contact lists... Sometimes it's strategy docs they authored... Sometimes it's password files (which often mix personal and work creds). Sometimes it's whatever-they-can-think-of that might be of value on the shar…

What about emails that they might need to bring up in court?

What's the general way for an employee to retain access to those?

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#592

Post by brandall10 »

mingusrude wrote: post #464
UncleMeat wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Friendly, smiley, fake. My father had to lay off a bunch of people in 2008. I am now a manager. He told me that if I am ever forced to do this to not ever do this crap to my team. Tell them that this is bullshit. Tell them that you are upset. Tell them that you haven't slept. Tell them that the are right to be mad, disappointed, and even to hate you for choosing their head to roll. Anything better than fake smiles…

> Tell them that the are right to be mad, disappointed, and even to hate you for choosing their head to roll. This is OK. > Tell them that you are upset. Tell them that you haven't slept. No, no, no. Never talk about your own difficulties when you lay someone off, this is one particular time when it's not about you but 100% about the person that you are laying off.

Right. I'm mystified this is anyone's reaction... dishing empathy while garnering sympathy is a weird double bind to put on people on the receiving end.

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#593

Post by cyphar »

danuker wrote: post #469
cyphar wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool_theory

This has held for over a century in the case of gold, since the USD kept readjusting its peg and eventually suspending convertibility. https://www.macrotrends.net/1333/historical-gold-prices-100-...

So what you're saying with that example is that even with the backing of many governments that have a vested interest in doing anything to stop the bubble from bursting (something Bitcoin doesn't have), the greater fool theory ultimately was correct in that eventually the bubble burst? (I don't agree that the USD-Gold peg was an example of greater fool theory, just an example of how pegging your currency to gold as a sovereign government with a central bank is not a reasonable way of doing monetary policy. The gold standard is an outlier in the human history of monetary policy, the only reason it's so notable to us today is because it was in use during the development of modern economics.)

Cryptocurrencies do not produce anything and any actual transactions done using them (as opposed to speculative trading) are a rounding error even after more than a decade. There is no mechanism for them to be anything other than a complicated greater fool scam because ultimately the only way you can make money from them is if you can sell them to someone else for more money than you bought them for -- which is what a greater fool scam is.

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#594

Post by sbierwagen »

QuadrupleA wrote: post #516

Did this get buried by moderators? 610 points / 504 comments in 3 hours yet already down to #38.

Submissions with lots of comments get deranked by the anti-flamewar algorithm to push them off the front page.

Don't worry, you'll be seeing plenty more stories about crypto businesses doing major layoffs over the next month.

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#595

Post by dvt »

paulgb wrote: post #435
dvt wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> his business as a literal Ponzi scheme Imagine being this uninformed and wanting to seriously have a conversation about crypto and the underlying fundamentals. We get it, you hate crypto. Why even bother at this point?

Matt Levine is pretty informed IMHO, and he interpreted SBF's explanation of yield farming as describing a Ponzi scheme. > I think of myself as like a fairly cynical person. And that was so much more cynical than how I would've described farming. You're just like, well, I'm in the Ponzi business and it's pretty good.

Yes, yield farming is a ponzi (though technically it's the greater fool theory). SBF's company (FTX) is certainly not a ponzi.

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#596

Post by ZephyrBlu »

rootusrootus wrote: post #381
ghaff wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In many jurisdictions (not in the US I suppose), before firing someone for poor performance they must be told that their performance is inadequate and be given a chance to improve. Performance Improvement Plans are a thing at larger companies. That said, once someone is on a PIP, the handwriting is almost certainly on the wall. I've also worked with people who were incredibly oblivious about the quality of their wor…

> once someone is on a PIP, the handwriting is almost certainly on the wall. My current manager is particularly transparent about this (with other managers, at least). When he puts someone on a PIP, it is a formality. He deliberately chooses a redemption project that is impossible to achieve. Edit: Jeez, guys, don't downvote -me- ;-). It's not my policy.

What sort of impossible projects does he assign?

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#597

Post by refracture »

tartoran wrote: post #590
refracture wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work as a contractor at a help desk, the company was based on the east coast while the office we were at was back west. We hired a guy that while nice enough was not a good fit; he couldn't do the work. HQ decided that we would terminate him on Friday. I have no idea why, but the on site supervisor had gotten the perception that we had the go ahead to inform this guy he was terminated, and right before he w…

> I don't believe it was just because of this but do I do firmly believe this awful experience may have been a contributing factor to him taking his life later that year. That’s extremly sad to hear. Not saying that the company or anyone owed him anything but we do live in a really mean world. In an alternate universe or maybe eveb a different country nobody would be pushed into taking such decisions as taking their…

I had my timeline off; it was a few years later. In any case it was really sad to hear, back in the dark days of my active Facebook use I was friends with a friend of his, his family was very heart broken and I learned more than I cared to of the specifics of his end.

He had apparently took up delivering pizza instead of IT, it was pretty awkward when he delivered Pizza to one of us. Another one of us felt so bad about how it all went down that he kept in regular contact with him right up to when he passed away.

Another coworker however chose to his interactions with this guy as the basis of a post on /r/talesfromtechsupport to win internet points.

I have chosen to keep my strongest memory of this man based around the one potlock we had while he was with us; he brought in an amazing habanero salsa and was a pleasure to chat with.

I miss some of the people but I don't miss working there.

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#598

Post by junar »

foobiekr wrote: post #584
adrr wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coinbase layoff is so large they are paying them because of the WARN act in California.

WARN is federal law not state law.

There's both a federal law and a California law.

https://edd.ca.gov/en/Jobs_and_Training/Layoff_Services_WARN

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#599

Post by q1w2 »

antisthenes wrote: post #591
q1w2 wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All sorts of things. Sometimes it's code or documentation/guides they wrote that they believe they're entitled to... Sometimes it's personal things they kept on their work computer/account.... Sometimes it's contact lists... Sometimes it's strategy docs they authored... Sometimes it's password files (which often mix personal and work creds). Sometimes it's whatever-they-can-think-of that might be of value on the shar…

What about emails that they might need to bring up in court? What's the general way for an employee to retain access to those?

If they file a case in court, they are entitled subpoena documents that might support their case, including emails. There is an established procedure for that and company legal/compliance departments have legal-hold policies to freeze anything that might be relevant for a pending legal case.

Trying to forcibly steal those documents/emails is a wonderful way to being charged with a computer crime if it's serious enough. ...but lesser consequences include public lawsuits that impact your career prospects (we did this to one high ranking employee who tried to email herself powerpoint strategy presentations she made and copied to a USB). ...but at the very least, having an attempted theft of documents on record will get any future allegations they might make against the company much easier to throw out.

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#600

Post by shrimpx »

Barrera wrote: post #60

> If you are affected, you will receive this notification in your personal email, because we made the decision to cut access to Coinbase systems for affected employees. I realize that removal of access will feel sudden and unexpected, and this is not the experience I wanted for you. Given the number of employees who have access to sensitive customer information, it was unfortunately the only practical choice, to ensu…

My first thought is that there could easily be a malicious actor within the not yet laid off employees who could now be actually incentivized to do their bad deed seeing clearly that they may get no notice when fired.
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