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Today I've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%

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Re: Today I've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%

#641

Post by BigTTYGothGF »

siren2026 wrote: post #561
kelnos wrote: post #515

> Leaders will own much more, with as many as 15+ direct reports. [...] Every leader at Coinbase must also be a strong and active individual contributor. Managers should be like player-coaches, getting their hands dirty alongside their teams. Oof. So not only are they giving their remaining managers more reports, but those managers will be expected to do lots of other, non-management work. Sure, nothing can go wrong…

Or maybe we should go back to what it was before Google and big $$$ tech decided that if you were a "manager" you shouldn't contribute technically. Being a manager now means a bunch of busy work talking to other managers and weekly 1:1s. There is a ton that has been written about the managerial class. Producing nothing, but for sure making themselves look self-important. Before that the manager was essentially the be…

> Before that the manager was essentially the best engineer in the team

I'm not sure that's ever been true.

Re: Today I've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%

#643

Post by pm90 »

storgendibal wrote: post #464
pm90 wrote: post #407

From some of the previous decisions taken by Brian, and the quality of his discourse on twitter, it feels like he has succumbed to something that afflicts a lot of rich people with frail egos: surrounding themselves with yes-men, they rarely engage with the reality as-is and instead with a make believe one. Elon Must also suffers from this as do the founders of AirBnB. It wasn't that long ago that, in SV, the dominan…

> "as do the founders of AirBnB." This resonates but I can't put my finger on why for the founders of AirBnB. Do you have examples? Obviously true for Elon. It seems like the previous generation of founders were always paranoid that their companies could/would fail in an instant, which led to the management styles of Andy Grove, Gates, Jobs etc (and I'd argue Larry and Sergey as well). That mindset meant they knew th…

Ah do you remember the whole Founder Mode trend? It faded just as fast as it started because it was meaningless. And it has had doubtful impact on the product itself.

Re: Today I've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%

#644

Post by bluerooibos »

muzani wrote: post #530
kelnos wrote: post #515

> Leaders will own much more, with as many as 15+ direct reports. [...] Every leader at Coinbase must also be a strong and active individual contributor. Managers should be like player-coaches, getting their hands dirty alongside their teams. Oof. So not only are they giving their remaining managers more reports, but those managers will be expected to do lots of other, non-management work. Sure, nothing can go wrong…

This jumped out at me right away too. What happened to the days when a dedicated manager would manage 8 reports? What now? AI is going to double the communication bandwidth with these reports and further double the free time they have? I do think the most efficient form of team is a "cell" of three people. One is a little unstable.

Just curious if there's a reason you mentioned 8 or if that's an arbitrary number? Was 8 an industry norm/upper limit at one point?

Re: Today I've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%

#645

Post by kakacik »

kelnos wrote: post #522
ryandrake wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If so, that's really generous, given the cost of having to pay for COBRA. Either way, I'd still be shitting my pants. 16 weeks is not a lot of time to find another job in today's environment. I know devs who have been out of work for years and had to resort to stocking shelves at Home Depot to tread water.

I would sincerely hope that anyone making tech money has some savings put away and isn't living paycheck-to-paycheck.

It would be a reasonable, even logical expectation, but everybody does sometimes less-than-logical things, takes some risks etc. Most of the time it works out somehow, sometimes it doesn't.

I've done my share - after buying one smaller apartment some 12 years ago, paying all legal fees, taxes and full reconstruction I was, overall, -1500 euro worth and now with 2 parallel mortgages on my shoulders. Had to take short term employer's loan to get back into positive numbers (that loan, if fired/let go, would be conveniently ignored so that has been be my main motivation for taking it otherwise its a dumb move on its own).

Getting fired during that period and maybe next 6-12 months afterwards would be still devastating for me, I don't have rich parent/family to fall back on, smart moral hard working folks didn't get paid well during socialism/communism. This is where rich kids have massive non-obvious advantage - like ie Gates, they can go and take big risks that are not that big for them, and come crying to rich daddy if they screw up, or be a hero if lucky. Folks like me, they have to risk everything to even get the chance to play the game (which has its own risks which luckily didn't materialize).

I see it even now with my colleagues - nobody would take any big risk, all very risk-averse because they can. My risks though took me further than they managed to get with a massively better starting position. Sometimes, austerity is a great motivator.

But it was a temporary dip, and I had a bit of luck through it. To be in software engineering and having long term no savings, thats... bad life strategy in most cases.

Re: Today I've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%

#646

Post by suslik »

kelnos wrote: post #515

> Leaders will own much more, with as many as 15+ direct reports. [...] Every leader at Coinbase must also be a strong and active individual contributor. Managers should be like player-coaches, getting their hands dirty alongside their teams. Oof. So not only are they giving their remaining managers more reports, but those managers will be expected to do lots of other, non-management work. Sure, nothing can go wrong…

I was a manager of 12 for several months and that was really difficult. I got a severe burnout, even though I had no IC responsibilities. I cannot imagine how could I dedicate enough time to my team if I did.

Re: Today I've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%

#647

Post by frollogaston »

reverend_gonzo wrote: post #268
scottlamb wrote: post #213

> We’ll be concentrating around AI-native talent Is this code for "we're firing all the old people"? As I understand it, I can say I'll only hire proficient English speakers (a "bona fide occupational requirement"), but I can't say I'll only hire native speakers, as that would discriminate against various protected groups. This seems like the same thing—proficiency may be a bona fide requirement, but expecting they l…

I would disagree. I am among the oldest on our team and also the most in tune with AI. I see AI-native as those who have embraced it, and are learning to leverage it appropriately.

That's not what the word "native" implies, but I think that's what he means here.

Re: Today I've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%

#648

Post by frollogaston »

pron wrote: post #344
reverend_gonzo wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would disagree. I am among the oldest on our team and also the most in tune with AI. I see AI-native as those who have embraced it, and are learning to leverage it appropriately.

Except people who are learning to leverage it appropriately already know better than to generate important production code by "managing fleets of agents".

None of these execs are AI-native, and the managers tend not to be either

Re: Today I've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%

#649

Post by frollogaston »

ryandrake wrote: post #279
CityOfThrowaway wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's obviously not. There is nothing about being old that prevents you from being AI-native.

I don't even know what "AI-native" even means. The term is sufficiently vague to shield any number of discrimination schemes.

If they wanted to discriminate on age, they wouldn't need a term for it. Big tech companies have been doing it with things like college interns or paying for student loans.

Re: Today I've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%

#650

Post by frollogaston »

torben-friis wrote: post #631
CityOfThrowaway wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's obviously not. There is nothing about being old that prevents you from being AI-native.

Native implies mother language. As in "this is how I learned from the start". Either it's badly named or people are trying to be included (?).

It's just badly named
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