Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

681–690 of 842 posts

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

#681

Post by tyyyy3 »

fastasucan wrote: post #676
tyyyy3 wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly believe increasing the rate at which one produces code misses the point. If engineers already know up front with clarity what they need to build, and, the leadership are very focused and concentrate resources on doing a few things.. then increasing the rate at which LOC is written is not beneficial - because getting the product built right is what matters.

Exactly. We all laughed at the cases where productivity was measured in lines of code. But now the whole world somehow optimize for it.

I did a degree in comp sci but my focus through my career is at the intersection of product design, economics and corporate finance/valuation whilst working with software engineers.

Im beginning to realise people who are too concentrated on one dimension (e.g software engineering) can’t see how things actually fit together. You only know what you know I guess.. but it’s blindly obvious to me.

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

#682

Post by weakfish »

newphone733 wrote: post #540
oytis wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have recently learned Kubernetes without AI and one week is more than enough to understand most of it.

This is definitely not true. But I doubt GP understand "most" of kubernetes too. They probably have a good working knowledge of the important commonly used features.

…it definitely is true, I spun up a cluster at home to learn it for a new job and felt comfortable with the basics within a few days.

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

#683

Post by runako »

daemin wrote: post #478
pron wrote: post #310

> Over the past year, I’ve watched engineers use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks. No, you didn't. You watched engineers use AI to ship in days something that looks like what used to take a team weeks. After enough rounds of feature evolution, you'll realise that what they actually shipped isn't at all the same. Anthropic's C compiler, which also seemed like a good start that would have taken people…

People that manage AI agents are not engineers as they do no engineering but are instead just supervisors.

Early in my career, people said this about programmers who (weakly) insisted on using assemblers.

Then, about people using high-level languages like C.

Then, about people using C++.

Then, about people using "toy"/"scripting" languages like PHP and Python.

About people who use ORMs instead of writing SQL directly.

About people who use JavaScript ("not a real programming language" was the dis).

People used to argue how it was the mark of a tourist to use anything more visual than Emacs.

This slight won't stick, nobody cares, and it might end up sounding stupid later. You can't usefully insult a professional engineer in 2026 by pointing out that they haven't memorized ASCII or the Arm instruction set.

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

#684

Post by ethbr1 »

malfist wrote: post #656
broken-kebab wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best manager I had in my career was a guy with zero software dev experience. Technical skills and leadership are simply different fields. Converting a best engineer into a mediocre manager doesn't sound like a solution for anything.

They're not completely different fields. Staff engineer and above is unobtainable without some of the leadership skills a manager needs. There's a lot of soft skill overlap between high impact ICs and management. I like to think of it as a manager isn't required to have technical expertise, it can help, I can hurt, but they have to be a leader. Junior and mid career are required to have technical expertise, but not r…

> bullshit performance management

Having a manager manage performance is the worst organizational option, except for all the others.

Good managers understand they (like senior ICs) are the grease between the working gears of a large company.

Bad managers think it means status.

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

#685

Post by freejazz »

turtlebits wrote: post #118
vdnkh wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This email was 100% AI generated. I just edited a similar sentence from a claude code doc I'm writing - "we're not just X, we're fundamentally Y" is an obvious tell. I guess he's putting his money where his mouth is

Who cares? If you're getting laid off, the only thing that really matters is the severance package. Its all lip service - either AI generated or hand written.

>Who cares?

People with dignity.

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

#686

Post by twosdai »

dahart wrote: post #672
siren2026 wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> We don't need weekly 1:1s to check on feelings. As a manager that does weekly 1:1s, I agree with that statement. But I do need 1:1s to check on progress, uncover blockers that people haven’t surfaced on their own, make continuous small decisions, offer support, assess performance, collect status information for my manager, and last but not least give employees the opportunity to share feelings frequently. They do,…

It is possible to move most of that discussion to required but intentional async communication.

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

#687

Post by vel0city »

broken-kebab wrote: post #607
siren2026 wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The best manager I had in my career was a guy with zero software dev experience. Technical skills and leadership are simply different fields. Converting a best engineer into a mediocre manager doesn't sound like a solution for anything.

The best manager role I ever worked with wasn't incredibly technical, although he was loosely working on getting some IT certifications at the time. He wasn't even the person I really reported to, he was just a project manager that was really on the ball. I knew if I needed something, I could go ask him real quick and he'd make it happen. If I didn't have the full specs, he'd go chase down the other teams and get them sorted leaving me to stay busy with the technical work. I knew if he threw a meeting my way we'd have a good agenda with real issues to work through, and I knew I'd get minutes sent out after the meeting to keep track of what was decided.

I haven't had many excellent experiences with project managers, but dang was he good at keeping me unblocked.

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

#688

Post by Eisenstein »

Sankozi wrote: post #664
friendzis wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a whole industry built around [mis-]conception that people will take less offense on the content if it was presented differently. The predictable result is that it is actually rewriting content, not the presentation or tone. No amount of linkedinese corporate fluffery will wash off the core message that people are getting laid off unless you outright hide the message under ambiguity of double-speak like "sli…

You are contradicting yourself: either presentation is not important so LLM use does not matter (as long as core message is still there), or it is important and and LLM can change how the message is received (by improving presentation or making it worse).

I don't see a contradiction. What they are saying is that no amount of non-ambiguous presentation can make poor content acceptable. They never said the presentation was meaningless.

Example: A friend has died and consolation is given. No amount of consolation makes the death a good thing for you, but there is still a difference in how that consolation is presented to you.

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

#689

Post by irishcoffee »

parliament32 wrote: post #662
siren2026 wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> We don't need weekly 1:1s to check on feelings Hard agree. One-on-ones are one of the silliest fads in our industry lately. Why would you wait until a weekly scheduled meeting to bring something up? Your manager's job is to be available to you when you need something, not just once a week. And if they want to know how you're feeling.. they should ask, putting it on an agenda feels very disingenuous. Me and my direc…

I make it a point to have 5-10 minute ad-hoc conversations with my directs 1-2 times a week, feels a lot more natural than a scheduled 1-on-1. Twice a year we have a company-sanctioned formal sit-down about perf.

As a result, people pop in my office regularly to start these conversations, which I prefer because it leads me to believe I am approachable, which is by far one of the most important things a manager should be.

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

#690

Post by keiferski »

It has always annoyed me that companies can basically fire people for whatever reason they want, but more specifically that they can lie about that reason.

It almost makes we wish there were legal requirements for giving proof backing up the reason. It doesn’t need to be an actually good or noble one, but just in the sense of actually being accurate information being put into the world. I imagine this could be sold as a part of financial transparency laws.

Because as of now, it really seems like companies are using AI as a cover to fire people.

Post reply on HN