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Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

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Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#81

Post by captaincaveman »

asien wrote: post #43
sjtindell wrote: post #34

I’ve become convinced that hiring more people is generally a warning sign. A team of between a few and about twenty people seems to produce all the good stuff. Anything beyond that, your value per employee drops drastically, and your cost per employee goes up as you need to offer higher and higher salaries to stay in competition. A company going on a hiring spree is now a negative indicator for me. I think FB, Goog,…

> I think FB, Goog, etc. could lay off thousands with no adverse effects and in fact an increase in velocity, quality, and quantity of new features/products. You can add Airbnb,Netflix,Uber they often attend conference to describe their architectures.It’s obvious most of these people have no idea what they are doing have no clear direction. They are just havin’ fun will trying to navigate corporates politics. Even th…

Yeah but which thousand ...

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#82

Post by robocat »

nowherebeen wrote: post #15
fathyb wrote: post #10

Initiatives like the Dot Collector and the Performance review system that has led to a toxic workplace culture I was curious about that "Dot Collector": Dot collector was an application invented by Ray Dalio’s hedge fund and Bridgewater Associates. The application has set its foot in Coinbase since the start of the year and has been in use by the HR and IT teams of the company. The user interface of the app is quite…

> include values like positive energy There is so many things wrong with a system like this. It's asking coworkers to rat on each other. This is dystopian.

You have just written three negative sentences. You have a somewhat negative nick (nowherebeen). Your previous three comments on HN were negative.

Perhaps coinbase doesn’t target employees like you. Maybe they like happy clappy medicinally-well-adjusted type employees?

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#83

Post by koonsolo »

blocked_again wrote: post #38

Companies should only hire entrepreneurs and engineers who has proven track record as builders as execs. Hiring people from business schools and non engineers as execs is the stupidest thing you can do for long term sucess of the company. Hire builders. Not resume builders.

I think this theory is proven in practice. If you look at the major tech companies, they are all run by people who programmed at some point. Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, ... .

However, Steve Jobs seems to be an exception here (In Dutch, we have the expression "The exception proves the rule" ;), which basically means that all theories have exceptions)

I think it's very hard for non-builders to really understand the underlying processes that result in success.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#84

Post by my80thaccount »

robocat wrote: post #82
nowherebeen wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> include values like positive energy There is so many things wrong with a system like this. It's asking coworkers to rat on each other. This is dystopian.

You have just written three negative sentences. You have a somewhat negative nick (nowherebeen). Your previous three comments on HN were negative. Perhaps coinbase doesn’t target employees like you. Maybe they like happy clappy medicinally-well-adjusted type employees?

[dead]

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#85

Post by is0tope »

rgoulter wrote: post #66
paganel wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even on paper sounds dystopian, to be honest.

Bridgewater's approach sounds interesting, albeit not for everyone. Ideally, you want to catch mistakes sooner rather than later. People don't want to admit they made a mistake; or people don't want to sincerely criticise others. One way of fixing this is creating an environment where people feel safe about making mistakes. AFAIU Bridgewater's approach is the opposite; everything gets exposed. e.g. Modelling differen…

Yeah, I highly doubt that any line employee is going to tell the CEO they did a bad job.

These happy clappy "systems" usually fail to take into account (almost biological) realities of how power structures work.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#86

Post by nowherebeen »

robocat wrote: post #82
nowherebeen wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> include values like positive energy There is so many things wrong with a system like this. It's asking coworkers to rat on each other. This is dystopian.

You have just written three negative sentences. You have a somewhat negative nick (nowherebeen). Your previous three comments on HN were negative. Perhaps coinbase doesn’t target employees like you. Maybe they like happy clappy medicinally-well-adjusted type employees?

That's fine by me. I have never applied to coinbase nor intend to. I do agree I am a somewhat negative nick as well since I tend to comment on stuff I disagree with on HN. Thanks for the heads up though. I shall see if I can improve upon it.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#87

Post by haihaibye »

koonsolo wrote: post #83
blocked_again wrote: post #38

Companies should only hire entrepreneurs and engineers who has proven track record as builders as execs. Hiring people from business schools and non engineers as execs is the stupidest thing you can do for long term sucess of the company. Hire builders. Not resume builders.

I think this theory is proven in practice. If you look at the major tech companies, they are all run by people who programmed at some point. Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, ... . However, Steve Jobs seems to be an exception here (In Dutch, we have the expression "The exception proves the rule" ;), which basically means that all theories have exceptions) I think it's very hard for non-builders to really…

> The exception proves the rule

This is also a common English proverb

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#88

Post by samwillis »

jen729w wrote: post #46
sjtindell wrote: post #34

I’ve become convinced that hiring more people is generally a warning sign. A team of between a few and about twenty people seems to produce all the good stuff. Anything beyond that, your value per employee drops drastically, and your cost per employee goes up as you need to offer higher and higher salaries to stay in competition. A company going on a hiring spree is now a negative indicator for me. I think FB, Goog,…

I’m fascinated by the idea that, once a company reaches a certain size – let’s say 100 – then it is, by definition, average. Any claims to be above average may be summarily dismissed. This exhibits most clearly in large IT integrators. I know, I work for one. The marketing spiel makes me feel sick. If I were ever to start a company – I probably don’t want the stress – I’d want to keep it small. It is for this reason…

They way I had it described to me was that the optimal number of direct reports to one person is 7 (hence why military squads tend to be about 8 people). All companies go through growing pains as they reach ~7^n people and have to put in another layer of management. So about 7, 50, 340, 2400…

In reality most companies will have a 2-3 founders running it and so those numbers are more like, 14-20, 100-150, 700-1000.

I have never worked somewhere with larger teams so I may well be wrong, however there is definitely a step in small businesses with two founders at about the 20 people point.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#89

Post by [deleted] »

koonsolo wrote: post #83
blocked_again wrote: post #38

Companies should only hire entrepreneurs and engineers who has proven track record as builders as execs. Hiring people from business schools and non engineers as execs is the stupidest thing you can do for long term sucess of the company. Hire builders. Not resume builders.

I think this theory is proven in practice. If you look at the major tech companies, they are all run by people who programmed at some point. Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, ... . However, Steve Jobs seems to be an exception here (In Dutch, we have the expression "The exception proves the rule" ;), which basically means that all theories have exceptions) I think it's very hard for non-builders to really…

[deleted]

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#90

Post by my80thaccount »

nowherebeen wrote: post #86
robocat wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have just written three negative sentences. You have a somewhat negative nick (nowherebeen). Your previous three comments on HN were negative. Perhaps coinbase doesn’t target employees like you. Maybe they like happy clappy medicinally-well-adjusted type employees?

That's fine by me. I have never applied to coinbase nor intend to. I do agree I am a somewhat negative nick as well since I tend to comment on stuff I disagree with on HN. Thanks for the heads up though. I shall see if I can improve upon it.

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