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Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

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Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#91

Post by encrux »

samwillis wrote: post #88
jen729w wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This seems surprisingly reasonable for my personal experience, so I'm gonna use it as a general rule now /s

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#92

Post by ur-whale »

permo-w wrote: post #78
ur-whale wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sounds like hell. Sounds like standard corporate usistan.

i.e. hell

> i.e. hell

Fair enough, but why single out Coinbase when the same kind of BS goes on in pretty much every large corp over there?

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#93

Post by rgoulter »

is0tope wrote: post #85
rgoulter wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The story I was thinking of was where a director sent him the criticism, and he shared the criticism within the company. From this summary of a TED talk Dalio gave in 2017: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/employee-sent-hedge-fund-gian...

I'm not familiar with other companies that have the same reputation of using a system like this the same way Bridgewater does.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#94

Post by xiphias2 »

Qworg wrote: post #29
xiphias2 wrote: post #16

While I'm sure that there's a lot of truth in this (and love the petition, as it focuses on shareholders, not the employees), the margins Coinbase was having for trading cryptocurrencies was unsustainable, and the company was overvalued. Now the controversial part: Coinbase had a valuation of 100k BTC in 2012, and had the same valuation (100k BTC) at the IPO time. Unlike the internet where most of the valuecis captur…

Why do you expect this? Bitcoin is supply limited, but you can take trading fees over and over forever.

Not really, the margins naturally go down, Coinbase has no monopoly on trading, but Bitcoin has network effect.

Coinbase made more money on trading fees than the whole ICE exchange, it's not sustainable.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#95

Post by nojito »

is0tope wrote: post #85
rgoulter wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Actually this happens all the time in firms using dot collector.

You have to remember you give real-time feedback during the meeting itself.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#96

Post by SilverBirch »

Honestly don't know what on earth this is trying to achieve. Running a software company is hard. Management is going to make choices and there are hard decisions. Not everyone you work with is going to be nice.

>The failure of the Coinbase NFT platform

Market forces.

>The over-prioritization of certain products, which has led to a lack of focus on other important issues like infrastructure

Name them. General "I disagree with your priorities" is pathetic. Name the decisions and explain why they were foreseeably wrong.

>Not being able to output any higher or better quality products and services despite aggressively hiring more employees

Welcome to any fast growing team. You get slower before you get faster.

>A generally apathetic and sometimes condescending attitude from the CPO, COO, and Chief People Officer

Grow up.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#97

Post by SilverBirch »

monkeydust wrote: post #6

Sure they have valid points but I am more sure that if the price of Bitcoin and other major cryptos kept moving on up this would not be a thing. This is the key problem with crypto only exchanges. At some point (probably further down in share price) they will become a target for existing exchanges looking to diversify - ICE, CME

CME Group has a market cap of about $70Bn. I would say that COIN looks like a good acqusition target in the 5-10Bn range. I could see that as a good exit strategy for a company like coinbase.

Unfortunately COIN is currently worth 15, and was worth around 70Bn last year.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#98

Post by tenpies »

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.

For what it's worth, this is progress. The previous default is a 24/7 inquisition trying to find and destroy any co-worker not on the cutting edge of woke - whether outside of work or at work.

A silly 10 question yes/no survey from HR is a step back towards sanity.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#100

Post by meerita »

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…

Sounds like hell. I can't believe companies use such systems to manage their own employees. It tells a lot how bad managers do their work, which is basically know every employee and care for them.
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