[HN Gopher] Coinbase is a decentralized company, with no headqua...
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Coinbase is a decentralized company, with no headquarters
Author : mericsson
Score : 58 points
Date : 2021-02-24 17:31 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.coinbase.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.coinbase.com)
| samr71 wrote:
| We've only been doing mass WFH for a year. Many companies have
| been saying things very similar to Coinbase, but I'm not sure if
| long-term mass WFH will prove to that great (for the company, I'd
| argue it certainly won't be great for the average worker).
| destitude wrote:
| One thing the average worker should watch out for is companies
| who perform geographically adjustment pay scales. Some WFH
| companies now even list that as a benefit that they do not do
| these type of adjustments. I'm not sure what the best answer is
| to that but feel many are using it as an excuse to pay workers
| less.
| pinkybanana wrote:
| Why wouldn't companies use WFH for their own benefit? They
| are businesses. I find it weird that western workers somehow
| imagine that WFH means that they can happily work remote but
| not compete with other remote workers. The fact is that their
| big value-add has been the physical contact with the
| employer, as employers want to interact with their employees
| f2f for god knows what reason.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I think the big value add is time proximity and lack of
| language barrier. Moreover, the large majority of high-
| level technical talent remains in the West (and the west
| coast of the west-most country of the West, at that),
| although that gap is closing.
| ajkjk wrote:
| I agree with the sentiment that companies should compete on
| WFH wages, the same as they would compete on anything else.
| It's really weird to me that HN thinks it shouldn't make a
| difference. Why not? You get to pick the job, pick it if it
| pays enough, don't if it doesn't. If it suppresses wages..
| good, they were too high anyay.
|
| But I disagree with "f2f for god knows what reason.". Face-
| to-face is really important to lots of people. That group
| of people is relatively less well-represented in HN comment
| sections, where lots of hacker types who are motivated by
| the work and would prefer to avoid socialization hang out,
| but it's a huge factor for lots of people.
|
| I, for one, am considering changing jobs to find one with
| an office as soon as possible if my workplace doesn't go
| back to having a physical office.
| tshaddox wrote:
| It's very possible to both dislike a thing and not be
| surprised by it.
| partiallypro wrote:
| Though I often feel my work/life relationship has shifted more
| towards work since moving full WFH, I am still saving time each
| day without a commute and also saving money on gas and car
| maintenance.
| ghaff wrote:
| Why not? Yes, to the sibling comment, there's the potential
| issue of pay adjustments that may (or may not) leave employees
| better off. But, in general, some percentage of employees do
| seem to want full remote and the majority want to work from
| home at least half the time. I agree that it's a negative for
| people who want to go back to an in-person office most days
| before time. But I assume that there will be many companies
| that lean in that direction.
| samr71 wrote:
| These all potentially could or could not happen, but I think
| they're possible given multi-year mass WFT. I'm not
| guaranteeing these, but I've seen them discussed.
|
| For the company: - Lower productivity (burnout, people not
| adequately connected, people not on same page, more difficult
| to manager remote workers, more distractions) - Less
| innovation - Less / No company culture - Less employee
| satisfaction; harder to recruit at all WFT firms - Difficulty
| onboarding new employees
|
| For employees: - Competing with talent globally, lower wages
| - Fewer perks - Less community, more atomization
| ghaff wrote:
| I was mostly responding to "I'd argue it certainly won't be
| great for the average worker"
|
| Many of us were working remotely before the current
| situation. I guess that makes me not average. But many
| people are saying they're looking forward to not going back
| to a commute every day even if they stay in the same
| general area and maybe go in a day or two a week for
| collaboration/meetings. The big negative for me has been
| working remotely _during a pandemic_ with my usual 100 or
| so days of travel curtailed.
| pinkybanana wrote:
| I agree, 1 year is very short time. We might see the effects of
| WFH policy even after 5 years or so, positive or negative.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| I am really looking forward to a future where we can all spread
| out to the locations we want and live the way we want. The trends
| of the past few decades towards big urban destinations means that
| people come to cities and encounter political strife trying to
| each make it how they want it, and no one is ever really happy.
| We already have a fix for that in our political system, which is
| to limit the amount of governance at higher-levels of the
| government (state, federal) and let local jurisdictions decide
| how they want to manage themselves. But taking full advantage of
| that requires more distributed economies. Hopefully this economic
| revolution (decentralization away from offices and expensive
| cities) also lets us decentralize politics next, so we can lower
| the temperature and be happy.
| gvv wrote:
| If they were truly a crypto friendly company they would've done
| an ICO instead...
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| This reminds me of how Valve Inc. touts a flat-hierarchy where no
| one has a boss and you can work on whatever project you'd like.
| But in reality Valve employees complain about constant office
| politics and de-facto team structures.
|
| Conceptually a decentralized structure sounds great but it
| creates power and process vaccuums. And in those vaccuums
| centralization manifests itself based on office politics. I
| predict some high profile Coinbase employees are going to
| coalesce around some location and that will start turning into a
| de-facto headquarters.
| herenorthere wrote:
| this a remote-first company. they will have different physical
| locations but most of the company will be working remotely.
| regardless, given that SF was the original HQ, that will likely
| always be the de facto HQ... since the higher ups are already
| coalesced around there
| dmurray wrote:
| I agree, it's natural that new structures emerge in this kind
| of power vacuum, but it sounds like Coinbase are explicitly
| taking measures to fight against it.
|
| > The executive team should lead by example... even after
| people can safely return to offices, the executive team has no
| plans to be "in-office" on a regular basis, and none of them
| currently live in San Francisco. This is one of the most
| powerful things we can do to keep Coinbase from inadvertently
| returning to an in-office culture.
|
| If they're serious about this, how far do they have to go?
| Would an official or unofficial policy of not promoting
| employees who come in to the office too much be enough
| incentive?
| cblconfederate wrote:
| no headquarters doesn't mean no hierarchy
| destitude wrote:
| I'm not clear why you think all remote companies can't have
| processes in place that allow them to work the same as those
| working in a physical office space.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah, the two things are pretty much orthogonal to each
| other. Though, if anything, I'd probably argue that absent
| clear communication channels and roles, remote work is much
| harder if you're dependent on self-organization.
| SlipperySlope wrote:
| Especially important...
|
| It has helped us attract top talent. One of the best parts about
| being a decentralized company is that we can hire more of the
| best people. Previously, less than 1% of the world lived within
| commuting distance of one of our offices. Now we can cast a much
| wider net. Over the last nine months, we've onboarded hundreds of
| employees from locations outside of the commute range of any of
| our existing offices. In Q1 of 2020, only 28% of new employees
| lived outside of California. In Q1 of 2021 to date, 58% of our
| new hires are from outside of the state.
| almost_usual wrote:
| Bay Area tech scene jumped shark in 2016. Was a fun time to be
| there but that time has passed.
| blast wrote:
| People have been saying that since at least the 80s.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| Do workers who are employees of a company but are working from
| home get to write off part of their home or apartment as a
| business expense, the way contractors and self-employed do?
| baron816 wrote:
| I just looked it up. Employees cannot.
| MichaelRazum wrote:
| Headquarter or not. What matters only in my opinion is where they
| pay their taxes.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| wherever they pay less, as all of tech does
| brink wrote:
| They pay the US government with censorship.
| [deleted]
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| Should probably qualify this as "geographically decentralized".
|
| As long as there are C-level executives, VPs, and the usual
| corporate heirarchy, they're not really decentralized in the
| sense that cryptocurrency itself is fully consensus-driven.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Too bad coinabase\s approach to crypto is centralized. They
| operate a blocklists to prevent people from sending funds to
| certain addresses . Even paypal does not do this.
| trident5000 wrote:
| Because AML laws require them to.
| xg15 wrote:
| Dumb question: How is such a block even effective? What keeps
| you from creating a temporary wallet outside Coinbase, sending
| your funds there from Coinbase and then sending the funds from
| the wallet to the blocked address?
| boring_twenties wrote:
| Nothing keeps you from doing that, but Coinbase can easily
| detect that after the fact, and then ban you from using their
| service.
| bondarchuk wrote:
| Which addresses?
| aaomidi wrote:
| PayPal literally limits/bans your account if you have the word
| "Iran" in a transaction, lol.
| lxgr wrote:
| Any regulated financial institution is required to do that.
| Where did you get the idea PayPal doesn't?
| pinkybanana wrote:
| Yeah, because paypal doesn't allow sending and receiving
| bitcoins to begin with. For sure they block sanctioned
| individuals or customers from sanctioned countries like any
| financial institution. And if they implement crypto, for sure
| they will have as strict compliance as coinbase.
| arkitaip wrote:
| I can see a future where office work is so rare that it's
| considered to be a major benefit only afforded by large
| corporations.
| samr71 wrote:
| This will almost certainly be bad for most everyone but company
| shareholders, unfortunately.
| almost_usual wrote:
| Which most tech workers who get paid in RSUs are?
| samr71 wrote:
| Until they're replaced with a team in Jakarta or Dhaka
| making 10% of what they made.
| almost_usual wrote:
| You really believe an in office work environment was the
| only thing preventing this from happening? Top talent
| gets paid the most.
| samr71 wrote:
| If a tech company is sourcing engineers in an office work
| environment, they need to pay salaries competitive for
| the location of said office. (You can find great
| engineers in Jakarta, but you have to relocate them to SV
| and pay SV rates)
|
| If everything is remote work, you hire the same worker,
| and pay them Jakarta rates (you can sub Jakarta for any
| very-low COL city).
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| alteria wrote:
| But they also have to live without an office and may not
| have meaningful stakes to make the tradeoff worth it for
| most.
| [deleted]
| tshaddox wrote:
| Which again is only large corporations, right?
| setpatchaddress wrote:
| Why would it be a benefit?
| tshaddox wrote:
| Because you don't have to cram 2 new desks into the expensive
| 1 bedroom apartment you share with your partner.
| agumonkey wrote:
| socially it's gonna be weird seeing all these business center
| full of empty skyscrapers
| cgb223 wrote:
| How do you do taxes for something like this?
|
| Like lots of employees working in lots of different
| states/countries, no "home base".
|
| Is there an easy way to do it?
| pinkybanana wrote:
| No there is no easy way, you need few accountants to handle the
| payroll. Something coinbase as a 1000+ person company can
| probably easily afford.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Employees don't realize that taxes are the reason companies
| generally don't allow for remote positions. It's not just
| payroll taxes at stake.
|
| In a nutshell, having an employee in a tax jurisdiction creates
| a taxable nexus for the company, meaning that they can be
| subject to income taxes, commercial taxes, sales taxes/VAT,
| etc., in that jurisdiction. (And note: this has been part of
| domestic and international tax law for decades.)
|
| For example: Company C in CA has an employee, E, who moves to
| NY to work remotely. Company C is now subject to NY income
| taxes, and must now collect NY sales tax if they have any sales
| to NY customers (though note: in the US many states now require
| sales tax collection even in the absence of physical presence,
| so C may already have been obligated to collect NY sales tax).
| If E is a programmer, the NY income tax exposure is probably
| very low, but if E is in sales, they could be looking at
| significant NY tax liabilities based on how they may be
| required to apportion (aka allocate) their income between CA
| and NY.
| boring_twenties wrote:
| Does it work the other way around, too? E.g., if live in New
| Hampshire and work remotely for a New York company, do I have
| to pay the NY income tax?
| ghaff wrote:
| As I understand it, no--assuming you are not in the office
| over some threshold (which I don't know). If you commute
| from NH to Massachusetts you do need to pay MA income tax.
| And, oh, if you live in MA and commute to NH, you _also_
| have to pay MA income tax. I 've definitely seen people who
| live in NH and used to commute to MA switching to being
| fully remote in the current situation.
| cgb223 wrote:
| So in the example if E is in NY, does C have to pay NY income
| tax on _all_ employees or just employee E?
|
| If E is a salesperson is it complicated because they're
| bringing contracts to C in NY or because they might work on
| Commission?
| almost_usual wrote:
| If there isn't that's a business opportunity.
| rojobuffalo wrote:
| there are payroll companies like https://justworks.com/ that
| have entities in each state to deal with the wage tax issue.
| that's the "easy" way as far as i know.
| 0xB31B1B wrote:
| The main issue is that having a full time employees in a
| state creates a "nexus" in that state, which means you need
| to file a bunch of tax things and deal with regulatory issues
| you wouldn't otherwise need to. At the size of coinbase, its
| probably pretty simple to deal with and doesn't cost much
| relative to their bottom line, for a 15 person company, it is
| much easier to deal with 1-2 states than to deal with 15. You
| can avoid paying sales tax in some areas based on how this
| works out when you are small but not when you are large.
| Justworks doesn't help with the whole tax nexus issue, just
| providing benefits.
| ghaff wrote:
| My understanding is that it's not "just" handling payroll
| taxes, unemployment, etc. There can also be paperwork around
| establishing legal entities which, of course, gets even more
| challenging as other countries are involved. It's _mostly_
| not that big a deal for large employers but it can be a fair
| bit of overhead for a small company--with the result that
| they don 't want employees just working anywhere. Mitchell
| Hashimoto has written about this some with respect to
| HashiCorp.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| There is paperwork, but you don't need to establish a new
| entity in every state/country where you have an office or
| employee. You can simply register your existing company as
| a "foreign" business in all of the jurisdictions where it
| is not legally incorporated (and this is what most
| businesses do).
|
| Generally, you only have a location-specific business
| created if there are location-specific benefits acquired,
| or benefits avoided, by doing so. (Like say, access to tax
| credits, or avoidance of certain compliance
| responsibilities).
| ghaff wrote:
| I don't have any personal experience but this is what
| Mitchell Hashimoto wrote a few years ago on the general
| topic of hiring remote:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17022563
| donsupreme wrote:
| Industries that rely heavily on business travel are basically
| fucked. Airlines (first and business class), hotels,
| ridesharings, car rentals and etc.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| >In Q1 of 2020, only 28% of new employees lived outside of
| California. In Q1 of 2021 to date, 58% of our new hires are from
| outside of the state.
|
| This has huge implications for California. The state of
| California is horribly mismanaged, but the tremendous amounts of
| money that is bought in by tech, covers a multitude of sins.
| However, if that money starts drying up, California will be in a
| world of hurt.
| setpatchaddress wrote:
| > The state of California is horribly mismanaged
|
| Compared to what? Texas?
|
| Edited to add: Wikipedia:
|
| > The economy of the State of California is the largest in the
| United States, boasting a $3.2 trillion gross state product
| (GSP) as of 2019.[9] If California were a sovereign nation
| (2019), it would rank as the world's fifth largest economy,
| ahead of India and behind Germany.[10][11]...
| samr71 wrote:
| What does a large GDP prove? It is the largest state after
| all. A smaller state, that doesn't happen to contain some of
| the country's best real estate and most productive industries
| (say, New Hampshire) could be better run, but of course with
| a smaller GDP to show for it.
|
| California's large GDP could then be in spite of its
| management, not a product of it.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Tech isn't CA's only industry...
|
| CA's large GDP is the result of the diversification of its
| industries. CA has the largest agricultural industry in the
| U.S., the largest manufacturing industry (yes, people still
| make things in the U.S.), the largest entertainment
| industry, and the largest tourism industry.
|
| And that doesn't even take into account the purely local-
| market GDP in the Bay Area, LA/OC metro area, or San Diego,
| each of which boasts a local GDP larger than the total GDPs
| of most of the Midwestern states, or, for that matter,
| industries where CA has a large market but isn't a national
| leader, such as finance, biotech, or resource extraction.
| tadfisher wrote:
| California is ahead of India, a country of well over 1
| billion people, which pretty much refutes the size
| argument.
| buzzerbetrayed wrote:
| No, it really doesn't refute that argument at all. Nobody
| is arguing that size is the only factor. India being
| ahead of California would refute _that_ argument, but no
| argument that anybody here has actually made.
| samr71 wrote:
| Not sure how that refutes the size argument. The
| variation between California and New Hampshire is much
| smaller than the variation between California and India.
| It's not really apples to apples in the latter case.
| danielrhodes wrote:
| I can't imagine what Karl Marx would think of all this. :-)
|
| "You mean to tell me the factory owner said the entire factory is
| now distributed? And you must now put the equipment on your own
| property in addition to using your own equipment, and you still
| don't get a share in the wealth? And on top of that, they will
| pay you less?"
| almost_usual wrote:
| Not everyone will be paid less, the best will get paid the
| most.
|
| I would take paying for my own home setup (which most companies
| will give you a stipend for) over commuting any day.
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