[HN Gopher] Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers
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Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers
Author : r0m4n0
Score : 352 points
Date : 2022-06-04 14:32 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sfgate.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sfgate.com)
| irrational wrote:
| I think this is the third time I've seen this in my professional
| career. First during the dot-com bubble burst in the early 2000s.
| Then during the 2008 recession. Now again we are starting to see
| news everyday about another company going through layoffs. Soon
| there will be a tsunamai of hiring freezes and layoffs as every
| company gets in on this. If the past is anything to go by, things
| will be bad for a number of years, but then will greatly improve
| on the other side.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| >Joseph Patrick "Joe" Kennedy, Sr. JFK's father, claimed that he
| knew it was time to get out of the stock market when he got
| investment tips from a shoeshine boy. On that moment Joe Kennedy
| had the intuition that we were at the end of the bull market and
| subsequently he decided to short the market and became .. multi-
| millionaire !
|
| https://www.4investors.eu/post/the-shoeshine-boy-indicator
|
| Similarly, when I saw the crypto Super Bowl ads, I knew the
| bubble was about to pop.
| whymauri wrote:
| Did you short crypto?
| outside1234 wrote:
| I mean Coinbase has been telling people who they are for years -
| no one should be surprised.
|
| I think we should be more surprised that anyone wants to work for
| Coinbase, Tesla, etc.
| chaosbolt wrote:
| Coinbase are legit scammers, but why Tesla? Is your uncle Dick
| Cheney by any chance?
| axpy906 wrote:
| A lot of these rescind offers are popping up on my social feeds.
| The majority appear to be foreign nationals who require work
| sponsorship to stay in the US.
| deeptote wrote:
| CRYPTO IS A FUCKING SCAM
|
| There are so many proper applications of blockchain that could
| improve humanity and provide value to customers and instead these
| shitheads create NFTs.
|
| "But the US dollar is fiat" they will say, "what's the
| difference?!"
|
| Gee, I dunno, the fact that the US Government backs it? All
| central banks use it? It's the reserve currency of the world? Any
| currency that isn't backed by a government or was widely used
| before there was a government (gold, for example) is a goddamn
| scam and I'm sick of it.
| qzx_pierri wrote:
| How much did you lose investing in Bitcoin?
| deeptote wrote:
| Exactly zero, because I don't gamble.
| ratsmack wrote:
| The US Dollar is tightly coupled with assets, and tangible
| goods and services that provide a substantial portion of its
| stability. Bitcoin, however, is based on burning through
| terawatts of electrical power in order to "prove work" and
| actually produce nothing but waste heat.
| deeptote wrote:
| The irony is there's use cases for that waste heat.
|
| - Utilities could use the extra boost of heat in winter
|
| - producing potable water
|
| The coin produced from these processes could then be used as
| tradable units. "Heat Coin" or "Fresh Water Coin" would ease
| the transaction of these resources.
|
| Hence, we get to the root of the problem of any "Coin": it is
| inherently worthless without any real asset or unit of
| production to back it's value.
| latenightcoding wrote:
| there are clearly not many "proper applications of blockchain
| that could improve humanity" people have been trying very hard
| to find them.
| dlivingston wrote:
| I think of crypto as a class of stock, instead of currency.
| Speculative valuation based on investor confidence.
|
| Yes, it's not backed by a real asset, so crypto is truly a
| sister to Monopoly money, but I don't see an issue with
| investing as long as you recognize what crypto is and what it
| isn't.
| grey-area wrote:
| You are not describing investing but speculating. Yes there
| is a difference.
| fullshark wrote:
| Arguably retail investors aren't actually investors either,
| but savers, speculating on whatever assets they buy having
| value when they need their dollar value.
| omginternets wrote:
| > There are so many proper applications of blockchain that
| could improve humanity and provide value to customers and
| instead these shitheads create NFTs.
|
| I wholeheartedly agree. I can't wait until "web3" moves past
| the whole fintech thing and people start realizing the true
| value of Web3 technologies: the fact that you no longer need a
| third party to mediate interactions between individual users on
| the internet.
| knorker wrote:
| > the fact that you no longer need a third party to mediate
| interactions between individual users on the internet.
|
| Could you explain this more?
|
| Like how you no longer need your ISP, or the blockchain
| systems run by third parties?
|
| It seems to me like just playing semantic games if the third
| party is supposedly no longer a third party if it's
| distributed.
|
| Maybe I missed something concrete about "web3"'s promises?
| omginternets wrote:
| You're thinking of blockchains, but I'm thinking more
| broadly of p2p systems. But even blockchains have the
| potential to satisfy the ideal that I have in mind. For
| example, I've often thought web2 SSO (sign in with
| Google/Facebook/etc) to be ripe for disruption by some open
| standard for wallet based authentication. I think I've even
| seen a few projects that come close to this.
|
| At any rate, this is the part I find interesting. The money
| games are a huge distraction IMHO.
|
| I have quite a few disorganized thoughts on the subject...
| maybe I should write an essay...
| seoaeu wrote:
| web3 is nothing but intermediaries. Everyone from the
| developers to the miners to the exchanges are intermediaries
| looking to get their cut
| omginternets wrote:
| You're talking about crypto. I'm talking about p2p.
|
| There's some overlap, but it's very much the latter that I
| find interesting and worthwhile.
| smilebot wrote:
| Probably an unpopular opinion here but I think they handled it in
| a classy way. Severance and assistance with your job search?
| That's very nice of them.
|
| Other companies like Meta rescinded too, I'm not sure if they
| offered severance. Maybe just a generic email?
| blibble wrote:
| if you had a signed contract don't they have to pay their way
| out of the notice period regardless?
| tasn wrote:
| There is usually no notice period (or mandated severance in
| the US).
| blibble wrote:
| so you can just quit and walk out the door?
|
| strange country
| lcvw wrote:
| Absolutely. You could just literally stop showing up one
| day, it is the company's problem at that point. 2 weeks
| notice is expected, and giving less is considered a bit
| of a betrayal, but it's perfectly legal. As much as like
| the idea of having the security of a contact, being
| forced to work honestly seems kind of strange to me.
| blibble wrote:
| no-one's forced to work by a contract of employment
|
| you can quit on the spot and ignore the notice period,
| and they can try suing you for lost business as a result,
| which is quite difficult to prove to any sort of standard
|
| whereas it's generally very easy to go after an employer
| if they don't pay your notice if they sack you on the
| spot
| swingbrother wrote:
| Meta did not really rescind in general. It was only a couple of
| very specific cases, such as not winning the H1B lottery they
| did rescind the offer.
| haltingproblem wrote:
| I would nor even count that as rescinding the offer. All
| offers including at firms actively hiring are _contingent_ on
| candidate receiving work visas.
| fma wrote:
| I didn't hear about Meta rescinding so I googled a bit. A few
| sources came up and it looks like it was a pretty specific
| scenario(s) about contractors, visa etc...but regular straight
| up offers are still good.
|
| This summarizes a few other searches I found:
| https://www.teamblind.com/post/Is-meta-really-rescinding-off...
|
| I could be wrong but that's what I found.
| coffeefirst wrote:
| I mean, they may intend it as kindness, but it's also cheaper
| and easier to put that option up front than to deal with
| lawyers from each person who had a signed offer rescinded.
| polio wrote:
| Meta did not rescind at scale. I recall seeing one Canadian new
| grad who was under the impression she'd be able to work at the
| Toronto office but which was rescinded for whatever reason.
| They followed up and were able to re-make the offer, though.
| blintz wrote:
| The detail that they also reassured the people with offers that
| their offers would _not_ be rescinded two weeks ago is wild. Did
| they expect this not to leak? Why weren't they transparent about
| this total about face in the initial announcement?
|
| https://twitter.com/teamblind/status/1532769735393169410?s=2...
|
| The only thing I can think to do is gently blacklist this company
| (personally and amongst friends). This kinda behavior needs to
| have some kind of consequences, I think.
| dixie_land wrote:
| I wonder how many excitedly gave their current boss a middle
| finger after getting that 7 figure offer from coinbase.
|
| I know for a fact you can go back to the same team (and same
| level) in many FAANG companies without even interviewing. If you
| left on good terms that is.
| cato_the_elder wrote:
| Aren't a lot of job offers accepted by email these days? So
| what's the problem with rescinding them by email?
|
| This is not like firing someone who has a established
| relationship with a company and might see his coworkers as
| friends etc. over email.
| db48x wrote:
| I kind of agree, but to get an offer letter you surely must
| have had at least one telephone call or video conference, if
| not several hours of in-person interviews.
| cato_the_elder wrote:
| It seems that they are paying a severance package of two
| months of base pay to try to compensate for that. [1]
|
| [1]: "The details surrounding the severance package are
| unclear, but some affected workers on Blind alleged they
| would receive two months worth of base pay; a representative
| from Coinbase did not provide further comment."
| db48x wrote:
| Yea, apparently there are some compensating factors. Still,
| an email to tell you that they're rescinding the offer is
| the easy way out; it avoids an awkward telephone call. It
| is easy to see why they went that route. I agree that it's
| not the worst thing in the world though.
| yojo wrote:
| This is meaningful and deserves more prominent placement.
| If you're going to rug pull someone paying out $10k+
| certainly takes some of the sting out.
|
| I would love to have an offer rescinded with pay. If the
| company's prospects are really that dim I wouldn't want to
| join anyway. Getting a cash bonus to go somewhere else is
| even better.
| adw wrote:
| 10k doesn't cover search costs. What about health
| insurance, for example?
| yojo wrote:
| I personally always line up multiple offers when job
| hunting. Much better for negotiations.
|
| In all cases I'm sure one of the companies I turned down
| would take me back if my first choice turned out to be a
| dud.
|
| YMMV, but it seems like there's more incentive than ever
| right now to make sure you've got more than one offer
| when job hopping.
| fullshark wrote:
| You can't get unfiltered answers to any follow up questions,
| taking that away from the applicant isn't great but yeah a lot
| of this is basically confusing proper behavior within business
| transactions with standard expectations of decency/behavior
| between friends or colleagues.
|
| These companies, and your manager, and that recruiter is not
| your friend. Stories like these just pull back the veil and
| show that the mutually accepted delusion between
| employee/employer disappears when the bad times come.
| baby wrote:
| Agree. That would be an awkward VC or phone call
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| One of my friends recently interviewed with them. He told me
| about the experience he had and it seems like the worst
| experience I've ever come across. The interviewers he had were
| working on their job during the sessions, and one guy wasn't even
| allowing a quick Google search for some python 3.5 syntax
| reference.
|
| The questions asked also seemed to be outrageous and silly for a
| 45 minute session. Felt like their process suits Machines rather
| than actual engineers lol.
|
| Additionally, the entire process according to him was badly
| mismanaged by the recruiter so it feels like one of the worst
| companies to work at.
| browningstreet wrote:
| Calling this rational is a mistake, it's unconscionable.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Sounds like we need a blockchain for job offers.
| [deleted]
| polote wrote:
| Already been discussed yesterday
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31600505
|
| It is no different than been fired I don't understand the noise
| it is making
| rvz wrote:
| > It is no different than been fired I don't understand the
| noise it is making
|
| Exactly. Not sure what the fuss is all about other than these
| companies not caring about you.
|
| I've seen worse and Fast _straight up_ shut down [0] after
| assuming that the VCs will just bankroll them despite Fast
| making little to no money for years with an extremely inflated
| valuation in the multi-billions.
|
| I think lots of people have also forgotten the change of policy
| that Tesla, Meta, Apple, and Google said about the 'Working
| from Home' option in the job description. Before it was _'
| we're 100% remote'_, then it was _' you can go remote but
| you'll get a paycut if you do'_, then it was _' back to the
| office by spring 2022'_ and now some employees who are back at
| the office are also having their benefits cut.
|
| With any company, _' nothing'_ is guaranteed. Once again these
| companies DO NOT care about YOU.
|
| [0] https://www.axios.com/2022/04/06/fast-checkout-startup-
| colla...
| lcvw wrote:
| I don't think Meta or Google are doing that for the most
| part. Yes there is a small pay cut if you move away but if
| they said you could be fully remote then they have honored
| that. And I don't think Tesla or Apple ever advertised that
| roles could be fully remote forever. That being said, you are
| absolutely right. Companies only care about employees to the
| extent they have to for retention. You always need a plan B,
| nothing is ever guaranteed.
| vkou wrote:
| 'you can go remote but you'll get a paycut if you do'
|
| No, it was 'you get a paycut if you move out of where you
| were working, into a lower-wage region.' Most (but not all)
| remote jobs in remote-only, or remote-first firms will cut
| your pay if you do that.
|
| When the pandemic started, and the office closed, a few
| people certainly did just that (with, or without notifying
| their employer), but the firm never made any promises that
| this sort of thing will work out.
|
| > then it was 'back to the office by spring 2022'
|
| In some orgs/teams, yes. In others, no. In Meta/Google, this
| is not a corporate-wide mandate, this is up to your director
| to make a decision on. Mine has no problem with remote, and
| we've hired two 100% remote people in the past 6 months.
| prezjordan wrote:
| It's a bait-and-switch. People left their jobs for new
| opportunities that were taken from them.
| granzymes wrote:
| Would you prefer Coinbase wait until their start date to fire
| them, instead of rescinding the offer?
| polote wrote:
| Yes but it is the same result, you have to find a new job.
| And actually fired is probably even worse as you no longer
| have a job starting today
| stiltzkin wrote:
| Because is a crypto company, something HN likes to critique.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| Losing over $60 billion in valuation is an impressive feat, makes
| me wonder if that's a record or something?
| seanhunter wrote:
| Masa Son lost $70bn in a single day during the dotcom bubble,
| which I believe was a record until recently when some crypto
| guy lost more.
| optimiz3 wrote:
| Rookie numbers. TSLA moves this much every other week.
| loceng wrote:
| Look at the % change compared to the total market cap..
|
| https://companiesmarketcap.com/tesla/marketcap/
|
| https://companiesmarketcap.com/facebook/marketcap/
|
| https://companiesmarketcap.com/coinbase/marketcap/
|
| Coinbase seems to still be the "winner" here.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| Percent change doesn't make sense either. Plenty of
| companies have lost a much higher percentage in the time
| period.
| umeshunni wrote:
| Not by a long shot:
| https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/03/facebooks-232billion-drop-in...
| loceng wrote:
| If looking at % of the whole, and not the amount, Coinbase
| looks to be the winner here?
|
| https://companiesmarketcap.com/coinbase/marketcap/
|
| https://companiesmarketcap.com/facebook/marketcap/
| throwk8s wrote:
| If looking at percentage of the whole, there are a lot of
| companies tied for the "win" at ~100%.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Oh there's plenty of companies that have lost more than
| 100% of their value. If you go from a positive value to a
| negative value (e.g. you have outstanding liabilities
| that cannot be discharged), that's a >100% reduction in
| value.
|
| One good example would be old mining companies that went
| bankrupt. Their value cratered to zero, AND now the
| corporate overlords that ended up acquiring them are
| spending neverending millions of dollars spent to clean
| up Superfund sites decade after decade. There are some
| liabilities that simply cannot be discharged.
| joebob42 wrote:
| Why did anyone acquire them then?
| tyrfing wrote:
| It's pretty similar to other big 2021 IPOs. Rivian,
| Robinhood, UIPath, etc. The ones doing well are only down
| 50-60%.
|
| Now, these companies have pretty good access to capital,
| and retail getting ripped off is no problem. The
| interesting part of this glacier is the pre-IPO ecosystem
| that is bleeding money and trying to avoid similar
| markdowns.
| baby wrote:
| Dfinity
| toddmorey wrote:
| "While we did not make this decision lightly..." Yes but you
| aren't doing it humanely, either.
|
| I've been through the dot com crash and several hard economic
| downturns. It really puts your company's humanity on full
| display. It's the real test.
|
| Preserving cash flow is important. But you also have to do things
| carefully, openly, and with genuine care for the people who've
| believed in your vision.
|
| People will respect the hard decisions but not sloppy or careless
| execution.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| This feels very much in keeping with a between-the-lines
| reading of the CEO's "mission-focused company" memo in 2020.
|
| https://blog.coinbase.com/coinbase-is-a-mission-focused-comp...
| lupire wrote:
| "mission-focused" is anti-political-activism position, not a
| financial health position.
| darawk wrote:
| What would you have preferred they do here?
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| >you aren't doing it humanely
|
| not sure how you can do it humanely. what does "humanely" got
| to do with business decision?
| jstummbillig wrote:
| Ominous, grandiose, hard to object to, impossible to act upon.
| duxup wrote:
| It sounds like they are offering severance and etc.
|
| That's more than most jobs.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| This is honestly a minimum to avoid getting sued. Otherwise
| an enterprising lawyer might be ready with some arguments
| about promissory estoppel.
| duxup wrote:
| What is the severance offered?
|
| I don't know how you can determine what the minimum is
| without knowing the severance and etc.
| ls612 wrote:
| I've read two months pay in a CNBC article, which for
| most of these folks is tens of thousands of dollars. They
| won't be starving by any means while they search for a
| new job.
| mlindner wrote:
| > Preserving cash flow is important. But you also have to do
| things carefully, openly, and with genuine care for the people
| who've believed in your vision.
|
| So firing people who have actively worked on the vision is
| better than firing people who haven't started working yet? You
| seem to be taking things backwards.
|
| This option is quite a lot better than the alternative.
| bdcravens wrote:
| > not sloppy or careless execution
|
| Isn't hiring excessively sloppy? In tech when times are good,
| everyone's desperately throwing warm bodies in chairs. I'm sure
| many have thought to themselves, "I'm glad I'm getting paid,
| but is my job really that necessary? Do we need a six-person
| Button Component Team?"
| baby wrote:
| How do you do it humanly? If it were me I'd rather get an email
| lupire wrote:
| Nobody joins a blockchain company for the humanity. The whole
| point of the blockchain economy is to the remove the human
| element.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| How about an email from the executives who made the mistake
| of driving the company into the ground, who are humanely (or
| even humanly) resigning, so that you could be paid your
| salary that they'd promised you?
|
| All the stock that the executives dumped could easily pay the
| salaries of all the people they screwed. And by resigning,
| they would open up some nice corner offices for all the
| people who they hired while fully knowing they were going to
| need to fire a lot of people soon.
|
| https://cointelegraph.com/news/coinbase-insiders-dump-
| nearly...
|
| >Coinbase insiders dump nearly $5 billion in COIN stock
| shortly after listing
|
| >After an edict to remain "mission focused," Coinbase
| executives have succeeded in making themselves a fortune.
|
| >Insider activity reports for Coinbase's COIN stock indicate
| that multiple early investors and executives sold billions in
| equity shortly after COIN's direct listing. While the filings
| initially indicated that multiple executives sold a high
| percentage of their stake in the company, a representative
| for Coinbase told Cointelegraph that the sellers maintain
| strong ownership positions.
|
| >Data from Capital Market Laboratories and confirmed by
| filings on Coinbase's Investor Relations website shows a
| total of 12,965,079 shares were sold by insiders, worth over
| $4.6 billion at COIN's $344.38 per share Friday close.
|
| >Notable transactions include Coinbase CFO Alesia Haas
| selling some 255,500 shares at a price of $388.73 (though her
| Form 4 states that she retains options), while CEO Brian
| Armstrong sold 749,999 shares in three transactions at
| various prices, netting a total of $291,827,966.
|
| >According to his Form 4 disclosure, after the sale Armstrong
| retains 300,001 shares worth over $1 billion. In a filing
| prior to the direct listing however, he was reported to have
| 36,851,833 shares, indicating that he sold just over 2% of
| his stake in the company.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| Take the hit. I worked for a series B startup employing
| around 100 people at the start of the pandemic. Because of
| the pandemic the business was entirely shut down for 6
| months. And was barely operational for longer still. Not a
| single person was let go.
|
| Now, this requires you to run your business responsibly from
| the start. If you're already on the edge of your runway you
| either cut back or die. But if you have the cash in the bank
| you're a better person for spending it on the employees than
| doubling down on your war chest.
| nxmnxm99 wrote:
| What? If you're cutting, you're not doing it for excess
| fuck-you cash, it's clearly a runway planning scenario.
| Giving the example of a company that basically shut down
| while paying their employees to do nothing isn't helping
| make your point.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Your missing his point. He used this as an opportunity to
| increase loyalty, keep a trained functioning team
| together at decent wages which were able to outperform
| other companies who laided off, rehired months later at
| greater costs, no loyalty and starting from ground zero.
| Sparyjerry wrote:
| The pandemic had "paycheck protection program" or PPP and a
| second round of this called PPP2 also. This program payed
| out billions to employers to keep employees, rather than
| let them go on unemployment, which would have been less
| productive to the country and maybe even cost the
| government more in those $600 per week in unemployment, per
| person. I seriously doubt any startup could otherwise have
| kept their employees thanks to their 'war chest.' Normally
| startups don't have a war chest at all.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| This startup had a 2 year runway after factoring in their
| office lease. Dropping the lease (since no one was coming
| in anyway) would have extended that. But you're right
| about PPP. They got PPP money a few months after the
| pandemic started.
| gazby wrote:
| It's not just about the method of communication, it's also
| about being made whole. These people should be getting
| severance. Also in America your healthcare is almost
| inextricably tied to your employer.
| calvano915 wrote:
| Perhaps this is a moment where those that would get a
| severance at all with a job loss acknowledge that workers
| rights matter, for everyone. You think that a majority of
| the restaurant workers during the lockdowns got severances?
| Perhaps it's time we separate healthcare from our
| workplace. If it wasn't crypto, maybe I'd be more
| sympathetic. Bad bets made all around in this case.
| dwwoelfel wrote:
| According to the article, they likely are getting
| severance.
|
| _Those affected will gain access to the company's
| "generous severance philosophy" and "a talent hub to allow
| them to opt-in to receive additional support services."
| (The details surrounding the severance package are unclear,
| but some affected workers on Blind alleged they would
| receive two months worth of base pay; a representative from
| Coinbase did not provide further comment.)_
| lupire wrote:
| I don't want a severance philosophy, I want a package.
| dwwoelfel wrote:
| They are getting a severance package.
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| Yeah this is 2022. Just email me. Saves us both awkward
| conversations that isn't going to change anything.
| fleetwoodsnack wrote:
| Exit interviews are an opportunity for the formerly
| employed to air and address their grievances too. I think
| it precludes a (generally) necessary transfer of
| information when an email is sent en lieu of a substantive
| discussion.
|
| As someone who's been on both sides of the proverbial desk,
| I've come away frustrated but enlightened in some way
| almost every time.
| scarface74 wrote:
| We all know the rules about exit interviews. They are the
| same as resignation letters. It's best to say something
| banal and move on.
| baq wrote:
| there's literally zero upside for the employee to say the
| truth - or anything at all - in an exit interview and
| basically unlimited downside. maybe you got lucky?
| lordnacho wrote:
| When I was an underboss in a firm that was going down, I just
| told people. Informally, in person. I wasn't supposed to, but
| they were putting two and two together themselves, and it
| would have been wrong to leave them with an inaccurate idea
| of how the firm was doing.
|
| Don't hire me if you need me to lie to your staff.
| the_only_law wrote:
| I've been surprised at the times companies have wanted me
| to lie about something, not the lies themselves, but more
| just how blatant are.
|
| Whatever I don't usually expect business to be honorable or
| empathic, but don't be surprised if I start lying to you
| too.
| IncRnd wrote:
| > When I was an underboss in a firm that was going down, I
| just told people.
|
| Other than in the mafia, what is an underboss? [1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underboss
| Hydraulix989 wrote:
| It's not difficult to infer what OP metaphorically meant
| from the tree diagram in your linked article.
| hallway_monitor wrote:
| This is literally my only request from management. If you
| know I'm going to lose my job don't wait until my last day
| to tell me. Give me some time to set up other options.
| lupire wrote:
| That's what a severance package is. Good companies pay
| severance and don't make you come into work.
| scarface74 wrote:
| You should always have other options. You shouldn't wait
| until you're about to be laid off. I can honestly say
| there isn't a single day since 2008 (I've been working a
| lot longer) that if the company I was working for laid me
| off that I wouldn't be prepared to look for another job
| the same day.
|
| That means an updated resume, career document of
| accomplishments and talking points, an active network and
| "fuck you money" in the bank. If you live in any major
| city in the US, and are a software developer with
| experience, you should be making in the upper quintile of
| income for your area. There is usually no excuse not to
| have savings.
| ipaddr wrote:
| A developer in SF is not in the upper quintile.. they
| can't even afford a starter house. Big cities add huge
| costs that start making sense with home ownership but
| will leave a renter worse off.
|
| Good advice on the other points.
| scarface74 wrote:
| The median household income in SF is $92K.
|
| https://sf.curbed.com/2019/2/25/18239828/report-middle-
| class...
|
| The average software developer in SF makes more then
| twice that.
|
| https://www.builtinsf.com/salaries/dev-engineer/software-
| eng...
| Hydraulix989 wrote:
| That just doesn't make any sense. You can't even rent an
| apartment for less than $3,000 in SF, let along think
| about buying the average $2M house. What is the
| discrepancy? Maybe these folks all ended up buying their
| houses 30 years ago?
| scarface74 wrote:
| Yet somehow half the people seem to be surviving in SF
| making that and less.
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| It's so tough though - with large layoffs, you want to
| avoid revenge actions from people who are being let go.
| Immediate termination / cutoff of access is really the
| only way to do it. But I agree, it's not humane. Don't
| ever buy companies that talk about being a family. They
| want you to treat them like family but they will turn
| around and do what they deem necessary to self-preserve.
| hyperman1 wrote:
| In Europe, we have layoff terms measured in months.
| Revenge action is nevertheless very rare.
|
| If your personel has an exit period of a few months, they
| can take their time to process what happened, grieve, and
| find a new job, without losing the house or healthcare.
| There simply isn't that much of a reason for revenge.
| SilasX wrote:
| Stupid question: I thought in Europe they'd get
| healthcare regardless of employment status?
| hyperman1 wrote:
| True and false. There is a basic package that's good
| enough to get you trough life. This is one extra reason
| why being let go is less likely to cause stress for you
| and damage for your boss.
|
| But bigger organisations give extra insurance. This
| covers e.g. avprivate or 2 person hospital room instead
| of multi person rooms. Or private care without waitung
| lists
|
| Also, as healthcare is getting more expensive, the core
| package gets smaller. E.g. dental care was a victim in my
| country, preventative care is still covered but
| restorative probably not.
| deckeraa wrote:
| The best way for a company to handle layoffs in the case
| where immediate termination is needed for security
| reasons is for the company to pay 2-6 additional weeks of
| salary beyond the termination date -- that way the
| employee has time to find new work without having a
| sudden, unexpected gap in income.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| This is how ie banking works. Nobody smart/experienced
| enough even pretends its about more than next paycheck.
|
| Sounds soulless, and for some it is, but there is no
| place for drama when the day comes.
|
| Being good hearted will eventually backfire - that one
| employee who feels its very unfair to him, with right
| access can do so much damage to already faltering company
| it can even bring it down.
|
| So its a precaution, because 1 (or 5) percent of people
| are vengeful assholes, and you often find out only when
| right buttons are pressed.
|
| Severance package is always generous, ie my bank gives in
| such case 1 salary for every year worked, on top of
| mandatory 3 ones mandated by Swiss laws.
| cortesoft wrote:
| If you think your employees will take revenge action
| after being let go, you need to do a lot better job at
| hiring people.
|
| I can't imagine many professionals would do something
| damaging to their employer on the way out. Facing legal
| troubles right when you are looking for a new job seems
| very shortsighted.
|
| Also, if you treat the people you are letting go as
| humans, they will be less likely to retaliate.
| Ironically, trying to prevent retaliation by treating
| them like they will retaliate is more likely to cause
| them to do so.
| ryan93 wrote:
| Delusional. 99% of professionals can come across as nice
| and respectful in interviews, and have no criminal
| record. How could you possibly anticipate "a willingness
| to take revenge".
| doktorhladnjak wrote:
| This can create its own chaos. Having been through layoffs
| where the news got out early and others where management
| mostly kept a lid on it, the outcome wasn't better when
| some people knew early.
|
| Those who were connected to the right bosses knew more than
| others. There were a couple leaders who already had new
| jobs lined up when the news became public while others were
| stuck scrambling. There was a lot of anger and resentment
| compared to other layoffs I'd been through.
|
| On the other hand, there were layoffs more of the form of
| directors making "objective" decisions without the bottom
| two layers of management knowing much of anything beyond
| that layoffs were probably going to happen. There was more
| shock. People had a bad time still but there wasn't the
| same toxicity to it.
| kodah wrote:
| The worst part is that Coinbase's interviews are difficult. If
| I'd spent months studying, rejecting other (good faith) offers,
| and then had this happen I'd not only be in a bad spot (without
| a job entering a recession) but I'd be furious at the
| inequality of input and output.
|
| I've been interviewing for the past month and I made a rule
| that I won't be doing _any_ algorithm interviews. I didn 't
| have time to study; some friends questioned whether this was a
| good idea or not. I ended up submitting code samples when
| recruiters or managers would try to go through that kind of
| phone screening. Not only am I interviewing at better quality
| firms, but it's not _nearly_ as stressful.
|
| Anecdotally there is a high correlation between firms that tell
| me they're freezing hiring, etc and algorithm interviews.
| pavlov wrote:
| _> "Anecdotally there is a high correlation between firms
| that tell me they 're freezing hiring, etc and algorithm
| interviews."_
|
| Both are signs of companies that treat employees as
| ammunition rather than assets.
| jlund-molfese wrote:
| How do you find the better-quality companies you apply to?
| Are you able to decline to answer algorithm questions when
| they're asked, and instead convince companies to accept code
| samples?
|
| There is https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards
| , but there aren't many larger companies on the list
| granshaw wrote:
| Yeah avoiding LC interviews typically means missing out on
| most of the high paying companies, for some it's worth it
| humaniania wrote:
| The cryptocurrency pyramid scam bubble popping is not
| indicative of a recession.
| baq wrote:
| ponzi schemes only blow up when money dries up - and money
| drying up is a hallmark of economic slowdown. recession may
| be pushing it... for now.
| davidgerard wrote:
| It's the other way round. When NASDAQ sneezes, crypto
| catches a cold. I think because there's some tech investors
| who put a few percent into crypto, and when the market
| heads south you sell your frivolous rubbish (the crypto)
| first. And it takes very little actual-dollar volume to
| tank crypto
|
| Same thing happened in March 2020, when investors panicked
| over COVID-19 and flew to US treasuries. Stocks went down,
| crypto went through the floor.
| cableshaft wrote:
| > Same thing happened in March 2020
|
| I wish it were the same as March 2020. You had a big drop
| and then almost an immediate reversal that lead to an
| explosive bull run to many new all-time-highs until April
| 2021.
|
| Instead this time it's had the big drop and been very
| anemic for months since, with no clear end in sight.
| Could easily drop more. Starting to look more and more
| like the two year crypto winter back in 2014. Course if I
| was buying a coin a month that entire time it was $200 a
| coin I would have been retired by now. Or at least semi-
| retired.
| exdsq wrote:
| Are you suggesting we're not entering a recession?
| doktorhladnjak wrote:
| We are probably already in one. Q1 GDP already shrank.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| Recessions are definitionally 2 quarters of consecutive
| shrinking GDP growth so 1 quarter of shrink can not
| qualify as a recession
| ako wrote:
| If Q2 GDP also shrinks then Q1 will have been part of a
| recession.
| fny wrote:
| Base effects are also an issue.
| solveit wrote:
| Of course it is. Money flows.
| bluedevil2k wrote:
| I went through the whole Coinbase interview process at the
| Staff level a few months back - I thought all their
| interviews were fair and represented what I would have been
| doing there as my job. There weren't any LC questions and the
| algorithm questions were all based around doing crypto
| related things.
| scottLobster wrote:
| A decade and a half of easy money leads to a lot of bullshit.
| I imagine many of those firms are your typical SV startup or
| wannabe SV startup that only exists due to easy money and
| doesn't yet have to make actual profit to survive. So they
| can tell themselves leetcode performance matters and get high
| on their own supply.
|
| In my experience the higher quality non-FAANG firms who
| aren't wildly popular places to work and also need to turn a
| profit to survive tend to be more appreciative of qualified
| applicants and waste less time getting them started
| mattbuilds wrote:
| Does a good way of finding these place exist? I would guess
| word of mouth and your network are best. As someone not
| super plugged into the VC world, and who is mostly interest
| in good sold work and interesting problems, and not the
| hype around "being a startup" I would be interested in
| knowing.
| neilv wrote:
| > _I 'd be furious at the inequality_
|
| They needn't get furious. They need to get a lawyer.
| jes wrote:
| > I'd be furious at the inequality of input and output
|
| Stranger here. Just want to suggest that getting furious over
| things outside of your control, or the world not being as you
| would like it to be, is optional.
|
| If you don't like being enraged, you can quit that pattern
| with some practice in learning to notice your emotions as
| they come and go, and then learning to interrupt the chain of
| events that leads to the state of being furious and brooding.
| bathtub365 wrote:
| It's ok to be mad at a company if they fuck you over by
| rescinding a signed offer.
| jes wrote:
| Of course. If someone wants to be angry, that's their
| choice.
|
| Yet a lot of people get angry easily, and being an
| easily-triggered person works against a person's life. No
| one wants to constantly have to walk on eggshells around
| another person in order to be their friend, partner,
| child, etc.
|
| Personally, I don't enjoy the emotion of being angry. If
| you do, more power to you.
| tonguez wrote:
| "Personally, I don't enjoy the emotion of being angry."
|
| no one cares
| ss2003 wrote:
| It's nice to be able to afford to not get angry. That's
| not an option for everyone.
| jes wrote:
| With respect, it's not a matter of money or resources.
|
| Getting angry is optional. With some practice (largely,
| mindfulness) people can learn to notice their emotions
| and not become strongly identified with whatever is
| happening in the moment, and choose to do something more
| productive than simply stewing or ruminating in the
| unfairness of life.
|
| Thanks for engaging.
| [deleted]
| bingohbangoh wrote:
| This sentiment seems common on Hacker News but I'm not sure
| its wise.
|
| Companies that have high standards are far more interesting
| places to work at and with more interesting colleagues. They
| all require whiteboards and leet code.
|
| It's definitely true that not all companies that use these
| algorithm interviews are worth working for. But, at least in
| my experience, companies that don't require them at all are
| pretty awful places to work. It demonstrates that management
| doesn't care who they hire.
| akhmatova wrote:
| _Companies that have high standards_
|
| The parent commenter wasn't saying we shouldn't have "high
| standards"; just that filtering for maximal prowess at leet
| code grinding does not serve as a useful instance of such,
| in their book.
|
| Further, this distinction seems basically quite obvious --
| there's no other way to read their text, actually.
| lrvick wrote:
| I have advised, consulted for, or worked full time at 20+
| companies, interviewed at too many to think about counting,
| and conducted technical interviews at 10+.
|
| Without exception the companies that weighted academic
| algorithm skills over practical architecture skill and
| implementation experience had some of the most confident
| and brazen mistakes in security or scalability and some of
| the poorest work-life balance.
| jbyers wrote:
| Without exception?
| xpe wrote:
| This is easy to say, but it is harder to convince others
| without showing us your data. Even a small table with
| anonymized company names and a few columns assessing
| their security foibles and work life balance would go a
| long way.
|
| I understand most people will say "this is too much
| work". The problem is that it is all too easy for someone
| to say "in my experience, X is correlated with Y" ... but
| that isn't very believable if the observer didn't even
| write things down.
|
| I don't like asking for everything to be quantified, but
| it does seem in this case you probably have the data in
| your head and just need a nudge to write it down.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| And yet the person he was replying to had just as little
| data, full of "in my experience, X, Y".
|
| But it was his comment you chose to "suggest he show the
| work".
| krainboltgreene wrote:
| This has been my experience as well after 15 years and
| ~13 companies.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| High standards != Leetcode
| beej71 wrote:
| > Companies that have high standards are far more
| interesting places to work at and with more interesting
| colleagues.
|
| I have quite high standards when I hire, which is why I
| don't use leetcode to assess. :)
|
| I can get much better data more quickly without it. And,
| indeed, the best places I've ever worked with the smartest
| people I've ever known have not used these types of
| problems in the interview.
|
| I've personally solved hundreds of them for the problem-
| solving challenge, but it's a horrible way to determine if
| someone is a good fit for a job. It's like interviewing a
| mechanic for your auto shop by seeing how well they can
| change a tire using only a screwdriver.
| jackblemming wrote:
| How many companies have you worked for?
| sarchertech wrote:
| Alternatives like take homes, pair programming etc... don't
| demonstrate that a company doesn't care who they hire. I
| mean sure it could, but it could also demonstrate they
| don't cargo cult interview practices.
|
| Other industries don't hire this way for anyone but fresh
| grads, and most don't even do this for them.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| > Companies that have high standards are far more
| interesting places to work at and with more interesting
| colleagues. They all require whiteboards and leet code.
|
| The industry is at a point where there are plenty of
| clueless cookie cutter companies cargo culting Leetcode
| just because those interesting companies engage in it.
|
| As far as interesting companies that don't require that,
| there's at least Stripe, famously, and surely more from
| this list:
|
| https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards
| [deleted]
| turdnagel wrote:
| What position did you interview for at Coinbase? I made it to
| offer stage and did not have to do any algorithms.
| distrill wrote:
| what position did you interview for? they are very
| definitely an algorithm interview company for technical
| roles.
| asah wrote:
| Seriously ?
|
| So let me get this straight: now, we're not allowed to ask
| people if they can perform an __essential function of the
| job__, without being labeled "inhumane" ?
|
| You interview for sanitation work, I want to know that you
| can sling a heavy bag of hot garbage.
|
| You interview for SWE, I want to know that you can throw a
| sling a heavy bag of hot garbage!!!
| a_chris wrote:
| Yeah, because we spend the whole day reversing a linked
| list in your real-life SWE job, right? It's ridiculous that
| we have to study all those algorithms that we will never
| use it in your life, it's just too much.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| I had an interview once that wanted me to do A-star "find
| fastest routing of internet packets between sites" and
| when I presented a brute force path finder and he
| complained about the big O, I told him that his problem
| as framed only featured tens of graphs _and_ his business
| domain as framed (as a function of the company 's domain)
| would never have more than 20 sites, _and_ anyways a
| sneakernet (ship ssds) would be faster (which he
| conceded).
|
| I didn't get the job.
| onion2k wrote:
| _So let me get this straight: now, we 're not allowed to
| ask people if they can perform an __essential function of
| the job__, without being labeled "inhumane"?_
|
| I think there's a simple solution to the problem of
| algorithm testing and Leetcode problems in hiring: every
| company should run their hiring technical test on their
| current staff, at random, on a regular basis. If the
| current staff can pass then the test is a valid one. If
| they can't then it isn't, and they should update it to be a
| more realistic task that the current staff can do.
| aaronchall wrote:
| So a company isn't allowed to raise the bar?
| mattbuilds wrote:
| You're allowed to do whatever you want, and the person
| being interviewed can reject for any reason.
|
| If someone has code samples, years of experience building
| things and can make it clear to companies that they can do
| the job, I don't see the problem.
|
| It's a two way street about finding a good fit, I think a
| lot of employers don't see it that way. Maybe they should.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I can confirm Coinbase interviews are difficult. I went in
| relatively confident and still failed.
|
| Looking back, it would appear I got lucky since we all know
| new blood is the first to be dropped come a downturn. Well,
| maybe potentially not lucky since I recently jumped ship
| anyway, but it is not crypto or startup so risk level is
| lower.
|
| To your point, I agree. As an applicant, I would be really
| aggravated if I passed on an offer, because I received and
| accepted offer from another place ( and that another placed
| rescinded offer afterwards ). Can I assume there will be some
| lawsuits over this ( in that case there seems to be an
| incurred loss )?
| 1270018080 wrote:
| Are there ANY companies that pay well and don't do algorithm
| interviews?
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Depends on your definition of "pays well", really. I think
| it's unlikely you're gonna find many companies paying
| Amazon or Google-tier salaries without these kinds of
| interviews, especially for junior or mid level.
| xref wrote:
| Thousands upon thousands. There are a lot more companies in
| the world than FAANGs and SV unicorns.
| scarface74 wrote:
| What is your definition of "pays well"?
| krainboltgreene wrote:
| Why don't you ask the parent of the parent?
| tempsy wrote:
| can't find the tweet right now but saw one where a candidate
| showed an email where a recruiter or hiring manager literally
| promised a few weeks earlier to not rescind their offer before
| rescinding it
| mavelikara wrote:
| > It really puts your company's humanity on full display. It's
| the real test.
|
| Which are the companies from the dot com crash you remember
| doing this very well, and very wrong?
| BrainInAJar wrote:
| The people who are going to be screwed the most are immigrants
| who now have to find another visa sponsor & fast
| elzbardico wrote:
| In a civilized country with decent labor laws, this would be
| unthinkable
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| It's not great, but how bad it is depends heavily on how they're
| compensating the people they did this to. Like, if everyone
| affected gets an immediate lump sum payment equivalent to say 4-6
| months salary, it would be really not so terrible. The mere 1
| month of salary they offered, though, is obviously completely
| unacceptable
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| I hope they go under.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Since this is essentially a coward's layoff, you might as well do
| a real layoff. It's hard to believe that they needed to cut back
| enough to not bring on a ~month's worth of hires, but not so much
| they they should do real layoffs.
| redisman wrote:
| They will probably do both. Bubble companies have been hiring
| for fun and "growth" for years. According to their website they
| have 4900+ employees!
| formercoder wrote:
| I spoke with Coinbase at a time where I was trying to get away
| from a job where I worked 70-100 hour weeks. I would always tell
| recruiters I was seeking better WLB as I didn't want a company
| that would have a problem with that attitude. I was told by
| multiple people that late nights should be expected and Coinbase
| was not a 40 hour per week company. Further - there are 4 weeks a
| year where the company shuts down and everyone is "encouraged" to
| take their vacation during those times. Personally I like to
| select the weeks that I am off work. The comp was good but I
| ended up at Google making the same money with great WLB. My
| equity has been hit far less hard by recent market turmoil as
| well. Can't even imagine getting a 6 figure equity package and
| having it devalue 70% and then grinding long hours.
| alphakilo wrote:
| FWIW the 1 week every 4 months is on top of your vacation, not
| "encouraged vacation", but rather a company wide recharge week
|
| I agree those who started in the 6 months after IPO got the
| short end of a stick. The current packages are based on 90 day
| moving average IIRC. At least the grants being yearly helps in
| this case
| cokeandpepsi wrote:
| One of the dirtiest things a company can do
| smrtinsert wrote:
| Makes me want to find a new exchange.
| erehweb wrote:
| LinkedIn should set up a code of practice that bans this. Rescind
| offers? Then you can't advertise on LinkedIn for the next 5
| years, and we won't host your job posts either. That would change
| the calculations at these companies and make the jobs marketplace
| better, at little cost to LinkedIn.
| duxup wrote:
| How would linked in even know with any certainty that such a
| thing happened?
|
| Recruiting may have had nothing to do with Linked in.
|
| I don't expect them to police other companies this way for me.
| erehweb wrote:
| How would LinkedIn know? In this case, everyone knows. In a
| more general case, a candidate could provide proof.
|
| Coinbase has several jobs posted on LinkedIn.
|
| I expect LinkedIn to filter out companies that are outright
| scams. Rescinding an offer is just one step above that.
| carlivar wrote:
| LinkedIn (a subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation) has the worst
| "activity feed" algorithm I have ever seen. It is a dopamine-
| poking, engagement-optimizing mess. So I have very little
| confidence they would do anything for ethical reasons over
| money.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| what makes it worse than others with algo feeds?
| erehweb wrote:
| This would not need to be for ethical reasons. If LinkedIn
| can vouch for the companies on its platform, that gives it a
| competitive advantage.
| forgingahead wrote:
| Just block the news feed. Here's some ublock filters:
| www.linkedin.com##.eah-header-item.eah-menu-trigger.ember-
| view.artdeco-dropdown__trigger--placement-bottom.artdeco-
| dropdown__trigger www.linkedin.com###voyager-feed
| www.linkedin.com##.pv3.news-module
|
| You won't be able to see individual updates/posts either, but
| just toggle off ublock when you do want to see someone's
| specific post. This has been huge for me to avoid all the
| virtue-signalling/pandering-to-the-Current-Thing crap that
| permeates the feed.
| filoleg wrote:
| Would you be ok if they let recruiters have similar tools on
| linkedin, to filter out candidates who rescinded offers before?
| I am not trying to elicit some sympathy for coinbase here, I
| absolutely don't care about them or companies in general, but I
| don't think you've thought this proposal through.
|
| Let's imagine the issue i mentioned above doesn't exist.
| Linkedin figured out a perfect way to figure out and filter out
| companies that rescinded offers. If that became a problem for
| companies, then a company would just hire someone and then lay
| them off immediately. Same result, but larger
| administrative/accounting overhead, so no severences for
| rescinded people, most likely. How would Linkedin track that?
| What's the time period cutoff for which laying someone
| off/firing them is considered "just a loophole around
| rescinding an offer"? A week? A month? How will you be able
| tell the difference between an instance of someone being fired
| within a short period of time after starting as a loophole
| around rescinding an offer vs. someone genuinely being fired
| within a month for whatever legitimate reason?
|
| Imo i dont see how the current situation with coinbase/meta is
| a reason for such a major outrage. I could have understood it,
| if they were habitually known for rescinding offers as a part
| of their regular practice. But they don't, they all did it
| exactly once, at the same time, due to a very legitimate reason
| of a strong economic downturn affecting their
| survival/livelihood very badly. Imagine your spouse was having
| serious health problems, and you just found out you will need
| to take care of them for a year, right after you just accepted
| an offer from a company a few days ago. I think it is more than
| reasonable for that person to rescind their offer and tell the
| company they have something that's more important and that
| matters to their survival.
|
| And that's not even mentioning that coinbase is paying
| severance worth 2 months of work (as well as provides job
| search assistance services, whatever that means) to those whose
| offers they rescinded. So those people essentially are paid for
| 2 months of job searching. Still sucks to deal with job search,
| don't get me wrong. But that severance package wasn't expected
| and feels pretty fair.
| erehweb wrote:
| Thanks for your thoughtful comments.
|
| Would I be OK if LinkedIn gave similar tools to recruiters?
| No, because an applicant has a lot less power than a company.
| But I can see that recruiters would want that. So why
| wouldn't we want that on our side?
|
| The "hire for a day, then fire" issue is interesting.
| Companies would tread more carefully there, though. Once
| you've hired someone, then you have a legal relationship with
| them. In the US, employment is at-will, but protections for
| firing due to race, gender, etc. still apply. So there's a
| lawsuit threat that would make this a dangerous game for
| companies to play.
|
| Other threads claim that Meta did not actually rescind -
| those were more visa issues. Why is this such a big outrage?
| Because it's a breach in the norms of how job markets work.
| Re your analogy - Coinbase would certainly prefer not to have
| all these people in a downturn. But it certainly has options
| that the person with a spouse with health problems doesn't
| have. For example, executives could reduce their compensation
| temporarily to deal with this. The entering cohort of
| employees would make Coinbase less profitable, but won't by
| itself cause it to fail.
|
| Do I really think that the CEO of Coinbase would take a 10%
| pay cut rather than rescind several offers? No. But the point
| is that Coinbase has options that mean it can do the ethical
| thing.
| claytonjy wrote:
| Is LinkedIn a successful way to advertise jobs? I know it seems
| like they're all on there, but the last two times I hired, the
| LI crowd was by far the lowest quality. I got 700 applicants in
| a couple days (and 1000+ in a week) for a data science posting
| at a startup in 2019, almost all were entry-level applicants
| for a senior-level role. I don't blame the applicants, but it
| was basically impossible to wade through so many as a two-
| person team (me and the VP of Eng I was reporting to). I think
| LinkedIn is partially to blame in making it too easy to shoot
| off another application with near-zero marginal cost. We had
| much better luck with applicants direct to our jobs page.
|
| I'm sure a company like Coinbase with their HR/recruiting
| resources has a rather different experience, though.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| In the future, it's pretty easy to filter out unqualified
| applicants merely by describing what you really need & being
| clear about it.
| was_a_dev wrote:
| Is LinkedIn really that large of a recruitment source? They
| certainly don't have a monopoly on it
| tarellel wrote:
| I'd think so, I get dozens of recruiters reaching out every
| week. My current position I started a few months ago from a
| recruiter show reached out to me through LinkedIn as well.
| claytonjy wrote:
| A recruiter reaching out directly (warm leads) is very
| different from a LinkedIn job posting applicants apply to
| themselves (cold lead), and much harder to prevent. Of the
| recruiters I hear from, almost none of them point me to a
| LinkedIn job posting.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| As awful as it is, letting people go is something that happens
| when doing business.
|
| If you have to choose between resciding offers and leading your
| company to its death by running out of funds, the only sensible
| decision is the first one.
|
| I also don't get why LinkedIn should be the HR police of 2022,
| this is nonsense.
| edwnj wrote:
| This is a very bullish sign (mid-long term). They see the writing
| on the wall and are doing a swift full throttle u turn.
|
| Nobody likes doing this kind of stuff, its really bad for PR,
| really bad for the stock (short term) and messes with morale.. So
| for them to do with when they have billions in cash is very kewl.
|
| Props to Brian and the team
| chromejs10 wrote:
| Companies that are rescinding offers are just terribly managed
| companies. If you're in that bad of shape, then you should have
| done a hiring freeze months ago and there shouldn't have been any
| offers left to rescind (sure, there are odd ones where maybe they
| accepted 3 months early).
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| 3 months ago the stock market was at or near an all time high,
| I don't see how they could anticipate the current economic
| downturn.
| cratermoon wrote:
| "No one could have predicted a thing that happens regularly
| in the current economic system"!
| dilyevsky wrote:
| It's june already so no it wasn't. The writing was on the
| wall in November and Fed had clearly telegraphed their intent
| that this is going to happen
| FearTheTrees wrote:
| In addition to bad management, the contrast of the CEO buying a
| $133 million compound in Bel Air while throwing employees out
| on the street is just too stark.
|
| https://therealdeal.com/la/2022/01/03/pawson-designed-bel-ai...
| fullshark wrote:
| Not many companies expect or plan for their valuation to drop
| 75% in 6 months, that's gonna lead to tough choices. In the
| case of coinbase I'm guessing they're also seeing trade volume
| (and therefore future revenue) plummet and don't project it to
| increase anytime soon. Not sure this is evidence of a horribly
| managed company so much as a company dealing with a crisis and
| doing costly things to their reputation to manage it.
| davesque wrote:
| Crypto has been that volatile for years. If they didn't see
| that coming, they have their heads up their asses.
| chromejs10 wrote:
| I mean, if you're in the crypto business you should have more
| foresight than that. It's literally the definition of a
| volatile market
| rococode wrote:
| The cruelest part of this:
|
| https://twitter.com/TeamBlind/status/1532769735393169410
|
| 2 weeks ago they sent out emails saying "we will not be
| rescinding the offers of any employees who have already signed or
| have received an offer from us".
|
| They then proceeded to rescind offers from people who received
| this assurance.
|
| 2 weeks is long enough that people signed leases, resigned from
| jobs, moved cities. And yet it's also short enough that Coinbase
| leadership was certainly already preparing to make this decision.
| hinkley wrote:
| These are hallmarks of people being uncomfortable having
| difficult conversations. Either because they can't, or they've
| been punished for trying by someone higher up.
| onemiketwelve wrote:
| Isn't this a promissory estoppel?
| xpe wrote:
| Would someone with legal experience care to weigh in?
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| I mean in all honesty it these prospective employees can hold
| out and get good counsel they may end up with 5+ years of
| salary in settlement negotiations.
| xpe wrote:
| 5 years? Why? What has your experience shown you?
| Ferrotin wrote:
| > And yet it's also short enough that Coinbase leadership was
| certainly already preparing to make this decision.
|
| You don't need any "preparation" to make this decision.
| Information changed, and a new course of action is taken.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| It's nice that they are offering 1 months severance, but still,
| it's got to be crushing to have an offer rescinded like this.
| outside1234 wrote:
| 1 month is no where near enough. Folks probably left money on
| the table at the previous job to join Coinbase and now are
| going to be at a significant disadvantage negotiating for their
| next position.
| kevinpet wrote:
| One month severance is perfectly reasonable. They're under no
| obligation to make sure people are in a better position than
| they were before, and if someone walked away from options,
| etc at a previous company that's their business. One month is
| enough time to find a job if you aren't choosy.
|
| You have to draw the line somewhere. When the economy goes
| south, guess what? People will be out of work. I don't know
| why white collar workers seem to think they need to be
| isolated from all bad events.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| there actually is legal precedent that they are under
| obligation to not cause losses through lying. Promissory
| estoppel is the term and basically it means that if you
| incurred expenses or lost gains as a result of a false
| promise (like a rescinded job offer) the party making that
| false promise may have to make you whole.
|
| So things like lost bonuses or options or moving expenses
| are very much something that Coinbase need worry about
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| The article says they're paying out two months severance.
| GoOnThenDoTell wrote:
| The only way 1 month severance is acceptable is if it
| becomes acceptable to give zero days notice to your old
| job, so you can ensure that you actually do start the new
| job
| heretogetout wrote:
| Some folks may have spouses or partners change jobs at the
| same time in preparation for a move. Coinbase should have
| paid a lot more than 1 month.
|
| And what is this nonsense about paying severance in cash? Do
| they believe in crypto or do they not?
| ShamelessC wrote:
| It's a grift.
| sithlord wrote:
| they must be offering different severance to different people,
| someone posted their email on blind and they were offered 2
| months.
| gdulli wrote:
| It's less nice and more that they're paying people to sign away
| their right to sue.
|
| Imagine you've left your job, you probably don't want to go
| back there. You have to start a new job search. You're likely
| out more than one month's salary. Plus the intangibles of a job
| search while unemployed vs. employed.
|
| Imagine you declined COBRA, or even with COBRA, you might end
| up with a period of being responsible for your own health
| insurance payments, too.
|
| You have a gap in your employment record where you otherwise
| wouldn't have had one. That affects credit decisions.
| redisman wrote:
| COBRA is actually a terrible deal if you had a nice plan. You
| could pay a third to get a decent marketplace plan in most
| places
| lcvw wrote:
| The last time I looked at marketplace plans (in my state
| ymv). I couldn't find a single one that had good enough
| coverage for this to be worth it. The person I was looking
| for hits their out of pocket max every year though, so it
| just depends on your usage. The best I could find was like
| 1k a month + a 12k out of pocket max, so 24k a year total.
| But ymmv
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > COBRA is actually a terrible deal if you had a nice plan.
| You could pay a third to get a decent marketplace plan in
| most places
|
| Unless you qualify for marketplace subsidies, marketplace
| plans aren't a better deal like for like, than the best
| deals on employer group plans. If you had a good employer
| plan, a minimal marketplace plan will be far cheaper, but
| switching insurers can have a nonfinancial transitional
| cost associated with networks changes that you may not want
| to deal with when transitioning to job hunting, and while
| _for the average consumer_ a cheaper plan will usually also
| be lower cost, _you may not be the average consumer_ ; a
| cheaper plan that covers less may, as well as being a
| transitional headache, increase your total insurance + out
| of pocket cost.
| scarface74 wrote:
| No credit decision is based on a gap in your employment.
| [deleted]
| butfreemrkt wrote:
| morpheos137 wrote:
| It's almost as if a business built on providing services for a
| half-baked libertarian meme / postmodern decentralised ponzi
| scheme has poor long term stability prospects.
| crorella wrote:
| What else to expect from a company whose entire business rests
| around a ponzi scheme?
|
| The way of backing up to people who already left their jobs was
| very unprofessional.
| dang wrote:
| Recent and related:
|
| _Update on Hiring Plans_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31600505 - June 2022 (466
| comments)
| skyzyx wrote:
| When I interviewed at Coinbase 6 years ago, the interviewers felt
| egotistical and borderline incompetent. After I'd interviewed,
| they decided to change the open req to a different role.
|
| By "egotistical", I mean that the interviewer clearly believed he
| knew more than he actually did. It was that "I'm hot shit" vibe.
| I have worked across several roles in this industry over the last
| 20 years, and there was clearly inexperience on the other end of
| the phone.
|
| That told me everything I needed to know about the company, and I
| was happy to move on from that experience.
| MikeTheRocker wrote:
| I cannot imagine how upsetting and stressful this would be,
| especially to individuals depending on work visas to lawfully
| remain in the country. Severance is some small solace, but wow.
| Shameful.
| drfuchs wrote:
| Still a lot better than having you show up and then get laid off
| a week later. Typically happens in larger companies where your
| boss's boss doesn't know that his boss's boss is about to lop off
| your department because her boss's boss has to cut expenses.
| exdsq wrote:
| Remember Coinbase is a YC company and they just received that
| email about 'surviving'.
| wozer wrote:
| Is this legal in the US?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Everywhere except maybe Montana, the only non-at-will state.
|
| _edit:_ Not even Montana. At-will for the first six months;
| fire for any legal reason. Protections kick in after that.
| tzs wrote:
| Even if the Montana non-at-will provisions kicked in
| immediately, would it matter?
|
| Non-at-will usually just means that that the company can only
| discharge people for categories of reasons enumerated in the
| law. In at-will states the company can terminate for any
| reason except for reasons that are specifically forbidden by
| law.
|
| The acceptable reasons to discharge people in a non-at-will
| jurisdiction is likely to include reducing costs when the
| business is facing a downturn.
| 1024core wrote:
| A Coinbase recruiter sent me an email a few months ago with this
| emoji https://emojipedia.org/emoji/%F0%9F%93%88/ in the subject
| line; I politely told him that the emoji was rotated 90
| degrees...
| hackernewds wrote:
| Coinbase is a dumpster fire. I moved states and they suddenly
| disabled my account. Which is fine, but they have now been
| holding my staked Ethereum hostage with no ability to
| withdraw.The support team has no capacity, ability nor the
| company has installed much incentive to help (besides hitting
| their resolution time metrics) even if they were willing.
|
| I only air this out publicly since, it seems by design that they
| want to delay or prevent withdrawal of your funds. And there is
| no other recourse.
|
| Explicitly caution everyone to move your holdings to a hardware
| wallet, and never stake anything on Coinbase. Not your keys, not
| your coins.
| bspear wrote:
| dumpster fire sounds right. their support team is also
| basically non-existent, so if you ever have questions about
| your account, expect multiple days of waiting
| mmerickel wrote:
| To be fair they are quite up front when you stake Ethereum that
| you cannot withdraw it before the network itself supports it...
| Hope they re-activate your account though!
| [deleted]
| jlmorton wrote:
| > holding my staked Ethereum hostage with no ability to
| withdraw.
|
| I mean, it's been pretty explicitly warned that you can't
| withdraw until the Eth2 merge. This is not a Coinbase issue,
| this is a staking issue.
| carlivar wrote:
| Coinbase tried to recruit me last summer. I politely told the
| recruiter that I felt it was all bubble speculation mania. Also
| the amount of equity sold by the CFO at the public listing
| indicated little confidence in the long term prospects.
|
| I guess I was right? Not trying to brag or anything. Just a tip
| to everyone job hunting I guess. Watch what executives do (not
| what they say). Well, and human history of speculative bubbles.
|
| I didn't think it was a coincidence Coinbase did a direct listing
| rather than an IPO, since an IPO has a waiting period for
| insiders to sell. I think insiders knew they had a limited window
| of cheap money froth.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > Also the amount of equity sold by the CFO at the public
| listing indicated little confidence in the long term prospects.
|
| As you note, since it was a direct listing and not an IPO,
| there isn't really an analog to many other companies.
|
| My opinion about why they did a direct listing is because
| institutional investors didn't want to touch it, and that
| memetail traders (a portmanteau of meme and retail) are
| undiscerning at any valuation.
|
| The company didn't sell any shares or make any money from the
| direct listing itself, so that means the _only_ people that
| could make money _or provide any shares for making a market at
| all_ would be existing shareholders that have a lot of shares.
| It 's impossible to levy criticism both ways simultaneously,
| just to smugly pat yourself on the back, but there are other
| reasons to.
|
| The other benefit of an IPO (to a trader looking for earliest
| exposure) is the stabilizing bid from the syndicate, a brief
| period of more legal market manipulation where a consortium
| props up the price. A significant reason I avoided Coinbase's
| attempt at a 100 billion dollar direct listing is because there
| would be no stabilizing bid and retail doesn't have enough
| capital to simulate one.
| hiq wrote:
| > The other benefit of an IPO (to a trader looking for
| earliest exposure) is the stabilizing bid from the syndicate,
| a brief period of more legal market manipulation where a
| consortium props up the price.
|
| Do you mean that you would have gotten the shares and would
| sell your shares at this point with a certain guarantee on
| the price, or something else?
| yieldcrv wrote:
| In an IPO, the company sells a bunch of shares to banks,
| and this is a funding round for the company. The banks then
| immediately try to sell the shares at a slightly higher
| price to retail, and also collude and post a bunch of money
| on the buy side of the order books to give the illusion of
| demand. Psychologically this is commonly effective at
| getting retail to hop in front of these orders and purchase
| at higher prices and feel like they can sell at any time,
| leading them to be less discerning about what price they'll
| purchase at. And yes, they can sell directly into the
| stabilizing bid. It doesn't guarantee a price, thats too
| strong of a word for what this is. The bid can be removed
| at any time, the only thing exceptional is that the bid can
| be placed at all, as this would otherwise be sanctionable
| activity by the regulator or private litigants.
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/stabilizingbid.asp#:~:
| t....
| hackernewds wrote:
| The participation of the banks is really spot on. And at
| peak mania you could see companies pop 100% on listing
| day despite having been bumped 100% the day prior to
| listing. The underwriting for the shares is a total
| farce, also shepherded by the same banks with insider
| holdings, and hence a conflict of interest to be honest
| with it.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Yeah IPOs are a meticulous theatrical performance
|
| There is dilution in a "final" equity round, and then the
| banks are immediately flipping them to people that
| believe they are helping the company but are just getting
| dumped on by the banks, as all help was done by the banks
|
| I theoretically like direct listings more, but I don't
| like retails tolerance of getting screwed in a different
| way because the valuations are unsupportable
|
| I just like exposure and liquidity, so float the shares
| one way or the other! People should be pragmatic about
| what they are participating in
| hackernewds wrote:
| Slack and Spotify did direct listings as well.
| jcrash wrote:
| Not sure if those are the best examples. In my personal
| opinion they both have dubious business models, and they've
| both made no profit.
|
| No offense to the companies intended, I like both of their
| products.
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| Might be a bubble, but I paid off my student loan and a car by
| investing in bitcoin. I'm certainly glad I ended up on the
| right side of the bubble.
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| Some people also win the lottery. But I would hardly call it
| a sound investment.
| serf wrote:
| investment is a pretty strong term for what a lot of us did
| to make money at btc.
|
| I made quite a bit of money by throwing my ex-gaming 4870x2
| radeon machine into a closet for a year.
|
| my investment was a few bucks in energy, and an old
| computer that was going to become e-waste, and a few
| minutes time.
|
| I got lucky that at the time this was a feasible strategy
| before ASIC domination -- but this 'investment' wasn't
| anything like the rest of my portfolio by any means.
| epgui wrote:
| Growing tulips isn't any more of an "investment" than
| buying tulips... Regardless of whether or not it's
| profitable, it's a speculative endeavour.
| eigenvalue wrote:
| Tell that to the Dutch companies currently making tens of
| millions of years growing and selling tulips of all
| colors!
|
| See https://scitechdaily.com/dutch-tulip-fields-come-
| into-bloom-...
| epgui wrote:
| It's a reference to the tulip bulb mania.
| bityard wrote:
| Mining can be an investment, if you can stomach the
| volatility and have a plan to mitigate the risk. But
| buying a currency with the mere hope that it will go up
| is just speculation, pure and simple.
| toddmorey wrote:
| That's how bubbles work and why they are so alluring. Where
| people get burned is when they confuse that kind of luck for
| smarts.
| turzmo wrote:
| "investing"
| riotney wrote:
| >Also the amount of equity sold by the CFO at the public
| listing indicated little confidence in the long term prospects.
|
| Where do you find this information? I'm really new to this. Is
| it using stock charts or something similar?
| seibelj wrote:
| Insiders sell stock whether executives or employees.
| Otherwise why work for a company and get compensated in stock
| if selling it was banned / frowned upon?
| jelling wrote:
| It's part of most stock listing pages under "Insider
| Transactions". Here's one for Alphabet:
| https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GOOGL/insider-transactions/
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| SEC Filings - https://investor.coinbase.com/financials/sec-
| filings/default.... Look out for "Statement of Changes in
| Beneficial Ownership" to see stock grants/ sales for insiders
| (executives and directors).
|
| But, scouring SEC filings can be demanding, so there are
| several websites that specialize in extracting and displaying
| such information, for example -
| https://www.marketbeat.com/stocks/NASDAQ/COIN/insider-
| trades...
| kylestlb wrote:
| https://www.sec.gov/edgar/search-and-access
| vimda wrote:
| You can find the puically filed SEC form 4s online
| FinanceAnon wrote:
| I think OpenInsider has a good interface for this:
| http://openinsider.com/COIN
| carlivar wrote:
| This is a simple, clean site that I like:
|
| https://www.secform4.com/insider-trading/1679788.htm
| [deleted]
| panarky wrote:
| You can read the public filings with the SEC here:
| https://www.sec.gov/edgar/browse/?CIK=1679788
|
| But if you don't know what you're looking for it can be
| tedious.
|
| Here are insider purchases and sales in an easier to navigate
| format: https://www.nasdaq.com/market-
| activity/stocks/coin/insider-a...
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Note that Ted Gioia (in his interview with Rick Beato) said the
| same thing about Spotify: insiders had no lockup period, so
| they dumped the stock right away.
| bingohbangoh wrote:
| I think Brian Armstrong downsized his stake from ~300k shares
| to ~30k late last year. Has any company ever done well after
| such a sell-off from insiders?
| codegeek wrote:
| I honestly don't get the point of Coinbase. Isn't it a
| centralized system to manage what is supposed to be
| decentralized and that kinda defeats the purpose? I may be
| dumb.
| thehappypm wrote:
| It lowers the barrier of entry for retail buyers
| lawn wrote:
| Crypto is indeed a decentralized system (well, the well-
| functioning ones at least).
|
| However, it's also a closed system and you need to get crypto
| from somewhere. A centralized exchange is the most efficient
| facilitator of buying/selling crypto, and after that you can
| withdraw it and enjoy digital transfers without a centralized
| party.
|
| (You can also get crypto buy mining or selling things for it,
| or even buy it for cash, but an exchange like Coinbase is
| much faster and more convenient.)
| solveit wrote:
| Email is a decentralized protocol and the fact that you use a
| centralized provider such as gmail only somewhat defeats the
| purpose of email being a decentralized protocol instead of
| Google Messenger.
| maccard wrote:
| By that metric banks are decentralised too - my bank only
| speaks to another bank over a protocol but fundamentally
| just trusts the other side is good for it
| solveit wrote:
| I'm not very familiar with the subject but I don't
| believe the protocols used in banking are very
| decentralized. I'd be very surprised if you told me SWIFT
| was permissionless, for instance.
| ralston3 wrote:
| Email is _a bit_ similar, but the analogy doesn't work too
| well. While email might be a decentralized protocol,
| participation in the protocol requires quite a bit of
| technical effort. Whereas in crypto (e.g., Bitcoin) you can
| participate by just downloading a simple client and sending
| transactions via a nice little UI. In your example, Google
| actually provides a pretty huge value add by abstracting
| the complexities of participating in the email protocol
| away from the user. Crypto protocols (insofar as the assets
| provided by Coinbase) don't really get _that_ complex
| svachalek wrote:
| It's even weirder than that, it's like if Google received
| your messages for you and bundled them up with everyone
| else's, then allowed you to read your share of the bundle
| but never actually delivered them to you as far as the
| protocol is concerned.
|
| The email protocol isn't complicated though. Back before
| spam was a thing, lots of people could just open a port
| and manually talk SMTP (you could send messages as Santa,
| or whatever). The only service Gmail provides that's not
| trivial (and I mean, something that can be done in a
| whiteboard interview) is the spam protection.
| fragmede wrote:
| With the accessibility of ML these days, I'm less
| convinced that spam protection is _that_ hard, if you
| have a little bit of patience. The spam I get is
| repetitive and bad, and I get enough of it that I think I
| could get a workable model simply by using Gmail 's spam
| tagging to train it.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| Back in the day ('noughties through 2015 or so) there was
| POPFile, which did Bayesian classification of emails for
| spam filtering. John Graham-Cumming wrote it, and it
| worked reasonably well. I still think of him as the
| POPFile guy first, then remember he's the Cloudflare CTO.
|
| A more advanced classifier certainly do better these
| days.
| codegeek wrote:
| You have a point but not quite the same. Email is not a
| speculative instrument which makes Coinbase a very risky
| proposition for people who are using it for transactions. I
| can also change Email providers (can be painful sure but
| possible).
| maxfurman wrote:
| Coinbase is the lowest-friction, most legal, way to buy into
| crypto. They make it easy for nontechnical novices to get set
| up, and they comply with KYC laws etc. This has helped them
| build a large customer base and stay on regulators' good
| sides. Think of them as Crypto Robinhood, if that helps,
| though once you get into the weeds they have very different
| business models.
| puranjay wrote:
| More and more serious investors and traders are moving to
| decentralized platforms
|
| That's where the biggest money and the highest yield is
| achievable anyway. And the quality of decenttalized offerings
| is rapidly improving.
| ralston3 wrote:
| You are indeed not dumb. Coinbase is a bit of an oxymoron. If
| decentralized value exchange takes off, that will surely be
| the end of Coinbase. To a degree, Coinbase's demise is baked
| into crypto's success - which is kinda funny to think about.
| Coinbase has always seemed like a bit of a money grab, and
| crypto veterans sort've treat it this way.
| mateo411 wrote:
| It's a brilliant strategy in the DeFi/CenFi space.
| AviationAtom wrote:
| Crypto has boom and bust cycles. It will be back again, and
| mania will happen again.
| anonporridge wrote:
| The problem for Coinbase, is that on the next boom cycle, a
| significant number of traditional stock exchanges will be
| slurping their milkshake.
|
| Coinbase has only gotten as big as it is because they were
| effectively the most legit American exchange selling crypto.
| With Robinhood, Square, Paypal, and even legacy exchanges
| getting in the game, they won't have that advantage next time
| around.
| BonoboIO wrote:
| The next wirecard?
| Animats wrote:
| Maybe not. Crypto has never been through a general recession.
| A lot of net-loss stuff, from Uber to WeWork, was propped up
| by zero interest rates. That's over.
|
| There will be other bubbles in future, but probably in other
| areas.
| tootie wrote:
| The fundamental unit of value backing crypto is mania.
| nikhilsimha wrote:
| That logic didn't apply to tulip bulbs
| dehrmann wrote:
| How are those beanie babies doing?
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Beanie babies and pokemon cards actually did quite well in
| this last mania.
| thebrain wrote:
| Beanie babies are actually a tangible object though. :)
| opportune wrote:
| Still waiting on the next gold rush to unload all my shovels
| sgt101 wrote:
| Just like tulips!
| maxwell wrote:
| Every pyramid scheme eventually runs out of new suckers.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Past booms are no guarantee of future booms. Fundamentals of
| crypto don't appear sound to me. So I wouldn't put much stock
| in them.
| mlyle wrote:
| Yah. I think distributed ledgers are here to stay, as are
| some tokens of stored value. But I don't think the insane
| bidding up of many tokens will ever happen again.
| AviationAtom wrote:
| It'll happen again. It will just be a new set of
| coins/tokens, with new promises of new utility, and a new
| set of gullible people being takem advantage of. The sad
| part is schemes of the sort damage the image of actual
| future usefulness of blockchain technology. For now the
| crypto winter sets in, until the next thaw.
| la_fayette wrote:
| Haha, I lived through so many of these cycles im crypto,
| e.g., the ICO scams of 2017 and yet everybody said, now
| crypto is dead...
| geerlingguy wrote:
| How many of those cycles were decades-long?
| paraph1n wrote:
| > I think distributed ledgers are here to stay
|
| What exactly makes you think that? As far as I can tell,
| it's still unclear if distributed ledgers are really
| effective tools for much of anything. What real problems
| have they solved?
| rvz wrote:
| I don't know, maybe Stripe, Moneygram, TransferGo,
| Namecheap, Porkbun, etc seem to think otherwise?
|
| These distributed ledgers are here to stay in fact.
| Unless in less than 5 years or so, they are all going to
| go away 100% totally guaranteed?
| st34m wrote:
| It's quite useful for buying drugs.
| AviationAtom wrote:
| Don't hear of as many murder for hire plots involving it
| these days though
| mlyle wrote:
| Non-repudiation is an important problem. Some things we
| can rely upon trusted third parties, but all kinds of
| things we rely on imperfect systems with notaries and
| trusted third parties can be more effectively solved with
| ledgers.
|
| A whole lot of the interesting applications are non-
| monetary-- proving that a record was produced and made
| available before a certain time and has not been tampered
| with since.
|
| As a world economy, we spend like $100B/year on
| notarizing things and related kinds of non-repudiation
| record keeping. If it was really cheap, we'd do much
| more. And a big fraction of this could be done cheaper
| and with a higher agree of assurance by distributed
| ledgers than notaries.
| [deleted]
| hiq wrote:
| > big fraction of this could be done cheaper and with a
| higher agree of assurance by distributed ledgers than
| notaries
|
| These theoretical benefits have been around for 10+ years
| with little to show for it. Ledger-based solutions tend
| to focus on a tiny technical step of a big process
| without considering whether that's a bottleneck or even a
| non-negligible part and whether improving it actually
| results in a better solution.
|
| I used to sympathize and engage with the theoretical
| arguments; but at this point a more productive approach
| is: if the advantages are such and such, where are the
| companies benefiting from this competitive advantage?
| Maybe this competitive advantage doesn't exist at all?
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > These theoretical benefits have been around for 10+
| years with little to show for it.
|
| The closest analog to crypto distributed ledgers is,
| well, ledgers. If you look around you, there probably
| isn't a single product that could have been produced
| without the adoption of double entry accounting. And yet
| that adoption process took around 300 years.
|
| Crypto is on the exact same trajectory. When people look
| around them in 300 years, there probably won't be a
| single product that could have been created without
| distributed ledger technology. But obviously this isn't
| going to happen in any of our lifetimes.
|
| The IQ test is being able to see the trend even though
| crypto is currently at literally 0.00% adoption (on the
| basis of total financial transactions). Sooner or later,
| reality always goes to par with the math.
| darkteflon wrote:
| > math
|
| I do not think that word means what you think it means.
| mlyle wrote:
| > I used to sympathize and engage with the theoretical
| arguments; but at this point a more productive approach
| is: if the advantages are such and such,
|
| Distributed ledgers are being used for real business
| cases in banking. Realizing these full benefits will take
| a very slow process of societal adoption and
| legal/evidentiary recognition.
|
| I said "not going away". These use cases are going to
| slowly grow and become ubiquitous, but it will be a very
| slow process. It isn't some overnight disruption where
| notaries vanish and banking is dis-intermediated in the
| next 5 years.
|
| > where are the companies benefiting from this
| competitive advantage
|
| E.g. JP Morgan and Liink are quietly connecting hundreds
| of banks and using it to more robustly and quickly move
| payment-related information between banks.
| Kina wrote:
| > Distributed ledgers are being used for real business
| cases in banking. Realizing these full benefits will take
| a very slow process of societal adoption and
| legal/evidentiary recognition.
|
| Looking at JPMorgan's Liink, there is no proof that this
| is anything more than a cynical publicity stunt to try to
| capture some of the money sloshing around in the crypto
| hype. Most of its touted features are things that could
| have been done without blockchain and should have been
| done decades ago if they were willing to invest in
| modernizing things.
| mlyle wrote:
| > cynical publicity stunt to try to capture some of the
| money sloshing around in the crypto hype
|
| It's not being sold to end-user rubes. It's a way to try
| and suck banks into JPMorgan's technology ecosystem
| (promising to settle repurchase agreements faster and
| save lots of interest intraday).
|
| It's not huge yet-- only about $1 billion per day flows
| through it.
| maccard wrote:
| > JP Morgan and Liink are quietly connecting hundreds of
| banks and using it to more robustly and quickly move
| payment-related information between banks.
|
| At this point you're trusting JP Morgan and link to run
| the ledger. What if I disagree with a transaction and
| fork the ledger? How is this any different to JP Morgan
| running a SQL database and speaking a common protocol?
| mlyle wrote:
| > At this point you're trusting JP Morgan and link to run
| the ledger.
|
| Liink is ETH derived, so it's hybrid proof-of-stake and
| proof-of-work.
|
| (Of course, JP Morgan likely dominates both at this
| point, but they don't _have_ to).
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Paperclips are here to stay, but would you invest in a
| company that only makes paperclip maximizers?
|
| https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/paperclip-maximizer
| burnished wrote:
| Be the paperclip maximizer, instead
| https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/
| mlyle wrote:
| Nowhere did I suggest investing in crypto (indeed, I have
| a track record of the opposite, and I was mostly agreeing
| with someone who was suggesting the opposite), so your
| comment is unhelpful.
| peyton wrote:
| General sentiment is too many people made too much money
| not to give it another go.
| unicornmama wrote:
| Pyramids don't resolve upside down.
| AviationAtom wrote:
| The next will be the same as this one, s*tcoins will lose
| most value, while Bitcoin and Ethereum will retain a
| reasonable amount of value. The problem is suckers think
| the altcoins are going to be their ticket to riches. Those
| that get in early do indeed gain, but those that are late
| to the scheme end up holding the bag.
| baby wrote:
| Yet everyone will tell you that the stock market only goes
| up
| brokencode wrote:
| The stock market goes up because the world economy goes
| up, allowing companies to make more profit. Someday that
| might stop, but it's been going strong since the
| industrial revolution.
|
| Cryptocurrencies don't have that kind of track record.
| They also provide dubious value to society at best
| currently.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Also this is true of the American stock market, where
| companies
|
| * represent a broad swathe of the diverse American
| economy and more or less correlate with it as a whole
|
| * have to issue regular, public, audited statements about
| their balance sheets
|
| Crypto is none of those things.
| cjf4 wrote:
| The stock market does two things crypto doesn't: -
| generates consistent cash flows - produces real economic
| value
| jcranmer wrote:
| The Japanese stock market peaked December 29, 1989. It
| has yet to reach those heights again, 32 years later.
| mvc wrote:
| At least (unlike bitcoin), holders of this stock have
| received the odd dividend now and again.
| tempsy wrote:
| at this point there's so much investment and attention
| dedicated to it that it will be willed into continued
| relevancy as much as anything happening organicly
| BonoboIO wrote:
| Like tulips.
|
| Still waiting for the bull market there.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
| anonporridge wrote:
| Fun fact, Tulip mania is mostly a myth.
|
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/there-never-was-
| real-...
|
| > So if tulipmania wasn't actually a calamity, why was it
| made out to be one? We have tetchy Christian moralists to
| blame for that. With great wealth comes great social
| anxiety, or as historian Simon Schama writes in The
| Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture
| in the Golden Age, "The prodigious quality of their success
| went to their heads, but it also made them a bit queasy."
| All the outlandish stories of economic ruin, of an innocent
| sailor thrown in prison for eating a tulip bulb, of chimney
| sweeps wading into the market in hopes of striking it rich
| --those come from propaganda pamphlets published by Dutch
| Calvinists worried that the tulip-propelled consumerism
| boom would lead to societal decay. Their insistence that
| such great wealth was ungodly has even stayed with us to
| this day.
| carlivar wrote:
| Yes, I referenced tulip mania to the Coinbase recruiter.
|
| It's probably going to collapse worse.
| BonoboIO wrote:
| Losing everything ... what a nightmare
|
| ,,Taiwanese Ends His Life After Losing $2 Million Luna
| Investment,,
|
| https://coinquora.com/taiwanese-ends-his-life-after-
| losing-2...
| _jal wrote:
| I told them something similar (didn't know about the CFO, I
| don't care enough to pay attention).
|
| I'm also amused by the headhunter I heard from who apparently
| was trying to specialize in whatevercoin/NFT/etc. startups. I
| politely told him I would entertain any non-"web3" plays, and
| he started telling me how I was making the worst career choice
| of my life and turning away money, etc.
|
| Wonder how he feels about his career right now.
|
| I will admit to a little schadenfreude, but more generally it
| just saddens me. Idiot greed is eternal, I know, it is just a
| bit depressing to watch the destructive nonsense play out.
| mlyle wrote:
| > ...amused by the headhunter...
|
| > Wonder how he feels about his career right now.
|
| Pretty good, for all the money he collected placing
| developers in these crap bubble jobs. A little sad, that
| recruiting is going to be down for a couple years before he
| can start cajoling developers to take some other kind of new-
| fangled job that he doesn't understand.
| mathattack wrote:
| Let's ask "Why are they doing this?" I will start by saying most
| indications are that the management is very rational.
|
| Sometimes companies use downturns to get rid of people that they
| haven't managed properly. It's lazy, but cutting the bottom 10%
| in a layoff can be less short term work than performance reviews.
| They avoid the PR issues by saying "everyone is doing it." This
| isn't what Coinbase did.
|
| If companies are cash flow negative and can't get funding, they
| may reneg on offers too. This is what the banks did it 2008 and
| tech did in 2001. People see the burn and get it. The firms
| survive the reputations damage because they can say "we don't
| want you to join if we are about to go under and we need to save
| cash." This isn't what Coinbase is doing.
|
| Coinbase is still cash flow positive and has positive earnings.
| So why are they doing this? My sense is they see what's coming.
| It's either volume will shrink, leaving them unable to cover
| fixed costs, or some other seismic shift in crypto that will cost
| them a fortune. They are rational and have tremendous data on the
| crypto world. To me this is an incredibly bearish sign. But it's
| also a very prudent sign on their part. (They feel the current
| risk is higher than future hiring challenges)
|
| Please don't take this as investment advice on COIN or crypto.
| puranjay wrote:
| Word on the grapevine is that there's a new bill coming up that
| would classify any crypto that had a presale or ICO as a
| security. This would include practically 99% of all popular
| coins, but would still classify BTC as a commodity (since it
| didn't have an ICO/presale)
|
| If this is true, Coinbase - and crypto - are in for a rough
| time
| bingohbangoh wrote:
| Jim Chanos, who famously shorted Enron and failed shorting
| Tesla, has been shorting Coinbase. He noted that Coinbase is
| making ~4% on AUM while Charles Schwab makes maybe ~0.5%.
| Surely this must come down.
| asd88 wrote:
| Apparently, folks with offers received an email two weeks ago,
| when the hiring freeze was announced, saying no offers would be
| rescinded. Did management change their minds in just two weeks?
| renewiltord wrote:
| Recruiting handles those emails and they're usually not privy
| to strategic decisions since they're not really strategic
| operators.
| azemetre wrote:
| Management is often not privy to these details. I doubt more
| than two dozen people knew about the news internally before
| they publicly disclosed it.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Smells like some expensive lawsuits are a comin'
| Hydraulix989 wrote:
| There's no grounds for a lawsuit for the at-will
| employment contracts you typically see with West Coast
| tech companies.
| [deleted]
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Coinbase is based on a scam market economy.
|
| Eventually the snake has no more tail to eat.
| alx__ wrote:
| Unregulated assets != scam
|
| Predatory con artist are taking advantage of the wild west
|
| Regulation is coming, I'd assume Coinbase is sensing the
| headwinds change
| yossarian1408 wrote:
| A flawed ideal maybe, but you can't say it's a scam.
| Marazan wrote:
| It's a scam.
| gitfan86 wrote:
| The only reason you cannot say Coinbase is isn't a scam is
| because it is impossible to prove that the people involved
| were lying in regards to the viability of crypto not being
| effectively a Ponzi scheme.
| solveit wrote:
| It is very difficult to believe Brian Armstrong was
| cynically cashing in on what he perceived as a Ponzi ten
| years ago when he founded Coinbase (he posted an ad for a
| co-founder here on HN).
| kelnos wrote:
| Unless you personally know him well and have spoken with
| him at length about this, I don't think that opinion is
| based on anything substantial. A post on HN looking for a
| cofounder tells you only what the person _wants_ you to
| believe they 're thinking and feeling about what they're
| doing.
| darkteflon wrote:
| Guilty until proven innocent.
| fosk wrote:
| There is value in a global blockchain with the level of
| participation of crypto. And sure there are scams, there
| are scams in the real economy too.
|
| Ponzi is not an acronym for "I don't understand its value
| therefore it's a Ponzi scheme".
| puranjay wrote:
| HN has decided crypto is a scam and any attempt to change
| its mind is met with wild resistance
|
| Don't even try man
| dixie_land wrote:
| It is an acronym for "I do understand it has no value but
| as long as I'm not the idiot holding the hot potato in
| the end..."
| smeeding wrote:
| I think the Ponzi claims stem from the fact that so many
| people are in the market for speculative profit (and not
| to revolutionize finance or whatever), and the fact that
| earlier investors can only capitalize on their
| investments by proselytizing, recruiting, and ultimately
| selling their bags to new investors. Framed that way,
| it's quite Ponzi-ish.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| This is true of any value storage vehicle. You only make
| money - or get your money back out - by passing it on to
| the next person. Art, baseball cards, stamps, stocks,
| gold etc. all work this way.
| unicornmama wrote:
| None of the things you mentioned are "value storage
| vehicles". Currencies may be a stores of value.
|
| Gold is a hedge against hyper inflation and global
| crisis. Art is an elaborate mechanism for money
| laundering. Baseball, stamps, and pokemon cards are
| collectibles and eb and flow with the tides of pop
| culture And I am too tired to explain stocks to you.
|
| > You only make money - or get your money back out - by
| passing it on to the next person. It might actual shock
| you to learn that the US money supply historically grows
| faster than inflation.
| smeeding wrote:
| > all work this way
|
| Do they though?
|
| Unlike cryptos, gold and stocks have real material value
| behind them, not just community buy-in.
|
| You can make the art/baseball cards/stamps argument, but
| then you'd be conceding that the value of cryptos --
| something pitched as a revolutionary technology with
| limitless profit potential -- is, in reality, determined
| by the same irrational valuation process as niche
| collectible markets.
|
| There's a reason we don't pay for groceries and mortgages
| with baseball cards and stamps.
| darkteflon wrote:
| I'd love to hear more about the distinction between "real
| material value" and "community buy-in" value. It's not a
| distinction I'm familiar with from my more than 20-year
| career in finance.
| smeeding wrote:
| Cryptos have value because their investors all agree that
| they do. That's where it ends. If those investors stopped
| believing that, their value would drop to zero because
| there's no underlying material value supporting it's
| market value. They're shared delusions, and arguably
| self-perpetuating high-control groups.
|
| What I'm calling "real material value" are things like
| physical assets and profit generation capacity. Companies
| own things, and they use those things to generate profit,
| which in turn filters down to investors. This dynamic
| doesn't exist in crypto.
|
| Gold has real material value as a useful product, not
| simply a store of value.
|
| I've only worked in finance for 6 years, and only on the
| technical side, so forgive me if my vocabulary doesn't
| meet your standards.
|
| If you're actually disagreeing with the point that I'm
| making, and not just being pedantic, please let me know
| who you work for so I can be sure to avoid their services
| in the future.
| darkteflon wrote:
| What I'm actually trying - and apparently failing - to do
| is get you to reassess your misplaced confidence. You
| have a toy-like, airbrushed conception of value that is
| doing you an analytical disservice.
|
| If you're in finance and interested in value, find a
| great textbook and get to reading. It's a fascinating
| topic.
|
| I'll leave you with Goethe: "Doubt grows with knowledge."
| chowchowchow wrote:
| You will lose all your money thinking like this.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| You will lose all of your wealth not thinking like this.
| chowchowchow wrote:
| Oh I'm sure all great fortunes were built by people who
| believe stocks and baseball cards are equivalent
| investment vehicles.
| dragontamer wrote:
| You make money from stocks by holding onto them and
| collecting the dividend.
| gitfan86 wrote:
| People can and do speculate on collectables. The
| difference is that there is underlying value in the
| collectable. There are people who would like to own a
| Babe Ruth signed baseball just because it is a unique
| piece of sports history and have no plan to sell the
| baseball when the price goes up.
|
| Speculation on that asset can make the price go up far
| above the underlying value. But that comes at a high risk
| of the price falling down to the underlying value. For
| crypto this underlying value is basically zero.
| darkteflon wrote:
| If only I had a dime for every time someone on HN
| unironically threw around the term "underlying value"
| like it meant something they could build an argument off.
| chowchowchow wrote:
| You don't believe in any concept of utility relating to
| value? You'd argue that a house has no underlying value
| due to location and comforts?
| darkteflon wrote:
| I think a house has "value" related to utility.
|
| I also think the putative concept of "underlying value" -
| always defined in opposition to some other form of value
| the speaker is railing against - is a lazy rhetorical
| crutch that provides nothing of analytical value to a
| discussion.
|
| Every time these crypto threads come along we have tens
| of people drawing this same distinction and hordes of
| software engineers nodding along in agreement like it's
| actually a thing. It's not a thing. At least, not the way
| it's deployed here.
|
| Usually I just ignore it but it's beginning to pass into
| accepted wisdom through sheer repetition.
| chowchowchow wrote:
| So to me it sounds like you do acknowledge the concept of
| underlying value. A house has utility, it is scarce,
| there is competition for it, ergo its value is a function
| of demand for the asset (aka a proxy for the utility of
| owning the asset). This can be extrapolated to other
| assets besides houses. Unclear if it can be to crypto,
| it's sort of you believe or you don't on that one. I
| think that's what people mean when they say it has no
| underlying value.
|
| TLDR scarcity + utility is where value comes from. Crypto
| really only has scarcity arguing for it. Much like
| collectibles actually.
| darkteflon wrote:
| There's just "value". People use the term "underlying
| value" as a proxy for "real value", in opposition to "not
| real value". You can verify that by looking at any
| example of its use in this thread.
|
| I'm saying it's a rhetorical crutch that doesn't lead to
| meaningful discussion or insight.
|
| If people acknowledged in these threads that "value" is
| way more complex and nebulous than these facile
| comparisons make it out to be, we'd have more interesting
| discussion.
| chowchowchow wrote:
| I think it's clear people are distinguishing value based
| purely on speculation in a scarce asset and value based
| on demand (and still maybe speculation) for some
| underlying good which has utility. Be that a house, a
| car, or stock of a SaaS business, a retail operation,
| whatever.
| jwilk wrote:
| https://twitter.com/patdennis/status/1518637225789042688
| lupire wrote:
| Coinbase doesn't do the Blockchain part, except as much
| as needed to enable a blockchain -adjacent thing for
| people who don't want the blockchain part.
|
| The non-blockchain part is the scam part.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| > So why are they doing this? My sense is they see what's
| coming.
|
| I think this vastly overestimates how efficiently corporations
| are actually run.
|
| I've been in meetings with executives at several public
| companies. When the topic of adjusting HC or spending money
| comes up, usually those conversations happen in a ratio of 50%
| politics, 40% wild-ass opinion, and 10% data. And almost
| always, the "data" are completely cherry-picked, highly
| speculative nonsense that someone asked a BI team to produce to
| support their own political agenda. Now, I wouldn't say that
| means Coinbase is healthy, or unhealthy, but IMO there is
| pretty much zero correlation between their actions and having
| some kind of crystal ball on the market.
| fatbird wrote:
| Seconding this. I work as a contractor at a Fortune 100, and
| have been there long enough, and am now highly enough ranked,
| that I see most of the decision pipeline from the C suite
| down to the intern I'm helping. The a-rationality of it is
| shocking. No one two steps above me really understands what
| our project does or how it makes money, only how it plays
| into the spreadsheets; and yet decisions come down from above
| that layer that have blistering consequences for us, with no
| apparent relation to our reality, but probably make a cell on
| a spreadsheet green instead of red.
|
| Arguably, that's just how well things can work at this scale.
| A CEO of a company that large who can see all the way down to
| me would be a nano-manager who should be fired. But it's
| still incredibly frustrating to be implementing decisions
| that affect me (such as a hiring or spending freeze), knowing
| that it was decided blindly with respect to me.
|
| As I near retirement, I'm starting to believe that any
| organization run substantially by spreadsheets alone is too
| large, meaning that profit is wasted on organizational
| overhead, and investors should be dismantling such companies
| into smaller ones.
| LaurensBER wrote:
| Having had the same experience this is why I prefer to
| invest in small cap companies. The amount of overhead and
| waste in big companies is insane and overwhelming.
|
| One would think that there's an enormous chance for
| optimization at companies at this scale, especially because
| everyone at the bottom know what is/isn't working but for
| various reasons, companies are very bad at doing this.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| I think it makes a difference if the founders of the
| corporation are still the CEO. At any rate crypto goes
| through very quick bull/bear cycles, with the most recent
| downturn being in 2018 & 2019. And they can easily see broad
| volume stats across the industry (it's all on-chain after
| all).
| mmarq wrote:
| > I wouldn't say that means Coinbase is healthy, or unhealthy
|
| I'd say that a company that makes an offer today and reneges
| it tomorrow is not a healthy company. It's certainly not a
| company I'd work for. We aren't talking about contracts
| underwritten 3 years ago.
| nwiswell wrote:
| I'm not sure it's clairvoyance so much as risk management. They
| see a _possible_ future in which they are unable to survive at
| current spend, and based on conservative management principles
| they 've decided to make the tough decisions that keep
| corporate failure out of the set of reasonably foreseeable
| outcomes.
|
| Realistically, if they could actually predict the crypto
| market, they wouldn't need to worry about money period.
| krainboltgreene wrote:
| > I will start by saying most indications are that the
| management is very rational.
|
| There is zero evidence of this.
| philjohn wrote:
| Are they cash flow positive? They made a loss in the latest
| quarterly filing?
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