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wiseowise 14 hours ago

> - No pure managers: Every leader at Coinbase must also be a strong and active individual contributor. Managers should be like player-coaches, getting their hands dirty alongside their teams.

Geeks who didn't even stand near professional sports should really shut up about anything sport related, lol.

I would really like to see professional, established coach running around with young prodigies on a peak of their biology.

> - AI-native pods: We’ll be concentrating around AI-native talent who can manage fleets of agents to drive outsized impact. We’ll also be experimenting with reduced pod sizes, including “one person teams” with engineers, designers, and product managers all in one role.

And AI clowns will cheer and applaud this, not seeing that they're now doing the job of 5(!) people with the same salary. Why is nobody talking about this?

Also, I find it really bizarre that those neo feudal lords see their companies as just a life stock to count. They don't even count people, just see them as numbers to reduce/scale up. Modern tsardom, but instead of being tied via official decree you're now tied by your lifestyle and family.

"Some of you may die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make"

827a 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You have to look past literally everything their leadership is saying and at the heart of the matter: This is a dying company, and they physically will not have the capital to pay paychecks if they don't do this. Everything else is window dressing to try to keep investors on-board, but they aren't buying it, and neither should you.

The crypto market winter that started in Q4 last year led to Coinbase's ~worst quarter ever ($667M loss). Crypto has not recovered. Coinbase has done nothing to stem the outflows. That same quarter HOOD showed a net profit of $605M; and showed a $346M profit last week. COIN and HOOD are two very similar companies.

COIN's earnings are in two days. They preceded the earnings call with layoffs, which is always a bad sign. And HOOD's net income has dropped by like 40%, though they're still at least profitable. You should be prepared for COIN to announce a similar drop; except, COIN wasn't even profitable before. Its going to be a bloodbath.

tverbeure an hour ago | parent [-]

I see $667M loss numbers in the press, but I also see a positive P/E ratio? How does that work?

Edit: it’s because the loss is an accounting loss due to mark to market adjustment, while the company is operationally profitable.

I assume that’s still no great, but not nearly as dire as the reported loss suggests, and not a sign of a dying company.

simpsond 30 minutes ago | parent [-]

P/E ratios are usually based on last 12 months, so E = sum of EPS over last 4 quarters.

cloche 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Geeks who didn't even stand near professional sports should really shut up about anything sport related, lol. I would really like to see professional, established coach running around with young prodigies on a peak of their biology.

Player-coach used to be a thing in professional sports a long, long time ago. There's a reason you don't have it anymore. A coach can't be expected to take the long-term view while also expecting to contribute. Most examples were players near the end of their career and they didn't tend to do very well.

The only place you see it is in fun adult leagues. Perhaps the message then is that Coinbase wants to be less professional and more amateur-like?

Rapzid 11 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah. I'd agree with this if it were tech leads that were mostly just IC leaders.

But managers should mostly be about two things IMHO:

> Facilitating for ICs.

> COACHING. To elevate ICs and help propagate the desired "culture".

draftsman 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Your comment reminded me that this still happens in the NBA. At 43 years old, Udonis Haslem seldom played minutes towards the end of his 20 year career with the Heat. But they kept him on as a “player-coach,” in that he was a mentor to the younger players and assisted in their coaching. Kyle Lowry is another current example of this “player-coach” role, currently on the Sixers.

htrp 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Haslem played 72 minutes the entire 82 game season. That's like the Engineering manager who ships a PR once a year.

GrooveSAN 6 hours ago | parent [-]

And to continue with the analogy, he neither replaces the coach, nor the actual team players. He just sits on the bench, paid for his - additional - role. Exactly the contrary of the Coinbase manager-IC, which is supposed to replace 2 jobs in 1.

cloche 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Thanks for the examples. I didn't realize this still happened. I don't follow basketball much - more hockey for me with some baseball. It sounds like those examples jive though - they're players in the twilight of their career who still bring a lot of value being in the locker room but maybe aren't ready to fully retire or move to coaching full time.

Actually, these scenarios happen in hockey as well. Teams will pick up character guys who have been through it all who are expected to contribute more off ice than on it. Corey Perry is one who comes to mind lately but they're never given a "coach" title. It's entirely possible though that these players may be expected to be a go-between guy between the coach and younger players to help them manage the pressure or to help with encouragement. They're definitely not getting prime minutes though.

I guess that would possibly be the same expectation of a manager who still codes. I can't see them doing anything critical. It's likely picking up some minor bugs or nice-to-have, low priority feature work. I was a manager before and while I didn't reach 15 reports, I was up to 12 at one time. There's just really no focus time that you need for coding. Maybe that's a bit different with AI but even then you still need to find time to make changes and validate. And that's time that takes away from other higher impact things that you could be doing for the team.

dekayed 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

We already have these in the industry. They're Staff+ Engineers and Architects. It's generally the norm to not be cranking out code at this level, but they make sure everyone is moving in the right direction, assisting managers, and mentoring juniors.

doitLP an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Good example but it still sounds more like a “tech lead”: this guy is still focused on tactical line level with other players than on handling the overall strategy, PR, plans, hiring, etc that a coach does

xdavidliu 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think the CEO was more talking in the line of Bill Russell or Maximus from Gladiator, not final-year Haslem

FireBeyond 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It happens, but these days is quite rare, and usually something reserved for a player is of Hall of Fame or close caliber, who has been an institution for the franchise, and is generally slated for a full-time coaching role post retirement.

ghaff an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm not sure the professional sports analogies carry over very well.

With very rare exceptions, professional athletes are just not as good athletically at 40/50 as they were at 20. They may be smarter in some ways--which maybe means they'd be better as coaches.

I'm not sure this carries over well to engineering unless you mean that the young people are willing to grind for a lot more hours on nights and weekends.

andriy_koval an hour ago | parent [-]

> With very rare exceptions, professional athletes are just not as good athletically at 40/50 as they were at 20. They may be smarter in some ways--which maybe means they'd be better as coaches.

not sure if focus should be on athletic sports. Chess is better analogy to software I think.

jrumbut 9 minutes ago | parent [-]

To part of it, but chess is generally played one against one, there are well understood rules and a clearly defined goal, and every win is someone else's loss.

When building software, if you can state an unambiguous goal and what rules apply you are more than halfway done. It's not uncommon to work on something for a year and discover you have been building the wrong thing. Navigating that ambiguity is where all the value in software engineering is.

dwd 36 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The only successful Player-Coach that comes to mind was Eric Cantona as player-manager of the France national beach soccer team after leaving Manchester United aged 30.

He won the 2004 Euro Championship, the 2005 FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup along with a number of top 4 places over his 15 years as player and/or coach.

Worf 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Reminds me of how kings used to (I think, I'm bad at history) actually fight the battles themselves. Now the head of state, the head of government and the other top people don't fight themselves. Even the admirals only plan and command, AFAIK.

orochimaaru 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think Netflix started the sports team analogy for their hiring (and firing). But they don't put forth a "you're a part of the Netflix family". They're open about the work culture you're going to be stepping into.

And I don't think they're trying this thing that Coinbase is trying either.

strken 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Player coaches would be redundant given that most sports already have captains, wouldn't they?

Jagerbizzle 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Captains can't decide to substitute/bench one of their teammates in the middle of a game.

cyanydeez 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

In sports like Football where CTE is king, there's just not gonna be enough qualified personnel to coach.

jasonfarnon 3 hours ago | parent [-]

No. Few college or professional coaches weren't themselves college or professional players. Think of all those assistant coaches, QB coaches, DB coaches etc.--all players. Mike Leach comes to mind as a rare counterexample.

JeremyNT 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Let's be honest, this is a crypto exchange. "Line go up" is the only philosophy these people adhere to.

> Also, I find it really bizarre that those neo feudal lords see their companies as just a life stock to count. They don't even count people, just see them as numbers to reduce/scale up. Modern tsardom, but instead of being tied via official decree you're now tied by your lifestyle and family.

People don't work somewhere like Coinbase if they're concerned about morality or mitigating the harms done to society.

hocuspocus 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Even better, as an exchange, they don't even necessarily care whether the line goes up, down, sideways, or in fucking circles to quote the Wolf of Wall Street. As long as it goes somewhere, and customers are charged fees.

Auracle 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Eh. Presumably there’s a ton more trading when the market is hot (and a somewhat lesser extent, when in a bi bear market).

l0gicpath 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I fail to see how this is specific to a crypto company. You’re drawing a correlation that’s not backed up by any empirical evidence.

The GP post describes a common problem in _most_ workplaces in the market today. It’s not specific to crypto, AI, or anything in between.

cheema33 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> I fail to see how this is specific to a crypto company.

It is not specific to a crypto company. But the element of it being a crypto company cannot be ignored. Crypto companies are not like ordinary businesses. They have very unique qualities to them. Same with crypto industry as a whole. Ever been to a crypto conference for example? I have read about and have seen the videos. These things have the highest concentration of the scammers and the gullible any one place.

senordevnyc 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Ever been to a crypto conference for example? I have read about and have seen the videos.

Actually, it sounds like you’re the one who hasn’t been to a crypto conference :)

spamizbad 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yeah my experience in engineering management: Very easy to be a "player coach" when the team was small, like when I had 4 direct reports. As soon as I had 9 (in an org with no TPM/product) my full time job was wearing 3 hats, and maybe 3 hours a week were spent on actual pure technical tasks (mostly scut work to unblock team members after-hours)

rideontime 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"Neo feudal lords" might read like hyperbole to those unaware of Brian Armstrong's "Network State" fanaticism. He may not be one yet, but he's certainly striving toward that goal.

adamors 7 hours ago | parent [-]

There’s also Yanis Varoufakis’ recent book, Technofeudalism.

ne0flex 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"They don't even count people, just see them as numbers to reduce/scale up."

I'm remember of when I went out for drinks with a startup consultant friend and she mentioned one founder she spoke with refer to his staff as "biological units" when addressing use of proceeds to hire additional staff.

chamomeal 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That is bonkers but I will enjoy calling my friends “biological units” from now on

keyle 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This is sickening. People that don't realise that companies are made of people are in for a surprise. Once they go public, they forget that, and it shows.

A company_is_ the sum of its people, their talents and aligned behind a mission statement.

This is so far misguided, I can't help but think this 'biological unit' of a founder won't last long.

duxup 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

And it's telling that really good players are often terrible coaches / good coaches were not great players.

Like the guy who "just gets math" is often NOT a good teacher.

ryanisnan 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I would really like to see professional, established coach running around with young prodigies on a peak of their biology.

This is a really strange nit. You are aware it's an analogy about skill and role. To reduce this to being about biology and the impacts of senescence on ability is weird, and doesn't really apply here.

machomaster 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Analogies have to make sense, to be applicable. In this case it doesn't.

E.g. you can't just spew nonsense like "let's work together like a bee hive, everything for the Queen/CEO, no matter the personal cost to an individual" without others pointing out the stupidity of comparing humans with bees.

You can't just come up with a desirable adjective and start coming up with random scenarios in which those characteristics may occur. "Let's make the company strong as a gorilla, big as an elephant, smart as Von Neumann, bright as a Sun, as courageous as young guys from youtube fails compilations." This makes no sense whatsoever.

Dylan16807 an hour ago | parent [-]

It makes plenty of sense. Player-coaches are a real thing, and in a realm where you're not worried about peak fitness then it's reasonable to demand the coaches become player-coaches.

Rapzid 16 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Crypto was always a clown show. Not saying everyone working the crypto/Web 3.0 was a clown just.. This tone-def message coming out of the waning crypto industry is nothing more than an eye-roll.

tylervigen 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The player-coach analogy is very common in role definitions, and it is real concept in sports: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player-coach

harshalizee 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> - AI-native pods: We’ll be concentrating around AI-native talent who can manage fleets of agents to drive outsized impact. We’ll also be experimenting with reduced pod sizes, including “one person teams” with engineers, designers, and product managers all in one role.

And then this person leaves, leaving no documentation or workflow. That's ok though, another ai agent will pick up right back and add slop on top of that until the codebase is a black box interacting with another black box.

Oh and this company handles other people's money? That's going to end well.

ChaseMeAway 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Perhaps it is time to unionize.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unionization_in_the_tech_secto...

hadlock 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Unions can't fix the fact that crypto didn't survive it's first real Flight to Quality and is suffering against gold.

ChaseMeAway 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Certainly not, I don’t think anyone would make that claim, seems a bit silly.

The benefits of unionization extend beyond this particular situation or company.

They can help shift the balance of power back to the employee and help them guard against being squeezed by their employer to produce more or take on more work for less benefits or compensation.

American tech workers have been fortunate to avoid such aggressive practices, but working conditions will only deteriorate from here, with workers crushed between LLMs and offshoring.

hadlock an hour ago | parent [-]

Your comment seems to imply you thought unions would have fixed this specific situation, which is why I felt compelled to respond.

p-o 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Geeks who didn't even stand near professional sports should really shut up about anything sport related, lol.

Reggie Dunlop is ready for duty, he'll get the job done.

smrtinsert 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Can I push to production anytime I want? I can run 10000 agents then no problem. I'll just move fast and break things and I'll get massive cheers because its AI.

tootie 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

How many player-coaches have their actually been in any major pro sport in the last 20 years? Zero give or take? The last one I recall is Pete Rose and that was like 1985.

an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]
[deleted]
khazhoux 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Also, I find it really bizarre that those neo feudal lords see their companies as just a life stock to count. They don't even count people, just see them as numbers to reduce/scale up. Modern tsardom, but instead of being tied via official decree you're now tied by your lifestyle and family.

The CEO is looking at revenue and at costs. He can see what will happen if current burn rate isn’t reduced. Doesn’t it come (in part) to numbers, which must be reduced/scaled as needed? (Along with other costs)

harimau777 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Brian Armstrong is still a billionaire. So it's not like he lacks alternatives to destroying people's lives.

nclin_ 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Aahahahaha yes the solidarity of the common memecoiner must not be broken.

moomoo11 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

what's the point of having 5 people doing 1 person's job though?

sounds stupid to me

triceratops 8 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

No problem if you split the gains 50-50. 2.5x raise for the one person.

harimau777 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The profit from the employee reduction goes to the capitalists not to labor. So it is in the best interest of workers to resist reductions in the number of workers.

reactordev 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

delusions of having AI do those roles and the one person in charge over prompting will know the difference between quality and slop... guess which one I'm betting on?

moomoo11 4 hours ago | parent [-]

historically speaking, efficiency has always won out

for example, the last obvious inefficiency i remember was sys admins. the most worthless, self aggrandizing group of people at any company. got wiped out mostly (the best work for the cloud engineering companies), and i think it was for the better!

engineers today handle deployments, and it is far better.

Refreeze5224 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> historically speaking, efficiency has always won out

Too bad AI is not about efficiency. It's about headcount reduction, which is exactly what Coinbase is doing here. AI just gives them plausible cover.

reactordev 4 hours ago | parent [-]

If it was about efficiency, they would be moving faster, not cutting headcount…

moomoo11 an hour ago | parent [-]

Surely there are some insanely smart people amongst the 100s of thousands of laid off supposedly god tier software engineers and adjacent who will start new companies maybe even spawn a new industry?

Feels like a problem that will solve itself. There are more cars today than people ever had horses.

Refreeze5224 24 minutes ago | parent [-]

Cars were more efficient horses. AI is not more efficient people. It's an excuse to reduce payroll. Capital is fundamentally antagonistic to labor, because labor is an eternal cost center that until AI, never had a solution.

reillyse 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Employees should be cattle not pets.

paulhebert 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

What a sad way to think about other people

claytonjy 4 hours ago | parent [-]

It is, but it’s the only way for a company to succeed and scale over time. A pet approach works well in the early days, but you can’t become a VC-backed success without drastically reducing bus factors throughout the company.

That could be an incentive to keep companies small, but high-scale companies do have unique benefits to society.

paulhebert 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Employees are people. Not cattle or pets. It doesn't mean you don't ever fire or lay people off. But you treat them as humans.

harimau777 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sounds like we need to prevent companies from scaling or being too successful.

Arainach 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> It is, but it’s the only way for a company to succeed and scale over time

This is absolutely not true. It never has been at any point in history. Not even CEOs would claim such a thing until the 1980s, and they were wrong then as now.

Even today, Costco and other businesses are thriving.

Stop drinking the Koolaid.

ambicapter an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Absolutely hilarious to optimize for having employees with no discernible edge whatsoever.

goyim-uprising 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

dakiol 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> And AI clowns will cheer and applaud this, not seeing that they're now doing the job of 5(!) people with the same salary. Why is nobody talking about this?

Exactly. People are too naive these days

orochimaaru 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>>> And AI clowns will cheer and applaud this, not seeing that they're now doing the job of 5(!) people with the same salary. Why is nobody talking about this?

I don't think anyone is applauding this. The only people applauding stuff like this are the CEO's of Anthropic (because that means more tokens/profit). Most other CEO's in big tech have toned down the rhetoric big-time.

The job of 5 people being done with the same salary is a function of the job market. It's an employers market now. So stuff like this happens. If you had an employee's market this wouldn't happen.

fwiw - and this is a separate topic. If health insurance were de-linked from employment most people would flee the job market on their own.

tokioyoyo 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> health insurance were de-linked from employment most people would flee the job market

That would be visible in all major markets outside of the US, no?

blharr 16 minutes ago | parent [-]

Many major markets outside the US have much stronger work-life balance. Isn't that the takeaway?