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> “I’m worried that the severance package was too good” Yeah... I'm genuinely curious how many people actually quit over the "apolitical" stance, vs employees

> “I’m worried that the severance package was too good” Yeah... I'm genuinely curious how many people actually quit over the "apolitical" stance, vs employees that were just unhappy with the job in general and took this convenient opportunity to leave with a pretty sweet deal.

anoncareer0212 6y ago
That employee is distanced enough from the idea that people would genuinely want to leave that I kinda laugh when I read their quote. COBRA alone would eat up most of the severance. Either people managed to get through a _whole interview process_ in a week, or they're fine with the idea of being jobless during the worst economy in 12 years, or they price the benefit of not being there fairly high. Which then leads us to how the whole argument is blinkered. It reduces decisions to a cost benefit analysis where a significant part of the benefit doesn't have a market price. Then, it questions if the benefit was too large, but by definition the arguer is still at the company and thus believes the unpricable part of the benefit isn't worth enough enough to leave.
- ahelwer 6y ago
  Software seems to be doing okay, jobs-wise. The number of recruiters showing up in my inbox hasn't changed. I think health insurance is included in the severance.
  - anoncareer0212 6y ago
    It isn't, the generosity is allowing you to pick up COBRA
    - shuckles 6y ago
      I believe COBRA is available for up to 36 months after your employment ends in California by law. As a result, I don’t know how to read “6 months COBRA” from the excerpt of the severance email besides “we will pay 6 months of employer premiums.”
      - anoncareer0212 6y ago
        COBRA means employees paying the employer premium, by guaranteeing COBRA, an employer is saying "We won't stop paying the health insurance company for _everybody else's insurance_, so you'll still have someone to pay" - it's a great PR jiu jitsu move, I didn't realize until this thread how confusing it is - I'm only familiar with it because sadly I had to sunset a company in California.
        shuckles 6y ago
        So are you saying the Coinbase CEO simply said something to the effect of “we will maintain our insurance plans for 6 months company-wide”? That seems disingenuous.
        argonaut 6y ago
        That is the most convoluted interpretation of offering COBRA, and is almost certainly incorrect. You're referring to the fact that an employer can technically terminate COBRA by ending all health insurance plans. But Coinbase would have to stop offering any health insurance to all their current employees for this to occur. If that happens (I'm virtually certain it won't), there would be an actual employee riot/exodus and the tech media would be all over that story.
    - patrickyeon 6y ago
      I haven't seen the details here, but I've been laid off twice in the last two years, in both cases when "the employer provided COBRA" they meant they are paying my COBRA premiums. This showed up as a cheque, on top of my severance pay, for the expected cost of COBRA premiums plus an appropriate amount to pay for the taxes on that payout.
- vmception 6y ago
  > COBRA alone would eat up most of the severance. A single software engineer paying for full price for high premium plan on COBRA would be spending around $400[1], over the whole 18 months of doing that it would be $7,200 which would be less than one month's paycheck on a $160,000 salary. A cursory look at h1bdata.info shows that Coinbase pays plenty of H1B's that much, on the low side. Your view is a little exaggerated. There isn't a downside here. If you were there a very short amount of time, just remove it from your resume and have a gap. Its inconsequential for software engineers. If you were there for over a year, take your vested shares, leave it on your resume, and still coast. If you were already interviewing and had another offer, do the same. [1] To my surprise, people are paying WAY more for health insurance. Are they San Francisco/Bay Area residents? Unknown. Are they individuals or paying the family rates? Unknown. Are they using the most competitive providers? Unknown. Is Coinbase still covering health insurance for people on severance as if they were employees with COBRA starting after the severance period is over, adjusting all of our math? Unclear.
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    > A software engineer paying for full price for high premium plan on COBRA would be spending around $400 Last time I continued health insurance via COBRA, I paid nearly $2k a month in premiums alone.
    - vonmoltke 6y ago
      I just estimated mine, and I would pay about $700/month. A stiff increase to be sure, but easily manageable if I was getting six months salary.
    - duked 6y ago
      I also want to share that I paid for COBRA $1,660 a month for for my family coverage (spouse + 2 kids) so $400 is probably not true in many cases even if single it seems really a low estimate
  - anoncareer0212 6y ago
    You're right, if you don't have a family and don't have _any_ paycheck deductions, don't pay _any_ taxes, and use numbers 33% below the average cost, it seems small. Survey of purported 2019 data shows $570 * 12 = $6,840 for individual, $19,000 for family (for some reason, no monthly cost there) So lets say you only pay the feds income tax, and don't bother with medicaid, social security, state income tax, 401K, any other witholdings whatsoever - you'll earn 85% of $160,000, or $136,000. Divided into 26 paychecks, $5230 biweekly. If you're single, yearly premium would be covered by 2.6 weeks of work, or 11% of your severance. If you have a family, 7.26 weeks of work, or 30% of your severance.
- shuckles 6y ago
  Healthcare was also part of the severance package, and the market for software engineers in the Bay Area remains strong.
  - anoncareer0212 6y ago
    It wasn't
    - dudul 6y ago
      What do you mean? It's one of the headline items. COBRA paid for 6 months.
majormajor 6y ago
> Yeah... I'm genuinely curious how many people actually quit over the "apolitical" stance, vs employees that were just unhappy with the job in general and took this convenient opportunity to leave with a pretty sweet deal. Getting people who are unhappy (politics aside) to leave sounds more like "the severance package was a nice move" than "the severance package was too good."
- areichert 6y ago
  Hmm that's a pretty interesting way of thinking about it, I didn't even consider it from that angle. Might be a silly idea, but I wonder if more companies would benefit from doing something like this on a semi-regular basis, i.e. giving unhappy employees the opportunity to leave with a decent "severance" package?
  - paulgb 6y ago
    The problem with this is adverse selection: the employees who are worth the most elsewhere relative to their current comp would be the quickest to leave. It would be great for those employees, though!
  - greggyb 6y ago
    Netflix takes the stance 'adequate performance gets a generous severance package.' You can read more in their culture doc that made the rounds a few years ago. Original deck: https://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664/ https://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664/ Up to date statement: http://jobs.netflix.com/culture http://jobs.netflix.com/culture
tabbott 6y ago
Remember that this is a press release, not independent journalism. This press release tries hard to position it as "people left because of the severance was really good" because that narrative is in Coinbase's interest. That may be true, but it's also possible most of 60 people quit through this program because they were upset about it. In an ideal world a reporter could answer your question by talking to many of the people who quit and ask what motivated their decision, but the severance package almost certainly came with an NDA that would make doing so impossible. So we'll likely never know. Probably one should assume that the answer doesn't look great for Coinbase's narrative; if they thought it would, they might have done a survey and published data from it.
- exolymph 6y ago
  Independent journalism (or really any journalism) is also narrative-optimized, it's just that the optimization incentives are different from corporate comms. In neither case — in no case — are you getting the unvarnished truth. That's simply not available, however much we'd like it to be.
the_only_law 6y ago
Somewhat unrelated, but on the topic of severance: Back before I broke into the software field, when I was working a retail job, I was working for company that had an unwritten policy that they didn't hire any fulltime employees, all new hired were part time. There were, however a number of "grandfathered" full time employees who had been there quite a while. The company ended up trying to merge with two other companies and after that, decided that they would give remaining full-time employees a choice: be moved to part time employment, or take a serverance check and leave. To little suprise, a good many took option 2.
protomyth 6y ago
They obviously wanted to make sure it was a sweet enough deal to serve its purpose. I would imagine there were employees that took the deal for non-political reasons. It would make a heck of a bonus, if you were already heading out the door. Frankly, giving the non-offended but unsatisfied employees a ready out is probably good for Coinbase in the long run.

anoncareer0212 6y ago

That employee is distanced enough from the idea that people would genuinely want to leave that I kinda laugh when I read their quote. COBRA alone would eat up most of the severance. Either people managed to get through a _whole interview process_ in a week, or they're fine with the idea of being jobless during the worst economy in 12 years, or they price the benefit of not being there fairly high. Which then leads us to how the whole argument is blinkered. It reduces decisions to a cost benefit analysis where a significant part of the benefit doesn't have a market price. Then, it questions if the benefit was too large, but by definition the arguer is still at the company and thus believes the unpricable part of the benefit isn't worth enough enough to leave.

ahelwer 6y ago
Software seems to be doing okay, jobs-wise. The number of recruiters showing up in my inbox hasn't changed. I think health insurance is included in the severance.
- anoncareer0212 6y ago
  It isn't, the generosity is allowing you to pick up COBRA
  - shuckles 6y ago
    I believe COBRA is available for up to 36 months after your employment ends in California by law. As a result, I don’t know how to read “6 months COBRA” from the excerpt of the severance email besides “we will pay 6 months of employer premiums.”
    - anoncareer0212 6y ago
      COBRA means employees paying the employer premium, by guaranteeing COBRA, an employer is saying "We won't stop paying the health insurance company for _everybody else's insurance_, so you'll still have someone to pay" - it's a great PR jiu jitsu move, I didn't realize until this thread how confusing it is - I'm only familiar with it because sadly I had to sunset a company in California.
      - shuckles 6y ago
        So are you saying the Coinbase CEO simply said something to the effect of “we will maintain our insurance plans for 6 months company-wide”? That seems disingenuous.
      - argonaut 6y ago
        That is the most convoluted interpretation of offering COBRA, and is almost certainly incorrect. You're referring to the fact that an employer can technically terminate COBRA by ending all health insurance plans. But Coinbase would have to stop offering any health insurance to all their current employees for this to occur. If that happens (I'm virtually certain it won't), there would be an actual employee riot/exodus and the tech media would be all over that story.
  - patrickyeon 6y ago
    I haven't seen the details here, but I've been laid off twice in the last two years, in both cases when "the employer provided COBRA" they meant they are paying my COBRA premiums. This showed up as a cheque, on top of my severance pay, for the expected cost of COBRA premiums plus an appropriate amount to pay for the taxes on that payout.
vmception 6y ago
> COBRA alone would eat up most of the severance. A single software engineer paying for full price for high premium plan on COBRA would be spending around $400[1], over the whole 18 months of doing that it would be $7,200 which would be less than one month's paycheck on a $160,000 salary. A cursory look at h1bdata.info shows that Coinbase pays plenty of H1B's that much, on the low side. Your view is a little exaggerated. There isn't a downside here. If you were there a very short amount of time, just remove it from your resume and have a gap. Its inconsequential for software engineers. If you were there for over a year, take your vested shares, leave it on your resume, and still coast. If you were already interviewing and had another offer, do the same. [1] To my surprise, people are paying WAY more for health insurance. Are they San Francisco/Bay Area residents? Unknown. Are they individuals or paying the family rates? Unknown. Are they using the most competitive providers? Unknown. Is Coinbase still covering health insurance for people on severance as if they were employees with COBRA starting after the severance period is over, adjusting all of our math? Unclear.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  > A software engineer paying for full price for high premium plan on COBRA would be spending around $400 Last time I continued health insurance via COBRA, I paid nearly $2k a month in premiums alone.
  - vonmoltke 6y ago
    I just estimated mine, and I would pay about $700/month. A stiff increase to be sure, but easily manageable if I was getting six months salary.
  - duked 6y ago
    I also want to share that I paid for COBRA $1,660 a month for for my family coverage (spouse + 2 kids) so $400 is probably not true in many cases even if single it seems really a low estimate
- anoncareer0212 6y ago
  You're right, if you don't have a family and don't have _any_ paycheck deductions, don't pay _any_ taxes, and use numbers 33% below the average cost, it seems small. Survey of purported 2019 data shows $570 * 12 = $6,840 for individual, $19,000 for family (for some reason, no monthly cost there) So lets say you only pay the feds income tax, and don't bother with medicaid, social security, state income tax, 401K, any other witholdings whatsoever - you'll earn 85% of $160,000, or $136,000. Divided into 26 paychecks, $5230 biweekly. If you're single, yearly premium would be covered by 2.6 weeks of work, or 11% of your severance. If you have a family, 7.26 weeks of work, or 30% of your severance.
shuckles 6y ago
Healthcare was also part of the severance package, and the market for software engineers in the Bay Area remains strong.
- anoncareer0212 6y ago
  It wasn't
  - dudul 6y ago
    What do you mean? It's one of the headline items. COBRA paid for 6 months.

majormajor 6y ago

> Yeah... I'm genuinely curious how many people actually quit over the "apolitical" stance, vs employees that were just unhappy with the job in general and took this convenient opportunity to leave with a pretty sweet deal. Getting people who are unhappy (politics aside) to leave sounds more like "the severance package was a nice move" than "the severance package was too good."

areichert 6y ago
Hmm that's a pretty interesting way of thinking about it, I didn't even consider it from that angle. Might be a silly idea, but I wonder if more companies would benefit from doing something like this on a semi-regular basis, i.e. giving unhappy employees the opportunity to leave with a decent "severance" package?
- paulgb 6y ago
  The problem with this is adverse selection: the employees who are worth the most elsewhere relative to their current comp would be the quickest to leave. It would be great for those employees, though!
- greggyb 6y ago
  Netflix takes the stance 'adequate performance gets a generous severance package.' You can read more in their culture doc that made the rounds a few years ago. Original deck: https://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664/ https://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664/ Up to date statement: http://jobs.netflix.com/culture http://jobs.netflix.com/culture

tabbott 6y ago

Remember that this is a press release, not independent journalism. This press release tries hard to position it as "people left because of the severance was really good" because that narrative is in Coinbase's interest. That may be true, but it's also possible most of 60 people quit through this program because they were upset about it. In an ideal world a reporter could answer your question by talking to many of the people who quit and ask what motivated their decision, but the severance package almost certainly came with an NDA that would make doing so impossible. So we'll likely never know. Probably one should assume that the answer doesn't look great for Coinbase's narrative; if they thought it would, they might have done a survey and published data from it.

exolymph 6y ago
Independent journalism (or really any journalism) is also narrative-optimized, it's just that the optimization incentives are different from corporate comms. In neither case — in no case — are you getting the unvarnished truth. That's simply not available, however much we'd like it to be.

the_only_law 6y ago

Somewhat unrelated, but on the topic of severance: Back before I broke into the software field, when I was working a retail job, I was working for company that had an unwritten policy that they didn't hire any fulltime employees, all new hired were part time. There were, however a number of "grandfathered" full time employees who had been there quite a while. The company ended up trying to merge with two other companies and after that, decided that they would give remaining full-time employees a choice: be moved to part time employment, or take a serverance check and leave. To little suprise, a good many took option 2.

protomyth 6y ago

They obviously wanted to make sure it was a sweet enough deal to serve its purpose. I would imagine there were employees that took the deal for non-political reasons. It would make a heck of a bonus, if you were already heading out the door. Frankly, giving the non-offended but unsatisfied employees a ready out is probably good for Coinbase in the long run.