4 ms·

Coinbase is an interesting company. They're grossly underrated and laughed off as an online casino, but they invest all that money they make very wisely and str

Coinbase is an interesting company. They're grossly underrated and laughed off as an online casino, but they invest all that money they make very wisely and strategically to grow the business. I find another paragraph from that press release interesting: >Traditionally people expect they need to negotiate for the best package after being hired in a new job. Those that do this well tend to be rewarded, and those that don’t lose out. These negotiations can disproportionately leave women and underrepresented minorities behind, and a disparity created early in someone’s career can follow them for decades. We want to do everything we can to ensure that’s not the experience at Coinbase. All employees in the same position, in the same location, receive the same salary and equity offer. No exceptions. If this was mandated to be standard practice, instead of the insane approach some countries take with minority quotas and such, we'd be a lot further in terms of equality in the work place. Also salary negotiation favors aggressive and outgoing types, while there might be qualified candidates who get left behind just because of their personality.

PLenz 5y ago
This is just reinventing unions but without the employee's ability to input via collective bargaining.
- akarma 5y ago
  If you're ambitious, this doesn't hurt your ability to join Coinbase and grow quickly, which is an important factor in the tech industry and its appeal of opportunity. A union would. This offers a more level playing field for employees to begin their time at the company without stringent rules around who can get promoted and when and other red tape. Seems like a great decision.
  - joshuamorton 5y ago
    > A union would. This claim is disputed by, like, many unions. Tenure based promotions/compensation is one, but certainly not the only approach that unions use.
    - akarma 5y ago
      Nearly every major union I've seen supports seniority-based promotions. I imagine that this is not popular with many employees, and so it cannot be a part of their initial pitch — as you said, not the only approach unions use. If established unions support seniority-based promotions but nascent ones don't publicly support them, it would follow that they must develop into supporting seniority-based promotions. This is possibly one of those issues where a union gets power and then takes overarching, unpopular measures that rid the company of anyone who wants to work harder and be promoted faster. If you have evidence that unions don't support seniority-based promotions, I would love to see it! I haven't had a chance to gather data, so I'm only speaking anecdotally.
      - joshuamorton 5y ago
        > Nearly every major union I've seen supports seniority-based promotions. There are a number of well known counterexamples, sports and acting unions/guilds for example. > If you have evidence that unions don't support seniority-based promotions I've yet to see any tech union advocate for this position, and they generally advocate against it. Tech Workers Coalition and the Alphabet Workers Union are the two I know of in this case. > If established unions support seniority-based promotions but nascent ones don't publicly support them This isn't really correct. Unions in certain fields support seniority based promotions. But on the other hand, certain professional fields support seniority based promotions without unions. Like medical and legal fields have non-union professional associations that afaik don't advocate for any sort of tenure based compensation. Despite that the most sought-after biglaw companies use a mostly-tenure based compensation process. The medical field uses an unholy combination of merit (exams and matching) and tenure (residency). > This is possibly one of those issues where a union gets power and then takes overarching, unpopular measures It's unclear how this could happen. Unions are democratic. The members vote on things. They generally cannot take unpopular measures[*]. It may be that there is a majority in some industries that prefer tenure based seniority. [*]: Ok the exception here is if in a "Right-to-Work" state people refuse to join the union, but it still has a majority membership and is therefore NLRB recognized, so you have say, 51% employees in the union, and those 51% have a directional bias. For example, everyone who supports tenure based compensation is a union member, and they make up 26% of the company, and 52% or so of the union. Then they vote and win and the union contract includes this clause. The fix here, of course, is for other people who don't support this to join the union. But then they don't want to because of the idea that unions are bad and support unpopular policies.
the_jeremy 5y ago
This seems like it will just result in those who can be underpaid being hired at lower levels. If a hiring manager really wants someone and they can't pay them more, they can hire them at a higher level. If decisions are made by the higher-leveled ICs, then it seems like even more decisions will be made by white men under this culture.
- akarma 5y ago
  > If a hiring manager really wants someone and they can't pay them more, they can hire them at a higher level. Yes, this is how it should work! Their role will then involve a higher level of responsibility and expected output that they better be prepared for, and they'll be compensated more for that. It makes much more sense than people getting higher/lower compensation for the same level of responsibility and expected output based on their competing offers at the time of signing, doesn't it?
  - trompetenaccoun 5y ago
    Exactly. I find it incredible that there are so many comments defending shady behind-closed-doors negotiations. Maybe a lot of the HN demographic are the type of people who benefit from this but for everyone getting a sweet deal there's someone else getting paid less. This is a step in the right direction, if you're actually worth so much more you can prove it and work your way up. No one should get a high salary off the bat just because they were able to impress the bro from HR during the interview. Companies should be competing for talent on an open market. They don't tell you salaries upfront because they want to pay you as little as they can get away with. At all jobs I worked in my life I got paid more than most coworkers who were often even more dedicated to their jobs than me. At one company, the less I cared about being productive and the more I complained, the more leeway and compensation they gave me. It was like in Office Space. Not that I refuse free money when they hand it to me, but that's obviously an unfair system. It's not a smart policy from the shareholder's perspective either, this is simply bad management and leads to lots of employees feeling treated unfairly.
    - ghaff 5y ago
namelessoracle 5y ago
Aggressive negotiating types will fight for position rather than salary at that point. I wonder how flat Coinbases structure is. I feel like if you had a skill they REALLY wanted, they would create a new position for you to get around this rule.
gtaylor 5y ago
The companies that I've been a part of that employed this non-negotiation strategy ended up only shifting the negotiations from compensation to title. The same negotiators still come out on top, since they'll request higher titles in order to meet their comp expectations (since they can't negotiate for comp directly). As a result, the eng org can end up topheavy in leveling. This is a tough problem, but these non-negotiation policies aren't the solution. They make the inequity even worse since it becomes harder to negotiate (for title) than for incremental comp increases.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  I don’t think these make it worse overall. It definitely makes it works for some but better for many. I suspect this policy and the 1-year grants makes it quite a bit harder for Coinbase to poach employees from FAANGs.
munificent 5y ago
This reads to me like when you talk to a used car salesman and the first thing he says is, "We don't negotiate on price." When someone you have a semi-adversarial relationship with removes your ability to negotiate, they aren't doing so in your favor.
throwaway3699 5y ago
All this is telling me (someone who cares about negotiation) to avoid Coinbase.
fshbbdssbbgdd 5y ago
I’ve been told before by recruiters that they don’t negotiate and that policy suddenly disappeared the moment I said “no, my other offers are higher.”
- Rapzid 5y ago
  The "no negotiation" policy ran off with the "COL adjustment" policy :D
jandrewrogers 5y ago
In my experience, when salary is narrowly banded such that there is little negotiation within the band for a position, people negotiate position as a proxy for salary. It produces the same net result in a more convoluted and opaque way. I've seen this pattern in several places. You see patterns in companies where new hires are consistently more senior than existing employees, largely because compensation has not kept up with the market rate. This creates some perverse incentives. I've worked at large companies where when compensation didn't fit an existing standardized value, they would literally create a "new position type" in the HR system for that hire that not coincidentally matched that hire's salary requirement. This caused a weird proliferation of titles that had little semantic relationship to the overall organization. At one company, they had 1,000 roles in the HR system for this reason, that at any sensible company could have been reduced to fewer than 100.
heavyset_go 5y ago
> All employees in the same position, in the same location, receive the same salary and equity offer. No exceptions. How do they define location? In one city, there are neighborhoods where the median income is six figures while it's a fifth of that in another. Same can be said of two different locations in a state or county, or two different states.

PLenz 5y ago

This is just reinventing unions but without the employee's ability to input via collective bargaining.

akarma 5y ago
If you're ambitious, this doesn't hurt your ability to join Coinbase and grow quickly, which is an important factor in the tech industry and its appeal of opportunity. A union would. This offers a more level playing field for employees to begin their time at the company without stringent rules around who can get promoted and when and other red tape. Seems like a great decision.
- joshuamorton 5y ago
  > A union would. This claim is disputed by, like, many unions. Tenure based promotions/compensation is one, but certainly not the only approach that unions use.
  - akarma 5y ago
    Nearly every major union I've seen supports seniority-based promotions. I imagine that this is not popular with many employees, and so it cannot be a part of their initial pitch — as you said, not the only approach unions use. If established unions support seniority-based promotions but nascent ones don't publicly support them, it would follow that they must develop into supporting seniority-based promotions. This is possibly one of those issues where a union gets power and then takes overarching, unpopular measures that rid the company of anyone who wants to work harder and be promoted faster. If you have evidence that unions don't support seniority-based promotions, I would love to see it! I haven't had a chance to gather data, so I'm only speaking anecdotally.
    - joshuamorton 5y ago
      > Nearly every major union I've seen supports seniority-based promotions. There are a number of well known counterexamples, sports and acting unions/guilds for example. > If you have evidence that unions don't support seniority-based promotions I've yet to see any tech union advocate for this position, and they generally advocate against it. Tech Workers Coalition and the Alphabet Workers Union are the two I know of in this case. > If established unions support seniority-based promotions but nascent ones don't publicly support them This isn't really correct. Unions in certain fields support seniority based promotions. But on the other hand, certain professional fields support seniority based promotions without unions. Like medical and legal fields have non-union professional associations that afaik don't advocate for any sort of tenure based compensation. Despite that the most sought-after biglaw companies use a mostly-tenure based compensation process. The medical field uses an unholy combination of merit (exams and matching) and tenure (residency). > This is possibly one of those issues where a union gets power and then takes overarching, unpopular measures It's unclear how this could happen. Unions are democratic. The members vote on things. They generally cannot take unpopular measures[*]. It may be that there is a majority in some industries that prefer tenure based seniority. [*]: Ok the exception here is if in a "Right-to-Work" state people refuse to join the union, but it still has a majority membership and is therefore NLRB recognized, so you have say, 51% employees in the union, and those 51% have a directional bias. For example, everyone who supports tenure based compensation is a union member, and they make up 26% of the company, and 52% or so of the union. Then they vote and win and the union contract includes this clause. The fix here, of course, is for other people who don't support this to join the union. But then they don't want to because of the idea that unions are bad and support unpopular policies.

the_jeremy 5y ago

This seems like it will just result in those who can be underpaid being hired at lower levels. If a hiring manager really wants someone and they can't pay them more, they can hire them at a higher level. If decisions are made by the higher-leveled ICs, then it seems like even more decisions will be made by white men under this culture.

akarma 5y ago
> If a hiring manager really wants someone and they can't pay them more, they can hire them at a higher level. Yes, this is how it should work! Their role will then involve a higher level of responsibility and expected output that they better be prepared for, and they'll be compensated more for that. It makes much more sense than people getting higher/lower compensation for the same level of responsibility and expected output based on their competing offers at the time of signing, doesn't it?
- trompetenaccoun 5y ago
  Exactly. I find it incredible that there are so many comments defending shady behind-closed-doors negotiations. Maybe a lot of the HN demographic are the type of people who benefit from this but for everyone getting a sweet deal there's someone else getting paid less. This is a step in the right direction, if you're actually worth so much more you can prove it and work your way up. No one should get a high salary off the bat just because they were able to impress the bro from HR during the interview. Companies should be competing for talent on an open market. They don't tell you salaries upfront because they want to pay you as little as they can get away with. At all jobs I worked in my life I got paid more than most coworkers who were often even more dedicated to their jobs than me. At one company, the less I cared about being productive and the more I complained, the more leeway and compensation they gave me. It was like in Office Space. Not that I refuse free money when they hand it to me, but that's obviously an unfair system. It's not a smart policy from the shareholder's perspective either, this is simply bad management and leads to lots of employees feeling treated unfairly.
  - ghaff 5y ago

namelessoracle 5y ago

Aggressive negotiating types will fight for position rather than salary at that point. I wonder how flat Coinbases structure is. I feel like if you had a skill they REALLY wanted, they would create a new position for you to get around this rule.

gtaylor 5y ago

The companies that I've been a part of that employed this non-negotiation strategy ended up only shifting the negotiations from compensation to title. The same negotiators still come out on top, since they'll request higher titles in order to meet their comp expectations (since they can't negotiate for comp directly). As a result, the eng org can end up topheavy in leveling. This is a tough problem, but these non-negotiation policies aren't the solution. They make the inequity even worse since it becomes harder to negotiate (for title) than for incremental comp increases.

sokoloff 5y ago
I don’t think these make it worse overall. It definitely makes it works for some but better for many. I suspect this policy and the 1-year grants makes it quite a bit harder for Coinbase to poach employees from FAANGs.

munificent 5y ago

This reads to me like when you talk to a used car salesman and the first thing he says is, "We don't negotiate on price." When someone you have a semi-adversarial relationship with removes your ability to negotiate, they aren't doing so in your favor.

throwaway3699 5y ago

All this is telling me (someone who cares about negotiation) to avoid Coinbase.

fshbbdssbbgdd 5y ago

I’ve been told before by recruiters that they don’t negotiate and that policy suddenly disappeared the moment I said “no, my other offers are higher.”

Rapzid 5y ago
The "no negotiation" policy ran off with the "COL adjustment" policy :D

jandrewrogers 5y ago

In my experience, when salary is narrowly banded such that there is little negotiation within the band for a position, people negotiate position as a proxy for salary. It produces the same net result in a more convoluted and opaque way. I've seen this pattern in several places. You see patterns in companies where new hires are consistently more senior than existing employees, largely because compensation has not kept up with the market rate. This creates some perverse incentives. I've worked at large companies where when compensation didn't fit an existing standardized value, they would literally create a "new position type" in the HR system for that hire that not coincidentally matched that hire's salary requirement. This caused a weird proliferation of titles that had little semantic relationship to the overall organization. At one company, they had 1,000 roles in the HR system for this reason, that at any sensible company could have been reduced to fewer than 100.

heavyset_go 5y ago

> All employees in the same position, in the same location, receive the same salary and equity offer. No exceptions. How do they define location? In one city, there are neighborhoods where the median income is six figures while it's a fifth of that in another. Same can be said of two different locations in a state or county, or two different states.