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Coinbase CEO Tweets ‘Quit and Find a Company You Believe In’
- salawat 4y agoThat's cute coming from a C-Suite who has already rooked billions out of investors on a business model of "lets be the financial industry but drag our feet on compliance". Mayhaps, just mayhaps... People are starting to realize the money is going to flow wherever some small number of people want it to, and are realizing that the only way to counter the perceived misallocation is from the inside? Or mayhaps, they found the Company and the Work, but the Executives are the ones who don't fit? Bottom up pressure is a bitch, ain't it?
- toomuchtodo 4y agoStay and unionize. You get to keep your job and make it a better job. And the NLRB would love to hear about anti-organization efforts at a big tech company that violate labor law. Let’s not just shrug and say “we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of options.”
- skybrian 4y agoYou’d still be working at a cryptocurrency company, though.
- DonHopkins 4y agoWhen the whole purpose of the company is scamming people and pushing get-rich-quick pyramid schemes, the employees shouldn't trust the CEO any more than the company's customers/victims can trust the CEO.
- gnicholas 4y agoWas the primary complaint about employee treatment (e.g., the rescission of offer letters)? I thought it was mostly about other leadership decisions, which would not be fixable via unionization. That is, making a union doesn't enable you to transform all aspects of a company, like "The over-prioritization of certain products, which has led to a lack of focus on other important issues like infrastructure" or "The failure of the Coinbase NFT platform". These were the first two items listed in the erstwhile no-confidence letter.
- dehrmann 4y agoThat could cause the end of Coinbase. It's busy dealing with less interest in crypto; it doesn't need to add labor negotiations into the mix. It's easier to get wins when a company is doing well.
- webinvest 4y agoI’m surprised by the downvotes on the other people’s comments here!
- TheMagicHorsey 4y agoRescinding accepted job offers is a real shit-heel thing to do, unless you are literally going out of business.
- samcheng 4y agoWhat do you want them to do, lay-off existing employees instead?
- SantalBlush 4y agoThey could be more forward-looking when making hiring decisions.
- dehrmann 4y agoThe average new hire should be a better fit for the company than a bottom 25% performer.
- ProjectArcturis 4y agoThey should have planned better and not made the offers in the first place?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ghusto 4y agoThey said the new employees were told that their offer would be upheld at least up until 2 weeks before it wasn't. So what I'd expect them to do is not be terrible human beings.
- batch12 4y agoMaybe plan ahead, deal with the choice and bring the person on and find a way to make it work, or pay a severance. It's a real shit thing to do, especially considering that prospects may have begun offboarding from their existing employer for an opportunity.
- 4y ago
- tomp 4y agoclickbait title of a clickbait article better off reading the original thread https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/1535304943728414721 https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/15353049437284147...
- gnicholas 4y agoGetting self-referential though — that tweet points to the prior HN thread!
- version_five 4y agoThanks. In context this thread is a dupe of the thread referenced on Twitter (in which Armstrong links to the tweet in the top post). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31690452 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31690452
- dehrmann 4y agoI can't believe that got traction. I saw it and figured it was just some disgruntled employees in denial about the current state of the crypto space.
- dehrmann 4y agoI like a lot of what I see from the Coinbase CEO. This response was very reasonable, and I liked the "apolitical" stance the company took to focus on its mission, not political activism. I just don't like the company's industry and product.
- Ar-Curunir 4y agoThe apolitical stance is nonsense given that the only reason Coinbase exists is due to the explicitly political actions of Satoshi and the early BTC community.
- BaseballPhysics 4y ago> This response was very reasonable, and I liked the "apolitical" stance the company took to focus on its mission, not political activism. That's a pretty funny statement given that the "mission" of the crypto world is an explicitly political one, overlapping significantly with extreme libertarian and anarchocapitalist movements.
- DonHopkins 4y agoQuit and Find a Company Whose CEO You Can Believe
- redleggedfrog 4y ago"...as people who have the rugged pulled out from under them...". WTF? Am I reading Forbes or some old MySpace page? Way to not proofread your shit at a major publication and put an automatic back button in the second paragraph. TD;DR Too dumb didn't read it.
- dubswithus 4y ago> Way to not proofread you shit at a major publication and put an automatic back button in the second paragraph. Sometimes it slips through!
- redleggedfrog 4y agoBeat my edit! Well played. But I'm not Forbes either.
- Shank 4y agoI highly suggest reading “An incomplete history of Forbes.com as a platform for scams, grift, and bad journalism” [0], as it covers the situation with Forbes’ declining quality quite well. [0]: https://www.niemanlab.org/2022/02/an-incomplete-history-of-forbes-com-as-a-platform-for-scams-grift-and-bad-journalism/ https://www.niemanlab.org/2022/02/an-incomplete-history-of-f...
- redleggedfrog 4y agoThank you, reading it now.
- itsoktocry 4y ago>Forbes’ declining quality quite well. It's essentially a blog platform, and has been for a while. I'm not sure why that matters in regards to the content of the article, though.
- kevinventullo 4y ago“Find a company you believe in” is the exact reason I’ve been ignoring Coinbase recruiters for the last few years.
- google234123 4y agoSeems like this is good for both you and coinbase?
- princevegeta89 4y agoRight, but why are they reaching out to him without knowing if he "believes" in them at all?
- gnicholas 4y agoThat's probably one of the reasons they make their polarizing stances known so publicly — to make it less likely that candidates who aren't interested in working for them know it and don't waste everyone's time going through the interview process.
- hotpotamus 4y agoA coworker once told me you can also believe in a product if you believe you’re going to make a lot of money by selling it.
- SahAssar 4y agoThat still requires you to believe that the product is worth more than it is today, or that you can sell it for more than it's worth.
- numair 4y agoIf you don’t want your employees to be highly opinionated and engage in ownership politics, perhaps you shouldn’t hire smart people (who tend to be opinionated and think a lot) and hand them shares in your company (hence turning them into co-owners)? Brian Armstrong wouldn’t have gotten very far with Coinbase if it was just him, on his own. Companies with this sort of management either blow up (RIM) or end up stagnant and dysfunctional (Facebook). He will end up alienating all of the people who he needs to resuscitate his company; moreover the sort of weird, semi-nuts people who create all of the great stuff in our industry (e.g. von Neumann) won’t go anywhere near his company. Coinbase may be the centralized crypto exchange with the lions’ share of liquidity today, but there’s no guarantee they’ll even exist in an industry that evolves past its shitcoin phase. Maybe he thinks he can single-handedly navigate this transition on his own; let’s see. Clearly, the market doesn’t think so — pretty ironic that he’s a market-maker who ignores market signals… Edit: I want to note that this tweet is toxic and disturbing on so many levels… It’s also comical given the history of our industry and the Traitorous Eight. https://mobile.twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/1535305081360240642 https://mobile.twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/1535305081...
- bushbaba 4y agoCoinbase’s only moat is regulation and it’s alliance with a bank. It’s not a strong moat. This allows companies like FTX to pay consumers to switch over.
- MichaelZuo 4y agoYour valuing their name brand recognition at 0?
- mise_en_place 4y agoProblem with ESOPs is that many times the board and CEO can act contrary to shareholders, specifically employee shareholders
- newaccount2021 4y ago
- rvz 4y agoI have to say he's right you know. Just like the free-software movement that wanted to remove all non-free software from existence, some of those folks instead joined the likes of Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Meta and they have a nasty and vile history of unethical practises which are just a nasty as Coinbase who were also being involved with VCs pumping and dumping on retail. But are we trying to find angels here? The pattern is the same. They DO NOT care and they will NOT change. So it is pointless expecting them to. So if you don't like them you are free to leave, just like you were free to join them in the first place. Or be a founder at your own company.
- seoaeu 4y ago> they will NOT change Their stock is down 83%, the company has a hiring freeze, and the CEO is begging employees to quit. Seems like there's a non-trivial chance that if they keep with their current trajectory the company will simply cease to exist.
- princevegeta89 4y agoLol what a delusional guy. He wanted everyone he hired to believe "in their mission" and take ownership in everything the company does, but he's okay to not care about them and would push them to feel free to quit. Lol.
- nickvec 4y agoI really hope Coinbase goes under along with cryptocurrency. Such a horrible space that provides almost zero utility for humanity.
- mkl95 4y agoWay I see it, working for Coinbase is like working for any gambling startup. For a significant amount of employees it's not going to be about "believing in the company's mission", it's going to be about making a lot of money quickly.
- oldsecondhand 4y agoMaybe they should invent trustless employment.
- DiabloD3 4y agoGiven this entire thing in context, and not as a quasi-clickbait headline (he literally said it verbatim, but he seems to have meant it slightly less intellectually honest than the headline implies) ... You know what? Quit and find a company you believe in. I wouldn't want someone that doesn't believe in what they're doing working for me, and I wouldn't want to work for a company who I don't believe in. Don't get me wrong, our economy is in shambles, the world is falling apart, today is March 833rd 2020, our collective stress levels are at an all time high and only rising, and we're all out of the mental juice to handle both being alive at work and also job hunting: do it anyways, go find a job that is actually fulfilling to you. Don't let shitty companies rob you of being actually successful in the ways that matter to you. You gotta live with yourself and what you've done, and the only person that cares about you is you. Your employer does not, and never will, give a shit about you.
- davesque 4y agoA related question: do people think it's possible for a major tech CEO to avoid having much of a social media presence? Seems like Armstrong is really shooting himself in the foot here by running to Twitter and posting his brain dump on the petition. Also, I think he's painted himself into a corner over time by doing the same thing on other occasions in reaction to other internal matters at his company. He really ought to follow the advice he himself gives in the original thread: praise publicly and criticize privately. It's actually great advice but it applies to everyone. Otherwise, I find I don't actually have much of an opinion about who's right here. I just find myself thinking, "If I were him, I'd just stay clear of Twitter."
- davesque 4y agoReflecting on this further, it seems like so many public figures have villified themselves in this age simply by over sharing on Twitter. It paints a picture of an immature person who gives too much weight to their own opinion and lacks self control. I feel like Elon Musk is another example of someone who wouldn't seem nearly so much like a jerk now if he could have just kept his mouth shut half the time.
- Ar-Curunir 4y agoBut rich people love that. They have all the money they want, so the only thing left to attain is affirmation of their opinions.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- azpa 4y agoCoinbase has done a poor job with planning and handled this challenging circumstance very poorly. That’s clear. That includes poor social media management. Many, including myself, admired this company because many of our smartest peers were joining in droves. Thought of Coinbase as their dream job. It is clear that that is no longer true. Therefore when they say that they survived a crypto winter before, what they miss is that they previously had many that rooted for their success. I hope they hold no illusion this time.
- yieldcrv 4y agoI love most of Brian Armstrong’s response. I like that he deals with employee activism and doesn’t just shy away from it like a lot of big tech with a sf bay area foci. Here though, I wonder if it is truly possible for employees to make the same suggestions internally. This is an anonymous list of grievances, attempting to use some cryptographic signature solution to show support without revealing who supported. Even taking out the proposal/demand for resignations, I wonder if the product suggestions can be made to any effect, internally.