11 ms·
Coinbase had over 5k employees?!!! WTF. What were they all doing?
by joshmarinacci 4y ago
Coinbase had over 5k employees?!!! WTF. What were they all doing?
- fortuna86 4y agoGotta spend that seed rd money somehow
- Geee 4y agoProbably customer service. They have about 100 million customers, so 1 employee per 20000 customers.
- popcalc 4y agoI'd wager 40-50 million of those are accounts opened under false/stolen identities.
- DoubleDerper 4y agoCoinbase is notoriously poor at customer service, so this doesn't make sense. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27653022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27653022
- oh_sigh 4y ago1 employee per 2000 customers seems like it makes perfect sense as to why customer service would be bad.
- dubcanada 4y agoWhy? Presumably your product works, so at best you'd only have like 1% (20) customers with issues on any given day. 1 customer service agent should be able to attend to 20 issues in a 7-8 hour shift.
- ghshephard 4y agoOf course, when that customer service agent has to deal with 1% of 20_000 - 200 issues/day/agent - things start to add up.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ghshephard 4y agoParticularly as it's actually 1 employee per 20_000 customers.
- nickjj 4y agoIt doesn't need to be. For example I do personal customer support for ~40,000 folks who take one of my video courses (programming and tech related). I often write personalized multi-sentence responses to their issues and follow up to reply back to them as many times as needed to get it fixed within minutes or hours of a request coming in. I think the big difference there is it's my business. The best possible customer experience outcome is the only option in my mind, if it would even hint at being anything less then I wouldn't have this business anymore.
- arrosenberg 4y agoThe big difference is that you aren't involved with peoples' finances. There is a whole other level beyond the crazy you attract in services and retail.
- nickjj 4y agoThat's true, but upset developers are up on the list of "how can I word this to be the most passive / aggressive as humanly possible". To be fair I think customer support in general is a hostile environment for the receiver. Everyone coming at you is usually dealing with an unexpected issue in some way that's preventing them from being able to do what they wanted to do. There's been a huge range of things I've seen. Everything from super nice folks including huge amounts of details and are calm to nothing more than "it's not working" and in 1 case a death threat because Docker wouldn't run on his Windows box. I don't think it was a serious threat (I'm still alive), but he wasn't trying to be funny. He was really upset. I don't let those things phase me. I help everyone equally regardless of how they treat me. From doing this for 5+ years I've learned that people act way differently initially when unexpected things happen but more often than not they calm down and apologize afterwards.
- kube-system 4y agoHaving a lot of employees does not necessarily make customer service good. Telecoms and large retail banks top the list for the largest number of customer service employees, but often are notorious for bad service.
- muttantt 4y agoThe last thing Coinbase is doing is customer service...
- synicalx 4y agoA company like that would 100% outsource their customer service to the lowest bidder
- effingwewt 4y agoDo they really have that many customers or do they just claim that? Also per their website that's only 'verified users' which is a super nebulous term, and also exactly what I'd expect from a crypto exchange.
- asdff 4y agoTheir API at least regularly times out for me. Probably half of them are in the server room with a fire extinguisher at all times.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- sytelus 4y agoAnd they still didn't have ability to provide statements!
- kleer001 4y agoWhat's insufficient to your needs with their current transaction reports? It's bare bones, but I think it's useful.
- sytelus 4y agoFor many legal requirements, you need to provide monthly statements of accounts. You need to show balance at each closing period. Every financial account in world does this.
- beefman 4y agoAbout 10% as much as employees at FTX, apparently https://craft.co/ftx-exchange https://craft.co/ftx-exchange
- DonHopkins 4y agoShilling, pumping, dumping, pulling rugs, laundering money, insider trading, etc.
- jsemrau 4y agoYou forgot front-running.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- KyeRussell 4y agoThe blind stupidity of some developers continues to amaze me. They’ll really go work at a company that per its fundamentals truly wouldn’t exist in any other industry and at any other time because “that’s how tech is”, and then act surprised when reality hits.
- markmark 4y agoI'm shocked they had 1100.