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There are a few really positive comments like this popping up in this thread. I'm really curious how this specific press release is different than the Coinbase

by cj 4y ago

There are a few really positive comments like this popping up in this thread. I'm really curious how this specific press release is different than the Coinbase one [0] (or most of the others on the homepage this week), where the HN crowd was demanding that the CEO "take accountability" and resign, or reduce CEO pay, etc etc To be honest, this press release reads basically the same as 10+ other tech layoff press releases I've read this week. Including nearly identical severance packages. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34323336 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34323336

Apocryphon 4y ago
One reason could be because HN is more familiar with Coinbase's mistakes (not getting into the NFT scene earlier and letting OpenSea/MetaMask beat them to the punch, being a crypto company in the first place which ideological quibbles aside is seen as extravagantly unsustainable and thus doomed to fail). Lattice is in a more mainstream ("useful") industry and its CEO doesn't have a record of courting controversy, so it gets more sympathy. It doesn't come with the downsides of being a ubiquitous brand or association with a controversial sector. Plus it's a smaller company so it's more of an underdog. Also the startup funding offer is neat and intriguing.
- whoisjuan 4y ago
  "HN is more familiar with Coinbase's mistakes (not getting into the NFT scene earlier and letting OpenSea/MetaMask beat them to the punch..." lol, who the heck thinks that not getting into NFT market was a mistake? If anything, they did themselves a favor by not building many NFT capabilities. NFTs might have a second chance in the future but currently is just a mass graveyard of scams.
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    NFTs were a short fad (did it even last a year?), but CB being the market leader for crypto wallets meant they should’ve had an NFT feature ready far earlier. This is a “performance” critique of them getting big and complacent and unable to execute while nimbler startups ran circles around them.
    - dewey 4y ago
      How is jumping on every fad a good thing? Focusing on their core business and not getting distracted by small month-long fads happening in their general industry sounds a lot more sensible.
      - Apocryphon 4y ago
        It was a very lucrative fad, and as per that other thread, it sounds like Coinbase bought into it anyway by increasing headcount to build an NFT offering anyway, just after they were late to the party. If that’s accurate, then lose-lose.
        rchaud 4y ago
        How lucrative could it have been when the one major player (OpenSea) was slashing staff as early as July 2022? https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2022/07/15/nft-marketplace-opensea-layoffs-why-crypto-crashing/10068300002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2022/07/15/nft-marketpla...
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        Apocryphon 4y ago
        That's a fair rebuttal, and I will admit that my recollection of last year is filtered through the very strange time compression of the COVID WFH era, and the extent of my perception of this was "What's an NFT? Is that something you can manage with Coinbase? There's another app now?" From an extremely layman view, it just seemed natural that the leading crypto app would support NFTs. But I'm not the only one to voice the opinion that it seemed like Coinbase had missed the NFT wave. I'm not a fan of big companies xeroxing each other's features, as it seems to be a dominant form of product "innovation" these days, but one could have assumed that Coinbase, being market leader in this space, would have done that for NFTs. And on the note of it being an extremely short fad- it is interesting that on occasion, the big tech incumbents might actually beat the upstart errant. Clubhouse seems pretty stagnant now, but Twitter Spaces seems to have had more vitality, even if it's just leaning on that site's massive social network as well as some free publicity from the current CEO's public drama. Of course, the NFT market exists independently of what any one company.
BoorishBears 4y ago
Seeing the comment under your very reasonable take is "One of the best comments on HN ever. Thank you!" I'd say the saccharin sweet tone in this comment section is mostly born of personal feelings. If the Coinbase CEO was a more integral, well-liked part of the SV founder scene, the same exact letter would have been just fine for most of these people.
- kristianc 4y ago
  I mean yeah - brand equity matters, and the CEO and how they behave is just about the most visible manifestation of your brand
  - BoorishBears 4y ago
    This is a pretty disengeous response, it's clear I'm not saying it's because it's Coinbase or Coinbase's CEO. I'm saying it's because it's the literal individual "Jack Altman", outside of his capacity as a CEO, has personally rubbed elbows with the right crowd. Lattice had 700+ employees working on a product that HN would normally lampoon for having even 100 working on, they were massively bloated and there is literally no chance the organization wasn't aware that they were hiring people who wouldn't add enough value to weather any sort of mild storm (and they all but say that in the letter). - They did so because it shows growth, and they put company growth above even the slightest bit resiliency because that's the playbook. Show growth at all costs because you can just fire those people and write a cutesy letter and a severance package with... some of the money that showing growth let you raise! It's a crappy thing founders often do, but again, if you sling tweets with the right crowd and hang with the right people, all is forgiven. Essentially the CEO gets to behave badly, as long as the person is well liked. That's not how a meritocracy based on anything like "brand equity" should work.
    - Apocryphon 4y ago
      The simple banal answer is probably people know more about Coinbase than they do about Lattice.
medellin 4y ago
Hackernews has a problem with crypto. Just see any thread related to crypto for the completely one sided and biased view most users on this site have. They will willfully ignore all valid and good uses cases for it so they can feel smart and self righteous when they see it crash…
- sleepybrett 4y ago
  > Hackernews has a problem with crypto. No, most reasonable adults have a problem with crypto.
- taormina 4y ago
  Still waiting to hear one of these valid and good uses cases for a publicly distributed ledger. One of these days I’ll hear one, but I haven’t yet. Circumventing oppressive regimes seems to be the only thing I’ve heard of that vaguely sounds like a value proposition.
  - emptysongglass 4y ago
    That you don't see one just means that you don't see one and by shouting down anyone else who disagrees, as the HN hivemind has in every crypto thread I've seen to date, doesn't mean one exists, it just means that in this community a valid and good use case may as well not exist. People, including me, have tried to explain, many times, the valid use cases but HN at large disagrees and has made that distaste clear. That's fine but you'll forgive us for giving up. Those you disagree with aren't idiots, they just have a different perspective and don't see it as useless.
    - taormina 4y ago
      I'd love to have a meaningful conversation. I'd love to hear a novel idea. You have to forgive me for being a little jaded though when I continually ask to hear a use case and I continually don't get use cases. "Some places are so terrible that the only external financial systems unregulated enough to allow them to participate are these specific unregulated financial markets" is some net good being produced in end for the citizens of those regimes, and circumstantially the "block chain did that" I guess, but that still doesn't tell me why you needed a block chain to be involved to begin with.
jsnell 4y ago
One key difference is that the Coinbase message said "accountability rests with me as the CEO". If you claim to take accountability, but there are no actual consequences, it's just the CEO grandstanding. Doesn't seem surprising that this specific bit would get called out. This message did not make such obviously false claims of accountability. Is that enough of a difference to make up the entire difference in the entire tenor of the conversation? I don't know. But it is at least the reason for your specific example.
- rchaud 4y ago
  The CEO is accountable. But they are not going to fire themselves, are they? The board decides that.
  - thegginthesky 4y ago
    No, but a CEO can slash his own pay to reflect the current situation. For example, when the WiiU was a flop, Nintendo's CEO personally decided to take a paycut of about 50%[0] I believe this should be the standard for any CEO who wants to say they take accountability. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-25941070 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-25941070
- wilg 4y ago
  What would you say these "consequences" are that you expect to happen? Just because someone is responsible for something doesn't mean they need to be punished.
  - bjornsing 4y ago
    Sure. But if you won’t take any pain don’t go around with that holier than thou attitude talking about how you take full responsibility.
    - wilg 4y ago
      It sounds like a definitional issue of what responsibility is. What "pain" should they "take"? And why?
greenthrow 4y ago
Those other threads had CEO bootlicker comments too. It's absurd. None of these CEOs are actually taking responsibility, it's all just lipservice.
runamok 4y ago
Thank you for this. The job of the C-suite is accurate forecasting which is why they make 400x what the line worker does in large companies. Obviously they don't have a crystal ball but if scaled up the company hugely during a black swan event like covid and assumed that was the new normal I'd be personally ashamed and would either resign or give back my salary for a year+ to keep most of those employees and find a function for them. Perhaps via retraining, perhaps with instituting optional pay cuts to let people work 4 days a week, etc.

by cj 4y ago

Apocryphon 4y ago

One reason could be because HN is more familiar with Coinbase's mistakes (not getting into the NFT scene earlier and letting OpenSea/MetaMask beat them to the punch, being a crypto company in the first place which ideological quibbles aside is seen as extravagantly unsustainable and thus doomed to fail). Lattice is in a more mainstream ("useful") industry and its CEO doesn't have a record of courting controversy, so it gets more sympathy. It doesn't come with the downsides of being a ubiquitous brand or association with a controversial sector. Plus it's a smaller company so it's more of an underdog. Also the startup funding offer is neat and intriguing.

whoisjuan 4y ago
"HN is more familiar with Coinbase's mistakes (not getting into the NFT scene earlier and letting OpenSea/MetaMask beat them to the punch..." lol, who the heck thinks that not getting into NFT market was a mistake? If anything, they did themselves a favor by not building many NFT capabilities. NFTs might have a second chance in the future but currently is just a mass graveyard of scams.
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  NFTs were a short fad (did it even last a year?), but CB being the market leader for crypto wallets meant they should’ve had an NFT feature ready far earlier. This is a “performance” critique of them getting big and complacent and unable to execute while nimbler startups ran circles around them.
  - dewey 4y ago
    How is jumping on every fad a good thing? Focusing on their core business and not getting distracted by small month-long fads happening in their general industry sounds a lot more sensible.
    - Apocryphon 4y ago
      It was a very lucrative fad, and as per that other thread, it sounds like Coinbase bought into it anyway by increasing headcount to build an NFT offering anyway, just after they were late to the party. If that’s accurate, then lose-lose.
      - rchaud 4y ago
        How lucrative could it have been when the one major player (OpenSea) was slashing staff as early as July 2022? https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2022/07/15/nft-marketplace-opensea-layoffs-why-crypto-crashing/10068300002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2022/07/15/nft-marketpla...
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        Apocryphon 4y ago
        That's a fair rebuttal, and I will admit that my recollection of last year is filtered through the very strange time compression of the COVID WFH era, and the extent of my perception of this was "What's an NFT? Is that something you can manage with Coinbase? There's another app now?" From an extremely layman view, it just seemed natural that the leading crypto app would support NFTs. But I'm not the only one to voice the opinion that it seemed like Coinbase had missed the NFT wave. I'm not a fan of big companies xeroxing each other's features, as it seems to be a dominant form of product "innovation" these days, but one could have assumed that Coinbase, being market leader in this space, would have done that for NFTs. And on the note of it being an extremely short fad- it is interesting that on occasion, the big tech incumbents might actually beat the upstart errant. Clubhouse seems pretty stagnant now, but Twitter Spaces seems to have had more vitality, even if it's just leaning on that site's massive social network as well as some free publicity from the current CEO's public drama. Of course, the NFT market exists independently of what any one company.

BoorishBears 4y ago

Seeing the comment under your very reasonable take is "One of the best comments on HN ever. Thank you!" I'd say the saccharin sweet tone in this comment section is mostly born of personal feelings. If the Coinbase CEO was a more integral, well-liked part of the SV founder scene, the same exact letter would have been just fine for most of these people.

kristianc 4y ago
I mean yeah - brand equity matters, and the CEO and how they behave is just about the most visible manifestation of your brand
- BoorishBears 4y ago
  This is a pretty disengeous response, it's clear I'm not saying it's because it's Coinbase or Coinbase's CEO. I'm saying it's because it's the literal individual "Jack Altman", outside of his capacity as a CEO, has personally rubbed elbows with the right crowd. Lattice had 700+ employees working on a product that HN would normally lampoon for having even 100 working on, they were massively bloated and there is literally no chance the organization wasn't aware that they were hiring people who wouldn't add enough value to weather any sort of mild storm (and they all but say that in the letter). - They did so because it shows growth, and they put company growth above even the slightest bit resiliency because that's the playbook. Show growth at all costs because you can just fire those people and write a cutesy letter and a severance package with... some of the money that showing growth let you raise! It's a crappy thing founders often do, but again, if you sling tweets with the right crowd and hang with the right people, all is forgiven. Essentially the CEO gets to behave badly, as long as the person is well liked. That's not how a meritocracy based on anything like "brand equity" should work.
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    The simple banal answer is probably people know more about Coinbase than they do about Lattice.

medellin 4y ago

Hackernews has a problem with crypto. Just see any thread related to crypto for the completely one sided and biased view most users on this site have. They will willfully ignore all valid and good uses cases for it so they can feel smart and self righteous when they see it crash…

sleepybrett 4y ago
> Hackernews has a problem with crypto. No, most reasonable adults have a problem with crypto.
taormina 4y ago
Still waiting to hear one of these valid and good uses cases for a publicly distributed ledger. One of these days I’ll hear one, but I haven’t yet. Circumventing oppressive regimes seems to be the only thing I’ve heard of that vaguely sounds like a value proposition.
- emptysongglass 4y ago
  That you don't see one just means that you don't see one and by shouting down anyone else who disagrees, as the HN hivemind has in every crypto thread I've seen to date, doesn't mean one exists, it just means that in this community a valid and good use case may as well not exist. People, including me, have tried to explain, many times, the valid use cases but HN at large disagrees and has made that distaste clear. That's fine but you'll forgive us for giving up. Those you disagree with aren't idiots, they just have a different perspective and don't see it as useless.
  - taormina 4y ago
    I'd love to have a meaningful conversation. I'd love to hear a novel idea. You have to forgive me for being a little jaded though when I continually ask to hear a use case and I continually don't get use cases. "Some places are so terrible that the only external financial systems unregulated enough to allow them to participate are these specific unregulated financial markets" is some net good being produced in end for the citizens of those regimes, and circumstantially the "block chain did that" I guess, but that still doesn't tell me why you needed a block chain to be involved to begin with.

jsnell 4y ago

One key difference is that the Coinbase message said "accountability rests with me as the CEO". If you claim to take accountability, but there are no actual consequences, it's just the CEO grandstanding. Doesn't seem surprising that this specific bit would get called out. This message did not make such obviously false claims of accountability. Is that enough of a difference to make up the entire difference in the entire tenor of the conversation? I don't know. But it is at least the reason for your specific example.

rchaud 4y ago
The CEO is accountable. But they are not going to fire themselves, are they? The board decides that.
- thegginthesky 4y ago
  No, but a CEO can slash his own pay to reflect the current situation. For example, when the WiiU was a flop, Nintendo's CEO personally decided to take a paycut of about 50%[0] I believe this should be the standard for any CEO who wants to say they take accountability. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-25941070 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-25941070
wilg 4y ago
What would you say these "consequences" are that you expect to happen? Just because someone is responsible for something doesn't mean they need to be punished.
- bjornsing 4y ago
  Sure. But if you won’t take any pain don’t go around with that holier than thou attitude talking about how you take full responsibility.
  - wilg 4y ago
    It sounds like a definitional issue of what responsibility is. What "pain" should they "take"? And why?

greenthrow 4y ago

Those other threads had CEO bootlicker comments too. It's absurd. None of these CEOs are actually taking responsibility, it's all just lipservice.

runamok 4y ago

Thank you for this. The job of the C-suite is accurate forecasting which is why they make 400x what the line worker does in large companies. Obviously they don't have a crystal ball but if scaled up the company hugely during a black swan event like covid and assumed that was the new normal I'd be personally ashamed and would either resign or give back my salary for a year+ to keep most of those employees and find a function for them. Perhaps via retraining, perhaps with instituting optional pay cuts to let people work 4 days a week, etc.