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> - No pure managers: Every leader at Coinbase must also be a strong and active individual contributor. Managers should be like player-coaches, getting their ha

> - No pure managers: Every leader at Coinbase must also be a strong and active individual contributor. Managers should be like player-coaches, getting their hands dirty alongside their teams. Geeks who didn't even stand near professional sports should really shut up about anything sport related, lol. I would really like to see professional, established coach running around with young prodigies on a peak of their biology. > - AI-native pods: We’ll be concentrating around AI-native talent who can manage fleets of agents to drive outsized impact. We’ll also be experimenting with reduced pod sizes, including “one person teams” with engineers, designers, and product managers all in one role. And AI clowns will cheer and applaud this, not seeing that they're now doing the job of 5(!) people with the same salary. Why is nobody talking about this? Also, I find it really bizarre that those neo feudal lords see their companies as just a life stock to count. They don't even count people, just see them as numbers to reduce/scale up. Modern tsardom, but instead of being tied via official decree you're now tied by your lifestyle and family. "Some of you may die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make"

cloche 6mo ago
> Geeks who didn't even stand near professional sports should really shut up about anything sport related, lol. I would really like to see professional, established coach running around with young prodigies on a peak of their biology. Player-coach used to be a thing in professional sports a long, long time ago. There's a reason you don't have it anymore. A coach can't be expected to take the long-term view while also expecting to contribute. Most examples were players near the end of their career and they didn't tend to do very well. The only place you see it is in fun adult leagues. Perhaps the message then is that Coinbase wants to be less professional and more amateur-like?
- draftsman 6mo ago
  Your comment reminded me that this still happens in the NBA. At 43 years old, Udonis Haslem seldom played minutes towards the end of his 20 year career with the Heat. But they kept him on as a “player-coach,” in that he was a mentor to the younger players and assisted in their coaching. Kyle Lowry is another current example of this “player-coach” role, currently on the Sixers.
  - cloche 6mo ago
    Thanks for the examples. I didn't realize this still happened. I don't follow basketball much - more hockey for me with some baseball. It sounds like those examples jive though - they're players in the twilight of their career who still bring a lot of value being in the locker room but maybe aren't ready to fully retire or move to coaching full time. Actually, these scenarios happen in hockey as well. Teams will pick up character guys who have been through it all who are expected to contribute more off ice than on it. Corey Perry is one who comes to mind lately but they're never given a "coach" title. It's entirely possible though that these players may be expected to be a go-between guy between the coach and younger players to help them manage the pressure or to help with encouragement. They're definitely not getting prime minutes though. I guess that would possibly be the same expectation of a manager who still codes. I can't see them doing anything critical. It's likely picking up some minor bugs or nice-to-have, low priority feature work. I was a manager before and while I didn't reach 15 reports, I was up to 12 at one time. There's just really no focus time that you need for coding. Maybe that's a bit different with AI but even then you still need to find time to make changes and validate. And that's time that takes away from other higher impact things that you could be doing for the team.
    - The_Blade 6mo ago
      i like MLB catchers, but maybe that is just because future HOF manager Austin Hedges is out there ripping an 0.824 OPS, vibes but no vibe coding
    - DwnVoteHoneyPot 6mo ago
      Hockey also has Captain (e.g. Mark Messier) and Alternate Captain roles, in addition to the Corey Perry types who aren't titled.
  - htrp 6mo ago
    Haslem played 72 minutes the entire 82 game season. That's like the Engineering manager who ships a PR once a year.
    - 6mo ago
- Worf 6mo ago
  Reminds me of how kings used to (I think, I'm bad at history) actually fight the battles themselves. Now the head of state, the head of government and the other top people don't fight themselves. Even the admirals only plan and command, AFAIK.
  - ikr678 6mo ago
    Less fight, more be present on the battlefield as a show of confidence.
  - Fnoord 6mo ago
    Big diff between RU and modern Western military (including UA) is officers on the field. RU has a very top-down hierarchy. In the end, everyone is replaceable. But a king is a bit more difficult to replace, as historically shown.
    - bhickey 6mo ago
      Celtic kings in Ireland were subject to ritualistic sacrifice if, for example, crops failed.
- cyanydeez 6mo ago
  In sports like Football where CTE is king, there's just not gonna be enough qualified personnel to coach.
  - jasonfarnon 6mo ago
    No. Few college or professional coaches weren't themselves college or professional players. Think of all those assistant coaches, QB coaches, DB coaches etc.--all players. Mike Leach comes to mind as a rare counterexample.
- strken 6mo ago
  Player coaches would be redundant given that most sports already have captains, wouldn't they?
  - Jagerbizzle 6mo ago
    Captains can't decide to substitute/bench one of their teammates in the middle of a game.
- orochimaaru 6mo ago
  I think Netflix started the sports team analogy for their hiring (and firing). But they don't put forth a "you're a part of the Netflix family". They're open about the work culture you're going to be stepping into. And I don't think they're trying this thing that Coinbase is trying either.
- ghaff 6mo ago
  I'm not sure the professional sports analogies carry over very well. With very rare exceptions, professional athletes are just not as good athletically at 40/50 as they were at 20. They may be smarter in some ways--which maybe means they'd be better as coaches. I'm not sure this carries over well to engineering unless you mean that the young people are willing to grind for a lot more hours on nights and weekends.
  - andriy_koval 6mo ago
    > With very rare exceptions, professional athletes are just not as good athletically at 40/50 as they were at 20. They may be smarter in some ways--which maybe means they'd be better as coaches. not sure if focus should be on athletic sports. Chess is better analogy to software I think.
    - jrumbut 6mo ago
      To part of it, but chess is generally played one against one, there are well understood rules and a clearly defined goal, and every win is someone else's loss. When building software, if you can state an unambiguous goal and what rules apply you are more than halfway done. It's not uncommon to work on something for a year and discover you have been building the wrong thing. Navigating that ambiguity is where all the value in software engineering is.
      - andriy_koval 6mo ago
        Sure, rules are different, though there are team chess competition, but the point is there are analogies not involving athleticism which declines with age, unlike software skills.
    - Ar-Curunir 6mo ago
      Armstrong did not mean chess players.
- dwd 6mo ago
  The only successful Player-Coach that comes to mind was Eric Cantona as player-manager of the France national beach soccer team after leaving Manchester United aged 30. He won the 2004 Euro Championship, the 2005 FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup along with a number of top 4 places over his 15 years as player and/or coach.
  - grogenaut 6mo ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Rose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Rose
    - The_Blade 6mo ago
      [dead]
  - thelock85 6mo ago
    Bill Russell. Won 9 championships as a Boston Celtic under legendary coach Red Auerbach, and alongside Hall of Famers like Bob Cousy. Then became the coach and starting center for 3 more years and won two more championships.
  - Fnoord 6mo ago
    Rinus Michels [1]. There are so many tho. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rinus_Michels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rinus_Michels
  - rossriley 6mo ago
    Kenny Dalglish for Liverpool too, winning the double whilst a player-manager.
    - dwd 6mo ago
      And kicking the goal in the final match that secured the Premiership. Definitely counts as being a "professional" league.
  - rafftre 6mo ago
    The fact that there have been so few of them throughout history of sports shows that this is an exceptional, uncommon situation. A small number of athletes compared to the total. It requires that a single individual possess many qualities at the same time.
- Rapzid 6mo ago
  Yeah. I'd agree with this if it were tech leads that were mostly just IC leaders. But managers should mostly be about two things IMHO: > Facilitating for ICs. > COACHING. To elevate ICs and help propagate the desired "culture".
- aorloff 6mo ago
  Lebron James
- delis-thumbs-7e 6mo ago
  It’s funny when bunch of nerds try to mask the fact they have know idea what they’re doing by some lame allegory to sports, military, or some other discipline supposedly more manly and rugger than girly (yugh) math, logic and programming. “We at the coding company LovelyBeeBunny should be like the samurai’s of the old, willing to pull our swords to die for emperor…” etc. And it is always riddled with complete misunderstanding of the analogous subject, whether sports, history, or warfare.
  - bruce511 6mo ago
    Your categorization of math, logic and programming as "girly" is hilarious. When I grew up those were the very definition of "not girly". Our math and comp sci faculties at uni would bend over backwards for any of the girl students. I would agree though that academics in general were "not manly" and at school at least streams of "academic" or "sporty" existed. For boys anyway. For the girls (less fascinated by sports) the top sporties were often top academics as well. History has shown that being academic is always better than sporty (if you gave to pick one.) The "status" given to sports is often an acknowledgment that it's a poor financial path, but we can offer "status" instead. Yes, sports metaphors can be amusing, but its the winners we're smiling at.
    - delis-thumbs-7e 6mo ago
      I was being sarcastic (I at least hoped it was obvious). There is probably nothing as illogical as assigning a gender to a logic - or maths or science for that matter. I also find it pretty stupid how “girly” is considered an insult. I prefer girly to being thick.
- IG_Semmelweiss 6mo ago
  Not true. You often see it semi-pro soccer. Previously, you could see player coaches even in top-flight elite soccer. There's a reason for this change. As players became elite and specialized by position, the budget for specialization expanded. At the top, teams could afford a distinct role for coaching focus. Since the stakes are really high (the difference between 1-3 points is measured in dozens of millions of dollars of impact due to relegation - a concept that is missing on most US elite sports) it follows specialization drive is sky-high at elite levels. Thus, soccer player coaches have mostly dissappeared at elite level. But the role is alive and well in the semipro tier. In roles where there's no binary, extreme outcome from specialization, like in semi pro soccer, or at an ENG role at a random company , it is only natural to have someone wear multiple hats and not specialize.
  - BoxFour 6mo ago
    Specialization is very much a thing in US sports as well, even without relegation and even with profit sharing/etc. The payoff to being elite at a valuable skill is enormous. Teams generally benefit more from combining players with distinct, elite strengths than from relying on broad generalists who are not truly elite at anything. This isn’t always possible if you can’t afford to build a team of specialists, or those specialists don't exist at your level of competition. But if you have the resources and coordination (and in sports, the roster depth and cap space) to cover each specialist’s weaknesses, specialization is pretty much always the stronger composition.
rideontime 6mo ago
"Neo feudal lords" might read like hyperbole to those unaware of Brian Armstrong's "Network State" fanaticism. He may not be one yet, but he's certainly striving toward that goal.
- adamors 6mo ago
  There’s also Yanis Varoufakis’ recent book, Technofeudalism.
moomoo11 6mo ago
what's the point of having 5 people doing 1 person's job though? sounds stupid to me
- reactordev 6mo ago
  delusions of having AI do those roles and the one person in charge over prompting will know the difference between quality and slop... guess which one I'm betting on?
  - moomoo11 6mo ago
    historically speaking, efficiency has always won out for example, the last obvious inefficiency i remember was sys admins. the most worthless, self aggrandizing group of people at any company. got wiped out mostly (the best work for the cloud engineering companies), and i think it was for the better! engineers today handle deployments, and it is far better.
    - Refreeze5224 6mo ago
      > historically speaking, efficiency has always won out Too bad AI is not about efficiency. It's about headcount reduction, which is exactly what Coinbase is doing here. AI just gives them plausible cover.
      - reactordev 6mo ago
        If it was about efficiency, they would be moving faster, not cutting headcount…
        moomoo11 6mo ago
        Surely there are some insanely smart people amongst the 100s of thousands of laid off supposedly god tier software engineers and adjacent who will start new companies maybe even spawn a new industry? Feels like a problem that will solve itself. There are more cars today than people ever had horses.
ne0flex 6mo ago
"They don't even count people, just see them as numbers to reduce/scale up." I'm remember of when I went out for drinks with a startup consultant friend and she mentioned one founder she spoke with refer to his staff as "biological units" when addressing use of proceeds to hire additional staff.
- chamomeal 6mo ago
  That is bonkers but I will enjoy calling my friends “biological units” from now on
- keyle 6mo ago
  This is sickening. People that don't realise that companies are made of people are in for a surprise. Once they go public, they forget that, and it shows. A company_is_ the sum of its people, their talents and aligned behind a mission statement. This is so far misguided, I can't help but think this 'biological unit' of a founder won't last long.
reillyse 6mo ago
[flagged]
- paulhebert 6mo ago
  What a sad way to think about other people
  - claytonjy 6mo ago
    It is, but it’s the only way for a company to succeed and scale over time. A pet approach works well in the early days, but you can’t become a VC-backed success without drastically reducing bus factors throughout the company. That could be an incentive to keep companies small, but high-scale companies do have unique benefits to society.
    - paulhebert 6mo ago
      Employees are people. Not cattle or pets. It doesn't mean you don't ever fire or lay people off. But you treat them as humans.
    - Arainach 6mo ago
      > It is, but it’s the only way for a company to succeed and scale over time This is absolutely not true. It never has been at any point in history. Not even CEOs would claim such a thing until the 1980s, and they were wrong then as now. Even today, Costco and other businesses are thriving. Stop drinking the Koolaid.
    - harimau777 6mo ago
      Sounds like we need to prevent companies from scaling or being too successful.
- ambicapter 6mo ago
  Absolutely hilarious to optimize for having employees with no discernible edge whatsoever.
- 6mo ago
khazhoux 6mo ago
> Also, I find it really bizarre that those neo feudal lords see their companies as just a life stock to count. They don't even count people, just see them as numbers to reduce/scale up. Modern tsardom, but instead of being tied via official decree you're now tied by your lifestyle and family. The CEO is looking at revenue and at costs. He can see what will happen if current burn rate isn’t reduced. Doesn’t it come (in part) to numbers, which must be reduced/scaled as needed? (Along with other costs)
- harimau777 6mo ago
  Brian Armstrong is still a billionaire. So it's not like he lacks alternatives to destroying people's lives.
JeremyNT 6mo ago
Let's be honest, this is a crypto exchange. "Line go up" is the only philosophy these people adhere to. > Also, I find it really bizarre that those neo feudal lords see their companies as just a life stock to count. They don't even count people, just see them as numbers to reduce/scale up. Modern tsardom, but instead of being tied via official decree you're now tied by your lifestyle and family. People don't work somewhere like Coinbase if they're concerned about morality or mitigating the harms done to society.
- hocuspocus 6mo ago
  Even better, as an exchange, they don't even necessarily care whether the line goes up, down, sideways, or in fucking circles to quote the Wolf of Wall Street. As long as it goes somewhere, and customers are charged fees.
  - Auracle 6mo ago
    Eh. Presumably there’s a ton more trading when the market is hot (and a somewhat lesser extent, when in a bi bear market).
    - delis-thumbs-7e 6mo ago
      Bi bears are not hot? I beg to disagree!
- l0gicpath 6mo ago
  I fail to see how this is specific to a crypto company. You’re drawing a correlation that’s not backed up by any empirical evidence. The GP post describes a common problem in _most_ workplaces in the market today. It’s not specific to crypto, AI, or anything in between.
  - cheema33 6mo ago
    > I fail to see how this is specific to a crypto company. It is not specific to a crypto company. But the element of it being a crypto company cannot be ignored. Crypto companies are not like ordinary businesses. They have very unique qualities to them. Same with crypto industry as a whole. Ever been to a crypto conference for example? I have read about and have seen the videos. These things have the highest concentration of the scammers and the gullible any one place.
harshalizee 6mo ago
> - AI-native pods: We’ll be concentrating around AI-native talent who can manage fleets of agents to drive outsized impact. We’ll also be experimenting with reduced pod sizes, including “one person teams” with engineers, designers, and product managers all in one role. And then this person leaves, leaving no documentation or workflow. That's ok though, another ai agent will pick up right back and add slop on top of that until the codebase is a black box interacting with another black box. Oh and this company handles other people's money? That's going to end well.
p-o 6mo ago
> Geeks who didn't even stand near professional sports should really shut up about anything sport related, lol. Reggie Dunlop is ready for duty, he'll get the job done.
ryanisnan 6mo ago
> I would really like to see professional, established coach running around with young prodigies on a peak of their biology. This is a really strange nit. You are aware it's an analogy about skill and role. To reduce this to being about biology and the impacts of senescence on ability is weird, and doesn't really apply here.
- machomaster 6mo ago
  Analogies have to make sense, to be applicable. In this case it doesn't. E.g. you can't just spew nonsense like "let's work together like a bee hive, everything for the Queen/CEO, no matter the personal cost to an individual" without others pointing out the stupidity of comparing humans with bees. You can't just come up with a desirable adjective and start coming up with random scenarios in which those characteristics may occur. "Let's make the company strong as a gorilla, big as an elephant, smart as Von Neumann, bright as a Sun, as courageous as young guys from youtube fails compilations." This makes no sense whatsoever.
  - Dylan16807 6mo ago
    It makes plenty of sense. Player-coaches are a real thing, and in a realm where you're not worried about peak fitness then it's reasonable to demand the coaches become player-coaches.
    - blharr 6mo ago
      Player-coaches are a real thing, but noticeable because of how rare and unusual they are. The problem is that the analogy doesn't even hold up in the source its referring to. Sure, there are good player-coaches, but there are also great pure leaders. There are also very bad player-coaches. A coach who is trying too hard and too deep to be a player when they are less "fit" (or skilled) has historically led to many problems in many cases
      - Dylan16807 6mo ago
        It's not a deep analogy. It's not saying player coaches are inherently better, but in their particular situation they want the managers to be coding. There's not much equivalent to "fit" here, just skill, and they decided they don't want the pure leaders, they want ones that are knuckle deep in the sausage. Good decision or not, that very basic analogy is completely fine.
dakiol 6mo ago
> And AI clowns will cheer and applaud this, not seeing that they're now doing the job of 5(!) people with the same salary. Why is nobody talking about this? Exactly. People are too naive these days
nclin_ 6mo ago
Aahahahaha yes the solidarity of the common memecoiner must not be broken.
tylervigen 6mo ago
The player-coach analogy is very common in role definitions, and it is real concept in sports: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player-coach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player-coach
- pyreko 6mo ago
  I mean it doesn't really help the analogy when most of the examples in the Wikipedia link mention how it's either not done anymore for that sport or very rare nowadays.
orochimaaru 6mo ago
>>> And AI clowns will cheer and applaud this, not seeing that they're now doing the job of 5(!) people with the same salary. Why is nobody talking about this? I don't think anyone is applauding this. The only people applauding stuff like this are the CEO's of Anthropic (because that means more tokens/profit). Most other CEO's in big tech have toned down the rhetoric big-time. The job of 5 people being done with the same salary is a function of the job market. It's an employers market now. So stuff like this happens. If you had an employee's market this wouldn't happen. fwiw - and this is a separate topic. If health insurance were de-linked from employment most people would flee the job market on their own.
- tokioyoyo 6mo ago
  > health insurance were de-linked from employment most people would flee the job market That would be visible in all major markets outside of the US, no?
  - blharr 6mo ago
    Many major markets outside the US have much stronger work-life balance. Isn't that the takeaway?
duxup 6mo ago
And it's telling that really good players are often terrible coaches / good coaches were not great players. Like the guy who "just gets math" is often NOT a good teacher.
tootie 6mo ago
How many player-coaches have their actually been in any major pro sport in the last 20 years? Zero give or take? The last one I recall is Pete Rose and that was like 1985.
ChaseMeAway 6mo ago
Perhaps it is time to unionize. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unionization_in_the_tech_sector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unionization_in_the_tech_secto...
- hadlock 6mo ago
  Unions can't fix the fact that crypto didn't survive it's first real Flight to Quality and is suffering against gold.
  - ChaseMeAway 6mo ago
    Certainly not, I don’t think anyone would make that claim, seems a bit silly. The benefits of unionization extend beyond this particular situation or company. They can help shift the balance of power back to the employee and help them guard against being squeezed by their employer to produce more or take on more work for less benefits or compensation. American tech workers have been fortunate to avoid such aggressive practices, but working conditions will only deteriorate from here, with workers crushed between LLMs and offshoring.
    - hadlock 6mo ago
      Your comment seems to imply you thought unions would have fixed this specific situation, which is why I felt compelled to respond.
827a 6mo ago
You have to look past literally everything their leadership is saying and at the heart of the matter: This is a dying company, and they physically will not have the capital to pay paychecks if they don't do this. Everything else is window dressing to try to keep investors on-board, but they aren't buying it, and neither should you. The crypto market winter that started in Q4 last year led to Coinbase's ~worst quarter ever ($667M loss). Crypto has not recovered. Coinbase has done nothing to stem the outflows. That same quarter HOOD showed a net profit of $605M; and showed a $346M profit last week. COIN and HOOD are two very similar companies. COIN's earnings are in two days. They preceded the earnings call with layoffs, which is always a bad sign. And HOOD's net income has dropped by like 40%, though they're still at least profitable. You should be prepared for COIN to announce a similar drop; except, COIN wasn't even profitable before. Its going to be a bloodbath.
- tverbeure 6mo ago
  I see $667M loss numbers in the press, but I also see a positive P/E ratio? How does that work? Edit: it’s because the loss is an accounting loss due to mark to market adjustment, while the company is operationally profitable. I assume that’s still no great, but not nearly as dire as the reported loss suggests, and not a sign of a dying company.
  - simpsond 6mo ago
    P/E ratios are usually based on last 12 months, so E = sum of EPS over last 4 quarters.
- echelon 6mo ago
  Almost every "AI washing", except for the firms that are spending massively on data center capex (Microsoft, Meta), is coming from a company that is hurting. The macro is not great right now. The world economy is on a razor's edge. If things unwind, we could all be in for a world of economic hurt. There aren't many levers to pull us out this time around, either. Crypto is in an even worse state. Investors want liquidity for the uncertainty. Plus there's the looming Q-day that keeps getting pushed earlier and earlier by the experts while we're also inching nearer and nearer on the clock.
spamizbad 6mo ago
Yeah my experience in engineering management: Very easy to be a "player coach" when the team was small, like when I had 4 direct reports. As soon as I had 9 (in an org with no TPM/product) my full time job was wearing 3 hats, and maybe 3 hours a week were spent on actual pure technical tasks (mostly scut work to unblock team members after-hours)
smrtinsert 6mo ago
Can I push to production anytime I want? I can run 10000 agents then no problem. I'll just move fast and break things and I'll get massive cheers because its AI.
- blharr 6mo ago
  You joke, but in a way this is the natural trajectory technology has been heading. AI has just increased the magnitude of it
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
Rapzid 6mo ago
Crypto was always a clown show. Not saying everyone working the crypto/Web 3.0 was a clown just.. This tone-def message coming out of the waning crypto industry is nothing more than an eye-roll.
asta123 6mo ago
> I would really like to see professional, established coach running around with young prodigies on a peak of their biology. Experienced high IQ player in a team sport could also be considered player-coach. Players like Lebron James or Nikola Jokic come to mind.
muldvarp 6mo ago
I don't get it either. LLMs put the enshittification of software engineering into overdrive. The job is less fun (reviewing AI slop, sometimes even produced by entirely non-tech people like managers), the expectation of increased productivity, the expectation that we can now do the job of multiple people and salaries will decrease as well. I don't understand how so many software engineers I know cheer for this technology. Do they not see that this will drastically change their lives for the worse? I'm in Europe, none of them has ever earned "fuck you" money.
jimbob45 6mo ago
I would really like to see professional, established coach running around with young prodigies on a peak of their biology. Bill Russell is (was) the guy you’re looking for and he is arguably the greatest basketball player of all time.
digitaltrees 6mo ago
These people should leave and start their own companies: AI-native pods: We’ll be concentrating around AI-native talent who can manage fleets of agents to drive outsized impact. We’ll also be experimenting with reduced pod sizes, including “one person teams” with engineers, designers, and product managers all in one role. F these leaders.
rsync 6mo ago
"I would really like to see professional, established coach running around with young prodigies on a peak of their biology." Well today is your lucky day! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NBA_player-coaches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NBA_player-coaches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_player-managers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Rose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Rose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player-coach#Player-coaches_in_ice_hockey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player-coach#Player-coaches_in... "Though primarily known as a dominant forward "Mr. Hockey" for the Detroit Red Wings, he came out of retirement in 1973 at age 45 to play with his sons and took on coaching responsibilities with Houston."[1] [1] Gordie Howe, playing on the same NHL team as his two sons.
xnx 6mo ago
If you don't like "player-coach", "quarterback" can be a better substitute.
skeptic_ai 6mo ago
But right now you also do the job of 10s compared to x years ago.
dchftcs 6mo ago
A major problem with player-coach is that it makes the manager compete with the IC. If we solve that it'd be more workable, if not it'd erode teams from the inside.
mvkel 6mo ago
> that they're now doing the job of 5(!) people with the same salary. The Marxist view of everything valuable being a product of a person's labor is tired and debunked.

cloche 6mo ago

> Geeks who didn't even stand near professional sports should really shut up about anything sport related, lol. I would really like to see professional, established coach running around with young prodigies on a peak of their biology. Player-coach used to be a thing in professional sports a long, long time ago. There's a reason you don't have it anymore. A coach can't be expected to take the long-term view while also expecting to contribute. Most examples were players near the end of their career and they didn't tend to do very well. The only place you see it is in fun adult leagues. Perhaps the message then is that Coinbase wants to be less professional and more amateur-like?

draftsman 6mo ago
Your comment reminded me that this still happens in the NBA. At 43 years old, Udonis Haslem seldom played minutes towards the end of his 20 year career with the Heat. But they kept him on as a “player-coach,” in that he was a mentor to the younger players and assisted in their coaching. Kyle Lowry is another current example of this “player-coach” role, currently on the Sixers.
- cloche 6mo ago
  Thanks for the examples. I didn't realize this still happened. I don't follow basketball much - more hockey for me with some baseball. It sounds like those examples jive though - they're players in the twilight of their career who still bring a lot of value being in the locker room but maybe aren't ready to fully retire or move to coaching full time. Actually, these scenarios happen in hockey as well. Teams will pick up character guys who have been through it all who are expected to contribute more off ice than on it. Corey Perry is one who comes to mind lately but they're never given a "coach" title. It's entirely possible though that these players may be expected to be a go-between guy between the coach and younger players to help them manage the pressure or to help with encouragement. They're definitely not getting prime minutes though. I guess that would possibly be the same expectation of a manager who still codes. I can't see them doing anything critical. It's likely picking up some minor bugs or nice-to-have, low priority feature work. I was a manager before and while I didn't reach 15 reports, I was up to 12 at one time. There's just really no focus time that you need for coding. Maybe that's a bit different with AI but even then you still need to find time to make changes and validate. And that's time that takes away from other higher impact things that you could be doing for the team.
  - The_Blade 6mo ago
    i like MLB catchers, but maybe that is just because future HOF manager Austin Hedges is out there ripping an 0.824 OPS, vibes but no vibe coding
  - DwnVoteHoneyPot 6mo ago
    Hockey also has Captain (e.g. Mark Messier) and Alternate Captain roles, in addition to the Corey Perry types who aren't titled.
- htrp 6mo ago
  Haslem played 72 minutes the entire 82 game season. That's like the Engineering manager who ships a PR once a year.
  - 6mo ago
Worf 6mo ago
Reminds me of how kings used to (I think, I'm bad at history) actually fight the battles themselves. Now the head of state, the head of government and the other top people don't fight themselves. Even the admirals only plan and command, AFAIK.
- ikr678 6mo ago
  Less fight, more be present on the battlefield as a show of confidence.
- Fnoord 6mo ago
  Big diff between RU and modern Western military (including UA) is officers on the field. RU has a very top-down hierarchy. In the end, everyone is replaceable. But a king is a bit more difficult to replace, as historically shown.
  - bhickey 6mo ago
    Celtic kings in Ireland were subject to ritualistic sacrifice if, for example, crops failed.
cyanydeez 6mo ago
In sports like Football where CTE is king, there's just not gonna be enough qualified personnel to coach.
- jasonfarnon 6mo ago
  No. Few college or professional coaches weren't themselves college or professional players. Think of all those assistant coaches, QB coaches, DB coaches etc.--all players. Mike Leach comes to mind as a rare counterexample.
strken 6mo ago
Player coaches would be redundant given that most sports already have captains, wouldn't they?
- Jagerbizzle 6mo ago
  Captains can't decide to substitute/bench one of their teammates in the middle of a game.
orochimaaru 6mo ago
I think Netflix started the sports team analogy for their hiring (and firing). But they don't put forth a "you're a part of the Netflix family". They're open about the work culture you're going to be stepping into. And I don't think they're trying this thing that Coinbase is trying either.
ghaff 6mo ago
I'm not sure the professional sports analogies carry over very well. With very rare exceptions, professional athletes are just not as good athletically at 40/50 as they were at 20. They may be smarter in some ways--which maybe means they'd be better as coaches. I'm not sure this carries over well to engineering unless you mean that the young people are willing to grind for a lot more hours on nights and weekends.
- andriy_koval 6mo ago
  > With very rare exceptions, professional athletes are just not as good athletically at 40/50 as they were at 20. They may be smarter in some ways--which maybe means they'd be better as coaches. not sure if focus should be on athletic sports. Chess is better analogy to software I think.
  - jrumbut 6mo ago
    To part of it, but chess is generally played one against one, there are well understood rules and a clearly defined goal, and every win is someone else's loss. When building software, if you can state an unambiguous goal and what rules apply you are more than halfway done. It's not uncommon to work on something for a year and discover you have been building the wrong thing. Navigating that ambiguity is where all the value in software engineering is.
    - andriy_koval 6mo ago
      Sure, rules are different, though there are team chess competition, but the point is there are analogies not involving athleticism which declines with age, unlike software skills.
  - Ar-Curunir 6mo ago
    Armstrong did not mean chess players.
dwd 6mo ago
The only successful Player-Coach that comes to mind was Eric Cantona as player-manager of the France national beach soccer team after leaving Manchester United aged 30. He won the 2004 Euro Championship, the 2005 FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup along with a number of top 4 places over his 15 years as player and/or coach.
- grogenaut 6mo ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Rose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Rose
  - The_Blade 6mo ago
    [dead]
- thelock85 6mo ago
  Bill Russell. Won 9 championships as a Boston Celtic under legendary coach Red Auerbach, and alongside Hall of Famers like Bob Cousy. Then became the coach and starting center for 3 more years and won two more championships.
- Fnoord 6mo ago
  Rinus Michels [1]. There are so many tho. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rinus_Michels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rinus_Michels
- rossriley 6mo ago
  Kenny Dalglish for Liverpool too, winning the double whilst a player-manager.
  - dwd 6mo ago
    And kicking the goal in the final match that secured the Premiership. Definitely counts as being a "professional" league.
- rafftre 6mo ago
  The fact that there have been so few of them throughout history of sports shows that this is an exceptional, uncommon situation. A small number of athletes compared to the total. It requires that a single individual possess many qualities at the same time.
Rapzid 6mo ago
Yeah. I'd agree with this if it were tech leads that were mostly just IC leaders. But managers should mostly be about two things IMHO: > Facilitating for ICs. > COACHING. To elevate ICs and help propagate the desired "culture".
aorloff 6mo ago
Lebron James
delis-thumbs-7e 6mo ago
It’s funny when bunch of nerds try to mask the fact they have know idea what they’re doing by some lame allegory to sports, military, or some other discipline supposedly more manly and rugger than girly (yugh) math, logic and programming. “We at the coding company LovelyBeeBunny should be like the samurai’s of the old, willing to pull our swords to die for emperor…” etc. And it is always riddled with complete misunderstanding of the analogous subject, whether sports, history, or warfare.
- bruce511 6mo ago
  Your categorization of math, logic and programming as "girly" is hilarious. When I grew up those were the very definition of "not girly". Our math and comp sci faculties at uni would bend over backwards for any of the girl students. I would agree though that academics in general were "not manly" and at school at least streams of "academic" or "sporty" existed. For boys anyway. For the girls (less fascinated by sports) the top sporties were often top academics as well. History has shown that being academic is always better than sporty (if you gave to pick one.) The "status" given to sports is often an acknowledgment that it's a poor financial path, but we can offer "status" instead. Yes, sports metaphors can be amusing, but its the winners we're smiling at.
  - delis-thumbs-7e 6mo ago
    I was being sarcastic (I at least hoped it was obvious). There is probably nothing as illogical as assigning a gender to a logic - or maths or science for that matter. I also find it pretty stupid how “girly” is considered an insult. I prefer girly to being thick.
IG_Semmelweiss 6mo ago
Not true. You often see it semi-pro soccer. Previously, you could see player coaches even in top-flight elite soccer. There's a reason for this change. As players became elite and specialized by position, the budget for specialization expanded. At the top, teams could afford a distinct role for coaching focus. Since the stakes are really high (the difference between 1-3 points is measured in dozens of millions of dollars of impact due to relegation - a concept that is missing on most US elite sports) it follows specialization drive is sky-high at elite levels. Thus, soccer player coaches have mostly dissappeared at elite level. But the role is alive and well in the semipro tier. In roles where there's no binary, extreme outcome from specialization, like in semi pro soccer, or at an ENG role at a random company , it is only natural to have someone wear multiple hats and not specialize.
- BoxFour 6mo ago
  Specialization is very much a thing in US sports as well, even without relegation and even with profit sharing/etc. The payoff to being elite at a valuable skill is enormous. Teams generally benefit more from combining players with distinct, elite strengths than from relying on broad generalists who are not truly elite at anything. This isn’t always possible if you can’t afford to build a team of specialists, or those specialists don't exist at your level of competition. But if you have the resources and coordination (and in sports, the roster depth and cap space) to cover each specialist’s weaknesses, specialization is pretty much always the stronger composition.

rideontime 6mo ago

"Neo feudal lords" might read like hyperbole to those unaware of Brian Armstrong's "Network State" fanaticism. He may not be one yet, but he's certainly striving toward that goal.

adamors 6mo ago
There’s also Yanis Varoufakis’ recent book, Technofeudalism.

moomoo11 6mo ago

what's the point of having 5 people doing 1 person's job though? sounds stupid to me

reactordev 6mo ago
delusions of having AI do those roles and the one person in charge over prompting will know the difference between quality and slop... guess which one I'm betting on?
- moomoo11 6mo ago
  historically speaking, efficiency has always won out for example, the last obvious inefficiency i remember was sys admins. the most worthless, self aggrandizing group of people at any company. got wiped out mostly (the best work for the cloud engineering companies), and i think it was for the better! engineers today handle deployments, and it is far better.
  - Refreeze5224 6mo ago
    > historically speaking, efficiency has always won out Too bad AI is not about efficiency. It's about headcount reduction, which is exactly what Coinbase is doing here. AI just gives them plausible cover.
    - reactordev 6mo ago
      If it was about efficiency, they would be moving faster, not cutting headcount…
      - moomoo11 6mo ago
        Surely there are some insanely smart people amongst the 100s of thousands of laid off supposedly god tier software engineers and adjacent who will start new companies maybe even spawn a new industry? Feels like a problem that will solve itself. There are more cars today than people ever had horses.

ne0flex 6mo ago

"They don't even count people, just see them as numbers to reduce/scale up." I'm remember of when I went out for drinks with a startup consultant friend and she mentioned one founder she spoke with refer to his staff as "biological units" when addressing use of proceeds to hire additional staff.

chamomeal 6mo ago
That is bonkers but I will enjoy calling my friends “biological units” from now on
keyle 6mo ago
This is sickening. People that don't realise that companies are made of people are in for a surprise. Once they go public, they forget that, and it shows. A company_is_ the sum of its people, their talents and aligned behind a mission statement. This is so far misguided, I can't help but think this 'biological unit' of a founder won't last long.

reillyse 6mo ago

[flagged]

paulhebert 6mo ago
What a sad way to think about other people
- claytonjy 6mo ago
  It is, but it’s the only way for a company to succeed and scale over time. A pet approach works well in the early days, but you can’t become a VC-backed success without drastically reducing bus factors throughout the company. That could be an incentive to keep companies small, but high-scale companies do have unique benefits to society.
  - paulhebert 6mo ago
    Employees are people. Not cattle or pets. It doesn't mean you don't ever fire or lay people off. But you treat them as humans.
  - Arainach 6mo ago
    > It is, but it’s the only way for a company to succeed and scale over time This is absolutely not true. It never has been at any point in history. Not even CEOs would claim such a thing until the 1980s, and they were wrong then as now. Even today, Costco and other businesses are thriving. Stop drinking the Koolaid.
  - harimau777 6mo ago
    Sounds like we need to prevent companies from scaling or being too successful.
ambicapter 6mo ago
Absolutely hilarious to optimize for having employees with no discernible edge whatsoever.
6mo ago

khazhoux 6mo ago

> Also, I find it really bizarre that those neo feudal lords see their companies as just a life stock to count. They don't even count people, just see them as numbers to reduce/scale up. Modern tsardom, but instead of being tied via official decree you're now tied by your lifestyle and family. The CEO is looking at revenue and at costs. He can see what will happen if current burn rate isn’t reduced. Doesn’t it come (in part) to numbers, which must be reduced/scaled as needed? (Along with other costs)

harimau777 6mo ago
Brian Armstrong is still a billionaire. So it's not like he lacks alternatives to destroying people's lives.

JeremyNT 6mo ago

Let's be honest, this is a crypto exchange. "Line go up" is the only philosophy these people adhere to. > Also, I find it really bizarre that those neo feudal lords see their companies as just a life stock to count. They don't even count people, just see them as numbers to reduce/scale up. Modern tsardom, but instead of being tied via official decree you're now tied by your lifestyle and family. People don't work somewhere like Coinbase if they're concerned about morality or mitigating the harms done to society.

hocuspocus 6mo ago
Even better, as an exchange, they don't even necessarily care whether the line goes up, down, sideways, or in fucking circles to quote the Wolf of Wall Street. As long as it goes somewhere, and customers are charged fees.
- Auracle 6mo ago
  Eh. Presumably there’s a ton more trading when the market is hot (and a somewhat lesser extent, when in a bi bear market).
  - delis-thumbs-7e 6mo ago
    Bi bears are not hot? I beg to disagree!
l0gicpath 6mo ago
I fail to see how this is specific to a crypto company. You’re drawing a correlation that’s not backed up by any empirical evidence. The GP post describes a common problem in _most_ workplaces in the market today. It’s not specific to crypto, AI, or anything in between.
- cheema33 6mo ago
  > I fail to see how this is specific to a crypto company. It is not specific to a crypto company. But the element of it being a crypto company cannot be ignored. Crypto companies are not like ordinary businesses. They have very unique qualities to them. Same with crypto industry as a whole. Ever been to a crypto conference for example? I have read about and have seen the videos. These things have the highest concentration of the scammers and the gullible any one place.

harshalizee 6mo ago

> - AI-native pods: We’ll be concentrating around AI-native talent who can manage fleets of agents to drive outsized impact. We’ll also be experimenting with reduced pod sizes, including “one person teams” with engineers, designers, and product managers all in one role. And then this person leaves, leaving no documentation or workflow. That's ok though, another ai agent will pick up right back and add slop on top of that until the codebase is a black box interacting with another black box. Oh and this company handles other people's money? That's going to end well.

p-o 6mo ago

> Geeks who didn't even stand near professional sports should really shut up about anything sport related, lol. Reggie Dunlop is ready for duty, he'll get the job done.

ryanisnan 6mo ago

> I would really like to see professional, established coach running around with young prodigies on a peak of their biology. This is a really strange nit. You are aware it's an analogy about skill and role. To reduce this to being about biology and the impacts of senescence on ability is weird, and doesn't really apply here.

machomaster 6mo ago
Analogies have to make sense, to be applicable. In this case it doesn't. E.g. you can't just spew nonsense like "let's work together like a bee hive, everything for the Queen/CEO, no matter the personal cost to an individual" without others pointing out the stupidity of comparing humans with bees. You can't just come up with a desirable adjective and start coming up with random scenarios in which those characteristics may occur. "Let's make the company strong as a gorilla, big as an elephant, smart as Von Neumann, bright as a Sun, as courageous as young guys from youtube fails compilations." This makes no sense whatsoever.
- Dylan16807 6mo ago
  It makes plenty of sense. Player-coaches are a real thing, and in a realm where you're not worried about peak fitness then it's reasonable to demand the coaches become player-coaches.
  - blharr 6mo ago
    Player-coaches are a real thing, but noticeable because of how rare and unusual they are. The problem is that the analogy doesn't even hold up in the source its referring to. Sure, there are good player-coaches, but there are also great pure leaders. There are also very bad player-coaches. A coach who is trying too hard and too deep to be a player when they are less "fit" (or skilled) has historically led to many problems in many cases
    - Dylan16807 6mo ago
      It's not a deep analogy. It's not saying player coaches are inherently better, but in their particular situation they want the managers to be coding. There's not much equivalent to "fit" here, just skill, and they decided they don't want the pure leaders, they want ones that are knuckle deep in the sausage. Good decision or not, that very basic analogy is completely fine.

dakiol 6mo ago

> And AI clowns will cheer and applaud this, not seeing that they're now doing the job of 5(!) people with the same salary. Why is nobody talking about this? Exactly. People are too naive these days

nclin_ 6mo ago

Aahahahaha yes the solidarity of the common memecoiner must not be broken.

tylervigen 6mo ago

The player-coach analogy is very common in role definitions, and it is real concept in sports: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player-coach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player-coach

pyreko 6mo ago
I mean it doesn't really help the analogy when most of the examples in the Wikipedia link mention how it's either not done anymore for that sport or very rare nowadays.

orochimaaru 6mo ago

>>> And AI clowns will cheer and applaud this, not seeing that they're now doing the job of 5(!) people with the same salary. Why is nobody talking about this? I don't think anyone is applauding this. The only people applauding stuff like this are the CEO's of Anthropic (because that means more tokens/profit). Most other CEO's in big tech have toned down the rhetoric big-time. The job of 5 people being done with the same salary is a function of the job market. It's an employers market now. So stuff like this happens. If you had an employee's market this wouldn't happen. fwiw - and this is a separate topic. If health insurance were de-linked from employment most people would flee the job market on their own.

tokioyoyo 6mo ago
> health insurance were de-linked from employment most people would flee the job market That would be visible in all major markets outside of the US, no?
- blharr 6mo ago
  Many major markets outside the US have much stronger work-life balance. Isn't that the takeaway?

duxup 6mo ago

And it's telling that really good players are often terrible coaches / good coaches were not great players. Like the guy who "just gets math" is often NOT a good teacher.

tootie 6mo ago

How many player-coaches have their actually been in any major pro sport in the last 20 years? Zero give or take? The last one I recall is Pete Rose and that was like 1985.

ChaseMeAway 6mo ago

Perhaps it is time to unionize. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unionization_in_the_tech_sector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unionization_in_the_tech_secto...

hadlock 6mo ago
Unions can't fix the fact that crypto didn't survive it's first real Flight to Quality and is suffering against gold.
- ChaseMeAway 6mo ago
  Certainly not, I don’t think anyone would make that claim, seems a bit silly. The benefits of unionization extend beyond this particular situation or company. They can help shift the balance of power back to the employee and help them guard against being squeezed by their employer to produce more or take on more work for less benefits or compensation. American tech workers have been fortunate to avoid such aggressive practices, but working conditions will only deteriorate from here, with workers crushed between LLMs and offshoring.
  - hadlock 6mo ago
    Your comment seems to imply you thought unions would have fixed this specific situation, which is why I felt compelled to respond.

827a 6mo ago

You have to look past literally everything their leadership is saying and at the heart of the matter: This is a dying company, and they physically will not have the capital to pay paychecks if they don't do this. Everything else is window dressing to try to keep investors on-board, but they aren't buying it, and neither should you. The crypto market winter that started in Q4 last year led to Coinbase's ~worst quarter ever ($667M loss). Crypto has not recovered. Coinbase has done nothing to stem the outflows. That same quarter HOOD showed a net profit of $605M; and showed a $346M profit last week. COIN and HOOD are two very similar companies. COIN's earnings are in two days. They preceded the earnings call with layoffs, which is always a bad sign. And HOOD's net income has dropped by like 40%, though they're still at least profitable. You should be prepared for COIN to announce a similar drop; except, COIN wasn't even profitable before. Its going to be a bloodbath.

tverbeure 6mo ago
I see $667M loss numbers in the press, but I also see a positive P/E ratio? How does that work? Edit: it’s because the loss is an accounting loss due to mark to market adjustment, while the company is operationally profitable. I assume that’s still no great, but not nearly as dire as the reported loss suggests, and not a sign of a dying company.
- simpsond 6mo ago
  P/E ratios are usually based on last 12 months, so E = sum of EPS over last 4 quarters.
echelon 6mo ago
Almost every "AI washing", except for the firms that are spending massively on data center capex (Microsoft, Meta), is coming from a company that is hurting. The macro is not great right now. The world economy is on a razor's edge. If things unwind, we could all be in for a world of economic hurt. There aren't many levers to pull us out this time around, either. Crypto is in an even worse state. Investors want liquidity for the uncertainty. Plus there's the looming Q-day that keeps getting pushed earlier and earlier by the experts while we're also inching nearer and nearer on the clock.

spamizbad 6mo ago

Yeah my experience in engineering management: Very easy to be a "player coach" when the team was small, like when I had 4 direct reports. As soon as I had 9 (in an org with no TPM/product) my full time job was wearing 3 hats, and maybe 3 hours a week were spent on actual pure technical tasks (mostly scut work to unblock team members after-hours)

smrtinsert 6mo ago

Can I push to production anytime I want? I can run 10000 agents then no problem. I'll just move fast and break things and I'll get massive cheers because its AI.

blharr 6mo ago
You joke, but in a way this is the natural trajectory technology has been heading. AI has just increased the magnitude of it

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

Rapzid 6mo ago

Crypto was always a clown show. Not saying everyone working the crypto/Web 3.0 was a clown just.. This tone-def message coming out of the waning crypto industry is nothing more than an eye-roll.

asta123 6mo ago

> I would really like to see professional, established coach running around with young prodigies on a peak of their biology. Experienced high IQ player in a team sport could also be considered player-coach. Players like Lebron James or Nikola Jokic come to mind.

muldvarp 6mo ago

I don't get it either. LLMs put the enshittification of software engineering into overdrive. The job is less fun (reviewing AI slop, sometimes even produced by entirely non-tech people like managers), the expectation of increased productivity, the expectation that we can now do the job of multiple people and salaries will decrease as well. I don't understand how so many software engineers I know cheer for this technology. Do they not see that this will drastically change their lives for the worse? I'm in Europe, none of them has ever earned "fuck you" money.

jimbob45 6mo ago

I would really like to see professional, established coach running around with young prodigies on a peak of their biology. Bill Russell is (was) the guy you’re looking for and he is arguably the greatest basketball player of all time.

digitaltrees 6mo ago

These people should leave and start their own companies: AI-native pods: We’ll be concentrating around AI-native talent who can manage fleets of agents to drive outsized impact. We’ll also be experimenting with reduced pod sizes, including “one person teams” with engineers, designers, and product managers all in one role. F these leaders.

rsync 6mo ago

"I would really like to see professional, established coach running around with young prodigies on a peak of their biology." Well today is your lucky day! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NBA_player-coaches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NBA_player-coaches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_player-managers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Rose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Rose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player-coach#Player-coaches_in_ice_hockey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player-coach#Player-coaches_in... "Though primarily known as a dominant forward "Mr. Hockey" for the Detroit Red Wings, he came out of retirement in 1973 at age 45 to play with his sons and took on coaching responsibilities with Houston."[1] [1] Gordie Howe, playing on the same NHL team as his two sons.

xnx 6mo ago

If you don't like "player-coach", "quarterback" can be a better substitute.

skeptic_ai 6mo ago

But right now you also do the job of 10s compared to x years ago.

dchftcs 6mo ago

A major problem with player-coach is that it makes the manager compete with the IC. If we solve that it'd be more workable, if not it'd erode teams from the inside.

mvkel 6mo ago

> that they're now doing the job of 5(!) people with the same salary. The Marxist view of everything valuable being a product of a person's labor is tired and debunked.