7 ms·

> Leaders will own much more, with as many as 15+ direct reports. [...] Every leader at Coinbase must also be a strong and active individual contributor. Manage

by kelnos 6mo ago

> Leaders will own much more, with as many as 15+ direct reports. [...] 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. Oof. So not only are they giving their remaining managers more reports, but those managers will be expected to do lots of other, non-management work. Sure, nothing can go wrong there... Even if they didn't have non-managerial work to do, 15+ direct reports is just too many. They're not going to get to spend enough time meeting each report's needs, not a chance. I think as layoffs emails go, it's a pretty good one (as the current top comment points out[0]), but boy, I would not want to be working at a company like what Coinbase is turning into. Non-technical teams shipping code to prod? No thanks. "AI-native pods"? No thanks. I do like the idea of one-person teams; I was at my most productive when I was in that kind of role (though I'm not sure my experience generalizes). I get that companies are still struggling to figure out how to adapt to LLMs, but... damn. Pretty solid severance package for the folks being laid off, though. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48021843 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48021843

muzani 6mo ago
This jumped out at me right away too. What happened to the days when a dedicated manager would manage 8 reports? What now? AI is going to double the communication bandwidth with these reports and further double the free time they have? I do think the most efficient form of team is a "cell" of three people. One is a little unstable.
- CamouflagedKiwi 6mo ago
  > What happened to the days when a dedicated manager would manage 8 reports? Cheap money went away which caused companies to start asking hard questions about productivity and how much those dedicated managers were contributing.
  - dormento 6mo ago
    Then there's the convenient answer of "AI made me do it", to which investors are somehow really empathetic... feels like every company CEO is operating on the mindset of "its gonna hit the fan any moment now", except they're the ones holding the fan.
- Spooky23 6mo ago
  Flattening is a management fad right now. Loser leaders want to be like Elon or whatever. It is pretty stupid and pathetic tbh, but easier than making an effective organization.
- bluerooibos 6mo ago
  Just curious if there's a reason you mentioned 8 or if that's an arbitrary number? Was 8 an industry norm/upper limit at one point?
  - elros 6mo ago
    Perhaps related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus...
    - reverius42 6mo ago
      See also https://martinfowler.com/bliki/TwoPizzaTeam.html https://martinfowler.com/bliki/TwoPizzaTeam.html
smugglerFlynn 6mo ago
> They're not going to get to spend enough time meeting each report's needs, not a chance. What needs? If you squeeze people hard enough there are no needs anymore, only responsibilities and urgent+important backlogs that have no bottom. Welcome to 2026.
- BadBadJellyBean 6mo ago
  If everything is high prio nothing is and if the backlog is always full it's not a problem if it fills up even more. If I am at the assembly line, I am doing my darnedest not to make it run faster. One can only sprint so long.
  - smugglerFlynn 6mo ago
    It is not a problem if you are an assembly line robot making motions. People, however, are not robots. They get held accountable by their higher-ups for delivering on these (often nonsensical) priorities, they risk getting fired when expectations are not met, and high uncertainty of faulty planning systems like that is extremely stressful in itself.
    - BadBadJellyBean 6mo ago
      Expectations will be raised until they can't be met anymore. There is always a ceiling. It is on every single worker to make sure that they don't please the system beyond what is reasonable. Often the problem is people who overwork themselves to please and set the bar over the reasonable amount of work. Still when the majority does not raise their output to an unhealthy amount that must be accepted as a ceiling.
      - smugglerFlynn 6mo ago
        I think you are mixing cause and effect in real life dynamics. In real organizations people tend to raise their performance to the [often unreasonable] level of expectations, even when situation stops being sustainable long-term for the whole group. Suggesting that people should simply avoid overperforming assumes a level of control they don’t really have. What do you think will actually happen at Coinbase now? Is it more likely that people will start saying hard “no,” or that they would stretch to meet the new expectations despite the personal cost?
siren2026 6mo ago
Or maybe we should go back to what it was before Google and big $$$ tech decided that if you were a "manager" you shouldn't contribute technically. Being a manager now means a bunch of busy work talking to other managers and weekly 1:1s. There is a ton that has been written about the managerial class. Producing nothing, but for sure making themselves look self-important. Before that the manager was essentially the best engineer in the team (or the one that wanted to get promoted). Being a manger meant you were respected directly for your skills and you were expected to still be a full time contributor. Directors meant you were one of the best ICs out there. Now, being a manager or a director means you sometimes did an MBA in an unrelated field. This brought a ton of politics, nonsense meetings (because the most visible output for managers is more meetings where they can posture). Let's go back to what it used to be. We don't need weekly 1:1s to check on feelings. We don't need a full layer of managers syncing with each others and taking political decisions that will mainly advance them. We don't need another layer of gatekeepers. I'm not saying all managers are bad, but this charade has been pushed a bit too far.
- skippyboxedhero 6mo ago
  As a data point, I work at a US company that ended up in this place and the same thing is happening. In my BU there were directors with 2 direct reports. Even at the next level up, the number of non-IC directs is only high single digits. There are many managers who were already engaging technically with the product (not PRs but playing an active role in planning work) and they have no idea what directors are actually doing...aside from attending meetings with other directors. Almost all decision-making capacity has been moved outside of teams which has resulted in almost no actual work (because everything needs to be cleared by someone with no engagement with product) and people leaving (because promo decisions are made by people who have no idea what anyone is contributing, the worst ICs are the only ones they can retain ofc). It is a terrible environment to work in. I don't necessarily think the manager should be best IC but definitely someone who is genuinely talented with sufficient scope and responsibility to make good decisions/add value for ICs. There are way too many passengers today. Also, this is true of higher-level ICs. At my work, they have no real engagement with product so have influence through ambiguous statements about the general direction that get passed around like the word of God. None of these decisions, so far, have been helpful or relevant.
aprilthird2021 6mo ago
Also, why use the analogy of player-coaches? How many successful player-coaches are there in the big leagues? There's a reason it's very uncommon ...
- hvb2 6mo ago
  This ain't about sports. In most sports you've retired by the age of 40 and most coaches are older than that. I would say that's the reason it's common in sports, but that's the exception not the rule
  - aprilthird2021 6mo ago
    Then why did they use the player-coach analogy if it's not about sports...
- hansmayer 6mo ago
  Its because when something is illogical, these "brains" retort to using some kind of a streched out metaphor which dumbs it down and makes it make sense, to them at least. So they invent the stupidities like treating a team as a Navy-SEAL unit or a sports team or... coming up with something like "player-coach"...
dataengineer56 6mo ago
A 30 min 1-1 per week per report would be a full working day. Never mind that if you're an IC then you'll also be expected to support other people using your code, as well as analysing and approving decisions for your reports.
- philipallstar 6mo ago
  It might be better to have 45 minutes every 2 weeks with reports, which is 1.5 days every 2 weeks. Then probably another 2 days every two weeks for sideways and upwards meetings, 2 days for ad hoc planning and design work, and 4 days for coding and reviewing. Hope they're well paid!
  - hilariously 6mo ago
    And that assumes nothing unplanned happens and there's nothing that expands in any domain. It's just a way to burn out everyone and create a culture of toxic positivity because you are gonna get fired otherwise.
- t43562 6mo ago
  30 minutes of chat is one thing but one might expect work to come out of it such as things you have to do for or about that person. IMO it's just efficient to use any excuse to say "what's up, how did the house move go?" or whatever and make sure that you do that with everyone and that you behave in such a way that they don't fear or hate to have a 5 minute chat and know you are ready to listen if they want to say more. i.e. to take an actual interest in each person.
aboodman 6mo ago
lol I read "as many as 15+ direct reports" and thought it was hilariously low. My manager at google had like 50+ directs in 2010. And he was the best boss I've ever had. Popular conception of what a manager is is wildly unambitious. Weekly 1:1 is performative and useless. It's not what makes a good manager. What makes a good manager is: * Having excellent domain knowledge and judgement * Having the respect of the team, to settle disputes * Solving problems when needed * Hiring and retaining an excellent team * Picking the right things to work on ... etc ... If a manager is doing these things well I don't need a standing meeting at all. Or we can meet quarterly to check in. Email is a thing.
- aboodman 6mo ago
  I mean I have 7 reports right now and we're a startup. And fully remote. And I'm still contributing as an IC too.
  - AdamN 6mo ago
    A manager who is also contributing code is almost an entirely different role than a manager who is not contributing code. Typically the former should not exist in a smaller org and in a larger org it makes sense to shift to the latter because there's enough non-code work to do that you might as well dedicate whole people to the task. Different roles though.
- jychang 6mo ago
  This is stupid and irrational. It's like seeing someone eat 100 cakes, and then assuming everyone can do it. And then getting diabetes afterwards. It seems quite counterproductive to assume such a system would scale to everyone else, or that everyone else could possibly implement this. This is cowboy levels of human resource management, not careful engineering.
  - aboodman 6mo ago
    I mean a branching factor of 50 vs a branching factor of 7 is a massive difference. A team of 50 can either be run by one manager and a two-level tree or like 8 managers (!!) and a three-level tree. Think about the difference in execution (and expense) in these two companies. If you can do it w/ the first model why on earth would you not?
suslik 6mo ago
I was a manager of 12 for several months and that was really difficult. I got a severe burnout, even though I had no IC responsibilities. I cannot imagine how could I dedicate enough time to my team if I did.
mchusma 6mo ago
I do think that if LLMs are the equivalent of more employees, then you'd expect people to do more managerial work and less individual contribution. Certainly, that's what I see in my day-to-day.
- panarky 6mo ago
  When your job becomes managing a fleet of agents, with all the design, planning, coordination, supervision and evaluation that requires, is that "individual contribution" or "managerial work"?
gamblor956 6mo ago
Earlier in my career I was a manager of a team of 12 direct reports (non-tech white-collar industry) and it wasn't that difficult to do on top of my normal workload. Of course, as a manager my normal workload was reduced to account for the managerial tasks, because that's what most industries outside of tech do.
datahack 6mo ago
Isn’t this just an attempt to build a two pizza team (across the company)? Or the whole “parking lot” philosophy that built Patagonia. Don’t know if it will work with this weird arbitrary cap, because 15 is fine for some things and way too many for others. Mandates do be like that.
matrix87 6mo ago
I think the point is to push people out primarily. This gives them a narrative for doing that by asking for something which isn't doable. Then middle management applies the expectation unevenly to people below them based off of political favor.

by kelnos 6mo ago

muzani 6mo ago

This jumped out at me right away too. What happened to the days when a dedicated manager would manage 8 reports? What now? AI is going to double the communication bandwidth with these reports and further double the free time they have? I do think the most efficient form of team is a "cell" of three people. One is a little unstable.

CamouflagedKiwi 6mo ago
> What happened to the days when a dedicated manager would manage 8 reports? Cheap money went away which caused companies to start asking hard questions about productivity and how much those dedicated managers were contributing.
- dormento 6mo ago
  Then there's the convenient answer of "AI made me do it", to which investors are somehow really empathetic... feels like every company CEO is operating on the mindset of "its gonna hit the fan any moment now", except they're the ones holding the fan.
Spooky23 6mo ago
Flattening is a management fad right now. Loser leaders want to be like Elon or whatever. It is pretty stupid and pathetic tbh, but easier than making an effective organization.
bluerooibos 6mo ago
Just curious if there's a reason you mentioned 8 or if that's an arbitrary number? Was 8 an industry norm/upper limit at one point?
- elros 6mo ago
  Perhaps related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus...
  - reverius42 6mo ago
    See also https://martinfowler.com/bliki/TwoPizzaTeam.html https://martinfowler.com/bliki/TwoPizzaTeam.html

smugglerFlynn 6mo ago

> They're not going to get to spend enough time meeting each report's needs, not a chance. What needs? If you squeeze people hard enough there are no needs anymore, only responsibilities and urgent+important backlogs that have no bottom. Welcome to 2026.

BadBadJellyBean 6mo ago
If everything is high prio nothing is and if the backlog is always full it's not a problem if it fills up even more. If I am at the assembly line, I am doing my darnedest not to make it run faster. One can only sprint so long.
- smugglerFlynn 6mo ago
  It is not a problem if you are an assembly line robot making motions. People, however, are not robots. They get held accountable by their higher-ups for delivering on these (often nonsensical) priorities, they risk getting fired when expectations are not met, and high uncertainty of faulty planning systems like that is extremely stressful in itself.
  - BadBadJellyBean 6mo ago
    Expectations will be raised until they can't be met anymore. There is always a ceiling. It is on every single worker to make sure that they don't please the system beyond what is reasonable. Often the problem is people who overwork themselves to please and set the bar over the reasonable amount of work. Still when the majority does not raise their output to an unhealthy amount that must be accepted as a ceiling.
    - smugglerFlynn 6mo ago
      I think you are mixing cause and effect in real life dynamics. In real organizations people tend to raise their performance to the [often unreasonable] level of expectations, even when situation stops being sustainable long-term for the whole group. Suggesting that people should simply avoid overperforming assumes a level of control they don’t really have. What do you think will actually happen at Coinbase now? Is it more likely that people will start saying hard “no,” or that they would stretch to meet the new expectations despite the personal cost?

siren2026 6mo ago

Or maybe we should go back to what it was before Google and big $$$ tech decided that if you were a "manager" you shouldn't contribute technically. Being a manager now means a bunch of busy work talking to other managers and weekly 1:1s. There is a ton that has been written about the managerial class. Producing nothing, but for sure making themselves look self-important. Before that the manager was essentially the best engineer in the team (or the one that wanted to get promoted). Being a manger meant you were respected directly for your skills and you were expected to still be a full time contributor. Directors meant you were one of the best ICs out there. Now, being a manager or a director means you sometimes did an MBA in an unrelated field. This brought a ton of politics, nonsense meetings (because the most visible output for managers is more meetings where they can posture). Let's go back to what it used to be. We don't need weekly 1:1s to check on feelings. We don't need a full layer of managers syncing with each others and taking political decisions that will mainly advance them. We don't need another layer of gatekeepers. I'm not saying all managers are bad, but this charade has been pushed a bit too far.

skippyboxedhero 6mo ago
As a data point, I work at a US company that ended up in this place and the same thing is happening. In my BU there were directors with 2 direct reports. Even at the next level up, the number of non-IC directs is only high single digits. There are many managers who were already engaging technically with the product (not PRs but playing an active role in planning work) and they have no idea what directors are actually doing...aside from attending meetings with other directors. Almost all decision-making capacity has been moved outside of teams which has resulted in almost no actual work (because everything needs to be cleared by someone with no engagement with product) and people leaving (because promo decisions are made by people who have no idea what anyone is contributing, the worst ICs are the only ones they can retain ofc). It is a terrible environment to work in. I don't necessarily think the manager should be best IC but definitely someone who is genuinely talented with sufficient scope and responsibility to make good decisions/add value for ICs. There are way too many passengers today. Also, this is true of higher-level ICs. At my work, they have no real engagement with product so have influence through ambiguous statements about the general direction that get passed around like the word of God. None of these decisions, so far, have been helpful or relevant.

aprilthird2021 6mo ago

Also, why use the analogy of player-coaches? How many successful player-coaches are there in the big leagues? There's a reason it's very uncommon ...

hvb2 6mo ago
This ain't about sports. In most sports you've retired by the age of 40 and most coaches are older than that. I would say that's the reason it's common in sports, but that's the exception not the rule
- aprilthird2021 6mo ago
  Then why did they use the player-coach analogy if it's not about sports...
hansmayer 6mo ago
Its because when something is illogical, these "brains" retort to using some kind of a streched out metaphor which dumbs it down and makes it make sense, to them at least. So they invent the stupidities like treating a team as a Navy-SEAL unit or a sports team or... coming up with something like "player-coach"...

dataengineer56 6mo ago

A 30 min 1-1 per week per report would be a full working day. Never mind that if you're an IC then you'll also be expected to support other people using your code, as well as analysing and approving decisions for your reports.

philipallstar 6mo ago
It might be better to have 45 minutes every 2 weeks with reports, which is 1.5 days every 2 weeks. Then probably another 2 days every two weeks for sideways and upwards meetings, 2 days for ad hoc planning and design work, and 4 days for coding and reviewing. Hope they're well paid!
- hilariously 6mo ago
  And that assumes nothing unplanned happens and there's nothing that expands in any domain. It's just a way to burn out everyone and create a culture of toxic positivity because you are gonna get fired otherwise.
t43562 6mo ago
30 minutes of chat is one thing but one might expect work to come out of it such as things you have to do for or about that person. IMO it's just efficient to use any excuse to say "what's up, how did the house move go?" or whatever and make sure that you do that with everyone and that you behave in such a way that they don't fear or hate to have a 5 minute chat and know you are ready to listen if they want to say more. i.e. to take an actual interest in each person.

aboodman 6mo ago

lol I read "as many as 15+ direct reports" and thought it was hilariously low. My manager at google had like 50+ directs in 2010. And he was the best boss I've ever had. Popular conception of what a manager is is wildly unambitious. Weekly 1:1 is performative and useless. It's not what makes a good manager. What makes a good manager is: * Having excellent domain knowledge and judgement * Having the respect of the team, to settle disputes * Solving problems when needed * Hiring and retaining an excellent team * Picking the right things to work on ... etc ... If a manager is doing these things well I don't need a standing meeting at all. Or we can meet quarterly to check in. Email is a thing.

aboodman 6mo ago
I mean I have 7 reports right now and we're a startup. And fully remote. And I'm still contributing as an IC too.
- AdamN 6mo ago
  A manager who is also contributing code is almost an entirely different role than a manager who is not contributing code. Typically the former should not exist in a smaller org and in a larger org it makes sense to shift to the latter because there's enough non-code work to do that you might as well dedicate whole people to the task. Different roles though.
jychang 6mo ago
This is stupid and irrational. It's like seeing someone eat 100 cakes, and then assuming everyone can do it. And then getting diabetes afterwards. It seems quite counterproductive to assume such a system would scale to everyone else, or that everyone else could possibly implement this. This is cowboy levels of human resource management, not careful engineering.
- aboodman 6mo ago
  I mean a branching factor of 50 vs a branching factor of 7 is a massive difference. A team of 50 can either be run by one manager and a two-level tree or like 8 managers (!!) and a three-level tree. Think about the difference in execution (and expense) in these two companies. If you can do it w/ the first model why on earth would you not?

suslik 6mo ago

I was a manager of 12 for several months and that was really difficult. I got a severe burnout, even though I had no IC responsibilities. I cannot imagine how could I dedicate enough time to my team if I did.

mchusma 6mo ago

I do think that if LLMs are the equivalent of more employees, then you'd expect people to do more managerial work and less individual contribution. Certainly, that's what I see in my day-to-day.

panarky 6mo ago
When your job becomes managing a fleet of agents, with all the design, planning, coordination, supervision and evaluation that requires, is that "individual contribution" or "managerial work"?

gamblor956 6mo ago

Earlier in my career I was a manager of a team of 12 direct reports (non-tech white-collar industry) and it wasn't that difficult to do on top of my normal workload. Of course, as a manager my normal workload was reduced to account for the managerial tasks, because that's what most industries outside of tech do.

datahack 6mo ago

Isn’t this just an attempt to build a two pizza team (across the company)? Or the whole “parking lot” philosophy that built Patagonia. Don’t know if it will work with this weird arbitrary cap, because 15 is fine for some things and way too many for others. Mandates do be like that.

matrix87 6mo ago

I think the point is to push people out primarily. This gives them a narrative for doing that by asking for something which isn't doable. Then middle management applies the expectation unevenly to people below them based off of political favor.