Culture at Coinbase | Hacker News Reader

Culture at Coinbase

blog.coinbase.com

13 pointsdsr1215 comments

Could anyone have guessed what company this was for if the name was anonymized? No? Then it's probably corporate drivel.

What company doesn't like to pretend they only hire top talent?

Yes it could be any company.

But I think sometimes it helps that out of sea of litany of HR or corporate speak, some are documented.

Documentation helps in conflict resolution.. "We should wait for some more time to get the right talent, till then let's shoot a mail to Mgr asking her to defer the project".

I worked for a big consulting firm and stupidly raised my hand in a regional rollout meeting for our new “strategy.”

I got like five minutes from a few partners saying that it was actually unique and no one could replicate because our people are so awesome.

That helped form my idea that these things are ritual, not content. It’s just about focusing attention and building community, not actually meaning anything. These are corporate mcguffins.

They are useful for trying to find meaningful work as people who say these things are probably “not cool” or are sacrificing their “cool” toward some greater purpose (eg, money, fame, martyrdom).

Maybe you couldn't distinguish between Valley tech firms from reading this document, but if you expand to all companies then yeah actually most of them wouldn't ever explicitly say, on their blog, that they will systematically fire people for mere low performance. Most executives would rather die than discuss firing people, let alone making it a point of pride.

Just to play devils advocate here:

>We're direct and succinct

You're loud and obnoxious.

>We focus on the 20% of the work that will get us 80% of the impact

You half-arse everything.

> We seek to improve all aspects of our company even in ways that are not explicitly part of our job

You have poorly defined roles and lack focus

>We take extraordinary measures to have exceptional people in every seat

You're delusionally egotistical and that's what you're looking for in your interview process

I'm not saying that these are 100% what is happening at coinbase, but some of these phrases just come across as a total lack of self-awareness and a bit toxic. Is taking time in your article about culture to detail just how willing you are to fire people showing positive energy? I don't think so.

It's also kind of funny because the culture at an organisation is never what the CEO thinks that the culture is. "Isn't it great I threaten to fire people!" "Yes Boss, please don't fire me"

I don't think the goal here is to create positive energy. A company is intended to create happy customers and via that, money, "positive energy" for employees is nice to have and may be an important ingredient of that, but it's a means to an end and not an end in and of itself.

Most obviously, one way to create positive energy is to never criticize or fire anyone. But that leads to dysfunctional organizations.

Don’t argue with me - positive energy is literally what their CEO said was one of their core values

That's true, I had failed to notice the final paragraphs and was focusing on the earlier part.

Remind me of Amazon’s leadership principle. Isn’t that generally considered a bit toxic?

> Unremarkable performance gets a generous severance package

> We are a winning team, not a family

I find these super unpalatable

To be fair, If the CEO tells me “We are a family”, I won’t believe it either

Why?

Because it feels like they don't care about you and will immediately take you out if you show an inch of unproductivity. And I'm guessing we all know the outcome of such type of pressure.

Yeah, but why would they —- tons of people just got liquid, and they are essentially realizing relatively large compensations over the next several years. At the same time, there’s an influx of new cheaper hires (WRT equity), and a lot of demand to work there. Why are they going to continue paying their workforce with such a disadvantageous distribution when they can adjust toward the mean? Now they can easily replace both groups of people due to demand to work there.

That's true of most companies. Saying that you care about your people doesn't make it true.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com