htormey

Well yeah, that’s what they think the candidates pay level will be. If the candidate doesn’t perform well in the interview they won’t get that offer.

No. This is well paid but not out of the ordinary for someone working at a top tier tech company in NYC/SF Bay Area. Think Facebook, Apple, etc. see https://www.levels.fyi/ for levels and comparison.

Some of those companies are doing hiring freezes right now but many are not.

Salary bands are adjusted within the USA by zones where NYC/SF/Seattle are zone 1, zone 2 is 90% of base, zone 3 is 85%. With equity component staying the same.

Europe/Brazil/Canada are on a totally different lower pay scale.

The macro economic setup doesn’t look good for small tech or growth stocks in general. Big tech I’m less worried about.

We have central banks rising interest rates to fight inflation, caused by wars and massive monetary and fiscal stimulus to fight Covid. these hikes impact valuation multiples used to value tech and unprofitable startups.

We have a supply chain shock caused by war in the Ukraine, the aftermath of Covid and Chinas second lock down which could lead to stagflation.

The only silver lining I see is that big tech prints money, is in many areas essential for cost reduction and has excellent balance sheets.

In summary Im more worried about the general economy tear down than the tech tear down, especially in the later half of this year and 2023.

I work at coinbase. We have standardized salary bands, this is just the salary at your level (comp plus equity, not sure if bonus is included). They are letting you know this up front to not waste your time.

One other thing that’s worth noting is that each year they give you a new equity grant. That grant I believe is priced based on the stock price over a period of 30 days in the first quarter.

Handy for limiting your downside if you are bearish about the economy.

Yep. That was my plan, do the cheapest best course that would get me an F1 (student visa) then do an internship with OPT and switch to full time.

Agreed, re FAANG or other companies that have a USA presence.

I hate tech interviews. If it’s any consolation, I remember when I interviewed at Apple, I failed 10 interviews for multiple teams over 2 years before I got my first job.

This is very similar to my story. I moved to America from Ireland in 2007 after graduating with a degree in cs. I did a year in grad school before working in tech in the Bay Area for more than a decade, including at two companies from FAANG. I also ran a consulting business and for the last 3 years worked at Coinbase.

I don’t consider myself in anyway special. I know many people from Europe who went down this path.

The sad reality is that in Europe software engineers don’t get paid very well relative to the value they create. It’s a lot better today in my home country Ireland than it was a decade or so ago but salaries and opportunities are still nowhere near as good as in the USA.

Unless you are very lucky, if you want to make a lot of money and work with the top people in your profession, you will have to move. This will likely involve risk and personal sacrifice. If I was to distill this guys journey into a high level formula it would be as follows:

1) Pick a fast growing industry you are interested in. 2) Move to the area which pays you the most and where the most opportunities are. 3) work with top people and adapt your career based on what you see them do. 4) live reasonably, save and invest.

I see a lot of people from Europe in the comments saying this is unrealistic or that it would be hard to replicate this success doing the same thing today. I disagree.

While the specifics of the plan might be different for todays 20 year olds. I.e specialize in cryptocurrency or machine learning or fintech. The overall approach is still valid, it just involves a lot of sacrifices and risks you may not be willing to take.

Can you explain why you think these integrations violate the Clayton act (I.e are unfair competition)?

Google exists and Amazon and Microsoft have growing advertising businesses. All of which have vast throves of integrated consumer data.

Sadly apple are not angels either when it comes to scanning photos:

https://www.pcmag.com/news/apple-to-delay-implementing-anti-...

I am an EM at Coinbase hiring for the borrow & lend team. I am hiring for react native, react frontend, backend (go/aws), design and product. Happy to refer people in for other roles at the company.

We are hiring sf/NYC and we are remotely friends for anyone in the USA and Canada. Email me

Harry.tormey@coinbase.com

Yeah sure but would that be worse than the other crashes that have happened over the life of BTC and other crypto assets? What kind of draw down would you expect and why?

I think it’s unlikely that this would happen to all stable coins. So what would this scenario look like if USDC or DAI still existed?

People, mainly in Asia, use tether where trading crypto with fiat currencies is either prohibited or very difficult, whereas it remains marginal in markets such as the United States.

I.e places with exchanges that don’t have good fiat rails for various reasons.

https://www.cryptovantage.com/news/why-is-tether-so-popular-...

I assume these people don’t stay in tether long, they just use it like a checking account when they cash in and out of positions.

I also assume that if tether went away tomorrow, people would either use another stablecoin like USDC and if all stablecoins went away, they would just trade in and out of btc.

Also, are these figures factoring in things landlords are doing now to sweeten the deal without dropping the per month/sq price?

I.e giving months away for free or other incentives like that? Anecdotally I’ve heard office rent is way down as well.

Oakland night life isn’t that bad :)

Theirs an image in the article that compares business and performance metrics before and after:

https://miro.medium.com/max/7200/0*L6GxhXWiTckqwMYL

Ratings and some perf metrics(start time) improved, no regressions.

Doesn’t that depend on the age of the building? I thought rent control was 1970s and earlier? That being said, SF is generally very tenant/sub tenant friendly in its laws.

Yeah, stuff like leveling and role changes become issues mainly at companies with large engineering teams. I.e FAANG, MSFT, etc.

In my opinion the main reasons to work at a startup are A) it’s growing ridiculously fast and you expect your equity to be worth something. B) your learning. I.e you like the technology or the space or your new to tech. C) you like the people.

Hence retention and recruiting for startups is a totally different ball game.

Other small non venture backed tech companies have a different set of challenges in this regard.

Making promotion the only way to get a bump in salary can cause all sorts of problem when the responsibilities and requirements of the role change at the next level.

As an example, at big companies staff level engineer is more oriented around writing/reviewing and building consensus about technologies. This is a very different role to the level below and someone who is great at that role may not be great as a staff level engineer. They do however deliver a lot of value to the company.

Having a way to reward someone who’s doing an amazing job at their current level helps avoid this situation. I.e inventing projects to justify promotion to staff level engineer.

In most companies, the level below staff is a terminal position. I.e their isn’t necessarily an expectation that you need to get promoted to the next level. I think Facebook got the formula right with its performance based bonus that allows employees who go above and beyond to be rewarded.

This is a similar situation to when companies had career tracks that forced really good engineers to get promoted into management in order to get more comp. Just because you are an amazing engineer doesn’t mean you would be a good people manager.

Also it can potentially reduce the client side logic needed to stitch said 4 requests together.

This can be a big complexity/bug preventer for multi client Apps (web, mobile, desktop).

Well I imagine it’s a function of the stage of companies the VC’s are investing in.

If you are an early stage investor and you are writing lots of checks to cast a wide net do you really have the time to do that level of due diligence? Presumably a quality founding team and a decent demo is enough to tick that box.

If you are a series A or above investor, does it really do anything to provide this advise after the fact?

I image that the assumption is that if the company is successful you can afford to bring in more seasoned people to fix things. At least that’s what I’ve seen on my travels in the Bay Area.

You are totally correct. Beyond a certain level of due diligence it doesn’t matter.

“ Investors need to start asking more probing questions about how organizations develop and deploy applications. Perhaps if the money becomes contingent, people will start to give a shit about the engineering quality”

Why? Most companies fail due to a lack of product market fit not because they picked the wrong software stack. Hence investors time is better spent on company outcomes and not micromanaging whether the backend team is building using Java or Rust or whatever’s trendy.

Just a reminder that Coinbase custody is a different product to the app you install from the App Store. The faq you posted I believe refers to the latter.

If you are a large institutional investor you would likely use this and not a normal coinbase account.

I don’t work on custody but they may have a different insurance policy and or do things on a case by case basis: http://custody.coinbase.com/faq

“ What storage systems does your insurance cover? - Coinbase’s policy covers all storage methods. This includes hot, warm and cold storage. Read more about our insurance policy here or ask the Custody team for more information.”

If you are interested in learning more here is a good article on insurance and cryptocurrency:

https://blog.coinbase.com/on-insurance-and-cryptocurrency-d6...

Has Michael said that micro strategy self custody publicly? If so where? Most institutional holders don’t self custody their own crypto for a variety of reasons ranging from governance (who signs off on coins going where, especially if Michael were to die), security and the ability to get the best price for a trade (read up on coinbases tagomi acquisition).

Disclaimer I work at coinbase on a team related to borrowing.

Re your point about hacking. They likely don’t self custody their own Bitcoin as they used Coinbase to purchase it and they have an excellent institutional custody solution with insurance and cold wallet storage:

https://www.coindesk.com/microstrategy-used-coinbase-for-mas...

Yeah I could totally see that. It’s a conversation me and my wife have been having a lot lately. I’m thinking about moving out of SF myself. Probably Oregon or Washington but we haven’t made any decisions yet. We want to see how the world looks after the elections in November.

I manage a team of 10 people in San Francisco and confirm a similar pattern. 8 of them have moved out of their SF apartments either to move somewhere else more spacious or in with their parents outside of the Bay Area.

Other people I know at my company have renegotiated rents. Most but not all are open to the idea of moving back depending on how things play out over the next 6-12 months.

I think their is still a big career advantage to being in the Bay Area due to the big tech companies having offices here and face time being important for career advancement.

I would expect somewhat of a swing back away from remote work when we get a vaccine. That being said, I think the wild card is city/state taxes in the aftermath of all this.

Okay, given that the original comment that prompted this thread was:

“ The WH is finally getting to its main goal, reducing immigration overall.”

Do you agree or disagree that discouraging foreign students will have an impact (even a small one) on immigration? It seems like it will.

Correct. However many companies will hire someone on a OPT and then apply for a H1B. If you don’t have OPT they probably won’t go through the hassle of sponsoring you for a visa if they want you in a US office.

3 years of OPT gives a companies lawyers plenty of chances to apply, get rejected and then reapply. This is the case with my company right now. I.e the first step in our hiring processes is asking if you are authorized to work in the USA? A no answer equals likely rejection.

OPT increases the probability that you will be able to get a h1b.

If you reduce the number of students you narrow the funnel.

It’s not about skipping lines. A tech master’s degree allows you to get a job prior to them applying for a h1b via the OPT program. Without that most companies that don’t have overseas offices won’t hire you if you are from countries like India or China.

I think these days a masters in CS or a related field allows you up to 3 years of OPT. I.e multiple chances to apply for a H1B visa while working legally in the USA.

For more context: Currently theirs about 1 million f1 students in the USA and about ~500k h1b holders. Roughly 223k applied and got OPT in 2019. More figures can be found here:

https://www.cato.org/blog/facts-about-optional-practical-tra...