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Comment by fshbbdssbbgdd | Hacker News Reader

I think the reality is that Coinbase is so obviously a rocketship that the CEO could say anything and they’d have no trouble with recruitment or retention. Existing employees have stock grants worth millions, and new employees are getting great offers. The people who will take these jobs are generally going to be bullish on crypto. If you expect crypto to become a bigger piece of the economy in the future, it would be crazy to give up the opportunity to own a bunch of Coinbase stock. I’d spend a year listening to Brian Armstrong tell me that my thetans need adjusting for 5000 shares of Coinbase.

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Coinbase has an rsu policy where you are not granted some number of shares each year but rather some dollar amount. So if my offer letter says I get $50k worth of rsus each year, and then Coinbase’s stock increases 10x, i’m still just going to receive 50k

If you are bullish on crypto, 50k of Coinbase stocks should have a significant pay off, like buying 50k of Google stock a decade ago.

Your beliefs about the value of pog stocks has little bearing on the value of pog stocks.

Is that not the case for most companies? At FAAMG I've seen yearly stock grants be in dollar figures and not number of shares.

They are expressed in dollars, but converted to stocks at the grant-time value, and vested in number of stocks.

Coinbase is different. The conversion to stocks doesn't happen at grant-time value for all of the grant. The conversion happens at the start of every year of the grant life. So if the stock goes up in the first year, you get fewer stocks for the second year (equaling to grant/4 in value). See my other sibling comment in this thread.

It’s unclear to me why this is being downvoted: that is exactly how it works at my (FAANG) employer.

There are two different ways companies give RSUs.

1. You get $X of stock grant when you join. This gets converted to number of stocks based on the value of the stock when you join and then the stock vests over the next 4 years. So if you get a stock grant of $400k when you join and the price of the stock at joining is $1000, you get 400 stocks that vest over the 4 years.

2. You get $X of stock grant when you join. This grant gets divided into $X/4 over the next 4 years. The number of stocks then gets decided each of those 4 years based on the value at the start of that year. So let's say you get a stock grant of $400k. So you get stock worth $100k every year. If the stock is at $1000 for the first year you get 100 stocks for the first year. If the stock goes up to $2000 at the start of second year, you get only 100 stocks. If it goes down to $500 for the third year, you get 200 stocks. So upside is capped. You will only get stocks worth $100k each year.

2. is what followed by Coinbase and Stripe. Some other companies are moving that direction as well. 1. is followed by FAAMG.

#2 is just rotten, especially if the grant expires.

50k is the grant amount and usually reflected by a 30 day average look back from grant date. From grant date your 50k worth of stock can go up on down based on the stock price.

This should be explained in any offer letter.

Coinbase is different - see my comment here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28808455.

COIN has lost 25% since IPO (in that time, GOOG, FB, MSFT, AAPL, HOOD are up, PP is even, and SQ is down marginally), and their offers aren't particularly better than <anywhere else>, so it doesn't seem like this is true.

Like, even if you think crypto is going to be super relevant, there's tons of other cryto startups. Coinbase has or had first mover advantage, but that's no longer an enormous advantage.

Something that I don't think is widely appreciated enough is that Coinbase Ventures holds chunks of many of these startups.

Any specifics I should check out?

well, a partial list of their investments is here: https://ventures.coinbase.com/

Some major ones aren't included such as CoinSwitch Kuber which Coinbase Ventures recently co-led a $260M round.

Coinbase’s stock is currently approximately equal to the IPO price and the IPO was six months ago. Coinbase and Robinhood (another rocketship) both experienced a pop after their respective IPOs and later dropped back down near IPO price. This isn’t a particularly relevant metric, in my view. At the IPO, the rocketship factor is already priced in. Look at the company’s trajectory over the decade it has existed.

> Look at the company’s trajectory over the decade it has existed.

The decade where it wasn't "mission focused"?

> Coinbase’s stock is currently approximately equal to the IPO price

Coinbase is down a little over 27% since IPO, at a time when the wider US stock market is up around 10%. That's not "approximately equal" in any meaningful way.

> At the IPO, the rocketship factor is already priced in.

I'll agree with you here - there was a ton of hype and the IPO price was largely based on an expected rocketship trajectory that failed to materialize. Its extremely telling that many of their executives have cashed out 100% or nearly 100% of their available stock options.

> there's tons of other cryto startups.

Where in your analysis do you talk about how these other crypto startups have (1) easier onboarding/KYC than COIN, (2) access to more coins to trade (3) better tooling (4) better fees (5) etc. etc. ?

Except that the upside is capped by the new Coinbase vesting policy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28808455

And that has nothing to do with the fact that Coinbase as a single entity is vastly more valuable than <insert any other crypto company>.

If you got stock for free because you work for coinbase, does it matter much it went down? I mean it's still around $250 each, that quickly adds up.

> their offers aren't particularly better than <anywhere else>

citation needed, I mean 'anywhere' is a big space. I'm seeing north of $100K on a quick google, that's a lot more than most places pay. Or are you speaking from a privileged, SF-blinkered position?

> If you got stock for free because you work for coinbase, does it matter much it went down? I mean it's still around $250 each, that quickly adds up.

That's where the "isn't better than other offers" part comes in. If you get 40K in stock from Coinbase or 40K in stock from Robinhood, and one went up and one didn't...

> citation needed, I mean 'anywhere' is a big space. I'm seeing north of $100K on a quick google, that's a lot more than most places pay.

I'm speaking as compared to the list of stock tickers I listed.

> Or are you speaking from a privileged, SF-blinkered position?

If we're at the point where Coinbase can't hire "privileged" employees and is having to settle for ones who don't have other options, I think that makes my case for me.

AIUI Coinbase is offering around $400k comp to senior-level engineers now, similar to FAANG.

Correct, and it has more room to grow than FAANG. By that I don’t mean it’s undervalued - but rather that the implied call option you get from a 4-year grant is more valuable.

They don't do 4 yr grants anymore. You basically get a recurring 1 yr grant, so your upside now is limited to just that year. It trades risk for upside.

https://blog.coinbase.com/how-coinbase-is-rethinking-its-app...

"Stock for free" doesn't equate since it's stock-based compensation. To some degree you expect it to retain its value and generally go up. Some companies might create an expectation of a greater appreciation even. But it's not a "oh I get paid X for my salary and then so much more for free." If you get stock at any company you compare those offers and the expected outcomes financially. There is a reason salary+stock is considered "total compensation." And in terms of it "not mattering that it went down." Of course that matters. Companies do things to keep comp consistent but if the stock does go down quarter over quarter people see that as a personal loss and a possible sinking ship. They can work somewhere else that is more stable or eve n has a positive trajectory. I have know people who had a family to think of and moved to a Apple since it's much more reliable.

What do you mean by stock for free? Do you only consider the base salary as the actual salary and stocks as bonus which could be $0? Because that doesn't make any sense...

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