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Comment by andyjohnson0 | Hacker News Reader

What struck me about this announcement was that the CEO states a couple of times that he is accountable for the decision, but doesn't say what form that accountability takes. I try not to be cynical, but I suspect in this case that there will be no actual, real accountability.

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He just bought a house for $133,000,000. That's enough to give everyone who was laid off slightly a severance of more than $120,000. Somehow I'm expecting accountability to be significantly less than that.

I had to look this up after seeing that eye popping number. Apparently 9 figure homes is a thing amongst the billionaire class:

https://www.dirt.com/gallery/moguls/finance/brian-armstrong-...

While simultaneously, Coinbase says that "managing the burn rate" is a primary reason for layoffs. If my eyes rolled any harder they'd be popping out of their sockets.

Imagine what the burn rate is on maintaining a property with 25,0000 square feet of living space that sits on 4.5 acres of hilltop land in place that gets quite hot and is currently experiencing a mega drought.

this man bought a minecraft home for 133M dollars

I'm a regular reader of high-end real estate blogs, so frequently see these types of purchases. I don't begrudge anyone for being wealthy (so far they made money legally and "ethically"), but I like imagining what I could alternatively do with such sums.

For example, look at this beautiful school campus in Russia - https://archive.ph/z5x01/26aa0da221582b152ab472fafafe811a483.... It was built at cost of $80 million [1].

But, somewhere across the world, someone spends way more than that on an individual home. It gets more real than that...Marc Andreessen (also a major Coinbase shareholder) spent $177 million on a Malibu manse, dropped $45 million on a second one, and $34 million on a third one [2]...Jeez

1- https://archive.ph/z5x01

2 - https://www.dirt.com/gallery/moguls/tech/marc-andreessen-hou...

There is no limit to the spend 10-30% on your home rule of thumb of portfolio allocations I guess. Your home has some features of self custody that bitcoin enthusiasts would appreciate. some people even buy islands in Hawaii as homes.

What do you have in mind for "real accountability?"

He could've deflected responsibility or hid behind a proxy, which happens all the time. Now, he gets more judgment good/bad directed at him from shareholders, the board, and customers.

https://www.theblock.co/linked/96078/coinbase-ceo-brian-arms...

Taking a pay cut in addition to the layoffs would be a good start

Bonus and Salary cut would be a good place to start.

> What do you have in mind for "real accountability?"

Reduction in pay and/or bonus. Loss of options. Reduction in his health cover to the same amount being offered to the people being sacked. Temporary or permanent removal from the board (probably not legally possible, but...).

Obviously none of those things will happen because, short of gross misconduct, they basically never happen to people in the executive layer - especially founders.

> He could've deflected responsibility or hid behind a proxy, which happens all the time. Now, he gets more judgment good/bad directed at him from shareholders, the board, and customers.

I think it would have been better for him not to claim personal accountability when everyone knows there is none. It's false and un-empathic. He has a net worth of $2.4 billion: there are no consequences and so no accountability.

Now, far be it from me to claim that there wasn't bloat in their workforce that generally needed to go, but if money is an issue, I'm pretty sure the CEO could use a house that costs a lot less than $133 million.

It's his fault and the buck stops with him, but guess who is remaining employed?

I mean, it's his company. Kind of a weird comment to make.

> I mean, it's his company. Kind of a weird comment to make.

Its a public company, so it belongs to the shareholders. Brian Armstrong is one of the founders, and is the largest share owner, but a cursory google suggests that he owns just about 10% of the shares by value.

...and the shareholders literally determine his salary.

Why do you care what these people pay each other?

That's like saying that US citizens vote for the Federal swamp.

99% of them are totally against the swamp, yet the swamp continues.

Voting doesn't matter if there's no real ability to vote for real change.

If there is any truth in this world it is that shareholders absolutely call the shots. Anyone with any experience in finance can produce tens of thousands of examples of this - from shareholder lawsuits, to activist investors, to hostile takeovers, to board shakeups... The list goes on and on and on and on...

His accountability comes in the form of the drop in price of the shares of the company. That is the ultimate accountability for any CEO or other shareholder.

His net worth was about $2.4 billion. Coinbase is currently down ~3.5% on the day. So his net worth is now about £2.3 billion†. I don't see that inconveniencing him much.

† Or maybe a bit more if he was foolish enough to hold some of it in crypto.

Zoom out, down 85% since November

He's lost literally billions during this correction. Losing over 50% of your net worth in just a couple months is definitely the ultimate accountability.

Mostly blame taking.

Well, Brian has lost billins in personal wealth. That's certainly something.

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