Talent Density at Coinbase

They're only looking for people with an extraordinary ability such as: - Are an Olympic athlete - Have elite armed forces experience - Developed a large audience on social media platforms - Won chess tournaments, coding or video game competitions - Researched and discovered breakthroughs

The CEO and COO now have to approve all candidates? Sounds like they want to slow down hiring aka hiring freeze...

A company I worked at did a stint of CTO approval for all hires after a period of significant scaling and while it was a PITA, it definitely helped calibrate recruiting, eng, pm, and design to what leadership was looking for. It also exposed leadership to the types of issues we were facing daily with hiring. It does slow things down (actually the CTO I'm referring to was awesome and turned things around in no less than 24 hours, avg of 4 hrs), BUT its a useful tool when its time-bounded and there's a commitment to quick turnaround.

Coinbase will be fine but I'll bet money they kill the cognitive testing after a year or two (or a lawsuit).

Anybody know what the internal definition for talent density is? The article is a bit vague on whether thats a reference to locale or having a lot of talented people on your team/in your company.