Hacker News Reader

Comment by cloche | Hacker News Reader

> Geeks who didn't even stand near professional sports should really shut up about anything sport related, lol. I would really like to see professional, established coach running around with young prodigies on a peak of their biology.

Player-coach used to be a thing in professional sports a long, long time ago. There's a reason you don't have it anymore. A coach can't be expected to take the long-term view while also expecting to contribute. Most examples were players near the end of their career and they didn't tend to do very well.

The only place you see it is in fun adult leagues. Perhaps the message then is that Coinbase wants to be less professional and more amateur-like?

View on HN

Your comment reminded me that this still happens in the NBA. At 43 years old, Udonis Haslem seldom played minutes towards the end of his 20 year career with the Heat. But they kept him on as a “player-coach,” in that he was a mentor to the younger players and assisted in their coaching. Kyle Lowry is another current example of this “player-coach” role, currently on the Sixers.

Thanks for the examples. I didn't realize this still happened. I don't follow basketball much - more hockey for me with some baseball. It sounds like those examples jive though - they're players in the twilight of their career who still bring a lot of value being in the locker room but maybe aren't ready to fully retire or move to coaching full time.

Actually, these scenarios happen in hockey as well. Teams will pick up character guys who have been through it all who are expected to contribute more off ice than on it. Corey Perry is one who comes to mind lately but they're never given a "coach" title. It's entirely possible though that these players may be expected to be a go-between guy between the coach and younger players to help them manage the pressure or to help with encouragement. They're definitely not getting prime minutes though.

I guess that would possibly be the same expectation of a manager who still codes. I can't see them doing anything critical. It's likely picking up some minor bugs or nice-to-have, low priority feature work. I was a manager before and while I didn't reach 15 reports, I was up to 12 at one time. There's just really no focus time that you need for coding. Maybe that's a bit different with AI but even then you still need to find time to make changes and validate. And that's time that takes away from other higher impact things that you could be doing for the team.

i like MLB catchers, but maybe that is just because future HOF manager Austin Hedges is out there ripping an 0.824 OPS, vibes but no vibe coding

Hockey also has Captain (e.g. Mark Messier) and Alternate Captain roles, in addition to the Corey Perry types who aren't titled.

Haslem played 72 minutes the entire 82 game season. That's like the Engineering manager who ships a PR once a year.

And to continue with the analogy, he neither replaces the coach, nor the actual team players. He just sits on the bench, paid for his - additional - role. Exactly the contrary of the Coinbase manager-IC, which is supposed to replace 2 jobs in 1.

I think the CEO was more talking in the line of Bill Russell or Maximus from Gladiator, not final-year Haslem

It happens, but these days is quite rare, and usually something reserved for a player is of Hall of Fame or close caliber, who has been an institution for the franchise, and is generally slated for a full-time coaching role post retirement.

We already have these in the industry. They're Staff+ Engineers and Architects. It's generally the norm to not be cranking out code at this level, but they make sure everyone is moving in the right direction, assisting managers, and mentoring juniors.

Good example but it still sounds more like a “tech lead”: this guy is still focused on tactical line level with other players than on handling the overall strategy, PR, plans, hiring, etc that a coach does

Reminds me of how kings used to (I think, I'm bad at history) actually fight the battles themselves. Now the head of state, the head of government and the other top people don't fight themselves. Even the admirals only plan and command, AFAIK.

Less fight, more be present on the battlefield as a show of confidence.

Big diff between RU and modern Western military (including UA) is officers on the field. RU has a very top-down hierarchy.

In the end, everyone is replaceable. But a king is a bit more difficult to replace, as historically shown.

Celtic kings in Ireland were subject to ritualistic sacrifice if, for example, crops failed.

The only successful Player-Coach that comes to mind was Eric Cantona as player-manager of the France national beach soccer team after leaving Manchester United aged 30.

He won the 2004 Euro Championship, the 2005 FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup along with a number of top 4 places over his 15 years as player and/or coach.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Rose

Bill Russell. Won 9 championships as a Boston Celtic under legendary coach Red Auerbach, and alongside Hall of Famers like Bob Cousy. Then became the coach and starting center for 3 more years and won two more championships.

Rinus Michels [1]. There are so many tho.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rinus_Michels

Kenny Dalglish for Liverpool too, winning the double whilst a player-manager.

And kicking the goal in the final match that secured the Premiership. Definitely counts as being a "professional" league.

The fact that there have been so few of them throughout history of sports shows that this is an exceptional, uncommon situation. A small number of athletes compared to the total. It requires that a single individual possess many qualities at the same time.

I'm not sure the professional sports analogies carry over very well.

With very rare exceptions, professional athletes are just not as good athletically at 40/50 as they were at 20. They may be smarter in some ways--which maybe means they'd be better as coaches.

I'm not sure this carries over well to engineering unless you mean that the young people are willing to grind for a lot more hours on nights and weekends.

> With very rare exceptions, professional athletes are just not as good athletically at 40/50 as they were at 20. They may be smarter in some ways--which maybe means they'd be better as coaches.

not sure if focus should be on athletic sports. Chess is better analogy to software I think.

To part of it, but chess is generally played one against one, there are well understood rules and a clearly defined goal, and every win is someone else's loss.

When building software, if you can state an unambiguous goal and what rules apply you are more than halfway done. It's not uncommon to work on something for a year and discover you have been building the wrong thing. Navigating that ambiguity is where all the value in software engineering is.

Sure, rules are different, though there are team chess competition, but the point is there are analogies not involving athleticism which declines with age, unlike software skills.

Armstrong did not mean chess players.

Yeah. I'd agree with this if it were tech leads that were mostly just IC leaders.

But managers should mostly be about two things IMHO:

> Facilitating for ICs.

> COACHING. To elevate ICs and help propagate the desired "culture".

Not true. You often see it semi-pro soccer. Previously, you could see player coaches even in top-flight elite soccer.

There's a reason for this change. As players became elite and specialized by position, the budget for specialization expanded. At the top, teams could afford a distinct role for coaching focus. Since the stakes are really high (the difference between 1-3 points is measured in dozens of millions of dollars of impact due to relegation - a concept that is missing on most US elite sports) it follows specialization drive is sky-high at elite levels.

Thus, soccer player coaches have mostly dissappeared at elite level. But the role is alive and well in the semipro tier.

In roles where there's no binary, extreme outcome from specialization, like in semi pro soccer, or at an ENG role at a random company , it is only natural to have someone wear multiple hats and not specialize.

Specialization is very much a thing in US sports as well, even without relegation and even with profit sharing/etc.

The payoff to being elite at a valuable skill is enormous. Teams generally benefit more from combining players with distinct, elite strengths than from relying on broad generalists who are not truly elite at anything.

This isn’t always possible if you can’t afford to build a team of specialists, or those specialists don't exist at your level of competition. But if you have the resources and coordination (and in sports, the roster depth and cap space) to cover each specialist’s weaknesses, specialization is pretty much always the stronger composition.

I think Netflix started the sports team analogy for their hiring (and firing). But they don't put forth a "you're a part of the Netflix family". They're open about the work culture you're going to be stepping into.

And I don't think they're trying this thing that Coinbase is trying either.

It’s funny when bunch of nerds try to mask the fact they have know idea what they’re doing by some lame allegory to sports, military, or some other discipline supposedly more manly and rugger than girly (yugh) math, logic and programming.

“We at the coding company LovelyBeeBunny should be like the samurai’s of the old, willing to pull our swords to die for emperor…” etc. And it is always riddled with complete misunderstanding of the analogous subject, whether sports, history, or warfare.

Your categorization of math, logic and programming as "girly" is hilarious.

When I grew up those were the very definition of "not girly". Our math and comp sci faculties at uni would bend over backwards for any of the girl students.

I would agree though that academics in general were "not manly" and at school at least streams of "academic" or "sporty" existed. For boys anyway.

For the girls (less fascinated by sports) the top sporties were often top academics as well.

History has shown that being academic is always better than sporty (if you gave to pick one.) The "status" given to sports is often an acknowledgment that it's a poor financial path, but we can offer "status" instead.

Yes, sports metaphors can be amusing, but its the winners we're smiling at.

I was being sarcastic (I at least hoped it was obvious). There is probably nothing as illogical as assigning a gender to a logic - or maths or science for that matter. I also find it pretty stupid how “girly” is considered an insult. I prefer girly to being thick.

In sports like Football where CTE is king, there's just not gonna be enough qualified personnel to coach.

No. Few college or professional coaches weren't themselves college or professional players. Think of all those assistant coaches, QB coaches, DB coaches etc.--all players. Mike Leach comes to mind as a rare counterexample.

Player coaches would be redundant given that most sports already have captains, wouldn't they?

Captains can't decide to substitute/bench one of their teammates in the middle of a game.

Lebron James

Reply on news.ycombinator.com