Why I Haven't Left Coinbase: An Early Career Framework
Optimizing for a strong network and ownership
Before sharing my thoughts on what to optimize for during the first few years of one’s career, I want to make sure to highlight that we will be hosting a Q&A session with a current Uber APM Levi Lian this Sunday, August 14th @ 2pm PT/5pm ET. Sign up and add any questions you have for Levi here!
TL;DR:
Building a strong network early in your career should be priority #1!
Find a talent hotspot that is growing quickly, then build a valuable network + own successful products
Hitting Turbulence
You know that feeling of flying and hitting turbulence that lasts just long enough to make you wonder is everything going to be okay? You are confident in the ability of the plane to get you to the right destination, but it is enough to warrant a quick reflection. That feels like a pretty good analogy for my first year at Coinbase. I’d love to walk through my personal reflection and gut-check moments in hopes that they will be helpful to others weighing various early career options.
Some Context
Do they know something I don’t?
I started off as an APM at Coinbase in August 2021 (and just hit a year here!) shortly after graduating from UC Berkeley. I am part of Coinbase’s first APM cohort – we started with 8 APMs…and were down to 5 within the first 7 months.
I should note that I do not feel this track record is a negative reflection of the APM program at all — if anything, it hints at the type of builders the program attracted and the crypto startup funding environment during the last bull run.
Two started their own, well-funded start-ups, and the third joined an early stage crypto startup. Each person that left made me question if I was on the “right” or “best” career path, and wonder if I should stay at Coinbase.
Dropping equity value
Perhaps a secondary reason, but the dropping value of my equity also caused me to take pause.
Crypto is notoriously volatile, and with a drop off in crypto prices, Coinbase has been hit like any other company largely reliant on trading volumes for revenue.
When I joined, Coinbase had recently gone public and the stock continued to rise along with the price of Bitcoin until it hit ~$360 in November 2021. Following the recent market headwinds, it dropped 85% from its peak (picture below is after gaining from a low of ~$40/share).
Around that steep drop in May, we also laid off 18% of our workforce. If you are looking for some amazing new talent, you can connect with affected employees in the Coinbase Talent Hub 💙.
The impacts of this downturn are many, but from a simple compensation standpoint, any RSUs granted at a price determined in 2021 are currently sitting at a fraction of their previous value. Assuming I could find a role elsewhere, it would make financial sense to lock in another role at the currently depressed stock prices many other companies are also facing.
I’ll just note that I feel extremely privileged to be here and do not take the opportunity for granted. That said, no matter how great the role, it’s healthy to occasionally ask: is this the right role for me at this point in my career?
Through some personal reflection and chatting with more senior folks at Coinbase I’ve come to grasp what I should be optimizing for right now. I’ll share these three aspects below, a few questions to frame each priority, and my thoughts on each in hope that this is helpful to others in the process of doing a healthy career gut check!
My Early Career Priorities (Stack Ranked 😃)
🤝 Relationships. Are you building a strong network?
💪 Ownership. Are you trusted with enough scope to learn quickly? Is what you are owning valuable to the business? Is there a clear path to more ownership over time?
💰Compensation. Are you underpaid? Is you earning potential elsewhere enough to justify a move now?
Relationships 🤝
Are you building a strong network?
Here’s the punchline: Building a strong network early in your career is the best way to set yourself up for long term career success.
Hunter Walk framed this well in his blog post entitled, “New Grads: Mid Stage Startups Are Your Best First Job in Tech:”
These folks – plus your new peers – will most likely spend the next 20 years as your friends, managers, employees, VCs, cofounders, etc. Building a tight and high quality network early in your career is much more valuable than any fancy title or near term compensation. From folks a few years more experienced you’ll get mentorship and learn good habits.
Soon after I joined Coinbase, I realized the role these early career networks had played in bringing many of my coworkers to Coinbase. To give a few examples:
Emilie Choi (the current President/COO of Coinbase) came over to Coinbase from LinkedIn in 2018. This started a migration of top performers (my manager included) from LI to Coinbase — some of the early migrators referring their favorite coworkers at LinkedIn for roles as Coinbase rapidly expanded.
My first mentor started off his career at Bain. When he was looking for a new role, an early coworker referred him to a tiny startup at the time called dYdX — he joined as employee number 3. Once he was looking for something new, that same friend had moved on to Coinbase and referred him to a PM role at Coinbase. The story continues — my mentor left Coinbase after 18 months, co-founded an NFT marketplace that recently raised funding at a $1.6B valuation (and has an amazing product and team), and just brought on a talented Coinbase designer from my team.
I like these examples because they illustrate another important point: who you know is often more important than the sheer number of people that you know. It may only take one close connection to assist you in an important career move. Building a network of “quality” people that are sharp, motivated, and caring is critical.
Note that you can’t fake your way to a strong network, or build one in a few months before jumping ship — it comes through getting to know coworkers, consistently being a great partner on impactful features, and supporting one another through tough moments.
This is most easily done at a fast-growing company like Coinbase, where there’s enough funding and green space to attract great talent. I have learned a ton from my manager and coworkers, found a few mentors, and despite the remote work environment, have built some great friendships.
It’s okay to stay at a company for longer than a year. Have the patience to build a strong network at a talent hotspot early on! I’m making a bet that doing my best here will result in relationships that will pay dividends down the road.
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Ownership 💪
I like the way Zain puts it, and would go a step further to say that valuable learnings are the byproduct of taking ownership. Especially in product! If a problem comes up that needs to be solved, the buck stops here — you are forced to go and solve it. I’ll divide this section into a few key questions that revolve around ownership:
Q1: Are you trusted with enough scope to learn quickly?
Chances are, if you are at a company growing quickly there’s more than enough scope to go around. Make sure you are getting projects with enough complexity or urgency that they stretch you! If you aren’t getting enough love here it will be tough to learn as quickly as your peers, or get promoted.
Q2: Is what I’m owning valuable to the business?
If so, it’s probably going to be more exciting to work on (or it will actually get built when it comes to resource prioritization). If done well, you’ll get the chance to take something else even cooler later on since you provided that value.
Q3: Is there a clear path to more ownership over time?
This is a spectrum: startups may offer lots of ownership as compared to larger companies, but their future may be less certain.
It’s important to be confident in the future prospects of that company, as its success means you will have worked on/led successful products. You’ll be associated with them moving forward and people will want to hire you since you’ve been a part of hyper growth. You could be the CPO of xyz company, but if no one has heard of it and it failed to get any traction then that experience is unlikely to be a career-launching one.
If you are interested in joining a company like this, Wealthfront publishes an annual list of Career Launching Companies, which may be a good place to start! These are private companies that are experiencing hyper growth and have a great chance at going public in the next few years. Not all of these companies will make it. I noticed BlockFi on the list, which recently hit a rough patch with the crypto market downturn and was acquired by FTX for a fraction of its latest valuation (which valued it at $4B.) Still worth a look!
You eventually get the confidence that comes with success and knowing you played a role in it, which makes it easier to go and take more ownership at your current company or elsewhere. I certainly feel like Coinbase has a massive amount (dare I say too many) of opportunities for ownership. Layoffs, while not ideal, can create opportunities to step in and fill gaps as well.
Compensation 💰
Are you underpaid? Is your earning potential elsewhere enough to justify a move now?
This is the least important of the three to me at this moment, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a consideration and motivator. Understand what a normal salary range is for your experience/role and level above you to ensure you aren’t leaving a ton of money on the table (levels.fyi is my go to source for this).
Your Network Will Compound Over Time 📈
If we think of our end goal as building the highest salary possible (we obviously want to enjoy our job, have friends, etc. too), each of the above aspects compound over time to give some return in the future. I think about growing relationships and a network early as the highest return on investment. If I’m not building the next big thing, I’d love to be friends with the guy or girl that is.
Ownership and learning through doing is also crucial. Companies that are growing quickly but haven’t yet fully matured often provide the best places to see success and then play a vital role in it. I’m excited about my role at Coinbase and the opportunities that I have here to partner with some amazing people and lay the groundwork for the future of the crypto economy — so I’m staying put.
Getting equity in a fast growing company early can pay off, but at an early stage in one’s career it’s rarely enough to set you up for life. So focus on the things that matter early on: relationships and learning by taking ownership.