[BitwiseFool]

This reminds me of how Valve Inc. touts a flat-hierarchy where no one has a boss and you can work on whatever project you'd like. But in reality Valve employees complain about constant office politics and de-facto team structures.

Conceptually a decentralized structure sounds great but it creates power and process vaccuums. And in those vaccuums centralization manifests itself based on office politics. I predict some high profile Coinbase employees are going to coalesce around some location and that will start turning into a de-facto headquarters.

[dmurray]

I agree, it's natural that new structures emerge in this kind of power vacuum, but it sounds like Coinbase are explicitly taking measures to fight against it.

> The executive team should lead by example... even after people can safely return to offices, the executive team has no plans to be “in-office” on a regular basis, and none of them currently live in San Francisco. This is one of the most powerful things we can do to keep Coinbase from inadvertently returning to an in-office culture.

If they're serious about this, how far do they have to go? Would an official or unofficial policy of not promoting employees who come in to the office too much be enough incentive?

[cblconfederate]

no headquarters doesn't mean no hierarchy

[destitude]

I'm not clear why you think all remote companies can't have processes in place that allow them to work the same as those working in a physical office space.

[ghaff]

Yeah, the two things are pretty much orthogonal to each other. Though, if anything, I'd probably argue that absent clear communication channels and roles, remote work is much harder if you're dependent on self-organization.

[herenorthere]

this a remote-first company. they will have different physical locations but most of the company will be working remotely. regardless, given that SF was the original HQ, that will likely always be the de facto HQ... since the higher ups are already coalesced around there