Jesse Pollak

Jesse Pollak

Jesse currently work on protocols, public goods, cities and currencies at Coinbase & beyond (more coming soon). She previously led all Retail engineering at Coinbase, including building Coinbase, Coinbase Pro and Coinbase Wallet. Way back when, she started Clef and was an engineer at BuzzFeed. She also writes open-source software and take photos.

When Jesse joined Coinbase as an engineer in 2017, he managed a four-person crew. Over the next half-decade, the team ballooned to 200, while Coinbase grew to a size commensurate with its Fortune 500 status. But more hands on deck doesn’t necessarily make a manager’s job easier. In fact, it added a lot to his plate. “In those times of very quick growth,” Jesse said, “it was both a people challenge because we needed to figure out how to onboard people and make them successful, and then it was also a technology challenge: how do we onboard more users and keep the website up? And that was a big part of my job.” Although Coinbase hit the rapid-growth button, Jesse says that most of the time it’s best to opt for a slower approach: “The temptation is always to grow really quickly people-wise, and it’s almost always that you’re growing too fast people-wise, and it’s a bad idea.” Instead, he says, “Don’t grow until you have to grow” — and then do it as “methodically as you possibly can from a people perspective.” His rule of thumb is to avoid doubling in size within a year unless you’re starting with a headcount in the single digits.