Orkle

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Watching @balajis operate as CTO at Coinbase taught me something profound about corporate power. Most executives are climbers who optimize for influence and empire-building. They hoard social capital to entrench themselves, hire bigger teams, spin up more projects, and own bigger budgets. The more they're responsible for, the more credible their bid for the next rung in the org chart. Balaji was different. He became CTO through the Earn acquisition, and he knew he wouldn't stay long. So instead of empire-building, he used his accumulated social capital as a knife to stab underperforming teams—the ones everyone knew were useless but no one bothered to go after. Most executives won't crusade against other executives. It's politically pointless. Doesn't earn you anything to get a peer fired. But Balaji was singularly offended by incompetence and wielded his power to exterminate entire teams. This developed him a reputation for being a menace. So many people at Coinbase at that time would complain about Balaji as impossible to work with. Even to outsiders like me, it was obvious how much people feared Balaji up and down the organization. But this is truly one of Balaji's superpowers: he is both tireless and always willing to simply say what he sees. It sounds simple, but it's incredibly rare. It requires an unnatural tolerance for pain and a willingness not to shy away from conflict. From the perspective of a CEO, you're constantly looking at your organization through the fog of war. People like Balaji are invaluable because their honesty cuts through that fog. People who develop this reputation—consistently calling out what everyone knows but won't say—eventually become the most powerful people in an organization. (Watch the clip by @brian_armstrong for context 👇)