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Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission

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Re: Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission

#51

Post by M2Ys4U »

throwawaysea wrote: post #2

I applaud Coinbase’s CEO on his position of keeping politics out of work. Other tech companies have been overrun with employee activism, which just means one political side has weaponized those companies in favor of their ideology. It is disrespectful to all their customers that don’t align with those views, damaging societally when digital public squares (Facebook and Twitter) are corrupted by employee politics, and…

>I applaud Coinbase’s CEO on his position of keeping politics out of work.

It's not keeping politics out of work, it is a political standpoint in and of itself.

Re: Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission

#52

Post by eeh »

tsherr wrote: post #15
throwawaysea wrote: post #2

I applaud Coinbase’s CEO on his position of keeping politics out of work. Other tech companies have been overrun with employee activism, which just means one political side has weaponized those companies in favor of their ideology. It is disrespectful to all their customers that don’t align with those views, damaging societally when digital public squares (Facebook and Twitter) are corrupted by employee politics, and…

To understand your position, you're saying that if you take a job with a company, you must either take on the company's politics and ethics or leave? There's no room for trying to improve a company from the inside?

The CEO is saying the company will remain apolitical, outside of its mission.

Re: Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission

#53

Post by 5thaccount »

md_ wrote: post #36

From some point of view, this might be viewed as management taking a harsh line against employees who make demands on their employers to do something other than maximize shareholder returns. One of the longstanding contradictions of Silicon Valley ethos is that we will simultaneously talk about "mission" and "impact"—and, implicitly, the social impact of our work—while applauding management efforts to stamp out emplo…

> many of us may be forced to decide

Are you saying you spend so long at work you don't have time to do these things after work hours? If not, why are work hours required to be spent on "being engaged citizens"?

Re: Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission

#54

Post by ZephyrBlu »

anwalters wrote: post #46
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this "us against them" mentality because it leaves no room for nuance. I strongly believe in PG's top of mind theory [1], and I don't see how you can achieve anything if you're constantly fighting for or against the status quo. Don't you believe it's possible to agree with certain viewpoints but not act on them? You also don't have to parade around your support during every waking moment, which is…

I agree with the basic premise: productive people do not have time to engage in petty fights. On the other hand, there are many situations where there is a silent majority of productive people who would literally need to speak up only once to topple an unfair system. The unfair system can be an open source project that has been hijacked by a small group of ideologists, it can be bad working conditions in ware houses.…

I have a theory that for worse or for better, the silent majority of productive people are more inclined to work with what they've got than attempt to change the system because attempting to change the system is generally unproductive.

Re: Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission

#55

Post by choppaface »

bananaface wrote: post #31
choppaface wrote: post #21

What's up with the 7 year exercise window? All contracts I've seen lately have adopted the modern 10 year window. Bonus to cover exercise + 83b is also now more common for non-execs now. 7 years sounds like they chose something less than the max intentionally. Furthermore, 6 months severance is on the lighter side for 3yrs of service in cases where the company did something remotely controversial. Setting the aside t…

How would a lawyer negotiate this up? They aren't firing people, they're just offering people to option to leave. Do employees here have any legal leverage?

No leverage through the offer or blog post itself, but if they have evidence of harassment or other misconduct, and screenshots from Slack, then it's more likely for a potential claim to result in additional severance versus any sort of litigation, especially since Coinbase is now inviting departures and inevitable conflict.

Being an adversarial employee when working on an exit package certainly is FAR from necessary, but it's also not at all necessary to put people out of a job during COVID due to _culture changes_.

Re: Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission

#56

Post by pornel »

This is going to work great for Coinbase. It's very helpful for employers to select for conformists who can be told to shut up, and not stand up for what they believe (unless they believe in the status quo and the company, which is called non-political).

Selecting for groupthink^W mission is pretty important in the business of cryptocurrencies. Reduces chances of anyone having a different moral stance that would push them to become a whistleblower. It might even be a way to prevent employees unionizing. Any disagreement about policies is political, free speech is political, so this is perfect to pre-emptively censor every criticism.

Re: Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission

#57

Post by searchableguy »

tsherr wrote: post #15
throwawaysea wrote: post #2

I applaud Coinbase’s CEO on his position of keeping politics out of work. Other tech companies have been overrun with employee activism, which just means one political side has weaponized those companies in favor of their ideology. It is disrespectful to all their customers that don’t align with those views, damaging societally when digital public squares (Facebook and Twitter) are corrupted by employee politics, and…

To understand your position, you're saying that if you take a job with a company, you must either take on the company's politics and ethics or leave? There's no room for trying to improve a company from the inside?

Any statistical data that suggests the odds are in favor of changing it from inside?

Re: Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission

#58

Post by kyrers »

onion2k wrote: post #29

I wonder if this is a way for Coinbase to push politically engaged employees out of the company in order to reduce the possibility of anyone pushing for internal change like people who want worker's rights groups or unionization. Operating with a workforce who only want to turn up and write code and never discuss anything that affects them as a group puts Coinbase in a very strong negotiating position because there's…

In the blog post in which he explained Coinbase's mission, he specifically mentioned that:

> Of course, employees should always feel free to advocate around issues of pay, conditions of employment, or violations of law, for instance.

Now, if he really is trying to diminsh the possibility of that happening, I don't know.

Re: Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission

#59

Post by J-dawg »

yholio wrote: post #27

Hypocrisy is rampant with some Coinbase figures that cry out for "acknowledging the injustice and inequality that affects many current and future Coinbase users." Good God, your firm exists to facilitate trading in speculative assets peddled by libertarian internet millionaires and that just so happen to be exceptionally useful for laundering money - enabling a whole online industry of shadow markets that were though…

> Good God, your firm exists to facilitate trading in speculative assets peddled by libertarian internet millionaires and that just so happen to be exceptionally useful for laundering money - enabling a whole online industry of shadow markets that were thought impossible a decade ago

This is a fantastic sentence. One of those times when I wish I could upvote more than once.

Arguably even more puzzling are the social activists at Facebook etc. They work for a platform that has interfered with democracy, has been proven to cause or exacerbate mental health problems, tramples over privacy, and at the very least is deliberately designed to be addictive and waste a lot of people's time.

It is strange that people can (claim to) care so deeply about the welfare of certain identity groups, yet work for a company that shows contempt for humanity as a whole.

Re: Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission

#60

Post by ClumsyPilot »

md_ wrote: post #36

From some point of view, this might be viewed as management taking a harsh line against employees who make demands on their employers to do something other than maximize shareholder returns. One of the longstanding contradictions of Silicon Valley ethos is that we will simultaneously talk about "mission" and "impact"—and, implicitly, the social impact of our work—while applauding management efforts to stamp out emplo…

Being proffeshional does not neccessarily imply neutrality when government policy contradicts science or even basic common sence.

Proffeshional without stones to stand up to authority/management is what gave us Chernobyl and Challanger disasters, Boeing 737, massive famine in China, and, debatably, 2008.

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