No position on politics is also a position (for the status quo).
Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission
71–80 of 1001 posts
Re: Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission
#72As a non-American, I find it truly bizarre (and sad) that's it's now controversial to publicly state that you're not taking sides.
I have a theory this is a consequence of tech companies wanting to move things online and become 'platform owners', leasing and ad-supporting everything rather than selling it.
After all, nobody would complain if the KKK had brought Microsoft Office licenses, any more than they'd complain if the KKK had brought food at wal-mart.
But many tech companies have realised how profitable it is to be Facebook or Github. They own the domain, their name's in the banner at the top of the page and the name of the native app, they pay all the hosting costs and make all the ad money, and they've put themselves in the situation where they can censor users.
When we in tech moved away from "we just sell the stuff, none of our business what you do with it" and made "what you do with it" the core of our businesses, we were walking into the realm of politics whether we realised it at the time or not.
Re: Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission
#73The state of politics today, as a base layer under and inside everything, is such that politics cannot be kept out of work. Look at something very straightforward like Covid-19, an airborne disease. For reasons that I can't explain, attitudes towards this virus in the US are political, such that there is a strong correlation between one's view of the severity of this virus and one's attitudes towards the legal status of abortion.
A company deciding between "everyone work from home" or "everyone come into the office and sit in open seating" has to engage with the realities of what the virus is, which necessitates taking a stand on issues which are political.
This is doubly impossible for Coinbase since cryptocurrency is the most overtly political area of technology.
Re: Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission
#74As a non-American, I find it truly bizarre (and sad) that's it's now controversial to publicly state that you're not taking sides.
Does the country in which you live have a status quo of the regular imprisonment, enslavement, and public executions of a specific race of people? That's the issue in the USA, and "not taking sides" on that matter is, well, an issue, because it means you don't care about human rights.
If you're trying to demonstrate just how ridiculous political polarization in the US has become, you're doing a pretty great job.
Re: Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's kinda interesting to see because the cryptocurrency space is surely one of the more political tech developments at the core - replacing fiat money, new financial instruments, self-governing contracts, ...?
The CEO is declaring the focus political issue is cryptocurrency. The focus is not whales, forests, ice caps, malaria. Why is this controversial?
Interesting definition, so if his crypto platform (hypothetical) is getting used by mafia and for 'tax minimisation' thats apolitical? And if I raise a stink about it, I am an activist?
Re: Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission
#76The blog post he made, which was a whole lot of words to say "We're not going to say Black Lives Matter, so stop asking", was really something else.
I see a lot of people praising the "not taking sides" thing. This presumes a false two-parties dichotomy that is endemic in the discussion of US social issues.
Really though, you can choose the status quo of widespread human rights abuses in the US, or you can choose to speak out against it. Those are the sides, and pretending that it maps to the tired and ongoing US electoral culture brawl is, well, "inaccurate" and "misleading" at best.
Coinbase has chosen, but they've done all sorts of weasel words to avoid the appearance that what they've chosen is anything other than a vote for the status quo.
This is not about "discussing politics", insofar as who-to-vote-for, et c. This is about the (really quite political) issue of whether or not you're fine with the state of human rights in US society, or not.
It's a bummer that they've decided that they're fine with the current situation, because it really sucks terribly for a lot of people: so badly that many people can't just "go to work and ignore it".
To see people praising this viewpoint is... baffling.
Re: Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission
#77What's their mission?
Re: Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Is there any evidence of harassment or people being put out of a job?
Re: Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission
#79I 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…
Another way to put it - you’re welcome if you’re comfortable with the status quo. In other words, young white college educated and male. All others who don’t fit in that category are more likely to not be comfortable with how society is treating them, and start that pesky trying to make things better stuff which gets in the way of business.
Re: Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you are being told when to come to work and when to leave, what to work on, how and where to work on it, how to dress, corrected on even the most subtle things that you are doing "wrong" from the managements perspective and expected to do as told, what hope do you have to have any influence on the values of the company? It's the norm that people in a workplace are primarily seen as cogs in the system, humans with…
I don't know how long you've been out of the workforce, but I haven't had a job that told me when to arrive, when to leave, how or where to do my work, or what to wear, in almost 20 years.
Congratulations, you're one of the winners. Talk to your local McDonalds employee and you'll get a different story.