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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

#301

Post by solidasparagus »

helen___keller wrote: post #277
Zenbit_UX wrote: post #120

Why is a company wanting to be apolitical is controversial? That should be the default, is this an American thing like how masks and healthcare are controversial? I would expect a government to have proper separation from church and state, so why is it weird to want a company to separate politics and mission? I can't see any good coming from being in a work environment where the company supports a political issue I'm…

My 2c: * Companies, like the rest of the world, are now hyperconnected. We have slack and email and so on. This makes it a lot easier for similar interests to connect across a massive organization, which is a boon for special interest groups, like anime, or magic the gathering. Or politics. * Companies muscle in on workers' identity. Workers respond to work over email/slack during their off hours. Workers pop open th…

> You are looking to hire a young, 25 year old computer scientist living in a big blue city who graduated from PresigiousUniversity. What politics do you think this person likely subscribes to?

I think people too readily assume that these people are blue, but you have to remember that academia (and tech in general) tends to have strong social pressure to either be blue or hide your political beliefs. There is likely a very large contingent of closet republicans.

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

#302

Post by DSingularity »

Zenbit_UX wrote: post #120

Why is a company wanting to be apolitical is controversial? That should be the default, is this an American thing like how masks and healthcare are controversial? I would expect a government to have proper separation from church and state, so why is it weird to want a company to separate politics and mission? I can't see any good coming from being in a work environment where the company supports a political issue I'm…

You can’t operate in a liberal society (liberal in the sense that we favor human liberty and freedom) and demand that your employees suppress their opinions. It’s a contradiction.

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

#303

Post by mancerayder »

wwright wrote: post #127
Zenbit_UX wrote: post #120

Why is a company wanting to be apolitical is controversial? That should be the default, is this an American thing like how masks and healthcare are controversial? I would expect a government to have proper separation from church and state, so why is it weird to want a company to separate politics and mission? I can't see any good coming from being in a work environment where the company supports a political issue I'm…

I (and many others) are of the opinion that you can’t truly be apolitical; claiming to be so is its own form of politics (and generally one that supports the status quo). Politics is ultimately about how we engage and collaborate with each other as a society, not just which “party” you like. The very act of being a company is very relative to the laws and regulations your country has, which are of course determined b…

>I (and many others) are of the opinion that you can’t truly be apolitical; claiming to be so is its own form of politics (and generally one that supports the status quo).

The Far Left and the Far Right, and college activists everywhere, tend to agree with this statement.

Everyone else finds the idea of a forced battle, which is what you said entails, to be the beginnings of authoritarianism (or bullying if taken at an individual level).

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

#304

Post by lucaspm98 »

sneak wrote: post #76

The 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…

Take a step back here, what are the widespread human rights abuses? Very few people are against human rights, that would be truly uncontroversial. The issue seems to be when what are labeled as human rights aren't actually human rights, or they are bundled together with divisive add-ons or an overall political stance.

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

#305

Post by cashewchoo »

another_sock wrote: post #166
Zenbit_UX wrote: post #120

Why is a company wanting to be apolitical is controversial? That should be the default, is this an American thing like how masks and healthcare are controversial? I would expect a government to have proper separation from church and state, so why is it weird to want a company to separate politics and mission? I can't see any good coming from being in a work environment where the company supports a political issue I'm…

The West Coast and its inhabitants live in a bit of a unique bubble and assume that the rest of the world see things in the very progressive manner they do, and expect that companies will march in lockstep with this sort of unique bubble. It's a very internalized unrecognized sort of expectation, but that's because so many companies have accepted these expectations completely. The rest of the country doesn't really c…

I work remotely from the midwest for a CA tech company.

I was surprised that other people were surprised that there's a confederate flag spray-painted on a car-sized piece of corrugated steel that's been beside the interstate (on private property) for years now that I see every time I drive between two cities.

Similarly the number of confederate flag shirts and, recently facemasks.

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

#306

Post by analyte123 »

buro9 wrote: post #154
jpdb wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is a company wanting to be apolitical is controversial? Because there's really no such thing as, "apolitical." If you offer web-hosting to a group of white nationalists, this is a political action. "Apolitical" is what people who are ok with the status quo use as a dog-whistle to avoid responsibility.

> Because there's really no such thing as, "apolitical." This a thousand times. I've tried to be apolitical in a "least damage" way, but it is not possible. You are supporting someone who is doing something abhorrent either explicitly or implicitly. In tech we are huge enablers, and when we support implicitly we need to accept that we are enabling behaviour that all employees would find unacceptable. Whether it is in…

All I see here is that you shouldn’t use Grafana if you don’t want to have your service arbitrarily terminated because of a random news article or a couple calls by activists.

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

#308

Post by roamerz »

I read his blog post and commend him on his insight and leadership. Politics can be divisive, destructive and at best distractive. One nutjob on either side of the coin (haha?) could be a risk to the integrity of the company of whole not to mention all of the other pitfalls if internal strife. Where I work there is plenty of differing opinion on politics but professionalism, respect and empathy have kept us pretty much whole. I think the problems of divisiveness are enhanced by remote working as the comradery gained by being at work in person is lost and that is essential in helping soak up bad feelings. Anyhow just my 2 cents.

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

#309

Post by rjkennedy98 »

meheleventyone wrote: post #17
jiofih wrote: post #12

This must feel harsh for those on the receiving end, but is the right thing to do. It is not effective to try and turn every company into a rights activism group just because it is a group of people. This may be a sign that it’s become increasingly hard to organize or take part in such activism outside of work. What happened?

It could also be a sign that people feel more empowered to express themselves in work and feel that a workplace that values their ideals is preferable to one that doesn't. Particularly in tech where we're all quite comfortably off we can worry about these things higher up the hierarchy of needs. It will be interesting to see where this takes the culture of Coinbase.

> It could also be a sign that people feel more empowered to express themselves in work

The cynic in me feels like it's a casual way for engineers to feel better about themselves.

It's no wonder to me that this "bring your whole self to work" nonsense sprung up at ad-tech companies like Google.

And by the way - the political stuff never is about anything that Google does. I haven't seen any tax law, anti-trust, or privacy protests at Google.

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

#310

Post by eeh »

iovrthoughtthis wrote: post #88
eeh wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CEO is declaring the focus political issue is cryptocurrency. The focus is not whales, forests, ice caps, malaria. Why is this controversial?

Probably because none of these things exist in a vacuum. Simply because we give a title to an "area of political focus" doesn't mean that it exists in it's own silo, unimpaired by decisions in any other area of political focus. What happens when your area of political focus crosses tracks with another area of political focus and you're faced with a trolley problem? Do you simply steam ahead regardless of the overall…

All entities including businesses commonly make tradeoffs between competing values. I am unaware how Coinbase plan to do this.

Outside the mission, it sounds like Coinbase won't factor these matters beyond the usual legal/reputation, the same as the majority of businesses.

Governments are best placed to guide prosocial behaviour.

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