Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission • Hacker News Board

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

#371

Post by ryanmarsh » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 2:45 PM UTC

koheripbal wrote: post #346

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #3

I agreed with what Brian Armstrong said in his blog post and thought it was admirable to publicly take that position, but now I have even more respect for his dedication. I don't know if the severance package is good or not, but it seems generous and it gives employees who aren't aligned with the company an easy way out.

There is a lot of value in removing political activists from your company, and so it's worth paying them to leave. Aside from the combative toxic environment they generate, they are also often the source of disgruntled rogue employees that will generally behave improperly, misrepresent coworkers, leak documents, raise alarms about operations they don't understand, and generally draw the company into litigation. In a…

True, hyper-political people of any persuasion are generally toxic. Trust and alignment are essential to performance.

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

#372

Post by hejja » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 2:46 PM UTC

Seanambers wrote: post #169

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…

The activism displayed in U.S tech is damaging both from a organizational point of view, but also its a competetitive disadvantage. Imagine having employees who refuses to do work because 'they feel they shouldn't'. Or organizes walkouts, protests and are actively lobbying for changes in company policy to reflect their own personal values. Or protests against certain customers of the company, because they are evil in…

Case and point: employees at Spotify wanting to censor Joe Rogan.

Whether or not you agree, you can objectively see how this would jeopardize a presumably 10-figure deal for Spotify.

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

#373

Post by RestlessMind » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 2:46 PM UTC

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…

> How can they truly be neutral on all of these issues that are directly relevant to the business they do?

I can see why a company might want to engage in a little bit of politics, particularly when it is tied to its very own existence. But that doesn't mean it should be engaging in all kinds of politics at all the times. So we are talking about "truly apolitical" vs "mostly apolitical" vs "not at all apolitical".

It seems Coinbase wants to be "mostly apolitical" here.

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

#374

Post by dangerface » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 2:46 PM UTC

If the logic is true that being apolitical is supporting the status quo, then arguing against being apolitical is a political argument supporting radicalism.

I feel the whole argument against being apolitical is just being made in bad faith to support radicalism, political acceleration and extremism.

Why would you wan't a workplace of radicals always fighting? If you can't argue this then you can't argue against being apolitical.

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

#375

Post by vmception » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 2:46 PM UTC

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #3

I agreed with what Brian Armstrong said in his blog post and thought it was admirable to publicly take that position, but now I have even more respect for his dedication. I don't know if the severance package is good or not, but it seems generous and it gives employees who aren't aligned with the company an easy way out.

My LinkedIn right now is full of professionals writing about how Coinbase is wrong and unsupportable. That is surprising to me.

I would like to see more mission focused companies.

They can help the societies they are in with some unilateral initiatives like Netflix did with helping capitalize banks in certain communities, without discussing it or changing the focus.

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

#376

Post by manigandham » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 2:50 PM UTC

yunohn wrote: post #354

manigandham wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's just stating that the workplace is neutral. It's not for or against anything. You can do that on your time instead.

The homepage of the privacy-focused adtech company you run, highlights California's new Privacy law. Have you considered that this means your workplace has a clear political stance on privacy?

Sure, the company provides services that help others comply with regulations and thus favors those regulations. Just like any other corporation that prefers regulations that help drive it's business.

Our workplace is still neutral though, and we don't discuss politics. To be extra clear: Whether you're for or against privacy regulations is not relevant. Whether the law is changing and will increase our revenues is relevant. See the difference?

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

#377

Post by RestlessMind » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 2:50 PM UTC

baron_harkonnen wrote: post #289

chii wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can’t truly be apolitical; that's one of those "you're either with us or against us" type of deal - which is not the right way to deal with anything imho. You _can_ be apolitical - as in, you do not let your political views affect what you do. You keep your political views private. You do not try to change anyone else's political views as part of your job.

The view you just described is active support for the status quo. One fairly non-controversial part of the status quo right now is our dependence on fossil fuels and co2 emissions to keep our economy running. Saying "I'll keep my views private" means I'm giving an okay to what's happening now. If every individual shares the thinking at every company then it is impossible to even imagine how the most catastrophic clim…

> The view you just described is active support for the status quo.

Not really. I can do my job from 9 to 5 in a non-political way and then actively try to change the status quo on evenings and weekends. That doesn't align with how you are describing being apolitical at work means.

> If every individual shares the thinking at every company then it is impossible to even imagine how the most catastrophic climate change can be avoided.

Because many individuals can sincerely believe that the way to deal with climate change goes via individual or citizen advocacy groups changing cultural attitudes and then exerting pressure on the Governments to bring in the necessary regulations. Companies should not be engaged in climate change politics (or global poverty or abortion rights) if they want to avoid it.

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

#378

Post by matthewdgreen » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 2:51 PM UTC

solidasparagus wrote: post #301

helen___keller wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's one thing to be a closet Republican, another thing to be against putting up even an anodyne corporate statement about BLM/racial intolerance.

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

#379

Post by username90 » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 2:53 PM UTC

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…

Cities and people with STEM jobs tend to be right wing in Europe though, since you vote right when you earn more and cities have more money. So if you intend to be a global company you will have a mix of right and left wing opinions. At local companies the Engineers I worked with were right wing, then when I worked for Google the local engineers were still mostly right wing but the company culture was very left. Felt very strange, especially since so many concepts people take for granted in USA are very different here.

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

#380

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 2:54 PM UTC

koheripbal wrote: post #346

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #3

I agreed with what Brian Armstrong said in his blog post and thought it was admirable to publicly take that position, but now I have even more respect for his dedication. I don't know if the severance package is good or not, but it seems generous and it gives employees who aren't aligned with the company an easy way out.

There is a lot of value in removing political activists from your company, and so it's worth paying them to leave. Aside from the combative toxic environment they generate, they are also often the source of disgruntled rogue employees that will generally behave improperly, misrepresent coworkers, leak documents, raise alarms about operations they don't understand, and generally draw the company into litigation. In a…

[deleted]