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

#551

Post by toiletfuneral » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

subsubzero wrote: post #503

Barrin92 wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>All I want is to just focus on engineering and ship features/improvements. Yeah if there wasn't the pesky world around all the engineering and we could all just stare at our stock options while we sit in our gentrified neighbourhoods and pretend the world doesn't exist. You can ignore politics but politics doesn't ignore you. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil is an unworthy attitude for a democratic citizen.…

Your strawman argument is invalid to what I said. I spend an inordinate amount of time researching each candidates views and each propositions pros and cons. Before election day I usually set aside a day or two to deep dive into every choice I make. I take voting very seriously as people have died to give me the luxury to vote. These actions all occur outside of the office where they belong. That being said leave pol…

Thank god IBM had employees like you during the 1930's, otherwise they might not have made as much money.

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

#552

Post by shams93 » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #483

subsubzero wrote: post #465

I may want to apply to coinbase. I am really fed up with 'activist' employees and the toxic environment they bring. All I want is to just focus on engineering and ship features/improvements. Bringing politics to the office(thanks Google!) has been one of the worst things to happen in the 21st century for tech companies. Interestingly enough google has been going through absolute hell with these cancerous employees an…

>All I want is to just focus on engineering and ship features/improvements. Yeah if there wasn't the pesky world around all the engineering and we could all just stare at our stock options while we sit in our gentrified neighbourhoods and pretend the world doesn't exist. You can ignore politics but politics doesn't ignore you. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil is an unworthy attitude for a democratic citizen.…

Well said!

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

#553

Post by drak0n1c » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

subsubzero wrote: post #465

I may want to apply to coinbase. I am really fed up with 'activist' employees and the toxic environment they bring. All I want is to just focus on engineering and ship features/improvements. Bringing politics to the office(thanks Google!) has been one of the worst things to happen in the 21st century for tech companies. Interestingly enough google has been going through absolute hell with these cancerous employees an…

There is now even a job site for firms and employees that want to avoid toxic accusatory work environments: https://www.unwoke.hr/

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

#554

Post by cbHXBY1D » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #527

Reading these comments I feel like the root of the issue is the collapse of American democracy. It's a bit grandiloquent but that's definitely how it looks like. If workers trust that "We, the people" are still in charge on the big picture then it doesn't make sense to bring politics at work. Just vote. Now if you feel like your power as a citizen has dwindled and you can't meaningfully enact change through democrati…

>I guess an other possibility would be to have proper unions but for some reason I don't see that happening in the USA any time soon...

I think this will happen sooner rather than later. As the market gets flooded with more and more engineers, tech workers will continue to get more and more proletarianized. Unionization will be the natural avenue for workers to get a slice of the pie.

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

#555

Post by natalyarostova » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #483

subsubzero wrote: post #465

I may want to apply to coinbase. I am really fed up with 'activist' employees and the toxic environment they bring. All I want is to just focus on engineering and ship features/improvements. Bringing politics to the office(thanks Google!) has been one of the worst things to happen in the 21st century for tech companies. Interestingly enough google has been going through absolute hell with these cancerous employees an…

>All I want is to just focus on engineering and ship features/improvements. Yeah if there wasn't the pesky world around all the engineering and we could all just stare at our stock options while we sit in our gentrified neighbourhoods and pretend the world doesn't exist. You can ignore politics but politics doesn't ignore you. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil is an unworthy attitude for a democratic citizen.…

Great. Go work at a firm that reserves time for activism under a common cause. Plenty of us don’t want to do that at work, and will look for firms that let us focus on engineering for our time at work, so we can reserve our free time to do as we please.

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

#556

Post by chillwaves » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 5:25 PM UTC

username90 wrote: post #402

voxl wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yikes, talk about MAGA propaganda. Trump is a proto fascist, if Americans don't want to be apart of the new axis of evil they better be activists. This has nothing to do with calling everything racist or sexist, the fact that you think so has me suspicious of your views on the world.

This might come as a shock to you, but a large majority dislike political correctness no matter what group they belong to. They just go through the motions because they are attacked if they don't. > While 83 percent of respondents who make less than $50,000 dislike political correctness, just 70 percent of those who make more than $100,000 are skeptical about it. And while 87 percent who have never attended college t…

Can you explain to me what constitutes "political correctness"?

From where I stand, it just means treating people equally and not being an asshole.

ETA: In considering all the worries of modern living, I have never once been concerned with using the wrong words for a group of people. Am I really the exception? It seems easy to call people by the terms they prefer. Not sure about which terms to use? Then I just ask.

I am struggling to see the burden of being "PC".

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

#557

Post by Barrin92 » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 5:25 PM UTC

ptero wrote: post #513

Barrin92 wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>All I want is to just focus on engineering and ship features/improvements. Yeah if there wasn't the pesky world around all the engineering and we could all just stare at our stock options while we sit in our gentrified neighbourhoods and pretend the world doesn't exist. You can ignore politics but politics doesn't ignore you. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil is an unworthy attitude for a democratic citizen.…

The comment author does not advocate ignoring the world, he wants to separate his engineering work from politics and thus wants to look for employers who do not push a particular political program on him. Which seems a perfectly valid (and attractive to me) view. You cannot ignore your dreams, your health, your family, social ills, the air quality, politics and a myriad of other things in the world around you. But if…

>Do you really want to make him jump and go demonstrate for/against your list of hot button topics?

Yes I do and countless of scientists and artists do exactly that, which is why a lot of them ended up being subject to McCarthyism paranoia at one point or the other. Brilliant scientists, more than anyone else maybe, need to engage the political world to understand what influence what they built has on it. Technologists being painfully unaware of the political ramifications of their work, if anything, got us to where we are right now.

It's no coincidence that the politically detached scientist is the archetypical citizen of autocratic countries. The technologist who does not care for politics is today, the most sought after person in China.

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

#558

Post by manigandham » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 5:25 PM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #483

subsubzero wrote: post #465

I may want to apply to coinbase. I am really fed up with 'activist' employees and the toxic environment they bring. All I want is to just focus on engineering and ship features/improvements. Bringing politics to the office(thanks Google!) has been one of the worst things to happen in the 21st century for tech companies. Interestingly enough google has been going through absolute hell with these cancerous employees an…

>All I want is to just focus on engineering and ship features/improvements. Yeah if there wasn't the pesky world around all the engineering and we could all just stare at our stock options while we sit in our gentrified neighbourhoods and pretend the world doesn't exist. You can ignore politics but politics doesn't ignore you. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil is an unworthy attitude for a democratic citizen.…

It's perfectly reasonable to separate the workplace and the rest of the world. No need to ignore everything to limit your discussion at work.

You can also still take action - by leaving. That's exactly what this policy is encouraging with a generous exit package. Why is that not acceptable? Why does the corporation have to follow what you decide?

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

#559

Post by hackerfromthefu » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 5:26 PM UTC

ivanbakel wrote: post #49

yyy888sss wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they are not the same. Every company and organisation will advocate for itself by advertising, lobbying, legal battles etc. Brands will also adopt a LGBT pride/BLM/etc campaign as soon as they think it provides good publicity. The aim of all this is to help the company/org. It's not the same as employees bringing up their social or political views while at work.

That attitude reifies the company - the company itself is nothing more than the collection of people who work together to drive it. Political stances, even for business purposes, come from the individuals who make up the company leadership, not out of some abstract organisation. In that sense, it's terribly unfair to forbid employees to bring up politics at work. After all, their bosses are doing it: and not only tha…

Proportion is important - bringing politics up occasionally (rarely), peacefully, and in proportion to other topics .. is very different to crusading about it, bullying about it, being emotional and irrational and losing sight of others' perspectives.

Those strongly emotional actions are a whole different thing and it's dishonest to use mild language to describe those behaviours as 'bringing it up' and more accurate to call it something such a 'arguing about politics instead of working'.

Viewed in that light is it unfair to forbid employees to regularly argue about politics instead of working?

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

#560

Post by chillwaves » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 5:26 PM UTC

CarelessExpert wrote: post #514

smooth_remmy wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a group you forgot to consider: the investors. What do the investors think? They are free to usurp the founders if they feel that Coinbase is not paying proper homage to social justice.

Certainly true, though to me that only reinforces my point. Investors invest in companies based on their perception of the value of a company, and that perception is of course coloured by political views. Heck, we have an entire financial movement called Socially Responsible Investing, something which is nakedly political and a clear acknowledgement that politics cannot be, and has never been, divorced from business.…

Movement to support the investor class is just another angle of politics. People forget this, since they are such a dominant wing in western society.