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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

#581

Post by coddle-hark »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #426

I've been around the block enough times to realise that any tech job inevitably has morally murky dimensions. It's never in regards the big overarching social issues like racial politics though. It's the advertising companies you work with, the casinos and bookmakers (which is the only time I've made a moral stand at work), or people losing jobs that are replaced by automation.

Not participating in morally abhorrent behaviour is admirable and really important. The problem, I think, is when people put it on themselves to police other’s behaviour.

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

#582

Post by sieabahlpark »

Alex3917 wrote: post #466
koheripbal wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> There is a lot of value in removing political activists from your company, and so it's worth paying them to leave. Your company should be 100% political activists, but (at least during work hours) they should be focused on advancing the mission of your organization. Even within activist groups you have the exact same problem that Joe is talking about, e.g. at some point in the 90s Adbusters went from lobbying again…

> Your company should be 100% political activists...

You don't really have a company at that point anymore.

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

#583

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #450
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.

I suspect its only some activists that Mr Armstrong want's rid of.

If someone went around the Coinbase office demanding that the company speak out against abortion, I'm pretty sure Armstrong would want to get rid of that guy too.

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

#584

Post by thisisbrians »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #60
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.

I'd argue that a lot of engineering disasters could/should have been avoided by adhering to standard safety practices and engineering ethics. This is very germane to the work/mission of the business and has little to do with the sorts of external political activism that Coinbase is trying to eschew.

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

#585

Post by zackees »

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.…

The problem with activism is that most people engage in easy to grab fast food activism served to them by the oligarchical msm.

The social justice actions by google was nothing less than a coup of the United States. Hence the reason I was forced to sacrifice my career to the blow the whistle.

[www.zachvorhies.com](https://www.zachvorhies.com)

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

#586

Post by ryandrake »

kleinsch wrote: post #124
nullc wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coming from the east coast (and maybe a little from an earlier era) I also find the attitude on this stuff a little mystifying. "In my day" -- it was just poor form to bring up that kind of stuff at work. If you did so at all, you usually tried to avoid being "that person". You don't get to choose each person you work with, so it pays if everyone puts in a bit of extra effort to not give anyone else a hard time. I th…

I worked for companies on the east coast, then moved to SF and now work at a big tech company. The companies I worked for on the east coast were mostly B2B, so we were focused on making a good product for businesses so they’d pay us more money. Big tech companies recruited for a long time with the pitch that we’re changing the world. That has brought in a bunch of employees who joined bc they want their employment to…

I've worked on the east coast for the early half of my career, and no company has ever mentioned "making a positive change in the world" as a pitch for the job. I was hired to fix bugs and connect two API layers to each other so that a set top box could ship or so we could release the next version of a display driver. There was plenty of political diversity in the office: people from all across the political spectrum. Yet, we all worked together fine, and you almost never heard an actual political argument. Occasionally it would come up as a polite conversation at lunchtime. The rare minute it got heated, someone would maturely step in and say, hey, guys, let's get back to work and put it aside, and that was that. This is in stark contrast to the stories you hear out of west coast tech companies today! How have we managed to screw this up so badly?

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

#587

Post by JeremyBanks »

hackerfromthefu wrote: post #577
JeremyBanks wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Strong opinions, naievely held? The world is a lot more nuanced than your vitriolic labelling of it. Be tolerant!

I have a lot of friends who voted Trump in 2016. Engaging with them was valuable and helped me gain perspective.

I have none who will be voting for him in 2020, because those who still support him in this extreme have nothing to say.

There is a difference between "political differences" and "ambivalence regarding an attempted coup", and anyone who can't see that is dangerously naive.

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

#588

Post by ojnabieoot »

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…

I suspect your comment isn't really being offered in good faith, but can you name a specific example of a company where a coworker did one of these things:

> leak documents, raise alarms about operations they don't understand, and generally draw the company into litigation

and it was actually a case of misguided political activism rather than legitimate whistleblowing? I suppose maybe in slaughterhouses or animal testing laboratories, but definitely not with tech.

> In a highly sensitive market like crypto, you don't want to gain unnecessary regulatory attention, and activists like this will be the first to testify against the company with their biased interpretation of internal operations.

It is very difficult to not read this as "sometimes crypto companies need to break the law to make that cheddar, and you really don't want any of these radical 'companies should obey the law' activists getting in your way."

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

#589

Post by itsoktocry »

ryanisnan wrote: post #574
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…

I hope you are only young and naive and will learn how short-sighted your opinion has been here.

What makes you so sure you're on the "right" side here?

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

#590

Post by mrnobody_67 »

moduspol wrote: post #93
unishark wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems pretty damn good severance to me. Four to six months of a SF salary? I wonder if the real goal here is just reduce headcount.

I wonder if the real goal is to foist problematic employees onto competitors.

Foist... i see what you did there ;)
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