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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

#671

Post by jiofih »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #655
paulgb wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last night he was given the chance to unequivocally condemn the Proud Boys and instead told them to "stand back and stand by", which the group themselves has taken as a rally cry. Just like how after Charlottesville, white supremacists took his ambiguous response as a sign of approval. He doesn't condemn, he validates with just enough deniability that people can make lists like the one you posted, while everyone who…

More like, he unambiguously condemned Neo nazis and white nationalists right after Charlottesville, so don't repeat that lie. We have the freaking video. https://www.twitter.com/BarrettWilson6/status/13111436668917... And the Proud Boys' leader looks pretty black for a white supremacist.

This is what I hear: he says white supremacists should be “totally condemned” which is as harsh as an indictment from a 6 year old. And then proceeds to say that the media treated them unfairly, and the “other side” was worse because they dressed in black and used riot gear.

If you say a group should be condemned but then proceed to justify their actions it’s barely a slap on the wrist, and coming from the president the lack of a strong response is actually a form of encouragement.

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

#672

Post by chillwaves »

mythrwy wrote: post #460

The current situation in these big tech companies reminds me a little bit of Wahhabism and the founding of modern Saudi Arabia. Initially the king used the Wahhabi extremists as troops and it was quite a successful partnership. But eventually it went sour as the king tried to modernize the country bringing in phone lines and roads and he was attacked by his former extremist friends who were opposed to the sinful mode…

Is there no irony in your parallel with Wahhabism to social justice activists?

The people who put money above all are their own form of extremist. I guess it is normalized to the point of being a non consideration, meanwhile the planet burns.

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

#673

Post by manigandham »

eli wrote: post #629
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.

Blocking even the discussion of change is the definition of conservatism. It's explicitly against change and implicitly for the status quo.

That is not the definition of conservatism, and a limit on discussion is not implicitly for anything. It's your own subjective interpretation if you think it's for the status quo.

This isn't complicated. For example: People may be on both sides of climate change, but not discussing it in the workplace doesn't mean the company is for or against anything. Apply this to any other topic that has nothing to do with the business.

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

#674

Post by sbmthakur »

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.…

I also believe that every citizen has certain roles and responsibilities in a democracy(voting for instance). However, the workplace is not exactly a democracy. The only thing that I will definitely participate is in the work that I am getting paid for. All other endeavors of the company should be voluntary. If the company is directly or indirectly forcing these on me, then I will consider it as a breach of my agreement with the company.

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

#675

Post by coryfklein »

ketzo wrote: post #623

That's my problem with all of this. Purely mission-focused companies sound great -- in a vacuum. A totally apolitical workplace could only exist in a vacuum. Politics is not something that happens twice a year in a voting booth, or even something that happens on TV; it's how you and I engage with civic society at large, and to say that the workplace should, or even could be divorced from that seems almost silly. Coin…

Totally depends on the form of the "politics at work". If we're talking about in-depth dialectic aimed at learning and problem solving then I'm all in.

Some other forms that I'd be happy to eliminate:

* Virtue signalling via preaching the doctrine of the party predominant at the company

* Bob from IT talking endlessly about his pet theory of Soros conspiracies

* Portraying politically grey areas as completely black-and-white and deplatforming those that disagree

After reading The Toxoplasma of Rage[1] I can't help but regard the vast majority of current politics with a great deal of cynicism.

[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage...

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

#676

Post by throwaways885 »

secondcoming wrote: post #462

I don't see why he's offering them any sort of package to leave, it's not like they're being made redundant. It's very generous but sets an odd precedent. It's like it's a compensation payment for not being allowed to make the workplace toxic.

An active incentive for them to piss off, rather than them going underground in their activism.

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

#677

Post by oh_sigh »

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.…

Do you ignore politics while you're pooping? If so, why?

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

#678

Post by spollo »

nemo44x wrote: post #118
kkhire wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s there to admire? This is common sense and he should have set these expectations from the start. why are people discussing politics at work?

It’s generally a small but vocal group. And I wouldn’t call it politics so much as activism. A sort of religious zeal has made its way into our institutions like schools and universities. Some people have taken to it like a missionary would religion and believe it’s their duty to spread the word everywhere at all times. The Inquisition was no different in this regard. You just have to read what the activism says. It…

I'm curious, in the various responses to this comment people are really getting into this interesting concept of certain political ideologies replacing the church, and resembling a religious fanaticism in their application of these ideologies.

My understanding is that we have had secular societies before, eg. the Soviet Union, China, which explicitly try to reduce practicing religion. Did this same kind of "new semi-religion appears to fill the void" event occur in those societies? Is it the particular "holy sacrements" that the west has adopted that is unique? Or are we unique in even having something arise the "fills the religious void"?

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

#679

Post by tshaddox »

brightball wrote: post #664
tshaddox wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wanting to separate engineering work from reality is precisely what Barrin92 is saying should not and can not be done. Engineering work isn't just some insulated game that gives you tokens to buy things you need in the real world. The engineering work is itself part of the real world.

By that logic, you can't separate church and state either. And that's to say that you can and you should.

Separation of church and state is nothing more than a limitation on the government, prohibiting it from establishing a national religion or inhibiting religious practice. It is not a claim that religion can never be discussed in government, or that government can never be discussed in religious practice.

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

#680

Post by zapdrive »

cactus2093 wrote: post #540
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…

I saw this firsthand in May/June in the aftermath of the George Floyd killing. It was a pretty small company and there was one employee in particular who was very much an activist, though a number of employees of course felt very strongly about what was going on. The company genuinely tried to do their best to support them, encouraged this person to take a week off for mental health and from my perspective was making…

Let me guess the gender of the said employee. You know what, never mind.
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