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

#691

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 6:37 PM UTC

tshaddox wrote: post #575

ptero wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

[deleted]

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

#692

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 6:37 PM UTC

andrethegiant wrote: post #681

That it's being framed as politics is way off the mark. What's being discussed at the workplace isn't foreign policy; it's authoritarianism vs democracy. That's an existential threat. People are getting executed in the street by those supposed to serve and protect, and business leaders want employees to "just be apolitical"? Asking employees to ignore an existential threat is like asking humans to not experience emot…

[deleted]

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

#693

Post by sbmthakur » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 6:37 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #454

The thread on the original blog post is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24610267 It got relatively little discussion because it set off the flamewar detector ( http://hnrankings.info/24610267/ ). Normally we'd turn that off in such a case, but we missed that one. Also: don't miss that there are multiple pages of comments in this thread. That's what the More link at the bottom points to. Or click: https://n…

For true positives, do you down-weight them?

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

#694

Post by cwkoss » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 6:39 PM UTC

paulgb wrote: post #137

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?

> What happened? I'm partial to Aaron Levie's take on this[1]: > An alternative take on the importance of companies taking a stand on critical social issues that impact our employees and communities: when there's a vacuum of leadership from the government in dealing with these topics, businesses often need to lead more than ever. When we have had presidents who were willing to condemn white supremacy, we tended not t…

Makes me think of "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power"

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

#695

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 6:40 PM UTC

andrethegiant wrote: post #681

That it's being framed as politics is way off the mark. What's being discussed at the workplace isn't foreign policy; it's authoritarianism vs democracy. That's an existential threat. People are getting executed in the street by those supposed to serve and protect, and business leaders want employees to "just be apolitical"? Asking employees to ignore an existential threat is like asking humans to not experience emot…

> That it's being framed as politics is way off the mark

No, it's not, at all.

> What's being discussed at the workplace isn't foreign policy

Well, I mean, it often is, but clearly that's not what you are centrally focussed on.

> it's authoritarianism vs democracy

That's still politics even when it isn't foreign policy, but it's not a mutually exclusive category with foreign policy.

> People are getting executed in the street by those supposed to serve and protect

Domestic racial and political repression is, very much, politics.

As is asking people to shut up about it.

> Asking employees to ignore an existential threat is like asking humans to not experience emotion,

No, it's asking workers to not act out on their emotion and behave as the industrial tools and consumables (“human resources”) which is their use in capitalism.

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

#696

Post by claudeganon » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 6:42 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #639

claudeganon wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. This is a bizarre, ahistorical sentiment. Go read about the history of labor struggle in the US. Even when everyone could vote, the organizing of workplaces and response by their employers was far more contentious and violent than anything that’s going on today.

Can you give an example of what you have in mind? I must admit that, being European, I don't really have a good grasp of the history of American worker struggles. Here in France I can't quite think of something really similar to Silicon Valley activists. When I think about worker-led revolts I think of Germinal or Mai 68, when the proletariat (and, in the case of Mai 68, the students and then the proletariat) fought…

There was all kinds of trade union opposition to the Vietnam War, which is really no different from tech workers protesting against collaboration with the military and other violent state forces. Many of the leading figures in the Civil Rights Movement also came from labor organizing backgrounds, and while unions like the AFL-CIO have mixed records, support from organized labor was crucial to it success.

The cleavage you’re describing between ideological and material concerns is one that was introduced as part of the neoliberal ideology of the 1970s, in which Capital intentionally carved out a narrow space for identitarian claims to better defend itself from the multi-constituency groups that were attacking it in the 1960s. But it doesn’t reflect the real history of how solidarity functioned in the period.

There is certainly a shift in white-collar workers beginning to understand themselves in terms more akin to their working class predecessors, especially as it relates to hierarchy and power dynamics in companies. But this is not too terribly surprising given that massive wealth inequality has produced an even greater degree of proletarianization, even among the highly educated workforce. Google has more contract employees than regular employees now, for example.

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

#697

Post by Nacdor » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 6:42 PM UTC

myroon5 wrote: post #508

dang wrote: post #454

The thread on the original blog post is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24610267 It got relatively little discussion because it set off the flamewar detector ( http://hnrankings.info/24610267/ ). Normally we'd turn that off in such a case, but we missed that one. Also: don't miss that there are multiple pages of comments in this thread. That's what the More link at the bottom points to. Or click: https://n…

the flamewar detector seems interesting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23280488 how often does it get triggered?

> how often does it get triggered?

That's my least favorite part of HN: There's zero transparency in the moderation and a lot of it is extremely subjective.

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

#698

Post by tlogan » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 6:43 PM UTC

mardifoufs wrote: post #388

tlogan wrote: post #211

We live in a different world now. Today, apolitical pretty much means “I’m white. And probably male. But definitely white.”

That's completely detached from reality and pretty much signals that you probably don't interact with minorities much. As a non white immigrant, I can tell you that in my experience most PoC are apolitical. Much more so than white males as you say. And that's not only true for first generation immigrants, but also for most of their children. Afro-americans are the only minority group I can think of that are actually…

I guess I hang out with ‘wrong’ minorities. My group are parents with kids in sf unified (I would say 80% non white). I probably live in my own bubble.

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

#699

Post by joshuamorton » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 6:44 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #639

claudeganon wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. This is a bizarre, ahistorical sentiment. Go read about the history of labor struggle in the US. Even when everyone could vote, the organizing of workplaces and response by their employers was far more contentious and violent than anything that’s going on today.

Can you give an example of what you have in mind? I must admit that, being European, I don't really have a good grasp of the history of American worker struggles. Here in France I can't quite think of something really similar to Silicon Valley activists. When I think about worker-led revolts I think of Germinal or Mai 68, when the proletariat (and, in the case of Mai 68, the students and then the proletariat) fought…

Most of the current tech activism is for things like salary transparency and employee representation/governance.

These are progressive ideals pushed usually by people who share other progressive ideals, but employee representation is not itself ideologically motivated.

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

#700

Post by jaywalk » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 6:44 PM UTC

awb wrote: post #686

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…

You could reasonably extend this to your friends and neighbors as well. Growing up, politics was private outside of the family dinner table. Any dedication to an injustice or a good cause was done through donating or volunteering. No yard signs, no shouting, no blaming. I understand that dramatic actions bring attention, but I just hope that we can start focusing more on doing our own part and leading by example rath…

Social media is the root of the problem here. All you have to do is make a post promoting the cause, and then you get a flood of little dopamine hits with each like.