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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

#831

Post by renewiltord »

tomjakubowski wrote: post #826
renewiltord wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SF did shove black people out with urban renewal but aren't demographics mostly like this in the West since the slave trade wasn't as extensive? The real indicator for the tech industry's lack of diversity is that CA's 39% Hispanic population reflects as some minor fraction of the tech population. Some extraordinary filter is occurring somewhere that's keeping Hispanic people out. Not alleging malice, just the scale…

No. Lots of black Americans moved from former confederate / "late era slave" states to the west coast, midwest, and northeast during the 20th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Migration_(African_Ameri...

That Wikipedia article has a measure for every 10 years from the Census starting with 1990:

1900 0.70%

1910 0.90%

1920 1.10%

1930 1.40%

1940 1.80%

1950 4.40%

1960 5.60%

1970 7.00%

1980 7.70%

and then you can fill in the rest with Census / ACS data

1990 7.40%

2000 6.40%

2010 6.20%

So, overall, it looks like it's about right. Black people were mostly in America through the slave trade and spread to areas adjacent to the South. The West saw very little increase.

Anyway, thank you for sharing that. It was enlightening. I do have to leave this discussion, though. I promised not to participate in non-tech here.

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

#832

Post by divbzero »

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.

The severance appears respectable to me given the circumstances. It’s on par with many layoff packages and more generous than the ongoing “pay to quit” program from Zappos and Amazon. [1]

[1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/21/why-amazon-pays-employees-50...

The extended window for exercising options is something I haven’t encountered before. I’d be curious to hear if others have seen it offered elsewhere.

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

#833

Post by a2tech »

TedShiller wrote: post #827

This makes sense. The problem with recent political activism in companies has been that it isn't fair. It has been acceptable to advocate for liberal causes (for example for affirmative action), but not for conservative ones (against affirmative action). It might be ok if both were allowed equally. But if only one viewpoint is allowed, that's not really democracy.

Oh? Do you thinj companies like fox media corp or Raytheon are places where you can push for liberal political activism? Because I can tell you you would be incorrect. Those companies have a clear opinion on those matters and will not be kind to liberal activism.

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

#834

Post by stjohnswarts »

edouard-harris wrote: post #817

A few comments have asserted that if an existing company chooses to be apolitical, that may itself be a political act. This sounds clever, but it's not correct. At the highest level, a company is a group of people who get together to 1) set an impactful goal, and then 2) work very hard to achieve it. The first part — the setting of the goal — is the political act. Disagreements at this level are good, and broadly hea…

So since global warming is more or less a political statement these days, would advocating for climate change mitigating philosophy being built into the company's DNA be political to you and therefore not allowed? Say it's a company that makes widgets that are completely orthogonal to climate change.

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

#835

Post by [deleted] »

TedShiller wrote: post #827

This makes sense. The problem with recent political activism in companies has been that it isn't fair. It has been acceptable to advocate for liberal causes (for example for affirmative action), but not for conservative ones (against affirmative action). It might be ok if both were allowed equally. But if only one viewpoint is allowed, that's not really democracy.

[deleted]

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

#836

Post by djrobstep »

TedShiller wrote: post #827

This makes sense. The problem with recent political activism in companies has been that it isn't fair. It has been acceptable to advocate for liberal causes (for example for affirmative action), but not for conservative ones (against affirmative action). It might be ok if both were allowed equally. But if only one viewpoint is allowed, that's not really democracy.

Try criticizing the people with actual power (military, police, entrenched big biz) and see what real "political correctness" really looks like.

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

#837

Post by nostromo95 »

eli wrote: post #801
jlokier wrote: post #775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There are many unbanked and underbanked people in the world who have no ability to get a loan to buy a home, or start a business, so this kind of technology has enormous potential to improve the world over time, even if it is still early days." - Brian Armstrong, 2 weeks ago Seems to me that's not at all a hard right-libertarian stance.

That the world is full of underserved people who should be helped by...this for-profit corporation?

Good reminder that non-profits, rather than, say, pharmaceutical companies, auto manufacturers, agro-chemical companies, logistics companies, etc. etc. have been the source of the leaps and bounds improvement in human welfare over the past two centuries.

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

#838

Post by dropit_sphere »

Apocryphon wrote: post #625
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No one's disputing that.

The grandparent comment is disputing just that.

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

#839

Post by stjohnswarts »

human_person wrote: post #565

Erica Joy (Director of eng at Github) had an interesting take on this. https://twitter.com/EricaJoy/status/1311178025275289600 "coinbase engineers walked off [in June] because brian wouldn't say "Black Lives Matter," he posted it so they'd get back to work, now he's having an executive "YOU AREN'T THE BOSS OF ME!" meltdown* about it" and "this looks a whole lot like the play certain advisors tell CEO's to run when th…

Like it or not BLM -the organization- does have some pretty leftist ideas that not everyone is fond of (Marxism for example espoused by some of the leaders of the movement). Some of them involve completely dismantling police forces as they're traditionally formed. However BLM the concept of equality for blacks and equal treatment under the law that is something 90% of the population can get behind. I think there is a lot of nuance to this stuff and companies need to be specific and careful about such things.

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

#840

Post by 3np »

itsoktocry wrote: post #611
kkhire wrote: post #65

I’ve never worked in the Bay Area, so could just be OOL but I’m genuinely surprised that this is such a big deal, or that this blog post got so much praise. Never discussed politics at any of the companies I’ve worked for, we were always too busy with...work!

> Never discussed politics at any of the companies I’ve worked for, we were always too busy with...work! Same, and that's the conundrum. "Activist" employees put others on the spot by querying coworkers' political views and expecting discussion. And for those who have had their head in the sand for the past few years, things like "being a Joe Rogan fan" are now considered unacceptable politics.

> things like "being a Joe Rogan fan" are now considered unacceptable politics

For one who has had their head in the sand and is only vaguely familiar with Joe Rogan; why?

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