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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

#851

Post by vyhd »

CarelessExpert wrote: post #456
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?

> why are people discussing politics at work? Probably because the work these companies do is frequently political. Let's be clear: What Coinbase is saying is, we the founders, who set the company's mission, and are doing so with a clear political view (rooted in libertarianism and so forth), are allowed to use the company to further our political ends. But the staff? Sorry, you have no voice. Maybe that's fine. The…

This is literally the only take I've read in this entire comment thread that has a firm grasp on the entire picture. Thanks for that.

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

#852

Post by yourcousinbilly »

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…

Political vs apolitical is just semantics. Will companies deciding not to be socially active have a political impact? Yes. Does not engaging in political activities support the status quo? Yes. Is a particular political group more affected by a ban on activism? Yes.

And I agree focus on their goal is a great, abstract guiding principle for a company. But the better question is does a socially active company have a more positive impact on the world? Brian believes social activism has "the potential to destroy a lot of value at most companies, both by being a distraction, and by creating internal division." That might be true, but in many cases, I doubt the cost of employee annoyance and loss of focus is more than the benefit of enacting minor policy changes and fund diversion that could positively impact millions.

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

#853

Post by edouard-harris »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #834
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.

This is a great question. As posed I'd say the answer is yes, though I'd dispute the characterization of "not allowed". All I'm saying is that:

1) There exists a zero-point of politicization for this widget company;

2) In this scenario that zero-point corresponds to the decision, "do not bake climate mitigation into company's DNA"; and

3) That decision is one necessary component of the policy that maximizes the company's chance of hitting its goal.

I'm not saying anything prescriptive at all — just highlighting that tradeoffs that are being made, whether or not one is intentional in making them.

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

#854

Post by humanrebar »

zajio1am wrote: post #85
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this "us against them" mentality because it leaves no room for nuance. I strongly believe in PG's top of mind theory [1], and I don't see how you can achieve anything if you're constantly fighting for or against the status quo. Don't you believe it's possible to agree with certain viewpoints but not act on them? You also don't have to parade around your support during every waking moment, which is…

> I don't understand this "us against them" mentality because it leaves no room for nuance. IMO it is just a rhetorical trick / social manipulation tool. On a landscape of political positions, there is a status quo area X. Who is against status quo is in non-X (complement to X). There is a side who wants to change status quo to position Y, which is a small and specific subset of non-X (which is necessary, because 'aw…

You just described an (plausivly) emergent formulation of a motte-and-bailey. Very interesting.

"Y" is the bailey and "not X" is the motte.

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

#855

Post by nine_k »

djrobstep wrote: post #836
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.

Haven't we seen a ton of criticism towards police last spring and summer? I remember myself walking past a few "defund NYPD" demonstrations, watched over by police officers keeping their cool.

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

#856

Post by exolymph »

theptip wrote: post #735
dwardu wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brian should have said we don't mix politics and activism in our company, if you don't like it, leave. Which should have ended like that. On the other hand, it's a good move because it keeps things neutral. These annoyed employees should just take it and leave.

The problem with taking such a hardline position is that there is a significant switching cost borne by the employee when they leave, and so at the margin you'll have employees that don't buy in to the mission statement, don't like your new/restated position, but need the job/dislike job-hunting even more. So now you've created/agitated a population of disgruntled employees; this will tend to cause problems. Paying a…

Which is presumably why the exit package is being offered, to solve this problem.

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

#857

Post by anm89 »

paxys wrote: post #723
anm89 wrote: post #689

I see this as strategically genius whether you agree with it or not. He's totally neutered the ability of employees to take strong political stances within the company going forward and he's made it clear where the company stands in away that makes it very hard for people to come back later and defend staying if they were interested in these kinds of politics. If you want to stay focused on building a company and not…

Whether it is a strategically genius move or not will depend on the eventual outcome. No tech company, especially one in the bitcoin/fintech sector, can pretend to be completely apolitical. So putting out public blog posts and setting strict policies that apply to employees may not fly well when the company or its leadership/executives themselves don't follow them down the line.

Of course only time will tell. I'm simply predicting that it was a wise move.

Also the company is not claiming to be apolitical. They are saying they don't want employees individually engaging in politics while acting on behalf of the company.

I'm sure coinbase has plenty of political objectives. On some level business is politics. Especially a crypto company, which makes it even more important not to have your employees politically organizing in a way that could appear represents your companies politics with out any executive oversight.

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

#858

Post by anm89 »

eli wrote: post #800
anm89 wrote: post #689

I see this as strategically genius whether you agree with it or not. He's totally neutered the ability of employees to take strong political stances within the company going forward and he's made it clear where the company stands in away that makes it very hard for people to come back later and defend staying if they were interested in these kinds of politics. If you want to stay focused on building a company and not…

You will build a less diverse and necessarily worse company this way.

As the other poster already mentioned, I would posit the exact opposite.

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

#859

Post by anm89 »

SquishyPanda23 wrote: post #731
anm89 wrote: post #689

I see this as strategically genius whether you agree with it or not. He's totally neutered the ability of employees to take strong political stances within the company going forward and he's made it clear where the company stands in away that makes it very hard for people to come back later and defend staying if they were interested in these kinds of politics. If you want to stay focused on building a company and not…

Meh it's not strategically genius. The crypto community is hugely political and right-libertarian leaning. He's just signalling that he's not going against that trend. > He's totally neutered the ability of employees to take strong political stances He absolutely has not. I'm sure they will continue to take hard right-libertarian stances that are common in the cryptocurrency world.

I don't think you are quite following this. The company isnt aiming to limit its own ability to achieve its political goals, it's limiting the ability of employees to promote political views while acting officially as employees.

Also I have never in my lifetime of working with many libertarian programmers heard anyone aggressively push their libertarian views in a way aimed at changing a companies internal politics. Also never heard a conservative or even really a traditional Democrat do this.

This is almost strictly a leftist thing.

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

#860

Post by anm89 »

jlokier wrote: post #775
SquishyPanda23 wrote: post #731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh it's not strategically genius. The crypto community is hugely political and right-libertarian leaning. He's just signalling that he's not going against that trend. > He's totally neutered the ability of employees to take strong political stances He absolutely has not. I'm sure they will continue to take hard right-libertarian stances that are common in the cryptocurrency world.

"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.

I mean, it's not really not libertarian. It's not a particularly partisan stance at all, more of a business direction.
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