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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

#871

Post by skinkestek »

spollo wrote: post #678
nemo44x wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-…

Read up on the Reign of Terror during the French revolution.

They were very secular and extremely violent and even evil (making shows out of drowning believers etc).

As much as the Catholic Church has something to answer for with the witch processes around here etc, they are small guys compared to the secular/atheists of the French Revolution.

Same goes to some degree for USSR and to a large degree for Khmer Rouge.

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

#872

Post by anm89 »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #864
anm89 wrote: post #857

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 emplo…

The company just extended a massive bonus and exercise extension to any employee that thinks they can get a better job. This is basically an invitation for the most talented people to exit the building ASAP even if they agree strongly with the Founders’ politics. This isn’t genius: it’s a mass layoff.

I guess we'll see what happens.

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

#873

Post by young_unixer »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #839
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…

Every political term has at least 3 layers of meaning.

1. The literal meaning of the term or its original definition.

2. The core ideas proposed by the group or by whoever defined the term.

3. The real actions of people who feel identified by a group or people who use the term.

Many times we have misunderstandings because we are thinking about different layers. Also, these differences in meaning are often astutely used to manipulate and tergiverse things.

Examples of terms with different effective meanings depending on the layer: blm, antifa, alt-right, feminism, neoliberalism, capitalism, communism.

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

#874

Post by nrmitchi »

chillacy wrote: post #806
nrmitchi wrote: post #390

I know that this will greatly help a few who are legitimately disturbed by the recent post and feel they either can't work at, or aren't excited by, Coinbase any more. But at the level of severance discussed in the post (4 (or 6) months, 7-year exercise window), it feels like most employees who know they could soft-land into another position would be silly not to take this offer. Some people may still enjoy working a…

There's probably a handful of people who had already interviewed and were on their way out in the next few weeks who got a lucky break today.

For sure. I'm not saying that they should do this, and I'm definitely not saying that I would be self-less enough to do it, but it would be a pretty strong gesture if those in that position were to turn around and donate their severance to an activism organization.

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

#876

Post by siculars »

kats wrote: post #736

Two weeks the same CEO campaigned against Apple's App Store policies on Twitter, and totally made it out to be a moral issue when it benefitted him. https://mobile.twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/1304490208... "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…

He was kind of very up front about being solely focused on economic freedom.

  Coinbase’s mission is to create an open financial system for the world. This means we want to use cryptocurrency to bring economic freedom to people all over the world.
This is squarely in line in trying to push Apple to be more amenable on this issue.

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

#877

Post by muyuu »

WJW wrote: post #641
monoideism wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s far beyond politics and more a religion than anything. I believe this is a result of the fact that Americans have turned away from organized religion in recent years (note: I'm not religious myself). There seems to be something deep inside of most people that requires a shared spiritual experience. Wokism has emerged to fill that need.

There seems to be an obvious counterexample in the rest of the Western nations (ie Canada, Australia, most of western Europe) that have experienced a similar reduction in organized religion but have not seen a corresponding rise to political division. Certainly not to the degree that the USA has.

I disagree. I'm in the UK and it's every bit as bad if not worse than the US in all cultural spheres and academia. The difference is that there has been much less pushback, if someone like Trump managed to be elected - which is highly unlikely as the gatekeeping is much worse than in the US - you'd see similar.

The atmosphere during the Brexit debate is/was absolutely fierce. The remain side has fundamentally a cosmopolitan-utopian worldview and the brexit side a nationalistic one (radically so compared to the orthodoxy in London and metro areas).

In other parts of Europe they're experiencing a severe decadence in culture and media because of the creeping monoculture of wokeism. They're having existential debates about their very national ideas, people don't want to have families anymore, nobody wants to defend their country and so they outsource this work to the US, while Russia and especially Asian powers have nothing of this whatsoever. Eastern Europe is caught in-between because they don't believe any of this but they don't have the size or clout to stand up to the soft economic power of Western Europe and the real power blocs elsewhere.

Out of the so-called West, the USA strikes me as by far the least decadent, and I'm not American. This feels to me like end-of-civilisation times as described for ancient empires. America pushing back presents some hope.

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

#878

Post by [deleted] »

newobj wrote: post #653
itsoktocry wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You ever wonder why "politics at work" has flared up so much in the last 4 years? Have you completely lost sight of the timeline of events, or do you refuse to acknowledge it? Do you think it's a reaction to something? Or did it just spontaneously instigate itself one day? Just uppity libs getting bored? People are speaking up because people feel existentially threatened. Because people are being existentially threat…

[deleted]

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

#879

Post by BurningFrog »

vmception wrote: post #493
flyinglizard wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guys who’d go on public platform to denounce Coinbase probably intersect with the type of people Coinbase wants to rid itself of. I fully support what Coinbase is doing. It seems very fair to all sides.

It doesn't change my stance on what I would prefer companies do but it seems like a multilayered issue on the tides to pay attention to here and at the very least makes me not want to espouse my own thoughts about "Yeah! mission focused companies!" publicly. Here are quotes from my feed: "The path to an IPO is to purge Black and Brown people from Coinbase ... this is very unbecoming of a federal contractor" "Over a d…

> "Sweden took 60 years to admit its neutrality policy was racist. How long will it take Coinbase to do the same? Being neutral is a position in support of the status quo - it always has been."

As a Swede, I... don't even know what they might be misinterpreting here!

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

#880

Post by throw_m239339 »

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.

Where do I apply for a join @ Coinbase? This is exactly the kind environment I want to work in. No petty identity politics while I'm supposed to test or deploy some code, I want my colleagues to come to work... to work and nothing else.
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