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A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

blog.coinbase.com

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Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#161

Post by modeless »

uniqueid wrote: post #85

I could see this working out badly. I think Coinbase will now attract/retain fewer conscientious employees. The kind of employees who definitely won't leave are the ones with careerist/mercenary personality types. If that becomes a vicious cycle ( per the 'like attracts like' thing https://youtu.be/wTgQ2PBiz-g?t=75 ), the culture could lead to wide-spread ass-covering and fraud. Then again, this isn't an area in whic…

I think the opposite. The employees who stay are the kind who agree with the mission and want to focus on it. The kind who leave were focused on something other than advancing the company's goals. The company will be more effective at achieving its goals with a workforce that is all pointed in the same direction with less distraction. And the CEO mentioned that the people who left were not disproportionately underrepresented, so they are not losing diversity, just increasing focus.

Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#162

Post by BurningFrog »

djsumdog wrote: post #139
thedevil wrote: post #11

One thought: If you see a resume with Coinbase until October 2020, that's probably someone who prefers political activism in the workplace. That might be seen in a positive or negative light, depending on your stance. I personally am afraid to associate myself too publicly with a political stance, lest I be wrong and/or the environment changes.

I dunno. I wonder how many people they lost, not because they were political, but they wanted a break for 4~6 months.

Of course, anyone who were about to quit for any reason would take the offer.

Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#163

Post by manfredo »

dangus wrote: post #90

I can’t think of a worse way to handle this situation. Sure, I’m not sure what the answer is. Then again, I’m not a professional HR person who is supposed to be trained in handling these issues. Having 5% of your workforce quit over nothing more than messaging is a catastrophic failure in people management. Outright political speech bans at companies may be perfectly justified, but it’s usually the case that work env…

This comment is a perfect example of why banning political speech in the workplace is a very good idea. Every workplace that I've worked in that tolerated political speech ended up with a highly vocal segment of people making statements that parallel this comment: proclaiming that only a certain stance on controversial issues is acceptable, and implying (or stating outright) that divergence from this orthodoxy amounts to an affront to human dignity. This kind of rhetoric creates a hostile and toxic work environment, and companies are right in putting a stop to it.

Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#164

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #88
devtul wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This idea of "everything is political" is why the discourse went to shit, now nobody can catch a break from politics, and if you had enough and don't want to take part then you instantly gets attacked for "supporting the status quo". I prefer to not be lectured on political issues by my orange juice brand. Their mission should be to sell high quality orange juice and make a profit.

Is it really an attack though? Supporting the status quo (by objecting to discussions about changing it) is the perceived state. Is it an attack, to observe this? I understand folks feel uncomfortable talking about systemic bias. Especially if they don't suffer from it. But that's exactly the issue of status quo vs change - getting folks to notice/discuss it. So there can be change, which requires the comfortable to…

I think it's intended as an attack, but even if it's not it's just a terribly unfair characterization. If you host a meeting to review a design document, and I start talking about the Syrian Civil War in the middle, are you really supporting the status quo when you ask me to stay on topic?

Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#165

Post by CJefferson »

JPKab wrote: post #124

I feel like this confirms (although this could be confirmation bias, and would literally be a textbook case) my belief that this is indeed a tiny percentage of people at most tech companies that are really into social justice activism, and they are very, very noisy and disruptive. My suspicion is that the percentage of folks who are into this is higher at companies like Google, who have absurdly overly bureaucratic h…

So these people you don't like (sjas) are both disruptive and conformist?

Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#166

Post by ponker »

danaris wrote: post #78
devtul wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This idea of "everything is political" is why the discourse went to shit, now nobody can catch a break from politics, and if you had enough and don't want to take part then you instantly gets attacked for "supporting the status quo". I prefer to not be lectured on political issues by my orange juice brand. Their mission should be to sell high quality orange juice and make a profit.

Your life may not be political. My life may not be political. But the life of a black trans woman? That's political by its very nature, in today's climate. One party doesn't want her to be allowed to exist, the other does. Believing it's possible to be "apolitical" in any time of polarization is a privilege of those who benefit from the status quo.

I think there are definitely people who don’t want her to exist but there are also ones like me, who get called Nazis for it, but whose perspective is largely 1) OK 2) please pay for your own costs related to your choices and 3) I’m not being an asshole to you because you’re a black trans woman, I’m being an asshole to you because I am an asshole and my white male friends say “oh Xxx is such as asshole.” So don’t take it personally

Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#167

Post by JPKab »

krzyk wrote: post #123

Is "apolitical" stance a bad thing? Isn't it the default, safe? I lived in country where you had to be "political" to be in management, it didn't end up well (East Europe, Soviet Union), I always (naively?) thought that West countries were wiser. So I prefer companies to not mess with politics.

My wife is mostly liberal from a US political perspective, but happens to be opposed to abortion. I happen to disagree in nuanced ways with her on this topic. My business.

According to my coworkers, who discovered this because they saw her bumper sticker when she picked me up one day, this is because she is "ignorant and doesn't know the facts" and "if she knew the facts she wouldn't think that way" and that I "need to talk to her and explain them."

They think that, due to their profession, they are intelligent, and therefore anyone who disagrees with them about a complex topic is either less intelligent or uninformed. It's the epitome of youthful arrogance. Naturally, none of them have kids and really don't see the nuance of the issue. It's insufferable, and at one point I was getting ready to clobber a guy who I am 100% positive has never been hit in his life.

Politics should be left out of work. And yes, by convincing a broad spectrum of the American public that Trump won the election because of a few facebook ads bought by Russian assets, instead of simply saying that they had a shitty candidate, the Democratic party has essentially pressured tech companies to have political filtering on their staff. If Facebook had Republicans working at senior levels in their company, they would have been subjected to even more harassment from Dem leaders who scapegoated them for their loss in 2016. Facebook has former Democratic party operatives at high levels in their company. They don't and can't have anyone from the Republican party. They get unending amounts of shit for Thiel being on their board.

Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#168

Post by sparkie »

AlexandrB wrote: post #143
sparkie wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the CEO’s refusal to take a stance on whether Black Lives Matter is a stance in itself. It’s hard not to assume that he doesn’t agree with the organization or the statement, even if that’s not the case. And while the movement is in some way political, in most ways the organization and the phrase simply stands for the idea that, well, Black Lives Matter. It’s simply a marginalized group seeking equal treatme…

> If BLM was just that, most people, even on the political right, would have no problems with it. Let's get real. People on the political right have been yelling about kneeling in the NFL since that particular form of protest began. And it has few/none of the associations you describe. > I'm a fan of racial equality, and by that I mean completely eliminating racism quotas, making hiring based purely on merit and not…

> Sounds great in theory. Now try to ascertain if someone made a hiring/promotion decision based on merit or on melanin without some kind of Star Trek era brain scan.

I'm of the opinion that business owners should be the sole arbiters of who is hired and promoted anyway. The State should mind its own business. A good business owner will promote the best talent which will make their company grow. If they start filtering talent based on skin color, they're hurting their own pocket.

You can't ascertain whether individual hiring decisions are based on merit or not, but you can make a statistical guess at what percentage of each ethnicity would be promoted based on the demographics where the hiring is taking place. If the population is 10% black and 90% white, you'd expect an organization to be 10% black and 90% white on average, if no racial screening is occurring.

However, the common "diversity quotas" which are commonly employed now want a different outcome. They want to see at least 50% of hires from BAME, even if BAME are only 20% of the demographics. There's a term for this. It's called racism.

Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#169

Post by eli »

thedevil wrote: post #11

One thought: If you see a resume with Coinbase until October 2020, that's probably someone who prefers political activism in the workplace. That might be seen in a positive or negative light, depending on your stance. I personally am afraid to associate myself too publicly with a political stance, lest I be wrong and/or the environment changes.

Only a very foolish hiring manager would hold it against someone who left Coinbase. Or someone who stayed on.

> I personally am afraid to associate myself too publicly with a political stance, lest I be wrong and/or the environment changes.

This suggests you speak from a position of privilege. It is easy to implicitly endorse the status quo when it is beneficial to you.

Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#170

Post by AnimalMuppet »

Pfhreak wrote: post #145
krzyk wrote: post #123

Is "apolitical" stance a bad thing? Isn't it the default, safe? I lived in country where you had to be "political" to be in management, it didn't end up well (East Europe, Soviet Union), I always (naively?) thought that West countries were wiser. So I prefer companies to not mess with politics.

"Apolitical" is the default. It's another way of saying, "The way things are is fine". The problem is that this is, in itself, a political stance. An example could be climate change. If Coinbase is doing nothing to make energy more green (even if that's just writing amicus briefs or blog posts), then they are effectively saying, "The way things are is fine."

No, they are effectively saying "Those issues are outside the scope of the purpose of our organization". That's not the same thing.
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