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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

#201

Post by lazyasciiart »

JPKab wrote: post #167
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…

But you're completely wrong. Facebook does have Republicans at senior levels in their company - Republicans as in "Joel Kaplan, vice-president of global public policy at Facebook, manages the company’s relationships with policymakers around the world. A former law clerk to archconservative justice Antonin Scalia on the supreme court, he served as deputy chief of staff for policy under former president George W Bush from 2006 to 2009, joining Facebook two years later."

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/03/facebook-... https://popular.info/p/the-republican-political-operatives

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

#202

Post by dangus »

orangecat wrote: post #136
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…

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 That's just wrong. "Black lives matter" encompasses at least three separate categories of claims: 1. The lives of black people are inherently as valuable as the lives of others. 2. The US and western civilization in general is based on white supremacy at its core, and…

I hoped that it was obvious by my word “mostly” that I was trying to distill the idea.

#2 is objectively true, ask any historian.

#3 is making a whole lot of assumptions about the goals and beliefs of an extremely large tent.

There are absolutely viewpoints that aren’t allowed to be challenged at work. But what you’re getting close to alluding to is the flawed idea of all ideas being equally acceptable.

The idea that Black Lives Matter is not on equal plane with the inverse. Those against the idea over technicalities are on the wrong side of history and human decency.

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

#203

Post by andreygrehov »

sparkie wrote: post #92
beervirus wrote: post #75

The policy seems pretty reasonable to me. Surprising that 60 people would quit because the company wants to make money instead of virtue signal.

It's the same as saying "Don't discuss religion at work." A religious fundamentalist would take issue with the mere fact that they are being told not to discuss their religion. That's what we have with virtue signalling types. They are religious fundamentalists, and their religion is Statism.

The problem with politics- and religion-like conversations is that it's like walking on the edge of a sword–it's quite easy to get into debates. Debating with your work colleagues about politics is something one would better avoid.

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

#204

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

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."

You, I, and Coinbase are all doing nothing to promote Joe Danna's campaign for sheriff of Harris County, Texas. Does that mean that we're effectively endorsing the status quo and the incumbent Ed Gonzalez? Or does it just mean that the Harris County sheriff's office has nothing to do with us?

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

#205

Post by yibg »

rllearneratwork wrote: post #71
asdfman123 wrote: post #12

I mean, I usually look for another job every year or two. If someone is also willing to pay me lavish amounts of money to do that and take a trip across Europe in between, please sign me up.

why? typically RSUs/signing bonus vest over 4 years period

if you leave after the initial cliff you're only losing out on future RSU / options vesting, same as future salary you haven't yet earned. Unless your initial equity has gone up a lot in value you're not really leaving anything behind as presumably in the new company you'd be getting similar or higher value grants.

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

#206

Post by notJim »

rllearneratwork wrote: post #71
asdfman123 wrote: post #12

I mean, I usually look for another job every year or two. If someone is also willing to pay me lavish amounts of money to do that and take a trip across Europe in between, please sign me up.

why? typically RSUs/signing bonus vest over 4 years period

I think it's not uncommon for years 2 and 3 to be the highest earning years though, due to the 25% cliff, and to retention grants you get in years 1/2.

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

#207

Post by JPKab »

CJefferson wrote: post #165
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?

Yes. They conform to their peer group by embracing politics and ideas from the SV bubble, which includes being disruptive for the reasons which their quasi-religion dictates.

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

#208

Post by vmception »

anoncareer0212 wrote: post #50
vmception wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> COBRA alone would eat up most of the severance. A single software engineer paying for full price for high premium plan on COBRA would be spending around $400[1], over the whole 18 months of doing that it would be $7,200 which would be less than one month's paycheck on a $160,000 salary. A cursory look at h1bdata.info shows that Coinbase pays plenty of H1B's that much, on the low side. Your view is a little exaggera…

You're right, if you don't have a family and don't have _any_ paycheck deductions, don't pay _any_ taxes, and use numbers 33% below the average cost, it seems small. Survey of purported 2019 data shows $570 * 12 = $6,840 for individual, $19,000 for family (for some reason, no monthly cost there) So lets say you only pay the feds income tax, and don't bother with medicaid, social security, state income tax, 401K, any…

> If you're single, yearly premium would be covered by 2.6 weeks of work, or 11% of your severance. If you have a family, 7.26 weeks of work, or 30% of your severance.

yeah this is a better metric than my napkin math above.

it is also important to elaborate that we are talking about 4 months of payment with continued health insurance included, and calling that savings for an additional 12 months of paying for health insurance.

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

#210

Post by decafninja »

I don't work in a Silicon Valley tech company, so maybe my perspective is out of touch with what's going on in SV.

But I thought it was generally understood that there were certain topics you really ought not to talk about at work including religion, politics, disclosing your salary, etc.

Has this changed? Or am I misunderstanding something?

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