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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

#241

Post by defen »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #213
defen wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If 95% of the people at the company don't care, but you're the person who won't stop bringing up the need to change orange juice vendors, to the point that it's disruptive and annoying to the 95%, maybe they don't want to work with you any more. And maybe it's not the right company for you, either. Why would you want to work with a bunch of people who are indifferent to environmental destruction when there are litera…

If 95% of the company doesn't care then you should change orange juice vendors. Making it turn into an ongoing issue would be a very strong sign that people at the company care very strongly about keeping the current vendor. Which means that perhaps you should leave, but you should leave because people are actively opposing your politics and not because that 95% is not political.

By "don't care" I mean they don't perceive the current situation as a problem, and they view the cost of switching vendors to be too high. But either way, yes.

I think one problem with the concept of "everything is political (including supporting the status quo)" is that it provides no principled mechanism for determining what counts as "too far" (costly) for any given political cause. The nice thing about having a dictator (CEO) in this regard is that it provides a fixed point.

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

#242

Post by nemothekid »

disposekinetics wrote: post #193
yokaze wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see it the other way around. (Almost) everything is political. The mission of the company is not disjoint from the society it is embedded in. Things have become divisive by being able to ignore and blend out the opposing views. By not talking and listening to one another. This is just one more step in that direction. Funnily enough, I think it has been extrapolated by Neal Stephenson in Diamond Age. We will end up…

>(Almost) everything is political. I'm curious what your definition of political is, because my gut feeling is that (Almost) nothing is political.

Do you believe end to end encryption is political? Do you believe that companies should disable E2E encryption in order to be "apolitical" in the eyes US's attorney general?

How do you believe Coinbase, a cryptocurrency corporation, will remain "a political" in the design of their systems given the changing political climate around crypto? Does that just mean bowing down to whatever the administration says? Do you believe Coinbase will remain "apolitical" is the US begins to enact policy that causes Coinbase users to find alternatives?

Do you believe Coinbase employees will have no opinion on the way the justice department handles cryptocurrency?

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

#243

Post by chrisseaton »

slow_donkey wrote: post #237
chrisseaton wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but switching jobs let's you ask for $10k or more Right... but aren't the options you're throwing away worth 10x that? How can it possibly be worth it?

Why wouldn't you be obtaining the equivalent amount of options at the next job? Let's say your vesting schedule is 4 years w/ 1 year cliff, it's only necessary to stay 1 year. Thereafter you're not 'losing' options by leaving.

You're forgetting the options gain value as the company grows (due to your own hard work which is the whole point!)

You're awarded $100k but then it grows to $200k by the time you start cashing it in. When you switch company you get $100k again, not the $200k you threw away.

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

#244

Post by ardy42 »

disposekinetics wrote: post #193
yokaze wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see it the other way around. (Almost) everything is political. The mission of the company is not disjoint from the society it is embedded in. Things have become divisive by being able to ignore and blend out the opposing views. By not talking and listening to one another. This is just one more step in that direction. Funnily enough, I think it has been extrapolated by Neal Stephenson in Diamond Age. We will end up…

>(Almost) everything is political. I'm curious what your definition of political is, because my gut feeling is that (Almost) nothing is political.

> I'm curious what your definition of political is, because my gut feeling is that (Almost) nothing is political.

Politics is more than just the rituals of government officials or what gets written about in the politics section of the newspaper:

> Politics (from Greek: Πολιτικά, politiká, 'affairs of the cities') is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations between individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics)

For instance, this effort to create an "apolitical workplace" could probably be understood as political project to stamp out elements of bottom-up democratic political culture in favor of a more autocratic political culture. At work we keep our heads down and follow the edicts (mission) of our leaders.

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

#245

Post by disposekinetics »

linuxhansl wrote: post #192
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #46

I am beyond sick of political activists in the workplace, so I hope this trend catches on.

I am beyond sick of folks in the workplace who silently accept the status quo, so I hope this trend does not catch on.

Silence gives us the ability to work together, without silence you get to hear my hardcore religious ideas all day. Silence is our truce.

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

#246

Post by greggyb »

areichert wrote: post #42
majormajor wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah... I'm genuinely curious how many people actually quit over the "apolitical" stance, vs employees that were just unhappy with the job in general and took this convenient opportunity to leave with a pretty sweet deal. Getting people who are unhappy (politics aside) to leave sounds more like "the severance package was a nice move" than "the severance package was too good."

Hmm that's a pretty interesting way of thinking about it, I didn't even consider it from that angle. Might be a silly idea, but I wonder if more companies would benefit from doing something like this on a semi-regular basis, i.e. giving unhappy employees the opportunity to leave with a decent "severance" package?

Netflix takes the stance 'adequate performance gets a generous severance package.' You can read more in their culture doc that made the rounds a few years ago.

Original deck: https://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664/

Up to date statement: http://jobs.netflix.com/culture

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

#247

Post by tehjoker »

cltby wrote: post #65
tehjoker wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wanting to make money is political because it means the environment has been configured in such a way that you can do so. If you make money in the position of a manager or boss, it is even more strongly political as you are using the configuration of the political system to direct societal resources at your whim to make money.

Just playing the bongos is political because it means the environment has been configured in such a way that you can do so. If you play the bongos in the position of a manager or boss, it is even more strongly political as you are using the configuration of the political system to direct societal resources at your whim to play the bongos. You might be proving too much here.

Not at all. While there is a tiny bit of truth to your bongo example, money in particular is highly political though it has been rhetorically stripped in order to make it appear as though it is not so the wealthy can make money in peace. Controlling the distribution of resources in society is a highly political question.

Who makes more money at work for example? The low level employee or the boss? Who controls what, why, and how things are produced? What the schedules are? These are smaller questions than national policy, but they are political in nature. Of course, the socialist movement sees all workplaces' workers united together as a national political project. When you swim in water all your life, you can't see it easily unless someone points it out.

Another reason "just making money" is political is because so many people can't. In a society with levels of inequality that approximate ancient kingdoms, the lowest people in society have little opportunity to "just make money" and their invisibility is a political artifice.

Put another way, what is political is the ability to _not care_ when others are suffering. People are being deported, attacked in the streets, dying of disease, etc. so keeping your head down _and make money_ during such a time is something won by virtue of class. Other people can't ignore it because politics is life and death. While exhaustion is a valid excuse to rest (I'm super tired myself), what is being asked is for solidarity and to exhibit positive humanity towards other people. A primary site of conflict and domination is the workplace -- it's just that so many of us are used to losing or out competing each other that we don't band together to win.

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

#248

Post by yokaze »

disposekinetics wrote: post #193
yokaze wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see it the other way around. (Almost) everything is political. The mission of the company is not disjoint from the society it is embedded in. Things have become divisive by being able to ignore and blend out the opposing views. By not talking and listening to one another. This is just one more step in that direction. Funnily enough, I think it has been extrapolated by Neal Stephenson in Diamond Age. We will end up…

>(Almost) everything is political. I'm curious what your definition of political is, because my gut feeling is that (Almost) nothing is political.

From entering "define political" in Google:

1. relating to the government or public affairs of a country.

Not the one the parent probably means:

2. (DEROGATORY) done or acting in the interests of status or power within an organization rather than as a matter of principle.

Whatever a company does, it relates in some way to the public affairs of a country. Either in what you offer, or what you need to produce your offer. Your company is hopefully affecting the public affairs of your country in more than one way. And that I think had very much a place at work.

The delineation between public affair and private matter seems to be quite arbitrary at times.

I would say abortion is a private matter, or who you marry or which combination of sex chromosomes you have, but all those things are very high on the list of things being discussed.

Here I have to say, I'm more likely to give the point, that those topics are not professionally relevant, but neither is sports.

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

#250

Post by RIMR »

skybrian wrote: post #240
yokaze wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see it the other way around. (Almost) everything is political. The mission of the company is not disjoint from the society it is embedded in. Things have become divisive by being able to ignore and blend out the opposing views. By not talking and listening to one another. This is just one more step in that direction. Funnily enough, I think it has been extrapolated by Neal Stephenson in Diamond Age. We will end up…

Missions are often in pursuit of political goals. (It's a political stance that promoting the use of cryptocurrency is good, and not one I share.) But, this doesn't mean an organization has to take a position on every hot-button political issue. Even the Biden campaign, a a political organization if there ever was one, needs to focus on getting their candidate elected, and not on things that divide Democrats. To agre…

But that's not what is being addressed. Not getting involved in "every hot-button political issue" is clearly advisable, but Coinbase is preemptively deciding that all political conversation is off the table while they run a highly unregulated multi-billion dollar currency exchange.

There are going to be political issues that involve Coinbase, and if they're deciding already to ignore any role they play in society, we need to be highly critical of every decision they make moving forward.

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