301–310 of 774 posts
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Not using your business as a political platform is not the same as supporting the status quo. The "if you're not with us, you're against us" stance is definitely polarizing and is not making things better.
But Coinbase is using their business as a political platform[1]. [1] https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/?...
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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?
If I had another offer, I would also take severance over Coinbase's "apolitical" stance
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>(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 offe…
Arguments like "abortion is highly related to site reliability engineering" are pretty overtly disingenuous in a very clear-cut fashion.
> Here I have to say, I'm more likely to give the point, that those topics are not professionally relevant, but neither is sports.
Sports don't cause the same degree of strife in the workplace. No one is demanding anyone's termination because they like a different sports team or because they were caught in a photograph gesturing in a way that looks vaguely like the hook 'em horns gesture (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hook_%27em_Horns).
It’s unfortunate that CEOs / Founders think it’s appropriate to dictate the culture of the organization vs. learning to nurture the emergent values from within the team. It’s a sign of limited leadership capacity to attempt to install culture as a top down mandate.
It's like that person who screamed "we're trying to build a home here!" at a university when someone was to be cancelled. What? No... that's not what a university is.
Emergent values and culture? A CEO should just start paying people and hope that a business emerges? What? It's literally the job of the leadership to steer the company.
I hated working at one of previous jobs because there were 600 different issues talked about in the workplace. The underlying assumption was that you were always onboard. Many times I wasn’t and it.
Seeing Armstrong voice this policy makes me much more interested in working at Coinbase. I’m convinced that I won’t be cornered into jumping on the latest cause de jour because that’s what’s expected of me. Where any deviation from the cause’s line would put my job at risk.
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What does this mean? If this is yet another “if you’re not for us you’re against us” argument (e.g. if you don’t discuss police violence in the workplace then you necessarily support police violence), then this is false on its face. If this means “the decision to not discuss politics—especially politics unrelated to one’s work—at work is itself a political decision” then fine, but what’s the point? Is the idea that i…
one inconsistency is that Coinbase is based in SF. Would you consider "sorry, I didn't get a lot of sleep due to police sound grenades going off until 3am" a political statement?
That's not an inconsistency.
> Would you consider "sorry, I didn't get a lot of sleep due to police sound grenades going off until 3am" a political statement?
No, of course not.
I feel like this is the start of a rising tide. I think Brian's stance is great, companies have missions, they should focus on those missions. Everything has become so political that your work, which occupies a large portion of your life, should not be divisive.
Coinbase will have to make political decisions, and it's natural that people within the company will have differing opinions -- informed by their personal politics -- as to the course those decisions should take.
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I mean - If it's a problem that they're political or apolitical, then it's already a part of your hiring process. Whether you talk to them (or not) about it doesn't change that - just means you're hiding that part of the process or including them in it.
> If it's a problem that they're political or apolitical, then it's already a part of your hiring process. Definitely not. Unconscious bias is a huge issue in interviewing. Blinding your interviewers to political orientation, or any other factor, is far more effective than telling them just to ignore it.
Altho TBC I do think you're right that blinding is better than attempting to ignore.
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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. Only in a world where words have no meaning.