A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company • Hacker News Board

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

#451

Post by heimatau » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 1:31 AM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #433

heimatau wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No You're speaking from a personal experience. I'm not minimizing your experience with my comments. But if you have time to browse Social Media or enough time to get into extended hostile discussions (about ANYTHING), then your manager isn't doing their job. Full-stop.

> But if you have time to browse Social Media or enough time to get into extended hostile discussions (about ANYTHING), then your manager isn't doing their job. Full-stop. What you describe is a sweat shop, not knowledge work. You can have downtime while still getting your work done and acting like an adult with colleagues. If you don’t have this skill set, make the effort to cultivate some tact and decorum.

> You can have downtime

This is where you might be misunderstanding. Downtime shouldn't be to engage in more stressful mental activity. Think about it. Go to the gym. Study for a big exam. Are you really engaged on the goals of a gym? Are you really engaged in getting a good grade on an exam? If you are, you are finite and I highly suspect that the high performers aren't going to try and add more stress on their lives (political or anything else). I'm suggesting they aren't sweating enough at the gym. I'm suggesting they aren't working hard enough. I'm not suggesting that they're a slave. I'm not suggesting they are a wage slave.

I'm suggesting they are more likely to be working in a half-assed way and don't have a 'buy-in' to the company's objectives. Which tends to be true based on numerous business management studies (since at least the 1970s that I've read).

Hard workers want enjoyable leisure. Not pissing off a Karen. Or dealing with a Greg. This is a toxic mindset that doesn't make any sense.

P.S. There is also another variable. That some people are closed minded but, imho, that can be overcome with good soft skills of a good manager/vision/buy-in.

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

#452

Post by issa » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 1:45 AM UTC

Some of the comments in this thread make me pretty sad. There is a lot of nuance, obviously, but generally speaking when people say work is too "political" and make complaints that "people are allowed to insult straight white males, but insulting other groups is off limits", it doesn't take much reading between the lines to see what is going on. I hope everyone can take a second and appreciate how underrepresented certain demographics are in tech and that we should all work to change this.

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

#453

Post by mtalantikite » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 1:45 AM UTC

knorker wrote: post #300

mtalantikite wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“I personally am afraid to associate myself too publicly with a political stance, lest I be wrong and/or the environment changes.” I can understand this fear, but generally if you choose a stance based on compassion for all beings you’ll be in the right in the long run. This particular issue was sparked by Coinbase not taking a stance on Black Lives Matter, which they are wrong about. Standing for dismantling racism…

On the other hand working with crimecurrency is always wrong, so already there we can say that every coinbase employee who stays is evil. > Standing for dismantling racism is always correct. As opposed to standing against it, yes. As opposed to "we're just building a juicer, man", no. Not every group of people "must" take an active stance on every social issue. If they did then they would do nothing but that. This is…

I mean yeah, I agree. Except maybe the not investing money part, that was a little extra. But everything else, for sure.

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

#454

Post by bhupy » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 1:51 AM UTC

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."

Just because I don’t bring up politics with my barber, doesn’t mean that either of us don’t care about political issues. The proposal here is to compartmentalize.

If I don’t know someone’s political stance, my default isn’t to assume that they think “things are fine”, my default is to assume that they have some set of beliefs that are irrelevant to that particular interaction with them.

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

#455

Post by paulcole » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 1:52 AM UTC

Where are all these politically active workplaces that these HN commenters hate. I’d love to work at a place like that!

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

#456

Post by arawnx » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 1:52 AM UTC

AgentME wrote: post #425

arawnx wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it interesting that the crowd fighting for liberation & equity are mysteriously up against... the apolitical crowd? When the dichotomy is ethical realism vs. pragmatism, you have to ask yourself who's actually operating like a religion, who's actually a dogmatist in liberator's clothing.

Most people don't worry about all aspects of the world's problems, and many people find themselves convinced that the status quo is more comfortable than the alternative. It's not at all surprising to me that a lot of political issues would have a "thought about it, realized the problems, and trying to fix it" position and a "apolitical, don't like thinking about it, don't want to consider changes to the status quo"…

This is nonsense. There is no "the alternative;" there are no "apolitical" people. This is a circumstance of organizations, for whom being apolitical is the best way to alienate the fewest people. However, if you do indeed believe you have objective truth in your nonsensical dogmatic worldview, then hypothetically you'd be countered by somebody with a contrary truth. However this does not happen. The only opposition that these dogmatists get is from the new ethical relativists, i.e. people who advocate for apolitical organizations.

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

#457

Post by ISL » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 1:54 AM UTC

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.

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

"Well, whatever life is, you’re going to die. So if you’re going to make things better for yourself or for those you care about, you had better become an activist while you’re still alive." -- Will Provine

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?cc=ptb;c=ptb;...

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

#458

Post by throwaway894345 » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 1:55 AM UTC

joshuamorton wrote: post #428

throwaway894345 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gay marriage is a divisive topic in the USA. A gay man talking about his wedding around the water cooler is political. A straight man talking about his wedding around the water cooler is not political. Talking about one's wedding around the water cooler is not political, irrespective of the speaker's orientation OR the audience's opinions about gay marriage. Similarly, an argument in favoring or opposing gay marria…

While that's true now, it wasn't true 10 (or even 5 in some places) years ago. It's arguably not even true in some places today. Just this week , the Supreme Court denied cert on a lawsuit about same sex marriage (Kim Davis).

You’re confusing “controversial” with “political”. Someone’s marriage may be controversial to someone, but talking about it isn’t political (at least not in the sense we’re discussing here). It becomes political when someone is arguing for or against gay marriage.

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

#459

Post by core-questions » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 1:57 AM UTC

yokaze wrote: post #188

redm wrote: post #82

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.

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…

> The mission of the company is not disjoint from the society it is embedded in.

If it cannot be disjoint, then it seems like it has become a requirement for it to be aligned in only one acceptable direction - hence why Coinbase's move is apparently controversial. Failure to actively support the standardized and approved message is apparently not acceptable!

> This is just one more step in that direction.

One more misstep. The combination of this effect with polarization means it's only a matter of time before someone realizes there's actually going to be a market for legitimately countercultural companies that reach out to those who don't walk the new party line. Since there's enough of them to elect a president, it's probably high time for some brave company to take you up on your suggestion that everything be political.

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

#460

Post by tzs » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 1:58 AM UTC

drivingmenuts wrote: post #295

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…

I tend to treat politics and religion as subjects best dealt with on my own time. The company is paying me to get results for the company, not the larger society. If I somehow disagree with the perceived politics, I’m free to seek other employment. Implicit in this position is that the company doesn’t get to dictate either politics or religion handled in my personal time.

So if you have a job you like, at a company that up to now has been only making products that you have no problem with, and they started working on something that you found morally reprehensible and assigned you to work on it, either you would work on it without bringing up your concerns or you would quit?