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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

#471

Post by schoen »

celdon25 wrote: post #409
rednerrus wrote: post #330

My company is becoming increasingly political and it's terrible. I'd gladly go work at a company where I didn't have to engage with endless political activism. If I want to hear everyone's opinions on everything, I'd find their facebook page or the HN usernames and follow them.

You could consider working for a 501(c)(3) charity, where employees are forbidden by law to make most types of political statements (including in private) using company equipment or channels. The actual laws around this are nuanced and don't cover all types of political speech, but it covers enough to where the average employee will be wise to think twice before saying just about anything political at work. The IRS h…

I worked at a 501(c)(3) for a long time and my coworkers followed the IRS rules about politics in the sense of electoral advocacy. That does not mean that they refrained from airing their social views at work or saying what people, groups, or ideas they thought were good or bad.

Your advice would be great for people who are uncomfortable mainly about coworkers using an employer mailing list or chat to ask people to vote a certain way. Otherwise, not so much, I think.

My impression is that restrictions on 501(c)(3)s' political activity are grounded in something like campaign finance concerns.

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

#472

Post by schoen »

celdon25 wrote: post #469
protomyth wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could consider working for a 501(c)(3) charity, where employees are forbidden by law to make most types of political statements (including in private) using company equipment or channels That's not quite how it actually works. https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organiz...

I work for a 501(c)(3). IIRC from the company meeting we had with an attorney who specializes in this subject, taking a political stance can fall under the category of indirect participation in a political campaign. If you're using company channels to make a statement, you're effectively campaigning under the official badge of that company, even if you're only talking to one other person who happens to work for that…

Sure, but think of how much of politics in the workplace and elsewhere today is not about political campaigns and candidates.

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

#473

Post by 1MachineElf »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #358
xmprt wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of governments would be much quicker to regulate companies like Google and Facebook if they weren't also fighting for these political issues. At the end of the day, these political stances help further the companies original mission.

This comment doesn't make much sense to me. I'm not sure if you're talking about political stances that are meaningfully related to the company's mission, and in either case how that would affect governments' willingness to regulate those companies. Are you simply arguing that governments would be more willing to regulate Google if Google didn't spend so much lobbying against regulation? In that case, obviously (this…

The parent comment is talking about how it is politically dangerous to be seen attempting to regulate companies that virtue signal.

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

#474

Post by ineedasername »

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…

You can make a connection between the work you do and society at large without getting into unproductive arguments on company time. Think that sort of thing has value? That's fine: do it outside of the time the company carves out for you to perform your normal duties.

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

#475

Post by username90 »

war1025 wrote: post #447
freeone3000 wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We control the information flow for billions. How the hell could that NOT be political?

> We control the information flow for billions Who is "we"? The majority of people here don't work for FANG

And the large majority of people at FANG have about as much control over the flow of information as a plumber has over the flow of shit from a city. They just keep the system running, they don't influence it.

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

#476

Post by hombre_fatal »

jariel wrote: post #436
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. " Serving coffee is not political. Planning the network installation is not political. Code reviews, cleaning your office, optimizing the VM, getting a bandwidth deal, negotiating the SaaS pricing, choosing ingredients for the new dish, figuring out how many loads of gravel are needed for the landfill, picking a guy to fix the fence ... It's 99% not political. Google search is bare…

> Google search is barely political

Google is making everything political with its "Machine Learning Fairness" initiative. Like when you google image search "european art" or "white men".

You'd think European art was 50% black person portraits and that 50% of white men were criminals or black.

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

#477

Post by mandelbrotwurst »

jefftk wrote: post #448
mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, really? Dont many (most?) 501c3s have highly political missions? E.g. EFF, ACLU, NRA?

The ACLU is a 501c4. There's also the ACLU Foundation which is a 501c3 and in exchange for being able to receive tax deductible donations accepts limits on what it can do politically. See https://stateimpact.npr.org/florida/2013/04/05/explaining-th... The NRA is also a 501c4. The EFF is a 501c3, which limits what sorts of political work it can do.

Oh, interesting, thanks. The only one I verified before posting was EFF, and I hadn't heard of a 501c4 previously.

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

#478

Post by remarkEon »

gnusty_gnurc wrote: post #115
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.

It’s precisely the type of messaging that happened after 9/11 too. “You’re either with us or against us.” Leave it to the woke crowd to take a page out of the Karl Rove handbook.

Who took it out of Lenin's handbook, ironically.

Time is a flat circle and all that.

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

#479

Post by war1025 »

username90 wrote: post #475
war1025 wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We control the information flow for billions Who is "we"? The majority of people here don't work for FANG

And the large majority of people at FANG have about as much control over the flow of information as a plumber has over the flow of shit from a city. They just keep the system running, they don't influence it.

Even more so then. "We" don't control anything any more than anyone else.

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

#480

Post by schoen »

arawnx wrote: post #456
AgentME wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[I wrote a super-long reply and then realized that I had interpreted your view exactly backwards. Sorry!]
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