Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

blog.coinbase.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

551–560 of 774 posts

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

#551

Post by [deleted] »

christophilus wrote: post #427
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #10

For reference, the severance package was 4 months of salary for employees with =3 years of tenure at Coinbase. The severance also included 6 months of health insurance. (Source: https://www.coindesk.com/coinbase-severance-apolitical-missi... ) What percentage of employees at Coinbase are actively interviewing for other jobs at any given time? 5%? If someone has one foot out the door already, taking a bonus equivalent…

I think you underestimate how many people are fed up with overly politicized workplaces. I’ve quit a couple of jobs due to it. I’d definitely stay somewhere where I can just work without having to listen to unrelated BS constantly, even if it meant passing on a sweet severance package.

[deleted]

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

#552

Post by heimatau »

heimatau wrote: post #432
__blockcipher__ wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the problem is really about politicization and more specifically the fact that in most US tech companies there is an enormous bias towards those on the political left, and a believe that those who lean left are more “scientifically educated” or intelligent or well-read, etc. As one example you can see it in the way you can make hostile comments about “straight white males” and nobody says anything, but if you wer…

> 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.

The fact that this comment has gotten a lot of downvotes is pretty clear to me that techies are in an ecochamber. And...they want to keep their bubble. Good stuff.

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

#553

Post by chii »

tzs wrote: post #460
drivingmenuts wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> you would work on it without bringing up your concerns or you would quit?

let me reverse this, and present a different scenario. You are doing your job, but you feel strongly about a certain political movement (be it BLM or abortion rights, or whatnot). You tell your boss that you are going to spend some work time to talk to other employees and may be convince them to join your cause. What should the boss do? Let you work on it without bringing up their concern? Or fire you?

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

#554

Post by chii »

nemothekid wrote: post #242
disposekinetics wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>(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 be…

But you're deliberately avoiding the point that coinbase wants to make - which is that if the topic is relevant to the business (as determined by the owners of the business), then it's considered on-topic for work place political discussion and activism.

But if it's unrelated to the business, then the business is no place to undertake such activism.

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

#555

Post by randmeerkat »

notSupplied wrote: post #488
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 certainly agree that the mission of a company can (and preferably) be more than just for profit. However, "to be political" is still a pretty wide range of possible missions. Who calls the shots about what you're going to be political about, and which side you take? And when a group of employees disagree with the shots being called, what kinds of reactions are appropriate or not? I'll take a shot: - I think compell…

I’ll take a shot at responding:

I would argue that the board wouldn’t exist without the people that make up the company. I would also argue that with monied interests and lobbyists in Washington, one of the last places that people can really effect societal change is at the work place. Companies have become the power center in American politics, so of course activism is going to rise up there.

As far as compelled activism goes, I feel that silence _is_ violence.

“The Only Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil is that Good Men Do Nothing” (JFK, Burke, Mill...)

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

#557

Post by chii »

femto113 wrote: post #263
disposekinetics wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Even deciding what is political or not is political. If you try to limit the definition to something putatively objective like "directly relating to the function of government agencies" a great many topics are immediately ambiguous: institutionalized racism? marriage? the environment? the economy?

> Even deciding what is political or not is political

No, the distinction is not whether somebody _decides_ if a topic is political or not, but that the conversations' intension is to convert the other party that your point of view is correct for society. I.e., you have to undertake political activism towards something for the topic to be political.

It's like religion as a topic of conversation, vs religious conversion. Two people can be talking about religion, but if neither is trying to "convert" the other, then this is not a religious conversion.

But if one party is talking with the intent to convert the other party to said religion, then it's a religious conversion. And the argument is that this should not happen in the workplace.

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

#558

Post by swiley »

83afnpg wrote: post #556

Brian seriously misunderstands what apolitical means and cannot tell the difference between Black Lives Matter and Black lives matter. The race and gender of his employees are not a political statement.

In his defense that's probably not immediately obvious to most people.

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

#559

Post by dannyw »

ummonk wrote: post #382
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #10

For reference, the severance package was 4 months of salary for employees with =3 years of tenure at Coinbase. The severance also included 6 months of health insurance. (Source: https://www.coindesk.com/coinbase-severance-apolitical-missi... ) What percentage of employees at Coinbase are actively interviewing for other jobs at any given time? 5%? If someone has one foot out the door already, taking a bonus equivalent…

Yeah it's weird so few took it up given how low median tenure in tech tends to be.

> Why did you leave Coinbase?

> I want to engage with politics at work.

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

#560

Post by chii »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #345
disposekinetics wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

To me, "everything is political" is a bumper sticker version of the assertion that what is and isn't "political" in the sense of "political statement" is often way more subjective than we sometimes recognize it is. If a coworker talks about his husband, is that a political statement? To some people, absolutely, right? How about someone mentioning a concert that they've gone to, for an artist that's outspokenly politi…

To me, the deciding criteria is the intent of the person undertaking said action. Are they taking an action to express their allegiance to a political movement? Are they taking action to attempt to convince/recruit people to a cause they believe in?

Or are they taking action not for such purposes? For example, a gay person talking about their spouse to a colleague without the intent to change any political beliefs of anyone around them?

Post reply on HN