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

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

#631

Post by nilkn » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 1:46 PM UTC

jariel wrote: post #625

nilkn wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t there a pretty clear power imbalance if one side is being given a platform to espouse these views in front of hundreds of employees while they get endorsed by HR and company leadership?

Are you really comparing the 'power of someone to say something at work in 2020' with things like 'Black people were not allowed to have mortgages until one generation ago'?

First, I feel you misrepresented my comment. “Saying something at work” doesn’t quite convey the same thing as “given a platform in front of hundreds of employees at a formal event with full support and endorsement by HR and company leadership.” The latter sounds a lot more like actual discrimination because it’s backed up by explicit and established power structures.

Second, you’ve selected examples separated in time by decades. When you grant yourself the power of time travel, it certainly does become a lot easier to come up with examples. The world is changing fast nowadays. The landscape is completely different today than it was even 10 years ago.

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

#632

Post by jiuahweruihawi » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 1:52 PM UTC

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?

Except that isn't what's happening at Coinbase. Coinbase is still making the same product it made six months ago. It's the activists who want Coinbase to start working on something else.

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

#633

Post by cltby » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 1:54 PM UTC

CarelessExpert wrote: post #119

cltby wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bob grows chickens and Alice grows corn. They trade via barter. We'd probably agree this isn't political in any meaningful sense. One day, Alice has a clever idea: she can create a digital representation of money. Both Alice and Bob agree to accept these "tokens" in lieu of barter. Big mistake. CarelessExpert announces to Alice and Bob that their creation obligates them to join in bitter arguments about abortion, cli…

So do you normally spend a lot of your time online standing up straw men and knocking them down? Or is today a special case? My point, since apparently I need to clarify it, is that Coinbase claiming to have an "apolitical" workplace while a) operating in a business that's driven by libertarian and anarchist philosophy and b) spending time and money lobbying politicians in Washington in support of said values is, at…

If the Coinbase guys were lobbying for "libertarian and anarchist philosophy," broadly construed, you'd have a point. But they're not. They're pushing for narrow financial regulation. There's no principled reason to think they're doing this in furtherance of their personal politics, as opposed to, say, making their customers' lives easier.

As such, I don't see the hypocrisy. Now, I'd be more inclined to agree if the "politics ban" covered activism around crypto policy issues. But of course, then management's position is very easy to see. They hired developers to implement their vision, not to fight it.

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

#634

Post by jiuahweruihawi » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 1:58 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #365

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.

My last company was trending in a similar direction. They would allow one ideological group to post completely unsubstantiated political claims, but opposing views were not allowed to be presented at all, even if they were thoroughly researched (this wasn't "official" policy, of course). Note that while I'm not a lawyer, I suspect that these permitted ideological viewpoints were sufficiently sexist and racist as to o…

Isn't it interesting that I know nothing about you or where you worked but I can predict with near 100% certainty which unsubstantiated, contentious opinions your company permitted and which ones weren't allowed no matter how well-researched?

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

#635

Post by nunja » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 2:00 PM UTC

thundergolfer wrote: post #362

nunja wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too. I can't see why staying in my comfort zone is regarded as political. One solution is to just get comfy. No politics involved, just plain survivalism, nothing wrong.

It’s political because a number of hugely important issues call us all to action (child poverty, climate change, homelessness) and those issues are and will continue to put vulnerable people in danger of death and suffering. Staying in your comfort zone is likely an expression of indifference to them as vanishingly few people are comfortable when tackling these problems. You might adopt a political position that your…

I actually agree with you. My comment was provocative in the sense that I would surely immediately become engaged politically if I was out of this comfort zone.

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

#636

Post by jiuahweruihawi » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 2:08 PM 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."

My company has never made any public statement that they oppose murder and rape. Does this mean that they support the continued existence of murder and rape?

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

#637

Post by jiuahweruihawi » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 2:12 PM UTC

eli wrote: post #144

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.

This has been discussed extensively in the previous threads on Coinbase, but banning the discussion of certain topics in the workplace is itself a political stance. Very much so.

Have they banned the discussion of certain topics entirely? Or have they just said that they don't want the company as an entity to get involved with these topics?

There's a difference between saying "we don't think it's appropriate for us to take an official stance on X, but feel free to discuss X on your lunch breaks like you would any other topic" and "thou shalt not mention X in any context while an employee of this company"

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

#638

Post by vonmoltke » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 2:22 PM UTC

advisedwang wrote: post #379

vonmoltke wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something is off about those listings. The majority of the transactions went to "Brian Forde for Congress" and have the memos like " .03533216 BITCOINS SOLD VIA COINBASE - PURCHASER UNKNOWN". I don't think these are contributions by Coinbase, but Bitcoin contributions that went through Coinbase. There is probably some byzantine election funding rule that allowed or forced these recipients to list Coinbase as the"sour…

There's not supposed to be "anonymous" donations, that's the entire point of reporting requirements. If Coinbase is hiding political donors, that's gotta be against election law?

Coinbase isn't hiding anything. It's the campaign's responsibility to identify donors in compliance with campaign finance laws. If a campaign is accepting donations of Bitcoin, it's their responsibility to find out who owns the wallet. Coinbase only knows, and can only know, the donor's wallet address. Coinbase doesn't even know what the transaction is for. That was one of the points of Bitcoin.

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

#639

Post by webmaven » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 2:25 PM 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…

> Funnily enough, I think it has been extrapolated by Neal Stephenson in Diamond Age. We will end up having parallel societies which define themselves not by geographic boundaries, but by affiliation. A North Korean community could be your neighbour.

Perhaps less Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age, and more Cory Doctorow's Eastern Standard Tribe:

https://craphound.com/category/est/

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

#640

Post by webmaven » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 2:35 PM UTC

nilkn wrote: post #491

sprt wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which, as your parent seems to not realize, is also a political stance. This dichotomy is exactly what MLK refers to in the Letter from a Bermingham Jail (i.e. positive vs negative peace).

I think this is a very simplistic take. The reason we’re seeing a crackdown on this is not because companies are making a political move to support the status quo. It’s because they’re trying to weed out and get rid of legitimately problematic and toxic people who abused the previous culture. For instance, there was an instance not too long ago at Facebook where one engineer publicly attacked another completely peace…

> For instance, there was an instance not too long ago at Facebook where one engineer publicly attacked another completely peaceful coworker on Twitter because the latter declined to put a BLM statement on the landing page of an open source project they maintained. The former employee was eventually fired. These kinds of antics are deeply divisive and destructive to the workplace.

It is unclear from your comment which employee was fired, unless "former" is intended in the ordinal sense (ie. "first") rather than temporal (ie. "prior"). Can you clarify?