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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

#701

Post by jcims »

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…

> (Almost) everything is political.

I think people are talking past each other with the word 'political'. Some may define it as the execution of governance, and others may define it as partisan gamesmanship, and of course lots around and in between.

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

#702

Post by [deleted] »

ketzo wrote: post #152
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.

> ...your work, which occupies a large portion of your life, should not be divisive. I get that desire, I really do, but I think it's so important to recognize that your work is not apolitical. It doesn't matter what you're building. What you build does not exist in a vacuum, and the decisions you make around politics at work are themselves political decisions.

[deleted]

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

#703

Post by remarkEon »

sneak wrote: post #689
remarkEon wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is about Coinbase making an explicit vote for the status quo of American racism, and trying to deflect the heat they’re taking for that by confusing people into thinking that this is about standard political discussion. One of my favorite things about this new type of political activism is that words no longer mean what we all understood them to mean in ages past. "Explicit" would mean something along the lines…

Context matters. When you say to someone, for example, that you're going to do X unless they object, and they stand silent, then their silence is, in that instance, interpreted as explicit consent for you to do X in many legal circumstances. A good example recently from current events was the US president being asked in a press conference to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, "win, lose, or draw". He responded w…

Of course context matters, but you're still conflating or redefining words here. Each of your examples is an example of implicit agreement, not explicit, because of the context provided. That's what context does ... it allows you to make an inference about how people are feeling or thinking about a certain topic when they don't explicitly say so. Your inference may be right, but it may also be wrong.

If in your parent comment you had accused Coinbase/Armstrong of implicitly supporting the status quo (as you define it) I would've said "yeah, sure, if I squint hard enough and wash it through the 'silence is violence' filters I can see how you'd think that".

Another troubling thing I want to point out here is your comment is part of an accelerating trend where people, particularly from but not limited to those on the left, consistently attribute maximum malice of intent to peoples' comments (said and unsaid) or their actions. That is, imo, one of the reasons these environments are so toxic, because people are immediately put on the defensive.

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

#704

Post by throwmeaway_pls »

fastball wrote: post #616
dannyw wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why did you leave Coinbase? > I want to engage with politics at work.

Alternatively: > Why did you leave Coinbase? > Because I was ready for new opportunities and they were offering a hefty severance package.

You’d also be signaling that you lied about your intentions.

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

#705

Post by throwaway98777 »

davorak wrote: post #687
throwaway98777 wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Knowledge and understanding of a topic is required before reasoned action is taken. If you can not talk about abortion, birth control, sexual/gender discrimination, gay marriage, and more because it is controversial then we might be getting in to an area where speech is so restricted that it impedes knowledge transfer and understanding on those topics. And you can research and discuss those topics outside of work. Y…

> And you can research and discuss those topics outside of work. In my experience in the USA it is common for conversations at work to be about family, kids, life experiences(good and bad), current events, etc. It is something people bond over and use to help form a common company culture. Different companies vary what is allowed and or encouraged and experience different benefits and consequences. > You're not being…

>In my experience in the USA it is common for conversations at work to be about family, kids, life experiences(good and bad), current events, etc. It is something people bond over and use to help form a common company culture.

None of which are politics, so we agree.

>I do not see anyone in this thread advocating for anything that extreme.

Did you by chance not RTFA? Employees are literally planning virtual walkouts because they felt that Coinbase didn't virtue signal enough.

>I am not in the know about bay area culture but that does not match my limited view from the outside.

Your limited view is in total contrast to reality. I've lived in the Bay Area for the past 8 years, and attempting to consider outside viewpoints that may be controversial might as well make you a Nazi sympathizer. https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/14/us/berkeley-ben-shapiro-speec...

>My focus on for this comment was not politic conversation in the work place but on how removing a large mechanism of knowledge and understanding transferal in the work place would have political consequences for society.

This is a non sequitur. No one is suggesting removing knowledge transfer and communication at work. People are suggesting limiting the amount of political activism at work that's outside of the scope of what you were paid to do (the company's general mission).

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

#706

Post by HappyDreamer »

nickpp wrote: post #641
john_moscow wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fellow Eastern European immigrant here. It's hopeless, dude. It's USSR 2.0 being built in our lifetimes. People here didn't see where this road ends, so they've got no idea what awaits them.

Count me as well. It is horrifying how otherwise well intentioned people are busy pushing the society we were escaping to into the society we were running away from.

What are the political opinions you have in mind? (that could cause USSR-2 to happen?)

And what were/are the different opinions of (some) employees at Coninbase that triggered this whole thing in the first place?

> pushing the society we were escaping to into the society we were running away from

This is too abstract for me. Would it be weird if I asked for concrete examples? (of how society is getting pushed in a bad direction)

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

#707

Post by HappyDreamer »

jhealy wrote: post #597

Is this a uniquely Amerian debate? I live outside America, and I don't really understand the subtext of these Coinbase posts. What does are some concrete examples of a company being political or apolitical? What are the kinds of things the Coinbase used to do and no longer does, which employees might leave over? Is it about the company donating to political compaigns, or openly participating in community debates and…

I wonder all this me too. This whole discussion is weird, to me, not knowing what triggered everything in the first place.

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

#708

Post by HappyDreamer »

Dan_JiuJitsu wrote: post #121

Seems 5% attrition is a very small price to pay to weed out the bad apples. Looking at this through another prism, fully 95% of the company decided that being apolitical at work is reasonable. What happened to the rule against politics and religion in polite society?

> weed out the bad apples

What were the opinions of the bad apples? That they wanted Coinbase to support?

I'm not in the US and a bit clueless

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

#709

Post by BurningFrog »

jcims wrote: post #699
xyzzyz wrote: post #688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's unfortunate discussions can't be kept over ideas and policies instead of veering towards persons. I don't think it's a matter of ideas vs persons. Already I hear that speech and ideas are violence, and violence requires fighting back (by complaining to HR that you made them feel unsafe). Of course, you cannot keep quiet either, because "silence is violence" too. > It's unfortunate discussions can't be kept ove…

>"silence is violence" To me this might be the best example of a 'meme', in Dawkins' sense of the word, that I'm aware of. - It's short - It rhymes - It gives new territory to a powerful word - It creates an in-group signal - It's self-amplifying, and most importantly - It's ridiculous It's absolutely destined to go far beyond it's own merit by outcompeting everything in its domain on 3+ metrics. It also helped me un…

> - It creates an in-group signal > - It's ridiculous

Note that a working ingroup signal needs to be costly.

Something that sounds idiotic to the outgroup means people can't just casually say it, and it creates clear divisions.

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

#710

Post by jiuahweruihawi »

sneak wrote: post #410
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.

See, this is intentional. They’re squishing the widespread (and somewhat bipartisan) support for the Black Lives Matter movement, a protest movement against police abuse, into the phrase “political activism”, which isn’t entirely untrue. The problem is that “political activism” also encompasses the ongoing american culture war, which indeed does not belong at work in any capacity. Reasonable people don’t want to enga…

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