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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

#711

Post by jiuahweruihawi »

webkike wrote: post #526
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s way worse than that. Even centrists and liberals are silenced by the vocal mob for merely questioning the validity of certain policies or initiatives that claim to have some righteous sounding goal, even when there is evidence that the proposed policy is more likely to be harmful than helpful. For example, it should not be controversial to debate the merits of Black Lives Matter, but since the alternate reality…

I always find it curious that some people find BLM as something by which the merits of are debatable. What’s there to debate?

I always find it curious that some people take the name "Black Lives Matter" at face value, and assume that the only possible reason anyone might find the organisation (not the slogan) debatable is that they don't think black lives matter.

Do you assume that anyone who criticises The People's Democratic Republic of Korea hates democracy and Koreans?

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

#712

Post by d1zzy »

mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #668
ZhIPh3zW5R wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am with you on this one. The definition of a having a non-political mission must mean all but mentioning a candidate's name. You can transparently see that some 501(c)(3)s are mostly political groups. As this becomes more common I expect politicians will use them to bypass campaign finance election laws. They will create charities that 'educate' voters about how bad their opponent is without naming that opponent.

Yeah, that's exactly much what I was thinking, that when you take a look at their activities, it's clear that the definition of what's considered political here is fairly narrow. Re: your hypothesis, after learning about 501c4s from Jeff in this thread and reading about for 10 seconds on Wikipedia, it seems that those actually serve that purpose quite well ("super PACs" are apparently 501c4), so I don't think the 501…

Maybe workplaces (and the public in general) should adopt the same rules as to what constitutes political discourse and then we'd stop having threads around "everything is political" statements...

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

#713

Post by HappyDreamer »

swiley wrote: post #558
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.

Is requests from employees to support Black Lives Matter what triggered this whole discussion?

Some employees wanted to support BLM, while others thought it was off-topic or didn't like it?

And Brian / the CEO then decided to not allow such discussions at the workplace? noticing that some employees got upset at each other, when talking about it?

(I'm in Europe and a bit clueless)

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

#714

Post by jiuahweruihawi »

barmstrong wrote: post #665
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…

We tried to make it clear to employees that the package was only intended for folks who weren't aligned with this new direction. If folks were interviewing elsewhere, or just feeling burned out, and wanted to take it, but they were still aligned with the direction of mission focused, then we discouraged them from taking it. Of course, people can always lie about their intentions, but we're counting on the honor syste…

This is what I love about Hacker News - it's the only forum I've ever read where the topic of discussion frequently shows up in the comments.

Brian, I've never given two shits about crypto, but this announcement seriously increases my desire to work at Coinbase. You have far more support than will dare to speak up, and I hope more companies start following your lead.

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

#715

Post by missedthecue »

krainboltgreene wrote: post #544
missedthecue wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was in the early/mid 30s, not during WW2.

Not only is that not factually incorrect, it's pretty trivial to check before you comment. Why didn't you?

Excuse me?

"The Nazis used Hollerith equipment that IBM's German subsidiary during the 1930s – Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen GmbH (Dehomag) – supplied... As did hundreds of foreign-owned companies that did business in Germany at that time"

https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/1388.wss

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

#716

Post by jiuahweruihawi »

Qub3d wrote: post #645
nefitty wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t that just mean providing equal facilities? If you put hand sanitizer in one bathroom, you should try to provide it in all of them.

A separation here is that these facilities are inherently unequal due to the existence of gendered signs declaring one restroom "Men" and the other "Women". In this existing framework, it doesn't make as much sense to go to the expense of stocking an item 99.99..% of users won't use. Instead, the signs could be changed to simply state "Restroom". Sure, one might have urinals and the other a tampon dispenser, but anyo…

Many women feel uncomfortable using gender-neutral bathrooms alongside men, for reasons that have nothing to do with transphobia.

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

#717

Post by jiuahweruihawi »

john_moscow wrote: post #686
sershe wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was instructive to hear the discussions in a Russian-speaking developer community about this... how the current stuff going on in the big companies reminded the older generation of the performative ideological cheering going on at their workplaces back in the late Soviet times. Think about it this way - sometimes, you have to be on call and stay up till 5am because of some crappy code you didn't write, and it suck…

The problem is that they are going for our kids at schools. Trying to hammer into their heads that instead of shooting for the stars, they should hate themselves for being White and spend most of their life yielding the way to the poor oppressed minorities. That's child abuse if you ask me.

I know many people will find your comment alarmist and hyperbolic, but you're understating it. I follow this issue closely and some of the crap that's being fed to schoolchildren in the US at the moment is jaw-dropping. Check out the site whataretheylearning.com for the tip of the iceberg.

If you're a parent of a child in K-12 schooling right now, you have a lot of reasons to be worried.

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

#718

Post by baggy_trough »

Avamander wrote: post #619
baggy_trough wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really a noxious idea. It's like saying that because we all breathe the same air, everything I do affects you. No, not in the vast majority of cases.

Okay this is like the worst example. Everything you do does affect the environment around you. For example if you take a Bahamas trip, you are paying to generate tons of CO2. If you buy a diesel car, or just driving one, you're affecting the shared air as well.

Yes that is true in a pedantic sense. It is also true that my gravitational force affects everyone in the world as I move about. But not enough to matter.

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

#719

Post by Nullabillity »

m463 wrote: post #604
christophilus wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I hate both kinds of office politics. I like being productive and they get in the way.

Surely it matters who benefits (or worse, gets hurt) from what you produce?

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

#720

Post by jiuahweruihawi »

nilkn wrote: post #646
webmaven wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 whic…

Apologies, the employee who attacked their coworker on Twitter is the one who was fired.

Well that's a ray of good news.

My wife works for a huge social media company that you've definitely heard of, and some of her higher-ups have told her they're worried that the rise of employee activism is going to tear the company's culture apart. I told her she should tell them to follow Coinbase's example.

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