Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why use a special term? Just "racism" works very well. The idea that only certain races can "qualify" for racism is Orwellian.
Your comment makes sense only if you're conflating "racism" with "racial discrimination". Per the APA: Individual racism is a personal belief in the superiority of one’s race over another. It is linked to racial prejudice and discriminatory behaviors, which can be an expression of implicit and explicit bias. Institutionalized racism is a system of assigning value and allocating opportunity based on skin color. It unf…
A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company
731–740 of 774 posts
Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company
#732Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is very interesting. The CEO said in his initial letter that Coinbase should only engage in politics that are relevant to their "core mission", but it's kind of interesting to reduce a candidate to "What can this candidate or party do specifically for our business?" and ignore other policies that a candidate or party may seek to enact. Pretending that you're unaware of or completely ambivalent about the conseque…
Companies aren't democracies. When you sign up to work for somebody else, the board and the executives have every right to make these decisions. Upset that you can't lobby for the rights of pink haired people in the office? Go start your own company and put murals featuring oppressed pink-haired people all over the walls. Until then, recognize that companies aren't set up as democracies, because no investor would be…
> Companies aren't democracies.
I think that's too strong a statement in support of the current default, which is the largely feudal corporation.
First, company structures are pretty clearly being pushed in a more democratic direction, and have been for quite a while. Silicon Valley is the poster child for flatter organizational structures, "good ideas can come from anywhere", increased freedom of movement for workers between companies, as well as sharing the financial gains more broadly (at least, that is the ideal that SV represents to the outside world).
You look at a typical SV corporation and see a rigid hierarchy. Most of the rest of the world sees an insanely freewheeling mess that can't possibly work.
There are also today already companies that are explicitly structured as democracies (in some cases a bit more like constitutional monarchies, and in other cases more like minarchist collectives). Not all of these experiments are successful, nor should we expect them to be.
But I certainly don't expect this overall trend to reverse, stop, or even slow down. If anything, I expect it to accelerate, as existing companies continue to try to pick out and graft on the parts and tools that seem to be working for other organizations. Even when these grafting attempts are unsuccessful (which is often), they just draw attention to the orgs that are succeeding (inspiring attempts at analysis of what is different), which leads to more such experiments.
Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company
#733Some of the comments in this thread make me pretty sad. There is a lot of nuance, obviously, but generally speaking when people say work is too "political" and make complaints that "people are allowed to insult straight white males, but insulting other groups is off limits", it doesn't take much reading between the lines to see what is going on. I hope everyone can take a second and appreciate how underrepresented ce…
> "people are allowed to insult straight white males, but insulting other groups is off limits"
No-one in the thread has said this.
Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company
#734It’s unfortunate that CEOs / Founders think it’s appropriate to dictate the culture of the organization vs. learning to nurture the emergent values from within the team. It’s a sign of limited leadership capacity to attempt to install culture as a top down mandate.
It's a business. Not a kindergarten. Though in Silicon Valley (having worked there) I know many employees don't understand this. It's like that person who screamed "we're trying to build a home here!" at a university when someone was to be cancelled. What? No... that's not what a university is. Emergent values and culture? A CEO should just start paying people and hope that a business emerges? What? It's literally th…
I’d suggest reading Tribal Leadership by Dave Logan.
Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company
#735Earlier quoted context omitted.
What meaning are you using then? Even the most basic dictionary definition of "politics" is something like "all the activities involved in determining the policies and actions of an organization or government."
If everything is political, including building a table ("because people can sit at a table") or breathing ("it's literally a life and death situation"), then "it's political" has no useful meaning. If a descriptive term doesn't serve as a means of distinguishing things, it's not a descriptive term.
Building a table does imply a bunch of politically charged decisions:
1. Deciding that a new table is a worthwhile use of resources (vs reuse, for example)
2. Deciding who to sell it to (if it's not for your own use)
3. Deciding what to make it out of (resource cost, ethical implications of the supply chain, concern about wood glue toxicity, ...)
And so on, and so forth. You might not consciously think about these as political, but.. that's also a political opinion.
> then "it's political" has no useful meaning.
Exactly.
Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company
#736It’s unfortunate that CEOs / Founders think it’s appropriate to dictate the culture of the organization vs. learning to nurture the emergent values from within the team. It’s a sign of limited leadership capacity to attempt to install culture as a top down mandate.
It's unfortunate that people who run companies... run companies? Do you understand how deluded you sound when you're indignantly concerntrolling over a crypto startup not abiding by the hyperintense political environ that you personally prefer? This is installing a culture. It's installing a culture that doesn't leech into either a. Areas they can't focus on primarily, or b. Areas that would directly make 10, 15, 25%…
I’m not sure where you got that I prefer a hypertense climate.
I’m referring to the hubris of a ceo who thinks they can dictate the culture in any meaningful way with top down mandates vs. actual leadership which is developing leaders and nudging culture via language and relationship structures.
Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company
#737Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think there are definitely people who don’t want her to exist but there are also ones like me, who get called Nazis for it, but whose perspective is largely 1) OK 2) please pay for your own costs related to your choices and 3) I’m not being an asshole to you because you’re a black trans woman, I’m being an asshole to you because I am an asshole and my white male friends say “oh Xxx is such as asshole.” So don’t tak…
> whose perspective is largely 1) OK 2) please pay for your own costs related to your choices In your example, the black trans woman has no choice about being black and no choice about their cisgender. Technically, they have a choice about whether they transition, but the alternative is living with the emotional pain of extreme gender dysphoria. Would you deny someone medical care for a physically painful but not lif…
You’ve pretty much done what almost never happens on the Internet: genuinely changed my view.
Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company
#738Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> 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).
I did not suggest anyone here was advocated for that in this thread. I provided examples above where people are told not to talk about, abortion, contraceptives, discrimination based on gender/sex, conversations about a gay marriage because they are "politics". Hence why some people are objecting to removing political conversations from work.
It was part of back and forth conversation with throwaway894345.
Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company
#739Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, you can do that. That's how things work in a pluralistic society. The only point being made though is that that "we" it not acting 'outside of politics' or 'avoiding politics' or being apolitical. When I go to work I focus on things to the exclusion of other things. That's fine, but we shouldn't think that on entering the office of my employer corporation I am somehow exiting the political realm. That would be e…
Wouldn't your compensation imply that the employer is paying you for your time and expertise so that you further their business? If you disagree with what they're trying to do and management disagrees, then shouldn't you just quit? I'm not sure what politicization of the workplace is intended to lead to. At some point people have to put their differences aside to work on a shared goal. If you disagree with the shared…
> I'm not sure what politicization of the workplace is intended to lead to.
Statements like this make me think we're not on the same page here. The workplace is always political. It can not be politicized in the sense of changing from apolitical to political.
"Politicized" has to mean then that political conflict has escalated or the political dimension of the workplace has become more visible.
In this sense what politicization of the workplace is intended to lead to is political change, that is, a change associated with the decision making in groups, or change in other forms of power relations between individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status.
> If you disagree with the shared goal then why join in the first place?
Political conflict in the workplace is in the vast majority of cases not like this. When thinking "politics in the workplace", the typical issues are around worker safety, worker compensation and benefits, the status of lgbt employees, or sexism.
A little while ago Github employees protested the involvement of their company with the ICE department of the USA government. In that case, could you simply say to the protesting employees, "Well, you must just disagree with the shared goal of the company and so you should quit". I think it's obvious that would be a ridiculous response given the complaints of the employees.
Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company
#740Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It seems my comment was more provocative :)
Or were we both heavily downvoted?