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

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

#761

Post by drivingmenuts » Sat, Oct 10, 2020, 4:59 PM UTC

chii wrote: post #553

tzs wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

Well, in my case, that situation would never arise (see previous comments). But, if I were the boss, I would advise the employee to either do that on their own time, or seek other employment. Again, I believe strongly that a work environment is not the place for personal politics or religion, unless that is the purpose of the business (the one concession I’ll make).

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

#762

Post by drivingmenuts » Sat, Oct 10, 2020, 5:04 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?

If I worked for a toy maker who suddenly decided to make land mines disguised as teddy bears, then I would absolutely have to quit, if we were in a disagreement over why this should happen.

If I knew that they manufactured these land mine bears before I started, I wouldn’t be there anyway.

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

#763

Post by kps » Sat, Oct 10, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

banachtarski wrote: post #489

notSupplied wrote: post #487

When a group of employees demand that their employers engage in political activism, what they are asking for is the ability to commandeer the resources of the company, whether it be its reputation, money, or labor to advance their political objective. They want to amplify their impact beyond what they can accomplish with their personal resources. I wonder how these same people feel about the political contributions o…

During WWII, IBM supplied the Nazis with mainframe computers and were responsible for untold deaths in exchange for money. It's not that black and white.

It's true that IBM sold unit record (punch card) equipment to the Nazis, but we can be pretty damn sure IBM didn't sell them computers, mainframe or otherwise, because they didn't exist.

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

#764

Post by oh_sigh » Sat, Oct 10, 2020, 6:35 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…

How should I properly demonstrate my wokeness while pooping? What about when I'm walking my dog? If everything is political I don't want to be seen as one of those complicit through silence while doing the dishes types of people.

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

#765

Post by randmeerkat » Sat, Oct 10, 2020, 7:21 PM UTC

CryptoPunk wrote: post #756

randmeerkat wrote: post #700

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what about Twitter flagging Trump’s tweets? Do you think that happened without a politicised workplace discussion? With the amount of power that tech wields over society these discussions _have_ to happen.

That doesn't require a politicized workplace. Only a mission-focused one. One of Twitter's mission could very conceivably be to attach warnings to misinformation, irrespective of what political agenda it is intended to advance.

An argument could be made that this mission is politicising freedom of speech, in that a tech company is now determining what is misinformation and what is not. This very topic was a point of contention in the congressional antitrust hearings.

A company operates in a political environment, whether or not people want to acknowledge that. Workers have real power and can advance their goals whether or not management wants to accept it. Politics in the workplace isn’t something to shy from, but to embrace. Any company that tries to refute politics will find themselves behind the curve on something they should very much so try to stay ahead of.

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

#766

Post by knorker » Sat, Oct 10, 2020, 8:33 PM UTC

ada1981 wrote: post #734

knorker wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Seems interesting from the Ted Talk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTkKSJSqU-I) summary.

But note "Leaders nudge people and the tribe to the next stage". In this case the leader sees where the tribe is going and is steering away from that sinkhole of unhappiness (constant workplace politicking doesn't make anybody happy, even when perceived progress is being made) and unproductivity that is workplace activism.

Putting a fire extinguisher on that self-destructive behavior seems like the leader's job. It's not something you should be nurturing.

You may disagree about it being self-destructive, but that would be a different issue.

But thanks for the book recommendation. Adding it to my list.

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

#767

Post by issa » Sat, Oct 10, 2020, 9:19 PM UTC

jiuahweruihawi wrote: post #733

issa wrote: post #452

Some 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.

I believe the thread is being edited, but I read multiple comments along these lines.

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

#768

Post by throwaway894345 » Sat, Oct 10, 2020, 10:03 PM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #573

throwaway894345 wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve never heard anyone told not to talk about those things because they’re political , but I could believe they were told not to talk about them because they’re controversial .

It is possible for a subject to be both political and controversial. I think the fact that there are two sides to US politics, and those two sides split cleanly along almost every controversial topic, is causing the confusion. Because it's both. Abortions are controversial because some people believe they should not be allowed to happen, while others belive women should be in control of their own bodies. Abortions ar…

> It is possible for a subject to be both political and controversial

I didn’t claim otherwise. I believe that people are told not to talk about their abortion because it’s controversial, but not because it’s political barring perhaps a few people who aren’t educated enough to understand the distinction.

> Abortions are political because the Republican party has a publicly-stated policy of wanting to legislate against abortion.

The Republican party’s political advocacy is obviously political, but it doesn’t follow that any given account of an abortion is political. Both are controversial, however.

> So everything controversial is becoming political.

Controversial things frequently are political, but that doesn’t mean any particular speech about a controversial topic is political speech. You seem to be confusing a prohibition about politics with a prohibition against any topic that has a political aspect. So at coinbase, a gay man could talk about his marriage despite that gay marriage is also a political subject (and also a controversial topic in some spheres, albeit probably not the SV spheres), but he (and any employee for that matter) couldn’t advocate for or against gay marriage policy or norms.

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

#769

Post by jhealy » Sat, Oct 10, 2020, 10:35 PM UTC

HappyDreamer wrote: post #707

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.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/10/09/coinbas...

> Cryptocurrency start-up Coinbase recently sought to restrict political speech by employees, a move many interpreted as a shift to the right because it came in reaction to internal discussions of Black Lives Matter.

That makes it sound like the Coinbase thing is less about the company holding a public political position, and more of a "leave your politics at home" thing.

Sounds like the corporate version of the recurring debate about whether open source projects should reject contributions from those with objectionable political views.

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

#770

Post by totony » Sun, Oct 11, 2020, 12:42 AM UTC

thundergolfer wrote: post #739

totony wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pol…

I mixed up two types of politics in the workplace in my other comment.

What I generally understand as "politicization of the workplace" is more around employees talking about issues they care about unrelated to what the company is doing and creating an hostile environment for dissenting views to theirs. If you think an issue unrelated to what you're doing is more important than having a good working environment to work on that shared project, then I still think you should just quit since you're not fulfilling your obligations as an employee.

As for the other kind:

>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 believe you should tell them exactly that if they voiced their concern to management but they still decided to go forward with the deal. What else are you going to do? Sow a negative/divisive work environment because your political views are more important than the product everyone is working on?

Politics are quite diverse, if every employee were to bring in negativity over every deal they disagree on, you wouldn't have collaboration and your product would not exist.