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1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

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Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#101

Post by refenestrator »

ctur wrote: post #56

I wrote this in an email turning down a chance explore opportunities at Coinbase. > To me, diversity and social justice are critically important. I have the luxury of being selective in where I put my time and energy and it is important those values align with my career. I appreciate aspects of being "mission focused" but I think that there is a gulf between my personal values and Coinbase's values such that I would…

Honest question, what do you do at your presumably more enlightened workplace instead to pursue your political beliefs?

From what I've seen, these people typically just want to treat the company slack like Twitter and persecute political enemies while still cashing their paycheck and doing nothing of material value for the disadvantaged.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#102

Post by refenestrator »

jrockway wrote: post #67

What mission did they focus on and how did it go? All I see here is "I wrote a controversial screed and many people tolerated it and kept showing up to work." That's great and all, but what sort of new things did it unlock? How do you compare it to the world where you didn't write the screed? It all feels like a heap of bullshit to me -- if you're in the right industry, you can be the worst manager on the planet and…

Noisy echo chambers are uninclusive to anyone who doesn't hold that precise political viewpoint.

We both know that the program goes way beyond "black people shouldn't be indiscriminately shot", its driven by people who are addicted to social media and perpetually pushing for another rush of outrage. I'd prefer not to be around that, personally.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#103

Post by young_unixer »

justinsaccount wrote: post #3

> The biggest lesson I took away from the whole ordeal is that if you believe something is the right path, it's worth speaking up about it, even if it's controversial. Unless you work at Coinbase, right?

You wouldn't go to a PETA meeting and complain that there's no meat.

In that same vein, if you join Coinbase, you should know what you're getting into, maybe it's political, but it's a kind of political that you knew beforehand. The problem comes when you try to shoehorn a different set of political beliefs onto something that didn't have them in the first place.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#104

Post by malermeister »

rglover wrote: post #91
malermeister wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you're part of what is called "Labor aristocracy" in Marxist discourse doesn't mean you can't recognize the exploitation inherent to the system. You don't need to be on the losing side of an unjust system to recognize the system as unjust.

So quit.

Sounds like the entire argument went way over your head.

Quitting doesn't change anything about the inherently exploitative relationship of labor and capital.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#105

Post by randomhodler84 »

qeternity wrote: post #88
randomhodler84 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren’t the same. I’m not knocking dogecoin — it’s a real Nakamoto blockchain, a real working product. I’d rather folks bought BTC but hey, any software fork of Satoshi client is better than the scamfactory enabled by Eth.

> I’d rather folks bought BTC Why? Presumably because you're long BTC. With all due respect, you make a lot of handwavy comments about ERC-20 scams and I agree with you, but aside from a highly speculative investment, BTC is nothing. It failed as a currency. It failed as a unit of account. Now the narrative has shifted to "store of value" which only anyone without an understanding of what that means could say. What d…

It’s the energy. Energy usage means security. ArcticBull will argue it’s bad, I’ll argue it’s the best thing ever. Follow the energy.

Why has it failed? Works fine for me and many others…

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#106

Post by rglover »

afavour wrote: post #97
rglover wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not being political, he's getting his company to focus.

Deciding what your employees are and are not allowed to discuss at work feels pretty political to me! But you’re right: Brian gets to decide what is and isn’t political, and he’s decided that he isn’t being political, so he isn’t. Which is an… interesting power to hold over your employees, hence my original post.

You want it to be political to fit the narrative in your head, but it isn't political.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#107

Post by woodruffw »

BurningFrog wrote: post #77
woodruffw wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Focus on what , exactly? Bitcoin is not exactly an apolitical industry. But even more generally: Armstrong's profile on Twitter includes his (ostensible) mission of "creating more economic freedom in the world." That's a very political mission, even by milquetoast American standards!

> Focus on what, exactly? Focus on building a successful profitable company. Surely you just pretend to not know this?

> Focus on building a successful profitable company.

Through what means, exactly?

We're not talking about a candy company here. This is a company that explicitly includes political messaging in both their mission and in their choice of means (i.e., cryptocurrency) towards that mission. Why the double standard?

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#108

Post by rglover »

rglover wrote: post #91
malermeister wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you're part of what is called "Labor aristocracy" in Marxist discourse doesn't mean you can't recognize the exploitation inherent to the system. You don't need to be on the losing side of an unjust system to recognize the system as unjust.

So quit.

I'm not allowed to reply to you directly but responding to your response to "so quit," okay, go live on a commune then. Live your values and demonstrate to the world why your way of life is better.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#109

Post by xibalba »

justinsaccount wrote: post #3

> The biggest lesson I took away from the whole ordeal is that if you believe something is the right path, it's worth speaking up about it, even if it's controversial. Unless you work at Coinbase, right?

It's pretty easy to dunk on people when you divorce their words from the surrounding context.

This statement was within the context of advising organizational leaders who are trying to "keep the peace" (and thus, inadvertently enabling distraction and morale rot) instead of creating clarity and focusing the mission.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#110

Post by mattparcens »

malermeister wrote: post #29
emsy wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people think work is an appropriate place for political activism?

Everything you do is implicitly political. To say you're non-political is just another political position itself - complicity with the status quo.

The status quo is not necessarily a bad thing, for instance if you have a lot of activist coworkers who want to "burn the system to the ground," then I, for one, become a huge supporter of the status quo.

One must remember that things can always get worse.

Just because there exist concrete problems in society does not mean that you, or activist coworkers get to assume that you're/they're automatically right nor that you/they have workable solutions.

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