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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

#121

Post by olegious »

fleddr wrote: post #71

Just want to say how ridiculous this is from a European perspective. I know nothing better than for any company to be mission focused. You go to work to do work. And you do so with a degree of neutrality, as you can't pick your colleagues, yet still need to cooperate with them. This doesn't mean you can't say anything at all, it means you shouldn't be overly divisive or confrontational. A company isn't your personal…

Having worked in both (EU and US) I have seen both sides. I saw the trend (identity based politics) starting to appear in tech in Europe, for example "we shouldn't try to win business from company X due to their stance on issue Y" came up multiple times in company all hands (500 person company).

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#122

Post by afavour »

rglover wrote: post #106
afavour wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Brian, is that you?

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#123

Post by fullshark »

sethherr wrote: post #98
fullshark wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do companies try to inspire employees with things beyond purely mercenary motivations?

Because mercenary motivation is in and of itself a choice. If everyone was motivated by money alone there wouldn’t be non-profits. There is clearly a market for occupations with different incentives.

Sounds like both sides are generally looking for more from the labor arrangement than simply keeping the lights on.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#124

Post by BitwiseFool »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #92
throwawaysea wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that anyone thinks it is appropriate - they know it is inappropriate. It's more that they don't care, and are willing to do whatever it takes to leverage the power of institutions (such as companies, universities, and government agencies) to fulfill their personal political and ideological goals. This is a well-known strategy for activism, particularly on the left, and even has a name - "long march through t…

> As we've seen in American tech companies, once a foothold is gained, these motivated activists immediately start loudly push for the aggressive exclusion of opposing views, and cancellation of all who belong to a different political group. Reminds me of a cryptocurrency exchange with an activist CEO who forbids dissenting political views in the workplace. Can’t remember his name.

This looks like a textbox case of the "Paradox of Intolerance" by Karl Popper, does it not?

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#125

Post by woodruffw »

rglover wrote: post #87
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 building a company that generates a return for investors and makes it possible to pay all of the people who work at Coinbase. Anybody who works there and disagrees with what the company is doing can quit and go work somewhere else whenever they please. You need to pull your head out of your belly button. The navel gazing you were taught at university is going to ruin your life and make you perpetually misera…

Nobody disagrees about his basic financial mission! He's a CEO, and that's what CEOs (are supposed to) do.

The farce here is in claiming that Coinbase's mission is somehow "apolitical," even beyond the standard (& correct) observation that everything is political: they are explicitly a financial services company with a political message of economic freedom. They are explicitly advocates for an explicitly political form of monetary exchange.

When Armstrong says "mission focused," he really means "consistent with Coinbase's politics." And that's okay. But it's ridiculous to dress it up as some kind of apolitical position.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#126

Post by tshaddox »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #96
malermeister wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not getting involved always means at least tacitly supporting the status quo. To think otherwise is just an expression of privilege. There is no being apolitical.

>"just another political position itself - complicity with the status quo." / "To think otherwise is just an expression of privilege. There is no being apolitical." The challenge I have with this line of thinking is that you can literally apply it to any and all issues. The number of problems in the world are effectively infinite but our ability to take a meaningful position is finite and extremely limited. The defau…

> The challenge I have with this line of thinking is that you can literally apply it to any and all issues.

That's not a challenge to this line of thinking, it's just another way of wording the exact same thing.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#127

Post by joshuamorton »

fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #74
joshuamorton wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

COIN has lost 25% since IPO (in that time, GOOG, FB, MSFT, AAPL, HOOD are up, PP is even, and SQ is down marginally), and their offers aren't particularly better than , so it doesn't seem like this is true. Like, even if you think crypto is going to be super relevant, there's tons of other cryto startups. Coinbase has or had first mover advantage, but that's no longer an enormous advantage.

Coinbase’s stock is currently approximately equal to the IPO price and the IPO was six months ago. Coinbase and Robinhood (another rocketship) both experienced a pop after their respective IPOs and later dropped back down near IPO price. This isn’t a particularly relevant metric, in my view. At the IPO, the rocketship factor is already priced in. Look at the company’s trajectory over the decade it has existed.

> Look at the company’s trajectory over the decade it has existed.

The decade where it wasn't "mission focused"?

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#128

Post by rglover »

rglover wrote: post #106
afavour wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, I'm brown and I have hair.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#130

Post by jmeister »

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…

A counterpoint: I’m actively seeking out “mission-based” or “anti-woke” workplaces in AI/ML. I’m not interested in crypto, so not Coinbase though.

This pluralism is what makes America great, right? As the beloved slogan goes: “It’s a free country”.

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