1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company • Hacker News Board

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#151

Post by fleddr » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 7:58 PM UTC

slownews45 wrote: post #116

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…

I used to work with kids in an international program. I had a hard "mission focused" rule. Most of the social justice type advocacy talk about political topics would be banned under this rule (along with a lot of other stuff about back home like what they owned etc). Kids whose parents would have hated each other getting along well, making friendships, etc. In the long run, seeing this humanity in each other (I think…

A beautiful story, thanks for sharing.

I can only attest from both travel and work that exposure to other cultures and peoples destroys any and all bias.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#152

Post by dntrkv » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 7:59 PM UTC

afavour wrote: post #114

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…

As a European living and working in the US: your comparison is very shortsighted. European countries literally have no legal concept of at-will employment. They have strong social nets that make quitting your job much easier, and more prevalent unions that fight to improve working conditions (all of these things are, gasp, political! incidentally) By comparison employment in the US is messed up enough that if you lea…

I don't see how at-will employment is related here.

This is Coinbase. The vast majority of the employees there are not stuck in a job they wish they could leave but can't. These are some of the most privileged employees in the world.

The bigger issue is like the OP stated, the state of politics in the US. How does at-will employment relate to issues like not working with certain government institutions because you disagree with their purpose?

Coinbase isn't trying to avoid political arguments over healthcare, they're trying to avoid employees rallying together and changing the company to further their personal political beliefs.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#153

Post by fourstar » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 7:59 PM UTC

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…

Which euro country? Seems like you haven’t experienced the workplace woke-ism yet. Don’t worry, though. It will be soon in every euro country that isn’t already. After all —- globohomo wokeness is America’s biggest export.

Good on Coinbase and I’ll vehemently defend them for it after experiencing it first hand.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#154

Post by sagichmal » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 7:59 PM UTC

sergiotapia wrote: post #4

"We have a much more aligned company now, where we can focus on getting work done toward our mission. And it has allowed us to hire some of the best talent from organizations where employees are fed up with politics, infighting, and distraction." BIG takeaway. The people on your team attract similar kinds of people to your team. Good for Coinbase. Lots of good lessons here.

They lost almost half of their engineering team. Product development has almost stalled. I dunno, man.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#155

Post by fourstar » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 8:00 PM UTC

tinyhouse wrote: post #139

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…

> Just want to say how ridiculous this is from a European perspective. What is ridiculous? What Brian said? the response? I'm not following.

It’s ridiculous in his homogenous untainted bubble. Guy is doing mental gymnastics with himself to appear morally superior.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#156

Post by randomhodler84 » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 8:01 PM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #111

randomhodler84 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'd argue that it has no negative feedback mechanism. More security isn't always useful. There's a reason you don't wear 25 seatbelts in a car or drive a tank to work. At some point more security is ineffective, and then eventually detrimental. Yes, more energy is more security in this case - which of course you can obtain in alternative ways. But so is driving a tank. So is living in bubble wrap in a missile silo in…

I don’t think a negative feedback cycle could exist that doesn’t introduce a huge vulnerability to a Nakamoto consensus. It is the pure externality of the metric (as opposed to chain balances or state) that makes it work in a trustless and censorship resistant way. How does one even decide a reasonable “limit” to hash rate. I want sufficient security such that when new power generation tech comes online it does not threaten the history of the chain. If we have to drive a tank to work, ok, better than getting hit by stray rifle fire on the highway.

I think the reality is no L1 can scale to digital cash for the everyone on planet to allow L1 txs. we need more layers and more innovation in transaction aggregation and transaction primitives, such as covenants.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#157

Post by ABeeSea » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 8:01 PM UTC

throwawaysea wrote: post #78

emsy wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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…

That wikipedia article doesn’t support your claims at all.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#158

Post by fleddr » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 8:01 PM UTC

tinyhouse wrote: post #139

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…

> Just want to say how ridiculous this is from a European perspective. What is ridiculous? What Brian said? the response? I'm not following.

Saying you're a mission focused company and this being somehow controversial is ridiculous. Every company should be mission focused.

As his post demonstrates, it turns out to not be controversial at all. A handful of people left and after a few weeks the Twitter mob stops. Then you're left with reasonable people to do the job, which is the point of any company.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#159

Post by jsiepkes » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 8:02 PM UTC

afavour wrote: post #114

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…

As a European living and working in the US: your comparison is very shortsighted. European countries literally have no legal concept of at-will employment. They have strong social nets that make quitting your job much easier, and more prevalent unions that fight to improve working conditions (all of these things are, gasp, political! incidentally) By comparison employment in the US is messed up enough that if you lea…

Aside from that your comparison with Europe is quite flawed (there are plenty "at-will employment" type of constructions possible here, you don't get unemployment benefits if you quit yourself, etc.) these are all tech workers who have new employers lining up to hire them. They are not blue collar workers in an Amazon warehouse who have to relieve themselves in a bottle and get terminated by an algorithm for failing to meet quota's.

But besides all that I fail to see how any of what you just said are arguments to make the workplace a political Twitter-style fight pit?

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#160

Post by afavour » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 8:02 PM UTC

fleddr wrote: post #142

afavour wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a European living and working in the US: your comparison is very shortsighted. European countries literally have no legal concept of at-will employment. They have strong social nets that make quitting your job much easier, and more prevalent unions that fight to improve working conditions (all of these things are, gasp, political! incidentally) By comparison employment in the US is messed up enough that if you lea…

I think we're mixing up different political topics here. The one I think you're talking about is the US workers' struggle to defend or increase basic worker rights. Which indeed is a political struggle of workers versus management. If I'm not mistaken, the Coinbase case is about social justice types of topics like feminism, BLM, trans rights, colonialism, the like.

My point is that positions like Brian's require there to be a clear and bright line between "political" and "not political". I think it's at least slightly easier to draw that line in European workplaces where the nature of employment is not as politically fraught.

Just to take two of your examples: feminism and trans rights. Both have healthcare implications. Your employer controls your healthcare. Should the healthcare provided by your employer cover birth control? Abortion? Conversion therapy? This mix is inevitable.