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

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#241

Post by imtringued » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 10:15 PM UTC

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.

I agree, a lot of free market arguments just boil down to maintaining an imagined status quo. What I take issue with is that the real status quo is an unspoken rule that everyone understands but nobody ever talks about. Most of it boils down to appeal to nature in the form of "the strong rule over the weak" and actual freedom for all people is basically irrelevant.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#242

Post by jokethrowaway » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 10:16 PM UTC

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 missed the point, he doesn't want employees to bring political activism (I seem to remember BLM was the trigger), controversial company politics is well accepted

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#243

Post by imtringued » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 10:20 PM UTC

malermeister wrote: post #84

fleddr wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whilst technically correct, I still object. Many if not most things aren't political in a meaningful way, but surely you can make them political. This is how you get "water is racist" and the entire movement of social justice becomes a thing of ridicule. The strategy harms, it doesn't help.

How about this: Every economic interaction (which includes employment) is political. Would you agree with this?

Take one step back. The interaction might not be political in itself but the desire to be able to engage in it might be. As others said, buying a lawn mower isn't political. Demanding that the product you are buying is safe and that economic transactions are done with USD or Bitcoin is definitively political.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#244

Post by Jensson » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 10:23 PM UTC

sagichmal wrote: post #233

slownews45 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The folks pulling the late nights on projects and delivering great results - normally the issue is to get them to stop talking about work all the time (happy hour?!) - not to get them to start talking about a social justice issue around microaggressions or whatever!

I’m not sure why you think people who care about justice draw that energy from the same pool that motivates their work, as if it’s a zero-sum calculus. It isn’t. People who think about things systemically tend to apply that perspective in all of their practices. And that’s the value.

The problem is when people who care about justice harasses co-workers because those co-workers doesn't care as much about justice. That has a very negative effect on those co-workers regardless if this has a negative effect on the harasser.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#245

Post by imtringued » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 10:23 PM UTC

jakelazaroff wrote: post #144

mattparcens wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Brian Armstrong has literally said he has a plan for Bitcoin to surpass the dollar as a reserve currency within the next decade [1]. That , to me, is an activist who wants to “burn the system to the ground”. [1] https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/coinbase-ceo-bitcoin-surpass-dolla...

It doesn't make sense because the whole idea of having a reserve currency is stupid to begin with and it was discovered to be stupid in the 40s.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

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Post by Aaronstotle » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 10:28 PM UTC

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…

Shows that this strategy is working as intended

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#247

Post by notafraudster » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 10:28 PM UTC

emsy wrote: post #44

gorwell wrote: post #32

Every company that continues to let itself get embroiled in Twitter's Political Topic of the Week is at such a distinct disadvantage it will ultimately fail. It's inevitable if you extrapolate. They won't survive the evolutionary process and will get selected out, only earning themselves a Darwin Award. Imagine a rowing team where half the team rows in one direction and the other half rows another direction. They nev…

At least they would be rowing, but political activism is not work. Imagine going to the barber and instead of cutting your hair he would lecture you on the hardship of Guatemalan shepherds.

Barbers famously talk about politics while cutting your hair. This is like a quintessential part of barber shop culture. Barbers that don't talk about partisan politics normally talk about some parapolitical thing, like cultural gripes, or sports, or other things that have a pretty similar valence.

I've had my hair cut in like 5 different countries by dozens of different barbers who speak different languages, come from different generations, the barber themselves are male or female, and I don't remember the last haircut that didn't bring up something that was either explicitly or expansively political.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#248

Post by Grimm1 » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 10:31 PM UTC

woodruffw wrote: post #51

ianbutler wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're paid to do a job. Politics is for your personal time. We need to work on getting more personal time for people so people can focus on those passions instead of further blending work and personal life.

> You're paid to do a job. Politics is for your personal time. It's remarkable how easily we've forgotten that the very concept of "personal time" took decades of sustained political effort at the workplace.

Sustained political effort - in spite of the established rules. Every one of those people risked their jobs and in many cases their health and life fighting for those rights against laws and established order. People today want their cake and to eat it to. They want the people who made an economic exchange for their labor also let them do things that work directly against their "the purchaser's" interests. How about people organize mass strikes? Scared of losing their jobs? Too busy? Not enough time? The OG labor movement had all of that and dealt with violent opposition to boot. Maybe things aren't that bad and it's a minority whining? I don't know but something isn't adding up to me.

How about people decide to take action -- regardless of the consequences to themselves instead of worrying about maintaining the scraps they're fed in the process? Why is today so much different than yesterday that people don't want to risk their standing and their lives for their principals and expect it just to happen, to be given? All the whining is just theatre as far as I'm concerned until people start actually making the hard decisions and doing something at risk to themselves for what they believe.

Why do people seem so hypocritical compared to the people during those decades you mention?

The owners of Coinbase made a stand for what they believe in, I support that. Maybe the otherside of the table needs to take that collective action they talk so much about instead of talking.

Edit: And you know I'm not sorry but I just don't feel bad for office workers bitching about their jobs. I feel bad for the front line workers, in the stores in the warehouses in logistics and shipping. They actually have real gripes to contend with being physically worn down everyday yet we lump the person sitting in their office chair reading reddit for 8 hours with these people actually killing themselves to get you a package a couple hours sooner.

Note: This isn't aimed at you directly but very much what I feel is the superficialness of many movements today.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

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Post by [deleted] » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 10:34 PM UTC

b9a2cab5 wrote: post #211

femiagbabiaka wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I work in a tech hub in Europe that has 80 nationalities, people from all walks of life. Any ethnicity, sex, gender, sexuality, religion and political conviction you can think of and we all get along just fine with zero tensions. I’m sure this statement is not true, (racism and sexism don’t exist in Europe now?) but even supposing it is, there are very few companies in the U.S. that are this diverse. And the state…

Sure there are. Have you walked into any FAANG office? There are a huge variety of West/East European nationalities and East/Southeast Asians. That's representative of over half the world's population right there. You can probably find an engineer from every single one of the ex-Soviet countries in an NYC Google office. I suppose by diversity you mean the right kind of diversity then?

[deleted]

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#250

Post by femiagbabiaka » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 10:34 PM UTC

b9a2cab5 wrote: post #211

femiagbabiaka wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I work in a tech hub in Europe that has 80 nationalities, people from all walks of life. Any ethnicity, sex, gender, sexuality, religion and political conviction you can think of and we all get along just fine with zero tensions. I’m sure this statement is not true, (racism and sexism don’t exist in Europe now?) but even supposing it is, there are very few companies in the U.S. that are this diverse. And the state…

Sure there are. Have you walked into any FAANG office? There are a huge variety of West/East European nationalities and East/Southeast Asians. That's representative of over half the world's population right there. You can probably find an engineer from every single one of the ex-Soviet countries in an NYC Google office. I suppose by diversity you mean the right kind of diversity then?

FAANG is not the tech industry. Are you saying every company has as large and international a recruitment pool as Google? But again, that’s what this convo is really about — the perceptions and prejudices that tech libertarians develop based on the perceived behaviors of less than 1% of employees at 5 tech firms. Hilarious.