1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

FWIW, in this case, that "difference" might be that Coinbase was simultaneously treating their black employees poorly--dare I say, as "second class citizens"--while actively refusing to take a few seconds to agree with something as banal/obvious as "black lives matter". The BLM statement struggle was merely a catalyst for what were already existing and somewhat long-standing racial tensions brewing inside the company that had led people to feel that, with its actions, the company did not in fact care about its black employees... context you can't just pretend didn't exist going into Brian's "let's not talk about this and everyone go back to work" post.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/27/technology/coinbase-crypt...

> The tensions at Coinbase came to a head in June, after the police killing of George Floyd. As many tech leaders publicly voiced support for Black Lives Matter protests, Black employees at Coinbase said on the Slack messaging platform that they were hurt by the silence of Mr. Armstrong and other executives about the matter. They organized a meeting where several of them told executives, often through tears, about their difficult experiences at the company, eight people who attended said.

Take careful note: this wasn't "merely" "our difficult experiences in the world", this was "our difficult experiences at the company". Seriously: too much of this comment thread seems to be hyperfocused on BLM statements--as I guess y'all really think taking a few minutes and a couple sentences to acknowledge that in solidarity somewhere is somehow a horrible distraction--while ignoring that this had started in the background of "Coinbase is mistreating its black employees so much that it had already lost 3/4s of them" (and that's before Brian's post, so a lack of strong improvement since then is telling). This is way more concrete than these abstractions.

> But according to 23 current and former Coinbase employees, five of whom spoke on the record, as well as internal documents and recordings of conversations, the start-up has long struggled with its management of Black employees.

> “It was the first time I realized what racism felt like in the modern world,” said Layllen Sawyerr, a compliance analyst who is Black. “I felt like I was being bullied every day at work.” She said she filed a discrimination complaint with Coinbase’s legal department before quitting in 2018.

He was correct, so was Shopify, so was Basecamp and all these businesses that told their employees to leave their partisan politics and social justice concerns at the door.

I'm not sure what HN has turned into but the litany of disingenuous comments from people claiming a tech company has the duty to mend society the way they believe is the best makes me believe that a lot of people here don't understand what running a business is about and It is not being a PAC.

I'm also amused with the people claiming that all these companies "are bleeding talent". No, a lot of us here just want to write programs or manage teams or products, nothing more. Certainly not be involved in any social justice activity.

I would absolutely love to work at Coinbase given these work conditions.

Even when they set that construction site on fire, the stark difference between the front of the march which went peacefully by and the trail of destruction from the end of the march; it's no wonder the people at the front were confused when the police confronted them. unless they were staring at their phones the entire time, they'd have no idea what the "pacific youth liberation front" was doing behind them.

Unless you went actively searching for both sides, the passive social media and MSM would just show you whatever half of the story aligned with your political views; any conversation was just 2 sides completely talking past each other because they only saw their echo-chamber and refused to acknowledge the other side's echo-chamber.

The best/dumbest example was video of a (dismounted) cop who rolled his bike over some guy's head. And then the time-lapse video of that guy spending 15+ mins following the cops around and laying down in front of them; only getting his head rolled over on the 5th time. The immaturity of all parties in that video is just mind-boggling to me.