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

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#281

Post by workersrights » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 11:14 PM UTC

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #273

mrRandomGuy wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This just in, people who also happen to work are not mindless automatons. People like working at places that seem to align with their own personal views. It's baffling to me that people believe I should turn off my brain when I'm at work.

>It's baffling to me that people believe I should turn off my brain when I'm at work. You should choose a place of employment that lets you behave as you feel you need to behave, not expect that you as the employee are the one who decides on the standards of behavior.

Employees should hold all the cards. Employers and capital are lucky anyone is willing to work for them.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#282

Post by philosopher1234 » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 11:16 PM UTC

emsy wrote: post #54

chroem- wrote: post #37

The amount of frothing vitriol in this thread makes it clear that Armstrong made the correct choice. Public discourse in the Bay Area has become completely toxic.

Not only that, but you can see why places like Twitter need 4 years to change a font. It looks like tech in general is undermined by highly unprofessional people and this whole thread is a testament to that.

Frankly: Good. Tech needs some undermining.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#283

Post by poszlem » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 11:18 PM UTC

gwelson wrote: post #277

poszlem wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you cannot work without doing social activism then perhaps a non-profit foundation is a better place to be?

but that's thing...what is "social activism" here? I don't think having a single tweet or post from your company's account saying "happy Pride month, we love our LGBTQ+ Coinbasers" is activism really....it's just like, a nice thing to do. No one is saying Coinbase or any company should pay their employees to go make phone calls for Bernie Sanders' campaign on the clock. It seems like people are inventing some kind of…

How about we stick to "a company can do everything it wants as long as it is legal and people are free to go work at whichever company they want"? Why is that controversial? If you want to effect social change become a politician, do not try to turn your work place into a political party that has to react to every social fashion.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#284

Post by philosopher1234 » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 11:18 PM UTC

jamiequint wrote: post #93

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…

Sounds like their policy of discouraging wokes, who want to use their job as a cudgel for their own political views, from applying to their company is working.

What do you know about OP? What if OP is an extremely productive programmer who lives to build product and has a huge impact, but also cares about black people or LGBTQ+ people? So he's worthless to coinbase? Thats insane.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#285

Post by babelfish » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 11:18 PM UTC

dmix wrote: post #253

> 3/ One of the biggest concerns around our stance was that it would impact our diversity numbers. Since my post, we've grown our headcount about 110%, while our diversity numbers have remained the same, or even improved on some metrics. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Reddit is at scale a sentence like this often means they’ve established a dominant monoculture and squashed out the ‘annoyances’..

What I take from that statement is "We have not meaningfully tackled any of the issues of discrimination in the workplace that our Black employees have continuously attempted to bring to our attention", such as the ones u/saurik linked in his comment.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#286

Post by Nimitz14 » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 11:19 PM UTC

BitwiseFool wrote: post #70

tptacek wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that's part of the premise of a society governed in large part by the free market. That's an idea I support, but it only makes sense if market power isn't amoral. Tech company employees wield some of the most important power in our markets.

>"a society governed in large part by the free market" I disagree and have a much more simple explanation. Activists naturally want to involve as many people as they can in their cause/struggle. By framing everything as political, they open up opportunities to proselytize in areas traditionally not appropriate for 'politics'. If you couple that with a cultural expectation that people must take a side, and, that simpl…

Of course. It's a classic technique of totalitarianism seen in both Nazi Germany and Stalin's USSR.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#287

Post by philosopher1234 » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 11:19 PM UTC

Jensson wrote: post #244

sagichmal wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or: it has the positive effect of changing their minds, and improving the world.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#288

Post by BoorishBears » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 11:19 PM UTC

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…

This is backwards, and the crux of why it's backwards lies here:

> Or they're not rowing at all and just yelling at each other on Slack all day.

I have never seen an office where you will not be fired for turning politics (or anything really) into a flamewar. Period.

And that's because companies past a certain size know they always have multiple "5%ers" rowing in the wrong direction.

If it's not politics it will be pay, if it's not pay it'll be the tech stack, if it's not the tech stack it'll be an exec everyone hates, it's not an exec it'll be a client that sucks, if it's not a client it'll be the...

So a company needs to be resilient to those disjointed efforts anyways, and being "mission focused" will never let you escape that.

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That's why even just pretending to care about these social issues puts you in a better place than a company like Coinbase.

Making statements for social causes costs nothing at all and those who don't agree with the statements generally have apathy towards them, while those agree are affirmed by the statements.

So it's a win-win vs alienating those who would have been affirmed by playing it off as a distraction from the mission.

Why would you not do it and just enforce the fact that people need to be civil?

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#289

Post by StanislavPetrov » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 11:22 PM UTC

workersrights wrote: post #281

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's baffling to me that people believe I should turn off my brain when I'm at work. You should choose a place of employment that lets you behave as you feel you need to behave, not expect that you as the employee are the one who decides on the standards of behavior.

Employees should hold all the cards. Employers and capital are lucky anyone is willing to work for them.

Then don't work for someone who you don't consider sufficiently woke! Nobody is being forced to work at Coinbase. If you don't like the idea that you are hired to do a job instead of running a social justice campaign, then don't take that job, work somewhere else! The sense of entitlement is absolutely astounding.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#290

Post by poszlem » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 11:23 PM UTC

In the perfect world people would just ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and went on their merry way if they didn't agree with Coinbase. The reason why there is so much vitriol in the comments here is that to some people there is nothing more scary than a prospect of companies realising that doing social activism can be really TERRIBLE to their bottom line and it IS POSSIBLE to have a nice, friendly, healthy company without going full woke.