Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 699 posts

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#391

Post by muench »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #203
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…

> Companies with great policies can sometimes retain employees on that basis alone! So I recently quit a FAANG and they sent me a COBRA notice with the cost of their insurance benefit. You can get great FAANG insurance for about $10k a year, which is peanuts for a Silicon Valley engineer. We need to dispel the myth that Silicon Valley engineers are working for health insurance.

COBRA means you’re still getting insurance through your (former) employer. How much does the same insurance benefit cost if you buy it fully on your own?

In my experience you can’t even buy a similar plan as an individual. And definitely not at the same price.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#392

Post by schneems »

civilized wrote: post #311
gwelson wrote: post #252

The thing I hate about this line of thinking is the supposed "distractions" of being mission-focused are nearly all related simply to basic rights/dignities for marginalized groups. I don't think anyone is saying companies need to take a strong stance on every political issue, but merely saying "we as a company believe the lives of our Black employees matter" or "we as a company welcome and accept our LGBTQ+ employee…

Basecamp's angry worker faction was demanding the company apologize for contributing to a white supremacist, genocidal culture... because some customer service folks had a funny customer name list that included names from all backgrounds. That had absolutely nothing to do with basic dignity for marginalized groups. It was simply a grab for power and status. One of many. We who have been watching are very familiar wit…

At least a third of the company quit. That is not something that happens over something “deeply disingenuous”.

I’ve got a timeline put together on it https://schneems.com/2021/05/12/the-room-where-it-happens-ho... the post also goes into detail about Rails governance internals from my experiences as a contributor over the last decade.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#393

Post by [deleted] »

rsj_hn wrote: post #339
wbl wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if my boss isn't giving me Yom Kippur off but the company is closed Christmas how does that work?

You ask for a day off for religious reasons so you can observe Yom Kippur. That there is no company-wide shutdown for a holiday observed by 2% of the population is not some great injustice that requires waging a culture war in the office to remedy.

[deleted]

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#394

Post by tmule »

tmule wrote: post #351
gwelson wrote: post #252

The thing I hate about this line of thinking is the supposed "distractions" of being mission-focused are nearly all related simply to basic rights/dignities for marginalized groups. I don't think anyone is saying companies need to take a strong stance on every political issue, but merely saying "we as a company believe the lives of our Black employees matter" or "we as a company welcome and accept our LGBTQ+ employee…

This is a caricature of the “mission-focused” mindset. I’ll preface this message by saying that I am brown, raised in relative poverty in the third world, and left of center on most issues. I’ll also say that I have materially contributed a substantial portion of my income helping educate poor brown kids, which most of my preachy white colleagues haven’t and won’t. The discourse at work in SV tech is not about, “hey,…

Bunch of presumably white folk downvoting away. Sigh - utterly predictable, unfortunately. If you feel so strongly about a good world/society, please indulge in effective altruism or donate a large chunk of your money to help poor brown and black folks in the poorest nations of the world. Your signaling is useless.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#395

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

Jensson wrote: post #378
SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think my assumptions are different than you. I’ve met people, co workers, who have told me that a trans person asking to be described as a new name is political, and forcing the co worker to call them by a new name is forcing politics in the workplace. This is my understanding of what an apolitical workplace means. Am I wrong? I’ve generally avoided workplaces that claim to be apolitical explicitly because the peop…

Then your problem isn't with apolitical workplaces, but with conservative workplaces. Also, a few people saying that trans stuff is political doesn't mean that those views are the general consensus or that apolitical workplaces works with that. I haven't seen that and almost everywhere I've been doesn't really do politics at work. Trans people are just people etc, nobody cares.

How do you tell an apolitical workplace from a conservative workplace if the conservative workplace claims it’s apolitical?

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#396

Post by babyshake »

civilized wrote: post #311
gwelson wrote: post #252

The thing I hate about this line of thinking is the supposed "distractions" of being mission-focused are nearly all related simply to basic rights/dignities for marginalized groups. I don't think anyone is saying companies need to take a strong stance on every political issue, but merely saying "we as a company believe the lives of our Black employees matter" or "we as a company welcome and accept our LGBTQ+ employee…

Basecamp's angry worker faction was demanding the company apologize for contributing to a white supremacist, genocidal culture... because some customer service folks had a funny customer name list that included names from all backgrounds. That had absolutely nothing to do with basic dignity for marginalized groups. It was simply a grab for power and status. One of many. We who have been watching are very familiar wit…

If you work in customer service, just don't make fun of your customers. It makes it harder to do your job well.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#397

Post by websap »

jrockway wrote: post #67

What mission did they focus on and how did it go? All I see here is "I wrote a controversial screed and many people tolerated it and kept showing up to work." That's great and all, but what sort of new things did it unlock? How do you compare it to the world where you didn't write the screed? It all feels like a heap of bullshit to me -- if you're in the right industry, you can be the worst manager on the planet and…

What you are talking about is Microsoft in the Balmer years. No focus on delivery, no focus on perfection, churning out half assed products. See where it got them? Lost out on mobile, lost out on Cloud, Playstation is still a better gaming console, etc.

Leaders inspire, letting things slide is bad for the culture of succcess.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#398

Post by civilized »

schneems wrote: post #392
civilized wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basecamp's angry worker faction was demanding the company apologize for contributing to a white supremacist, genocidal culture... because some customer service folks had a funny customer name list that included names from all backgrounds. That had absolutely nothing to do with basic dignity for marginalized groups. It was simply a grab for power and status. One of many. We who have been watching are very familiar wit…

At least a third of the company quit. That is not something that happens over something “deeply disingenuous”. I’ve got a timeline put together on it https://schneems.com/2021/05/12/the-room-where-it-happens-ho... the post also goes into detail about Rails governance internals from my experiences as a contributor over the last decade.

Half the country voted for Trump. A small percentage of those, but still millions of people, voted for him in part because they believed he was going to save them from a satanic ruling class of pedophiles.

"A lot of people did something" is not a solid reason to respect what they did or why they did it.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#399

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#400

Post by Talanes »

thewakalix wrote: post #382
gfodor wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say you’re baffled but conclude the people you are baffled by are heartless. You’re not baffled: you have made up your mind.

> I now try to avoid using the English idiom "I just don't understand how..." to express indignation. If I genuinely don't understand how, then my model is being surprised by the facts, and I should discard it and find a better model. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tWLFWAndSZSYN6rPB/think-like...

I just don't understand what kind of person expects their idioms and mental models to have a literal 1:1 match. If I wanted to say exactly what I'm thinking, I wouldn't be reaching for idioms.
Post reply on HN