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1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

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Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#501

Post by b9a2cab5 »

femiagbabiaka wrote: post #250
b9a2cab5 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the past I worked at a telecom company which had representation from Russia, Japan, China, India, Britain, and America on my team alone.

And I'm guessing you want tech companies to hire more black and Latino workers because that's what every diversity pundit says. You know those demographics are overwhelmingly domestic and not international?

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#502

Post by krrrh »

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.

You’re right, a lot of people also know that the biggest impact then can have is participating in their local community and not by joining in on shallow sloganeering.

And there’s another more pernicious problem. People can care deeply about justice but have very different views on how to achieve it. It takes more than a lifetime to sort some of these issues out, and anyone with a bit of maturity has had their mind changed enough to have a bit of humility and know it’s not something you can or should do at or through work.

The problem with the sort of political activism that passes for personality these days (not limited to one side) is that it conflates bromides that everyone basically agrees with with specific contentious policy prescriptions on which there is little agreement.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#503

Post by solveit »

sneak wrote: post #420
ayngg wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coinbase hits a unique intersection of outrage here since it provokes vitriol from both people who hate cryptocurrency, and those that are outspoken progressives, both of which are large demographics on HN. Like when you think about it, how is this a big deal in any way? I think the fact that people are making a big deal out of it is a bigger deal than whatever Coinbase's internal practices are here.

I love cryptocurrency and don't care much for american progressivism. It's still pretty obvious to me that Coinbase is run by scumbags, like Uber and Google are.

Can you name a company in, say, the top 50 largest companies by market cap that isn't run by scumbags? The intent of the question is to divine whether you think Coinbase in particular is a problem, or whether you have a problem with big companies in general.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#504

Post by jollybean »

kimmeld wrote: post #457
zarkov99 wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, I, a fairly good Engineer, would favor Coinbase over many other tech companies precisely because their CEO had the courage to say what every other CEO is thinking, that is that a company is a place where money is exchanged for labour not a venue for promoting one's political agenda, no matter how righteous that agenda might feel.

Because the CEO shares your politics and is only allowing your brand to express themselves at work you want to work there. I mean I understand the feeling but can we stop pretending that this isn’t entirely political?

What 'brand of politics' is it to suggest that politics shouldn't be a major factor at work.

Also, to your OP's point ... I think it's reductionist to suggest that 'companies are an exchange for labour' - this is too much.

Almost all educated workers derive some meaning and dignity from their work beyond salary or benefits.

So 'what we work on matters'.

That said, even if we work on 'some new currency that can help the world' it may still mean that whether or not the company should fly the BLM flag is a bit of a political matter.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#505

Post by ravel-bar-foo »

plorg wrote: post #499
remarkEon wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I take it most people don't see your existence, as you are, as a political problem? I want to point out that this is a perfect example of how absolutely mind numbing and toxic it is to interact with a lot of these "woke" types. OP made an benign comment ("I want to work at work, not worry about the political opinions of my coworkers.") and its taken in the maximally worst way possible . There's no nuance, and no roo…

If a trans person walked into my office their existence would be a political problem, because none of my coworkers or company leadership accept the legitimacy of trans identity. It isn't that the person's physical safety is in danger (necessarily), but merely being present makes them the subject of politics. And those politics are generally hostile. I have a trans friend who was qualified for an open position, and I…

I'm in South Korea. We don't have many trans people here, the mainstream feminist movement is anti-trans, and most of the mainstream Christian movements are anti-LGBT. (My boss is Catholic.) Despite this, when we had a trans person visit my workplace ... absolutely nothing happened. They had lunch with us, nobody said anything about their gender, sexuality, or appearance, and they never mentioned it. Conversation was the same as for non-trans visitors.

Now, I don't know if this is because the people in my workplace are especially tolerant, if they were afraid of confrontation, or if they lacked a lens through which to interpret the visitor, but something sounds really weird to me about your workplace. Are the people in your region so vocally political as a matter of course? Are you in the bible belt? What does it mean to acknowledge the existence of a trans person?

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#506

Post by nathanvanfleet »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #186
joshuamorton wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

COIN has lost 25% since IPO (in that time, GOOG, FB, MSFT, AAPL, HOOD are up, PP is even, and SQ is down marginally), and their offers aren't particularly better than , so it doesn't seem like this is true. Like, even if you think crypto is going to be super relevant, there's tons of other cryto startups. Coinbase has or had first mover advantage, but that's no longer an enormous advantage.

If you got stock for free because you work for coinbase, does it matter much it went down? I mean it's still around $250 each, that quickly adds up. > their offers aren't particularly better than citation needed, I mean 'anywhere' is a big space. I'm seeing north of $100K on a quick google, that's a lot more than most places pay. Or are you speaking from a privileged, SF-blinkered position?

"Stock for free" doesn't equate since it's stock-based compensation. To some degree you expect it to retain its value and generally go up. Some companies might create an expectation of a greater appreciation even. But it's not a "oh I get paid X for my salary and then so much more for free." If you get stock at any company you compare those offers and the expected outcomes financially. There is a reason salary+stock is considered "total compensation." And in terms of it "not mattering that it went down." Of course that matters. Companies do things to keep comp consistent but if the stock does go down quarter over quarter people see that as a personal loss and a possible sinking ship. They can work somewhere else that is more stable or eve n has a positive trajectory. I have know people who had a family to think of and moved to a Apple since it's much more reliable.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#508

Post by pcthrowaway »

doopy1 wrote: post #486
pcthrowaway wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1% of global energy consumption is hardly a rounding error. I'm massively excited for the potential of cryptocurrency, but there's a reason ETH is moving to PoS, and newer PoW projects aren't getting the same kind of traction.

The most aggressive estimates I've seen are below 1% (maybe around half), which is quite literally a rounding error. Don't get me wrong I agree it's a lot, but it's a drop in the bucket on the global scale. What about the fact that china is pumping out something like 1/3rd of the world's emissions? What about excess livestock? FWIW - I do agree that PoW is not ideal and will largely be phased out, but there are lower…

There are things within our control and things that aren't. Driving up the price of bitcoin will lead to more energy consumption, so I don't buy it, even though it might lead to juicy gains.

Livestock also lead to excessive greenhouse gas emissions, so I don't buy it either, even if it could lead to juicy steak.

Lots of lower cap proof of stake cryptos (and Ethereum, which is moving to Proof of Stake) are likely to outperform bitcoin in terms of percentage gains anyway.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#509

Post by pcthrowaway »

nefitty wrote: post #482
pcthrowaway wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1% of global energy consumption is hardly a rounding error. I'm massively excited for the potential of cryptocurrency, but there's a reason ETH is moving to PoS, and newer PoW projects aren't getting the same kind of traction.

What do you consider the potential of cryptocurrency to be? Specifically, which of those potentials excites you?

Just a few:

- Decentralized payment infrastructure that can't be taken down.

- Currency that isn't issued by a government

- Open financial applications

- Pseudonymous payments (depending on the crypto)

- Infrastructure for fully transparent payments and analysis of value flows (governments and institutions should be using these)

- applications whose source can be verified. Even if a web application you use promises they handle your data securely and publish source code, there's no guarantee what they're running is actually what they've published. Decentralized applications can be interacted with and viewed by anyone (even if compiled to bytecode, you can verify the contracts they've published are accurate)

- Decentralized governance (the potential of this is massive, even moreso when coupled with decentralized identity)

- Access to financial instruments typically only accessible to institutions.

- A global, border-agnostic payment network

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#510

Post by onelovetwo »

tims33 wrote: post #68

I think it is great the company went the direction they did and I'm glad Brian is happy with it. The commentary that I find frustrating is about the "retaliatory and intellectually dishonest hit pieces." The press does suck in many ways, but when you're own a massive chunk of a $65B company you should expect some negative press and be prepared. It makes him sound like he isn't open to dissent which is an incredibly p…

does it mean he should not point out the obvious dishonest hit piece simply because the company is valued at x amount?
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