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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

#551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

My skepticism of the starry eyed and incredibly convenient anecdotes of endless diverse and equitable workplaces from you and others has absolutely nothing to do with my own political beliefs. Your insistence that that is what I want despite the fact that I have not even mentioned specific race based diversity quotas says a lot about your beliefs and prejudices though. Keep tilting at the windmills — I’m sure the world in which nobody mentions politics that don’t align with your worldview or the worldview of their employer will be a better one. And of course, under such a regime, nobody will ever be fired for their political beliefs again, after all the only thing separating us from that are those pesky “diversity pundits.”

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#552
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’..

If there is one thing I've learned from a company that went woke was that the supposed diversity that it reached was merely superficial. They hired people from all the minorities necessary and ended up with culture that was even more monolithic than before. No dissent allowed. I am a bisexual dude, and nobody at work (sans my closest friends) know about it because it's none of their business. I did not disclose it du…

[deleted]

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#553
post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that positions like Brian's require there to be a clear and bright line between "political" and "not political". I think it's at least slightly easier to draw that line in European workplaces where the nature of employment is not as politically fraught. Just to take two of your examples: feminism and trans rights. Both have healthcare implications. Your employer controls your healthcare. Should the health…

You can afford pretty much anything you need as a trans person by working a year as a software engineer. Healthcare is bad in the USA? Do medical tourism, they have great doctors overseas.

Medical tourism is not convenient or even guaranteed to be a trusting experience. Two things that would be very important for many high ticket medical procedures.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#554
post #197

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…

I don't get it. You argue that employment is more tenuous at US companies for various reasons... therefore employees want to stick their necks out by engaging in politics? Shouldn't we expect the opposite?

Breaking points in history are still breaking points.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#555
post #360

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…

You make at least three times as much as people in Europe, while the cost of living isn't three times higher. You can save this money in case something bad happens. If you're a minimum wage worker that's a different story. But we're talking about software engineers here. A standing desk and wrist exercises solve most of your possible work-related injuries.

Not everyone at tech company is a software engineer or makes that type of money.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#556
post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should any insurance cover elective procedures? You could also add things like beauty surgeries, hair transplant, lasik surgeries etc. (I know that EU insurances often cover birth control, but I think that's mostly because it's a drug prescribed by a doctor so it fits into the framework... I don't think it should cover birth control (except maybe for young people before they start working) - that's not insurance…

"Elective" in "elective procedure" doesn't mean "optional and potentially frivolous." It just means "not emergent", or put differently it means you won't die if you don't have it right now . Kidney stone surgery is elective. Cancer resection is elective. Most heart surgery is elective. Most brain surgery is elective. I assume you're not arguing that health insurance shouldn't cover these things, because that would be…

What’s the correct term?

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#557
post #404

Love that Armstrong did this at Coinbase. I want to work at work, not worry about the political opinions of my coworkers.

Work, including who you work for, is an inherently political act. The set of coworkers you have is a result of their and your political opinions. He didn't simply ban politics at work, however: he just refused to acknowledge the Black Lives Matter movement. Prior to that Coinbase had Black History Month events they conducted; now they don't.

"Work, including who you work for, is an inherently political act."

I have heard the same thing about knitting and breastfeeding. Hard disagree; this is the kind of mission creep that takes over your entire life if you aren't careful.

"Black History Month events they conducted; now they don't."

So they stopped a performative action whose real impact is debatable. Employees likely won't forget the history of U.S. slavery even if their employer stopped running special events to conmemorate it.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#558
post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, in that case if it’s medically indicated and not elective, that’s a different situation.

Why does a workplace get to determine what is and isn’t medically elective for a woman to take birth control? Isn’t that political too?

Obviously it is. But for people defending all kinds of status quo, it's a political act just trying to change it. Trying to keep it as it is, it's seen as "normal" or apolitical.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#559
post #142

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…

I think we're mixing up different political topics here. The one I think you're talking about is the US workers' struggle to defend or increase basic worker rights. Which indeed is a political struggle of workers versus management. If I'm not mistaken, the Coinbase case is about social justice types of topics like feminism, BLM, trans rights, colonialism, the like.

Of course everyone knows that feminism has nothing to do with basic workers rights because a women's place is in the home.

/sarcasm

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#560
post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, none of what you said is relevant to my point. What I have a problem with is the immediate reversion to the most caustic framing possible of a person who disagrees with you. > If a trans person walked into my office their existence would be a political problem Maybe my problem with this is a semantic one, since I’m a student of language, but describing it in this way is legitimately insane to me. Insane in t…

"Insane" is a pretty charged word for a person deeply concerned about jumping to the most caustic framing possible. I can't say that I know how every person means the things they say, but "my existence is political" is a relatively common statement, and I have never understood it to strictly mean that "I am alive subject to political whims." Every time I've encountered it the person saying it described how the mere a…

The issue is that it’s possible for that person to not “be political”, even typical in large parts of the world, so if the person thinks they always are, they’re not seeing correctly. Insane is way too strong a term but such a person does risk their misperception harming relationships and wasting good opportunities.
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