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‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase

nytimes.com

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Re: ‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase

#101

Post by slg »

seibelj wrote: post #86
slg wrote: post #5

This is in the wake of Coinbase decision to be a "mission focused company" and prevent their employees from speaking out about political issues at the workplace. It shows the dangers of being apolitical when saying "Blank employees should feel safe and welcome at their job" is apparently still a political statement.

I don’t see why we need to be debating politics all day in the work place. I can guarantee you my politics (libertarian / capitalist / corporatist / anti-collectivism) will do nothing but enrage you and debates in public chats, lunch, etc. will serve nothing of purpose. Isn’t it better if we save the philosophical debates for beers and the ballot box? I don’t want to hear your soap box and you don’t want to hear mine…

You missed the point of my comment entirely. The issue is how "politics" is defined. I couldn't care less if Coinbase banned people from talking about the estate tax or free trade. However it is a problem when people can't speak up about the discrimination they feel at work.

Re: ‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase

#102

Post by 6c9be5fc6b39 »

slg wrote: post #51
RestlessMind wrote: post #33

From Coinbase's preemptive rebuttal[1]: "we hired an external consultant in August of this year who specializes in data science and diversity and inclusion to cull through all of our historic data related to diversity ... and conduct a high volume of interviews with employees representing all background, functions, and tenures to understand the employee experience. The independent investigation concluded that there w…

>What else can they do if they are really innocent? Innocent of what exactly? At a certain point whether the leadership of Coinbase is racist or not doesn't matter. What matters is their actions. The article says "roughly three-quarters of the Black employees" left the company over a 6 month span due to feelings of being discriminated against. That isn't an accusation. It is a fact. It also isn't something that will…

It is possible for a Black person to feel discriminated against because of their race even when such discrimination has not occurred. The event mentioned in the article referring to a Black person dealing drugs and having a gun is bad, but the rest of it just sounds like normal annoying work crap. Being talked down to and belittled in a work meeting? I'm a middle-aged white programmer and that's happened to me a number of times over my career.

Re: ‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase

#103

Post by cbthrow91 »

ergocoder wrote: post #94
slg wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand on what you mean by "far left politics"? Reminder, this happened in late 2018 and early 2019. It was before this year's round of Black Lives Matter protests. It was also before Coinbase issued its no politics edict. I am really struggling to think of what "far left politics" you are referring to here that would be important enough to the Black employees of Coinbase that it results in 75% of them leavin…

Far left politics is an extremist. For example, if you criticize BLM for looting, you will be labeled racists. Looting small shop owners makes no sense. Many shop owners are even black. This happened in Seattle where many shop owners support BLM. You might say, well, that was an exception. But Noah Trevor (an influential person) also justified looting because police breaks social contract first. Now why would you loo…

@slg: I believe CB has internally discouraged politics in the workplace not related to the mission since before 2020

Re: ‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase

#104

Post by oh_sigh »

slg wrote: post #71
oh_sigh wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can think of contexts, especially when n=15(if this was a statistical study on insulin response to artificial sweeteners, people would be saying the sample size is too small to draw conclusions), but I don't know if developing hypothetical scenarios is useful. Learning the true context is most important. This could be done by corroborating allegations for example.

>I can think of contexts, especially when n=15(if this was a statistical study on insulin response to artificial sweeteners, people would be saying the sample size is too small to draw conclusions), but I don't know if developing hypothetical scenarios is useful. N = 15 while p ≈ 20. It has been a while since I have taken a stats class, but that sample seems plenty large enough to me. >Learning the true context is mo…

If you order the claims in the article on a scale of not racist at all to clearly racist, you'll see basically all of the corroboration comes from claims on the left side of that scale, and few if any on the right side. The claims I was specifically thinking about were things like:

> One Black employee said her manager suggested in front of colleagues that she was dealing drugs and carrying a gun, trading on racist stereotypes. Another said a co-worker at a recruiting meeting broadly described Black employees as less capable. Still another said managers spoke down to her and her Black colleagues, adding that they were passed over for promotions in favor of less experienced white employees. The accumulation of incidents, they said, led to the wave of departures.

These have no corroboration, even though they allegedly happened in front of multiple coworkers.

Re: ‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase

#105

Post by seibelj »

slg wrote: post #101
seibelj wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see why we need to be debating politics all day in the work place. I can guarantee you my politics (libertarian / capitalist / corporatist / anti-collectivism) will do nothing but enrage you and debates in public chats, lunch, etc. will serve nothing of purpose. Isn’t it better if we save the philosophical debates for beers and the ballot box? I don’t want to hear your soap box and you don’t want to hear mine…

You missed the point of my comment entirely. The issue is how "politics" is defined. I couldn't care less if Coinbase banned people from talking about the estate tax or free trade. However it is a problem when people can't speak up about the discrimination they feel at work.

You are talking about something that is so wrong it warrants a front page NYT expose and results in potentially multi-million dollar lawsuits. I can understand why a company wouldn’t want to promote sessions where everyone accuses the corporation of systemic discrimination.

Re: ‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase

#106

Post by TACIXAT »

RestlessMind wrote: post #65
vmception wrote: post #63

I was willing to support the general message Brian Armstrong put out, but with the added context and chronology I cannot. I would say that this kind of mission statement can only work if done at the beginning, as reacting in response to the work environment described by their employees was doomed for failure. I know many people like Brian Armstrong, and the investors. They are all cut from a similar cloth and they ho…

From Coinbase's "About us"[1] > They don't know how to get women on a panel 2 out of 7 members of the exec team are women. > they don't know hot to get qualified people of color in positions to change things 4 out of 7 members of the exec team have last names of Choi, Chatterjee, Grewal, Gupta. It's almost as if you have strong biases (or delusions) and didn't even do a basic fact check before making bold claims agai…

Where is the Hispanic and Black representation? I see 3/15 people on that page being women, not a very strong point for a group that is 50% of the population.

This is the standard SV makeup. Do a random sample of any large tech company and this is the team you’d get. This tells me they’re not doing anything different.

Re: ‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase

#107

Post by slg »

oh_sigh wrote: post #104
slg wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I can think of contexts, especially when n=15(if this was a statistical study on insulin response to artificial sweeteners, people would be saying the sample size is too small to draw conclusions), but I don't know if developing hypothetical scenarios is useful. N = 15 while p ≈ 20. It has been a while since I have taken a stats class, but that sample seems plenty large enough to me. >Learning the true context is mo…

If you order the claims in the article on a scale of not racist at all to clearly racist, you'll see basically all of the corroboration comes from claims on the left side of that scale, and few if any on the right side. The claims I was specifically thinking about were things like: > One Black employee said her manager suggested in front of colleagues that she was dealing drugs and carrying a gun, trading on racist s…

We don't need to corroborate each individual complaint. The story here isn't that one employee was passed over for a promotion. The story is the trend that all these anecdotes support. There is corroboration for the trend.

Re: ‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase

#109

Post by slg »

6c9be5fc6b39 wrote: post #102
slg wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What else can they do if they are really innocent? Innocent of what exactly? At a certain point whether the leadership of Coinbase is racist or not doesn't matter. What matters is their actions. The article says "roughly three-quarters of the Black employees" left the company over a 6 month span due to feelings of being discriminated against. That isn't an accusation. It is a fact. It also isn't something that will…

It is possible for a Black person to feel discriminated against because of their race even when such discrimination has not occurred. The event mentioned in the article referring to a Black person dealing drugs and having a gun is bad, but the rest of it just sounds like normal annoying work crap. Being talked down to and belittled in a work meeting? I'm a middle-aged white programmer and that's happened to me a numb…

>It is possible for a Black person to feel discriminated against because of their race even when such discrimination has not occurred.

This explanation's believability has an inverse relationship with the number of claims. I could buy the idea that a couple people perceived "normal annoying work crap" as discrimination, but would that happen 15 times? 75% of the Black employees left the company in a 6 month window. You don't see anything like that at any other company.

Re: ‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase

#110

Post by tptacek »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #100
pjc50 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't Scottish Law, you don't need to corroborate every single item with third parties. (I wonder how many people apply this level of corroboration requirement to forward-looking statements about the benefits of bitcoin?)

You don't need to do anything. Newspapers are free to publish whatever they'd like. But if the NYT isn't interested in discovering the truth of the accusations, that lends credence to the idea that their primary motivation is not the accusations but Coinbase's lack of support for racial justice politics.

Again: the NYT is a newspaper, and isn't vested with subpoena powers. They operate within the limits all newspapers operate in, and there is more than enough meat in this story to understand why they ran with it. "Isn't interested in discovering the truth of the accusations" is hardly a fair criticism here.
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