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‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase

nytimes.com

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

#141

Post by aparsons »

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…

Here’s the catcher though: these people never personally sacrifice themselves, and a good number of them are quite biased themselves.

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

#143

Post by treis »

ygjb wrote: post #125
treis wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinly veiled insults aside, you didn't address my actual point. The people in the article risked all the repercussions you mentioned by formally reporting the abuse and speaking with the NYTimes. Saying that they would do that but not risk snapping a pic of a racist e-mail, as an example, doesn't make any sense.

Insulting people wasn't my intention, but I have some uncharitable views of the HN community members that cry meritocracy and find founders blameless. You are correct that the people in the article that either filed complaints, or spoke with the New York Times risked repercussions, but not all of the folks the Times spoke with are identified. People were willing to talk, but not necessarily on the record, or to be id…

>You are correct that the people in the article that either filed complaints, or spoke with the New York Times risked repercussions, but not all of the folks the Times spoke with are identified. People were willing to talk, but not necessarily on the record, or to be identified. That is because they are fearful of reprisal, based on past experiences and observations.

You're arguing against a straw man here. I did not say that the only acceptable proof was an on the record statement. Anonymous corroboration or reporting a general description of an e-mail to preserve anonymity would be fine. There's nothing even like that.

>Getting justice in civil matters often boils down to the size of a victims pocket book

That's not really true. Susan Fowler blew up Uber with a single blog post. The difference is making specific accusations and providing some level of detail. There's essentially none of that in the NYTimes piece.

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

#145

Post by whymauri »

cbthrow91 wrote: post #111
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people traffic in blatant stereotypes in the guise of some kind of positive statement, which makes reprimands less likely. I once had a speaker tell us - in a diversity seminar! - about specific racial groups he thinks are too timid to speak up for themselves.

Our execs have short text guides on how to work best with them and everyone on my team has been encouraged to share similar. The default assumption is everyone should be working together to accommodate on how we can all work best together. I've been in environments where certain communications styles are labeled more correct or ideal. So I've really loved this guidebook + accommodation approach. I went into this arti…

>CB is a really great company for any curious nerd to join.

Not if they're black or brown, apparently. I have no idea how you could say this is a 'great' company after reading this article. Like my mind is actually blown.

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

#146

Post by dang »

briane80 wrote: post #36
demarq wrote: post #7

> I know it’s frustrating and distracting. Let’s keep focused on building an amazing company together. One would hope an amazing company that doesn't cover it's ass when it turns out the executive couldn't give a hoot about the treatment of black people and now everyone knows

Yeah you better kneel whitey or you're definitely a racist.

Regardless of where one is on the underlying issue, flamebait like this is beyond the pale. You've been posting a lot of it—please stop.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

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

#147

Post by vmception »

9HZZRfNlpR wrote: post #123
TACIXAT wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If true, what are they doing to change that? When I was at Google there were zero paths to bring in people with potential and train them up. I’m guessing it is the same at Coinbase. Doing nothing to address the problem then pointing at your H1Bs and patting yourself on the back.

I would guess through the same system everyone else qualifies through, weather it be Google or someone else. Your local governments have to push the education forward instead of doing these racist affirmative action rules.

The talent pools exist, they can definitely increase recruiting at different schools.

America is where it is by not even tapping into the productivity of basically up to half of its population across various demographics, imagine if it did.

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

#148

Post by dang »

ksherlock wrote: post #76

Sure, but do they use a "master" branch in their git repo?

"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#149

Post by HarryHirsch »

skywhopper wrote: post #137
HarryHirsch wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Callous" would mean it's about you, but think about it from the viewpoint of the company. If the aggrieved employee leaves, the problem is solved.

Only if the issue is with that individual employee. In this case, that obviously isn’t the case. Ignoring a systemic problem in your company solves nothing.

Don't know if that's true. The big goal is to avoid federal lawsuits and other scandals. If the can can be kicked down the road for a few more years, fine! Uber only blew up because Susan Fowler was better connected than most, and you'd like to know how much the scandal affected the company. Uber is fine, Kalanick is fine, a few HR drones lost their jobs, business as usual.

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

#150

Post by slg »

cbthrow91 wrote: post #140
slg wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, let's accept what you say as fact and ignore that an exception was made for the single White employee in that department which wasn't made for any of the Black employees you are referencing. Let's also ignore the weirdness of 40% of the company's Black employees being on a single seemingly small team. That still leaves 7 other employees in other departments who left the company in a 6 month window due to feeling…

Just went back to double check the article and am actually not certain how you are getting to the number 75%. 11 employees cited a complaint to HR according to the article. Where are you getting the denominator for total number of black employees in 2019? There's a data mismatch between the CB blog post and the article. CB cites that only 2-3 formal complaints were filed iirc. 11 employee complaints matches pretty cl…

The first sentence of the second paragraph of the article.

>The 15 people worked at Coinbase, the most valuable U.S. cryptocurrency start-up, where they represented roughly three-quarters of the Black employees at the 600-person company.

"[R]oughly three-quarters" implies there were likely either 19 or 21 employees Black employees at the company since 20 would be exactly three-quarters. I was just using 75% and 20 employees because that is the best estimate we got. The article also stated clearly that 8 Black employees were part of the PDX group.

The Coinbase rebuttal was worded very specifically.

>only three of these people filed complaints during their time at Coinbase.

The New York Times wasn't being as narrow with their counting and they said:

>11 of them informed the human resources department or their managers about what they said was racist or discriminatory treatment

There is obvious middle ground between these two quotes. 11 people complained to their manager or HR at some point including potentially after they left the company however only 3 filed official complaints while working there. Keep in mind that simply complaining about something to a coworker isn't the same thing as "filing" a complaint.

If this middle ground scenario transpired as I described, doesn't the NYT's recounting sound much closer to the truth than CB's? Also ask yourself who has a bigger incentive to stretch the truth here. Is it the newspaper that could instead report on literally anything else or the company that is being accused of discrimination?

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