Hit piece from the now fully woke NYT. This shouldn't be on HN.
‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase
151–160 of 717 posts
Re: ‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are not enough qualified black people in that job market, what is this that Americans have that difficult to grok?
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.
honest Q: why is it their job to fix this?
also: for companies that are global in nature, with global operations, offices, employees, etc. is it right to take on the issues of the country where they have an office? (or are HQ-ed, or have X% of employees (even if majority)?)
Why not other things? Why aren't the issues of the impoverished of India an issue w/ tech companies, especially given the large presence of "well to do" Indians or upper-casters?
Re: ‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase
#153[flagged]
Re: ‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase
#154Hmmm. A 'mission focused' company that bans discusses political and societal issues also has issues with diversity and how it treats its non-white workers?
I'll go ahead and file this in the 'In other news, water is wet' category.
Re: ‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase
#155“Most people of color working in tech know that there’s a diversity problem,” Interesting. Are Asians or Indians not “people” or “of color” in this worldview?
In the US, being "marginalized" means you are part of a cultural minority group that is politically useful to political corporatists - typically of the cultural coalition party.
Re: ‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> Where is the Hispanic and Black representation?
Coinbase aspires to be a global company. What does "Black" even mean in that context? People with dark skin color? If so, a broad portion of South Asians and sub-Saharan Africans would qualify.
What does Hispanic mean? Would Spanish people qualify?
Did you mean only in the context of the USA? If so, how is that different than the Nationalist jingoism of Donald Trump, where you want US-centric population representation in a global company?
Re: ‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase
#157“Most people of color working in tech know that there’s a diversity problem,” Interesting. Are Asians or Indians not “people” or “of color” in this worldview?
Newspeak makes a distinction between "poc" and "non black poc"
Re: ‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's nothing in the article alleging that Brian Armstrong attributed "bad stuff" to being on the autistic spectrum. The only allegation in the article is that Brian Armstrong did not speak or make decisions at meetings, and attributed this to being on the spectrum. The full quote is: >"Mr. Armstrong rarely spoke or made decisions in meetings, the current and former employees said, leaving them uncertain about his…
Obviously they were talking about decisions regarding the treatment and complaints of black employees. I mean honestly what is there to think about? What are the other stakeholders he’d need to consult, racists? What other considerations, what is the other side, what downside is there about being against harassment? Every educated person could issue a quick decision: reprimand the people harassing your black employee…
> And that it is a complete and utter insult to people with actual social disabilities when he blames “being on the spectrum” for being bad at his job?
That cuts both ways. Discrimination on neuro-diversity is also bad.
> And that it is a complete and utter insult to people with actual problems with racism when she blames “being Black” for missing a promotion?
The autism-jab was in bad faith, and it worked on you. You turned his inability/carefulness not to make split decisions into a poor-faith excuse for being a racist tech bro oblivious to the struggles of others.
Re: ‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase
#159From 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…
Babysitting employees is not really a function of the employers. If people wish to leave it's their choice
Re: ‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase
#160From 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…
If you've never done this sort of thing before: there's a huge market for these "external consultants". Their unstated job (and reputations) are as whitewashing firms. You hire them to ensure there is "no evidence" of anything done wrong. The primary purpose is to create a credible defense in lawsuits but PR purposes are also common. Firms that find problems suddenly see their business dry up because most companies don't want this kind of honest evaluation (it just creates a problem and potentially exposes you to liability).
Without access to information about the firm doing the work, the report, or the underlying data it is impossible to know if a real investigation was done or not.