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A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

blog.coinbase.com

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Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#211

Post by newbie789 »

dmurray wrote: post #154
newbie789 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very interesting. The CEO said in his initial letter that Coinbase should only engage in politics that are relevant to their "core mission", but it's kind of interesting to reduce a candidate to "What can this candidate or party do specifically for our business?" and ignore other policies that a candidate or party may seek to enact. Pretending that you're unaware of or completely ambivalent about the conseque…

Or just "the board and CEO will decide what political activism is relevant to the core business of the company, and the political positions the company should take". Which seems exactly within the remit of the board and CEO.

This is absolutely true, and appears to be the stated policy in no uncertain terms.

The issue that I intended to address is the interesting usage of language to sidestep making political contributions and supporting candidates and parties as being political acts.

Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#212

Post by tshaddox »

manfredo wrote: post #163
dangus wrote: post #90

I can’t think of a worse way to handle this situation. Sure, I’m not sure what the answer is. Then again, I’m not a professional HR person who is supposed to be trained in handling these issues. Having 5% of your workforce quit over nothing more than messaging is a catastrophic failure in people management. Outright political speech bans at companies may be perfectly justified, but it’s usually the case that work env…

This comment is a perfect example of why banning political speech in the workplace is a very good idea. Every workplace that I've worked in that tolerated political speech ended up with a highly vocal segment of people making statements that parallel this comment: proclaiming that only a certain stance on controversial issues is acceptable, and implying (or stating outright) that divergence from this orthodoxy amount…

> proclaiming that only a certain stance on controversial issues is acceptable, and implying (or stating outright) that divergence from this orthodoxy amounts to an affront to human dignity.

Are you suggesting that all stances on all controversial issues are acceptable, and that it is impossible to hold a stance which is an affront to human dignity? Or are you merely saying that these issues are relatively unimportant compared to one's labor at their place of employment, and should thus be ignored?

Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#213

Post by lazyasciiart »

defen wrote: post #179
blck wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in prior times when we didn't have all the information we have available at hand: sure that's fine. But what if your orange juice brand of choice was actively contributing to the destruction of the environment, lobbying politicians to make them exempt from environmental regulations, and destroying competition in nefarious ways? That's an extreme but if that's information you have and you still support that or…

If 95% of the people at the company don't care, but you're the person who won't stop bringing up the need to change orange juice vendors, to the point that it's disruptive and annoying to the 95%, maybe they don't want to work with you any more. And maybe it's not the right company for you, either. Why would you want to work with a bunch of people who are indifferent to environmental destruction when there are litera…

If 95% of the company doesn't care then you should change orange juice vendors. Making it turn into an ongoing issue would be a very strong sign that people at the company care very strongly about keeping the current vendor. Which means that perhaps you should leave, but you should leave because people are actively opposing your politics and not because that 95% is not political.

Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#214

Post by lykr0n »

I wanted to find an example for my response to this article, and I can't. I was looking for the sites like GitHub, Go Docs, Cloudflare, Hashicorp, and others what splashed a "#BlackLivesMatter" header on across all their sites. I remember a lot of places slapping banners or changing their headers black in support of the movement, and now I can't find any examples of that happening. They all seem to have been removed by this point.

So- what was accomplished? I don't remember which companies supported "the cause." All I know is that the companies that I thought I did no longer do- or at least don't show support any more. Which stands out to me more then their support.

Tells me that two things happened.

1. The companies wasted time figuring out how they should show their support, implementing those features, and all the associated work with making major changes to frontends. Spend hours figuring it out, most likely had meetings to discuses how to do it and what they should say.

2. The stopped showing supporting it after a point in time, which tells me they don't actually care. They just want to show they do.

I'm guessing they showed support for two reasons. First is some sort of genuine support for the cause, but the 2nd is a fear of internal backlash for not showing support.

Good on Coinbase for removing the elements inside their company that would get pissed if their company didn't take an active stand on flavor of the month political issues. When I go to work, I'm there to do my job and get paid. I don't want to have to deal with people fighting over what political stand the company should take a position on this month. I don't care that my programming language's maintainers voiced support or not. I don't care that program X or Y slapped a banner on their products for the month.

The fact that there was visible support for for Black Lives Matter that was removed a month later is a lot more telling then their support. You want to be apart of the movement without actually doing anything to fix the issues.

If you want to be political as a company, quietly donate money to the causes you support. Provide resources such as technical help or free/discounted services to the causes you support. That's infinitely more productive and helpful then letting your employees fight over what token gesture they want the company to show.

Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#216

Post by arawnx »

ada1981 wrote: post #195

It’s unfortunate that CEOs / Founders think it’s appropriate to dictate the culture of the organization vs. learning to nurture the emergent values from within the team. It’s a sign of limited leadership capacity to attempt to install culture as a top down mandate.

It's unfortunate that people who run companies... run companies? Do you understand how deluded you sound when you're indignantly concerntrolling over a crypto startup not abiding by the hyperintense political environ that you personally prefer? This is installing a culture. It's installing a culture that doesn't leech into either

a. Areas they can't focus on primarily, or b. Areas that would directly make 10, 15, 25% of their human capital feel attacked/engaged in a hostile environment.

Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#217

Post by MattGaiser »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #150

I'm still shocked by the support over this policy. Having no stance on a topic is taking a stance on a topic. I'm surprised they didn't have more people leave. It's looks like from the article they have lost 5% so far and haven't finished talks with all employees.

> Having no stance on a topic is taking a stance on a topic.

Semantically perhaps, but not in practice. On most issues there are those who support, those who oppose, and a lot of neutrals who do not want to be involved and do not want to be caught in the middle of the fighting.

Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#218

Post by throwaway4715 »

dlivingston wrote: post #200
lazyasciiart wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indifference to politics is a political view.

No, it is not. Politics apathy is present across all races, all classes, all genders. Those who are politically possessed like to claim that “everything is politics” and that “it’s a privilege to not care about politics”, but every Hispanic and Filipino immigrant I’ve known (which is not a negligible number) care about family, hard work, and stability: not politics.

How does one ensure "stability" without getting involved in politics?

Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#219

Post by dangus »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #149
dangus wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know if they still do this, but I recall Zappos having a constant offer on the table to pay you to quit. I bet they didn’t have 5% turnover over some time-deaf email from the CEO. My guess: those 5% got sick of tone-dead all hands meetings/memos and saw their chance to bail out. I wonder what other companies during the Covid recession has 5% voluntary turnover?

My only question is what are employees proposing CoinBase takes a stance over? If you want something like cryptocurrencies to thrive you can't be overly policing them, that's not your job as a company. Your job is not a political platform unless you work with politicians on their campaigns or are a politician / other form of politically affiliated / influenced company. Politics can make people feel extremely uncomfor…

I made another longer comment about it on this thread.

The gist of it is that a competent HR department can make a statement without directly committing support to any particular organization or group that they aren’t comfortable with.

Saying “I refuse to comment and you’re not allowed to comment” is the worst way to go about it, literally anything would be better.

There are also ways to train on empathy, bias, and general employee-to-employee communication that can guide employees through those conversations with colleagues.

Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#220

Post by MattGaiser »

uniqueid wrote: post #85

I could see this working out badly. I think Coinbase will now attract/retain fewer conscientious employees. The kind of employees who definitely won't leave are the ones with careerist/mercenary personality types. If that becomes a vicious cycle ( per the 'like attracts like' thing https://youtu.be/wTgQ2PBiz-g?t=75 ), the culture could lead to wide-spread ass-covering and fraud. Then again, this isn't an area in whic…

6 months of severance when you can probably get a job in a few weeks is not something a careerist would take?
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