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An upcoming story about Coinbase

blog.coinbase.com

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Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#301

Post by doublekill »

muglug wrote: post #191
doublekill wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first European colleague was a male-to-female person. She had worked at a major company for years, got a bad performance report, and attributed it to her transition. It went to court and the company settled, instead of defending not promoting her (with or without regard of her transition). Very good programmer. She worked there for 1 year more, doing only things that the company laywers agreed to. In America I see…

I don’t believe neurodiverse people make racist jokes as a matter of course. At least, that hasn’t been my experience. I think journalists are also able to tell the difference between “some dude made a poor-taste joke once” and “dudes were always making poor-taste jokes targeted at one specific minority when the employee was present”. I’ll also say that, at my reasonably woke US company, I’m not aware of any neurodiv…

The journalist won't get to talk to the neurodiverse person. Usually someone lacking a thick skin or easy to take offense, goes to HR to complain (anonymously if need be) about offensive, awkward, sexist, racist, far-right, ... speech. The neurodiverse person will (rightly) get a warning, an internal investigation finds no systemic harm done, and that's that, you won't even hear about it, as it juridically not smart to be transparent about such cases.

Then the offended person changes jobs, complains on Twitter about sexist humor driving her out of her previous job, a journalist searches for leads on their next story, and suddenly you are in the news with "multiple people complained about sexist and racist humor on the work floor, but nothing was done about it, and no complaint or investigation resulted in any action. We asked the company for a response and they replied that these internal investigations turned up nothing and that they don't accept discrimination of any kind".

Nearly every company has incidents of sex between co-workers, or people taking illegal drugs on a company get together. Depending on who you get to talk to that's "it seemed like every other week I saw a used condom in the stair ways" or "management regurarily used cocaine during company parties". You won't talk to anyone relativating it, and company PR is shy to even admit that stuff.

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#303

Post by Taek »

julianmarq wrote: post #209
Taek wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you get accused of racism, what you should do is take the accusation seriously, assume that it is the result of genuine tension within the company, and then figure out places in your process where you were not being proactive enough about looking out for your employees and team chemistry. Happy employees don't accuse their employers of racism. If you are being accused of racism by your employees, surely something…

> If you are being accused [...], surely something went wrong This is "guilty until proven innocent", when exactly did this mentality catch on? Well, in any case I hope the trend reverses because it's directly opposite to how the law works.

Nobody is getting convicted of a crime here.

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#304

Post by hda2 »

uncomputation wrote: post #253
hda2 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coinbase has been on the receiving end of news media abusive for a short while (ever since they offered to pay their disruptive employees to leave). I don't really blame them for wanting to preemptively defend themselves.

> news media abusive [sic] Criticism is not abuse. They’re also not doing the best job defending themselves since they offer no concrete proof, testimony, or narrative. Who were these employees? What happened? We don’t know, but are left with some empty promise of a statement that Coinbase “handled it internally.”

I'm not talking about criticism. I'm talking about publishing false information.

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#305

Post by julianmarq »

Taek wrote: post #303
julianmarq wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you are being accused [...], surely something went wrong This is "guilty until proven innocent", when exactly did this mentality catch on? Well, in any case I hope the trend reverses because it's directly opposite to how the law works.

Nobody is getting convicted of a crime here.

How is this apropos to my comment? I didn't say anyone was. The only way I can see how this might fit as a reply to my comment would be the implication that it's okay to throw accusations around, and accepting accusations as automatically true, just because the accusation is not of a crime. That's exactly what we shouldn't do. That's my point and I for one am not gonna start doing such anytime soon, and I also try to keep contact with people who do that at a minimum.

For that matter, I would love if you elaborated on how an accusation must surely mean that a wrongdoing actually happened instead of replying with uncharitable interpretations of my comments.

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#306

Post by jolux »

manigandham wrote: post #287
jolux wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It means they’re involved in preserving the present state of affairs in politics. We can call this being apolitical if we’d like, we just need to be clear about what we mean.

> "means they’re involved in preserving the present state of affairs" No it doesn't. Perhaps constantly forcing your subjective interpreted and implied meaning on everyone else is the root of the problem. > "call this being apolitical" Sure, call it that. It literally means not involved. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/apolitical

I still feel that you're missing my point but I am clearly not skilled enough to make it more obvious.

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#307

Post by gamblor956 »

thu2111 wrote: post #296
gamblor956 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coinbase's political non-activism policy announcement at the end of September had no bearing on this article. Investigations into racial discrimination or sexual harassment complaints take months (see for example, at Riot Games, an internal investigation took almost 5 months even though most of the facts were already publicly known at the start of the investigation. https://www.espn.com/esports/story/_/id/26686134/ho…

Doubtful the NYT would spend >2 months on a story about one relatively small company. Journalist time isn't free. The timing does look very odd and let's face it, the NYT has a lot of people who would absolutely hate a tech firm standing up to their agenda in the way Coinbase has done. Having successfully politicised the NYT they'd certainly feel entitled to do the same everywhere else. The 100% idpol nature of the s…

None of what you said makes sense, and Coinbase isn't standing up to any hidden agenda.

It's simply being called it for is corporate behavior. And based on it's past behavior, it's likely the NYT report is true.

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#308

Post by Taek »

julianmarq wrote: post #305
Taek wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is getting convicted of a crime here.

How is this apropos to my comment? I didn't say anyone was. The only way I can see how this might fit as a reply to my comment would be the implication that it's okay to throw accusations around, and accepting accusations as automatically true, just because the accusation is not of a crime. That's exactly what we shouldn't do. That's my point and I for one am not gonna start doing such anytime soon, and I also try to…

Innocent until proven guilty is a standard used by law which places a very high burden on the accuser. Such a standard is in place because the consequences are both formal and very significant.

Such a burden is also unreasonable in many informal situations, as being required to establish formal and indisputable evidence of wrongdoing would prevent many people from being able to speak out about wrongdoings (especially lesser wrongdoings) within their community.

Coinbase here had 3 formal racism complaints filed internally and Coinbase is stating in their article that they found that all of these claims were incorrect and baseless. To which I say... really? Even model citizen companies are able to trace down elements of racism within their organization when they look hard enough, because racism is a natural bias cooked into many of us, and overcoming that bias requires proactive effort.

You are asking me to give you charitable interpretations, while at the same time refusing to give charitable interpretations to the folks lodging the racism complaints.

No company is perfect, and especially over 1,000 employees I don't think it's unreasonable to have issues within certain parts of the org. But after those issues surface, it seems problematic to me that you would try and assert that actually everything is just fine. Especially in an industry that is overwhelmingly white and male.

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#309

Post by robswc »

JeremyNT wrote: post #261
galaxyLogic wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes isn't this a rather common strategy, "Be pro-active, not reactive". When the actual story comes out it is not such a big news any more, because it is not news any more. First impressions often last, so now the first impressions is that the story is fake. So even if their response does amplify the story, it might amplify a good story rather than a bad one. So go even so far as to say "all publicity is good publici…

I get that this strategy can work, but are there really that many people who will be swayed by a pr statement from coinbase? I'm primed to assume their version is filled with lies and spin, and I'm waiting for the piece in the NYT to cut through the corporate pr bullshit.

I would personally trust coinbase over NYT at this point...

Especially given the circumstances of the article.

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