Live data from Hacker News

‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase

nytimes.com

301–310 of 717 posts

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

#301

This piece paints coinbase as a company with racist tendencies and a hostile place to work for black people. Based on the evidence or lack there of provided the article and after reading coinbase's rebuttal, I must say this NYT piece feels like an attempt to bully coinbase/armstrong into reverting its/his stance on engagement in issues unrelated to coinbase core mission and into submission to the cause.

Nice victim mentality for a company with clear and blatant evidence of belittling black employees...

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

#302
> at least 11 of them informed the human resources department or their managers about what they said was racist or discriminatory treatment ... One Black employee said her manager suggested in front of colleagues that she was dealing drugs and carrying a gun, trading on racist stereotypes.

In an era of smartphones and viral videos, the fact that we don't have a single audio/video recording exposing the racism seems rather suspect. I'm not saying that is proof of anything. But something to consider.

The idea that coinbase, a silicon valley/SF/etc company, would discriminate, especially against black people, is hard for me to believe. But I'm open to anything. Certainly even if the company doesn't have a culture of bias, it may have a few bad apples.

> If the numbers haven’t changed, it’s definitely because there wasn’t a real intention to do so

This is a lie. Everyone who works in tech knows that companies are bending over backwards to hire black employees. The problem is the lack of qualified employees. Even unqualified black employees are being hired just to say "we have more black employees today than last year". It's been like this for a few years now. That tech companies had no real intention to hire black employees is simply a lie.

> When Mr. Armstrong wrote his blog post in September asking employees to leave their outside interests at the door, he was celebrated and praised by several tech investors.

So this is why we have a nytimes article. It's a political attack masquerading as a employment bias issue. Got it.

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

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What’s with the wall of text? Because, if you'd read it, it's much more nuanced than you're making it out to be. I felt an exploration might be interesting. You clearly disagree. > Violence isn’t justified regardless of who’s doing it. Yes, it is. If someone comes at you with a knife, you're justified in a violent response. Period. I doubt even a pacifist monk would disagree. Where things get more interesting is wh…

> If someone comes at you with a knife, you're justified in a violent response. Period. Exactly. Only there is no 'oppressive system', but an individual officer responding to 911 call and standing against an agitated individual with a weapon who's about to attack.

So there's a few things here.

> Only there is no 'oppressive system'.

I think this is open to debate, and it's not fair to simply state it as fact given the evidence.

> ... but an individual officer responding to 911 call and standing against an agitated individual with a weapon and who's about to attack.

Indeed, but that's also overly simplistic. A violent response is justified but isn't necessarily preferred, and degree matters. Proper training in de-escalation, hand-to-hand combat, safety equipment, non-lethal, less-lethal and eventually if necessary lethal weapons are all available to officers.

How you pick is a systemic question. How much training and what kind is a systemic question. And the results are measurable. Indeed Canada's per capita police shooting rate is 1/10th that of the US -- and Canada's pretty high as far as rich countries go! New Zealand police killed 2 or 3 people since 2015.

It's overwhelmingly not a kill-or-be-killed situation, and further, the job of an officer is not to eliminate 100% of harm potential for themselves at all costs -- but instead to resolve the situation with the optimal outcome for all involved. The job is in fact risky, which is why the profession is so highly regarded.

I maintain the issue is one of accountability, between police not being held accountable for gross negligence, the unequivocal support from the police unions and of course, qualified immunity. I suspect people just want to feel like they're being treated fairly. If you don't hold anyone accountable it creates a negative feedback loop breaking trust and making the job more dangerous for everyone.

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

#304
post #71
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…

Addressing only the viability of the sample for basic binomial analysis, the sample size is on the small end. This would be okay if we could reasonably expect the underlying events to follow identical and independent distributions, but when we know the people involved worked together that assumption is clearly void. Unfortunately this means we really can’t use any sort of statistical analysis on this datum. The models just don’t support it.

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

#305

Reading through the comments as black person is depressing. Many of the comments question whether the accusations are even true or collusive attack because of an unfounded accusation that black people tend to be SJWs (stereotyping). Others blame affirmative-action, bad schools, etc. (classic misdirection). Some even venture into the possibility that a black person complaining about being passed over for promotion mig…

I'm glad you spoke up, and maybe I and others should've.

There are some kinds of topics that I can immediately guess will invite certain kinds of comments on HN, and I've learned to just take a deep breath and ignore them. (If it gets really bad, I go catch up on that other Web site that does over-the-top criticism of HN, so that I don't feel like the only one.) On rare occasions, I've tried to engage some of the, but it's just draining.

However, when not enough people speak up, that can send an implicit message that some life-sucking background noise from others is OK with everyone else, when it's not.

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

#306
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did: 1. They are not mentioning that one reason is that a team had transfered regions/states, and that might be the main cause of attrition on that team, and not the actual treatment. 2. In a previous article, NYT failed to mention at all that Coinbase had provided severance of 6 months (which is very generous). NYT made it seems as these employees were forced out the company and lelft out in the streets a) Omit…

> They are not mentioning that one reason is that a team had transfered regions/states, and that might be the main cause of attrition on that team, and not the actual treatment. They did mention this: "When Coinbase announced it would be opening an office in Portland, Ore., several Black employees in the compliance department who worked remotely were told to move there or reapply for new jobs, four former employees s…

[deleted]

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

#307

“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"

It's not "newspeak" to suggest that Black people are treated differently than Asian people; in fact, it would be more surprising to hear that they aren't, since the two groups of people have wildly different histories in the United States.

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

#308
post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I apologize in advance because you seem to be emotionally invested in this, but I really do not understand the questions you pose in your comment. What did you actually expect from the discussion? Were there not enough comments against Coinbase? Were there not enough comments outraged about the perceived racist behavior of it? Do you think none of those commenters "imagine the possibility that racism is a problem in…

You appear to be arguing with the comment you wish that person had written, not they one they actually wrote. The actual comment is specific about the pattern of problematic comments they observed: * They suggest that Black people are in general SJWs * They attempt to litigate affirmative action rather than the claims in the article * They argue that Black employees passed over for promotion were underqualified. * Th…

The message was I can't believe people made comments with the points above. Everyone should be on the page that racism exists specifically against black people in 2020.

I don't think the parent poster was pretending anything the parent-parent poster didn't share.

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

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to dispute something another commenter says, do so. The guidelines ask you specifically not to snark like this.

some comments cross over to the realm of outrageous and ridiculous to an extent they cannot be acknowledged in any reasonable and guidelines-compliant way.

In my view the comment you replied to is neither outrageous or ridiculous, and it ought to be possible to disagree with it in a civil manner even if you think it's very wrong.

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

#310
post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Police are mostly peaceful

Without taking a meaningful position here, how do you differentiate between the individuals on the street who are generally poor and powerless (and if you take them at their word, disenfranchised), while the police are backed by the institution, carrying military weapons, and legally empowered to use violence to stop them? This is a question I have struggled with, so I'm curious what your take is, and that of the res…

I'd certainly agree that, when poor, powerless and disenfranchised people are randomly lashing out, the only solution is to enfranchise them and bring them out of poverty. (And of course, we should try to do those things no matter what - bringing people out of poverty is an important priority no matter how peaceful things are.)

What scares me is when wealthy, powerful, and enfranchised people fan the flames. There was a period of a week or so when mobs were going around breaking things, buildings in every major city were being boarded up - and many politicians and news outlets explicitly endorsed the mobs! There was a famous video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1mxJMIIMuE) where an MSNBC reporter said the protests were "not generally speaking unruly" while standing in front of a building burning to the ground.

Post reply on HN