‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase • Hacker News Board

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

#341

Post by tptacek » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 2:18 AM UTC

cbthrow91 wrote: post #337

cbthrow91 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unclear but I think when it's mentioned PHL employee is able to work remote, they mean they are able to work out of the NYC office which is remote relative to the PDX office. It was not my read that they are working remote from home. Your wording speculates on how the communication around remote was delivered in an unfavorable light. We know the decision was made to end WFH/remote, and one employee managed to ge…

@tptacek: you are imputing a motivation out of thin air. having fought hard for wfh/remote at companies against it, I can imagine far more benign reasons to be plausible.

No company does a group relocation without expecting to lose several members of the team. They're essentially all RIFs. I've tried to keep my analysis as dispassionate as I can in this part of the thread. I think the facts as asserted in the article speak pretty clearly, and the bulleted list I provided upthread recites those facts pretty much directly and in ways you haven't disputed.

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

#342

Post by whakim » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 2:18 AM UTC

ardit33 wrote: post #267

whakim wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Please, don't dismiss arguments and call them names. I was referring to a previous article... they omitted the severance package altogether, which was a key detail of the story and all other major outlets did mention it. It is clear that NYT is being scetchy-dishonest/has an axe to grind, or just plain sloppy/incompetent. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/28/technology/politics-tech-... "Two months earlier, dozens of C…

I wasn't intending to engage in name-calling; I apologise if it came off that way.

I agree that the earlier story should have directly mentioned the severance Coinbase offered to employees who left. That being said, the severance was pretty tangential to the point of that earlier story: that different companies have very different policies on workplace activism, and Coinbase was taking a hard line on politics at work (no politics allowed at work).

That being said, the NYT omitting a salient but tangential fact in a different story about Coinbase written several months ago hardly smacks of conspiracy. I try to read news articles on their own merits, giving some consideration to the agenda of the publication (and, as I mentioned earlier, the NYT has a perspective just like every other publication). To me, Coinbase didn't really provide anything to refute the allegations in this story in their "prebuttal", and the portrait of the company that the NYT paints seems pretty convincing.

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

#343

Post by roenxi » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 2:20 AM UTC

sangnoir wrote: post #329

roenxi wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would probably violate privacy. It is unclear to me whether they can do that.

Whose privacy? Coinbase's?! They wouldn't be the first company to publicly publish an internal report (voluntary or not; such documents routinely go public via the justice system).

The employee's. If someone makes a complaint to HR it might easily be illegal to investigate then broadcast it to the world accompanied with a "this employee is full of it" style message. Doing that might, for example, damage that employees prospects of finding employment or reveal specific personal details. Certainly appalling form, probably illegal.

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

#344

Post by CyberDildonics » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 2:21 AM UTC

briane80 wrote: post #38

CyberDildonics wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there is no evidence, what are they being pressured to "kneel" to?

Maybe you're not aware of the back story. Coinbase was one of the few large companies that did not go all woke over the George Floyd incident. The identity politics activists in the company took offence to this and demanded management make a statement. When management refused to bend the knee the activists made allegations of racism and took them to the nytimes.

What do you mean by "go all woke"? You are being very vague, maybe you should be more specific.

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

#345

Post by tptacek » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 2:22 AM UTC

nilkn wrote: post #338

[Thank you for all your advice -- it's greatly appreciated. I've edited this post since it included a few personal details that I don't want permanently attached to my account on here. I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.]

One possibility is to bring it up in the interview, and ask probing questions. The downside to this is you might not get hired --- but if that costs you the job, maybe you don't want to work there in the first place? I wouldn't. The upside is that either way, you'll be sending a pretty strong signal that this article "broke through" and that people care about it; companies do tend to pay attention to things they hear in the recruiting process. You don't have to throw away your market power; you can deploy it.

This is a company that took the time to write a damage control pre-buttal to an NYT story, so you can safely assume they have a canned answer about it deployed to their recruiting teams. So the key here would be the "probing questions" part.

And, who knows? Coinbase might convince you that their heart is in the right place on this issue.

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

#346

Post by vmception » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 2:23 AM UTC

caffeine wrote: post #215

vmception wrote: post #63

I was willing to support the general message Brian Armstrong put out, but with the added context and chronology I cannot. I would say that this kind of mission statement can only work if done at the beginning, as reacting in response to the work environment described by their employees was doomed for failure. I know many people like Brian Armstrong, and the investors. They are all cut from a similar cloth and they ho…

Why is it racist or sexist to not to be interested in "inclusion" (which actually means "quotas", right?) I would think that progressive activism is the minority rather than the default view. Isn't it the racially discriminatory stance to make decisions based on race? I think most rational people would rather make decisions purely on competence and facts, not identity.

Inclusion doesnt mean quotas.

Say that 30 times real fast and ask a new question

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

#347

Post by whakim » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 2:25 AM UTC

edbob wrote: post #328

whakim wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the article starts from the premise that an abnormally large percentage of Coinbase's black employees left over a short period of time. It then uses a large body of circumstantial evidence to (pretty convincingly, in my opinion) portray the culture at Coinbase as hostile to employees of color. Not really sure how that's dishonest.

The article fails to mention the generous 4-6 month severance package that was being offered at the same time as the relocation of the division. Of course a bunch of employees will take the 6 months paid vacation over moving. This is the level of dishonesty that I've come to expect from the NYT. Any fact that does not fit their narrative basically doesn't exist. Better treatment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=…

Do you have inside information that this was the case? Because I'm sure that would be quite compelling to hear.

To clarify, I assume the generous severance you're referring to is not the generous severance Coinbase offered employees as part of their no-politics-at-work approach, because the timelines don't match.

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

#348

Post by tptacek » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 2:25 AM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #343

sangnoir wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whose privacy? Coinbase's?! They wouldn't be the first company to publicly publish an internal report (voluntary or not; such documents routinely go public via the justice system).

The employee's. If someone makes a complaint to HR it might easily be illegal to investigate then broadcast it to the world accompanied with a "this employee is full of it" style message. Doing that might, for example, damage that employees prospects of finding employment or reveal specific personal details. Certainly appalling form, probably illegal.

You are, due respect, basically just making this up. Companies publish investigator reports of bias and discrimination somewhat regularly. It's possible that Coinbase contractually can't disclose the reports they've already commissioned --- in which case they probably ought not to have tried to refute the article with them --- but they can certainly commission a new one that they can disclose. It's a 600+ employee company; the cost of the report is a rounding error.

As it stands, the kernel of Coinbase's defense here is "we paid for a secret report and it says we're great". Reasonable people can find that response unpersuasive.

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

#349

Post by sumedh » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 2:27 AM UTC

function_seven wrote: post #335

mssundaram wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Which is that, if you can share?

It's n-gate [dot] com I think you have to type in that URL. If the referrer is set to this site, you get goatse'd or something.

The comments link at n-gate points back to HN?

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

#350

Post by sangnoir » Sat, Nov 28, 2020, 2:27 AM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #343

sangnoir wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whose privacy? Coinbase's?! They wouldn't be the first company to publicly publish an internal report (voluntary or not; such documents routinely go public via the justice system).

The employee's. If someone makes a complaint to HR it might easily be illegal to investigate then broadcast it to the world accompanied with a "this employee is full of it" style message. Doing that might, for example, damage that employees prospects of finding employment or reveal specific personal details. Certainly appalling form, probably illegal.

Redaction is commonly used on sensitive, non-germane information - this is not an unsolved problem.