Live data from Hacker News

‘Tokenized’: Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase

nytimes.com

41–50 of 717 posts

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

#41
post #37

11 of then ~20 Black employees by early 2019* had complained to HR about racism. That's over half! And that's only the people with the fortitude or optimism to talk to HR (HR is notoriously useless at many companies). That's a complete disaster. 15 of that 20 quit! Why wasn't that treated as an emergency? *At the end the article says at the end of 2019 there's 31 Black employees of 1000. At the beginning of the artic…

> Why wasn't that treated as an emergency? Companies can be incredibly callous about retention issues, especially if fixing them involves noticing which managers are responsible for behaving badly towards their staff.

> retention issues

Well we allow those companies to continue to dismiss their interactions with most of the people in the company as "retention issues," so I think I can spot an actual cause here. Roll in typical treatment of customers as barriers to profit and we have a theme starting.

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

#42
post #22

I hope Coinbase does not bend the knee. I don't like the idea of crypto too much, but it should be for everybody.

I'm not sure I understood correctly - wouldn't removing discrimination or other hurdles for marginalized groups in your organization be more "for everybody"?

There was no evidence of discrimination after 3 investiagtions. 2 done by external auditors. This isn't about discrimination it's about a group of woke activists trying to sieze power for themselves.

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

#44
post #37

11 of then ~20 Black employees by early 2019* had complained to HR about racism. That's over half! And that's only the people with the fortitude or optimism to talk to HR (HR is notoriously useless at many companies). That's a complete disaster. 15 of that 20 quit! Why wasn't that treated as an emergency? *At the end the article says at the end of 2019 there's 31 Black employees of 1000. At the beginning of the artic…

> Why wasn't that treated as an emergency? Companies can be incredibly callous about retention issues, especially if fixing them involves noticing which managers are responsible for behaving badly towards their staff.

Or if the real problem is at the top.

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

#45
post #7

> I know it’s frustrating and distracting. Let’s keep focused on building an amazing company together. One would hope an amazing company that doesn't cover it's ass when it turns out the executive couldn't give a hoot about the treatment of black people and now everyone knows

Yeah you better kneel whitey or you're definitely a racist.

Congratulations on posting the first openly inflammatory racist language.

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

#46

From 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…

Did they disclose who the "external investigators" are? It matters. There are firms you can hire to rubber stamp a conclusion and others who with serious reputations.

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

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah you better kneel whitey or you're definitely a racist.

Congratulations on posting the first openly inflammatory racist language.

Don't be silly, you can't be racist to white people.

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

#50

From 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…

The external investigators were hired and paid for by Coinbase and we know nothing about the details of their findings (or who they even were) other than that single mention in the company's own blog post. There's no mention in the post about 'data' shared with the NYT, they just told them the investigations cleared them. Here's NYT's version:

Ms. Milosevich said Coinbase hired a consultant over the summer who did interviews and looked at the company’s history, and found “no evidence of structural bias.”

“Employees reported a strong culture, fair employee treatment, high employee satisfaction and high energy for belonging, inclusion and diversity,” she said.

Managers in the customer support team, where many of the Black employees work, wrote their own report last month.

Post reply on HN