A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company • Hacker News Board

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

#481

Post by konjin » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 3:07 AM UTC

yokaze wrote: post #188

redm wrote: post #82

I feel like this is the start of a rising tide. I think Brian's stance is great, companies have missions, they should focus on those missions. Everything has become so political that your work, which occupies a large portion of your life, should not be divisive.

I see it the other way around. (Almost) everything is political. The mission of the company is not disjoint from the society it is embedded in. Things have become divisive by being able to ignore and blend out the opposing views. By not talking and listening to one another. This is just one more step in that direction. Funnily enough, I think it has been extrapolated by Neal Stephenson in Diamond Age. We will end up…

The only people who could think that are people who do not have to deal with people different to them in their daily life at all. Having three shades of skin tone on software developers that all went to Stanford does not count for your difference quota.

Money is money, and the money of a jew, nazi, gay, christian, muslim or pedophile are all equally good. Anyone rejecting money because they don't agree with where it comes from is either lying or about to be eaten alive by someone who doesn't.

There is a reason why everyone in China is trying to escape to our system, while they have invented personal money - in the form of your social score.

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

#482

Post by creato » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 3:08 AM UTC

Pfhreak wrote: post #145

krzyk wrote: post #123

Is "apolitical" stance a bad thing? Isn't it the default, safe? I lived in country where you had to be "political" to be in management, it didn't end up well (East Europe, Soviet Union), I always (naively?) thought that West countries were wiser. So I prefer companies to not mess with politics.

"Apolitical" is the default. It's another way of saying, "The way things are is fine". The problem is that this is, in itself, a political stance. An example could be climate change. If Coinbase is doing nothing to make energy more green (even if that's just writing amicus briefs or blog posts), then they are effectively saying, "The way things are is fine."

> An example could be climate change. If Coinbase is doing nothing to make energy more green (even if that's just writing amicus briefs or blog posts), then they are effectively saying, "The way things are is fine."

You think every single company that isn't writing amicus briefs or blog posts about climate change is taking a political stance against fighting climate change?

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

#483

Post by manigandham » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 3:12 AM UTC

mrguyorama wrote: post #278

dingaling wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> work are themselves political decisions But those political decisions are ones relevant to the mission of the company. Coinbase probably shouldn't be involved in politics around police reform, fracking, climate change or the Second Amendment because they are orthogonal to its mission. Insert other topics as you see fit. And hence its employees should leave their opinions of such matters at the door. Coinbase should…

Taking "no stance" on a political issue is itself a political stance for the status quo. It is impossible to not be political

No stance means just that. Redefining terms and imposing a will is the overtly irrelevant and aggressive political posturing that these policies are trying to avoid.

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

#484

Post by beefalo » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 3:17 AM UTC

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.

I'm not surprised that it's only 5%. I think it's worth keeping in mind that this is a cryptocurrency company and so that already are within a culture that has strong libertarian leanings. The people that took the severance are very likely just bored with their job and wanted a vacation.

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

#485

Post by nilkn » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 3:19 AM UTC

jariel wrote: post #434

monoideism wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why use a special term? Just "racism" works very well. The idea that only certain races can "qualify" for racism is Orwellian.

The intersectional view is that 'real racism' requires a power imbalance - which is actually a fair point. It would be unfair not to recognize that some groups have considerably more power than others. That said - it's still racism one way or another, discriminatory etc. and in 2020 it's getting really hard to talk about individuals as being a function of their race. So while it's worth reminding ourselves of the int…

Isn’t there a pretty clear power imbalance if one side is being given a platform to espouse these views in front of hundreds of employees while they get endorsed by HR and company leadership?

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

#486

Post by remarkEon » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 3:20 AM UTC

sneak wrote: post #373

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #46

I am beyond sick of political activists in the workplace, so I hope this trend catches on.

It’s a bummer that Coinbase’s ploy to intentionally conflate not supporting the Black Lives Matter movement (that is, a clear implicit endorsement of the status quo) with generalized left/right-political-activism-at-work seems to have worked, at least for a lot of people who aren’t paying attention. This isn’t about office politics, or political activism at work. This is about Coinbase making an explicit vote for the…

>This is about Coinbase making an explicit vote for the status quo of American racism, and trying to deflect the heat they’re taking for that by confusing people into thinking that this is about standard political discussion.

One of my favorite things about this new type of political activism is that words no longer mean what we all understood them to mean in ages past. "Explicit" would mean something along the lines of Coinbase or Armstrong saying "we support the status quo of American racism", as you have alleged. Alas, I've read all these blog posts and there is no sentence that matches or even could be remotely construed to resemble the one you have wrote.

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

#487

Post by notSupplied » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 3:20 AM UTC

When a group of employees demand that their employers engage in political activism, what they are asking for is the ability to commandeer the resources of the company, whether it be its reputation, money, or labor to advance their political objective. They want to amplify their impact beyond what they can accomplish with their personal resources. I wonder how these same people feel about the political contributions of companies from the opposing end of the spectrum. Would they say "Get corporate power out of politics!"?

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

#488

Post by notSupplied » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 3:25 AM UTC

yokaze wrote: post #188

redm wrote: post #82

I feel like this is the start of a rising tide. I think Brian's stance is great, companies have missions, they should focus on those missions. Everything has become so political that your work, which occupies a large portion of your life, should not be divisive.

I see it the other way around. (Almost) everything is political. The mission of the company is not disjoint from the society it is embedded in. Things have become divisive by being able to ignore and blend out the opposing views. By not talking and listening to one another. This is just one more step in that direction. Funnily enough, I think it has been extrapolated by Neal Stephenson in Diamond Age. We will end up…

I certainly agree that the mission of a company can (and preferably) be more than just for profit. However, "to be political" is still a pretty wide range of possible missions. Who calls the shots about what you're going to be political about, and which side you take? And when a group of employees disagree with the shots being called, what kinds of reactions are appropriate or not?

I'll take a shot: - I think compelled activism is inappropriate. You know, the "silence is violence" stuff. - I think expecting to have power to set a company's political agenda and expressing anger when you don't get your way is inappropriate. That power belongs to the board. Employment and stock-options are not "fractions of board seats".

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

#489

Post by banachtarski » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 3:28 AM UTC

notSupplied wrote: post #487

When a group of employees demand that their employers engage in political activism, what they are asking for is the ability to commandeer the resources of the company, whether it be its reputation, money, or labor to advance their political objective. They want to amplify their impact beyond what they can accomplish with their personal resources. I wonder how these same people feel about the political contributions o…

During WWII, IBM supplied the Nazis with mainframe computers and were responsible for untold deaths in exchange for money.

It's not that black and white.

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

#490

Post by cromwellian » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 3:28 AM UTC

If there's rising fascism in a country, then a "neutral" position in effect is supporting it indirectly. There are sometimes you just shouldn't stand on the sidelines for. If the brownshirts and jackboots are filling the streets, silence is tacit approval.

Additionally, I find it real strange that a cryptocurrency company is pretending to have an 'apolitical' mission. Cryptocurrencies were created for political reasons. A lot of the pre-cursor developers (and suspected inventors) and early proponents are anti-government libertarians/crypto-anarchists. Even before Bitcoin, cypherpunks were heavily invested into digital cash techniques, that although used centralized servers, were nevertheless, blinded and federated, again with the desire to have untraceable cash like transactions that could be sent through unbreakable channels, and untouchable by government taxation and regulation.