Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission • Hacker News Board

Re: Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission

#611

Post by itsoktocry » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 5:51 PM UTC

kkhire wrote: post #65

I’ve never worked in the Bay Area, so could just be OOL but I’m genuinely surprised that this is such a big deal, or that this blog post got so much praise. Never discussed politics at any of the companies I’ve worked for, we were always too busy with...work!

>Never discussed politics at any of the companies I’ve worked for, we were always too busy with...work!

Same, and that's the conundrum.

"Activist" employees put others on the spot by querying coworkers' political views and expecting discussion. And for those who have had their head in the sand for the past few years, things like "being a Joe Rogan fan" are now considered unacceptable politics.

Re: Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission

#612

Post by debaserab2 » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 5:51 PM UTC

subsubzero wrote: post #465

I may want to apply to coinbase. I am really fed up with 'activist' employees and the toxic environment they bring. All I want is to just focus on engineering and ship features/improvements. Bringing politics to the office(thanks Google!) has been one of the worst things to happen in the 21st century for tech companies. Interestingly enough google has been going through absolute hell with these cancerous employees an…

What about when the engineering decisions you make today affect the politics of the future?

Perhaps this doesn't apply to your area of engineering, but I do feel that it does affect a substantial chunk of the HN audience.

How and what data you choose to collect about internet visitors is no longer a purely technical analysis, it now has broader implications that potentially involve political actors. You don't know who might have access to that data in the future or what they might do with it.

We as engineers are the final implementer of these decisions. Should we really abdicate the ethical responsibilities tied to these decisions so easily?

Re: Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission

#613

Post by luckylion » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 5:52 PM UTC

kennywinker wrote: post #593

itsoktocry wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah if there wasn't the pesky world around all the engineering and we could all just stare at our stock options while we sit in our gentrified neighbourhoods and pretend the world doesn't exist. The issue with "activist" employees isn't so much that they want to bring politics to work (which I can see arguments for and against). It's that the new "activist" employees insist everyone's politics be the same, else yo…

Your logic is sound: politics are a distraction, so offices where politics are put aside will be more productive. But I know a lot of VERY smart people who wouldn’t sign up for that workplace. Especially if there are social and political ramifications to the product being built or the customers being served (there almost always are - hence the cliche “making the world a better place” goal of any startup).

Are there really that many? A lot of very smart people tend to end up at Google, FB or Amazon, their ethics don't seem to be the deciding factor in the choice of employer.

Re: Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission

#614

Post by jackcosgrove » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 5:52 PM UTC

9HZZRfNlpR wrote: post #207

nemo44x wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s generally a small but vocal group. And I wouldn’t call it politics so much as activism. A sort of religious zeal has made its way into our institutions like schools and universities. Some people have taken to it like a missionary would religion and believe it’s their duty to spread the word everywhere at all times. The Inquisition was no different in this regard. You just have to read what the activism says. It…

It just filled the gap of religion disappearing, people want to belong in groups. Maybe broad categorization but this religious activism seems to be more of an American thing, Europe is definetly more diverse when it comes to different issues.

> religious activism seems to be more of an American thing

I would argue it's a Reformed Protestant thing. Reformed Protestantism is the religious scaffolding of American culture.

Re: Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission

#615

Post by another_sock » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 5:52 PM UTC

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #401

another_sock wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The West Coast and its inhabitants live in a bit of a unique bubble and assume that the rest of the world see things in the very progressive manner they do, and expect that companies will march in lockstep with this sort of unique bubble. It's a very internalized unrecognized sort of expectation, but that's because so many companies have accepted these expectations completely. The rest of the country doesn't really c…

> " The West Coast and its inhabitants live in a bit of a unique bubble and assume that the rest of the world see things in the very progressive manner they do. " That's tarring with rather a broad brush. There are a lot of old school liberals on the west coast who strongly disapprove of the progressives and their behavior, including myself. The progressives' "You are either with us or against us" rhetoric is diametr…

Yes and every year those old school liberals get less and less, especially on the West Coast, because they are seen as being right wing as you can tell by the many new normal West Coasters in this thread.

Re: Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission

#616

Post by trimbo » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 5:53 PM UTC

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #60

md_ wrote: post #36

From some point of view, this might be viewed as management taking a harsh line against employees who make demands on their employers to do something other than maximize shareholder returns. One of the longstanding contradictions of Silicon Valley ethos is that we will simultaneously talk about "mission" and "impact"—and, implicitly, the social impact of our work—while applauding management efforts to stamp out emplo…

Being proffeshional does not neccessarily imply neutrality when government policy contradicts science or even basic common sence. Proffeshional without stones to stand up to authority/management is what gave us Chernobyl and Challanger disasters, Boeing 737, massive famine in China, and, debatably, 2008.

This is worth a read. I think it applies to Chernobyl, Challenger (where it was coined) and the 737 Max.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance

All three had known issues (in the case of Chernobyl, for decades), but averting disaster gave people, specifically the engineers, confidence to continue.

Re: Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission

#617

Post by scollet » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 5:53 PM UTC

drak0n1c wrote: post #553

subsubzero wrote: post #465

I may want to apply to coinbase. I am really fed up with 'activist' employees and the toxic environment they bring. All I want is to just focus on engineering and ship features/improvements. Bringing politics to the office(thanks Google!) has been one of the worst things to happen in the 21st century for tech companies. Interestingly enough google has been going through absolute hell with these cancerous employees an…

There is now even a job site for firms and employees that want to avoid toxic accusatory work environments: https://www.unwoke.hr/

I'll have to remember this site so I don't accidentally apply to any of these.

Re: Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission

#618

Post by x3n0ph3n3 » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 5:54 PM UTC

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #60

md_ wrote: post #36

From some point of view, this might be viewed as management taking a harsh line against employees who make demands on their employers to do something other than maximize shareholder returns. One of the longstanding contradictions of Silicon Valley ethos is that we will simultaneously talk about "mission" and "impact"—and, implicitly, the social impact of our work—while applauding management efforts to stamp out emplo…

Being proffeshional does not neccessarily imply neutrality when government policy contradicts science or even basic common sence. Proffeshional without stones to stand up to authority/management is what gave us Chernobyl and Challanger disasters, Boeing 737, massive famine in China, and, debatably, 2008.

How does policy "contradict" science? Science doesn't tell us what we _should_ do, it tells us what is and what may be the consequences of decisions we make. The policy you say "contradicts science" is just promoting values and ignoring consequences that you disagree with.

I think Sabine Hossenfelder said it best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGVIJSW0Y3k

Re: Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission

#619

Post by eli » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 5:54 PM UTC

subsubzero wrote: post #465

I may want to apply to coinbase. I am really fed up with 'activist' employees and the toxic environment they bring. All I want is to just focus on engineering and ship features/improvements. Bringing politics to the office(thanks Google!) has been one of the worst things to happen in the 21st century for tech companies. Interestingly enough google has been going through absolute hell with these cancerous employees an…

I'm sure you will find lots of like minded people at Coinbase. And fewer and fewer people with differing opinions. Hmm.

Re: Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission

#620

Post by dogman144 » Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 5:55 PM UTC

andy_ppp wrote: post #434

I am caught in two minds on this, I’m personally extremely political, but I want to clearly understand both sides of arguments as deeply as I possibly can. For example I often argue things in my own mind from a conservative, let’s keep everything stable, work hard, individual responsibility POV even though I firmly believe probably 80% of people’s success is down to luck and consequently think a strong welfare state…

I think the common challenge leaders are facing is the missions employees bring into the offie in fact aren't particularly aligned or orthogonal to the company's mission.

This is exacerbated by a decade+ of claiming the company is "making the world a better place by X," when really of course it's not. It's selling ads or what have you.

So, I think part of the insistence to bring politics into work is also driven by that - the employees were sold a bill of moral goods at 23, slowly realize the company doesn't actually have the PR mission it says it does because it's a profit seeking company, and employees start trying to overcorrect.

At least CB is being open about what they're about :shrug:.

Probably a matter of pick your poison.