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Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission

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

#881

Post by [deleted] »

awb wrote: post #686
koheripbal wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot of value in removing political activists from your company, and so it's worth paying them to leave. Aside from the combative toxic environment they generate, they are also often the source of disgruntled rogue employees that will generally behave improperly, misrepresent coworkers, leak documents, raise alarms about operations they don't understand, and generally draw the company into litigation. In a…

You could reasonably extend this to your friends and neighbors as well. Growing up, politics was private outside of the family dinner table. Any dedication to an injustice or a good cause was done through donating or volunteering. No yard signs, no shouting, no blaming. I understand that dramatic actions bring attention, but I just hope that we can start focusing more on doing our own part and leading by example rath…

[deleted]

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

#882

Post by remarkEon »

3np wrote: post #840
itsoktocry wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> things like "being a Joe Rogan fan" are now considered unacceptable politics For one who has had their head in the sand and is only vaguely familiar with Joe Rogan; why?

My take: he’s generally opposed to this kind of laborious activism and tedious “political correctness” (broadly defined). He’s had some folks on his podcast who are very outspoken on certain things (trans issues, politics, etc) that people find offensive, and they claim he’s a “gateway to the alt right” as a result. Despite Rogan self-identifying as a progressive, the label has pretty much stuck and even though he has an extremely wide variety of guests - from cutting edge technologists to comedians to Snowden - on the show, he’s forever tainted by not aligning to the activists’ goals.

My personal opinion is that they don’t like him because his platform is massive and threatens other traditional means of informing people about what to think on certain topics.

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

#883

Post by kristjansson »

heavyset_go wrote: post #804
paxys wrote: post #723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether it is a strategically genius move or not will depend on the eventual outcome. No tech company, especially one in the bitcoin/fintech sector, can pretend to be completely apolitical. So putting out public blog posts and setting strict policies that apply to employees may not fly well when the company or its leadership/executives themselves don't follow them down the line.

> No tech company, especially one in the bitcoin/fintech sector, can pretend to be completely apolitical Especially when the company in question makes significant political donations[1]. [1] https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/?...

Interesting, all of the transactions with Coinbase as contributor have memo fields like

    x.yyyzzz BITCOIN SOLD VIA COINBASE - PURCHASER UNKNOWN
and are followed subsequently by transactions with an (apparent) natural person as contributor with memo fields like

    x.yyyzzz Bitcoins, Contributions Previously Disclosed
So it looks like those PACs reported contributions twice, once naming the actual contributor, and once naming Coinbase. I'm not sure why they'd do that - perhaps to head off FEC questions about deposits from Coinbase?

Regardless, those don't seem to be contributions directly from Coinbase, but rather artifacts of campaign finance reporting.

On an aside, there are some transactions that jump out e.g. line B of [1] where the PAC appears to have netted $5665 for 7.49 BTC in the closing days of 2017(!).

Looking further, it seems like their reporting occasionally exchanged BTC for ETH, and the contribution reported makes sense for latter. Still, for a moment it was fun to imagine that someone got a screaming deal on a heap of BTC the day after Christmas 2017

[1]: https://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/fecimg/?201801319091289865

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

#884

Post by kthxbye123 »

young_unixer wrote: post #747
human_person wrote: post #565

Erica Joy (Director of eng at Github) had an interesting take on this. https://twitter.com/EricaJoy/status/1311178025275289600 "coinbase engineers walked off [in June] because brian wouldn't say "Black Lives Matter," he posted it so they'd get back to work, now he's having an executive "YOU AREN'T THE BOSS OF ME!" meltdown* about it" and "this looks a whole lot like the play certain advisors tell CEO's to run when th…

That speaks much worse about herself than it does about Coinbase.

I think quite the opposite. We give far, far too much cultural deference to megalomaniacal executives and petty business tyrants; it’s refreshing to see them called out on their bullshit. More refreshing would be seeing more CEOs, founders, and VCs forced to cede control to employees, but I’ll take what we can get.

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

#885

Post by xvector »

young_unixer wrote: post #747
human_person wrote: post #565

Erica Joy (Director of eng at Github) had an interesting take on this. https://twitter.com/EricaJoy/status/1311178025275289600 "coinbase engineers walked off [in June] because brian wouldn't say "Black Lives Matter," he posted it so they'd get back to work, now he's having an executive "YOU AREN'T THE BOSS OF ME!" meltdown* about it" and "this looks a whole lot like the play certain advisors tell CEO's to run when th…

That speaks much worse about herself than it does about Coinbase.

Seriously, I can’t believe grown adults say stuff like this. So much professionalism from the “Director of Engineering at GitHub,” saying that people who don’t share her perspective on politics in the workplace are having “meltdowns.”

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

#886

Post by GabrielBen »

onion2k wrote: post #29

I wonder if this is a way for Coinbase to push politically engaged employees out of the company in order to reduce the possibility of anyone pushing for internal change like people who want worker's rights groups or unionization. Operating with a workforce who only want to turn up and write code and never discuss anything that affects them as a group puts Coinbase in a very strong negotiating position because there's…

The first thing I ever saw of a tech union in SF was advertising on the BART about keeping people like me out from working in tech.

So, pass on that.

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

#887

Post by xvector »

hackerfromthefu wrote: post #487
albedoa wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Coinbase are more attractive to people who are worried about being "deplatformed" for their ideology, then they are selecting for that group. You write "no matter my ideology" when you mean "despite my ideology".

Personally I find it attractive to get away from the ridiculous bullys who attack other people in the name of pc .. I'm not debating those issues .. especially not with hothead radicals who bully those with nuanced perspectives with personal attacks

Hell, I support BLM and lean quite left, but I think it’s absolutely childish and counterproductive to bring politics into the workplace.

I’d love to work at a place like this. It looks like a “get down to business, cut the bullshit” place. And I’d quite like to chat with coworkers and make friends regardless of our political viewpoints. It’d be interesting.

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

#888

Post by GabrielBen »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #708
Seanambers wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The activism displayed in U.S tech is damaging both from a organizational point of view, but also its a competetitive disadvantage. Imagine having employees who refuses to do work because 'they feel they shouldn't'. Or organizes walkouts, protests and are actively lobbying for changes in company policy to reflect their own personal values. Or protests against certain customers of the company, because they are evil in…

I hate to be the one triggering Godwin's Law at this depth in the discussion, but oh well. > Imagine having employees who refuses to do work because 'they feel they shouldn't'. Or organizes walkouts, protests and are actively lobbying for changes in company policy to reflect their own personal values. Or protests against certain customers of the company, because they are evil in some perceived way or form. It's smart…

They always have the choice to not do the work. You just don't show up and that's it. Not doing something is the easiest thing to do.

The protest is about trying someone else to do something.

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

#889

Post by xvector »

cblconfederate wrote: post #163
kleinsch wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for companies on the east coast, then moved to SF and now work at a big tech company. The companies I worked for on the east coast were mostly B2B, so we were focused on making a good product for businesses so they’d pay us more money. Big tech companies recruited for a long time with the pitch that we’re changing the world. That has brought in a bunch of employees who joined bc they want their employment to…

I wonder what % of SV employees actually did move there for "making a better place blabla". It always souded as a pure marketing signal , like those old Benneton ads. I can understand that people who work for wikipedia do it, but not the big tech sector. It's particularly hard to believe it considering the cynicism of the current "total compensation"-oriented generation of tech crowd.

When you recruit starry-eyed kids out of college telling them that they’ll change the world at your company, well, some of those kids never grow up and realize that it’s just marketing.

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

#890

Post by antonvs »

vmception wrote: post #493
flyinglizard wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guys who’d go on public platform to denounce Coinbase probably intersect with the type of people Coinbase wants to rid itself of. I fully support what Coinbase is doing. It seems very fair to all sides.

It doesn't change my stance on what I would prefer companies do but it seems like a multilayered issue on the tides to pay attention to here and at the very least makes me not want to espouse my own thoughts about "Yeah! mission focused companies!" publicly. Here are quotes from my feed: "The path to an IPO is to purge Black and Brown people from Coinbase ... this is very unbecoming of a federal contractor" "Over a d…

> "Being neutral is a position in support of the status quo - it always has been."

This is undeniably true.

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