Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission

theblockcrypto.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

901–910 of 1001 posts

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

#901

Post by pm90 »

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…

Thanks for posting this. I think she makes excellent points. I've worked at companies where similar executive retaliation to principled employees has happened before, and I can relate to the changes that seem to have been instituted (pre-vetting town hall questions to execs, shutting down slack channels that allow for asking questions to execs directly).

Funnily enough, I interviewed at Coinbase not that long ago, and almost joined the company. I am glad that I did not, this would have made me quit. One of the things that one of the interviewers mentioned was the openness and transparency of the execs. I wonder if these draconian measures will make these employees think twice about working at such an institution.

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

#902

Post by Closi »

mountainb wrote: post #103
Closi wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who works for a mostly apolitical organization - it depends on the issue. For example, the company refuses to take a stance on: - Brexit (even though it will negatively impact them) - Elections or any vote (even though again, this impacts them) But for example actively campaigns on: - Agricultural issues (It's in the food industry) The company VERY strongly supports LGBT rights and minority rights, and wil…

It's not true that "LGBT Rights" are value-free. Promoting LGBT rights also alienates members of the largest religious groups in the world, including those that are majority-non-European like Islam and Catholicism. Being a practicing L, G, B, or T or pro any of them is against sharia, the Catechism, and against the rules of many major Protestant sects like Mormons. Gay marriage is expressly against the rules of most…

I didn’t say the company was value/culture free - apolitical doesn’t mean that they don’t have values, morals and core beliefs.

It’s about adopting values which tend to unite your customers rather than divide them, and in the U.K. at least LGBT rights is one of those issues. A stance of no-support on these issues would elicit a severe backlash from customers in the U.K. but meanwhile they aren’t campaigning for changes to the law in these areas, or supporting particular political parties because of it (as reasonable people could disagree on that because of how democracies work, and doing this will alienate specific customer groups).

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

#903

Post by pm90 »

refurb wrote: post #820
eli wrote: post #800

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will build a less diverse and necessarily worse company this way.

Really? I'd say it would be more diverse since people wouldn't feel like their opinions were verboten or that they had to "play along" in order to get along.

I'm not sure if you're deliberately being obtuse. But if you're not: the currently accepted meaning of diversity in the workplace is :

> Cultural diversity means that a group contains people of different races, religions, ages, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, socioeconomic statuses, nationalities, and more.

Their agreements or disagreements on political viewpoints are not what makes a pool of employees culturally diverse.

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

#904

Post by Closi »

zo1 wrote: post #238
danpalmer wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the difference between strongly supporting LGBT rights and strongly supporting remaining in the EU? Both likely affect the company significantly, both are (unfortunately) political issues, both (unfortunately) alienate people. It seems the only distinction here is that Brexit is a closer call in the UK. Is there another way of looking at it?

My take on it: Most LGBTQ+ rights issues are almost entirely settled and agreed on anyways at the greater societal level. You'd be hard pressed to find an appreciable amount of people that rationally want to take away normal, everyday rights from LGBTQ+ individuals. Sure there are exotic and controversial discussion points (E.g. child transitioning, odd bathroom laws, etc) but no normal business touches those issues…

You got it. Why alienate 50% of your customers?

Meanwhile LGBT rights are pretty much universally agreed, and I don’t think that “LGBT support” is generally classed as a political view so much as an expected cultural norm (i.e. not showing support would elicit a severe backlash within the customer base).

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

#905

Post by lalaland1125 »

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?

Joe Rogan is infamous for inviting white supremacists onto his show.

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

#906

Post by sdfqasdghj2 »

seneca wrote: post #442
sdfqasdghj2 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see this press release as forbidding debate. This is simply saying that the company won't be taking a stance. That shouldn't stop individual employees discussing political topics as long as they can act like adults and not create a hostile environment.

> I don't see this press release as forbidding debate. It specifically does: > We won’t: Debate causes or political candidates internally

Hm. What is the legality of limiting employees speech during e.g. their lunch break time?

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

#907

Post by trashcan »

hnrodey wrote: post #338
cblconfederate wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often wonder about the other side: Why do people who work in SV seem so militant on political issues? After all they live in a very privileged space (or "bubble") which is severely disconnected from the reality of most of the Earth, and even nearby american cities. I don't know enough about the demographics of the region and what can drive this behaviour but it is full of contradictions. For example, while they all…

>After all they live in a very privileged space (or "bubble") It's my personal view that so much of the current political vitriol is because as a society, we've run out of things to worry about. We've reached critical mass of people solving Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and therefore, we are dwelving in to other arenas where we are feeling neglected.

Is this train of thought not trending towards: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unab...

> 22. If our society had no social problems at all, the leftists would have to INVENT problems in order to provide themselves with an excuse for making a fuss.

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

#908

Post by thu2111 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #428
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…

In my experience, the vast majority of employees don’t want their workplace to become a political battleground. Even those who occasionally discuss politics at work and are mature enough to behave like adults about it. It’s tempting to think of this in terms of Democrats vs Republicans or right vs left, but that’s not really the domain of the most problematic employees. The most problematic employees are the ones who…

Paying to remove these people from a company makes a lot of sense

I think most business owners would say this is not at all sensible. If someone is a troublemaker you don't normally pay them to leave. You fire them. Brian is being very generous here, almost inexplicably so except for the fact that they're based in the Bay Area. Most CEOs would tackle it in two phases:

1. Tell people they may not attempt to bring social activism into the work place.

2. Fire anyone who keeps doing it.

Payments wouldn't enter the picture!

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

#909

Post by thu2111 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #879
vmception wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> "Sweden took 60 years to admit its neutrality policy was racist. How long will it take Coinbase to do the same? Being neutral is a position in support of the status quo - it always has been." As a Swede, I... don't even know what they might be misinterpreting here!

It's rare but still surprisingly common for Americans to mix up Sweden and Switzerland. Switzerland is famous for its policy of neutrality, perhaps that's what they're thinking of? Except I don't recall Switzerland ever abandoning it, let alone deciding it was racist. So I think that person is just terminally confused.

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

#910

Post by jmalicki »

BurningFrog wrote: post #879
vmception wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> "Sweden took 60 years to admit its neutrality policy was racist. How long will it take Coinbase to do the same? Being neutral is a position in support of the status quo - it always has been." As a Swede, I... don't even know what they might be misinterpreting here!

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/murky-truth-...
Post reply on HN