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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

#941

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…

> They're just poison. This. And like another commenter pointed out, it's not unique to one side or the other. Anyone who defines their entire existence in this left/right dichotomy is suffering from media-induced mental illness.

Pepsi and Coke only want you to think about Pepsi and Coke, because it means they only compete against 1 rival, instead of Fanta, Sprite, RC Cola, Faygo, etc.

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

#942

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…

I suspect your comment isn't really being offered in good faith, but can you name a specific example of a company where a coworker did one of these things: > leak documents, raise alarms about operations they don't understand, and generally draw the company into litigation and it was actually a case of misguided political activism rather than legitimate whistleblowing? I suppose maybe in slaughterhouses or animal tes…

Weren't there a few at Google?

A conservative guy who generated headlines because of being discriminated against because he voted for the GOP?

Also some sort of whistleblower who got fired for speaking out against anti-union activity (but may have been a personal / non-union issue)?

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

#943
post #939

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…

Reading her Twitter feed made me shake my head in disgust. The fact that someone as deranged as her can rise to the level of director of engineering at GitHub is simultaneously hilarious and sad. Not that this is out of line for GitHub ( https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/02/08/report-anti-white- ...), but I wonder how much value Erica Joy actually provides to GitHub's engineering team. Wouldn't surprise me if they…

they worked IT at google and then magically become a senior engineer somewhere else and then became manager -> director of engineering in a few years.

i’ve never seen such a meteoric rise. i’m sure it has nothing to do with gender or race

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

#944
post #938

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She comes off, to me at least, as: Unprofessional, ideological, dogmatic, crazy-lady

What specifically did she say that made her come off that way to you?

Spend a few minutes scrolling through her Twitter feed:

https://twitter.com/EricaJoy/status/1307109690917224449

https://twitter.com/EricaJoy/status/1306403761603051521

https://twitter.com/EricaJoy/status/1306280514035179521

https://twitter.com/EricaJoy/status/1303264312354512896

And on, and on, and on. She tweets so much it's kind of sad. Practically none of her tweets have anything to do with actual engineering. It's all identity politics and other leftist nonsense.

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

#945

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

In a country where your employer controls your access to healthcare and retirement, as well as indirectly controls your access to these things for the rest of your life via references (future employers will shy away from hiring a lone person who refused to do as they were told and was fired for that reason), I would say this is not easy at all.

IMO, modern companies in America are turning into a sort of benevolent government; and that's why you have all these protests. Cut employers out of things fundamental to life like healthcare and retirement, and turn it into a true monetary exchange. Then you will have far fewer of these protests; and people might feel more comfortable quitting en masse instead.

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

#946

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.

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

#947
post #899

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why does it speak worse of her?

The part about being pressured to post the statement about BLM may be true. Nothing wrong with pointing that out.

But then she starts to over-speculate about Armstrong's emotions without any basis and tries to frame him as an unstable person. All of this simply because Armstrong posted about his company's mission.

How would she feel if talking about her company's mission resulted in execs from other companies tweeting about her "having a meltdown", simply because she has a different political perspective?

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

#948

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 soci…

The court of public opinion, even if sometimes unfair, still exists and impacts your business's ability to operate.

By using the carrot instead of the stick, you protect yourself somewhat from these disgruntled employees tanking your public image.

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

#949

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s far beyond politics and more a religion than anything. I believe this is a result of the fact that Americans have turned away from organized religion in recent years (note: I'm not religious myself). There seems to be something deep inside of most people that requires a shared spiritual experience. Wokism has emerged to fill that need.

I think this article is going to interest you: https://gist.github.com/jart/b73868081a5e1a1c5cf0 >Finally, our parasite will employ a strategy of politicization, insisting that everyone in a society be involved in the contest for political power. Since our memetic parasite is already bound to one or more political factions, politicization leaves no one with the option to ignore it, and simply live their lives. Neutra…

TBH, that article doesn't really make any sense. Saying "because ideology A shares a few attributes with my favorite ideology, it's really just a subset of my ideology" doesn't really make sense. Also, I don't understand how he thinks that pacifism or communalism are unique to christianity. That's just a bizarre claim.

It's also weird how he's aware of the oversimplification involved in classifying birds and bats in the same category, and then he immediately goes off and says the equivalent of "both a birds and planes have wings and a tail, therefore planes are a subset of birds". While that statement can be true from a certain point of view for certain uses ("can this thing fly?"), in the end it's just a bad analogy and bad reasoning.

Which is all not to say that the point I think you're driving at from your selection in that article can't be correct. I would agree that post-religion, people will pick up causes to fight for and act in ways that are reminiscent of fundamentalist religions, but that doesn't mean the fundamental truth is that they're all variations of religion. The fundamental truth is some people just enjoy picking up causes that let them justify bad behavior. This used to include religion a lot more in the past, and now that humanity is moving beyond it, we're discovering new ways to justify the same old behavior that we've always had.

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

#950
post #757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of people in Silicon Valley are liberals. The loud, troublesome activist liberals are who he is ousting. Just look at Google.

You probably haven't spent much time in Silicon Valley if you think that.

Do you think that the majority of Silicon Valley is conservative?
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