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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

#981

Post by tdeck »

username90 wrote: post #402
voxl wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yikes, talk about MAGA propaganda. Trump is a proto fascist, if Americans don't want to be apart of the new axis of evil they better be activists. This has nothing to do with calling everything racist or sexist, the fact that you think so has me suspicious of your views on the world.

This might come as a shock to you, but a large majority dislike political correctness no matter what group they belong to. They just go through the motions because they are attacked if they don't. > While 83 percent of respondents who make less than $50,000 dislike political correctness, just 70 percent of those who make more than $100,000 are skeptical about it. And while 87 percent who have never attended college t…

That's because "political correctness" is a somewhat vague term with intensely negative connotations. It's like asking if people are in favor of "government overreach" - people may have very different ideas about what that specifically constitutes but saying you oppose it is an easy nonspecific way to connect.

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

#982

Post by 3np »

hajwh wrote: post #951
3np wrote: post #840

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I think Glenn Greenwald nailed it with this analysis: https://theintercept.com/2020/09/22/as-joe-rogans-platform-g...

Thank you. I think this captures a lot of it:

> liberals care far more about proper culture signaling than they do about the much harder and more consequential work of actual politics.

I'd argue this is more about the political climate in the US (and many other places) than about liberals specifically. Arguably for "true liberals" this shouldn't be a consideration at all but might be for conservatives.

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

#983

Post by YetAnotherNick »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #834
edouard-harris wrote: post #817

A few comments have asserted that if an existing company chooses to be apolitical, that may itself be a political act. This sounds clever, but it's not correct. At the highest level, a company is a group of people who get together to 1) set an impactful goal, and then 2) work very hard to achieve it. The first part — the setting of the goal — is the political act. Disagreements at this level are good, and broadly hea…

So since global warming is more or less a political statement these days, would advocating for climate change mitigating philosophy being built into the company's DNA be political to you and therefore not allowed? Say it's a company that makes widgets that are completely orthogonal to climate change.

Yes, I would say so. eg many companies have rules against internal dating, not because they are against dating, but the possibility of problem it could cause. You can ban discussion on climate change, just because of the bitterness it could cause, not because you are taking a stand in climate change.

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

#984

Post by notSupplied »

JauntyHatAngle wrote: post #828
CarelessExpert wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why are people discussing politics at work? Probably because the work these companies do is frequently political. Let's be clear: What Coinbase is saying is, we the founders, who set the company's mission, and are doing so with a clear political view (rooted in libertarianism and so forth), are allowed to use the company to further our political ends. But the staff? Sorry, you have no voice. Maybe that's fine. The…

You're absolutely right, and I'm disappointed that you've been voted down to negative. At the very least this is a well worded argument worth looking at. Politics, as much as we all hate it, is engaged with everywhere in business. Choosing to be apolitical is effectively a form of political engagement, usually resulting in a vote for the status quo and/or the pursuit of money eschewing engagement in difficult questio…

The employees have a voice: as private citizens. The workplace is not a democratic community, and the employees are not its constituency. It a place where employer-employee come together to complete a mission that both sides consent to, otherwise they separate. Of course, mission is a negotiable term just like compensation and benefits, an employee is free to ask "in addition to pay you must also dedicate the company's resources and attention to my preferred causes", and the employer is free to decline. Coinbase is simply make it clear that changing their mission is not a price they are willing to pay, so please look elsewhere.

I think this brings clarity to the work relationship, as "the power to direct the political mission of the company" had been previously an unstated, unnegotiated axis of the terms of employment. People are now learning that this need to be crystal clear upfront.

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

#985

Post by notSupplied »

theptip wrote: post #735
dwardu wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brian should have said we don't mix politics and activism in our company, if you don't like it, leave. Which should have ended like that. On the other hand, it's a good move because it keeps things neutral. These annoyed employees should just take it and leave.

The problem with taking such a hardline position is that there is a significant switching cost borne by the employee when they leave, and so at the margin you'll have employees that don't buy in to the mission statement, don't like your new/restated position, but need the job/dislike job-hunting even more. So now you've created/agitated a population of disgruntled employees; this will tend to cause problems. Paying a…

There could already be a majority agitated, disgruntled employees--those agitated and disgruntled by the political discord at the company caused by the activism.

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

#986

Post by [deleted] »

erichocean wrote: post #957
AmericanChopper wrote: post #777

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the parent comment is just quite typical of modern political extremism. Where every actor must take a position on every issue, where failure to take the correct position is heresy, and where failure to take any position amounts to taking a position against the one of the extremist who is demanding that you take one (and is therefor also heresy). The role of an employee is to deliver value to the employer duri…

> Where every actor must take a position on every issue Not taking a position is, by default, choosing to uphold the status quo. When the status quo is unjust, it's choosing to uphold injustice. That's fine, just own up to it. Hiding behind "I'm apolitical" when you're a loyal foot soldier for the current system isn't a good look.

[deleted]

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

#987

Post by notSupplied »

erichocean wrote: post #957
AmericanChopper wrote: post #777

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the parent comment is just quite typical of modern political extremism. Where every actor must take a position on every issue, where failure to take the correct position is heresy, and where failure to take any position amounts to taking a position against the one of the extremist who is demanding that you take one (and is therefor also heresy). The role of an employee is to deliver value to the employer duri…

> Where every actor must take a position on every issue Not taking a position is, by default, choosing to uphold the status quo. When the status quo is unjust, it's choosing to uphold injustice. That's fine, just own up to it. Hiding behind "I'm apolitical" when you're a loyal foot soldier for the current system isn't a good look.

Therein lies the difference between "This is what I believe." vs "This is what I believe, and anyone who isn't actively fighting for my cause must be evil." None of us here can really know what Brian has done as a private citizen in terms of political activism. What would you think if he is privately active (maybe even for causes you agree with!) and also chooses the workplace to be politically neutral?

(Speaking of which, what have you done to fight the status quo? Why not more? Why have you not consumed all of your time/money/attention on it? What level is necessary to be considered not-complicit in the status quo?)

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

#988

Post by throw_m239339 »

throw_m239339 wrote: post #880
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #3

I agreed with what Brian Armstrong said in his blog post and thought it was admirable to publicly take that position, but now I have even more respect for his dedication. I don't know if the severance package is good or not, but it seems generous and it gives employees who aren't aligned with the company an easy way out.

Where do I apply for a join @ Coinbase? This is exactly the kind environment I want to work in. No petty identity politics while I'm supposed to test or deploy some code, I want my colleagues to come to work... to work and nothing else.

s/join/job of course.

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

#989

Post by hnmullany »

smsm42 wrote: post #787
hnmullany wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know ... there's a reason that US Unions are partisan, which is that the Republican party has been on a mission to destroy them since Reagan and has largely succeeded.

Union's popularity has been falling for years and years: https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/480481-unions-decline-ag... and for a good reason - as soon as you don't force people to join, turns out not everybody wants to. And the polarization of unions is far from a forced move. I do not think Republicans made this happen: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/democratic-socialists-am... It's more like that centralized…

I would encourage you to read the history of the NLRB under Reagan. They absolutely gutted the thing.

https://ucommblog.com/section/national-politics/ronald-reaga...

(And Zerohedge is a trashbag of libertarian fanfiction and russian govt talking points - with the exception of their currency coverage - which is great stuff.)

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

#990

Post by loco5niner »

kthxbye123 wrote: post #884
young_unixer wrote: post #747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't see how saying "let's focus on work" leads you so call someone megalomaniacal.
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