Why would this stance be surprising? A company managed by the federal gov cannot take stances on politics.
Coinbase was started and is run by the feds.
> “I’m worried that the severance package was too good”
Yeah... I'm genuinely curious how many people actually quit over the "apolitical" stance, vs employees that were just unhappy with the job in general and took this convenient opportunity to leave with a pretty sweet deal.
That employee is distanced enough from the idea that people would genuinely want to leave that I kinda laugh when I read their quote. COBRA alone would eat up most of the severance.
Either people managed to get through a _whole interview process_ in a week, or they're fine with the idea of being jobless during the worst economy in 12 years, or they price the benefit of not being there fairly high.
Which then leads us to how the whole argument is blinkered. It reduces decisions to a cost benefit analysis where a significant part of the benefit doesn't have a market price. Then, it questions if the benefit was too large, but by definition the arguer is still at the company and thus believes the unpricable part of the benefit isn't worth enough enough to leave.
Software seems to be doing okay, jobs-wise. The number of recruiters showing up in my inbox hasn't changed. I think health insurance is included in the severance.
I believe COBRA is available for up to 36 months after your employment ends in California by law. As a result, I don’t know how to read “6 months COBRA” from the excerpt of the severance email besides “we will pay 6 months of employer premiums.”
COBRA means employees paying the employer premium, by guaranteeing COBRA, an employer is saying "We won't stop paying the health insurance company for _everybody else's insurance_, so you'll still have someone to pay" - it's a great PR jiu jitsu move, I didn't realize until this thread how confusing it is - I'm only familiar with it because sadly I had to sunset a company in California.
So are you saying the Coinbase CEO simply said something to the effect of “we will maintain our insurance plans for 6 months company-wide”? That seems disingenuous.
That is the most convoluted interpretation of offering COBRA, and is almost certainly incorrect. You're referring to the fact that an employer can technically terminate COBRA by ending all health insurance plans. But Coinbase would have to stop offering any health insurance to all their current employees for this to occur. If that happens (I'm virtually certain it won't), there would be an actual employee riot/exodus and the tech media would be all over that story.
I haven't seen the details here, but I've been laid off twice in the last two years, in both cases when "the employer provided COBRA" they meant they are paying my COBRA premiums. This showed up as a cheque, on top of my severance pay, for the expected cost of COBRA premiums plus an appropriate amount to pay for the taxes on that payout.
A single software engineer paying for full price for high premium plan on COBRA would be spending around $400[1], over the whole 18 months of doing that it would be $7,200 which would be less than one month's paycheck on a $160,000 salary.
A cursory look at h1bdata.info shows that Coinbase pays plenty of H1B's that much, on the low side.
Your view is a little exaggerated.
There isn't a downside here. If you were there a very short amount of time, just remove it from your resume and have a gap. Its inconsequential for software engineers. If you were there for over a year, take your vested shares, leave it on your resume, and still coast. If you were already interviewing and had another offer, do the same.
[1] To my surprise, people are paying WAY more for health insurance. Are they San Francisco/Bay Area residents? Unknown. Are they individuals or paying the family rates? Unknown. Are they using the most competitive providers? Unknown. Is Coinbase still covering health insurance for people on severance as if they were employees with COBRA starting after the severance period is over, adjusting all of our math? Unclear.
I also want to share that I paid for COBRA $1,660 a month for for my family coverage (spouse + 2 kids) so $400 is probably not true in many cases even if single it seems really a low estimate
You're right, if you don't have a family and don't have _any_ paycheck deductions, don't pay _any_ taxes, and use numbers 33% below the average cost, it seems small.
Survey of purported 2019 data shows $570 * 12 = $6,840 for individual, $19,000 for family (for some reason, no monthly cost there)
So lets say you only pay the feds income tax, and don't bother with medicaid, social security, state income tax, 401K, any other witholdings whatsoever - you'll earn 85% of $160,000, or $136,000. Divided into 26 paychecks, $5230 biweekly.
If you're single, yearly premium would be covered by 2.6 weeks of work, or 11% of your severance. If you have a family, 7.26 weeks of work, or 30% of your severance.
> If you're single, yearly premium would be covered by 2.6 weeks of work, or 11% of your severance. If you have a family, 7.26 weeks of work, or 30% of your severance.
yeah this is a better metric than my napkin math above.
it is also important to elaborate that we are talking about 4 months of payment with continued health insurance included, and calling that savings for an additional 12 months of paying for health insurance.
The one time I was on COBRA, under 3 years ago, I paid close to $700/month, and I was the only person included in my coverage. Health insurance premiums have very likely gone up since then, and family sizes above 1 (such as even I have now) would cost meaningfully more than that. Smaller companies than that employer might also have higher total premium cost per employee, if they aim for good coverage.
This was NYC and was high quality and inclusive coverage.
Kaiser Permanente is from what I've heard an unusually good deal without anything comparable in NYC or most of the rest of the US, though not without their own weaknesses in areas like mental health coverage and dispute resolution.
> Yeah... I'm genuinely curious how many people actually quit over the "apolitical" stance, vs employees that were just unhappy with the job in general and took this convenient opportunity to leave with a pretty sweet deal.
Getting people who are unhappy (politics aside) to leave sounds more like "the severance package was a nice move" than "the severance package was too good."
Hmm that's a pretty interesting way of thinking about it, I didn't even consider it from that angle.
Might be a silly idea, but I wonder if more companies would benefit from doing something like this on a semi-regular basis, i.e. giving unhappy employees the opportunity to leave with a decent "severance" package?
The problem with this is adverse selection: the employees who are worth the most elsewhere relative to their current comp would be the quickest to leave.
Netflix takes the stance 'adequate performance gets a generous severance package.' You can read more in their culture doc that made the rounds a few years ago.
Remember that this is a press release, not independent journalism. This press release tries hard to position it as "people left because of the severance was really good" because that narrative is in Coinbase's interest. That may be true, but it's also possible most of 60 people quit through this program because they were upset about it.
In an ideal world a reporter could answer your question by talking to many of the people who quit and ask what motivated their decision, but the severance package almost certainly came with an NDA that would make doing so impossible.
So we'll likely never know. Probably one should assume that the answer doesn't look great for Coinbase's narrative; if they thought it would, they might have done a survey and published data from it.
Independent journalism (or really any journalism) is also narrative-optimized, it's just that the optimization incentives are different from corporate comms. In neither case — in no case — are you getting the unvarnished truth. That's simply not available, however much we'd like it to be.
Somewhat unrelated, but on the topic of severance: Back before I broke into the software field, when I was working a retail job, I was working for company that had an unwritten policy that they didn't hire any fulltime employees, all new hired were part time. There were, however a number of "grandfathered" full time employees who had been there quite a while. The company ended up trying to merge with two other companies and after that, decided that they would give remaining full-time employees a choice: be moved to part time employment, or take a serverance check and leave. To little suprise, a good many took option 2.
They obviously wanted to make sure it was a sweet enough deal to serve its purpose. I would imagine there were employees that took the deal for non-political reasons. It would make a heck of a bonus, if you were already heading out the door.
Frankly, giving the non-offended but unsatisfied employees a ready out is probably good for Coinbase in the long run.
If I had an equivalent offer, I would take the severance (4-6 months paid leave) plus that offer in a heartbeat, regardless of any political statement or non-statement.
A few years ago when bitcoin was going up in value so much Coinbase was one of the best places to be, now I dont see much upside for the company, I imagine a bunch of people there are happy to leave.
For reference, the severance package was 4 months of salary for employees with <3 years of tenure, or 6 months of salary for >=3 years of tenure at Coinbase.
What percentage of employees at Coinbase are actively interviewing for other jobs at any given time? 5%? If someone has one foot out the door already, taking a bonus equivalent to half a year of your salary is a cherry on top of changing jobs. I'm surprised only 5% of the company took this opportunity.
This assumes all roles at the company are equally able to exit the company in the midst of a global pandemic and find opportune work with the same growth opportunities, salary, and locality.
I have definitely been seeing a decrease in some FAANG spots. Things may have started to ramp back up, but I believe there were several companies who put blanket freezes hiring for certain levels.
I work in analytics so have a wide range of customers - it's definitely up and down depending on the industry and I'd argue it's net down, but not if you are experienced / have a specialization.
Ecommerce is booming, but you're not likely to get a job in support/services which is likely already filled with experienced folks at most companies, and isn't likely to churn in a pandemic.
There are a lot of pockets like this, but they mostly benefit software engineers and more experienced roles. It's pretty common on HN for folks to assume that everyone has the role/job fluidity as your average tech person, or worse, your average software engineer.
Lots of folks "in tech" aren't really deeply into tech, so it's even more difficult for them to navigate a chaotic time.
I was recently laid off in tech and I flipped the "I'm looking for work" switch on linkedin and got literally dozens of messages from recruiters every day. I ultimately got a job that paid 10% better than my previous job, and I rushed the decision because I had only a small fraction of the severance that coinbase employees are receiving. Even with the "looking for work" switch toggled off, I get several messages from recruiters every day. No doubt our industry is affected by COVID, but there's no shortage of high-paying work.
I think you underestimate how many people are fed up with overly politicized workplaces. I’ve quit a couple of jobs due to it. I’d definitely stay somewhere where I can just work without having to listen to unrelated BS constantly, even if it meant passing on a sweet severance package.
I haven't worked anywhere that ordinary politics was discussed. I'm in uk though. I'd find it rude for someone to shove their political views in my face. It's fine for friends to discuss as I choose my friends not my colleagues.
That's the difference. For a lot of Californian tech companies, the whole company meetings revolve less around strategy and mission and more about racial inequality and Trump. As an outsider, I can't understand how strong the bubble is and how lacking in context these people are.
Well, I do work for one, and yes, last time I participated in an all company call the majority of the time the management spent talking about racial equality, completely unrelated to our business?
I seriously doubt that. Most companies are pushing internal "respect your coworkers" rules that can be linked with politics but that's not really discussing Trump. I suspect that even Coinbase with their newly declared "apolitical workplace" rules does have plenty of anti-discrimination, harassment, etc rules, for one because lacking those can result in very bad consequences for the company in a trial.
Imagine if you had lunch with your coworkers, and one of them started complaining about Boris Johnson trying to kill the minorities with his fascist COVID policies. You personally don't like Johnson, and think his policies are far from optimal, but you think calling his policies "fascist", or implying he wants to kill anyone, is clearly over the top. However, instead of protesting, you nod your head and keep quiet, because defending Johnson's policies means that you're a fan of Johnson, and so basically a fascist, and you fear the general opprobrium among your colleagues, and would prefer to avoid anonymous HR complaints of your person.
This is the reality of working for large tech companies in the US, just with Trump instead of Johnson.
It's unfortunate discussions can't be kept over ideas and policies instead of veering towards persons. While I believe Trump is the worst president the US has had in recent history that doesn't mean I'd be unwilling to entertain a discussion of anything he may have done that people think it was a good thing. I suspect in most cases we'll end up with "we agree to disagree" which is fine.
That said, one thing we have to consider is the environment in which the discussion takes place. At work people shouldn't have to get stressed with non-work related things, that's not in the interest of the company nor of the employees. So even if you know you can have respectful deep conversations of controversial current day politics with your colleagues, a better question would be, should you even have those conversations at work?
I feel for people that suddenly need to discuss such topics, it means that they probably don't have IRL friends or friends outside of work if they really feel that they have to talk about no-work related issues at a work lunch. It's sad.
> It's unfortunate discussions can't be kept over ideas and policies instead of veering towards persons.
I don't think it's a matter of ideas vs persons. Already I hear that speech and ideas are violence, and violence requires fighting back (by complaining to HR that you made them feel unsafe). Of course, you cannot keep quiet either, because "silence is violence" too.
> It's unfortunate discussions can't be kept over ideas and policies instead of veering towards persons.
This is a sensible expectation, and I think that's what reasonable people should be able to do. However, my experience tells me that there's nothing to win by having such conversation in work environment, so I'd prefer them to be avoided altogether. However, both the company as an institutions, and many individuals working on it, are insisting that the employees have these discussions, no matter how irrelevant it is for the actual job. This is the reality on the ground in most big US tech corporations.
> I feel for people that suddenly need to discuss such topics, it means that they probably don't have IRL friends or friends outside of work if they really feel that they have to talk about no-work related issues at a work lunch. It's sad.
I don't think that this is the case. In my experience, it's the more social people who are insisting on having these conversations. I think this is because the more social people are better at gauging social climate, and the purpose of these conversations, often purportedly about diversity and inclusion, is to enforce uniformity and exclusion of people with alternative views.
To me this might be the best example of a 'meme', in Dawkins' sense of the word, that I'm aware of.
- It's short
- It rhymes
- It gives new territory to a powerful word
- It creates an in-group signal
- It's self-amplifying, and most importantly
- It's ridiculous
It's absolutely destined to go far beyond it's own merit by outcompeting everything in its domain on 3+ metrics.
It also helped me understand one possible reason why so many broken slogans are rising to the top. There are many factors in totality of course, but the ones that are ridiculous drive engagement from everyone, the proponents to echo and the opponents to mock.
We tried to make it clear to employees that the package was only intended for folks who weren't aligned with this new direction. If folks were interviewing elsewhere, or just feeling burned out, and wanted to take it, but they were still aligned with the direction of mission focused, then we discouraged them from taking it. Of course, people can always lie about their intentions, but we're counting on the honor system preventing most of that.
This is what I love about Hacker News - it's the only forum I've ever read where the topic of discussion frequently shows up in the comments.
Brian, I've never given two shits about crypto, but this announcement seriously increases my desire to work at Coinbase. You have far more support than will dare to speak up, and I hope more companies start following your lead.
I hope they provide some follow-up data on how many people took that package. My assumption is that it will be a small group. I think a lot of other companies could learn from the outcome.
Or they joined during the crypto euphoria era and have been disappointed by the general state of the market, and decided it was a good deal to give them some runway to find something that excites them more.
Alternatively, if you see a resume with Coinbase through 2020-2021, that person probably prefers the opposite, which may also be seen in a positive or negative light, depending on your stance.
It signals that a person did not want to be politically active at their workplace enough to lose/quit their job.
I think that says nothing of a persons political views and is just self-preservation or even indifference. Hiring would have to make some very tenuous assumptions to consider that a signal.
No, it is not. Politics apathy is present across all races, all classes, all genders.
Those who are politically possessed like to claim that “everything is politics” and that “it’s a privilege to not care about politics”, but every Hispanic and Filipino immigrant I’ve known (which is not a negligible number) care about family, hard work, and stability: not politics.
Possibly by observing the actual changes implemented and interpreting them in their own context (i.e. IRS changes tax forms, but all the numbers stay the same when filling it out). Not being convinced that their fundamental right to attempt existence is threatened by imaginary what-ifs.
Getting involved in politics makes your life more unstable, which is why mostly privileged people engage in it. For example extremely few people from below median homes are politically active in USA, while home owners are among the most active. Ergo people are mostly politically active to defend their privileges and not to fix injustices.
I'm not sure how anyone can think that being politically active would make your life more stable.
Edit: An example of this is that black people are much less likely to vote than white people. Is this because black people support the status quo while white people want to change things? No, it is because black people don't have the time and energy to spare to vote. And no, this isn't about voting disenfranchisement, black people are less likely to vote even in very blue states.
I'm not sure why an opinion being commonly held across race/class/gender would make it not political.
Your statement that the immigrants you know care about x and y and not politics doesn't actually make sense in response to the concept 'everything is political'. You are responding from the perspective that politics means elections, or some similarly narrow set of topics. But 'everything is political' explicitly rejects that perspective. It means that a Filipino immigrant thinking about whether their uncle and cousins will be able to visit them is political because it's harder for them to get a visa than my English cousins. It means that a Hispanic immigrant talking to her friend in a restaurant after dropping the kids at school should not risk being detained by ICE because speaking Spanish makes some dropkick immigration officer decide they must be illegal immigrants, which happened in Montana.
Staying in a job and supporting yourself and you family for a temporary time doing a normal job is not indifference. It is putting food on the table, perhaps literally.
It's probably not a great signal for anything. How many Coinbase employees leave the company in an average month? And how much did this severance offer cause would-be future departures to cluster in October to take advantage of the payout?
> I think that says nothing of a persons political views
Rubbish - we all know what type of political activism is tearing these companies apart and we all know what political views are the only ones that can be safely expressed.
Which, as your parent seems to not realize, is also a political stance. This dichotomy is exactly what MLK refers to in the Letter from a Bermingham Jail (i.e. positive vs negative peace).
For an action to be "political" in a strong sense, its performer it needs to be consciously thinking about their political alignment. Majority of people are economically motivated and do not engage in in-depth analysis of their actions or inactions and thus describing their actions as "political" is quite tendentious.
Respectfully disagree. You're essentially arguing that they're not politically motivated in staying at/leaving their job. That's fair. Nevertheless their actions translate either support, inaction, or opposition. The implication which MLK argues is that inaction is harmful to the movement.
You are taking a consequentialist stance, deciding that if something has political consequences, then it is political. But literally anything could have political consequences. A solar flare could have political consequences. A fly landing on someone's hair could have political consequences. This does not mean that flies are political!
If everything is political, then the moniker "political" is meaningless.
you don't need to be actively aware of gravity to not float off the ground. You can act politically without being aware of that fact, that just means you're not conscious of what's driving your decision making.
Most politics and also culture expresses itself tacitly. By requiring some sort of conscious intent you're actually ignoring what is arguably the vast majority of political interaction. For example casual sexism and systematic mistreatment of women was just "normal" but nonetheless political. Of course the people doing the subtle discriminating don't like to think of it as political, because that implies responsibility for action.
You are taking a "consequentialist" stance implying that if something has political consequences, then it is political. There are several problems with this.
First, literally anything could have political consequences, from a solar flare to a fly landing in someone's hair. This logic easily devolves into absurdity. Famously, Chinese government under Mao declared sparrows "public animals of capitalism" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign
Second, when anything could be political, the moniker "political" (like any other inflated moniker) loses a lot of its meaning. And yet real politics is still done by real people with real consequences.
Third, raising everything to the status of political is an example of politicization. This is typical of totalitarian regimes. Totalitarian regimes are in fact characterized by the fact that literally everything is raised to the realm of political, the realm of rule by the regime. By pressuring others to be political, you are creating a totalitarian environment, a very unpleasant environment for most people to be as we already know from some very bitter 20th century lessons.
Fourth, politics is about having political enemies. When political enemy (opponent) does not exist, there is no politics as such. By insisting that people act politically, you are simultaneously insisting that they have enemies. There are profound moral problems with this, whether you are Christian or even not religious at all.
The solar flare isn't political obviously, but the response to it is. human disaster usually is the consequence of bad responses to catastrophes which have been declared inevitable. (see the current American covid response). Something that actually is in the realm of politics is shoved into the category of thoughts and prayers.
>Third, raising everything to the status of political is an example of politicization. This is typical of totalitarian regimes
Politicisation isn't bad and the only thing your post is any evidence of is the typical midbrow "no politics or gulag" logic that every conservative American who is afraid of engaging in political conflict has been repeating ad nauseam. You may think you appear smarter if you complain about tribalism every five minutes and act like you're above the fray, but you are not. It's just a silly straw-man made by people who are afraid of political change.
What does this mean? If this is yet another “if you’re not for us you’re against us” argument (e.g. if you don’t discuss police violence in the workplace then you necessarily support police violence), then this is false on its face. If this means “the decision to not discuss politics—especially politics unrelated to one’s work—at work is itself a political decision” then fine, but what’s the point? Is the idea that it’s a self-inconsistent position? If so, how? One can discuss even the policy not to discuss politics at work without discussing e.g. police violence.
one inconsistency is that Coinbase is based in SF. Would you consider "sorry, I didn't get a lot of sleep due to police sound grenades going off until 3am" a political statement?
> > Would you consider "sorry, I didn't get a lot of sleep due to police sound grenades going off until 3am" a political statement?
> No, of course not.
Awesome. So it follows that you would have no issue then with a coworker stating: "Police activity in SF has negatively impacted my ability to do work". Congratulations, you have a significantly broader definition of acceptable workplace speech than Coinbase.
> Awesome. So it follows that you would have no issue then with a coworker stating
Of course I wouldn't have an issue (ignoring for the moment that you're apparently conflating me with coinbase), because this isn't a political statement.
> Congratulations, you have a significantly broader definition of acceptable workplace speech than Coinbase.
The issue was never about people expressing their political opinions, but their demands that _Coinbase_ express political opinions and get mired in what police in SF may or may not be doing.
I think this is a very simplistic take. The reason we’re seeing a crackdown on this is not because companies are making a political move to support the status quo. It’s because they’re trying to weed out and get rid of legitimately problematic and toxic people who abused the previous culture.
For instance, there was an instance not too long ago at Facebook where one engineer publicly attacked another completely peaceful coworker on Twitter because the latter declined to put a BLM statement on the landing page of an open source project they maintained. The former employee was eventually fired. These kinds of antics are deeply divisive and destructive to the workplace.
> For instance, there was an instance not too long ago at Facebook where one engineer publicly attacked another completely peaceful coworker on Twitter because the latter declined to put a BLM statement on the landing page of an open source project they maintained. The former employee was eventually fired. These kinds of antics are deeply divisive and destructive to the workplace.
It is unclear from your comment which employee was fired, unless "former" is intended in the ordinal sense (ie. "first") rather than temporal (ie. "prior"). Can you clarify?
My wife works for a huge social media company that you've definitely heard of, and some of her higher-ups have told her they're worried that the rise of employee activism is going to tear the company's culture apart. I told her she should tell them to follow Coinbase's example.
Isn't it interesting that the crowd fighting for liberation & equity are mysteriously up against... the apolitical crowd? When the dichotomy is ethical realism vs. pragmatism, you have to ask yourself who's actually operating like a religion, who's actually a dogmatist in liberator's clothing.
Nah. I’m one of the “apolitical” crowd. I have all sorts of weird, controversial opinions, but I simply leave them at the door and do the job I’m paid to do.
Most people don't worry about all aspects of the world's problems, and many people find themselves convinced that the status quo is more comfortable than the alternative. It's not at all surprising to me that a lot of political issues would have a "thought about it, realized the problems, and trying to fix it" position and a "apolitical, don't like thinking about it, don't want to consider changes to the status quo" position that end up butting heads. I don't see how you can go from that to "anyone arguing with 'apolitical' people is following a religion". (Obviously there are bad variants of this scenario like where someone misidentifies a problem or misidentifies the fix, but that doesn't seem necessarily like religious thinking either.)
This is nonsense. There is no "the alternative;" there are no "apolitical" people. This is a circumstance of organizations, for whom being apolitical is the best way to alienate the fewest people. However, if you do indeed believe you have objective truth in your nonsensical dogmatic worldview, then hypothetically you'd be countered by somebody with a contrary truth. However this does not happen. The only opposition that these dogmatists get is from the new ethical relativists, i.e. people who advocate for apolitical organizations.
I would not go further than associating an October exit date as someone who took a buyout, and anyone with an exit date in the first half of 2021 as a sucker.
Any circumstance in which someone is looking at that is a circumstance in which they could also be treating you like a specific individual; aka, if it matters to them, you're there to ask.
Ironically / IMHO, the irritant at the center of the pearl that is many of these ('social justice') issues is people treating other people as a member of an imagined group rather than a specific human they can talk to.
Asking specific people about their political views during the hiring process (even general questions like "do you think tech workers should be politically active in the workplace?") is dangerous even if not necessarily illegal. Making hiring decisions based on the applicant's experience and employment history is pretty much best practice.
> If it's a problem that they're political or apolitical, then it's already a part of your hiring process.
Definitely not. Unconscious bias is a huge issue in interviewing. Blinding your interviewers to political orientation, or any other factor, is far more effective than telling them just to ignore it.
Hmm. I'd expect directly addressing it - instead of either attempting to ignore it or blinding - to be the most effective. IMO it's not just about hiring, it's also about whether or not they'll succeed once hired, and I would expect any unconscious bias to impact that.
Altho TBC I do think you're right that blinding is better than attempting to ignore.
do people really read this much into resumes? I mostly just look to see if they have any relevant experience and/or impressive projects. aside from raising an eyebrow if I see a bunch of short stints at different companies, I don't try to ferret out their life story or political views by carefully analyzing their hire/leave dates.
If I see a bunch of short stints, let's say 3 or 4 tenures in a row that didn't make it past 1 year, I would definitely ask for some details during an interview.
I have some on my own resume and I don't mind explaining that here the company was acquired, here we ran out of money, here I had to move to be with family, etc etc.
It's just normal due diligence for a hiring manager.
In fact, being able to lavishly throw around internal capital and play with people's careers over their political opinions is the position of privilege. Leveraging multimillion dollar firms to hammer Cathedral dogma into people's heads is privilege.
Not wanted to berate people/be berated/get in political fights writing Selenium for a crypto startup is not privilege.
Not necessarily. Everybody knows the best way to move up in tech is to switch. Depending upon your options taking this offer and moving to another company where you make more is the best possible path you could take. Throw in the desire right now for people to leave SF and it gets even better.
“I personally am afraid to associate myself too publicly with a political stance, lest I be wrong and/or the environment changes.”
I can understand this fear, but generally if you choose a stance based on compassion for all beings you’ll be in the right in the long run.
This particular issue was sparked by Coinbase not taking a stance on Black Lives Matter, which they are wrong about. Standing for dismantling racism is always correct.
Standing for dismantling racism might always be correct, but burning down predominately black neighborhoods doesn't seem to relate to that in a positive way. You can't dismantle racism by causing devastation in the name of black people.
> but generally if you choose a stance based on compassion for all beings you’ll be in the right in the long run
I like capitalism and the free market because I think it's the best system to give most prosperity to a broad spectrum of society. I believe that I take this stance based on compassion but I can assure you that this view is not popular among other people who are in the compassion camp.
You can disagree about the methods to achieve the thing while still agreeing about what the compassionate stance is. We would likely agree that moving people out of poverty is a compassionate thing, even if we disagree about what the best way to do that is.
No one is asking Coinbase to take a stance and say that the police must be abolished, or that the way forward for Black liberation is X policy. They were simply asking them to acknowledge that racism exists and Black lives do in fact matter.
On the other hand working with crimecurrency is always wrong, so already there we can say that every coinbase employee who stays is evil.
> Standing for dismantling racism is always correct.
As opposed to standing against it, yes. As opposed to "we're just building a juicer, man", no.
Not every group of people "must" take an active stance on every social issue. If they did then they would do nothing but that.
This is why I'm hesitant to invest in Silicon Valley stock at the moment. If this trend continues they'll spend 100% of their time "making a stand", and not innovating or trying to fulfil their stated mission.
I have a responsibility to keep my own house in order. To make sure I'm not racist, homophobic, etc... I don't have a responsibility to spend my life on a cause you select for me, even if that cause is just.
If I were to pick a cause it would be that the central organization for a leading religion is actively harboring and protecting child rapists from international law enforcement. But still I would not, like you, say that every organization that doesn't march under that banner are "wrong about" that.
Companies are not "supporting status quo of child rapists" if they don't put up banners on their website. They're just not. That's nonsense.
You can't condemn me for not marching with you. That's fascism.
Funny, I don't see anyone complaining that Fruit Gushers hasn't taken a stand on child pornography?
I will disagree somewhat with the people who say that companies never have a place for political stuff. If you are any company involved in South Africa during apartheid you should choose a side on apartheid and voice that position.
If BLM means just the simple definition of what the words imply (that black lives matter), there's no point in saying it. Because there's literally no one on the other side. I suspect that's not what it means, because saying a broader statement "All Lives Matter" seems to be considered a kind of slur.
So "Black Lives Matter" means something deeper. More like "Black people are killed indiscriminately by police in this country. The cops get away with it, and it's a huge problem." That is full of assumptions and political beliefs that reasonable people can disagree about. And I don't see why every company should take a side on that issue.
> Funny, I don't see anyone complaining that Fruit Gushers hasn't taken a stand on child pornography?
Child pornography, from what I can tell, is not a controversial issue. Most companies haven't made statements about their views on murder, theft, and slavery either. But if the nation were prominently split over whether murder, theft, slavery, or child pornography are good things, I would hope some companies would make a statement.
Actually child pornography is a controversial issue, because it’s often use as a “think of the children” excuse to censor the internet or ban cryptography.
The nation isn't prominently split over whether racism is bad or whether black lives matter.
It is, however, prominently split over whether the specific, contentious version of "anti-racism" though promulgated by the likes of Ibram Kendi and Robin DiAngelo - "Critical Race Theory", to call it by its academic name - is the One True Anti-Racism that it claims to be, or whether it's counterproductive, divisive, anti-liberal and on track to set race relations back by decades.
Companies have as much moral obligation to state support for CRT as they do to state their support for Trotskyism or Randian Objectivism.
Standing for dismantling racism is always correct, but that's distinct from explicitly stating support for the Black Lives Matter political organization.
If you don't agree with some of their stated objectives, tactics, leadership, it should be OK to refuse to offer support, and that doesn't automatically imply a tacit support of racism, and it doesn't automatically imply resistance to lower-case black lives matter.
Technical interviewing is so extremely biased. This sentiment of “Coinbase October resume is activist” is a prime example of where false negatives come from, even when the candidate correctly inverts the binary tree on the whiteboard in C.
As a way of reply to, "I personally am afraid to associate myself too publicly with a political stance, lest I be wrong and/or the environment changes."
"Well, whatever life is, you’re going to die. So if you’re going to make things better for yourself or for those you care about, you had better become an activist while you’re still alive." -- Will Provine
Viewing activism as a binary—the only choices being "I am an activist" and "I am not an activist"—glosses over a wide spectrum of dispositional diversity that people inhabit.
Put differently: There is a difference between advocacy and activism, between holding political opinions and being comfortable with them as a central focus of your life, or as a central characteristic that you wish people to see in you.
I mean, I usually look for another job every year or two. If someone is also willing to pay me lavish amounts of money to do that and take a trip across Europe in between, please sign me up.
At least in finance (I realize HN is FAANG/SV focused), the signing bonus typically vests in 12-18 months. Finance also offers cash bonuses instead of RSUs. Finance also typically has paid leave built into the contract as a noncompete.
Typically the signing bonus vests over 12 months in tech, and the RSUs vest over 4 years. There are also usually cash bonuses in addition to the above.
YMMV depending on the company. Netflix is an obvious outlier in that they offer no RSUs and just pay very high salaries.
Which may or may not be worth anything. The rule of thumb is to value stock options at 0 for a reason. As opposed to RSUs, which are liquid upon vesting.
Not every company offers RSUs (at least outside US).
E.g. in my case only my third offered it, and I was like "What is that?", in my case it started vesting after 1 year (linear). So at that point one can think of looking for new job.
It's the (usually 1-year) cliff that is more important when considering leaving. Once an engineer hits the RSU/bonus cliff, they're not losing _past_ benefits for leaving, only future benefits - and presumably the other job opportunity has better future benefits.
My longest stay at one job as been 2.5 years. By changing jobs, I get a lot more experience in a lot of different things. I've worked in five different markets:
I know people who've been at the same job for 6~7 years and they are totally getting paid way under market. A company might give you a 2~3% cost of living increase, or a $5k promotion every few years, but switching jobs let's you ask for $10k or more.
On the downside, I would NOT recommend anyone else change jobs almost yearly like I did. My job loyalty is shit and it's hard for me to take on other jobs when people are concerned I could just leave.
That being said, the good jobs with good pipeline engineering, tests and CI/CD flows allow people to flow in and out; quickly pick up things and move with fast/good deploys. Those shops are the best, but they are rare. They tend to not care as much weird resumes because they want to hire people who are innovative.
I think an optimal time within a project in between 3 to 5 years, and the reason is to get deeper understanding of problems rather than surface. My YoY compensation growth is between 20% and 30% compounded.
You're forgetting the options gain value as the company grows (due to your own hard work which is the whole point!)
You're awarded $100k but then it grows to $200k by the time you start cashing it in. When you switch company you get $100k again, not the $200k you threw away.
Consider it similar to diversifying your stock portfolio. By switching jobs every year, you're effectively hedging your portfolio. You're increasing your lottery chances of a unicorn exit, which is where the Big Money is.
That's a fair point, we'd have to compare projected growth vs. expected salary of new job. Certainly the benefit of working at large tech companies or rocketships.
My experience with smaller startups, was that it's impossible to determine if the options would be worth $0 or $$$.
if you leave after the initial cliff you're only losing out on future RSU / options vesting, same as future salary you haven't yet earned. Unless your initial equity has gone up a lot in value you're not really leaving anything behind as presumably in the new company you'd be getting similar or higher value grants.
I think it's not uncommon for years 2 and 3 to be the highest earning years though, due to the 25% cliff, and to retention grants you get in years 1/2.
I don't think it can be understated how much saying 'no politics' is a political statement. Supporting the status quo is a political statement. And supporting the status quo in this political climate is a strange hill to plant your flag on.
Something being a political statement doesn't necessarily mean it is directly in support of one pole or the other. It's still political.
Saying "my business supports whatever the current US government's stated opinion is on all issues" is a political stance. It may not be partisan, but it absolutely is political. Those aren't synonymous.
Saying ‘we don’t want to be an activist organization beyond our business goals, therefore we want to keep political discussions out of the workplace’ is not the same thing as saying ‘my business supports whatever the US government’s stated opinion is’.
Correct, but both are political statements. "We don't want to be involved in the political discussion" is just as political as "we want to be involved in the political discussion".
My cynical take on this is Coinbase is preparing for Democrats to take control of the US gov't in a few months and sees Republicans suddenly becoming very concerned about gov't / central bank failures and buying cryptocurrency as a hedge. Don't want to be seen a leftist company when your user growth will come from the right.
That is definitely an interesting take but I think any right-winger that goes that far is more likely to be caught up in a grift than going to Coinbase where they have to send in their government-issue ID and link their account to a US bank that reports to government if they notice suspicious activity.
Not using your business as a political platform is not the same as supporting the status quo. The "if you're not with us, you're against us" stance is definitely polarizing and is not making things better.
This is very interesting. The CEO said in his initial letter that Coinbase should only engage in politics that are relevant to their "core mission", but it's kind of interesting to reduce a candidate to "What can this candidate or party do specifically for our business?" and ignore other policies that a candidate or party may seek to enact.
Pretending that you're unaware of or completely ambivalent about the consequences of shifts in political power (so long as it benefits you financially) doesn't really qualify you as "apolitical." You're still involved in the political process even if you stick your fingers in your ears and chant "nananana I can't hear you."
I hate to sound incisive, but it kind of seems like the position that Coinbase's leadership has taken is "The board and CEO will decide what qualifies as 'apolitical' and as such will dictate the ongoing political activity of the company, which they have no desire to stop being involved in."
Or just "the board and CEO will decide what political activism is relevant to the core business of the company, and the political positions the company should take". Which seems exactly within the remit of the board and CEO.
This is absolutely true, and appears to be the stated policy in no uncertain terms.
The issue that I intended to address is the interesting usage of language to sidestep making political contributions and supporting candidates and parties as being political acts.
Companies aren't democracies. When you sign up to work for somebody else, the board and the executives have every right to make these decisions. Upset that you can't lobby for the rights of pink haired people in the office? Go start your own company and put murals featuring oppressed pink-haired people all over the walls. Until then, recognize that companies aren't set up as democracies, because no investor would be dumb enough to throw their money down a toilet where any muppet who can run a QA job or write a few lines of JS has equal input with someone who co-founded the enterprise.
I think that's too strong a statement in support of the current default, which is the largely feudal corporation.
First, company structures are pretty clearly being pushed in a more democratic direction, and have been for quite a while. Silicon Valley is the poster child for flatter organizational structures, "good ideas can come from anywhere", increased freedom of movement for workers between companies, as well as sharing the financial gains more broadly (at least, that is the ideal that SV represents to the outside world).
You look at a typical SV corporation and see a rigid hierarchy. Most of the rest of the world sees an insanely freewheeling mess that can't possibly work.
There are also today already companies that are explicitly structured as democracies (in some cases a bit more like constitutional monarchies, and in other cases more like minarchist collectives). Not all of these experiments are successful, nor should we expect them to be.
But I certainly don't expect this overall trend to reverse, stop, or even slow down. If anything, I expect it to accelerate, as existing companies continue to try to pick out and graft on the parts and tools that seem to be working for other organizations. Even when these grafting attempts are unsuccessful (which is often), they just draw attention to the orgs that are succeeding (inspiring attempts at analysis of what is different), which leads to more such experiments.
"In recognition of his work, Brian was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and one of the ten most influential people in bitcoin and blockchain"
You are correct in your "understatement" claim, though I suspect unintentionally so. Yes, "avoiding politics" cuts into time you could be spending advancing progressive politics. So does writing software. So does watching a movie with your spouse. So does sleeping. So does every single thing that isn't literally "advancing progressive politics."
"No politics = politics" is an utterly vacuous statement.
He's not passively stating no politics he's actively discouraging any politics. There is a slight difference.
If you become friendly with a person in the workplace you'll eventually learn their politics, right? Either through how they act or what they say. How do you limit how much a person reveals about themselves at work?
The CEO is saying Coinbase won't take political stances. That's fine in theory but in practice it's not. The whole idea of cryptocurrency itself is political.
There is a difference in being passively apolitical and actively apolitical for sure.
The rules aren't as strict as you're thinking. As the article describes, Armstrong's made it clear that there's no rule requiring employees to just pretend politics don't exist, and employees are still free to discuss politics with each other or create political discussion Slack channels.
The stance "I am now and forever apolitical regardless of the state of the world or how political decisions affect me or others" is true no politics.
The stance "I am avoiding politics because there's nothing worth my time to be an activist about but I would if that changed and political decisions started seriously affecting me, my family, or my friends" is "the status quo is fine."
The stance "I'm avoiding politics because it's bad for my metal health or $any_criticism" is an act of protest! Super political.
I have genuinely never met someone in the first camp.
There are lots of reasons, good and bad, to avoid politics. But to claim that doing so is inherently political... isn't saying anything. To the extent it's true, it's trivially so. And to the extent it's non-trivial, it's completely false.
The reason that you can't require people to vote in the US is because the act of not voting is considered protected political speech. Why is not participating in politics any different?
Hell, refusing to engage with certain types of politics isn't just political, it's an act of protest!
Have the people you've met specifically told you this is their stance? I'm worried you may be misunderstanding. I and almost all apolitical people I know fall in the first camp; I don't think the status quo is fine, but I also don't think that engaging in politics all the time improves it.
That’s a very paranoid way of looking at things.
Signalling support for the status quo would involve something more active, eg “wooo, go status quo!!” on a banner.
Maybe they have different priorities than you and just want to make money. Not everything is political.
Just wanting to make money is political because it means the environment has been configured in such a way that you can do so. If you make money in the position of a manager or boss, it is even more strongly political as you are using the configuration of the political system to direct societal resources at your whim to make money.
Just playing the bongos is political because it means the environment has been configured in such a way that you can do so. If you play the bongos in the position of a manager or boss, it is even more strongly political as you are using the configuration of the political system to direct societal resources at your whim to play the bongos.
Not at all. While there is a tiny bit of truth to your bongo example, money in particular is highly political though it has been rhetorically stripped in order to make it appear as though it is not so the wealthy can make money in peace. Controlling the distribution of resources in society is a highly political question.
Who makes more money at work for example? The low level employee or the boss? Who controls what, why, and how things are produced? What the schedules are? These are smaller questions than national policy, but they are political in nature. Of course, the socialist movement sees all workplaces' workers united together as a national political project. When you swim in water all your life, you can't see it easily unless someone points it out.
Another reason "just making money" is political is because so many people can't. In a society with levels of inequality that approximate ancient kingdoms, the lowest people in society have little opportunity to "just make money" and their invisibility is a political artifice.
Put another way, what is political is the ability to _not care_ when others are suffering. People are being deported, attacked in the streets, dying of disease, etc. so keeping your head down _and make money_ during such a time is something won by virtue of class. Other people can't ignore it because politics is life and death. While exhaustion is a valid excuse to rest (I'm super tired myself), what is being asked is for solidarity and to exhibit positive humanity towards other people. A primary site of conflict and domination is the workplace -- it's just that so many of us are used to losing or out competing each other that we don't band together to win.
Coinbase didn't say "no politics" or "we support the status quo". They just said that the company is focused on cryptocurrency, and won't engage in political causes other than supporting cryptocurrency.
As someone else pointed out, they seem to have no problem in donating to political candidates as a corporation so this is the height of hypocrisy. Individual employees don't get to have a say in the direction of the company's politics.
I don't see the hypocrisy. Like I said, the company's been quite open about the fact that they will continue to engage in cryptocurrency-related politics.
Bob grows chickens and Alice grows corn. They trade via barter. We'd probably agree this isn't political in any meaningful sense.
One day, Alice has a clever idea: she can create a digital representation of money. Both Alice and Bob agree to accept these "tokens" in lieu of barter.
Big mistake. CarelessExpert announces to Alice and Bob that their creation obligates them to join in bitter arguments about abortion, climate change, and LGBT rights.
So do you normally spend a lot of your time online standing up straw men and knocking them down? Or is today a special case?
My point, since apparently I need to clarify it, is that Coinbase claiming to have an "apolitical" workplace while a) operating in a business that's driven by libertarian and anarchist philosophy and b) spending time and money lobbying politicians in Washington in support of said values is, at best demonstrative of a total lack of self-awareness, and at worst represents rank hypocrisy.
If the Coinbase guys were lobbying for "libertarian and anarchist philosophy," broadly construed, you'd have a point. But they're not. They're pushing for narrow financial regulation. There's no principled reason to think they're doing this in furtherance of their personal politics, as opposed to, say, making their customers' lives easier.
As such, I don't see the hypocrisy. Now, I'd be more inclined to agree if the "politics ban" covered activism around crypto policy issues. But of course, then management's position is very easy to see. They hired developers to implement their vision, not to fight it.
This idea of "everything is political" is why the discourse went to shit, now nobody can catch a break from politics, and if you had enough and don't want to take part then you instantly gets attacked for "supporting the status quo".
I prefer to not be lectured on political issues by my orange juice brand. Their mission should be to sell high quality orange juice and make a profit.
I think in prior times when we didn't have all the information we have available at hand: sure that's fine.
But what if your orange juice brand of choice was actively contributing to the destruction of the environment, lobbying politicians to make them exempt from environmental regulations, and destroying competition in nefarious ways?
That's an extreme but if that's information you have and you still support that orange juice brand then you are supporting everything that is public knowledge about that brand.
If 95% of the people at the company don't care, but you're the person who won't stop bringing up the need to change orange juice vendors, to the point that it's disruptive and annoying to the 95%, maybe they don't want to work with you any more. And maybe it's not the right company for you, either. Why would you want to work with a bunch of people who are indifferent to environmental destruction when there are literally thousands of companies out there who actively embrace your orange juice opinions?
If 95% of the company doesn't care then you should change orange juice vendors. Making it turn into an ongoing issue would be a very strong sign that people at the company care very strongly about keeping the current vendor. Which means that perhaps you should leave, but you should leave because people are actively opposing your politics and not because that 95% is not political.
By "don't care" I mean they don't perceive the current situation as a problem, and they view the cost of switching vendors to be too high. But either way, yes.
I think one problem with the concept of "everything is political (including supporting the status quo)" is that it provides no principled mechanism for determining what counts as "too far" (costly) for any given political cause. The nice thing about having a dictator (CEO) in this regard is that it provides a fixed point.
Great! Because it's totally non-political to influence international trade policy to give yourself an advantage in buying your oranges and labor in waaaaaait it totally is.
IMO Coinbase is "doing it pretty well", not by saying "we'll be apolitical", but by saying, "we're going to be political ONLY about X & Y".
My read is that they're not discouraging their employees from being political (unclear to me ATM if they're still doing donation matching regardless), and they're not stopping work-place diversity programs... they're just limiting their lobbying to, you know, their own issues.
But the life of a black trans woman? That's political by its very nature, in today's climate. One party doesn't want her to be allowed to exist, the other does.
Believing it's possible to be "apolitical" in any time of polarization is a privilege of those who benefit from the status quo.
I think there are definitely people who don’t want her to exist but there are also ones like me, who get called Nazis for it, but whose perspective is largely 1) OK 2) please pay for your own costs related to your choices and 3) I’m not being an asshole to you because you’re a black trans woman, I’m being an asshole to you because I am an asshole and my white male friends say “oh Xxx is such as asshole.” So don’t take it personally
In other words, given the rates of poverty among Black trans women, you don't want her to be allowed to exist.
Your view is not above regular politics. It is a view that's firmly embedded within the right wing of regular politics. I personally wouldn't consider it "Nazi" but would definitely consider it deeply transphobic, and exclude you from my friend circle. If I met someone with your view at work, I would avoid any interactions with them other than the minimum necessary to perform my job.
Good. People experiencing the social consequences of expressing bigoted views, and being a little more afraid as a result, is how the world moves forward. A term sometimes used for it is the "democratization of discomfort".
> You’re not wrong... but remember that the voting booth is another anonymous forum.
Sure, and the implication that letting discriminatory behavior remain normalized can be a strategy that lets you court voters at the margin isn't new.
In a sense, it is a strategy that grants political power but denies a mandate to do much of anything meaningful with it to combat discrimination. It also cedes the initiative to the opposition who can easily retreat or just run (and then continue to portray your compromised proposals as just as extreme as ever).
> whose perspective is largely 1) OK 2) please pay for your own costs related to your choices
In your example, the black trans woman has no choice about being black and no choice about their cisgender.
Technically, they have a choice about whether they transition, but the alternative is living with the emotional pain of extreme gender dysphoria.
Would you deny someone medical care for a physically painful but not life threatening medical condition (say arthritis, or psoriasis), or tell them that treating it is their choice and responsibility?
How about mental conditions such as clinical depression, or bipolar disorder?
Would you relax the requirements on businesses to provide reasonable accommodation for wheelchair access to parking and restrooms? After all, it is their choice to go out in public.
Would you allow discrimination for employment or a mortgage based on these conditions?
This isn't really that complicated. Gender dysphoria is a real thing, and while the choice to transition (with or without gender reassignment surgery) is a personal one, and likely never an easy one to make, it should be an option that society supports and simply does not allow discrimination against.
> 3) I’m not being an asshole to you because you’re a black trans woman, I’m being an asshole to you because I am an asshole and my white male friends say “oh Xxx is such as asshole.” So don’t take it personally
I thought this deserved to be broken out to a separate reply.
I actually used to be in that camp. In my case I used to say some extremely heteronormative patriarchal objectifying bullshit ironically (typical examples would be "barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen" or "get me a beer, bitch". This started pretty darn early, like 10 years old. My mom's friends all thought it was hilarious when I was asked what piece of chicken I wanted and I answered with a deadpan "well, I'm usually a leg man, but..."). In other words, I was pretending to be a misogynist asshole for purposes of humor.
It turns out that as an adult, many of the people closest to me couldn't always tell I was being ironic, despite the obvious (to me) extreme contrast between these statements and my everyday persona.
And that's entirely aside from the fact that this sort of humor is painful to people who regularly encounter the real thing when it is meant to hurt them, even if they completely understand that I don't mean it that way. I was essentially using their pain as a prop for my humor.
So, I could have responded with some variant of "fuck 'em if they can't take a joke", but that would have left me associating only with people who a) got my sense of humor and put up with it, as well as b) people who didn't but approved of the literal interpretation and were encouraged by it. That wouldn't have been a good outcome for me.
To give a less pointed example of my sense of humor, I once horrified a co-worker who brought to my attention a severe defect that would have caused a user security issue if it had been deployed to production by responding "Well, we certainly couldn't allow that!" with heavy sarcasm. I was using sarcasm ironically. Since I immediately escalated the issue I would have thought that it was obvious that I was taking the issue very seriously, but I had misjudged my audience.
It is incumbent on me to communicate clearly, even or especially when using humor. And my sort of weapons-grade irony and sarcasm can't be handled too carefully.
Now, what you're talking about isn't quite the same thing (since I actually try to not be an asshole), but in your case it really is incumbent on you to communicate clearly as well when you're being an asshole that you are not being an asshole to a black trans woman because they are a black trans woman, and also that you aren't being an asshole to them as a black trans woman. And you have to somehow do it without a bunch of "I'm not a racist etc., but..." qualifiers. The latter point is so subtle, you're never going to be able to get it right, except perhaps one-on-one with someone you know very well (eg. my spouse thinks a "get me a fuckin' beer, woman" demand from me is hilarious, but that's in part because she knows I don't like beer, and rarely swear. Even with her I would be pretty careful about asking for anything else that way). You certainly won't get it right while still using racist and transphobic rhetoric.
So, you have a stark choice similar to mine: stop being an asshole to black trans women, or end up associating only with people who think doing that is excusable, normal, or even desirable, behavior.
No idea what you’re talking about. Someone comes to me with a dumb idea. I tell them it’s a dumb idea and am not nice about it. If they are a minority group they could feel that I am acting this way to them because I’m a x-ist. But it’s actually because I’m an asshole.
Since, as a member of a minority group, they probably get more negative feedback than average, and since probably most of that negative feedback is due to x-ism, why shouldn't they assume you're an x-ist?
And that's completely leaving aside whether there exists any sort of stereotype that members of group x aren't as smart or capable as non-x folks that you may be playing into.
It's really on your shoulders to indicate or demonstrate that you're just an asshole and not an x-ist asshole. Because, as far as the various x-folk are concerned, isn't it simpler to assume that a non-x is being an asshole to them because of x-ism? Odds are that they're right.
Is it really an attack though? Supporting the status quo (by objecting to discussions about changing it) is the perceived state. Is it an attack, to observe this?
I understand folks feel uncomfortable talking about systemic bias. Especially if they don't suffer from it. But that's exactly the issue of status quo vs change - getting folks to notice/discuss it. So there can be change, which requires the comfortable to change too.
I think it's intended as an attack, but even if it's not it's just a terribly unfair characterization. If you host a meeting to review a design document, and I start talking about the Syrian Civil War in the middle, are you really supporting the status quo when you ask me to stay on topic?
Why stop at Karl Rove? Tribalism is an inherent primal instinct in our species. We are all directly descended from brutal tribes at odds with other tribes over competition for limited resources. It's rooted in nearly all of our thinking, and you have to take active steps in your thought processes to avoid being biased by this inherent biological preference you have for the success of your kin versus the kin of others.
"you must become a member of the Party" is a horrible situation for any country to be in. Full stop. There are too many examples in history of where that leads to claim naiveté or propose that their consistent outcomes won't apply here.
> I don't think it can be understated how much saying 'no politics' is a political statement.
I disagree, and I think you're grossly overstating it.
I can see how you could characterize their stance as "supporting the status quo". But, there are varying degrees of "support", and this is pretty much the lowest degree of "support" imaginable.
Put another way, you're painting this as "with us or against us" when in reality there's a spectrum of support. Coinbase is standing just SLIGHTLY off center in one direction.
> And supporting the status quo in this political climate is a strange hill to plant your flag on.
Why do you think it's strange? The vast majority of employees prefer a work environment that is stripped of political conversation. And, such an environment is more conducive to focus and productivity.
> The vast majority of employees prefer a work environment that is stripped of political conversation
While I generally agree, I think there is a tacit assumption that Armstrong's actions will work exactly as intended. 5-8% of workforce is...honestly I don't know if it's high or low, but is certainly non-trivial. These weren't strategic layoffs or restructurings, so certain business-critical projects might be delayed due to headcount issues/loss of senior staff. If we hear about another walkout at Coinbase 6 months from now, this might just look like a catastrophic management blunder.
Literally firing the walkout organizers would probably have led to a worse media cycle, but likely fewer staff quitting in protest (Google firing the walkout organizers seemed to have little to no effect).
If by "status quo" you mean "Donald Trump is President", does your view change if Biden wins? Will the status quo be ok, and will it therefore be ok to ban political activity in the workplace?
The problem with the view that activism is ok if the current administration is objectionable is that the "status quo" changes from cycle to cycle.
Presidential politics is only a very small part of political activity in the US (though it is the most visible). What if your frame of reference is state and local politics? Is political activism in the workplace ok if you don't like the local school board?
No, it's possible to support changes to the status quo while simultaneously maintaining an apolitical workplace. I most certainly support changes to the status quo, and I would simultaneously take the same stance as Coinbase with regards to politics in the workplace. I've never seen a workplace embrace political activism without creating a hostile workplace environment for a significant segment of workers.
This is kind of the same kind of fallacy as people who try to say that atheism is a religion. No, it's the absence of religion. In the same vein, an apolitical workplace isn't support for the status quo. It's the absence of any political, either for or against the status quo.
All businesses that want to survive are political. Whether they admit it or not.
How many defense contractors are there? These people do have a vested interest to vote for candidates that increase govt contracts with the private sector. This is a massive industry.
Now that govt is getting more involved in health care, we're seeing that too.
These are trillions of dollars we're talking about.
This is also valid for small businesses too. How taxes are done in a given community. Etc.
I can't emphasize enough the vested interest a business has to be selfish. I'm indifferent on if this is a drawback.
I just wish there was more competition/choices for everyone and like you, I wish people would be more upfront (or self aware) of what they're doing.
P.S. When it comes to Coinbase. What stops them from backing a racist KKK member whom backs Bitcoin/crypto? What stops them from backing an anarchist whom backs Bitcoin/crypto? Etc...etc... This silencing of discussion...it a bit disgusting.
>I don't think it can be understated how much saying 'no politics' is a political statement.
This is often presented as obvious self-contradiction, but in fact the definition of "politics" here changes from first use to the second. In other words, this is a cheap rhetorical trick to make something sound irrational and self-contradictory, while int fact it isn't.
There is a difference between explicitly supporting the status quo and simply saying we aren't going to actively work to change the status quo within this organization.
Is this something where there needs to be a bright-line rule? It feels like having a rigorous formal definition for "be nice to your coworkers" - a healthy company can resolve these kinds of disputes informally, and an unhealthy company will struggle no matter how clear the rules are.
Right, lobbying is super valuable for a company whose business is in a legally questionable position on the boundary of the highly regulated banking industry.
This "apolitical" move would be a compelling choice if their only goal was optimizing shareholder value -- it's in their interest to maximize their ability to effectively lobby both American political parties to ensure any future cryptocurrency regulations benefit them.
Something is off about those listings. The majority of the transactions went to "Brian Forde for Congress" and have the memos like " .03533216 BITCOINS SOLD VIA COINBASE - PURCHASER UNKNOWN". I don't think these are contributions by Coinbase, but Bitcoin contributions that went through Coinbase. There is probably some byzantine election funding rule that allowed or forced these recipients to list Coinbase as the"source" of anonymous Bitcoin donations.
There's not supposed to be "anonymous" donations, that's the entire point of reporting requirements. If Coinbase is hiding political donors, that's gotta be against election law?
Coinbase isn't hiding anything. It's the campaign's responsibility to identify donors in compliance with campaign finance laws. If a campaign is accepting donations of Bitcoin, it's their responsibility to find out who owns the wallet. Coinbase only knows, and can only know, the donor's wallet address. Coinbase doesn't even know what the transaction is for. That was one of the points of Bitcoin.
That's what didn't sit right with me about the Coinbase stance. It seems somewhat elitist to suggest that the board are allowed to hire lobbyists and make donations to campaigns but the rank and file are not to discuss politics in the office.
This is getting down-voted but honestly I agree. Silence is a professional courtesy when it comes to certain ideas. For instance, I don't talk about how I find certain parts of 4chan incredibly hilarious. As a black man, I'd definitely have co-workers blow up if I mentioned this at work - granted they feel more than entitled to talk about all sorts of things that I wouldn't even talk about if I was at a bar with friends (fringe lefty politics and sexually explicit things).
I feel this. As someone who grew up in the 4chan hey-day, the internet I fell in love with was extremely inappropriate and anarchic. Shooting the shit about whatever inane thing 4chan was going on about were the source of hilarious and open conversations we used to have amongst friends. Don't get me wrong, 4chan is wrong, messed up, socially deviant and not something to look up to. But all the people I know who used to browse that crazy site ended up being normal, well adjusted people. The social climate is so tense nowadays I would never think to talk about good old 4chan openly.
Agreed. I think there are only two options for a company:
1) don't allow any activism in the company
2) allow ALL types of activism in the company
Right now, it seems most companies only allow liberal activism but not conservative activism. This is a recipe for problems because it's arbitrary and not democratic.
Do companies have an obligation to be democratic? Are democratic companies common?
Protected classes aside, if I start a company I can choose to hire or exclude whomever I choose. I could start a company that only hires registered Republicans, or only people who can't stand the taste of bananas. If this turns out to be a bad business decision (which it probably is), the market will punish me and I'll eventually lose to smarter competitors. Right?
I didn't realize that, you are likely correct! I could start such a company in my state, but I'd have to be very careful with jurisdictions. In practice most companies I'm familiar with have official policies banning political discrimination across the board, which makes sense considering the importance of California in tech.
You can't discriminate against certain protected classes, but yes, it boggles my mind a little bit that someone could think "a corporation" is anything other than one of the most authoritarian, top-down governance structures ever devised.
If it's voluntarily formed, it's not authoritarian.
When a political faction deems that those who refuse to pay half their income for a highly benevolent social program, will face punitive legal consequences, that is authoritarian. I only bring this up because I suspect you are in support of these kinds of programs.
Man recoils from trouble, from suffering; and yet he is condemned by nature to the suffering of privation, if he does not take the trouble to work. He has to choose, then, between these two evils. What means can he adopt to avoid both? There remains now, and there will remain, only one way, which is, to enjoy the labor of others. Such a course of conduct prevents the trouble and the satisfaction from preserving their natural proportion, and causes all the trouble to become the lot of one set of persons, and all the satisfaction that of another. This is the origin of slavery and of plunder, whatever its form may be - whether that of wars, imposition, violence, restrictions, frauds, etc. - monstrous abuses, but consistent with the thought which has given them birth. Oppressors should be detested and resisted - they can hardly be called absurd.
Slavery is disappearing, thank heaven! and, on the other hand, our disposition to defend our property prevents direct and open plunder from being easy.
One thing, however, remains - it is the original inclination which exists in all men to divide the lot of life into two parts, throwing the trouble upon others, and keeping the satisfaction for themselves. It remains to be shown under what new form this sad tendency is manifesting itself.
The oppressor no longer acts directly and with his own powers upon his victim. No, our conscience has become too sensitive for that. The tyrant and his victim are still present, but there is an intermediate person between them, which is the State - that is, the Law itself.
I actually find it quite curious that you’re not allowed to discriminate based on religion, but allowed to discriminate based on political views, throughout the West.
One is a freely chosen personal belief, and the other is a freely chosen personal belief.
It’s way worse than that. Even centrists and liberals are silenced by the vocal mob for merely questioning the validity of certain policies or initiatives that claim to have some righteous sounding goal, even when there is evidence that the proposed policy is more likely to be harmful than helpful. For example, it should not be controversial to debate the merits of Black Lives Matter, but since the alternate reality that certain people want to project doesn’t hold up well against facts and data, it’s easier just to brand you a racist (or whatever-ist, depending on the topic) instead. There is a ton of self-censorship and coercion by these activists asserting their supposed moral authority, which is not a good road to go down.
In an industry full of data scientists and engineers, it amazes me how people go along with this narrative that disparate outcomes among members of arbitrary group identities is evidence of discrimination. We know that is not a valid application of statistics, yet people who know better still keep repeating it.
Not only will you be viciously attacked for questioning BLM, but an open source maintainer at Facebook was publicly attacked by coworkers for politely declining a request to put a BLM banner on the website for an open source project (he stated he wanted to remain apolitical, without giving an opinion).
Social advocacy is a spiritual replacement to religion and supporters are even more fervent.
It depends on if your use of BLM means "lives of those of African-decent matter" or "the Black Lives Matter movement/group".
Personally i would expect the former to have more widespread support in America. The latter stands for many things that could be more controversial in the states. A DuckDuckGo for "blm demands"[0] returns the following NPR piece[1] from DC-based interviews. It lists BLM demands as:
- Defund Police
- No New Jails
- Decriminalize Sex Work
- Police-Free Schools
- Drop Charges Against Protesters
- End Cash Bail In Maryland
- Ban Stop And Frisk
THIS is why it’s so insidious. BLM is a well funded political organization with self-described marxist founders. It has about as much to do with black lives as the Nazi party had to do with “national socialism”.
Nobody thinks black lives don’t matter. This is very different from supporting BLM, however. Many prominent black public figures have come out denouncing BLM, and it isn’t because they think their own lives don’t matter.
The name is purely orwellian PR trickery that you can’t argue with, just like “antifa” is. It’s a remarkably effective tactic because most people assume it just means what the words say.
I always find it curious that some people take the name "Black Lives Matter" at face value, and assume that the only possible reason anyone might find the organisation (not the slogan) debatable is that they don't think black lives matter.
Do you assume that anyone who criticises The People's Democratic Republic of Korea hates democracy and Koreans?
That any race matters more than any other race. If someone put "X Lives Matter" on a t-shirt, where X is any other race, they would be attacked, or at least fired from their job.
Similarly, you can go to work wearing a blue Biden hat, and nothing would happen. However, if you went to work wearing a red Trump hat, it might be your last day at work.
Why is it a fact? I'm independent, so I usually let the other two sides battle it out among themselves, while I stand by and am usually quite impressed by the sophisticated and clever arguments going both ways. I have yet to be swayed either way. Still, it's interesting!
In a way it's an optimization. My hope is that one day, when the two sides have finally come to a conclusion as to which one is right, I can join that one, and save myself a lot of trouble in the meantime ;)
Me too. I can't see why staying in my comfort zone is regarded as political. One solution is to just get comfy. No politics involved, just plain survivalism, nothing wrong.
It’s political because a number of hugely important issues call us all to action (child poverty, climate change, homelessness) and those issues are and will continue to put vulnerable people in danger of death and suffering. Staying in your comfort zone is likely an expression of indifference to them as vanishingly few people are comfortable when tackling these problems.
You might adopt a political position that your privileged position of safety and comfort is not subject to any particular obligations to engage with others and become involved in society’s problems, but that would be politics all the same.
I actually agree with you. My comment was provocative in the sense that I would surely immediately become engaged politically if I was out of this comfort zone.
It’s a bummer that Coinbase’s ploy to intentionally conflate not supporting the Black Lives Matter movement (that is, a clear implicit endorsement of the status quo) with generalized left/right-political-activism-at-work seems to have worked, at least for a lot of people who aren’t paying attention.
This isn’t about office politics, or political activism at work. This is about Coinbase making an explicit vote for the status quo of American racism, and trying to deflect the heat they’re taking for that by confusing people into thinking that this is about standard political discussion.
It makes me really angry that they would do this.
It makes me really sad that it worked.
I guess with that much money you can hire really good PR people to shape the narrative into exactly what you want, and dupe tons of people who are rightfully tired of the american culture war into thinking that this has anything to do with that.
The reality is thar vast majority of those who do not support the BLM movement are not at all racist. I believe that this movement has made our society more racist and divided than it was before.
I’m responding to “I believe that this movement has made our society more racist and divided than it was before.”
Effectively this means the parent thinks that no movement should be made at all, ergo the status quo should continue.
You can debate the merits of the demands that BLM puts forth but how on earth is this not implying that the protests in response to police killings are making society more racist?
I think this very view is likely what made the coinbase workplace so toxic and uninviting. "Black lives matter" is a statement that everyone already agrees with. "Black Lives Matter" is a political organization with political objectives, including the de-emphasis of the nuclear family, socialist economics, and explicit financial funnelling to the Democrat party.
It's a moral "package deal." The idea being that if you reject BLM for its bad politics, you reject that black lives matter. And if you accept it, you also accept a bunch of other shit you're not actually for.
BLM should be recognized for the moral "package deal" that it is, and vehemently rejected. It's dishonest.
It's not Coinbase that is conflating anything, BLM itself is a conflation of ideas.
Oh come on. Have you ever tried to find one person who actually, literally believes that the lives of black people do not matter?
You'll certainly find 11-year olds in Call of Duty who will say it for shits and giggles to control you; you won't find anybody who actually believes it.
I personally know dozens of people who don't care at all about black lives one way or the other. I've seen hundreds more that I don't know personally demonstrate that belief publicly, many of them police officers.
The disparities in policing, application of police violence, and prosecution are well-documented.
This is why the movement exists. It's a real problem, whether you personally have experienced it or not, whether you personally wish to acknowledge it or not.
There are many people out there who simply do not think that it matters whether or not black people live or die. Many of them are in uniform.
>This is about Coinbase making an explicit vote for the status quo of American racism, and trying to deflect the heat they’re taking for that by confusing people into thinking that this is about standard political discussion.
One of my favorite things about this new type of political activism is that words no longer mean what we all understood them to mean in ages past. "Explicit" would mean something along the lines of Coinbase or Armstrong saying "we support the status quo of American racism", as you have alleged. Alas, I've read all these blog posts and there is no sentence that matches or even could be remotely construed to resemble the one you have wrote.
Context matters. When you say to someone, for example, that you're going to do X unless they object, and they stand silent, then their silence is, in that instance, interpreted as explicit consent for you to do X in many legal circumstances.
A good example recently from current events was the US president being asked in a press conference to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, "win, lose, or draw". He responded with "we'll have to see what happens". In the context of the question being posed, that's a clear and explicit failure to commit, given that context.
Context can entirely invert the meaning of two identical statements, and, in the right context, a failure to do a certain thing, or even remaining silent, can indeed be an explicit statement.
Another case comes from 2013, Salinas v Texas, when the police were questioning a murder suspect who suddenly became quiet during questioning when the topic turned to the murder. They were able to use this sudden silence as incriminating circumstantial evidence, given that specific context. This resulted in silence in the face of questioning by the government having to be explicitly invoked as such to not be potentially incriminating, which is an odd state of affairs and probably not the best outcome, but you can however tell that those judges weren't completely insane. Silence after saying "I affirmatively invoke my right to remain silent" is very different than silence after you were just answering police questions voluntarily, until they asked you about a murder they thought you committed.
Silence can speak volumes, explicitly, given the circumstances preceding and surrounding that silence.
Desmond Tutu, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, once said:
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”
Of course context matters, but you're still conflating or redefining words here. Each of your examples is an example of implicit agreement, not explicit, because of the context provided. That's what context does ... it allows you to make an inference about how people are feeling or thinking about a certain topic when they don't explicitly say so. Your inference may be right, but it may also be wrong.
If in your parent comment you had accused Coinbase/Armstrong of implicitly supporting the status quo (as you define it) I would've said "yeah, sure, if I squint hard enough and wash it through the 'silence is violence' filters I can see how you'd think that".
Another troubling thing I want to point out here is your comment is part of an accelerating trend where people, particularly from but not limited to those on the left, consistently attribute maximum malice of intent to peoples' comments (said and unsaid) or their actions. That is, imo, one of the reasons these environments are so toxic, because people are immediately put on the defensive.
Where do you draw the line on what is political? Is wearing a mask political? What about calling someone by their preferred pronoun, or recognizing gay marriage?
I'm curious to know how many of these exits were in engineering – those with the privilege to know another engineering job is immediately available somewhere else – versus other roles in the company.
Generally speaking, dead weight know they're dead weight / have an easy gig, and are the last people you would see taking such a deal because they usually prefer to keep coasting.
By definition most of them do not have strong principles (they're okay with mediocre work representing them), so i don't picture them leaving on principles
It's the same as saying "Don't discuss religion at work." A religious fundamentalist would take issue with the mere fact that they are being told not to discuss their religion. That's what we have with virtue signalling types. They are religious fundamentalists, and their religion is Statism.
And not even “don’t discuss it at work” (although that would also be a fine rule). More just that the company itself isn’t going to be in the business of lobbying for any particular politics.
The problem with politics- and religion-like conversations is that it's like walking on the edge of a sword–it's quite easy to get into debates. Debating with your work colleagues about politics is something one would better avoid.
Of course, it's impossible to know now, but I wonder how many people would've still left if there was no exit package. It's possible some decided they wanted to work somewhere else and saw a way out.
That's just what I was thinking: if I were in a job I was on the margin of leaving anyway, and an exit package were offered, that might be sufficient to make me make the move.
My only question is what are employees proposing CoinBase takes a stance over? If you want something like cryptocurrencies to thrive you can't be overly policing them, that's not your job as a company.
Your job is not a political platform unless you work with politicians on their campaigns or are a politician / other form of politically affiliated / influenced company.
Politics can make people feel extremely uncomfortable especially if they feel suppressed and as a minority are bullied by other employees.
I made another longer comment about it on this thread.
The gist of it is that a competent HR department can make a statement without directly committing support to any particular organization or group that they aren’t comfortable with.
Saying “I refuse to comment and you’re not allowed to comment” is the worst way to go about it, literally anything would be better.
There are also ways to train on empathy, bias, and general employee-to-employee communication that can guide employees through those conversations with colleagues.
Regarding bias training that you mentioned, the Heterodox Academy did a literature review and concluded that there isn't adequate evidence to conclude efficacy and if anything the effects are deleterious on workplace cohesion.
It seems much more time-deaf to think that everyone wants to be involved in this highly stressful, chaotic game of identity politics. Some people just want to do their job. Personally, I want to focus on what I'm working on while at work, not have my boss preach their particular views at me. I bet the meetings/memos were not very tone-dead if you were there to work on what the company was doing.
My guess: 1-2% of those people are the loud, annoying group that demands everyone behave how they think they should, and the other 3-4% were people who saw an opportunity for a long paid vacation while they look for another role.
6 months of pay as severance. I could find another job in a couple weeks and I am not that skilled or experienced a software engineer. It would be quite tempting.
Companies aren't generally supposed to be political. Is the story here that Coinbase is offering a severance for employees that feel the company should be doing more? Seems like an incentivized quit.
This is incredibly naive. Companies hire lobbyists, make political donations, give seats on the board to former politicians, setup fake grass-roots campaign groups, play states off against each other for tax-breaks. It happens all the time.
I'm guessing now they're apolitical Coinbase wont be doing any of that.
Of course companies play politics to tilt the market in their favor. What I mean is that companies don't often take political stances like "we encourage all our employees to vote X" or "we believe candidate y is the right fellow" or even "we support z ballot initiative" as a company position. Companies might do that one hand removed, but almost never do it directly as a company policy. An example too would be "we support black lives matter". Some companies do, vast majority do not.
I feel like this is the start of a rising tide. I think Brian's stance is great, companies have missions, they should focus on those missions. Everything has become so political that your work, which occupies a large portion of your life, should not be divisive.
> ...your work, which occupies a large portion of your life, should not be divisive.
I get that desire, I really do, but I think it's so important to recognize that your work is not apolitical. It doesn't matter what you're building. What you build does not exist in a vacuum, and the decisions you make around politics at work are themselves political decisions.
This is really a noxious idea. It's like saying that because we all breathe the same air, everything I do affects you. No, not in the vast majority of cases.
Everything you do does affect the environment around you. For example if you take a Bahamas trip, you are paying to generate tons of CO2. If you buy a diesel car, or just driving one, you're affecting the shared air as well.
Yes that is true in a pedantic sense. It is also true that my gravitational force affects everyone in the world as I move about. But not enough to matter.
To me this take rolls into the general "silence is violence" or "either you're with us or against us" refrain that has become background noise to me. It reads the same as someone telling me I'm enabling fascism by not posting a black square on instagram or whatever.
I'm nearing the point of being aggressively dismissive towards this kind of attitude, because a lot of it doesn't even seem to be laid out in good faith. People are just addicted to being mad, addicted to being right, addicted to the idea that they can channel their anger through pop politics and get validation for it as a bonus.
I have an extremely low opinion of the people and groups who follow along with whatever pop social issue is trending today because they don't want to get in trouble, and IMHO those people aren't really worth interacting with because again, it's more about landing a spicy dunk on the bad guys (tm) and collecting heart icons than whatever issue they're using as a weapon today.
>your work is not apolitical. It doesn't matter what you're building
And the large majority of people at FANG have about as much control over the flow of information as a plumber has over the flow of shit from a city. They just keep the system running, they don't influence it.
But those political decisions are ones relevant to the mission of the company.
Coinbase probably shouldn't be involved in politics around police reform, fracking, climate change or the Second Amendment because they are orthogonal to its mission. Insert other topics as you see fit.
And hence its employees should leave their opinions of such matters at the door.
Coinbase should be focused on politics around global financial regulation. And its employees should focus their workplace political energy on those matters.
Also, it's generally just polite and respectful to your coworkers to provide a non-political, non-partisan workplace.
If the outcome of society would be the same if you exist or not then you are not political. For example if you don't vote and don't support any political causes, then the people who take the time to get involved decides everything and you had no influence.
There are 4 levels of competence. For all the people who know they are incompetence and therefore abstain from voting there are a lot of people (possibly more) that don't know their incompetence and decide to vote regardless. If you're not voting because you're uninformed, you're probably much more informed than many of the people who are voting.
> don't know their incompetence and decide to vote regardless
That's a very wrong way to understand what democracy means. If you're incompetent, you are still afforded a vote. And you sleep on the bed you make.
and in any case, the incompetence voter implies that they could be voting "wrong". This is a deep and insidious implication because implying something can be wrong also implies the other "competent" voters are "right". The very notion that one side is "right" is very anti-democratic.
If one million people don't care about changing the status quo and 50 do, the status quo will won't change. If one person doesn't care and 50 do, it's much more likely. The status quo exists in everyone who does nothing to change it, even if they don't move to actively affect things.
No stance means just that. Redefining terms and imposing a will is the overtly irrelevant and aggressive political posturing that these policies are trying to avoid.
Isn't 'no stance' just the 'null stance'? Similar to how one must reject the null hypothesis to accept another, one must reject the null stance to take another.
That is a mis-characterization. My no-stance stance is not that I support that status quo, it's that I'll try to care about myself and my friends and family no matter what you political idiots do. Communism? Sure. Fascism? Whatever. I'd rather that you didn't, but it's more productive to mitigate it for myself than to get involved either way.
Is it selfish? Probably, and I'm open and proud about that.
Yeah, the same way atheism is a religion and "off" is a TV channel.
Individualism as a political philosophy would be smth like advocating for libertarianism/adjacent stuff, etc.
The apolitical stance is the apolitical stance. I do not engage in politics unless it's a minimum-effort activity like the default mail-in voting (WA). Sure, I may know approximately what the best way to organize society is, and if aliens landed and put me in charge I'd become political; but as it is, I do not care, mostly because it's not productive, but in no small part because actively caring about how to organize society is heavily correlated with being very wrong (IMHO).
>Coinbase probably shouldn't be involved in politics around police reform, fracking, climate change or the Second Amendment because they are orthogonal to its mission.
It's impossible to not involve yourself in politics that effect your employee's everyday lives.
I'm sympathetic to this argument because on the face of it, it seems correct and should be the way we ideally do things.
But many things in the world that should not be politicized are, in fact, politicized. Perhaps Coinbase wants to hire a more diverse bunch of people, and starts an internal initiative to do so. Perhaps they do this not out of any political motivation, but because they genuinely believe (as they should!) that having a more diverse workforce will help them make better decisions about their product.
But of course there will be some (many?) who will decry this as Coinbase "being political". You just can't win, really.
I'm not coinbase, so I can only speculate as to their meaning. While it's possible to define "political" so abstractly that it becomes all-encompassing, it's pretty clear to me that they probably mean to prohibit political debates that are unrelated (or only very tenuously related) to their core mission.
"We should hire a more diverse workforce because diversity improves our collective judgment, thereby furthering our mission" is on its face a fine subject for discussion provided you're evaluating the claim on its merits and not sneaking in overtly political implications like "we have a moral responsibility to hire diverse candidates". One could envision a fruitful, dispassionate discussion about how much return on investment the company could expect from a diversity initiative, how that ROI stacks up against other opportunities, how to measure the ROI and make sure the initiative is meeting expectations, whether or not it runs afoul of anti-discrimination law, what kind of diversity (race, gender, viewpoint, etc) is most likely to yield the highest ROI, etc.
Of course, it's prudent to stay away from these kinds of charged topics altogether because it's very likely that you have employees that will take this as an opportunity to pollute a potentially productive conversation with their overtly political opinions.
That some things are easily abused by bad-faith employees doesn't mean that we should let bad faith employees have free reign.
If you want to have such a broad definition of political, then why restrict the whole fight to tech companies? Why aren't on the barricades about the fashion industry or traditional media?
Are you sure this isn't just an excuse to make things political in these west coast companies that are full of young, hot-headed, extremely left wing people?
I hope so. I enjoy talking about politics and social issues and think the discussion is important, but not at work. It's a distraction and it is alienating to employees who do not share the majority opinion.
I see it the other way around. (Almost) everything is political. The mission of the company is not disjoint from the society it is embedded in. Things have become divisive by being able to ignore and blend out the opposing views. By not talking and listening to one another.
This is just one more step in that direction.
Funnily enough, I think it has been extrapolated by Neal Stephenson in Diamond Age. We will end up having parallel societies which define themselves not by geographic boundaries, but by affiliation. A North Korean community could be your neighbour.
Do you believe end to end encryption is political? Do you believe that companies should disable E2E encryption in order to be "apolitical" in the eyes US's attorney general?
How do you believe Coinbase, a cryptocurrency corporation, will remain "a political" in the design of their systems given the changing political climate around crypto? Does that just mean bowing down to whatever the administration says? Do you believe Coinbase will remain "apolitical" is the US begins to enact policy that causes Coinbase users to find alternatives?
Do you believe Coinbase employees will have no opinion on the way the justice department handles cryptocurrency?
But you're deliberately avoiding the point that coinbase wants to make - which is that if the topic is relevant to the business (as determined by the owners of the business), then it's considered on-topic for work place political discussion and activism.
But if it's unrelated to the business, then the business is no place to undertake such activism.
> I'm curious what your definition of political is, because my gut feeling is that (Almost) nothing is political.
Politics is more than just the rituals of government officials or what gets written about in the politics section of the newspaper:
> Politics (from Greek: Πολιτικά, politiká, 'affairs of the cities') is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations between individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics)
For instance, this effort to create an "apolitical workplace" could probably be understood as political project to stamp out elements of bottom-up democratic political culture in favor of a more autocratic political culture. At work we keep our heads down and follow the edicts (mission) of our leaders.
1. relating to the government or public affairs of a country.
Not the one the parent probably means:
2. (DEROGATORY) done or acting in the interests of status or power within an organization rather than as a matter of principle.
Whatever a company does, it relates in some way to the public affairs of a country.
Either in what you offer, or what you need to produce your offer. Your company is hopefully affecting the public affairs of your country in more than one way.
And that I think had very much a place at work.
The delineation between public affair and private matter seems to be quite arbitrary at times.
I would say abortion is a private matter, or who you marry or which combination of sex chromosomes you have, but all those things are very high on the list of things being discussed.
Here I have to say, I'm more likely to give the point, that those topics are not professionally relevant, but neither is sports.
It's safe to say that a company can impact the public affairs of a country by creating economic value without taking an official speculative stance on e.g. the racial distribution of unjust police killings. It's pretty obvious to me when people talk about "leaving political topics out of the workplace" they mean "topics which are unrelated to one's work".
Arguments like "abortion is highly related to site reliability engineering" are pretty overtly disingenuous in a very clear-cut fashion.
> Here I have to say, I'm more likely to give the point, that those topics are not professionally relevant, but neither is sports.
Sports don't cause the same degree of strife in the workplace. No one is demanding anyone's termination because they like a different sports team or because they were caught in a photograph gesturing in a way that looks vaguely like the hook 'em horns gesture (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hook_%27em_Horns).
HTTPS is political (see attorney general of united states). Do you use HTTPS on your websites? (a step against the U.S. government position) Have you turned HTTPS off in your browser? (a step towards the U.S. government position) Do you implement forward perfect secrecy for HTTPS connections? (more against U.S. government position) How do you weigh it's threat to national security against it's protection from criminals for individuals and companies?
All of these actions can be viewed as political statements. Everything is political.
This does seem to be the standard Libertarian worldview, but no matter how much you intend to ignore the world around you, it exists and you're a part of it, and you answer to your neighbors.
> This does seem to be the standard Libertarian worldview, but no matter how much you intend to ignore the world around you, it exists and you're a part of it, and you answer to your neighbors.
One clever way to deeply entrench a political decision is to convince others that it's not a political decision at all. If you're successful, you've erected a barrier against your opponents by interfering with their ability to even conceive opposition to your position. It's sort of like the concept of Newspeak.
The opposite strategy is to talk about politics constantly, so that it's painfully obvious who's in the minority.
Which is better for a gay man in Saudi Arabia? A company where people only talk about work, or a company where everybody is expected to take a stance on homosexuality?
> The opposite strategy is to talk about politics constantly, so that it's painfully obvious who's in the minority.
> Which is better for a gay man in Saudi Arabia? A company where people only talk about work, or a company where everybody is expected to take a stance on homosexuality?
You're talking about something completely different. What I'm talking about is basically falsely depoliticizing a political decision, so people think it's something that cannot be changed, like nature or something. The reference to Newspeak, which was imagined as a way of dismantling the mental machinery of political opposition, should have made that clear. That you missed it is ironic given your username.
If you want to map the experience of a gay man in Saudi Arabia onto what I was talking about, he would marry a woman and not even think things could be any different.
The objection you and others are making to TFA is that you can't choose to be apolitical, because everything is political. Your contribution is to propose that people might claim things are apolitical to prevent people from realizing the truth about how political they actually are.
Your appeal to newspeak is pretty pointless, as it applies only inasmuch as it does to anyone who might claim that something is its opposite, for example the slogans "the personal is political" and "silence is violence".
Sure, if you accept lies like that, you may lose the ability to think about the true nature of those things.
But you haven't really contributed anything to the conversation. You're just saying "ah, but what if they're /lying/! To /trick us/!"
> The objection you and others are making to TFA is that you can't choose to be apolitical, because everything is political. Your contribution is to propose that people might claim things are apolitical to prevent people from realizing the truth about how political they actually are.
You're still not really getting what I was saying. Directly claiming something is apolitical won't actually create the state I was talking about. To do that you actually have to get a bunch of influential people to talk about some political idea like it was obviously some kind of natural or social law or something.
Not everything is political, but many people are ignorant of the political nature of many things.
> Your appeal to newspeak is pretty pointless, as it applies only inasmuch as it does to anyone who might claim that something is its opposite, for example the slogans "the personal is political" and "silence is violence".
You're thinking about the slogans like "freedom is slavery," which weren't Newspeak and would have been unexpressible in it.
> But you haven't really contributed anything to the conversation. You're just saying "ah, but what if they're /lying/! To /trick us/!"
I'm not sure I'm contributing the the conversion that you want to have, which makes it a little baffling why you're engaging with me and not one of "the others" who seem to be who you really want to engage with.
Even deciding what is political or not is political. If you try to limit the definition to something putatively objective like "directly relating to the function of government agencies" a great many topics are immediately ambiguous: institutionalized racism? marriage? the environment? the economy?
That's totally fair, I hadn't considered it from that perspective. In my mind politics are things like the tax rate. So a social issue could never be political.
> Even deciding what is political or not is political
No, the distinction is not whether somebody _decides_ if a topic is political or not, but that the conversations' intension is to convert the other party that your point of view is correct for society. I.e., you have to undertake political activism towards something for the topic to be political.
It's like religion as a topic of conversation, vs religious conversion. Two people can be talking about religion, but if neither is trying to "convert" the other, then this is not a religious conversion.
But if one party is talking with the intent to convert the other party to said religion, then it's a religious conversion. And the argument is that this should not happen in the workplace.
To me, "everything is political" is a bumper sticker version of the assertion that what is and isn't "political" in the sense of "political statement" is often way more subjective than we sometimes recognize it is.
If a coworker talks about his husband, is that a political statement? To some people, absolutely, right?
How about someone mentioning a concert that they've gone to, for an artist that's outspokenly political one way or another? Just a concert, right?
What about talking about a great movie or TV show, if those are, I don't know, "Sorry to Bother You" or "Lovecraft Country"?
Can you mention that you went to a gun show, or a shooting range?
Can you recommend a Jordan Peterson book?
Can you put an NRA logo on your car?
What about a BLM logo?
What about on your T-shirt?
If a coworker goes through a gender transition, how does that get handled in a way that everyone, across the board, considers apolitical? Good luck with that: the very act of transitioning is, to a significant portion of the population, itself political.
So, I mean, sure, not literally everything is political, but if you give the statement a bit more of a generous reading than "Come on, are you saying ice cream is political? Harrumph!", you can see the point being made.
To me, the deciding criteria is the intent of the person undertaking said action. Are they taking an action to express their allegiance to a political movement? Are they taking action to attempt to convince/recruit people to a cause they believe in?
Or are they taking action not for such purposes? For example, a gay person talking about their spouse to a colleague without the intent to change any political beliefs of anyone around them?
Missions are often in pursuit of political goals. (It's a political stance that promoting the use of cryptocurrency is good, and not one I share.)
But, this doesn't mean an organization has to take a position on every hot-button political issue. Even the Biden campaign, a a political organization if there ever was one, needs to focus on getting their candidate elected, and not on things that divide Democrats.
To agree on a mission doesn't mean people on the organization need to agree on everything. Putting aside any differences on stuff not related to the mission is important in being able to work together as a team.
But that's not what is being addressed. Not getting involved in "every hot-button political issue" is clearly advisable, but Coinbase is preemptively deciding that all political conversation is off the table while they run a highly unregulated multi-billion dollar currency exchange.
There are going to be political issues that involve Coinbase, and if they're deciding already to ignore any role they play in society, we need to be highly critical of every decision they make moving forward.
Coinbase is far from unregulated, they're subject to and enforce the same KYC rules that banks do, go ahead and try to buy some BTC there anonymously and see how far you get.
If you define “political” in such a way that nothing can be “apolitical” then the word “political” completely loses its meaning. The whole point of any adjective is to distinguish between things. It’s a tautology.
One's preferred flavor of ice cream is apolitical. But anything that involves more than one person, and actual or potential conflicts between people, is political. Status quo, as a whole, is political.
And that constitutes a much larger part of our lives than is traditionally acknowledged. Which is itself, also, a political matter, because designating a subset of actual politics as "officially politics", and then marginalizing that subset, is one way to slow down further political developments in that department.
I don't think your comment is entirely true. For example I think a lot of purchases of the Bernie Sanders flavored ice cream from Ben & Jerry's had nothing to do with the actual taste of the ice cream.
> "Everything is political" is literally the working definition of totalitarianism.
No, its not.
"Everything must be directed by the coercive power of the state" is. The former does not imply the latter (the scope of the coercive power of the state is, itself, a political issue.)
Certainly not, because the question of whether a government ought to be involved in some interaction is, clearly, a political question, and asking that question is clearly not equivalent to saying that the government ought to be involved in all interactions.
>and asking that question is clearly not equivalent to saying that the government ought to be involved in all interactions.
Yes, actually it absolutely is. Putting everything up for grabs for state (or in modern day; the mob) control is literally totalitarianism. People who "don't understand" this are either abysmally stupid or are power mad imbeciles who are pretending not to understand for Machiavellian reasons.
Saying "everything is political" is putting everything up for grabs for state (or mob) control whether you said it aloud or not. Doesn't matter if it's a tyranny by some generalissimo or amorphous mob of twitter gibbering nitwits or tiki torch bearing numskulls.
If "everything is political" there is no room for private life, which is the only life that matters.
No, as I said, the statement "the government should not be involved in your private life" is very clearly a political statement, because it relates (directly!) to the policies and actions of the government. And that is, of course, the opposite of totalitarianism.
That's like saying that if everything is physical, then nothing is. "Everything," by which we mean many things, is political in the sense that it has political aspects that should be recognised, but those aspects are very different from one thing to another. Political means pertaining to the distribution of power and resources in a society. But what kind of power/resources, which society and what form of distribution vary greatly. That many things have a colour doesn't mean the concept of colour is meaningless, nor that it draws its meaning from things that don't have a colour, because colour is an aspect with many hues. In short, "everything is political" means learning to look at the political aspects of things. The goal is not to distinguish between the political and apolitical, but between the many different shades of the political.
The mission of the company isn’t completely disjoint from the broader political context, but relevance isn’t a binary proposition. If Google’s mission is to make the world’s information more accessible, and it stopped everything and put all of its efforts toward (for example) minimizing unjust police killings, how much closer to its mission would it be than if it focused on making search better (even if we assume all Google employees have exactly the same idea about how to achieve it)? I would argue that investing in search is an astronomically better investment with respect to Google’s mission. Never mind how unproductive that effort would certainly be, considering how divisive this topic has become (to be clear, the division is about whether or not unjust police killings are strongly racially biased, not whether or not unjust police killings are ideal).
I agree that our divisiveness is caused by an unwillingness to listen to one another, but I don’t think avoiding discussion in the workplace is making us less willing to listen. People have lots of opportunities to listen to opposing views outside of the workplace, and yet many positively pride themselves on ignoring dissenting opinions—ostracizing one’s family for wrongthink is a veritable badge of honor in certain ideological communities. I don’t see how bringing that divisiveness into the workplace is going to soften those people.
If someone is deeply committed to ignorance and divisiveness, allowing them to proselytize at work doesn’t seem fruitful (everyone who is not committed to ignorance has likely already considered their views) and is very likely going to be harmful. On the other hand, there is a chance that by ignoring politics at work, people might have a chance to build relationships with reasonable people (who they otherwise would have written off or persecuted for heresy) which might have a deradicalizing effect (if you look up to someone who is charitable, honest, and open minded, you are probably more likely to emulate those qualities yourself).
I think a lot of governments would be much quicker to regulate companies like Google and Facebook if they weren't also fighting for these political issues. At the end of the day, these political stances help further the companies original mission.
This comment doesn't make much sense to me. I'm not sure if you're talking about political stances that are meaningfully related to the company's mission, and in either case how that would affect governments' willingness to regulate those companies. Are you simply arguing that governments would be more willing to regulate Google if Google didn't spend so much lobbying against regulation? In that case, obviously (this is pretty much tautologically true), but how does that relate to what we're discussing? If we're talking about political stances like "police shootings are unjustly biased against black people", then that's about as unrelated to Google's mission as one could imagine. It seems like mental gymnastics either way.
That's an uncharitably pedantic way of looking at it. I think the parent meant that (almost) every endeavor will have some element of politics in it. That doesn't mean the word "politics" has no meaning.
> I think the parent meant that (almost) every endeavor will have some element of politics in it
This is textbook pedantry. Obviously "don't discuss politics in the workplace" means "don't discuss divisive topics, especially when they're not particularly relevant to your work".
Of course everything is "technically political", but that's not how anyone uses "political" except when they're trying to argue in bad faith (specifically engaging in tautology).
Gay marriage is a divisive topic in the USA. A gay man talking about his wedding around the water cooler is political. A straight man talking about his wedding around the water cooler is not political. The only non-political choice is not allowing either to occur. Because if you allow both, that is a political statement. If you only allow one, that is too.
The funny thing about politics is: a company doesn't get to choose what topics are divisive. People do. All it takes is one person to strongly hold a belief in the office to make it political.
> A gay man talking about his wedding around the water cooler is political
Not like "we need to put gay marriage banners on our home page" is political.
I really think people should start respecting the difference.
> All it takes is one person to strongly hold a belief in the office to make it political.
No. It requires them to act on it. To engage in political activity.
It's not political to be a communist at work. It's political to use this belief to steer how the job is done or how the company should perform its mission, or indeed to try to change its mission.
> Gay marriage is a divisive topic in the USA. A gay man talking about his wedding around the water cooler is political. A straight man talking about his wedding around the water cooler is not political.
Talking about one's wedding around the water cooler is not political, irrespective of the speaker's orientation OR the audience's opinions about gay marriage. Similarly, an argument in favoring or opposing gay marriage would be political irrespective of the speaker's sexuality or the audience's opinions. This seems perfectly straightforward to me. It seems like you're trying to make a problem where none exists.
While that's true now, it wasn't true 10 (or even 5 in some places) years ago. It's arguably not even true in some places today. Just this week, the Supreme Court denied cert on a lawsuit about same sex marriage (Kim Davis).
You’re confusing “controversial” with “political”. Someone’s marriage may be controversial to someone, but talking about it isn’t political (at least not in the sense we’re discussing here). It becomes political when someone is arguing for or against gay marriage.
Seems like a reasonable interpretation in my experience. I have definitely seen people told not to talk about what you might call controversial because it is political.
Don't talk about your abortion and how it made your life better or worse.
Don't talk about your birth control.
Don't talk about how you were explicitly told by an authority figure you were not worthy of a job because of your sex/gender.
Easy for me to imagine someone being told not to talk about their gay marriage under similar circumstances.
I think commonly used phrases are "its not for polite company", "keep politics out of it", "don't bring your politics here", etc.
It is obviously selective enforcement of the rules, but that is a common and unfortunately often effective shield.
Luckily I have heard/see less of the above over the last 10 years than the 10 years before that.
I’ve never heard anyone told not to talk about those things because they’re political, but I could believe they were told not to talk about them because they’re controversial.
It is possible for a subject to be both political and controversial.
I think the fact that there are two sides to US politics, and those two sides split cleanly along almost every controversial topic, is causing the confusion. Because it's both.
Abortions are controversial because some people believe they should not be allowed to happen, while others belive women should be in control of their own bodies. Abortions are political because the Republican party has a publicly-stated policy of wanting to legislate against abortion. The Democratic party has a publicly-stated policy of wanting to maintain women's ability to get an abortion if they need one.
Thus a controversial topic is also political. Any discussion of the topic will inevitably reduce to a political discussion because the two political parties are so closely aligned with the two sides of the conversation.
Because of the way that US politics has been so data-driven, focus-group informed, every controversial topic is being used as a method of creating political traction. So everything controversial is becoming political. Even something as banal as wearing a mask during a pandemic is turned into a political statement.
> It is possible for a subject to be both political and controversial
I didn’t claim otherwise. I believe that people are told not to talk about their abortion because it’s controversial, but not because it’s political barring perhaps a few people who aren’t educated enough to understand the distinction.
> Abortions are political because the Republican party has a publicly-stated policy of wanting to legislate against abortion.
The Republican party’s political advocacy is obviously political, but it doesn’t follow that any given account of an abortion is political. Both are controversial, however.
> So everything controversial is becoming political.
Controversial things frequently are political, but that doesn’t mean any particular speech about a controversial topic is political speech. You seem to be confusing a prohibition about politics with a prohibition against any topic that has a political aspect. So at coinbase, a gay man could talk about his marriage despite that gay marriage is also a political subject (and also a controversial topic in some spheres, albeit probably not the SV spheres), but he (and any employee for that matter) couldn’t advocate for or against gay marriage policy or norms.
The phases I use in my response above explicitly often explicitly use the word politics. The people saying that are not being narrow with their definitions like you are here.
So if people live their life having people around them using the word politics like in my phrases above they will also start using the word that way. A way that does not match up with your definitions.
> You’re confusing “controversial” with “political”.
So when you say things like the above it comes off to me as unreasonable/uncharitable. Since the people you are talking to are using a set of definitions that are relatively common in my experience.
edit: unreasonable -> unreasonable/uncharitable
---
> I’ve never heard anyone told not to talk about those things because they’re political, but I could believe they were told not to talk about them because they’re controversial.
Knowledge and understanding of a topic is required before reasoned action is taken. If you can not talk about abortion, birth control, sexual/gender discrimination, gay marriage, and more because it is controversial then we might be getting in to an area where speech is so restricted that it impedes knowledge transfer and understanding on those topics.
In order to have an informed populace then need to be exposed to things, sometime controversial. If you remove a reasonably large mechanism for that, conversation at work, it will have political consequences.
>Knowledge and understanding of a topic is required before reasoned action is taken. If you can not talk about abortion, birth control, sexual/gender discrimination, gay marriage, and more because it is controversial then we might be getting in to an area where speech is so restricted that it impedes knowledge transfer and understanding on those topics.
And you can research and discuss those topics outside of work.
You're not being paid to show up to work and form PACs. You're not being paid to show up to work to virtue signal about the most fashionable wedge issue of the day. You're not being paid to show up to work and sow discord by assuming moral high ground and vilifying the other side. etc., etc.
>In order to have an informed populace then need to be exposed to things, sometime controversial.
The political culture status quo at Bay Area companies is that this is an alt-right talking point.
>If you remove a reasonably large mechanism for that, conversation at work, it will have political consequences.
Conversation at work absolutely should not be a large mechanism for political discussion. It's work. If there are political consequences because workers are no longer allow to virtue signal all day, then that speaks more about their weak mental state than it does about politics.
>Knowledge and understanding of a topic is required before reasoned action is taken. If you can not talk about abortion, birth control, sexual/gender discrimination, gay marriage, and more because it is controversial then we might be getting in to an area where speech is so restricted that it impedes knowledge transfer and understanding on those topics.
And you can research and discuss those topics outside of work.
You're not being paid to show up to work and form PACs. You're not being paid to show up to work to virtue signal about the most fashionable wedge issue of the day. You're not being paid to show up to work and sow discord by assuming moral high ground and vilifying the other side. etc., etc.
>In order to have an informed populace then need to be exposed to things, sometime controversial.
The political culture status quo at Bay Area companies is that this is an alt-right talking point.
>If you remove a reasonably large mechanism for that, conversation at work, it will have political consequences.
Conversation at work absolutely should not be a large mechanism for political discussion. It's work. If there are political consequences because workers are no longer allow to virtue signal all day, then that speaks more about their weak mental state than it does about politics.
> And you can research and discuss those topics outside of work.
In my experience in the USA it is common for conversations at work to be about family, kids, life experiences(good and bad), current events, etc. It is something people bond over and use to help form a common company culture.
Different companies vary what is allowed and or encouraged and experience different benefits and consequences.
> You're not being paid to show up to work and form PACs. You're not being paid to show up to work to virtue signal about the most fashionable wedge issue of the day. You're not being paid to show up to work and sow discord by assuming moral high ground and vilifying the other side. etc., etc.
I do not see anyone in this thread advocating for anything that extreme.
>>In order to have an informed populace then need to be exposed to things, sometime controversial.
> The political culture status quo at Bay Area companies is that this is an alt-right talking point.
I am not in the know about bay area culture but that does not match my limited view from the outside.
> Conversation at work absolutely should not be a large mechanism for political discussion. It's work. If there are political consequences because workers are no longer allow to virtue signal all day, then that speaks more about their weak mental state than it does about politics.
My focus on for this comment was not politic conversation in the work place but on how removing a large mechanism of knowledge and understanding transferal in the work place would have political consequences for society.
>In my experience in the USA it is common for conversations at work to be about family, kids, life experiences(good and bad), current events, etc. It is something people bond over and use to help form a common company culture.
None of which are politics, so we agree.
>I do not see anyone in this thread advocating for anything that extreme.
Did you by chance not RTFA? Employees are literally planning virtual walkouts because they felt that Coinbase didn't virtue signal enough.
>I am not in the know about bay area culture but that does not match my limited view from the outside.
Your limited view is in total contrast to reality. I've lived in the Bay Area for the past 8 years, and attempting to consider outside viewpoints that may be controversial might as well make you a Nazi sympathizer. https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/14/us/berkeley-ben-shapiro-speec...
>My focus on for this comment was not politic conversation in the work place but on how removing a large mechanism of knowledge and understanding transferal in the work place would have political consequences for society.
This is a non sequitur. No one is suggesting removing knowledge transfer and communication at work. People are suggesting limiting the amount of political activism at work that's outside of the scope of what you were paid to do (the company's general mission).
> This is a non sequitur. No one is suggesting removing knowledge transfer and communication at work. People are suggesting limiting the amount of political activism at work that's outside of the scope of what you were paid to do (the company's general mission).
I did not suggest anyone here was advocated for that in this thread. I provided examples above where people are told not to talk about, abortion, contraceptives, discrimination based on gender/sex, conversations about a gay marriage because they are "politics". Hence why some people are objecting to removing political conversations from work.
It was part of back and forth conversation with throwaway894345.
Being open about something that can land you in jail in some countries is taking a political stand. If I am an Atheist and I keep that to myself, I can travel to places I wouldn't be able to safely go if I were open about my religion.
And before anyone says anything, when religion informs lawmaking, it becomes political.
Ah, another "everything is political" argument. Strangely, the "everything is political" crowd seems the most concerned with Coinbase's no-politics stance. It's as if they fear the policy will have a real impact. But shouldn't they know better? After all, the policy doesn't even make sense since everything is political.
Of course, I'm asking rhetorically. They know perfectly what it means and they don't like it.
To answer your question, no I don't believe "gay man talking about his wedding" will fall under what's not allowed to be discussed around a water cooler at Coinbase.
Politics is the process of determining the allocation and distribution of scarce resources, status, and power.
Unless you are living in a post-scarcity, post-status, post-power anarchist society, populated entirely by The New Soviet Man (or some other fictional relative thereof), everything that's meaningful is, indeed, political.
You can draw a contrast between personal politics and organizational politics. An organization can be explicit that it engages in organizational politics, but bars personal politics. That is what Coinbase is currently doing[1]. That's the CEO's, and the board's prerogative.
[1] It does, however, falsely claim that its organizational political activity is somehow apolitical. It's not.
What meaning are you using then? Even the most basic dictionary definition of "politics" is something like "all the activities involved in determining the policies and actions of an organization or government."
If everything is political, including building a table ("because people can sit at a table") or breathing ("it's literally a life and death situation"), then "it's political" has no useful meaning. If a descriptive term doesn't serve as a means of distinguishing things, it's not a descriptive term.
In this conversation I think it is fairly clear we're talking about government politics. And I would say the majority of things you do in your life do not (and should not) involve government politics. Obviously "apolitical" in this context does not mean Coinbase will lack "office politics".
I tend to treat politics and religion as subjects best dealt with on my own time. The company is paying me to get results for the company, not the larger society. If I somehow disagree with the perceived politics, I’m free to seek other employment. Implicit in this position is that the company doesn’t get to dictate either politics or religion handled in my personal time.
So if you have a job you like, at a company that up to now has been only making products that you have no problem with, and they started working on something that you found morally reprehensible and assigned you to work on it, either you would work on it without bringing up your concerns or you would quit?
The problem is almost never an issue of the ethical nature of the company's own product or service. The "politicization" problem is largely around social activism that is adjacent to the company's mission.
Which is why Coinbase is saying specifically there are politics which are central to their mission that they still must naturally engage with.
I think any engineer who has a moral quandary about the work the are doing should absolutely take it up with management, up to including whistle-blowing or resigning. Professional Engineers put their license on the line with this, mere computer engineers may not have so much at stake professionally but are equally ethically bound.
> you would work on it without bringing up your concerns or you would quit?
let me reverse this, and present a different scenario. You are doing your job, but you feel strongly about a certain political movement (be it BLM or abortion rights, or whatnot). You tell your boss that you are going to spend some work time to talk to other employees and may be convince them to join your cause. What should the boss do? Let you work on it without bringing up their concern? Or fire you?
Well, in my case, that situation would never arise (see previous comments). But, if I were the boss, I would advise the employee to either do that on their own time, or seek other employment. Again, I believe strongly that a work environment is not the place for personal politics or religion, unless that is the purpose of the business (the one concession I’ll make).
Except that isn't what's happening at Coinbase. Coinbase is still making the same product it made six months ago. It's the activists who want Coinbase to start working on something else.
If I worked for a toy maker who suddenly decided to make land mines disguised as teddy bears, then I would absolutely have to quit, if we were in a disagreement over why this should happen.
If I knew that they manufactured these land mine bears before I started, I wouldn’t be there anyway.
I think the relevant distinction that Brian makes is not "political vs not-political" but "relevant or not relevant to the business". It seems they are comfortable engaging on political issues that are directly related to what they are doing. For example, affirmative action is arguably a political topic, but it would be on the table for discussion at Coinbase because it's relevant to how they hire.
You only have so much time, money, energy and attention, and they are choosing that they do not want to actively spend that energy on active activism as a company outside of their company mission.
Serving coffee is not political. Planning the network installation is not political. Code reviews, cleaning your office, optimizing the VM, getting a bandwidth deal, negotiating the SaaS pricing, choosing ingredients for the new dish, figuring out how many loads of gravel are needed for the landfill, picking a guy to fix the fence ...
It's 99% not political.
Google search is barely political, ads are a little bit.
Social Media is political and not that-that much more.
It's 100% fine for you to 'work on something consistent with your political views' but at the same time just 'pick the place' instead of 'making the place' inherently political.
Don't newspapers report on masks? Are they political as well? Doesn't TV? Why is all the politics revolving around these west coast tech companies?
Could it be that it's actually not that political, it's just that these companies are filled by extremely left wing west coast people who want to make it political?
Of course newspapers are political. I don't understand how this is even a point you're confused about, unless you believe in a truly extreme form of cultural relativism.
You obviously have an axe to grind against a particular political spectrum, so I will pose a more direct example that does not involve it.
Is Russia Today political? Is choosing to display it prominently in a search result political? Is choosing to display a 'this is state sponsored news' tag on it political? Is not choosing to display that tag on a link to the CBC, or NPR not a political decision?
If you don't think RT is political, I can go down the list until we find something that is. Zero hedge? QAnon? The International Council of Communism? The newsletter published by your local KKK chapter? BLM?
The reason the work of tech companies is political is because they've installed themselves as gatekeepers of political information. If they were dumb pipes, this wouldn't be an issue. They aren't, though.
You didn't actually consider the fact that I might have an axe to grind towards everyone who makes the workplace political, and toxic by alienating people with minority view points?
Would you consider it possible I'm a liberal myself? And that my liberalismi is exactly the reason it's difficult for me to accept this sort of behavior?
Google is making everything political with its "Machine Learning Fairness" initiative. Like when you google image search "european art" or "white men".
You'd think European art was 50% black person portraits and that 50% of white men were criminals or black.
What I understand from what you are saying, and with what I can agree is, that not everything you do, has to be or should be a political statement.
But the point I trying to make is, that "apolitical" is not the absence of political. It is a political choice.
Here a definition of apolitical: "not interested or involved in politics"
> Serving coffee is not political.
Which coffee do you serve? If you don't care, you are apolitical, but you can either serve coffee with child labour or not.
> Planning the network installation is not political.
So, it will include equipment from Huawei? Or Cisco?
> Code reviews,
If someone puts in there a "joke", do you address it? Should you?
> cleaning your office, optimizing the VM,
Yeah, probably not.
> getting a bandwidth deal, negotiating the SaaS pricing, choosing ingredients for the new dish,
To which standard do you hold your suppliers? Are they subscribing to any social corporate responsibility standard? Are you? Are you trying to make a vegan dish or not? (Not that I care, I am apolitical there, but I do not think, it is not political)
> figuring out how many loads of gravel are needed for the landfill,
Probably not.
> picking a guy to fix the fence ..
Are you rejecting the guy who has a MAGA bumper on his truck?
> Google search is barely political,
Really? There was just recently a case of republicans complaining about how they are ranked. What about Google in China? Or Hong Kong?
> It's 100% fine for you to 'work on something consistent with your political views' but at the same time just 'pick the place' instead of 'making the place' inherently political.
Here I think, I can understand that you want to say, that all the points I just made, are likely to be unproductive to be discussed at the workplace. And I would agree.
You may say, you are tired of hearing those issues, and I can understand.
But I would say, one doesn't make a place inherently political, it is. Being apolitical doesn't make it go away, that decisions have an impact on the public affairs of a country. In a small and intangible way probably, but so does a vote.
Choosing coffee is not child labour, bad jokes can happen anywhere, Huawei/Not Huawei is a security choice not a political one ... and for god's sakes we're picking our caprenters based in their bumpers stickers? No. I don't care what bumper stickers my carpenter has, and although I personally hate Trump, I don't care one bit that he has such a bumper sticker, and nobody else should either.
99.99% of Google content is mundane and not political.
They're not banning a lot from Google search other than really illegal stuff.
'Choosing the SaaS vendor based on price' is not just 'going with the status quo.
I get what you are trying to say, I just don't agree.
I don't even think that workplaces embracing popular social issues directly that much, what matters is addressing the social issues directly, not as a matter of populism.
Saying "our company doesn't hire black people, that doesn't seem fair, can we think about that" is 100% reasonable, but making public statements about BLM etc. is more political, less pragmatic.
What's funny is that traditional media has just as much issues with misinformation and bias, yet the whole discussion around how content related to the election might not be straight and honest revolves completely around tech companies.
For some reason it's just the west coast tech companies where information or search is political, but with traditional media it's not?
Search for "american mathematician" on Google and the first six images that come back with the search results are of black mathematicians, 3 of them women.
That is political.
Nothing wrong with female or black mathematicians, the more the better, but that's not how it went down.
If I worked at Google and they asked me to code that, I would have said, "Sure, I can do that", which would be a non-political decision, but whoever decided on how that should be implemented was making a political decision.
> The mission of the company is not disjoint from the society it is embedded in.
If it cannot be disjoint, then it seems like it has become a requirement for it to be aligned in only one acceptable direction - hence why Coinbase's move is apparently controversial. Failure to actively support the standardized and approved message is apparently not acceptable!
> This is just one more step in that direction.
One more misstep. The combination of this effect with polarization means it's only a matter of time before someone realizes there's actually going to be a market for legitimately countercultural companies that reach out to those who don't walk the new party line. Since there's enough of them to elect a president, it's probably high time for some brave company to take you up on your suggestion that everything be political.
You can make a connection between the work you do and society at large without getting into unproductive arguments on company time. Think that sort of thing has value? That's fine: do it outside of the time the company carves out for you to perform your normal duties.
The only people who could think that are people who do not have to deal with people different to them in their daily life at all. Having three shades of skin tone on software developers that all went to Stanford does not count for your difference quota.
Money is money, and the money of a jew, nazi, gay, christian, muslim or pedophile are all equally good. Anyone rejecting money because they don't agree with where it comes from is either lying or about to be eaten alive by someone who doesn't.
There is a reason why everyone in China is trying to escape to our system, while they have invented personal money - in the form of your social score.
I certainly agree that the mission of a company can (and preferably) be more than just for profit. However, "to be political" is still a pretty wide range of possible missions. Who calls the shots about what you're going to be political about, and which side you take? And when a group of employees disagree with the shots being called, what kinds of reactions are appropriate or not?
I'll take a shot:
- I think compelled activism is inappropriate. You know, the "silence is violence" stuff.
- I think expecting to have power to set a company's political agenda and expressing anger when you don't get your way is inappropriate. That power belongs to the board. Employment and stock-options are not "fractions of board seats".
> Employment and stock-options are not "fractions of board seats".
i agree that employment is not "fractions of board seats. But stock options (when converted to stock) holds voting power, and thus _do_ represent "factions of board seats". Very little amount, but an amount nonetheless.
I would argue that the board wouldn’t exist without the people that make up the company. I would also argue that with monied interests and lobbyists in Washington, one of the last places that people can really effect societal change is at the work place. Companies have become the power center in American politics, so of course activism is going to rise up there.
As far as compelled activism goes, I feel that silence _is_ violence.
“The Only Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil is that Good Men Do Nothing” (JFK, Burke, Mill...)
It's the framing of everything in good vs evil, monochromatic terms that actually increases divisiveness and prevents deescalation of conflict. Forcing people to take one's side or else "be on the wrong side" in a multifaceted environment is not appropriate for a workplace, where people expect to be able to set aside differences to work together on work itself.
I agree. But that's not a problem inherent in bringing political issues to the work place.
This is a whole different problem which exists regardless of the work place.
It's the zeitgeist, it's the result of attention economy, and massive social media.
I mean it’s absolutely appropriate to take a side on certain issues. I've always refused to work on military hardware for example. If my employer started working on military hardware, I’d refuse to contribute and I would try to encourage others to refuse as well. But actually we all have things we would refuse to do. Usually it’s not an issue because both management and the workers feel the same way. Most people wouldn’t want to create a product designed to murder people for example.
The issue comes when some people are uncomfortable with work being done and others aren’t. Those who are uncomfortable are probably going to want to have discussions about it. If I was asked to contribute to a system that put people (any people) in to cages I would refuse. But that’s precisely what ICE is doing in the USA. If such a contract came up you can bet it’s something I’d want to talk about with my coworkers!
The situation with Coinbase is the opposite of what you describe. Coinbase isn't moving into new territory that its employees find objectionable, e.g. by starting to develop crypto for the military. The activists at Coinbase are angry because the company isn't moving into their demanded new territory.
Millions of Americans are unemployed, hundreds of thousands are dying from a pandemic, tens of thousands are in lines at food banks, there are children in cages, women being given forced hysterectomies, and there are literally neo-Nazis that the President refuses to disavow.
If you’re not going to take a stand now, when will you?
So what about Twitter flagging Trump’s tweets? Do you think that happened without a politicised workplace discussion? With the amount of power that tech wields over society these discussions _have_ to happen.
That doesn't require a politicized workplace. Only a mission-focused one. One of Twitter's mission could very conceivably be to attach warnings to misinformation, irrespective of what political agenda it is intended to advance.
An argument could be made that this mission is politicising freedom of speech, in that a tech company is now determining what is misinformation and what is not. This very topic was a point of contention in the congressional antitrust hearings.
A company operates in a political environment, whether or not people want to acknowledge that. Workers have real power and can advance their goals whether or not management wants to accept it. Politics in the workplace isn’t something to shy from, but to embrace. Any company that tries to refute politics will find themselves behind the curve on something they should very much so try to stay ahead of.
I don't see how a tech company being the final arbiter on what is deemed misinformation on its own platform is politicizing free speech.
Yes you could stretch any argument to categorize anything as what you want, but I think under a reasonable interpretation of 'politicized workplace', Twitter could institute a policy of adding warnings to content it deems misinformation without politicizing its workplace.
As for workers having power, yes, but the company has the right to dictate what the worker does in their capacity as workers, if they choose to stay employed at the company.
Maintaining a mission focused company that doesn't allow employees to turn the company into a vehicle to advance a political cause unrelated to that mission is good for productivity.
I am operating on an underlying principle that others may not share, but this could help elucidate why I disagree with many fellow liberals on this front:
I'm trying to solve for how decision making power is allocated without making assumptions about which side is right or wrong. In other words, the argument that "The company must do XYZ because this political cause is simply on the RIGHT side of history!" is not acceptable to me, even though I often personally agree that the cause really _is_ right.
Companies that have a mission "to change the world" attract employees on the basis of activisism in the world. Heck this company is trying to overhaul the entire monetary system. If succeeded this will effect the lives of billions of people. Recruiting people with this premise, and then telling them actually, you don't have any say in what the company actually does, and the ways it changes the world, that actually it was all a joke, and so just shut up and do what the board says because they own all the power and rights is pretty disappointing.
I never believed the whole "change the world" SV nonsense, and always knew it was nothing more than cynical marketing. But at least in places like Google the employees who were brought on that premise, fight to achieve it, and make it real.
Coinbase is still hypocritical, and I wouldn't expect much more.
But this whole, "you are only a serf and the whole of power morally belongs to the board" reveals an unsettling feudal mentality.
It would be entirely possible to 'change the world' just by transforming the monetary system though, would it not? Yes, that is in itself a goal with political undercurrents and ultimately would clearly involve political decisions, but they are not at that stage yet and therefore I think it's quite reasonable to want to stay apolitical, where possible.
Serfs are (were) bound to their feudal overlord. Their children were bound as well. They couldn’t quit. They’ve had no political power. In many places they were even denied access to courts — they were forced to arbitrage through their lord. There was nothing they could do to improve their or their children’s lives.
I don’t think it compares, even as a hyperbole, to Coinbase employees.
> I never believed the whole "change the world" SV nonsense, and always knew it was nothing more than cynical marketing.
It certainly is.
But I like to believe, there is an underlying reasonable philosophy behind it.
Every company tries to make a difference, that is its value proposition. If your value proposition has a negative social impact, it is not a sustainable business model. Legislation will eventually render your business untenable. (Even if it takes centuries or decades like tobacco, or fossil fuel).
So, considering your social impact makes business sense.
To quote Paul Drucker:
"Responsibility for social impacts is a management responsibility — not because it is a social responsibility, but because it is a business responsibility. The ideal is to make elimination of such an impact into a business opportunity. But wherever that cannot be done, the design of the appropriate regulation with the optimal trade-off balance—and public discussion of the problem and promotion of the best regulatory solution — is management’s job."
If I could separate myself from certain segments of our society and never have to deal with them ever again, I'd gladly do that. However I don't keep my fingers crossed. They are too dependent on my money to implement their policies, I doubt they will ever leave productive members alone
Activists never planned to try to talk and listen and went too far in this direction. If it keeps going, at some point it becomes untenable and needs to stop. It's not business' job to teach activists how to live, they must figure it out by themselves.
> Funnily enough, I think it has been extrapolated by Neal Stephenson in Diamond Age. We will end up having parallel societies which define themselves not by geographic boundaries, but by affiliation. A North Korean community could be your neighbour.
Perhaps less Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age, and more Cory Doctorow's Eastern Standard Tribe:
Do you have an example where in a political company both views were heard?
Typically the whole discussion around overly political workplaces revolves around west coast tech companies, which are a monoculture of liberalism. Republican views are definitely not heard or dealt with.
I think people are talking past each other with the word 'political'. Some may define it as the execution of governance, and others may define it as partisan gamesmanship, and of course lots around and in between.
How should I properly demonstrate my wokeness while pooping? What about when I'm walking my dog? If everything is political I don't want to be seen as one of those complicit through silence while doing the dishes types of people.
Unfortunately I think politics is unavoidable in some (many?) businesses. A financial services company that deals with new currency instruments that aim to supplement or supplant fiat currency is going to be neck-deep in politics pretty often.
Coinbase will have to make political decisions, and it's natural that people within the company will have differing opinions -- informed by their personal politics -- as to the course those decisions should take.
Coinbase says they want to be political insofar as it relates to and advances their mission. But political activism that is outside this scope is a distraction and what they are barring from company premises. I assume they also oppose political initiatives being taken without the approval of management.
Their position is pretty straightforward and sensible, even if it is not entirely straightforward to implement in an even handed way.
Personally I would like it if the workplace became a whole lot more political, seeing as the status quo is that you have no say in how the company is ran or what it does with its profits, and if you don't like it you can starve. Ignoring politics doesn't make it not exist.
> status quo is that you have no say in how the company is ran or what it does with its profits
that is the rights of ownership, and is a capitalist ideal. To change it is to strip these rights from ownership and give it to those who do not currently have ownership (and is basically what communism is).
But he’s still being political when he bothers to look at numbers of non white employees or talks about “diversity in tue workplace”. All these are political agenda by another name.
I think Coinbase will now attract/retain fewer conscientious employees. The kind of employees who definitely won't leave are the ones with careerist/mercenary personality types. If that becomes a vicious cycle ( per the 'like attracts like' thing https://youtu.be/wTgQ2PBiz-g?t=75 ), the culture could lead to wide-spread ass-covering and fraud.
Then again, this isn't an area in which I have some particular expertise. Maybe it will work out perfectly.
Another possibility that occurs to me is that some employees are very conscientious, but have value systems that are looked down upon in mainstream Silicon Valley culture.
I could imagine such employees being more willing to stay with Coinbase when that potential source of strife is removed.
I think the opposite. The employees who stay are the kind who agree with the mission and want to focus on it. The kind who leave were focused on something other than advancing the company's goals. The company will be more effective at achieving its goals with a workforce that is all pointed in the same direction with less distraction. And the CEO mentioned that the people who left were not disproportionately underrepresented, so they are not losing diversity, just increasing focus.
My thinking is that it takes a certain personality type to whistle-blow, or push back against SOP for moralistic (or customer-focused) reasons. I don't want to overplay my hand here — I don't know for certain — but Coinbase's current messaging strikes me as off-putting to that sort of personality type.
“The kind who leave were focused on something other than advancing the company's goals.”
I’m not sure that’s what happened here. This was started because employees were upset that the company wasn’t taking a stance to support the Black Lives Matter movement. If my employer decided to be apolitical around something as basic as saying racism is a thing and Black people shouldn’t be killed by the police I’d certainly leave too.
Don't think that people tho don't want to bring their politics to work are 'less conscientious' - this is in fact almost a form of bigotry. "Oh those people who don't want to bring politics to work just 'don't care'". Not true.
Life is complicated, we have a lot of things to focus on, most people like to do work at work, not get tangled in what might be suppressive or irrelevant social webs.
My bet is that 70% of people would prefer apolitical, 20% 'moderate' and only 10% activism - of course - only if it's specifically their view of activism.
I can’t think of a worse way to handle this situation.
Sure, I’m not sure what the answer is. Then again, I’m not a professional HR person who is supposed to be trained in handling these issues.
Having 5% of your workforce quit over nothing more than messaging is a catastrophic failure in people management.
Outright political speech bans at companies may be perfectly justified, but it’s usually the case that work environments that have a habit of outright banning things are stifling to be a part of. I’m sure this isn’t the first time that employees have heard tone-deaf messaging from corporate, and being offered some money to leave on the heels of some more time-deafness must have been appealing.
It’s not hard to have policies and training rooted in being empathetic and respectful toward others. That way you don’t have to ban difficult topics. Conversations between coworkers being excessively policed never feels good.
Asking people to always be work robots is completely unreasonable - lifelong friendships and marriages happen with coworkers. We are human, social creatures. Things happen in the world and we spend most of our weekday life at work, so we often need other people at work to talk with about them.
I think the CEO’s refusal to take a stance on whether Black Lives Matter is a stance in itself. It’s hard not to assume that he doesn’t agree with the organization or the statement, even if that’s not the case. And while the movement is in some way political, in most ways the organization and the phrase simply stands for the idea that, well, Black Lives Matter. It’s simply a marginalized group seeking equal treatment, and there really shouldn’t be anything political about being treated as an equal.
Of course, the reactionaries in our world always demand that we think otherwise: that we should be considerate of their views on keeping women, certain races and ethnicities, the differently abled, or people with the “wrong” faith as second-class citizens. They want us to consider these fundamentally flawed views as if they are on equal plane as a valid “other side” of the coin, as if it’s simple political disagreement. In reality, their viewpoints were never acceptable, we’ve just had to suffer through them.
There’s nothing political about telling someone through words and actions that they matter, and treating those people with equal protections and rights in the criminal justice system.
As an anecdote, my employer had no problem proclaiming support for Black lives. We have Black employees, of course we should agree that Black Lives Matter. And of course we can have difficult conversations among our coworkers, as long as we know how to listen to each other. This is where HR comes in to help train and guide around keeping those conversations productive and beneficial to everyone, because people grow by having their viewpoints challenged and expanded - and that can happen at work!
> I think the CEO’s refusal to take a stance on whether Black Lives Matter is a stance in itself. It’s hard not to assume that he doesn’t agree with the organization or the statement, even if that’s not the case. And while the movement is in some way political, in most ways the organization and the phrase simply stands for the idea that, well, Black Lives Matter. It’s simply a marginalized group seeking equal treatment, and there really shouldn’t be anything political about being treated as an equal.
If BLM was just that, most people, even on the political right, would have no problems with it. The trouble is, BLM the organization is run by Marxists, is openly racist in itself (black exclusivity), and their aims are much more than racial equality.
Their leaders have made statements regarding dismantling capitalism, have attended rallies with Nicolas Maduro, and have had their funding organized by ex-convict Susan Rosenberg, who was part of the terrorist May 19th Communist Organization.
I'm a fan of racial equality, and by that I mean completely eliminating racism quotas, making hiring based purely on merit and not melanin. I will have nothing to do with the organization BLM.
I’m not sure that I would consider BLM to be that centralized anymore. It has far outgrown the opinions of its initial founders. The vast majority of people who identify with the movement are in no way Marxist or anti-capitalist. They’re just people who are tired of seeing different rules for different races.
From Wikipedia:
> The phrase "Black Lives Matter" can refer to a Twitter hashtag, a slogan, a social movement, a political action committee,[18] or a loose confederation of groups advocating for racial justice. As a movement, Black Lives Matter is grassroots and decentralized, and leaders have emphasized the importance of local organizing over national leadership
Again, as a company it’s not even hard to take a not-tone-deaf stance on the issue while avoiding directly supporting the original organization. It’s not hard to reassure your Black colleagues that you recognize their struggle and that you support them.
When you as a company say “we refuse to discuss this, you are forbidden from discussing this,” it’s inhuman and tone deaf.
> If BLM was just that, most people, even on the political right, would have no problems with it.
Let's get real. People on the political right have been yelling about kneeling in the NFL since that particular form of protest began. And it has few/none of the associations you describe.
> I'm a fan of racial equality, and by that I mean completely eliminating racism quotas, making hiring based purely on merit and not melanin.
Sounds great in theory. Now try to ascertain if someone made a hiring/promotion decision based on merit or on melanin without some kind of Star Trek era brain scan.
> Sounds great in theory. Now try to ascertain if someone made a hiring/promotion decision based on merit or on melanin without some kind of Star Trek era brain scan.
I'm of the opinion that business owners should be the sole arbiters of who is hired and promoted anyway. The State should mind its own business. A good business owner will promote the best talent which will make their company grow. If they start filtering talent based on skin color, they're hurting their own pocket.
You can't ascertain whether individual hiring decisions are based on merit or not, but you can make a statistical guess at what percentage of each ethnicity would be promoted based on the demographics where the hiring is taking place. If the population is 10% black and 90% white, you'd expect an organization to be 10% black and 90% white on average, if no racial screening is occurring.
However, the common "diversity quotas" which are commonly employed now want a different outcome. They want to see at least 50% of hires from BAME, even if BAME are only 20% of the demographics. There's a term for this. It's called racism.
> However, the common "diversity quotas" which are commonly employed now want a different outcome. They want to see at least 50% of hires from BAME, even if BAME are only 20% of the demographics.
I'm pretty sure this is a straw man. 50% quotas are common for women (50% of the population), but otherwise I could find no evidence of 50% quotas based on race.
> Having 5% of your workforce quit over nothing more than messaging is a catastrophic failure in people management.
> I think the CEO’s refusal to take a stance on whether Black Lives Matter is a stance in itself. It’s hard not to assume that he doesn’t agree with the organization or the statement, even if that’s not the case.
I think you're right about the second part, but I disagree that it's "nothing more than messaging." Surely it must not be about "focusing on Coinbase's mission" but rather that the Coinbase leadership feels that the Black Lives Matter issue simply is not important enough to take a stance on and thus potentially alienate some people. I strongly suspect that Coinbase would take a stance if they deemed the issue to be important enough. Would Coinbase take a stance if there was a current prominent debate over whether Black people should be allowed to vote? Or is that not related closely enough to their mission? What if the prominent debate was over whether Black people should be allowed to have bank accounts, or purchase cryptocurrencies?
And while the movement is in some way political, in most ways the organization and the phrase simply stands for the idea that, well, Black Lives Matter
That's just wrong. "Black lives matter" encompasses at least three separate categories of claims:
1. The lives of black people are inherently as valuable as the lives of others.
2. The US and western civilization in general is based on white supremacy at its core, and all disparities that disfavor minorities are solely due to present-day racism.
3. Radical change is necessary in order to solve the problems of racism, including reparations, abolishing the police, and ending capitalism.
BLM often ends up being a motte-and-bailey where anyone who isn't totally on board with #2 or #3 is accused of denying #1.
This is where HR comes in to help train and guide around keeping those conversations productive and beneficial to everyone, because people grow by having their viewpoints challenged and expanded
I suspect there are certain viewpoints that can be challenged and others than cannot.
I hoped that it was obvious by my word “mostly” that I was trying to distill the idea.
#2 is objectively true, ask any historian.
#3 is making a whole lot of assumptions about the goals and beliefs of an extremely large tent.
There are absolutely viewpoints that aren’t allowed to be challenged at work. But what you’re getting close to alluding to is the flawed idea of all ideas being equally acceptable.
The idea that Black Lives Matter is not on equal plane with the inverse. Those against the idea over technicalities are on the wrong side of history and human decency.
This comment is a perfect example of why banning political speech in the workplace is a very good idea. Every workplace that I've worked in that tolerated political speech ended up with a highly vocal segment of people making statements that parallel this comment: proclaiming that only a certain stance on controversial issues is acceptable, and implying (or stating outright) that divergence from this orthodoxy amounts to an affront to human dignity. This kind of rhetoric creates a hostile and toxic work environment, and companies are right in putting a stop to it.
> proclaiming that only a certain stance on controversial issues is acceptable, and implying (or stating outright) that divergence from this orthodoxy amounts to an affront to human dignity.
Are you suggesting that all stances on all controversial issues are acceptable, and that it is impossible to hold a stance which is an affront to human dignity? Or are you merely saying that these issues are relatively unimportant compared to one's labor at their place of employment, and should thus be ignored?
Stances that genuinely are an affront to human dignity are already prohibited under harassment rules. Banning politics in the workplace has no bearing on this.
Other political issues may very well be important to people, and they're free to act on them in their own time. Your co-workers are a captive audience, and it's not appropriate to abuse that relationship for political activism. People who want to be politically active can do so on their own time. I would not take issue with, say, a Mormon co-worker who goes door to door on weekends and takes PTO to go on missionary trips. I would however, take issue with proselytizing to co-workers. I regard politics the same way.
> only a certain stance on controversial issues is acceptable, and implying (or stating outright) that divergence from this orthodoxy amounts to an affront to human dignity
There are a variety of controversial issues where one position is a literal affront to human dignity (i.e., a deliberate act of disrespect).
> This kind of rhetoric creates a hostile and toxic work environment
This is a privileged view of the situation.
As a simple example, imagine you have three coworkers: Alex, Blake, and Taylor.
Alex believes that Taylor should not have been allowed to have married their current spouse, and posts on their personal Twitter account advocating that the decisions which allowed that to be possible be repealed.
Alex hasn't shared their beliefs in a work setting, but did tweet something about the company and as a result Taylor saw the other tweets and learned how Alex felt.
Taylor believes that Alex's position is a deliberate act of disrespect. Taylor fears a decision that would result in no longer being married to their spouse, which would lead to problems with medical insurance, child custody, finances, etc. Taylor doesn't feel safe working with someone who actively wishes to destroy a meaningful part of their life.
Taylor asks the company to make a statement supporting their right to have married their partner.
Blake says that Taylor is creating a hostile and toxic work environment.
Is Blake right? Or is Taylor acting in self defensive, in response to an already-hostile and already-toxic work environment? Is the discomfort felt by Blake acceptable "collateral damage"?
Do your answers change if the hypothetical scenario is not about a same-sex couple in 2020 following Obergefell, but an interracial couple in California in 1950 following the ruling of anti-miscegenation laws as unconstitutional?
Statements that genuinely are an affront to human dignity are already prohibited under anti-harassment rules. Such positions are also rarely controversial: most people do not want to disrespect human dignity.
A substantial segment of people have realized that they can shut down any conflicting opinions on controversial issues by proclaiming that divergence from their orthodoxy amounts to an affront to human dignity. Over the course of my employment I've seen people claim:
* All positions must pursue at least 50% female representation, and anything less than that amounts to misogyny.
* Voting for the current president of the United States amounts to an act of overt racism.
* Opposing affirmative action amounts to overt racism.
* Supporting affirmative action amounts to overt racism.
These positions are not affronts to human dignity. Maybe some people genuinely do believe that it does, but their views are disconnected enough that it's no excuse:
* Say an anti-abortion activist genuinely does believe that terminating a pregnancy amounts to murder. I'm sure such a person would be deeply offended by someone who supports a woman's right to do so, and would see it as an affront to human dignity. Say they posted on Facebook to this effect, that abortion is murder and should be banned. A co-worker who has had an abortion complains to HR saying a co-worker accused them of murder because of their contraceptive decisions. No HR person worth their salt would take action in this case, since it's effectively firing ~30% of the population because of their political or religious beliefs. If you don't want to be exposed to your co-workers political views, don't friend them on Facebook and don't follow them on Twitter.
* Say Bob makes a tweet supporting affirmative action in hiring and promotion, and Lin (who is Asian and opposes affirmative action) sees this. She finds it an affront to her dignity and amounts to asking organizations to deprive her right to equal opportunity. Does Lin have grounds to ask the company to sanction Bob for openly espousing discrimination against her? If these statement were made in the workplace, maybe, but otherwise Lin should just not view Bob's out-of-work communications. The company's policy is to give equal opportunity to all races, and Lin has no proof that Bob brought his views into the workplace.
Crucially, though, these two examples occurred outside of the workplace. Had they occurred inside the workplace ,then they now have much stronger cases. Your co-workers are captive audiences, in the context of interactions in the office. If Bob says this to Lin in the office, Lin can't just block him.
As far as your example goes, If Taylor doesn't want to see Alex's political views Taylor should block Alex on Twitter. They're not a captive audience in this situation: there's zero reason why these two people need to see each other's tweets to do their job. But if Alex said this inside the office, then there'd be better grounds for taking action against Alex. That's why offices are increasingly telling co-workers to keep their politics out of the office.
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 397 ms ] threadYeah... I'm genuinely curious how many people actually quit over the "apolitical" stance, vs employees that were just unhappy with the job in general and took this convenient opportunity to leave with a pretty sweet deal.
Either people managed to get through a _whole interview process_ in a week, or they're fine with the idea of being jobless during the worst economy in 12 years, or they price the benefit of not being there fairly high.
Which then leads us to how the whole argument is blinkered. It reduces decisions to a cost benefit analysis where a significant part of the benefit doesn't have a market price. Then, it questions if the benefit was too large, but by definition the arguer is still at the company and thus believes the unpricable part of the benefit isn't worth enough enough to leave.
A single software engineer paying for full price for high premium plan on COBRA would be spending around $400[1], over the whole 18 months of doing that it would be $7,200 which would be less than one month's paycheck on a $160,000 salary.
A cursory look at h1bdata.info shows that Coinbase pays plenty of H1B's that much, on the low side.
Your view is a little exaggerated.
There isn't a downside here. If you were there a very short amount of time, just remove it from your resume and have a gap. Its inconsequential for software engineers. If you were there for over a year, take your vested shares, leave it on your resume, and still coast. If you were already interviewing and had another offer, do the same.
[1] To my surprise, people are paying WAY more for health insurance. Are they San Francisco/Bay Area residents? Unknown. Are they individuals or paying the family rates? Unknown. Are they using the most competitive providers? Unknown. Is Coinbase still covering health insurance for people on severance as if they were employees with COBRA starting after the severance period is over, adjusting all of our math? Unclear.
Last time I continued health insurance via COBRA, I paid nearly $2k a month in premiums alone.
Survey of purported 2019 data shows $570 * 12 = $6,840 for individual, $19,000 for family (for some reason, no monthly cost there)
So lets say you only pay the feds income tax, and don't bother with medicaid, social security, state income tax, 401K, any other witholdings whatsoever - you'll earn 85% of $160,000, or $136,000. Divided into 26 paychecks, $5230 biweekly.
If you're single, yearly premium would be covered by 2.6 weeks of work, or 11% of your severance. If you have a family, 7.26 weeks of work, or 30% of your severance.
yeah this is a better metric than my napkin math above.
it is also important to elaborate that we are talking about 4 months of payment with continued health insurance included, and calling that savings for an additional 12 months of paying for health insurance.
Kaiser Permanente is from what I've heard an unusually good deal without anything comparable in NYC or most of the rest of the US, though not without their own weaknesses in areas like mental health coverage and dispute resolution.
Getting people who are unhappy (politics aside) to leave sounds more like "the severance package was a nice move" than "the severance package was too good."
Might be a silly idea, but I wonder if more companies would benefit from doing something like this on a semi-regular basis, i.e. giving unhappy employees the opportunity to leave with a decent "severance" package?
It would be great for those employees, though!
Original deck: https://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664/
Up to date statement: http://jobs.netflix.com/culture
In an ideal world a reporter could answer your question by talking to many of the people who quit and ask what motivated their decision, but the severance package almost certainly came with an NDA that would make doing so impossible.
So we'll likely never know. Probably one should assume that the answer doesn't look great for Coinbase's narrative; if they thought it would, they might have done a survey and published data from it.
Frankly, giving the non-offended but unsatisfied employees a ready out is probably good for Coinbase in the long run.
The severance also included 6 months of health insurance. (Source: https://www.coindesk.com/coinbase-severance-apolitical-missi... )
What percentage of employees at Coinbase are actively interviewing for other jobs at any given time? 5%? If someone has one foot out the door already, taking a bonus equivalent to half a year of your salary is a cherry on top of changing jobs. I'm surprised only 5% of the company took this opportunity.
Bitcoin isn't hurting, either.
Ecommerce is booming, but you're not likely to get a job in support/services which is likely already filled with experienced folks at most companies, and isn't likely to churn in a pandemic.
There are a lot of pockets like this, but they mostly benefit software engineers and more experienced roles. It's pretty common on HN for folks to assume that everyone has the role/job fluidity as your average tech person, or worse, your average software engineer.
Lots of folks "in tech" aren't really deeply into tech, so it's even more difficult for them to navigate a chaotic time.
I.e. the “people who are able to exit” group may not overlap the 5% that would have resigned because they were already searching for something.
The GP’s (codezero) point above still seems valid to me because of that.
> I want to engage with politics at work.
> Why did you leave Coinbase?
> Because I was ready for new opportunities and they were offering a hefty severance package.
> They didn't align with my ethical framework.
What kinda of things are people talking about?
This is the reality of working for large tech companies in the US, just with Trump instead of Johnson.
That said, one thing we have to consider is the environment in which the discussion takes place. At work people shouldn't have to get stressed with non-work related things, that's not in the interest of the company nor of the employees. So even if you know you can have respectful deep conversations of controversial current day politics with your colleagues, a better question would be, should you even have those conversations at work?
I feel for people that suddenly need to discuss such topics, it means that they probably don't have IRL friends or friends outside of work if they really feel that they have to talk about no-work related issues at a work lunch. It's sad.
I don't think it's a matter of ideas vs persons. Already I hear that speech and ideas are violence, and violence requires fighting back (by complaining to HR that you made them feel unsafe). Of course, you cannot keep quiet either, because "silence is violence" too.
> It's unfortunate discussions can't be kept over ideas and policies instead of veering towards persons.
This is a sensible expectation, and I think that's what reasonable people should be able to do. However, my experience tells me that there's nothing to win by having such conversation in work environment, so I'd prefer them to be avoided altogether. However, both the company as an institutions, and many individuals working on it, are insisting that the employees have these discussions, no matter how irrelevant it is for the actual job. This is the reality on the ground in most big US tech corporations.
> I feel for people that suddenly need to discuss such topics, it means that they probably don't have IRL friends or friends outside of work if they really feel that they have to talk about no-work related issues at a work lunch. It's sad.
I don't think that this is the case. In my experience, it's the more social people who are insisting on having these conversations. I think this is because the more social people are better at gauging social climate, and the purpose of these conversations, often purportedly about diversity and inclusion, is to enforce uniformity and exclusion of people with alternative views.
To me this might be the best example of a 'meme', in Dawkins' sense of the word, that I'm aware of.
- It's short
- It rhymes
- It gives new territory to a powerful word
- It creates an in-group signal
- It's self-amplifying, and most importantly
- It's ridiculous
It's absolutely destined to go far beyond it's own merit by outcompeting everything in its domain on 3+ metrics.
It also helped me understand one possible reason why so many broken slogans are rising to the top. There are many factors in totality of course, but the ones that are ridiculous drive engagement from everyone, the proponents to echo and the opponents to mock.
Note that a working ingroup signal needs to be costly.
Something that sounds idiotic to the outgroup means people can't just casually say it, and it creates clear divisions.
Brian, I've never given two shits about crypto, but this announcement seriously increases my desire to work at Coinbase. You have far more support than will dare to speak up, and I hope more companies start following your lead.
That might be seen in a positive or negative light, depending on your stance.
I personally am afraid to associate myself too publicly with a political stance, lest I be wrong and/or the environment changes.
I think that says nothing of a persons political views and is just self-preservation or even indifference. Hiring would have to make some very tenuous assumptions to consider that a signal.
Those who are politically possessed like to claim that “everything is politics” and that “it’s a privilege to not care about politics”, but every Hispanic and Filipino immigrant I’ve known (which is not a negligible number) care about family, hard work, and stability: not politics.
I'm not sure how anyone can think that being politically active would make your life more stable.
Edit: An example of this is that black people are much less likely to vote than white people. Is this because black people support the status quo while white people want to change things? No, it is because black people don't have the time and energy to spare to vote. And no, this isn't about voting disenfranchisement, black people are less likely to vote even in very blue states.
Stability isn't about dominance, stability is about being uninteresting enough not to get your teeth kicked in.
[1] https://genius.com/Tyler-childers-long-violent-history-lyric...
Your statement that the immigrants you know care about x and y and not politics doesn't actually make sense in response to the concept 'everything is political'. You are responding from the perspective that politics means elections, or some similarly narrow set of topics. But 'everything is political' explicitly rejects that perspective. It means that a Filipino immigrant thinking about whether their uncle and cousins will be able to visit them is political because it's harder for them to get a visa than my English cousins. It means that a Hispanic immigrant talking to her friend in a restaurant after dropping the kids at school should not risk being detained by ICE because speaking Spanish makes some dropkick immigration officer decide they must be illegal immigrants, which happened in Montana.
A whole lot of people in the world are actively indifferent to politics.
Those apolitical people vastly outnumber all the hyper political "your with us or against us" group.
Rubbish - we all know what type of political activism is tearing these companies apart and we all know what political views are the only ones that can be safely expressed.
If everything is political, then the moniker "political" is meaningless.
Most politics and also culture expresses itself tacitly. By requiring some sort of conscious intent you're actually ignoring what is arguably the vast majority of political interaction. For example casual sexism and systematic mistreatment of women was just "normal" but nonetheless political. Of course the people doing the subtle discriminating don't like to think of it as political, because that implies responsibility for action.
First, literally anything could have political consequences, from a solar flare to a fly landing in someone's hair. This logic easily devolves into absurdity. Famously, Chinese government under Mao declared sparrows "public animals of capitalism" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign
Second, when anything could be political, the moniker "political" (like any other inflated moniker) loses a lot of its meaning. And yet real politics is still done by real people with real consequences.
Third, raising everything to the status of political is an example of politicization. This is typical of totalitarian regimes. Totalitarian regimes are in fact characterized by the fact that literally everything is raised to the realm of political, the realm of rule by the regime. By pressuring others to be political, you are creating a totalitarian environment, a very unpleasant environment for most people to be as we already know from some very bitter 20th century lessons.
Fourth, politics is about having political enemies. When political enemy (opponent) does not exist, there is no politics as such. By insisting that people act politically, you are simultaneously insisting that they have enemies. There are profound moral problems with this, whether you are Christian or even not religious at all.
The solar flare isn't political obviously, but the response to it is. human disaster usually is the consequence of bad responses to catastrophes which have been declared inevitable. (see the current American covid response). Something that actually is in the realm of politics is shoved into the category of thoughts and prayers.
>Third, raising everything to the status of political is an example of politicization. This is typical of totalitarian regimes
Politicisation isn't bad and the only thing your post is any evidence of is the typical midbrow "no politics or gulag" logic that every conservative American who is afraid of engaging in political conflict has been repeating ad nauseam. You may think you appear smarter if you complain about tribalism every five minutes and act like you're above the fray, but you are not. It's just a silly straw-man made by people who are afraid of political change.
That's not an inconsistency.
> Would you consider "sorry, I didn't get a lot of sleep due to police sound grenades going off until 3am" a political statement?
No, of course not.
> No, of course not.
Awesome. So it follows that you would have no issue then with a coworker stating: "Police activity in SF has negatively impacted my ability to do work". Congratulations, you have a significantly broader definition of acceptable workplace speech than Coinbase.
Of course I wouldn't have an issue (ignoring for the moment that you're apparently conflating me with coinbase), because this isn't a political statement.
> Congratulations, you have a significantly broader definition of acceptable workplace speech than Coinbase.
This is a pretty obvious straw man argument.
For instance, there was an instance not too long ago at Facebook where one engineer publicly attacked another completely peaceful coworker on Twitter because the latter declined to put a BLM statement on the landing page of an open source project they maintained. The former employee was eventually fired. These kinds of antics are deeply divisive and destructive to the workplace.
It is unclear from your comment which employee was fired, unless "former" is intended in the ordinal sense (ie. "first") rather than temporal (ie. "prior"). Can you clarify?
My wife works for a huge social media company that you've definitely heard of, and some of her higher-ups have told her they're worried that the rise of employee activism is going to tear the company's culture apart. I told her she should tell them to follow Coinbase's example.
It's probably for the best.
Taking the package can be seen as a strong stance, not taking it... not really.
Ironically / IMHO, the irritant at the center of the pearl that is many of these ('social justice') issues is people treating other people as a member of an imagined group rather than a specific human they can talk to.
Whether you talk to them (or not) about it doesn't change that - just means you're hiding that part of the process or including them in it.
Definitely not. Unconscious bias is a huge issue in interviewing. Blinding your interviewers to political orientation, or any other factor, is far more effective than telling them just to ignore it.
Altho TBC I do think you're right that blinding is better than attempting to ignore.
I have some on my own resume and I don't mind explaining that here the company was acquired, here we ran out of money, here I had to move to be with family, etc etc.
It's just normal due diligence for a hiring manager.
> I personally am afraid to associate myself too publicly with a political stance, lest I be wrong and/or the environment changes.
This suggests you speak from a position of privilege. It is easy to implicitly endorse the status quo when it is beneficial to you.
In fact, being able to lavishly throw around internal capital and play with people's careers over their political opinions is the position of privilege. Leveraging multimillion dollar firms to hammer Cathedral dogma into people's heads is privilege.
Not wanted to berate people/be berated/get in political fights writing Selenium for a crypto startup is not privilege.
I can understand this fear, but generally if you choose a stance based on compassion for all beings you’ll be in the right in the long run.
This particular issue was sparked by Coinbase not taking a stance on Black Lives Matter, which they are wrong about. Standing for dismantling racism is always correct.
I like capitalism and the free market because I think it's the best system to give most prosperity to a broad spectrum of society. I believe that I take this stance based on compassion but I can assure you that this view is not popular among other people who are in the compassion camp.
No one is asking Coinbase to take a stance and say that the police must be abolished, or that the way forward for Black liberation is X policy. They were simply asking them to acknowledge that racism exists and Black lives do in fact matter.
> Standing for dismantling racism is always correct.
As opposed to standing against it, yes. As opposed to "we're just building a juicer, man", no.
Not every group of people "must" take an active stance on every social issue. If they did then they would do nothing but that.
This is why I'm hesitant to invest in Silicon Valley stock at the moment. If this trend continues they'll spend 100% of their time "making a stand", and not innovating or trying to fulfil their stated mission.
I have a responsibility to keep my own house in order. To make sure I'm not racist, homophobic, etc... I don't have a responsibility to spend my life on a cause you select for me, even if that cause is just.
If I were to pick a cause it would be that the central organization for a leading religion is actively harboring and protecting child rapists from international law enforcement. But still I would not, like you, say that every organization that doesn't march under that banner are "wrong about" that.
Companies are not "supporting status quo of child rapists" if they don't put up banners on their website. They're just not. That's nonsense.
You can't condemn me for not marching with you. That's fascism.
I will disagree somewhat with the people who say that companies never have a place for political stuff. If you are any company involved in South Africa during apartheid you should choose a side on apartheid and voice that position.
If BLM means just the simple definition of what the words imply (that black lives matter), there's no point in saying it. Because there's literally no one on the other side. I suspect that's not what it means, because saying a broader statement "All Lives Matter" seems to be considered a kind of slur.
So "Black Lives Matter" means something deeper. More like "Black people are killed indiscriminately by police in this country. The cops get away with it, and it's a huge problem." That is full of assumptions and political beliefs that reasonable people can disagree about. And I don't see why every company should take a side on that issue.
Child pornography, from what I can tell, is not a controversial issue. Most companies haven't made statements about their views on murder, theft, and slavery either. But if the nation were prominently split over whether murder, theft, slavery, or child pornography are good things, I would hope some companies would make a statement.
It is, however, prominently split over whether the specific, contentious version of "anti-racism" though promulgated by the likes of Ibram Kendi and Robin DiAngelo - "Critical Race Theory", to call it by its academic name - is the One True Anti-Racism that it claims to be, or whether it's counterproductive, divisive, anti-liberal and on track to set race relations back by decades.
Companies have as much moral obligation to state support for CRT as they do to state their support for Trotskyism or Randian Objectivism.
If you don't agree with some of their stated objectives, tactics, leadership, it should be OK to refuse to offer support, and that doesn't automatically imply a tacit support of racism, and it doesn't automatically imply resistance to lower-case black lives matter.
"Well, whatever life is, you’re going to die. So if you’re going to make things better for yourself or for those you care about, you had better become an activist while you’re still alive." -- Will Provine
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?cc=ptb;c=ptb;...
Put differently: There is a difference between advocacy and activism, between holding political opinions and being comfortable with them as a central focus of your life, or as a central characteristic that you wish people to see in you.
YMMV depending on the company. Netflix is an obvious outlier in that they offer no RSUs and just pay very high salaries.
E.g. in my case only my third offered it, and I was like "What is that?", in my case it started vesting after 1 year (linear). So at that point one can think of looking for new job.
https://battlepenguin.com/tech/tech-culture-shock-from-ameri...
I know people who've been at the same job for 6~7 years and they are totally getting paid way under market. A company might give you a 2~3% cost of living increase, or a $5k promotion every few years, but switching jobs let's you ask for $10k or more.
On the downside, I would NOT recommend anyone else change jobs almost yearly like I did. My job loyalty is shit and it's hard for me to take on other jobs when people are concerned I could just leave.
That being said, the good jobs with good pipeline engineering, tests and CI/CD flows allow people to flow in and out; quickly pick up things and move with fast/good deploys. Those shops are the best, but they are rare. They tend to not care as much weird resumes because they want to hire people who are innovative.
Right... but aren't the options you're throwing away worth 10x that? How can it possibly be worth it?
Let's say your vesting schedule is 4 years w/ 1 year cliff, it's only necessary to stay 1 year. Thereafter you're not 'losing' options by leaving.
You're awarded $100k but then it grows to $200k by the time you start cashing it in. When you switch company you get $100k again, not the $200k you threw away.
Most places I know of do not
My experience with smaller startups, was that it's impossible to determine if the options would be worth $0 or $$$.
Social media has amplified polarization.
Is it really the case that everyone must support one or other of the poles?
Saying "my business supports whatever the current US government's stated opinion is on all issues" is a political stance. It may not be partisan, but it absolutely is political. Those aren't synonymous.
Nobody supports the status quo.
The statements we were talking about upthread don’t reduce to these ones.
[1] https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/?...
Pretending that you're unaware of or completely ambivalent about the consequences of shifts in political power (so long as it benefits you financially) doesn't really qualify you as "apolitical." You're still involved in the political process even if you stick your fingers in your ears and chant "nananana I can't hear you."
I hate to sound incisive, but it kind of seems like the position that Coinbase's leadership has taken is "The board and CEO will decide what qualifies as 'apolitical' and as such will dictate the ongoing political activity of the company, which they have no desire to stop being involved in."
The issue that I intended to address is the interesting usage of language to sidestep making political contributions and supporting candidates and parties as being political acts.
I think that's too strong a statement in support of the current default, which is the largely feudal corporation.
First, company structures are pretty clearly being pushed in a more democratic direction, and have been for quite a while. Silicon Valley is the poster child for flatter organizational structures, "good ideas can come from anywhere", increased freedom of movement for workers between companies, as well as sharing the financial gains more broadly (at least, that is the ideal that SV represents to the outside world).
You look at a typical SV corporation and see a rigid hierarchy. Most of the rest of the world sees an insanely freewheeling mess that can't possibly work.
There are also today already companies that are explicitly structured as democracies (in some cases a bit more like constitutional monarchies, and in other cases more like minarchist collectives). Not all of these experiments are successful, nor should we expect them to be.
But I certainly don't expect this overall trend to reverse, stop, or even slow down. If anything, I expect it to accelerate, as existing companies continue to try to pick out and graft on the parts and tools that seem to be working for other organizations. Even when these grafting attempts are unsuccessful (which is often), they just draw attention to the orgs that are succeeding (inspiring attempts at analysis of what is different), which leads to more such experiments.
"In recognition of his work, Brian was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and one of the ten most influential people in bitcoin and blockchain"
"No politics = politics" is an utterly vacuous statement.
If you become friendly with a person in the workplace you'll eventually learn their politics, right? Either through how they act or what they say. How do you limit how much a person reveals about themselves at work?
The CEO is saying Coinbase won't take political stances. That's fine in theory but in practice it's not. The whole idea of cryptocurrency itself is political.
There is a difference in being passively apolitical and actively apolitical for sure.
The stance "I am avoiding politics because there's nothing worth my time to be an activist about but I would if that changed and political decisions started seriously affecting me, my family, or my friends" is "the status quo is fine."
The stance "I'm avoiding politics because it's bad for my metal health or $any_criticism" is an act of protest! Super political.
I have genuinely never met someone in the first camp.
Hell, refusing to engage with certain types of politics isn't just political, it's an act of protest!
Maybe they have different priorities than you and just want to make money. Not everything is political.
You might be proving too much here.
Who makes more money at work for example? The low level employee or the boss? Who controls what, why, and how things are produced? What the schedules are? These are smaller questions than national policy, but they are political in nature. Of course, the socialist movement sees all workplaces' workers united together as a national political project. When you swim in water all your life, you can't see it easily unless someone points it out.
Another reason "just making money" is political is because so many people can't. In a society with levels of inequality that approximate ancient kingdoms, the lowest people in society have little opportunity to "just make money" and their invisibility is a political artifice.
Put another way, what is political is the ability to _not care_ when others are suffering. People are being deported, attacked in the streets, dying of disease, etc. so keeping your head down _and make money_ during such a time is something won by virtue of class. Other people can't ignore it because politics is life and death. While exhaustion is a valid excuse to rest (I'm super tired myself), what is being asked is for solidarity and to exhibit positive humanity towards other people. A primary site of conflict and domination is the workplace -- it's just that so many of us are used to losing or out competing each other that we don't band together to win.
One day, Alice has a clever idea: she can create a digital representation of money. Both Alice and Bob agree to accept these "tokens" in lieu of barter.
Big mistake. CarelessExpert announces to Alice and Bob that their creation obligates them to join in bitter arguments about abortion, climate change, and LGBT rights.
My point, since apparently I need to clarify it, is that Coinbase claiming to have an "apolitical" workplace while a) operating in a business that's driven by libertarian and anarchist philosophy and b) spending time and money lobbying politicians in Washington in support of said values is, at best demonstrative of a total lack of self-awareness, and at worst represents rank hypocrisy.
I tend to suspect it's the latter.
As such, I don't see the hypocrisy. Now, I'd be more inclined to agree if the "politics ban" covered activism around crypto policy issues. But of course, then management's position is very easy to see. They hired developers to implement their vision, not to fight it.
I prefer to not be lectured on political issues by my orange juice brand. Their mission should be to sell high quality orange juice and make a profit.
But what if your orange juice brand of choice was actively contributing to the destruction of the environment, lobbying politicians to make them exempt from environmental regulations, and destroying competition in nefarious ways?
That's an extreme but if that's information you have and you still support that orange juice brand then you are supporting everything that is public knowledge about that brand.
I think one problem with the concept of "everything is political (including supporting the status quo)" is that it provides no principled mechanism for determining what counts as "too far" (costly) for any given political cause. The nice thing about having a dictator (CEO) in this regard is that it provides a fixed point.
IMO Coinbase is "doing it pretty well", not by saying "we'll be apolitical", but by saying, "we're going to be political ONLY about X & Y".
My read is that they're not discouraging their employees from being political (unclear to me ATM if they're still doing donation matching regardless), and they're not stopping work-place diversity programs... they're just limiting their lobbying to, you know, their own issues.
My life may not be political.
But the life of a black trans woman? That's political by its very nature, in today's climate. One party doesn't want her to be allowed to exist, the other does.
Believing it's possible to be "apolitical" in any time of polarization is a privilege of those who benefit from the status quo.
Your view is not above regular politics. It is a view that's firmly embedded within the right wing of regular politics. I personally wouldn't consider it "Nazi" but would definitely consider it deeply transphobic, and exclude you from my friend circle. If I met someone with your view at work, I would avoid any interactions with them other than the minimum necessary to perform my job.
The First Amendment cuts both ways.
Sure, and the implication that letting discriminatory behavior remain normalized can be a strategy that lets you court voters at the margin isn't new.
In a sense, it is a strategy that grants political power but denies a mandate to do much of anything meaningful with it to combat discrimination. It also cedes the initiative to the opposition who can easily retreat or just run (and then continue to portray your compromised proposals as just as extreme as ever).
In your example, the black trans woman has no choice about being black and no choice about their cisgender.
Technically, they have a choice about whether they transition, but the alternative is living with the emotional pain of extreme gender dysphoria.
Would you deny someone medical care for a physically painful but not life threatening medical condition (say arthritis, or psoriasis), or tell them that treating it is their choice and responsibility?
How about mental conditions such as clinical depression, or bipolar disorder?
Would you relax the requirements on businesses to provide reasonable accommodation for wheelchair access to parking and restrooms? After all, it is their choice to go out in public.
Would you allow discrimination for employment or a mortgage based on these conditions?
This isn't really that complicated. Gender dysphoria is a real thing, and while the choice to transition (with or without gender reassignment surgery) is a personal one, and likely never an easy one to make, it should be an option that society supports and simply does not allow discrimination against.
Making arguments in good faith sometimes feels like pointlessly shouting into the void.
Obligatory xkcd: https:// xkcd.com/386/
I thought this deserved to be broken out to a separate reply.
I actually used to be in that camp. In my case I used to say some extremely heteronormative patriarchal objectifying bullshit ironically (typical examples would be "barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen" or "get me a beer, bitch". This started pretty darn early, like 10 years old. My mom's friends all thought it was hilarious when I was asked what piece of chicken I wanted and I answered with a deadpan "well, I'm usually a leg man, but..."). In other words, I was pretending to be a misogynist asshole for purposes of humor.
It turns out that as an adult, many of the people closest to me couldn't always tell I was being ironic, despite the obvious (to me) extreme contrast between these statements and my everyday persona.
And that's entirely aside from the fact that this sort of humor is painful to people who regularly encounter the real thing when it is meant to hurt them, even if they completely understand that I don't mean it that way. I was essentially using their pain as a prop for my humor.
So, I could have responded with some variant of "fuck 'em if they can't take a joke", but that would have left me associating only with people who a) got my sense of humor and put up with it, as well as b) people who didn't but approved of the literal interpretation and were encouraged by it. That wouldn't have been a good outcome for me.
To give a less pointed example of my sense of humor, I once horrified a co-worker who brought to my attention a severe defect that would have caused a user security issue if it had been deployed to production by responding "Well, we certainly couldn't allow that!" with heavy sarcasm. I was using sarcasm ironically. Since I immediately escalated the issue I would have thought that it was obvious that I was taking the issue very seriously, but I had misjudged my audience.
It is incumbent on me to communicate clearly, even or especially when using humor. And my sort of weapons-grade irony and sarcasm can't be handled too carefully.
Now, what you're talking about isn't quite the same thing (since I actually try to not be an asshole), but in your case it really is incumbent on you to communicate clearly as well when you're being an asshole that you are not being an asshole to a black trans woman because they are a black trans woman, and also that you aren't being an asshole to them as a black trans woman. And you have to somehow do it without a bunch of "I'm not a racist etc., but..." qualifiers. The latter point is so subtle, you're never going to be able to get it right, except perhaps one-on-one with someone you know very well (eg. my spouse thinks a "get me a fuckin' beer, woman" demand from me is hilarious, but that's in part because she knows I don't like beer, and rarely swear. Even with her I would be pretty careful about asking for anything else that way). You certainly won't get it right while still using racist and transphobic rhetoric.
So, you have a stark choice similar to mine: stop being an asshole to black trans women, or end up associating only with people who think doing that is excusable, normal, or even desirable, behavior.
Since, as a member of a minority group, they probably get more negative feedback than average, and since probably most of that negative feedback is due to x-ism, why shouldn't they assume you're an x-ist?
And that's completely leaving aside whether there exists any sort of stereotype that members of group x aren't as smart or capable as non-x folks that you may be playing into.
It's really on your shoulders to indicate or demonstrate that you're just an asshole and not an x-ist asshole. Because, as far as the various x-folk are concerned, isn't it simpler to assume that a non-x is being an asshole to them because of x-ism? Odds are that they're right.
I understand folks feel uncomfortable talking about systemic bias. Especially if they don't suffer from it. But that's exactly the issue of status quo vs change - getting folks to notice/discuss it. So there can be change, which requires the comfortable to change too.
“You’re either with us or against us.”
Leave it to the woke crowd to take a page out of the Karl Rove handbook.
Time is a flat circle and all that.
Anyone using it is just saying “If you are not with us, your against us”.
It’s simply a way to force a divide of the world into black and white and that sucks.
I disagree, and I think you're grossly overstating it.
I can see how you could characterize their stance as "supporting the status quo". But, there are varying degrees of "support", and this is pretty much the lowest degree of "support" imaginable.
Put another way, you're painting this as "with us or against us" when in reality there's a spectrum of support. Coinbase is standing just SLIGHTLY off center in one direction.
> And supporting the status quo in this political climate is a strange hill to plant your flag on.
Why do you think it's strange? The vast majority of employees prefer a work environment that is stripped of political conversation. And, such an environment is more conducive to focus and productivity.
While I generally agree, I think there is a tacit assumption that Armstrong's actions will work exactly as intended. 5-8% of workforce is...honestly I don't know if it's high or low, but is certainly non-trivial. These weren't strategic layoffs or restructurings, so certain business-critical projects might be delayed due to headcount issues/loss of senior staff. If we hear about another walkout at Coinbase 6 months from now, this might just look like a catastrophic management blunder.
Literally firing the walkout organizers would probably have led to a worse media cycle, but likely fewer staff quitting in protest (Google firing the walkout organizers seemed to have little to no effect).
The problem with the view that activism is ok if the current administration is objectionable is that the "status quo" changes from cycle to cycle.
Presidential politics is only a very small part of political activity in the US (though it is the most visible). What if your frame of reference is state and local politics? Is political activism in the workplace ok if you don't like the local school board?
This is kind of the same kind of fallacy as people who try to say that atheism is a religion. No, it's the absence of religion. In the same vein, an apolitical workplace isn't support for the status quo. It's the absence of any political, either for or against the status quo.
How many defense contractors are there? These people do have a vested interest to vote for candidates that increase govt contracts with the private sector. This is a massive industry.
Now that govt is getting more involved in health care, we're seeing that too.
These are trillions of dollars we're talking about.
This is also valid for small businesses too. How taxes are done in a given community. Etc.
I can't emphasize enough the vested interest a business has to be selfish. I'm indifferent on if this is a drawback.
I just wish there was more competition/choices for everyone and like you, I wish people would be more upfront (or self aware) of what they're doing.
P.S. When it comes to Coinbase. What stops them from backing a racist KKK member whom backs Bitcoin/crypto? What stops them from backing an anarchist whom backs Bitcoin/crypto? Etc...etc... This silencing of discussion...it a bit disgusting.
This is often presented as obvious self-contradiction, but in fact the definition of "politics" here changes from first use to the second. In other words, this is a cheap rhetorical trick to make something sound irrational and self-contradictory, while int fact it isn't.
I'm sure you meant "overstated".
Good luck dealing with disagreements on this when it's so poorly defined.
[1] https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/?...
This "apolitical" move would be a compelling choice if their only goal was optimizing shareholder value -- it's in their interest to maximize their ability to effectively lobby both American political parties to ensure any future cryptocurrency regulations benefit them.
I suspect that many of these employees aren't motivated by politics, but instead by money.
Just ask people who are interested in politics in the workplace to leave.
However, activism at work is something you can actually legally lose your job over.
That doesn't mean you can't express your political opinions, freedom of expression is protected, but no agitation/activism.
1) don't allow any activism in the company
2) allow ALL types of activism in the company
Right now, it seems most companies only allow liberal activism but not conservative activism. This is a recipe for problems because it's arbitrary and not democratic.
Protected classes aside, if I start a company I can choose to hire or exclude whomever I choose. I could start a company that only hires registered Republicans, or only people who can't stand the taste of bananas. If this turns out to be a bad business decision (which it probably is), the market will punish me and I'll eventually lose to smarter competitors. Right?
This might be illegal in California, which considers political activity to be a protected class.
When a political faction deems that those who refuse to pay half their income for a highly benevolent social program, will face punitive legal consequences, that is authoritarian. I only bring this up because I suspect you are in support of these kinds of programs.
If there are only 10 companies and only one will hire you, with no capital you have zero choice but to work for that company.
I quote Frédéric Bastiat:
Man recoils from trouble, from suffering; and yet he is condemned by nature to the suffering of privation, if he does not take the trouble to work. He has to choose, then, between these two evils. What means can he adopt to avoid both? There remains now, and there will remain, only one way, which is, to enjoy the labor of others. Such a course of conduct prevents the trouble and the satisfaction from preserving their natural proportion, and causes all the trouble to become the lot of one set of persons, and all the satisfaction that of another. This is the origin of slavery and of plunder, whatever its form may be - whether that of wars, imposition, violence, restrictions, frauds, etc. - monstrous abuses, but consistent with the thought which has given them birth. Oppressors should be detested and resisted - they can hardly be called absurd.
Slavery is disappearing, thank heaven! and, on the other hand, our disposition to defend our property prevents direct and open plunder from being easy. One thing, however, remains - it is the original inclination which exists in all men to divide the lot of life into two parts, throwing the trouble upon others, and keeping the satisfaction for themselves. It remains to be shown under what new form this sad tendency is manifesting itself.
The oppressor no longer acts directly and with his own powers upon his victim. No, our conscience has become too sensitive for that. The tyrant and his victim are still present, but there is an intermediate person between them, which is the State - that is, the Law itself.
One is a freely chosen personal belief, and the other is a freely chosen personal belief.
In an industry full of data scientists and engineers, it amazes me how people go along with this narrative that disparate outcomes among members of arbitrary group identities is evidence of discrimination. We know that is not a valid application of statistics, yet people who know better still keep repeating it.
Social advocacy is a spiritual replacement to religion and supporters are even more fervent.
Personally i would expect the former to have more widespread support in America. The latter stands for many things that could be more controversial in the states. A DuckDuckGo for "blm demands"[0] returns the following NPR piece[1] from DC-based interviews. It lists BLM demands as:
0: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=blm+demands1: https://www.npr.org/local/305/2020/06/09/872859084/here-s-wh...
Nobody thinks black lives don’t matter. This is very different from supporting BLM, however. Many prominent black public figures have come out denouncing BLM, and it isn’t because they think their own lives don’t matter.
The name is purely orwellian PR trickery that you can’t argue with, just like “antifa” is. It’s a remarkably effective tactic because most people assume it just means what the words say.
Do you assume that anyone who criticises The People's Democratic Republic of Korea hates democracy and Koreans?
Similarly, you can go to work wearing a blue Biden hat, and nothing would happen. However, if you went to work wearing a red Trump hat, it might be your last day at work.
In a democratic society, this doesn't make sense.
In a way it's an optimization. My hope is that one day, when the two sides have finally come to a conclusion as to which one is right, I can join that one, and save myself a lot of trouble in the meantime ;)
You might adopt a political position that your privileged position of safety and comfort is not subject to any particular obligations to engage with others and become involved in society’s problems, but that would be politics all the same.
That doesn't make inaction immoral. It just means that it's not apolitical.
Or were we both heavily downvoted?
This isn’t about office politics, or political activism at work. This is about Coinbase making an explicit vote for the status quo of American racism, and trying to deflect the heat they’re taking for that by confusing people into thinking that this is about standard political discussion.
It makes me really angry that they would do this.
It makes me really sad that it worked.
I guess with that much money you can hire really good PR people to shape the narrative into exactly what you want, and dupe tons of people who are rightfully tired of the american culture war into thinking that this has anything to do with that.
This is obnoxious, dishonest, bullying.
It's a moral "package deal." The idea being that if you reject BLM for its bad politics, you reject that black lives matter. And if you accept it, you also accept a bunch of other shit you're not actually for.
BLM should be recognized for the moral "package deal" that it is, and vehemently rejected. It's dishonest.
It's not Coinbase that is conflating anything, BLM itself is a conflation of ideas.
The fact that you believe that is probably most of the problem.
You'll certainly find 11-year olds in Call of Duty who will say it for shits and giggles to control you; you won't find anybody who actually believes it.
The disparities in policing, application of police violence, and prosecution are well-documented.
This is why the movement exists. It's a real problem, whether you personally have experienced it or not, whether you personally wish to acknowledge it or not.
There are many people out there who simply do not think that it matters whether or not black people live or die. Many of them are in uniform.
One of my favorite things about this new type of political activism is that words no longer mean what we all understood them to mean in ages past. "Explicit" would mean something along the lines of Coinbase or Armstrong saying "we support the status quo of American racism", as you have alleged. Alas, I've read all these blog posts and there is no sentence that matches or even could be remotely construed to resemble the one you have wrote.
A good example recently from current events was the US president being asked in a press conference to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, "win, lose, or draw". He responded with "we'll have to see what happens". In the context of the question being posed, that's a clear and explicit failure to commit, given that context.
Context can entirely invert the meaning of two identical statements, and, in the right context, a failure to do a certain thing, or even remaining silent, can indeed be an explicit statement.
Another case comes from 2013, Salinas v Texas, when the police were questioning a murder suspect who suddenly became quiet during questioning when the topic turned to the murder. They were able to use this sudden silence as incriminating circumstantial evidence, given that specific context. This resulted in silence in the face of questioning by the government having to be explicitly invoked as such to not be potentially incriminating, which is an odd state of affairs and probably not the best outcome, but you can however tell that those judges weren't completely insane. Silence after saying "I affirmatively invoke my right to remain silent" is very different than silence after you were just answering police questions voluntarily, until they asked you about a murder they thought you committed.
Silence can speak volumes, explicitly, given the circumstances preceding and surrounding that silence.
Desmond Tutu, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, once said:
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”
If in your parent comment you had accused Coinbase/Armstrong of implicitly supporting the status quo (as you define it) I would've said "yeah, sure, if I squint hard enough and wash it through the 'silence is violence' filters I can see how you'd think that".
Another troubling thing I want to point out here is your comment is part of an accelerating trend where people, particularly from but not limited to those on the left, consistently attribute maximum malice of intent to peoples' comments (said and unsaid) or their actions. That is, imo, one of the reasons these environments are so toxic, because people are immediately put on the defensive.
Two can play this game.
And it is a game.
Given enough time, your being incorrect on the topic will only harm yourself, not others.
I've certainly worked with a number of the type.
I was actually sad she left on her own rather than getting fired. She actually moved to a bigger company.
By definition most of them do not have strong principles (they're okay with mediocre work representing them), so i don't picture them leaving on principles
I bet they didn’t have 5% turnover over some time-deaf email from the CEO.
My guess: those 5% got sick of tone-dead all hands meetings/memos and saw their chance to bail out.
I wonder what other companies during the Covid recession has 5% voluntary turnover?
Your job is not a political platform unless you work with politicians on their campaigns or are a politician / other form of politically affiliated / influenced company.
Politics can make people feel extremely uncomfortable especially if they feel suppressed and as a minority are bullied by other employees.
The gist of it is that a competent HR department can make a statement without directly committing support to any particular organization or group that they aren’t comfortable with.
Saying “I refuse to comment and you’re not allowed to comment” is the worst way to go about it, literally anything would be better.
There are also ways to train on empathy, bias, and general employee-to-employee communication that can guide employees through those conversations with colleagues.
Coinbase's offer was 4-6 months severance with benefits over that timeframe.
My guess: 1-2% of those people are the loud, annoying group that demands everyone behave how they think they should, and the other 3-4% were people who saw an opportunity for a long paid vacation while they look for another role.
I honestly don't understand how you could believe that.
Every oil and gas company or tobacco company has been historically engaged in politics.
IBM and BMW famously enabled the Nazi regime during WWII.
Union busting and strike breaking throughout the 70s and 80s was entirely political.
Silicon Valley, in general, heavily invests in political lobbying, including Coinbase itself!
I'm guessing now they're apolitical Coinbase wont be doing any of that.
I get that desire, I really do, but I think it's so important to recognize that your work is not apolitical. It doesn't matter what you're building. What you build does not exist in a vacuum, and the decisions you make around politics at work are themselves political decisions.
Everything you do does affect the environment around you. For example if you take a Bahamas trip, you are paying to generate tons of CO2. If you buy a diesel car, or just driving one, you're affecting the shared air as well.
I'm nearing the point of being aggressively dismissive towards this kind of attitude, because a lot of it doesn't even seem to be laid out in good faith. People are just addicted to being mad, addicted to being right, addicted to the idea that they can channel their anger through pop politics and get validation for it as a bonus.
I have an extremely low opinion of the people and groups who follow along with whatever pop social issue is trending today because they don't want to get in trouble, and IMHO those people aren't really worth interacting with because again, it's more about landing a spicy dunk on the bad guys (tm) and collecting heart icons than whatever issue they're using as a weapon today.
>your work is not apolitical. It doesn't matter what you're building
spare me.
Who is "we"?
The majority of people here don't work for FANG
But those political decisions are ones relevant to the mission of the company.
Coinbase probably shouldn't be involved in politics around police reform, fracking, climate change or the Second Amendment because they are orthogonal to its mission. Insert other topics as you see fit.
And hence its employees should leave their opinions of such matters at the door.
Coinbase should be focused on politics around global financial regulation. And its employees should focus their workplace political energy on those matters.
Also, it's generally just polite and respectful to your coworkers to provide a non-political, non-partisan workplace.
That's a very wrong way to understand what democracy means. If you're incompetent, you are still afforded a vote. And you sleep on the bed you make.
and in any case, the incompetence voter implies that they could be voting "wrong". This is a deep and insidious implication because implying something can be wrong also implies the other "competent" voters are "right". The very notion that one side is "right" is very anti-democratic.
Is it selfish? Probably, and I'm open and proud about that.
Individualism as a political philosophy would be smth like advocating for libertarianism/adjacent stuff, etc. The apolitical stance is the apolitical stance. I do not engage in politics unless it's a minimum-effort activity like the default mail-in voting (WA). Sure, I may know approximately what the best way to organize society is, and if aliens landed and put me in charge I'd become political; but as it is, I do not care, mostly because it's not productive, but in no small part because actively caring about how to organize society is heavily correlated with being very wrong (IMHO).
It's impossible to not involve yourself in politics that effect your employee's everyday lives.
But many things in the world that should not be politicized are, in fact, politicized. Perhaps Coinbase wants to hire a more diverse bunch of people, and starts an internal initiative to do so. Perhaps they do this not out of any political motivation, but because they genuinely believe (as they should!) that having a more diverse workforce will help them make better decisions about their product.
But of course there will be some (many?) who will decry this as Coinbase "being political". You just can't win, really.
"We should hire a more diverse workforce because diversity improves our collective judgment, thereby furthering our mission" is on its face a fine subject for discussion provided you're evaluating the claim on its merits and not sneaking in overtly political implications like "we have a moral responsibility to hire diverse candidates". One could envision a fruitful, dispassionate discussion about how much return on investment the company could expect from a diversity initiative, how that ROI stacks up against other opportunities, how to measure the ROI and make sure the initiative is meeting expectations, whether or not it runs afoul of anti-discrimination law, what kind of diversity (race, gender, viewpoint, etc) is most likely to yield the highest ROI, etc.
Of course, it's prudent to stay away from these kinds of charged topics altogether because it's very likely that you have employees that will take this as an opportunity to pollute a potentially productive conversation with their overtly political opinions.
That some things are easily abused by bad-faith employees doesn't mean that we should let bad faith employees have free reign.
Are you sure this isn't just an excuse to make things political in these west coast companies that are full of young, hot-headed, extremely left wing people?
This is just one more step in that direction.
Funnily enough, I think it has been extrapolated by Neal Stephenson in Diamond Age. We will end up having parallel societies which define themselves not by geographic boundaries, but by affiliation. A North Korean community could be your neighbour.
I'm curious what your definition of political is, because my gut feeling is that (Almost) nothing is political.
How do you believe Coinbase, a cryptocurrency corporation, will remain "a political" in the design of their systems given the changing political climate around crypto? Does that just mean bowing down to whatever the administration says? Do you believe Coinbase will remain "apolitical" is the US begins to enact policy that causes Coinbase users to find alternatives?
Do you believe Coinbase employees will have no opinion on the way the justice department handles cryptocurrency?
But if it's unrelated to the business, then the business is no place to undertake such activism.
Politics is more than just the rituals of government officials or what gets written about in the politics section of the newspaper:
> Politics (from Greek: Πολιτικά, politiká, 'affairs of the cities') is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations between individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics)
For instance, this effort to create an "apolitical workplace" could probably be understood as political project to stamp out elements of bottom-up democratic political culture in favor of a more autocratic political culture. At work we keep our heads down and follow the edicts (mission) of our leaders.
1. relating to the government or public affairs of a country.
Not the one the parent probably means:
2. (DEROGATORY) done or acting in the interests of status or power within an organization rather than as a matter of principle.
Whatever a company does, it relates in some way to the public affairs of a country. Either in what you offer, or what you need to produce your offer. Your company is hopefully affecting the public affairs of your country in more than one way. And that I think had very much a place at work.
The delineation between public affair and private matter seems to be quite arbitrary at times.
I would say abortion is a private matter, or who you marry or which combination of sex chromosomes you have, but all those things are very high on the list of things being discussed.
Here I have to say, I'm more likely to give the point, that those topics are not professionally relevant, but neither is sports.
Arguments like "abortion is highly related to site reliability engineering" are pretty overtly disingenuous in a very clear-cut fashion.
> Here I have to say, I'm more likely to give the point, that those topics are not professionally relevant, but neither is sports.
Sports don't cause the same degree of strife in the workplace. No one is demanding anyone's termination because they like a different sports team or because they were caught in a photograph gesturing in a way that looks vaguely like the hook 'em horns gesture (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hook_%27em_Horns).
All of these actions can be viewed as political statements. Everything is political.
Coinbase is intrinsically political. They're a financial institution. Their product is subject to both laws and public scrutiny.
Fundamentally, this is our disagreement.
One clever way to deeply entrench a political decision is to convince others that it's not a political decision at all. If you're successful, you've erected a barrier against your opponents by interfering with their ability to even conceive opposition to your position. It's sort of like the concept of Newspeak.
Which is better for a gay man in Saudi Arabia? A company where people only talk about work, or a company where everybody is expected to take a stance on homosexuality?
> Which is better for a gay man in Saudi Arabia? A company where people only talk about work, or a company where everybody is expected to take a stance on homosexuality?
You're talking about something completely different. What I'm talking about is basically falsely depoliticizing a political decision, so people think it's something that cannot be changed, like nature or something. The reference to Newspeak, which was imagined as a way of dismantling the mental machinery of political opposition, should have made that clear. That you missed it is ironic given your username.
If you want to map the experience of a gay man in Saudi Arabia onto what I was talking about, he would marry a woman and not even think things could be any different.
Your appeal to newspeak is pretty pointless, as it applies only inasmuch as it does to anyone who might claim that something is its opposite, for example the slogans "the personal is political" and "silence is violence".
Sure, if you accept lies like that, you may lose the ability to think about the true nature of those things.
But you haven't really contributed anything to the conversation. You're just saying "ah, but what if they're /lying/! To /trick us/!"
You're still not really getting what I was saying. Directly claiming something is apolitical won't actually create the state I was talking about. To do that you actually have to get a bunch of influential people to talk about some political idea like it was obviously some kind of natural or social law or something.
Not everything is political, but many people are ignorant of the political nature of many things.
> Your appeal to newspeak is pretty pointless, as it applies only inasmuch as it does to anyone who might claim that something is its opposite, for example the slogans "the personal is political" and "silence is violence".
You're thinking about the slogans like "freedom is slavery," which weren't Newspeak and would have been unexpressible in it.
> But you haven't really contributed anything to the conversation. You're just saying "ah, but what if they're /lying/! To /trick us/!"
I'm not sure I'm contributing the the conversion that you want to have, which makes it a little baffling why you're engaging with me and not one of "the others" who seem to be who you really want to engage with.
No, the distinction is not whether somebody _decides_ if a topic is political or not, but that the conversations' intension is to convert the other party that your point of view is correct for society. I.e., you have to undertake political activism towards something for the topic to be political.
It's like religion as a topic of conversation, vs religious conversion. Two people can be talking about religion, but if neither is trying to "convert" the other, then this is not a religious conversion.
But if one party is talking with the intent to convert the other party to said religion, then it's a religious conversion. And the argument is that this should not happen in the workplace.
If a coworker talks about his husband, is that a political statement? To some people, absolutely, right?
How about someone mentioning a concert that they've gone to, for an artist that's outspokenly political one way or another? Just a concert, right?
What about talking about a great movie or TV show, if those are, I don't know, "Sorry to Bother You" or "Lovecraft Country"?
Can you mention that you went to a gun show, or a shooting range?
Can you recommend a Jordan Peterson book?
Can you put an NRA logo on your car?
What about a BLM logo?
What about on your T-shirt?
If a coworker goes through a gender transition, how does that get handled in a way that everyone, across the board, considers apolitical? Good luck with that: the very act of transitioning is, to a significant portion of the population, itself political.
So, I mean, sure, not literally everything is political, but if you give the statement a bit more of a generous reading than "Come on, are you saying ice cream is political? Harrumph!", you can see the point being made.
(Also, re: ice cream: what about Ben & Jerry's?)
Or are they taking action not for such purposes? For example, a gay person talking about their spouse to a colleague without the intent to change any political beliefs of anyone around them?
But, this doesn't mean an organization has to take a position on every hot-button political issue. Even the Biden campaign, a a political organization if there ever was one, needs to focus on getting their candidate elected, and not on things that divide Democrats.
To agree on a mission doesn't mean people on the organization need to agree on everything. Putting aside any differences on stuff not related to the mission is important in being able to work together as a team.
There are going to be political issues that involve Coinbase, and if they're deciding already to ignore any role they play in society, we need to be highly critical of every decision they make moving forward.
And that constitutes a much larger part of our lives than is traditionally acknowledged. Which is itself, also, a political matter, because designating a subset of actual politics as "officially politics", and then marginalizing that subset, is one way to slow down further political developments in that department.
No, its not.
"Everything must be directed by the coercive power of the state" is. The former does not imply the latter (the scope of the coercive power of the state is, itself, a political issue.)
Yes, actually it absolutely is. Putting everything up for grabs for state (or in modern day; the mob) control is literally totalitarianism. People who "don't understand" this are either abysmally stupid or are power mad imbeciles who are pretending not to understand for Machiavellian reasons.
If "everything is political" there is no room for private life, which is the only life that matters.
I agree that our divisiveness is caused by an unwillingness to listen to one another, but I don’t think avoiding discussion in the workplace is making us less willing to listen. People have lots of opportunities to listen to opposing views outside of the workplace, and yet many positively pride themselves on ignoring dissenting opinions—ostracizing one’s family for wrongthink is a veritable badge of honor in certain ideological communities. I don’t see how bringing that divisiveness into the workplace is going to soften those people.
If someone is deeply committed to ignorance and divisiveness, allowing them to proselytize at work doesn’t seem fruitful (everyone who is not committed to ignorance has likely already considered their views) and is very likely going to be harmful. On the other hand, there is a chance that by ignoring politics at work, people might have a chance to build relationships with reasonable people (who they otherwise would have written off or persecuted for heresy) which might have a deradicalizing effect (if you look up to someone who is charitable, honest, and open minded, you are probably more likely to emulate those qualities yourself).
Only in a world where words have no meaning.
I think the parent meant that the more you use the term "political" to refer to everything, the less meaning "political" has.
That only means the word "politics" has no meaning at the limit.
This is textbook pedantry. Obviously "don't discuss politics in the workplace" means "don't discuss divisive topics, especially when they're not particularly relevant to your work".
Of course everything is "technically political", but that's not how anyone uses "political" except when they're trying to argue in bad faith (specifically engaging in tautology).
The funny thing about politics is: a company doesn't get to choose what topics are divisive. People do. All it takes is one person to strongly hold a belief in the office to make it political.
Not like "we need to put gay marriage banners on our home page" is political.
I really think people should start respecting the difference.
> All it takes is one person to strongly hold a belief in the office to make it political.
No. It requires them to act on it. To engage in political activity.
It's not political to be a communist at work. It's political to use this belief to steer how the job is done or how the company should perform its mission, or indeed to try to change its mission.
Talking about one's wedding around the water cooler is not political, irrespective of the speaker's orientation OR the audience's opinions about gay marriage. Similarly, an argument in favoring or opposing gay marriage would be political irrespective of the speaker's sexuality or the audience's opinions. This seems perfectly straightforward to me. It seems like you're trying to make a problem where none exists.
Don't talk about your abortion and how it made your life better or worse.
Don't talk about your birth control.
Don't talk about how you were explicitly told by an authority figure you were not worthy of a job because of your sex/gender.
Easy for me to imagine someone being told not to talk about their gay marriage under similar circumstances.
I think commonly used phrases are "its not for polite company", "keep politics out of it", "don't bring your politics here", etc.
It is obviously selective enforcement of the rules, but that is a common and unfortunately often effective shield.
Luckily I have heard/see less of the above over the last 10 years than the 10 years before that.
I think the fact that there are two sides to US politics, and those two sides split cleanly along almost every controversial topic, is causing the confusion. Because it's both.
Abortions are controversial because some people believe they should not be allowed to happen, while others belive women should be in control of their own bodies. Abortions are political because the Republican party has a publicly-stated policy of wanting to legislate against abortion. The Democratic party has a publicly-stated policy of wanting to maintain women's ability to get an abortion if they need one.
Thus a controversial topic is also political. Any discussion of the topic will inevitably reduce to a political discussion because the two political parties are so closely aligned with the two sides of the conversation.
Because of the way that US politics has been so data-driven, focus-group informed, every controversial topic is being used as a method of creating political traction. So everything controversial is becoming political. Even something as banal as wearing a mask during a pandemic is turned into a political statement.
I didn’t claim otherwise. I believe that people are told not to talk about their abortion because it’s controversial, but not because it’s political barring perhaps a few people who aren’t educated enough to understand the distinction.
> Abortions are political because the Republican party has a publicly-stated policy of wanting to legislate against abortion.
The Republican party’s political advocacy is obviously political, but it doesn’t follow that any given account of an abortion is political. Both are controversial, however.
> So everything controversial is becoming political.
Controversial things frequently are political, but that doesn’t mean any particular speech about a controversial topic is political speech. You seem to be confusing a prohibition about politics with a prohibition against any topic that has a political aspect. So at coinbase, a gay man could talk about his marriage despite that gay marriage is also a political subject (and also a controversial topic in some spheres, albeit probably not the SV spheres), but he (and any employee for that matter) couldn’t advocate for or against gay marriage policy or norms.
So if people live their life having people around them using the word politics like in my phrases above they will also start using the word that way. A way that does not match up with your definitions.
> You’re confusing “controversial” with “political”.
So when you say things like the above it comes off to me as unreasonable/uncharitable. Since the people you are talking to are using a set of definitions that are relatively common in my experience.
edit: unreasonable -> unreasonable/uncharitable
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> I’ve never heard anyone told not to talk about those things because they’re political, but I could believe they were told not to talk about them because they’re controversial.
Knowledge and understanding of a topic is required before reasoned action is taken. If you can not talk about abortion, birth control, sexual/gender discrimination, gay marriage, and more because it is controversial then we might be getting in to an area where speech is so restricted that it impedes knowledge transfer and understanding on those topics.
In order to have an informed populace then need to be exposed to things, sometime controversial. If you remove a reasonably large mechanism for that, conversation at work, it will have political consequences.
And you can research and discuss those topics outside of work.
You're not being paid to show up to work and form PACs. You're not being paid to show up to work to virtue signal about the most fashionable wedge issue of the day. You're not being paid to show up to work and sow discord by assuming moral high ground and vilifying the other side. etc., etc.
>In order to have an informed populace then need to be exposed to things, sometime controversial.
The political culture status quo at Bay Area companies is that this is an alt-right talking point.
>If you remove a reasonably large mechanism for that, conversation at work, it will have political consequences.
Conversation at work absolutely should not be a large mechanism for political discussion. It's work. If there are political consequences because workers are no longer allow to virtue signal all day, then that speaks more about their weak mental state than it does about politics.
And you can research and discuss those topics outside of work.
You're not being paid to show up to work and form PACs. You're not being paid to show up to work to virtue signal about the most fashionable wedge issue of the day. You're not being paid to show up to work and sow discord by assuming moral high ground and vilifying the other side. etc., etc.
>In order to have an informed populace then need to be exposed to things, sometime controversial.
The political culture status quo at Bay Area companies is that this is an alt-right talking point.
>If you remove a reasonably large mechanism for that, conversation at work, it will have political consequences.
Conversation at work absolutely should not be a large mechanism for political discussion. It's work. If there are political consequences because workers are no longer allow to virtue signal all day, then that speaks more about their weak mental state than it does about politics.
In my experience in the USA it is common for conversations at work to be about family, kids, life experiences(good and bad), current events, etc. It is something people bond over and use to help form a common company culture.
Different companies vary what is allowed and or encouraged and experience different benefits and consequences.
> You're not being paid to show up to work and form PACs. You're not being paid to show up to work to virtue signal about the most fashionable wedge issue of the day. You're not being paid to show up to work and sow discord by assuming moral high ground and vilifying the other side. etc., etc.
I do not see anyone in this thread advocating for anything that extreme.
>>In order to have an informed populace then need to be exposed to things, sometime controversial.
> The political culture status quo at Bay Area companies is that this is an alt-right talking point.
I am not in the know about bay area culture but that does not match my limited view from the outside.
> Conversation at work absolutely should not be a large mechanism for political discussion. It's work. If there are political consequences because workers are no longer allow to virtue signal all day, then that speaks more about their weak mental state than it does about politics.
My focus on for this comment was not politic conversation in the work place but on how removing a large mechanism of knowledge and understanding transferal in the work place would have political consequences for society.
None of which are politics, so we agree.
>I do not see anyone in this thread advocating for anything that extreme.
Did you by chance not RTFA? Employees are literally planning virtual walkouts because they felt that Coinbase didn't virtue signal enough.
>I am not in the know about bay area culture but that does not match my limited view from the outside.
Your limited view is in total contrast to reality. I've lived in the Bay Area for the past 8 years, and attempting to consider outside viewpoints that may be controversial might as well make you a Nazi sympathizer. https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/14/us/berkeley-ben-shapiro-speec...
>My focus on for this comment was not politic conversation in the work place but on how removing a large mechanism of knowledge and understanding transferal in the work place would have political consequences for society.
This is a non sequitur. No one is suggesting removing knowledge transfer and communication at work. People are suggesting limiting the amount of political activism at work that's outside of the scope of what you were paid to do (the company's general mission).
I did not suggest anyone here was advocated for that in this thread. I provided examples above where people are told not to talk about, abortion, contraceptives, discrimination based on gender/sex, conversations about a gay marriage because they are "politics". Hence why some people are objecting to removing political conversations from work.
It was part of back and forth conversation with throwaway894345.
And before anyone says anything, when religion informs lawmaking, it becomes political.
Of course, I'm asking rhetorically. They know perfectly what it means and they don't like it.
To answer your question, no I don't believe "gay man talking about his wedding" will fall under what's not allowed to be discussed around a water cooler at Coinbase.
Unless you are living in a post-scarcity, post-status, post-power anarchist society, populated entirely by The New Soviet Man (or some other fictional relative thereof), everything that's meaningful is, indeed, political.
You can draw a contrast between personal politics and organizational politics. An organization can be explicit that it engages in organizational politics, but bars personal politics. That is what Coinbase is currently doing[1]. That's the CEO's, and the board's prerogative.
[1] It does, however, falsely claim that its organizational political activity is somehow apolitical. It's not.
That's like saying every conversation is about syntax and semantics.
1. Deciding that a new table is a worthwhile use of resources (vs reuse, for example)
2. Deciding who to sell it to (if it's not for your own use)
3. Deciding what to make it out of (resource cost, ethical implications of the supply chain, concern about wood glue toxicity, ...)
And so on, and so forth. You might not consciously think about these as political, but.. that's also a political opinion.
> then "it's political" has no useful meaning.
Exactly.
Which is why Coinbase is saying specifically there are politics which are central to their mission that they still must naturally engage with.
I think any engineer who has a moral quandary about the work the are doing should absolutely take it up with management, up to including whistle-blowing or resigning. Professional Engineers put their license on the line with this, mere computer engineers may not have so much at stake professionally but are equally ethically bound.
let me reverse this, and present a different scenario. You are doing your job, but you feel strongly about a certain political movement (be it BLM or abortion rights, or whatnot). You tell your boss that you are going to spend some work time to talk to other employees and may be convince them to join your cause. What should the boss do? Let you work on it without bringing up their concern? Or fire you?
If I knew that they manufactured these land mine bears before I started, I wouldn’t be there anyway.
I definitely see the point of keeping a company focused on its task, though probably we have then the same discussion with different terms.
Serving coffee is not political. Planning the network installation is not political. Code reviews, cleaning your office, optimizing the VM, getting a bandwidth deal, negotiating the SaaS pricing, choosing ingredients for the new dish, figuring out how many loads of gravel are needed for the landfill, picking a guy to fix the fence ...
It's 99% not political.
Google search is barely political, ads are a little bit.
Social Media is political and not that-that much more.
It's 100% fine for you to 'work on something consistent with your political views' but at the same time just 'pick the place' instead of 'making the place' inherently political.
In 2020, the answer that google search gives to the query "Do masks protect you from COVID" is political.
Whether or not google search even works in, say, Russia... Or Australia is political.
Could it be that it's actually not that political, it's just that these companies are filled by extremely left wing west coast people who want to make it political?
You obviously have an axe to grind against a particular political spectrum, so I will pose a more direct example that does not involve it.
Is Russia Today political? Is choosing to display it prominently in a search result political? Is choosing to display a 'this is state sponsored news' tag on it political? Is not choosing to display that tag on a link to the CBC, or NPR not a political decision?
If you don't think RT is political, I can go down the list until we find something that is. Zero hedge? QAnon? The International Council of Communism? The newsletter published by your local KKK chapter? BLM?
The reason the work of tech companies is political is because they've installed themselves as gatekeepers of political information. If they were dumb pipes, this wouldn't be an issue. They aren't, though.
Would you consider it possible I'm a liberal myself? And that my liberalismi is exactly the reason it's difficult for me to accept this sort of behavior?
Google is making everything political with its "Machine Learning Fairness" initiative. Like when you google image search "european art" or "white men".
You'd think European art was 50% black person portraits and that 50% of white men were criminals or black.
But the point I trying to make is, that "apolitical" is not the absence of political. It is a political choice. Here a definition of apolitical: "not interested or involved in politics"
> Serving coffee is not political.
Which coffee do you serve? If you don't care, you are apolitical, but you can either serve coffee with child labour or not.
> Planning the network installation is not political.
So, it will include equipment from Huawei? Or Cisco?
> Code reviews,
If someone puts in there a "joke", do you address it? Should you?
> cleaning your office, optimizing the VM,
Yeah, probably not.
> getting a bandwidth deal, negotiating the SaaS pricing, choosing ingredients for the new dish,
To which standard do you hold your suppliers? Are they subscribing to any social corporate responsibility standard? Are you? Are you trying to make a vegan dish or not? (Not that I care, I am apolitical there, but I do not think, it is not political)
> figuring out how many loads of gravel are needed for the landfill,
Probably not.
> picking a guy to fix the fence ..
Are you rejecting the guy who has a MAGA bumper on his truck?
> Google search is barely political,
Really? There was just recently a case of republicans complaining about how they are ranked. What about Google in China? Or Hong Kong?
> It's 100% fine for you to 'work on something consistent with your political views' but at the same time just 'pick the place' instead of 'making the place' inherently political.
Here I think, I can understand that you want to say, that all the points I just made, are likely to be unproductive to be discussed at the workplace. And I would agree. You may say, you are tired of hearing those issues, and I can understand.
But I would say, one doesn't make a place inherently political, it is. Being apolitical doesn't make it go away, that decisions have an impact on the public affairs of a country. In a small and intangible way probably, but so does a vote.
Choosing coffee is not child labour, bad jokes can happen anywhere, Huawei/Not Huawei is a security choice not a political one ... and for god's sakes we're picking our caprenters based in their bumpers stickers? No. I don't care what bumper stickers my carpenter has, and although I personally hate Trump, I don't care one bit that he has such a bumper sticker, and nobody else should either.
99.99% of Google content is mundane and not political.
They're not banning a lot from Google search other than really illegal stuff.
'Choosing the SaaS vendor based on price' is not just 'going with the status quo.
I get what you are trying to say, I just don't agree.
I don't even think that workplaces embracing popular social issues directly that much, what matters is addressing the social issues directly, not as a matter of populism.
Saying "our company doesn't hire black people, that doesn't seem fair, can we think about that" is 100% reasonable, but making public statements about BLM etc. is more political, less pragmatic.
For some reason it's just the west coast tech companies where information or search is political, but with traditional media it's not?
Search for "american mathematician" on Google and the first six images that come back with the search results are of black mathematicians, 3 of them women.
That is political.
Nothing wrong with female or black mathematicians, the more the better, but that's not how it went down.
If I worked at Google and they asked me to code that, I would have said, "Sure, I can do that", which would be a non-political decision, but whoever decided on how that should be implemented was making a political decision.
99.99% of searches are just searches, and that's it.
And why do they get to decide that?
If it cannot be disjoint, then it seems like it has become a requirement for it to be aligned in only one acceptable direction - hence why Coinbase's move is apparently controversial. Failure to actively support the standardized and approved message is apparently not acceptable!
> This is just one more step in that direction.
One more misstep. The combination of this effect with polarization means it's only a matter of time before someone realizes there's actually going to be a market for legitimately countercultural companies that reach out to those who don't walk the new party line. Since there's enough of them to elect a president, it's probably high time for some brave company to take you up on your suggestion that everything be political.
Money is money, and the money of a jew, nazi, gay, christian, muslim or pedophile are all equally good. Anyone rejecting money because they don't agree with where it comes from is either lying or about to be eaten alive by someone who doesn't.
There is a reason why everyone in China is trying to escape to our system, while they have invented personal money - in the form of your social score.
I'll take a shot: - I think compelled activism is inappropriate. You know, the "silence is violence" stuff. - I think expecting to have power to set a company's political agenda and expressing anger when you don't get your way is inappropriate. That power belongs to the board. Employment and stock-options are not "fractions of board seats".
i agree that employment is not "fractions of board seats. But stock options (when converted to stock) holds voting power, and thus _do_ represent "factions of board seats". Very little amount, but an amount nonetheless.
I would argue that the board wouldn’t exist without the people that make up the company. I would also argue that with monied interests and lobbyists in Washington, one of the last places that people can really effect societal change is at the work place. Companies have become the power center in American politics, so of course activism is going to rise up there.
As far as compelled activism goes, I feel that silence _is_ violence.
“The Only Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil is that Good Men Do Nothing” (JFK, Burke, Mill...)
The issue comes when some people are uncomfortable with work being done and others aren’t. Those who are uncomfortable are probably going to want to have discussions about it. If I was asked to contribute to a system that put people (any people) in to cages I would refuse. But that’s precisely what ICE is doing in the USA. If such a contract came up you can bet it’s something I’d want to talk about with my coworkers!
If you’re not going to take a stand now, when will you?
When I'm not at work.
When and where I stand is my business, but "when" is definitely not when I am at work and nobody is bullying anyone.
A company operates in a political environment, whether or not people want to acknowledge that. Workers have real power and can advance their goals whether or not management wants to accept it. Politics in the workplace isn’t something to shy from, but to embrace. Any company that tries to refute politics will find themselves behind the curve on something they should very much so try to stay ahead of.
Yes you could stretch any argument to categorize anything as what you want, but I think under a reasonable interpretation of 'politicized workplace', Twitter could institute a policy of adding warnings to content it deems misinformation without politicizing its workplace.
As for workers having power, yes, but the company has the right to dictate what the worker does in their capacity as workers, if they choose to stay employed at the company.
Maintaining a mission focused company that doesn't allow employees to turn the company into a vehicle to advance a political cause unrelated to that mission is good for productivity.
I'm trying to solve for how decision making power is allocated without making assumptions about which side is right or wrong. In other words, the argument that "The company must do XYZ because this political cause is simply on the RIGHT side of history!" is not acceptable to me, even though I often personally agree that the cause really _is_ right.
I never believed the whole "change the world" SV nonsense, and always knew it was nothing more than cynical marketing. But at least in places like Google the employees who were brought on that premise, fight to achieve it, and make it real.
Coinbase is still hypocritical, and I wouldn't expect much more.
But this whole, "you are only a serf and the whole of power morally belongs to the board" reveals an unsettling feudal mentality.
I don’t think it compares, even as a hyperbole, to Coinbase employees.
It certainly is.
But I like to believe, there is an underlying reasonable philosophy behind it. Every company tries to make a difference, that is its value proposition. If your value proposition has a negative social impact, it is not a sustainable business model. Legislation will eventually render your business untenable. (Even if it takes centuries or decades like tobacco, or fossil fuel).
So, considering your social impact makes business sense.
To quote Paul Drucker:
"Responsibility for social impacts is a management responsibility — not because it is a social responsibility, but because it is a business responsibility. The ideal is to make elimination of such an impact into a business opportunity. But wherever that cannot be done, the design of the appropriate regulation with the optimal trade-off balance—and public discussion of the problem and promotion of the best regulatory solution — is management’s job."
To be involved in any and all politics is just absurd.
Even personally if you want to change something you have to have a very narrow focus. You can’t change everything.
Perhaps less Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age, and more Cory Doctorow's Eastern Standard Tribe:
https://craphound.com/category/est/
Typically the whole discussion around overly political workplaces revolves around west coast tech companies, which are a monoculture of liberalism. Republican views are definitely not heard or dealt with.
I think people are talking past each other with the word 'political'. Some may define it as the execution of governance, and others may define it as partisan gamesmanship, and of course lots around and in between.
Coinbase will have to make political decisions, and it's natural that people within the company will have differing opinions -- informed by their personal politics -- as to the course those decisions should take.
[1] https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/?...
Their position is pretty straightforward and sensible, even if it is not entirely straightforward to implement in an even handed way.
that is the rights of ownership, and is a capitalist ideal. To change it is to strip these rights from ownership and give it to those who do not currently have ownership (and is basically what communism is).
I think Coinbase will now attract/retain fewer conscientious employees. The kind of employees who definitely won't leave are the ones with careerist/mercenary personality types. If that becomes a vicious cycle ( per the 'like attracts like' thing https://youtu.be/wTgQ2PBiz-g?t=75 ), the culture could lead to wide-spread ass-covering and fraud.
Then again, this isn't an area in which I have some particular expertise. Maybe it will work out perfectly.
Another possibility that occurs to me is that some employees are very conscientious, but have value systems that are looked down upon in mainstream Silicon Valley culture.
I could imagine such employees being more willing to stay with Coinbase when that potential source of strife is removed.
I’m not sure that’s what happened here. This was started because employees were upset that the company wasn’t taking a stance to support the Black Lives Matter movement. If my employer decided to be apolitical around something as basic as saying racism is a thing and Black people shouldn’t be killed by the police I’d certainly leave too.
To my point, though, I'm envisioning a longer-term culture-shift.
Life is complicated, we have a lot of things to focus on, most people like to do work at work, not get tangled in what might be suppressive or irrelevant social webs.
My bet is that 70% of people would prefer apolitical, 20% 'moderate' and only 10% activism - of course - only if it's specifically their view of activism.
Sure, I’m not sure what the answer is. Then again, I’m not a professional HR person who is supposed to be trained in handling these issues.
Having 5% of your workforce quit over nothing more than messaging is a catastrophic failure in people management.
Outright political speech bans at companies may be perfectly justified, but it’s usually the case that work environments that have a habit of outright banning things are stifling to be a part of. I’m sure this isn’t the first time that employees have heard tone-deaf messaging from corporate, and being offered some money to leave on the heels of some more time-deafness must have been appealing.
It’s not hard to have policies and training rooted in being empathetic and respectful toward others. That way you don’t have to ban difficult topics. Conversations between coworkers being excessively policed never feels good.
Asking people to always be work robots is completely unreasonable - lifelong friendships and marriages happen with coworkers. We are human, social creatures. Things happen in the world and we spend most of our weekday life at work, so we often need other people at work to talk with about them.
I think the CEO’s refusal to take a stance on whether Black Lives Matter is a stance in itself. It’s hard not to assume that he doesn’t agree with the organization or the statement, even if that’s not the case. And while the movement is in some way political, in most ways the organization and the phrase simply stands for the idea that, well, Black Lives Matter. It’s simply a marginalized group seeking equal treatment, and there really shouldn’t be anything political about being treated as an equal.
Of course, the reactionaries in our world always demand that we think otherwise: that we should be considerate of their views on keeping women, certain races and ethnicities, the differently abled, or people with the “wrong” faith as second-class citizens. They want us to consider these fundamentally flawed views as if they are on equal plane as a valid “other side” of the coin, as if it’s simple political disagreement. In reality, their viewpoints were never acceptable, we’ve just had to suffer through them.
There’s nothing political about telling someone through words and actions that they matter, and treating those people with equal protections and rights in the criminal justice system.
As an anecdote, my employer had no problem proclaiming support for Black lives. We have Black employees, of course we should agree that Black Lives Matter. And of course we can have difficult conversations among our coworkers, as long as we know how to listen to each other. This is where HR comes in to help train and guide around keeping those conversations productive and beneficial to everyone, because people grow by having their viewpoints challenged and expanded - and that can happen at work!
If BLM was just that, most people, even on the political right, would have no problems with it. The trouble is, BLM the organization is run by Marxists, is openly racist in itself (black exclusivity), and their aims are much more than racial equality.
Their leaders have made statements regarding dismantling capitalism, have attended rallies with Nicolas Maduro, and have had their funding organized by ex-convict Susan Rosenberg, who was part of the terrorist May 19th Communist Organization.
I'm a fan of racial equality, and by that I mean completely eliminating racism quotas, making hiring based purely on merit and not melanin. I will have nothing to do with the organization BLM.
From Wikipedia:
> The phrase "Black Lives Matter" can refer to a Twitter hashtag, a slogan, a social movement, a political action committee,[18] or a loose confederation of groups advocating for racial justice. As a movement, Black Lives Matter is grassroots and decentralized, and leaders have emphasized the importance of local organizing over national leadership
Again, as a company it’s not even hard to take a not-tone-deaf stance on the issue while avoiding directly supporting the original organization. It’s not hard to reassure your Black colleagues that you recognize their struggle and that you support them.
When you as a company say “we refuse to discuss this, you are forbidden from discussing this,” it’s inhuman and tone deaf.
Let's get real. People on the political right have been yelling about kneeling in the NFL since that particular form of protest began. And it has few/none of the associations you describe.
> I'm a fan of racial equality, and by that I mean completely eliminating racism quotas, making hiring based purely on merit and not melanin.
Sounds great in theory. Now try to ascertain if someone made a hiring/promotion decision based on merit or on melanin without some kind of Star Trek era brain scan.
I'm of the opinion that business owners should be the sole arbiters of who is hired and promoted anyway. The State should mind its own business. A good business owner will promote the best talent which will make their company grow. If they start filtering talent based on skin color, they're hurting their own pocket.
You can't ascertain whether individual hiring decisions are based on merit or not, but you can make a statistical guess at what percentage of each ethnicity would be promoted based on the demographics where the hiring is taking place. If the population is 10% black and 90% white, you'd expect an organization to be 10% black and 90% white on average, if no racial screening is occurring.
However, the common "diversity quotas" which are commonly employed now want a different outcome. They want to see at least 50% of hires from BAME, even if BAME are only 20% of the demographics. There's a term for this. It's called racism.
I'm pretty sure this is a straw man. 50% quotas are common for women (50% of the population), but otherwise I could find no evidence of 50% quotas based on race.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> I think the CEO’s refusal to take a stance on whether Black Lives Matter is a stance in itself. It’s hard not to assume that he doesn’t agree with the organization or the statement, even if that’s not the case.
I think you're right about the second part, but I disagree that it's "nothing more than messaging." Surely it must not be about "focusing on Coinbase's mission" but rather that the Coinbase leadership feels that the Black Lives Matter issue simply is not important enough to take a stance on and thus potentially alienate some people. I strongly suspect that Coinbase would take a stance if they deemed the issue to be important enough. Would Coinbase take a stance if there was a current prominent debate over whether Black people should be allowed to vote? Or is that not related closely enough to their mission? What if the prominent debate was over whether Black people should be allowed to have bank accounts, or purchase cryptocurrencies?
That's just wrong. "Black lives matter" encompasses at least three separate categories of claims:
1. The lives of black people are inherently as valuable as the lives of others.
2. The US and western civilization in general is based on white supremacy at its core, and all disparities that disfavor minorities are solely due to present-day racism.
3. Radical change is necessary in order to solve the problems of racism, including reparations, abolishing the police, and ending capitalism.
BLM often ends up being a motte-and-bailey where anyone who isn't totally on board with #2 or #3 is accused of denying #1.
This is where HR comes in to help train and guide around keeping those conversations productive and beneficial to everyone, because people grow by having their viewpoints challenged and expanded
I suspect there are certain viewpoints that can be challenged and others than cannot.
#2 is objectively true, ask any historian.
#3 is making a whole lot of assumptions about the goals and beliefs of an extremely large tent.
There are absolutely viewpoints that aren’t allowed to be challenged at work. But what you’re getting close to alluding to is the flawed idea of all ideas being equally acceptable.
The idea that Black Lives Matter is not on equal plane with the inverse. Those against the idea over technicalities are on the wrong side of history and human decency.
Are you suggesting that all stances on all controversial issues are acceptable, and that it is impossible to hold a stance which is an affront to human dignity? Or are you merely saying that these issues are relatively unimportant compared to one's labor at their place of employment, and should thus be ignored?
Other political issues may very well be important to people, and they're free to act on them in their own time. Your co-workers are a captive audience, and it's not appropriate to abuse that relationship for political activism. People who want to be politically active can do so on their own time. I would not take issue with, say, a Mormon co-worker who goes door to door on weekends and takes PTO to go on missionary trips. I would however, take issue with proselytizing to co-workers. I regard politics the same way.
There are a variety of controversial issues where one position is a literal affront to human dignity (i.e., a deliberate act of disrespect).
> This kind of rhetoric creates a hostile and toxic work environment
This is a privileged view of the situation.
As a simple example, imagine you have three coworkers: Alex, Blake, and Taylor.
Alex believes that Taylor should not have been allowed to have married their current spouse, and posts on their personal Twitter account advocating that the decisions which allowed that to be possible be repealed.
Alex hasn't shared their beliefs in a work setting, but did tweet something about the company and as a result Taylor saw the other tweets and learned how Alex felt.
Taylor believes that Alex's position is a deliberate act of disrespect. Taylor fears a decision that would result in no longer being married to their spouse, which would lead to problems with medical insurance, child custody, finances, etc. Taylor doesn't feel safe working with someone who actively wishes to destroy a meaningful part of their life.
Taylor asks the company to make a statement supporting their right to have married their partner.
Blake says that Taylor is creating a hostile and toxic work environment.
Is Blake right? Or is Taylor acting in self defensive, in response to an already-hostile and already-toxic work environment? Is the discomfort felt by Blake acceptable "collateral damage"?
Do your answers change if the hypothetical scenario is not about a same-sex couple in 2020 following Obergefell, but an interracial couple in California in 1950 following the ruling of anti-miscegenation laws as unconstitutional?
A substantial segment of people have realized that they can shut down any conflicting opinions on controversial issues by proclaiming that divergence from their orthodoxy amounts to an affront to human dignity. Over the course of my employment I've seen people claim:
* All positions must pursue at least 50% female representation, and anything less than that amounts to misogyny.
* Voting for the current president of the United States amounts to an act of overt racism.
* Opposing affirmative action amounts to overt racism.
* Supporting affirmative action amounts to overt racism.
These positions are not affronts to human dignity. Maybe some people genuinely do believe that it does, but their views are disconnected enough that it's no excuse:
* Say an anti-abortion activist genuinely does believe that terminating a pregnancy amounts to murder. I'm sure such a person would be deeply offended by someone who supports a woman's right to do so, and would see it as an affront to human dignity. Say they posted on Facebook to this effect, that abortion is murder and should be banned. A co-worker who has had an abortion complains to HR saying a co-worker accused them of murder because of their contraceptive decisions. No HR person worth their salt would take action in this case, since it's effectively firing ~30% of the population because of their political or religious beliefs. If you don't want to be exposed to your co-workers political views, don't friend them on Facebook and don't follow them on Twitter.
* Say Bob makes a tweet supporting affirmative action in hiring and promotion, and Lin (who is Asian and opposes affirmative action) sees this. She finds it an affront to her dignity and amounts to asking organizations to deprive her right to equal opportunity. Does Lin have grounds to ask the company to sanction Bob for openly espousing discrimination against her? If these statement were made in the workplace, maybe, but otherwise Lin should just not view Bob's out-of-work communications. The company's policy is to give equal opportunity to all races, and Lin has no proof that Bob brought his views into the workplace.
Crucially, though, these two examples occurred outside of the workplace. Had they occurred inside the workplace ,then they now have much stronger cases. Your co-workers are captive audiences, in the context of interactions in the office. If Bob says this to Lin in the office, Lin can't just block him.
As far as your example goes, If Taylor doesn't want to see Alex's political views Taylor should block Alex on Twitter. They're not a captive audience in this situation: there's zero reason why these two people need to see each other's tweets to do their job. But if Alex said this inside the office, then there'd be better grounds for taking action against Alex. That's why offices are increasingly telling co-workers to keep their politics out of the office.