[HN Gopher] Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfo...
___________________________________________________________________
Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its
mission
Author : crones
Score : 532 points
Date : 2020-09-30 09:20 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theblockcrypto.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theblockcrypto.com)
| onion2k wrote:
| I wonder if this is a way for Coinbase to push politically
| engaged employees out of the company in order to reduce the
| possibility of anyone pushing for _internal_ change like people
| who want worker 's rights groups or unionization. Operating with
| a workforce who only want to turn up and write code and never
| discuss anything that affects them as a group puts Coinbase in a
| very strong negotiating position because there's almost complete
| information asymmetry in their favor.
| kyrers wrote:
| In the blog post in which he explained Coinbase's mission, he
| specifically mentioned that:
|
| > Of course, employees should always feel free to advocate
| around issues of pay, conditions of employment, or violations
| of law, for instance.
|
| Now, if he really is trying to diminsh the possibility of that
| happening, I don't know.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "employees should always feel free to advocate around ...
| violations of law"
|
| So generous of him, he could have run it like a drug cartel.
| kyrers wrote:
| Yeah, he would've been better off ending the sentence
| before that statement.
| britch wrote:
| For what it's worth, Coinbase must "allow" those discussions
| by law in the US. In my mind, that's the kind of thing you
| say in a staement like this to protect yourself from a
| lawsuit.
|
| I doubt Coinbase thinks employees advocating around
| pay/conditions are desirable for the company.
| kyrers wrote:
| > For what it's worth, Coinbase must "allow" those
| discussions by law in the US.
|
| I'm not from the US, so thanks for pointing that out.
|
| > For what it's worth, Coinbase must "allow" those
| discussions by law in the US.
|
| I feel most companies think that this isn't desirable.
| However, as long as the complaints, and the complainers,
| are treated fairly, that's fine by me.
| Seanambers wrote:
| The activism displayed in U.S tech is damaging both from a
| organizational point of view, but also its a competetitive
| disadvantage.
|
| Imagine having employees who refuses to do work because 'they
| feel they shouldn't'. Or organizes walkouts, protests and are
| actively lobbying for changes in company policy to reflect
| their own personal values. Or protests against certain
| customers of the company, because they are evil in some
| perceived way or form.
|
| It's smart to do what one can to get rid of these types of
| employees basically because they are only trouble, they add
| nothing with their activism in the workplace.
|
| Now what you do on your own time on the other hand is totally
| up to you.
| hejja wrote:
| Case and point: employees at Spotify wanting to censor Joe
| Rogan.
|
| Whether or not you agree, you can objectively see how this
| would jeopardize a presumably 10-figure deal for Spotify.
| voxl wrote:
| Yeah I mean it's smart to do everything in your power to
| annihilate all workers rights, if you could turn them into
| slaves that would be ideal.
| skinkestek wrote:
| > Or protests against certain customers of the company,
| because they are evil in some perceived way or form.
|
| Or protests against other employees because <reasons>.
|
| I'm the bloke who got my boss to hire the Polish girl who
| cleaned our offices after I realized she had a relevant
| degree.
|
| The Indian girl I worked with at the helpdesk at the start of
| my career approached me at a wedding for common friends and
| said thanks for how much I had helped and encouraged her to
| pick up the local language.
|
| I'm often the bloke people talk to about this or that because
| I listen and neither judge nor leak (unless clearly agreed).
|
| I'm the bloke who was happy to be let go so that another guy
| with less experience could keep his as the bottom fell out of
| the market. (Also I really didn't like that job, but it made
| me genuinely happy that he could stay there as he had small
| kids and needed a job for different reasons. Also: I got a
| 40% increase in my base salary when I got a new job : )
|
| It goes without saying I strongly believe all people have the
| same worth.
|
| But at Google I would not feel safe at all, because I have
| studied enough biology and psychology to know that men and
| women are different and I refuse to pretend otherwise if
| confronted although I am wise enough not to bring the topic
| up.
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| I hate to be the one triggering Godwin's Law at this depth in
| the discussion, but oh well.
|
| > Imagine having employees who refuses to do work because
| 'they feel they shouldn't'. Or organizes walkouts, protests
| and are actively lobbying for changes in company policy to
| reflect their own personal values. Or protests against
| certain customers of the company, because they are evil in
| some perceived way or form. It's smart to do what one can to
| get rid of these types of employees basically because they
| are only trouble, they add nothing with their activism in the
| workplace.
|
| I think the world would have been collectively grateful if
| engineers at IBM and Dehomag would have refused to do some
| work because they felt they shouldn't [1].
|
| Remember, politics is out there in the world. If a large
| enough number of people at your company are being affected by
| it, _there 's likely something wrong that's much greater than
| your company_. History can teach us some lessons about this.
|
| ---------------------------
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
| op00to wrote:
| Another way to put it - you're welcome if you're comfortable
| with the status quo. In other words, young white college
| educated and male. All others who don't fit in that category
| are more likely to not be comfortable with how society is
| treating them, and start that pesky trying to make things
| better stuff which gets in the way of business.
| ycombonator wrote:
| Came here to see how the crowd is taking "keep politics out of
| everyday business" thing as it was until the 2000s. "If you are
| not with me, you are against me" mentality has not worn off. I
| blame the liberal campuses for brain washing a whole generation
| of youth.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Q:
|
| Is the current wave of political tension in workplaces limited to
| tech/SV companies, or is this a more general thing? Have there
| been any significant incidents/announcement in other areas?
| dangerface wrote:
| If the logic is true that being apolitical is supporting the
| status quo, then arguing against being apolitical is a political
| argument supporting radicalism.
|
| I feel the whole argument against being apolitical is just being
| made in bad faith to support radicalism, political acceleration
| and extremism.
|
| Why would you wan't a workplace of radicals always fighting? If
| you can't argue this then you can't argue against being
| apolitical.
| ldd wrote:
| I will offer a personal take on keeping politics out of my 1-man
| video game company.
|
| In theory, I am all for it. I do not use hashtags on twitter, or
| openly support any ideologies.
|
| However, as a light brown dude whose parents immigrated here to
| Canada, my existence itself is a political statement (in support
| of legal immigration) that is bound to offend people.
|
| I try, to the extent that is possible, to not say political
| statements on twitter, but I am only human. And for many humans,
| existing itself is a political statement.
|
| I sometimes feel like a platypus. There are plenty of taxonomist
| that want me dead. There are plenty of well intentioned people
| that will protest for me to keep my rights to exist while never
| getting close to me.
|
| And all I wanna do is keep platypusing every day. It's just hard
| to do that in deeply divisive times, I guess.
| lliamander wrote:
| > my existence itself is a political statement (in support of
| legal immigration)
|
| Unless those in your country who are opposed to immigration
| literally want you dead, this is a pretty hyperbolic statement.
| [deleted]
| adamjb wrote:
| One can oppose the existence of something on the basis of its
| location while not being opposed to its existence generally.
| See: NIMBYs.
| lliamander wrote:
| The mainstream "anti-immigration" position is about
| curtailing future immigration, rather than removing current
| immigrants.
|
| The objection isn't to the presence of the immigrants _per
| se_ , but rather the consequences of continuing the flow of
| people on the labor market and on cultural cohesion.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Sure, and as a brown guy in Canada he's fine. But if he
| were in the US and it were all about "curtailing future
| immigration" you could easily turn off green cards and
| deport a quarter million Indians who have lived in
| America for ten years on temporary visas.
|
| Yeah, it's all about the future thing there. Give me a
| break.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| > you could easily turn off green cards and deport a
| quarter million Indians who have lived in America for ten
| years on temporary visas.
|
| That's not future immigration, that's past immigration
| fraudulently misrepresented as future immigration on
| paper.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Hey, sorry, I unfortunately cannot delete the comment so
| just responding to acknowledge. The 'temporary visas' are
| dual-intent so they are intended to be for immigration as
| well. There is no fraudulence there.
|
| Unfortunately, I cannot discuss this further.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| > There is no fraudulence there.
|
| Sorry, I was insufficiently explicit. "Indians who have
| lived in America for ten years" are past immigrants. They
| have already immigrated. A effort to "curtail[] future
| immigration" that allows deporting them to be part of it
| is fraudulently misrepresenting that past immigration as
| part of the "future immigration" which it purports to
| curtail.
|
| > Unfortunately, I cannot discuss this further.
|
| Fair enough; good luck on whatever came up.
| lliamander wrote:
| Sounds to me like the "temporary" visa system has been
| greatly abused by employers looking for cheap labor and
| needs to be fixed so that people who wish to make life in
| the U.S. aren't left in limbo for so long.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Sure, that's your stance and I won't attempt to change
| your mind. I just needed to clarify that you are
| requesting taking actions that will result in the
| deportation of a large number of immigrants currently
| residing in the US.
|
| It was important to me that that caveat was applied to
|
| > _The mainstream "anti-immigration" position is about
| curtailing future immigration, rather than removing
| current immigrants._
|
| So that it is clear that removing current immigrants
| resident in the US under dual-intent visas is part of the
| mainstream position.
| lliamander wrote:
| > I just needed to clarify that you are requesting taking
| actions that will result in the deportation of a large
| number of immigrants currently residing in the US.
|
| Please do not mind read. You are not very good at it.
|
| Temporary work visas exist to help cover shortages of
| labor in a host country, which will naturally vary over
| time. If someone is in the US on a temporary visa, then
| that implies that they should only be in the US on that
| visa for a relatively short time, and that at the end of
| that time they should either be granted a more permanent
| status or they should return home.
|
| To continue to extend such visas indefinitely, such that
| visa holder builds a life in the US, all the while still
| _legally_ in the position that they could be forced to
| return at any time is cruel and unjust. If that is
| happening to a large (or small) number of Indians
| presently in the US, I think it would be entirely
| reasonable to grant special consideration for them - as
| part of an overall immigration reform that would avoid
| situations in the future.
| renewiltord2 wrote:
| Apologies for having to respond from here. I am currently
| rate limited. Made the new account so I could apologize
| for guessing at motivations.
|
| I believe mainstream immigration restrictions actually do
| not share your view on dual intent visas. Not many people
| support the position you have on Indian/Chinese who are
| present in America for a long time on their dual-intent
| visas.
|
| Consider my comments as being edited to not reference you
| but reference mainstream anti-immigration positions -
| none of which currently state any GC reforms that permit
| existing Indian/Chinese backlogs to be grandfathered in.
| lliamander wrote:
| That you made this effort to apologize is quite
| commendable, thank you.
|
| And I may be mistaken on where the mainstream anti-
| immigration position is, though I do think that many/most
| people who are in favor of reducing immigration would
| also be amenable to some sort of a deal if it were on the
| table.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| Just keep in mind Twitter is a piss poor reflection of society.
| There are some radical ideas on Twitter, but ask people in
| person what they actually think and everyone will sing a
| different tune.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| This is one of the bigger problems I encountered when
| mentoring junior engineers: Many of them grew up consuming a
| firehose of hyperbolic Twitter and Reddit content, thinking
| that it was an accurate representation of the real world.
| Worse yet, some of them essentially learned their social
| skills from Twitter debates and Reddit threads, mistaking
| angry online arguments for normal adult conversation.
|
| Fortunately, most of them are quick to pick up on the reality
| that they've been misled, but a small minority try to turn
| the workplace into an extension of a Twitter flame war at
| every opportunity.
| secondcoming wrote:
| I was thinking about this recently. They're probably the
| first (?) generation where online social interaction
| consists of a very large part of their overall social
| interactions. The online world is place where people can be
| ignored/blocked/shadowbanned. Then they venture out into
| the real world for Uni and find they don't have these
| censorship tools at their disposal, and don't have the
| skills to handle it properly.
| dogman144 wrote:
| An interesting part to this is Coinbase's mission is, if it
| actually works out, absurdly counter-culture and near
| revolutionary.
|
| Yeah, it's an exchange, trade w/o mainstream adoption will likely
| go on for a while, and there are a lot of caveats I'm not
| mentioning.
|
| A mainstream Coinbase with mainstream cryptocurrencies, which
| will include Bitcoin (assuming a multi-currency future, not just
| BTC dominance), implies some ____serious __ __changes to bedrock
| financial and geopolitical practices currently in place.
|
| In the same way that wearing a mass-produced cotton shirt vs. a
| homespun one in 1890 implies the industrial revolution which
| implies Manchester mill-towns which implies...., so does a
| successful Coinbase if it reaches the end goals of its mission.
|
| It's interesting that in exchange for not taking a stance on one
| set of issues, their very aggressive stance in another extremely
| societally profound area is getting overlooked. Like literally,
| interesting. Probably a nature of how Coinbase vs. other crypto
| cos chose to market itself.
| x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
| > It's interesting that in exchange for not taking a stance on
| one set of issues, their very aggressive stance in another
| extremely societally profound area is getting overlooked.
|
| It's not overlooked, it's explicit in the call to focus on the
| mission of the company and not unrelated politics.
| dogman144 wrote:
| Talking about gen pop. Obviously Coinbase is aware of it, and
| their stance makes a lot more sense when analyzed that way.
| vibrolax wrote:
| I place political activity at work in the same category as
| religious proselytizing. It is an unwelcome diversion from the
| tasks at hand, and increases interpersonal tensions. It's
| difficult enough to grow and maintain one's technical competence
| and foster team cohesion without additional religious and/or
| political complications.
| 0df8dkdf wrote:
| >Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong released a blog post this week
| saying the exchange intends to keep activism and politics
| separate from its business.
|
| That is how it ought to be!!!!!! Activism and politics tends to
| divd people. Keep it out of work is a great thing!
|
| There is no point to talk about anything like activism or
| politics.
|
| Just do it!
| matmann2001 wrote:
| Being able to keep work and politics separate is a privilege of
| a successfully-functioning democracy.
| nrmitchi wrote:
| I know that this will greatly help a few who are legitimately
| disturbed by the recent post and feel they either can't work at,
| or aren't excited by, Coinbase any more.
|
| But at the level of severance discussed in the post (4 (or 6)
| months, 7-year exercise window), it feels like most employees who
| know they could soft-land into another position would be silly
| not to take this offer. Some people may still enjoy working at
| Coinbase, but do they enjoy it enough to reject an effective
| 30-50% bonus?
|
| Especially for employees who were there less than 2 years, and
| may not necessarily stay for 2 years, this looks like a unique
| opportunity to lock in that 7 year exercise window.
|
| I've seen offers like this before, and it led to a much-higher-
| than-expected number of employees choosing to leave.
| skinkestek wrote:
| At this point in my life this is a message that would make me
| want to stay.
|
| Not having to deal with activism at work sounds like a nice
| perk!
| mesozoic wrote:
| Agreed. Putting Coinbase on my shortlist for sure.
| md_ wrote:
| From some point of view, this might be viewed as management
| taking a harsh line against employees who make demands on their
| employers to do something other than maximize shareholder
| returns.
|
| One of the longstanding contradictions of Silicon Valley ethos is
| that we will simultaneously talk about "mission" and "impact"--
| and, implicitly, the _social_ impact of our work--while
| applauding management efforts to stamp out employee activism as a
| principled stance.
|
| At the same time, as American politics in particular become
| increasingly polarized, many of us may be forced to decide
| between being professionals--and the apoliticism that implies--
| and being engaged citizens.
|
| Edit: Reading some other posts here, I'm struck by some other
| trends at play:
|
| - The shifting of--or, more pointedly, fragmentation of the
| "Overton Window" of acceptable behavior.
|
| - The longstanding tendency in tech companies to have porous
| boundaries between "work" and "social" spheres.
|
| - The above-mentioned rhetoric in tech companies to promote an
| idea of "mission" that goes beyond mere profit.
|
| Along with increasing political polarization and (worse)
| _delegitimization_ , these are all trends that make it harder to
| keep politics out of the workplace, and harder to balance
| "activism" with "professional" conduct.
|
| I don't think Coinbase's approach will prove to be a lasting one.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Counbase's approach here is fairly on-the-nose. That's unlikely
| to be the lasting/widespread one.
|
| OTOH, if the trend continues towards employees and/or
| management demanding more political positioning from their
| companies... some sort of "on board or out" dynamic is
| inevitable. Maybe "on board or shut up," in reality.
|
| No position, including neutrality, will be comfortable for
| everyone and no company wants political factioning in their
| ranks.
|
| Ultimately though, I think employee opinions are less operative
| than some of these reports would have us think.
| 5thaccount wrote:
| > many of us may be forced to decide
|
| Are you saying you spend so long at work you don't have time to
| do these things after work hours? If not, why are work hours
| required to be spent on "being engaged citizens"?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Being proffeshional does not neccessarily imply neutrality when
| government policy contradicts science or even basic common
| sence.
|
| Proffeshional without stones to stand up to
| authority/management is what gave us Chernobyl and Challanger
| disasters, Boeing 737, massive famine in China, and, debatably,
| 2008.
| thisisbrians wrote:
| I'd argue that a lot of engineering disasters could/should
| have been avoided by adhering to standard safety practices
| and engineering ethics. This is very germane to the
| work/mission of the business and has little to do with the
| sorts of external political activism that Coinbase is trying
| to eschew.
| md_ wrote:
| Agreed. My point was more that there seems to be broad and
| increasing disagreement on what professionalism entails--both
| in terms of an obligation to speak up, as you say, and in
| terms of politely avoiding certain topics in the workplace.
| trimbo wrote:
| This is worth a read. I think it applies to Chernobyl,
| Challenger (where it was coined) and the 737 Max.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance
|
| All three had known issues (in the case of Chernobyl, for
| decades), but averting disaster gave people, specifically the
| engineers, confidence to continue.
| x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
| How does policy "contradict" science? Science doesn't tell us
| what we _should_ do, it tells us what is and what may be the
| consequences of decisions we make. The policy you say
| "contradicts science" is just promoting values and ignoring
| consequences that you disagree with.
|
| I think Sabine Hossenfelder said it best:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGVIJSW0Y3k
| sk5t wrote:
| Never forget that calls that protests and political expressions
| aren't happening "in the right venue" or "in the right way" only
| help one side.
|
| Take for example NFL management telling the players not to kneel
| in solidarity. That is the players' most effective (and frankly,
| peaceful, and not particularly disruptive) way to send a message.
| But if you don't agree with their message, moving to shift it to
| a less visible place is absolutely a political attempt to neuter
| it.
| drak0n1c wrote:
| That's the point. Why should a private business like Coinbase
| accommodate far-left ideologues against capitalism and its very
| existence? That seems incongruous.
| zbyte64 wrote:
| Weird how a social conscience or civil rights hurt certain
| businesses and get interpreted as anti-capitalist.
| sk5t wrote:
| Do you then agree that Coinbase is forcing a certain set of
| politics on its employees?
| subsubzero wrote:
| I may want to apply to coinbase. I am really fed up with
| 'activist' employees and the toxic environment they bring. All I
| want is to just focus on engineering and ship
| features/improvements. Bringing politics to the office(thanks
| Google!) has been one of the worst things to happen in the 21st
| century for tech companies. Interestingly enough google has been
| going through absolute hell with these cancerous employees and
| other companies will have the same issues by embracing their
| failed strategy. Lets leave politics at home or outside the
| office where it belongs.
| ryanisnan wrote:
| I hope you are only young and naive and will learn how short-
| sighted your opinion has been here.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| What makes you so sure you're on the "right" side here?
| newobj wrote:
| You ever wonder why "politics at work" has flared up so
| much in the last 4 years? Have you completely lost sight of
| the timeline of events, or do you refuse to acknowledge it?
|
| Do you think it's a reaction to something? Or did it just
| spontaneously instigate itself one day? Just uppity libs
| getting bored?
|
| People are speaking up because people feel existentially
| threatened. Because people are being existentially
| threatened. This threat permeates peoples' lives. It
| doesn't get left at home when they "go" to the office.
| Asking them to turn it off at work is asking them to TURN
| IT OFF. And now we're in gaslighting territory.
|
| DARVO. You know it?
|
| We're in the phase now where the person under threat is the
| problem, the victim is being attacked for speaking up.
|
| Extinguishing politics at work is not some "rational man"
| exercise. "I just want to be free to ply my trade, dude."
| It's asking people to pause their very real own pain. It's
| asking them to deny it, deny its effects; to pretend it's
| not real. To think they're the problem, not the person
| who's threatened.
|
| This has never been about "ooh, should we, or should we
| not, discuss supply-side economics at work?" Broad segments
| of the population are under threat. That's not politics.
| That's just violence. Asking them to switch it off at work
| is just perpetuating and enabling the violence.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| > We're in the phase now where the person under threat is
| the problem, the victim is being attacked for speaking
| up.
|
| Yes; the victim is being attacked by activist coworkers
| for admitting that they don't agree with attacking people
| for admitting they they don't agree with things.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _You ever wonder why "politics at work" has flared up
| so much in the last 4 years? Have you completely lost
| sight of the timeline of events, or do you refuse to
| acknowledge it?_
|
| No, please, fill me in. What has changed in the last 4
| years that has suddenly made people existentially
| threatened at work? It sounds like you're trying to
| implicate 'Donald Trump' as the start of all of these
| issues, and yet I'm not sure how the 2016 US election
| matters for me, in my country.
|
| Accusing people who want to only do their job at work as
| "violent"? Your comment is a perfect demonstration of why
| apolitical work environments will be appealing to a lot
| of people.
| newobj wrote:
| Never said the workplace was threatening. I said people
| are being threatened at-large, and what you call
| "politics" is them responding to that threat, and it's
| harmful to the victim of such violence to suppress their
| ability to discuss it, in any environment, including
| work.
|
| Now, please answer my question. Why do YOU think
| "politics at work" has flared up so much in the last 4
| years?
| lwansbrough wrote:
| A lot of harm has been done by humans "just doing their job."
| The world needs people who are willing to stand against those
| who take no interest in weighing the morality of their work.
|
| For example, AGI will be built either by accident or
| intentionally by sociopaths at Google, etc. All decisions at a
| certain scale are inevitably political, and choosing to ignore
| the politics in those contexts is in itself a political
| position.
| luckylion wrote:
| > A lot of harm has been done by humans "just doing their
| job."
|
| I'd say most harm was done by humans who did not just do
| their job, but thought they knew how everyone else has to do
| their job, live their lives etc, by political activists.
|
| You might think of activism only as what those do that you're
| politically aligned with. What are those on the opposite side
| who work just as hard to bring about their ideas of society?
|
| What serves the public better, a utility company that "just
| does its job", or a utility company that snoops around
| people's garbage, identifies dissenters and then stops
| supplying water to them (because otherwise you'd be aiding
| the enemy)?
| rjkennedy98 wrote:
| Yes, humans have created harm "just doing their job", such as
| purposefully making addictive apps like youtube or social
| media sites like Facebook that make people depressed, or
| gathering vast amounts of personal data for targeted
| advertising.
|
| Except this has nothing to do with that. It has do with a
| group of people that insist that everyone get behind their
| pet cause and use their job to promote whatever activist
| belief they have - and negatively affect everyone else who
| may not agree with them.
|
| I'd stand behind anyone who wants to protest their companies
| business model - like the executive at Amazon who protested
| the treatment of a union organizer (which was racist and
| absolutely disgusting). I'm not going to get behind the
| culture of activism which has nothing to do with civil
| disobedience.
| sbmthakur wrote:
| The argument of ethics always exists. As far as I understand
| the parent comment, they are talking about scenarios where a
| political position does not necessarily align with the
| ethics. For example, _ending racial discrimination_ is a
| right thing to do. But _ending racial discrimination by
| running a campaign on Social Media_ isn 't something that
| everyone will agree with.
| coryfklein wrote:
| There is a difference between being aware of the negative
| externalities of your work, and using your position in your
| company as a platform to accomplish your own partisan
| political goals. The former should be encouraged and the
| latter discouraged.
|
| Much of the discussion here today is confused by the
| intermingling of so many concepts under the singular term
| "politics".
| lwansbrough wrote:
| I feel that this is the same argument as the kneeling
| football players argument. People should be allowed to use
| their position of power - however limited or not it may be
| - as their platform for protest. If it becomes so
| burdensome that you have to put rules in place to prevent
| it, that's a very clear indication of an underlying problem
| with society. Creating policy to ignore the problems of
| society that impact your own workforce is going to leave
| you with a workplace filled with people who are largely
| unimpacted.
| whymauri wrote:
| >A lot of harm has been done by humans "just doing their
| job."
|
| For a deeper dive on this, look at Arendt's "Report on the
| Banality of Evil."
| tbatchelli wrote:
| I wish that we collectively had become more political in the
| past decade and stopped being apolitical cogwheels of machines
| that have, ultimately, used to undermine democracy.
|
| We all bear responsibility to what happens to this world, and
| we, collectively, are building systems that affect how people
| think and view the world, and hence how they act. We are part
| of this shared universe, and now more than ever, we are the
| ones creating it.
|
| That's of course coming from a point of view where Democracy is
| the only moral political system, and the understanding that
| democracy dies if not defended daily by being political. First
| very slowly, then very quickly. There are obviously other
| points of view, and dictatorships have their supporters.
| newobj wrote:
| Sorry, do you want an ideologically inclusive environment, as
| alluded to in the article, or an anideological environment?
| mediaguilt wrote:
| Weird point of view when most tech and engineering is used to
| generate political instability, misinformation and vote
| suppression. In the case of coinbase I wouldn't be surprise if
| the << amazing engineering >> is mostly used for tax evasion or
| to by-pass politic finance laws, corruption laws etc...
| makuto wrote:
| That's a pretty jaded view of the world. Most tech I would
| guess goes towards increasing value in the company: improving
| their offerings, making new technology which solves problems
| for people/companies, etc.
|
| Very few people have the time and money to fund tech and
| engineering purely to influence elections. Most money coming
| in to tech is going to be from customers and investors, the
| latter being in interest of making money off of the business
| getting more customers.
|
| Companies like Cambridge Analytica are a very very minute
| minority compared to the swaths of B2B, consumer tech, etc.
| eli wrote:
| Sorry. Your work is political whether you choose to acknowledge
| that or not.
| drstewart wrote:
| I notice that Industry Dive doesn't have a message supporting
| BLM on its website.
|
| Can you share why you've failed to support this social cause
| on your front page? Silence is violence, and Industry Dive
| has clearly taken the stance that it does not support BLM.
| eli wrote:
| This seems like a disingenuous question. If there was a big
| BLM banner on the front page would you instead be accusing
| me of "performative wokeness" right now?
| eddof13 wrote:
| I concur, I suspect the influx of applicants to coinbase based
| on this will be larger than the potential loss of people taking
| the severance
| JeremyBanks wrote:
| I'm sure there will be many applicants, but they'll all be
| sociopaths. Whatever shreds of decency may have once existed
| at that company, they're making sure to eliminate.
|
| I have normally been very against political talk at work, but
| this is not a normal moment. Choosing to pretend you can be
| neutral in this environment is something between
| incompetence, insanity, and evil.
|
| If you choose to join Coinbase now, expect to be
| "mysteriously" rejected for a lot of jobs in the future.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| Strong opinions, naievely held?
|
| The world is a lot more nuanced than your vitriolic
| labelling of it. Be tolerant!
| JeremyBanks wrote:
| I have a lot of friends who voted Trump in 2016. Engaging
| with them was valuable and helped me gain perspective.
|
| I have none who will be voting for him in 2020, because
| those who still support him in this extreme have nothing
| to say.
|
| There is a difference between "political differences" and
| "ambivalence regarding an attempted coup", and anyone who
| can't see that is dangerously naive.
| quotemstr wrote:
| > If you choose to join Coinbase now, expect to be
| "mysteriously" rejected for a lot of jobs in the future.
|
| Fortunately, these days, it's possible to make a whole
| career out of working at companies that don't subscribe to
| this neo-McCarthyism.
| makuto wrote:
| I think the original blog post made a very important point:
| We may all agree that there are issues, but there is a lot
| of disagreement in how problems should be solved. For
| example, some think that you should solve problems with the
| system, through elections, bills, etc., while others think
| a violent revolution and communism is the only way forward.
|
| Your position regarding thinking everyone who isn't
| political at work is naive or evil is not helping the
| problem. This is only alienating people who already find
| such aggressive and exaggerated statements wrong.
| seneca wrote:
| > I'm sure there will be many applicants, but they'll all
| be sociopaths.
|
| This is the exact kind of tone Coinbase is ejecting from
| their company. You thinking this is the wrong move is
| exactly the point. People don't want to work around people
| who call them "sociopaths" over not wanting to debate at
| work.
| spollo wrote:
| I don't disagree with your underlying feeling here, that is
| to say I'm on your side of the fence. But don't you think
| it's a bit extreme to label people sociopaths, insane,
| evil, incompetent, for expressing their desire to work in a
| place where they can focus on their craft? Your last
| sentence is actually really threatening as well.
|
| I can think of many reasons people might find this
| appealing. They may be incredibly politically engaged in
| their personal life and want work to be a place of focus.
| They might disagree with the political solutions that their
| coworkers favour, which is totally okay! But it would be
| extremely draining for that person.
|
| Please, start with the best interpretation of people rather
| than labelling broad swaths of people as wicked and
| mentally ill. This is a great opportunity for discussion!
| cortesoft wrote:
| > But don't you think it's a bit extreme to label people
| sociopaths, insane, evil, incompetent, for expressing
| their desire to work in a place where they can focus on
| their craft?
|
| I don't think you can ever fully just 'work on your
| craft' without considering the consequences of what you
| are doing.
|
| Do you think it would be ok to 'just focus on your craft'
| if you were hired to design computerized controllers for
| suicide bombers?
|
| Obviously that is a ridiculous example, but it is a good
| demonstration of why you can't fully ignore what your
| work is being used for.
|
| You don't need to care if your work is some great helper
| of humanity, but you do have a responsibility to make
| sure your work isn't evil.
| cft wrote:
| Certainly. If I was looking for a job, I would rank it very
| high because of this.
| cft wrote:
| See how toxic the politically active (in the workplace)
| employees are: i am getting downvoted simply for saying
| that I would choose an apolitical company if I was looking
| for a job...
| xoxoy wrote:
| perhaps take a step back and realize that the HN
| demographic of young white males is exactly the type that
| would have the least issue with this policy...
| makuto wrote:
| Fight racism and stereotypes with more racism and
| stereotypes, that'll work.
| whymauri wrote:
| Where is the racism in the GP comment?
| makuto wrote:
| Assuming young white males think the same thing. They had
| to bring age, race, and sex in to decide what they assume
| the political beliefs are of the majority of the site.
| dirtyoldmick wrote:
| And by racist you mean people that don't agree with your
| political worldview.
| camdenlock wrote:
| "all young black males are like this" <- is this racist?
|
| "all young white males are like this" <- is this racist?
| whymauri wrote:
| Neither of these are what the poster was saying. If you
| want to pursue a victimhood complex, I'll let you be.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| Nitpick: xoxoy's claim was " _most_ young white males are
| like this ", not "all".
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| When someone tells us what they think, and we dismiss it
| by saying that's exactly what someone of their race would
| be expected to think, that's racism in one of its worst
| manifestations.
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| I think each side needs to have sympathy for each other. I
| totally understand not wanting to hear about politics. I'd love
| for the world to be boring enough that work could stay work.
| But on the flip side, a lot of people have skin in the game, so
| to speak, and can't disentangle politics from their life. Being
| able to ignore politics right now is a very privileged, very
| lucky position. I have no doubt that if you surveyed various
| politically active employees, they'd love it if they didn't
| have to think about politics. Unfortunately that's not their
| decision.
| ideal_stingray wrote:
| "Do people like me get to exist in public life" is often a
| hot topic of political discussion, but it's not a discussion
| I'm interested in having or even hearing about at work. Not
| sure I'd consider this "privilege".
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| People can be as politically active as they want, on their
| own time and on their own dime.
|
| Ironically, the people preaching activism in the workplace
| would be livid if a religious believer proselytized their
| faith at the workplace, despite the believer having as strong
| a belief in their ideas as the activists do in theirs. Quite
| the double standard.
| makuto wrote:
| This comparison resonated with me especially once I've
| learned how "deep" political views are, similar to
| religious views. Jonathan Haidt's "The Righteous Mind" is
| about this. Preaching politics in the workplace will
| scratch the same nerves that preaching religion will -
| deeply held beliefs that can cause strong reactions to
| people who agree or disagree with them.
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| Well, in fairness, if someone's religion had reliable,
| study backed evidence that the world was going to face a
| catastrophic climate based future, I'd probably be fine
| with them proselytizing in the workplace.
|
| I don't begrudge the dislike of workplace politics--again,
| I'd love to not talk about this. But for some groups, i.e.
| black Americans, it may not seem like a choice of whether
| they can be political. Indeed I'm a little surprised more
| Asians in tech aren't concerned at the president's rhetoric
| about the "China virus". Remember, it's within living
| memory that the US government rounded up Asian Americans
| and put them into internment camps.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Perhaps religious believers should be free to proselytize
| their faith at work. It might not be the most effective
| venue to do it at, but why should they be forbidden from
| following their conscience?
| purple_ferret wrote:
| Have you considered Raytheon, Huawei, the Turkish government,
| etc?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Huawei and the Turkish government very much require their
| employees to endorse specific political expressions. It's my
| understanding that Raytheon does not and I think they're an
| entirely reasonable company for a SWE to consider.
| trhway wrote:
| 'activist', toxic, cancerous ... Slapping these terms onto the
| people around understandably takes time and effort away from
| focusing on engineering and shipping features.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| "Activist" is being used to describe an extremely broad range
| of employees.
|
| It's one thing for an employee to be activist within the
| company about new (or even existing) features/products/etc,
| because that is part of the company's mission and business ops
| and its the kind of feedback a company should get before it
| introduces a potentially controversial product/feature to the
| market, or about problematic products/features that should be
| retired. Otherwise you end up with companies like Palantir, or
| unethical business models based on loot boxes and youth
| gambling.
|
| It's another thing for an employee to take external politics
| that aren't directly or indirectly related to the company's
| business, and try to make the company and other employees take
| a stand on those political issues. Generally, the only time
| this is appropriate is if, for example, those political issues
| directly affect a large segment of the customer base and taking
| a position is also a deliberate act of marketing. (See, e.g.,
| Patagonia, Nike and even Hobby Lobby, but contrast with
| Chikfila.) Otherwise, you just end up alienating a large
| portion of your employees _and_ customers to the overall
| detriment of the business.
| [deleted]
| drak0n1c wrote:
| There is now even a job site for firms and employees that want
| to avoid toxic accusatory work environments:
| https://www.unwoke.hr/
| ascorbic wrote:
| The name of that site makes its partisanship pretty clear.
| scsilver wrote:
| I find it hard to take someone seriously when they define
| themselves by what they are not. Its defining themselves by
| their opponent. If there was no opponent who would they be?
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Stamp collectors push their stamp collecting ideologies
| onto all the non-stamp collectors who just want to do
| engineering. Stamp collectors set up meetings and socially
| shame/outcast non stamp collectors who don't attend. Non
| stamp collectors get tired of this and say they are going
| to make a job board where they don't have to worry about
| stamp collectors if they take a job at a place.
|
| The answer is that there is nothing that unites these
| people _except_ not being stamp collectors. If stamp
| collectors didn 't exist, then no one would identify as
| non-stamp collectors.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| > If there was no opponent who would they be?
|
| They wouldn't be; that's the point. If there was no problem
| there would be no reason to define oneself as anti-problem.
| scollet wrote:
| I'll have to remember this site so I don't accidentally apply
| to any of these.
| spamizbad wrote:
| My personal view on this is that these "activist employees" are
| a predictable natural side-effect of any organization is:
|
| 1) Large
|
| 2) Has a culture that embraces optimism, reject cynicism, and
| has "Change the World!" type mission statements
|
| 3) Have overly-strict culture fit parameters.
|
| Political activists share a lot in common with founders: They
| are stubbornly optimistic (Why fight for social change if you
| think it's pointless or impossible?), they want to change the
| world, and they have interests in building
| movements/organizations. If your hiring process is designed to
| weed out candidates cynical enough to know your organizations
| mission statement is bullshit and recognize you're just here to
| make money not change the world - or pessimistic enough to
| think they'll never be part of positive change - don't be
| surprised if you find yourself with a team full of activists...
| just saying.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >All I want is to just focus on engineering and ship
| features/improvements.
|
| Yeah if there wasn't the pesky world around all the engineering
| and we could all just stare at our stock options while we sit
| in our gentrified neighbourhoods and pretend the world doesn't
| exist.
|
| You can ignore politics but politics doesn't ignore you. See no
| evil, hear no evil, speak no evil is an unworthy attitude for a
| democratic citizen. The etymology for the word 'idiot' comes
| from 'idios', meaning 'one's own', in ancient Greece signifying
| a person who is only concerned with their private interest,
| rather than living an active life and participating in civic
| affairs. To be an idiot was to be withdrawn, isolated and
| selfish, to not participate in the public, political life of
| the state.
|
| Given how much people nowadays love to invoke the Greeks and
| our ancient Western traditions, maybe it's time to remind
| everyone of the meaning of that word again.
|
| http://faculty.washington.edu/rsoder/EDUC305/305parkeridiocy...
| Reedx wrote:
| If people don't want to bring the political battlefield into
| every venue, that's not only valid, but wise.
|
| You are not going to innovate or create anything if you're
| fighting all day, every day. Constantly distracted. The
| purpose of a company is to bring people together to CREATE
| something of value. To solve problems. Hopefully to improve
| lives on some vector. And you do that most effectively by
| rowing in the same direction, focused.
|
| People spending their day on Twitter or Slack or in the
| office halls arguing about the war is not productive. It's
| mostly just destructive. They're certainly not inventing
| anything, or curing a disease, or improving energy
| efficiency, or creating tools, or educating, or entertaining,
| or inspiring, or anything else additive.
| uoaei wrote:
| You've misrepresented the quote, and in the process
| invalidated your whole point.
|
| The original quote is _diplomacy_ is war by other means.
| And it had very specific connotations to explicitly
| adversarial political relationships. Politics is much
| larger than diplomacy, and indeed as Aristotle concluded
| there is nothing in a society that is not politics.
| sbmthakur wrote:
| I also believe that every citizen has certain roles and
| responsibilities in a democracy(voting for instance).
| However, the workplace is not exactly a democracy. The only
| thing that I will definitely participate is in the work that
| I am getting paid for. All other endeavors of the company
| should be voluntary. If the company is directly or indirectly
| forcing these on me, then I will consider it as a breach of
| my agreement with the company.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Yeah if there wasn 't the pesky world around all the
| engineering and we could all just stare at our stock options
| while we sit in our gentrified neighbourhoods and pretend the
| world doesn't exist._
|
| The issue with "activist" employees isn't so much that they
| want to bring politics to work (which I can see arguments for
| and against). It's that the new "activist" employees insist
| everyone's politics be the same, else you become a target.
|
| I think "no politics" offices will crush it in the future, if
| by nothing more than being able to focus on the product.
| kennywinker wrote:
| Your logic is sound: politics are a distraction, so offices
| where politics are put aside will be more productive. But I
| know a lot of VERY smart people who wouldn't sign up for
| that workplace. Especially if there are social and
| political ramifications to the product being built or the
| customers being served (there almost always are - hence the
| cliche "making the world a better place" goal of any
| startup).
| luckylion wrote:
| Are there really that many? A lot of very smart people
| tend to end up at Google, FB or Amazon, their ethics
| don't seem to be the deciding factor in the choice of
| employer.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _But I know a lot of VERY smart people who wouldn't
| sign up for that workplace._
|
| Sure, that's the trade-off.
|
| In a vacuum we all want to "make the world a better
| place". Does cancelling academics who appear on Joe
| Rogan's podcast "make the world a better place"? Does
| having a coworker cancelled or fired because of a stupid
| joke "make the world a better place"? I don't know; I
| don't think so.
|
| On the other hand, I think there _should_ be internal
| political discussion regarding policy at a place like
| Facebook.
|
| What are the politics relevant to your job? It's not easy
| to answer.
| buzzerbetrayed wrote:
| GP never said to ignore politics. You are the one that
| brought that up. They said to leave them out of the office.
| There is plenty of time for politics before and after work.
| Bringing your politics in to work just makes for an
| uncomfortable work environment for you co-workers.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| 'the office' or the firm today, is for better or worse our
| primary means by which we can exercise influence. _That is
| why tech workers are bringing politics into the firm in the
| first place_ , because they realise, rightly, that it is
| one of the most potent channels to actually exercise
| change, and that's why so many people want to keep politics
| out of it. The workplace is the one space where your
| political opponent _can 't simply escape from politics_,
| and has to be confronted with your views, which is after
| all the actual point of political life.
|
| People realise that rather than the local town hall, the
| large internet platforms, their workplace, and their social
| media feed have become the public space of ideas. That's
| why the free speech debate focuses so much on internet
| platforms, and why 'it's privately owned' has long lost
| meaning to anyone in the debate.
|
| Keeping politics 'out of the workplace', at least in our
| environment today, is basically to say to keep politics
| out, period. It's not the apolitical position, it is the
| 'idiotic' position because it intents to keep politics out
| of the one place that actually matters the most in this day
| and age.
| claudeganon wrote:
| It's always been this way in the west, post
| industrialization. People treating it as some novel
| development are just ignorant of history. Why do you
| think so many democracies have "labor" or "workers"
| parties? Myriad progressive movements and political
| parties were born out of and materially supported by
| workers organizing their workplaces.
| gambler wrote:
| You haven't really provided any arguments for why
| converting companies (entities providing goods and
| services) into mini political parties is _a good idea_.
| Anyone can yell about "status quo" and "change". In
| reality, "status quo" is frequently an ill defined
| concept and the benefits of change depend entirely on
| what kind of change it is.
|
| When I work for a company, I provide my labor in exchange
| for payment. I am then free to use my money to support an
| activist organization or a cause. So are all other
| employees.
|
| Corporate activism, on the other hand, is inherently
| degenerate. It means your employer withholds resources
| from improving the business or paying higher salaries.
| They instead apply those resources to some causes of
| _their_ choosing. Any employee who doesn 't agree with
| the cause is effectively coerced into supporting it
| unless they quit. So is every customer. The goods and
| services become inherently tangled with an ideology of
| some sort.
|
| Why should a model where everyone is free to pursue their
| personal activism be replaced with a model where people
| are coerced to pursue activism "approved" by corporate
| execs?
| Apocryphon wrote:
| The post doesn't argue for converting companies into
| political parties, merely that it's natural for workers
| to be politically active at work, given the continued
| atomization of modern society making the workplace a
| default place for political activity, especially since so
| much of day to day life and social activity takes place
| there.
|
| It's also a straw man to talk about corporate execs
| leading the activism, the post was talking about the
| workers themselves.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > The workplace is the one space where your political
| opponent can't simply escape from politics, and has to be
| confronted with your views
|
| It is _for this exact reason_ that many people object to
| politics being overtly brought into the workplace against
| people 's will.
|
| If someone _wants_ to discuss politics (or religion or
| sexuality or anything else that makes us all human) with
| you, have at it. If they don 't want to, _you need to
| stop_.
|
| No means no here as well. The fact that _they can 't
| leave_ imposes a higher burden on consent, not a lower
| one, IMO.
| moneytalks wrote:
| Some would call political activism on your employer's
| dime theft.
|
| Unless it's part of your job description.
|
| But no one likes to face what it means to sell their time
| to another person.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > Some would call political activism on your employer's
| dime theft.
|
| That's probably true, but they would be wrong. The fact
| that some people would say incorrect things is not a
| strong argument.
| uoaei wrote:
| And what about when the business performed by the company
| you are working for has political consequences?
| x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
| Brian Armstrong pretty clearly stated that position:
|
| > Policy decisions: If there is a bill introduced around
| crypto, we may engage here, but we normally wouldn't
| engage in policy decisions around healthcare or education
| for example.
|
| Are there other "political consequences" around crypto
| that you'd have Coinbase engage in?
| zackees wrote:
| The problem with activism is that most people engage in easy
| to grab fast food activism served to them by the oligarchical
| msm.
|
| The social justice actions by google was nothing less than a
| coup of the United States. Hence the reason I was forced to
| sacrifice my career to the blow the whistle.
|
| [www.zachvorhies.com](https://www.zachvorhies.com)
| subsubzero wrote:
| Your strawman argument is invalid to what I said. I spend an
| inordinate amount of time researching each candidates views
| and each propositions pros and cons. Before election day I
| usually set aside a day or two to deep dive into every choice
| I make. I take voting very seriously as people have died to
| give me the luxury to vote. These actions all occur outside
| of the office where they belong. That being said leave
| politics out of the office.
| derkster wrote:
| Absolutely. And I better not hear anything about unionizing
| either, with all their liberal communist ideology! They're
| lucky I let them have jobs. /s
| claudeganon wrote:
| Lots of people also died to make sure that we have the
| right to organize our workplaces, a right that's just as
| much enshrined in law as voting:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_worker_deaths_in_Un
| i...
|
| Their sacrifice wasn't any less important or necessary to
| the expansion of the democracy in the United States. In
| fact, it was this "bringing politics to the work" that
| provided the means for workers having real representation
| for them in government in the first place.
| md_ wrote:
| This may sound like a troll, but how do we delineate what
| politics belong in the office and what do not?
|
| As I noted elsewhere in this thread, I think it's _more_
| ambiguous these days, not less.
|
| As a few concrete examples:
|
| * Say I refuse to buy Chinese-made goods because I oppose
| the treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. What do I do if my
| employer considers doing business in China? Should I not
| mention this, because it's "political"? *
| What if it's 1933, and my employer is IBM, and the customer
| is Nazi Germany?
|
| * Say I oppose H1B visas because they take jobs away from
| American citizens, and my employer considers expanding the
| H1B workforce. Should I speak out against it, or hold my
| tongue because my motives are "political"?
|
| * Say I believe in equal rights for gay couples, and my
| employer is considering expanding health coverage to same-
| sex partners. Should I speak out in favor of it?
|
| In each of these examples, it seems to me there's a
| spectrum of options, ranging from:
|
| A. No constraints on in-office behavior; I speak out about
| anything.
|
| B. In the office, I am purely a shareholder-profit-
| maximizing robot.
|
| I don't think either of those extremes is very satisfying--
| I expect many of us would say it is noble to oppose selling
| adding machines to Nazi Germany, but that we'd have many
| more questions when it comes to some of the other examples.
|
| Unfortunately, I think that means that there's no simple
| answer here. "No politics in the workplace" can result in
| ghastly, amoral outcomes (selling adding machines to the
| Nazis).
|
| But "every culture war, all the time" is a great way to be
| a dick.
|
| I think my personal code here is, "try not to be a dick."
| Past that point, I don't think there are easy answers.
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| Thank god IBM had employees like you during the 1930's,
| otherwise they might not have made as much money.
| uoaei wrote:
| Voting is literally an infinitesimal part of politics.
| Voting is an instantaneous act, and then it's done. That is
| not politics.
|
| All labor is "activism" performed in service of a specific
| outcome, because _every action is inherently ideological_.
| Only tools are morally neutral -- not the actions performed
| with them.
|
| What you spend your time doing, introduces an influence
| that drives nature and society in one direction over
| another. If you make tools for microlending, you are
| contributing to the economic activity of disconnected
| portions of the world population. If you make tools for
| surveilling undocumented immigrants, you are contributing
| to the apparatus which continues to strip and violate the
| human rights of large groups of people.
|
| Different degrees of separation warrant different levels of
| attribution. But no one is completely inculpable.
| dtoma wrote:
| > "an inordinate amount of time researching [...] I usually
| set aside a day or two"
|
| English isn't my native language but doesn't this make it
| sound like you only spend "a day or two" researching? Or
| are these two sentences unrelated?
|
| > Bringing politics to the office(thanks Google!)
|
| How bad is it really? Have you ever been told something
| like "I won't review your PR because you don't vote for the
| same person I do"?
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Do you ignore politics while you're pooping? If so, why?
| f00zz wrote:
| "Everything is political"
|
| "Being apolitical is a political stance"
|
| "If you don't take a stand you're part of the problem"
|
| Gosh, this is tiresome.
| shams93 wrote:
| Well said!
| natalyarostova wrote:
| Great. Go work at a firm that reserves time for activism
| under a common cause. Plenty of us don't want to do that at
| work, and will look for firms that let us focus on
| engineering for our time at work, so we can reserve our free
| time to do as we please.
| manigandham wrote:
| It's perfectly reasonable to separate the workplace and the
| rest of the world. No need to ignore everything to limit your
| discussion at work.
|
| You can also still take action - by leaving. That's exactly
| what this policy is encouraging with a generous exit package.
| Why is that not acceptable? Why does the corporation have to
| follow what _you_ decide?
| ideal_stingray wrote:
| As a member of several different marginalized groups, I want
| to be able to go to work and do my job without having to hear
| my coworkers argue about whether I get to exist. I'm well
| aware that politics doesn't ignore me, but for my own sanity
| I don't want to think about it any more than necessary,
| either.
| ptero wrote:
| The comment author does not advocate ignoring the world, he
| wants to separate his _engineering_ work from politics and
| thus wants to look for employers who do not push a particular
| political program on him. Which seems a perfectly valid (and
| attractive to me) view.
|
| You cannot ignore your dreams, your health, your family,
| social ills, the air quality, politics and a myriad of other
| things in the world around you. But if you focus on all of
| those all the time you will achieve nothing. Imagine a great
| inventor, scientist, engineer or artist working on his next
| idea. Do you _really_ want to make him jump and go
| demonstrate for /against your list of hot button topics?
| tshaddox wrote:
| Wanting to separate engineering work from reality is
| precisely what Barrin92 is saying should not and can not be
| done. Engineering work isn't just some insulated game that
| gives you tokens to buy things you need in the real world.
| The engineering work is itself part of the real world.
| [deleted]
| wellpast wrote:
| I think this is all contextual to our times. We just have
| so much disagreement on what we are sure is
| moral/immoral.
|
| If the different political sides had more balance, I
| think it'd make sense to permit a modest bit in the
| workplace.
|
| But today the left is so sure of its position to the
| point where they think they are in the black & white
| moral right _and_ they are increasingly dominant and loud
| in our cultural institutions and many corporate
| institutions that it is substantially interfering with
| basic ability to think.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Everything is part of the real world. Would you go to a
| mattress company and demand that they make it harder for
| your political opponents to get a good night's sleep?
| eli wrote:
| I dunno, but I bet in the long run the mattress company
| that allows internal debate outperforms one that silences
| it.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I just don't see how yelling about complex and emotional
| social issues could help a company build good mattresses.
| eli wrote:
| Is there anything between yelling and forbidding all
| discussion?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| To some degree. It's very possible for employees to have
| polite discussions over the lunch table about political
| topics, and to the extent Coinbase is trying to prohibit
| those discussions I'm against it.
|
| Is there a way to have employees say e.g. "the company
| needs to endorse suchandsuch political slogan" or "the
| company needs to oppose suchandsuch candidate" without
| yelling? I don't think so.
| pm90 wrote:
| Because activism is more than yelling about complex and
| emotional social issues, even if that's the way you
| perceive it.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Wouldn't be the first time a mattress company got
| involved in that space. Casper sponsors the Slate
| Political Gabfest podcast, or used to at least.
| tshaddox wrote:
| No, I wouldn't, but I don't know how that is relevant. If
| a mattress company refused to sell mattresses to gay
| people, I wouldn't do business with that mattress
| company, and I would also approve of employees of that
| mattress company taking part in political activism to
| oppose that practice.
| Oricle wrote:
| I would. Mental illness shouldn't be glorified.
|
| And has for trans, 84% attempt suicide and all of them
| cause hell for everyone around them.
|
| Thank the Jews for pushing this bullshit on us! Just like
| everything else
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I guess I don't see how the response is relevant. If
| Coinbase refused to sell cryptocurrency to gay people,
| I'd be all in favor of employees and external political
| activists saying they should - and Coinbase agrees, they
| don't expect to be apolitical with respect to the actual
| work that they do.
| brightball wrote:
| By that logic, you can't separate church and state
| either.
|
| And that's to say that you can and you should.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Separation of church and state is nothing more than a
| limitation on the government, prohibiting it from
| establishing a national religion or inhibiting religious
| practice. It is not a claim that religion can never be
| discussed in government, or that government can never be
| discussed in religious practice.
| brightball wrote:
| If you're a government employee it's highly discouraged
| to the point of official reprimand.
| ryanisnan wrote:
| This is impossible. When the very technology you work on is
| employed in entirely political ways (i.e. dragonfly), you
| cannot separate work from the world.
| coryfklein wrote:
| Cash is a technology that is one of the biggest enablers
| of drug trafficking and child prostitution. Does this
| serve as an argument for employees of the Treasury
| Department (which prints and mints said cash) to engage
| in politics in the workplace?
|
| Much of technology is agnostic to politics, and enables
| much evil and good alike. This does not, in my mind,
| serve as justification for technology creators to
| intertwine politics with the creation of said technology.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Yes, if it will bring about more regulations and
| protections.
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/treasury-plugs-gap-in-anti-
| mone...
| dirtyoldmick wrote:
| Yes! More government regulations are exactly what I want
| to deal with at work. There aren't nearly enough.
| pm90 wrote:
| This is quite Amusing, because the treasury department
| _is_ involved in efforts to prevent human trafficking:
| https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-
| stories/combatting-h...
| coryfklein wrote:
| Which is a good and laudable thing! But you're talking
| about the place the Treasure Department has in advocating
| for political positions that are inline with it's
| mission. I'm talking about whether Bob the coin stamp
| machine operator holds responsibility for building a
| technology that is, in some cases, used for nefarious
| purposes.
|
| Bob doesn't want to be accosted by Richard from
| accounting because he doesn't do enough to advocate for
| anti-money laundering political causes or senatorial
| candidates. Bob just wants to show up and do his job.
| qchris wrote:
| Hey, I've been writing on planning an article discussing
| some components of open-source and ethics, and I would
| really love to use a (variation) of your sentence. Would
| you mind if I did that, and if so, would you like me to
| include some form of direct attribution to you? You can
| find my email in my profile.
| fivre wrote:
| Are there no lines the op, or you, would not cross in the
| pursuit of your engineering work? Perhaps you're okay with
| Coinbase's mission specifically, but are you saying that
| you're okay with _literally anything_ in the pursuit of
| good engineering?
|
| Perhaps you and the OP would be quite happy, say, writing
| code for a lab that makes novel fentanyl analogues for the
| express purpose of including them in black-market knockoff
| heroin powder, which in turn leads to a number of deaths
| (accurately cutting in your microgram-potent meds is hard,
| and sometimes your downstream supply chain makes a hit
| that's got too high a fentanyl analogue/cut material ratio,
| go figure!), or an industrial system that captures
| unsuspecting babies to then drown them, strip their flesh,
| and harvest their valuable bones (not really that realistic
| in our normal reality, but per
| http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=25967.0 it
| works great in Dwarf Fortress! or it did, anyway, until
| that got patched out because of said bone harvester), or
| hell, let's just Godwin on it and say you'd be perfectly
| happy writing automation tooling to make Treblinka 10% more
| efficient.
|
| The respondent, whom you so readily chastise, has a quite
| valid point that we can't separate our engineering work
| from "politics" (ethics, really, but there does seem to be
| a side in this debate that prefers to say "politics", since
| that evokes more the admittedly annoying horse race
| electoraliasm and doublespeak-driven world of actual
| politics and takes away from the thrust of the issue, which
| is ethics, which happen to often overlap with politics but
| are very much their own thing) ever. That's an important
| thing to recognize, especially in an industry that has
| persistent issues with laying ethics aside in pursuit of
| "great inventions" (let's be pragmatic, it's mostly in
| pursuit of profit, with some good inventions as an
| occasional byproduct).
|
| What I think the respondent may be getting at is that there
| is a significant population in the industry that probably
| does have some lines they won't cross, but is privileged
| and willing to cross a great many lines that won't affect
| them personally. You perhaps think that's a laudable
| stance, and you can hold that opinion if you wish, but you
| should do so with the recognition that there are a number
| of people that will see that less as a commitment to
| honorable professional detachment and more as a willingness
| to trod over the rights and wellbeing of the less fortunate
| so long as it doesn't injure you immediately. I'd argue
| that it's important thing to at least consider in an
| industry that often speaks of changing the world for the
| better--perhaps that was more it drinking the consultant
| kool-aid about what millenials value in their work and
| deciding it needed to work that into messaging, if not
| action, but hey, if it wants to say that, it ought to put
| its money where its mouth is.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| This response is mis-characterization and is acting in bad
| faith, no one in this thread is asking for forced
| demonstrating. That's not actually a thing that's
| happening.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >Do you really want to make him jump and go demonstrate
| for/against your list of hot button topics?
|
| Yes I do and countless of scientists and artists do exactly
| that, which is why a lot of them ended up being subject to
| McCarthyism paranoia at one point or the other. Brilliant
| scientists, more than anyone else maybe, need to engage the
| political world to understand what influence what they
| built has on it. Technologists being painfully unaware of
| the political ramifications of their work, if anything, got
| us to where we are right now.
|
| It's no coincidence that the politically detached scientist
| is the archetypical citizen of autocratic countries. The
| technologist who does not care for politics is today, the
| most sought after person in China.
| exolymph wrote:
| > Do you really want to make him jump and go demonstrate
| for/against your list of hot button topics?
|
| Sadly for many people the answer to this is an unequivocal
| yes.
| paxys wrote:
| While it isn't possible to separate engineering from
| politics in general, the sentiment is doubly hilarious when
| your goal is to enable a new global monetary system.
| tshaddox wrote:
| The Coinbase blog post is directly self-contradictory.
| First it lists some things that they focus on in order to
| accomplish their mission. One of those is this:
|
| > Enable belonging for everyone: We work to create an
| environment where everyone is welcome and can do their
| best work, regardless of background, sexual orientation,
| race, gender, age, etc.
|
| Then, just a few short paragraphs later, they list things
| that they focus minimally on, because they are "not
| directly related to the mission." One of those things is
| this:
|
| > Broader societal issues: We don't engage here when
| issues are unrelated to our core mission, because we
| believe impact only comes with focus.
|
| It doesn't get more blatantly contradictory than that.
| ironSkillet wrote:
| I think what they're saying is that will work to make the
| environment _within_ the company as welcoming as
| possible. However, they will not try and solve that
| problem for society at large. Although you may disagree
| with the approach, it doesn 't seem contradictory to me.
| tshaddox wrote:
| And again, it's a false notion to think that those are
| two separate things. You can't, to use example that I
| hope is obvious, support making your work environment
| welcoming to everyone regardless of sexual orientation,
| while also refusing to oppose or even discuss a political
| movement or politician who would throw people in jail for
| having a certain sexual orientation.
| sokoloff wrote:
| While I would find that political position abhorrent, I
| wouldn't expect and certainly not demand that my company
| issue a specific public statement denouncing it.
| paxys wrote:
| What about being able to discuss that internally with
| coworkers? Because the company prohibits that as well.
| sokoloff wrote:
| My wager is they de facto won't prohibit any discussion
| between consenting and mutually interested coworkers that
| doesn't negatively impact their work output, which seems
| "fair enough" to me.
| paxys wrote:
| So you'd be okay working for a company with policies you
| don't agree with because "they probably won't enforce
| them"?
| tshaddox wrote:
| You don't need to expect or demand that, although I
| certainly would. The problem is when a company claims
| they care about that issue as part of their mission, but
| then prohibits employees from taking a stand on that
| issue or even discussing that issue.
| Zak wrote:
| > _he wants to separate his engineering work from politics_
|
| So did Wernher von Braun. I've intentionally selected the
| most extreme example that came to mind readily to
| illustrate the point: designing rockets for the Nazis to be
| built by slaves and used to carry bombs to kill civilians
| has moral and political implications. It's reasonable to
| judge von Braun for knowingly participating in atrocities
| even if his only interest was in rocket science. It's not
| possible to separate the engineering from the politics.
|
| Cryptocurrency has political consequences, though they're
| not as obvious as those of ballistic missiles. For a
| company to work on cryptocurrency trading and pretend to be
| apolitical is disingenuous because if the company is
| successful, its actions will have a political impact. I'm
| inclined to think that anyone engaging in acts with
| political consequences should be proactive about what those
| consequences will be. Most technological change comes with
| the potential for political consequences.
|
| Of course, there's engineering work that's less political.
| Making incremental improvements to the efficiency of
| widely-used infrastructure is usually fairly neutral; it's
| good for everyone, but doesn't really change the balance of
| power.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > The comment author does not advocate ignoring the world,
| he wants to separate his engineering work from politics and
| thus wants to look for employers who do not push a
| particular political program on him. Which seems a
| perfectly valid (and attractive to me) view.
|
| A lot of engineering work is inherently political. For
| instance, an engineer designed the gas chambers at
| Auschwitz and by doing his engineering work he supported
| the politics of the holocaust since his work and those
| politics are inseparable. In most cases, the connection is
| not so obvious and clear cut, but it's still there.
| debaserab2 wrote:
| What about when the engineering decisions you make today affect
| the politics of the future?
|
| Perhaps this doesn't apply to your area of engineering, but I
| do feel that it does affect a substantial chunk of the HN
| audience.
|
| How and what data you choose to collect about internet visitors
| is no longer a purely technical analysis, it now has broader
| implications that potentially involve political actors. You
| don't know who might have access to that data in the future or
| what they might do with it.
|
| We as engineers are the final implementer of these decisions.
| Should we really abdicate the ethical responsibilities tied to
| these decisions so easily?
| mtalantikite wrote:
| Financial systems are political, though. To not realize that
| while working on a product like Coinbase would be very short
| sighted.
| eli wrote:
| I'm sure you will find lots of like minded people at Coinbase.
| And fewer and fewer people with differing opinions. Hmm.
| mplewis wrote:
| Joining a company with garbage politics to own the libs is
| truly a bespoke reactionary take.
| lliamander wrote:
| How is that remotely "owning the libs"? Sounds like this
| person just wants to be free of them (or those that would try
| to get him fired).
|
| It's not an attack if people just don't want to be around
| you.
| [deleted]
| rburhum wrote:
| How can you be "apolitical" and pay lobbyist to push crypto-
| friendly govt legislation?
|
| https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary...
| disruptalot wrote:
| That would be clearly in line with their mission?
| aVx1uyD5pYWW wrote:
| That type of exception is explicitly stated in the CEOs blog
| post:
|
| >We focus minimally on causes not directly related to the
| mission
|
| >Policy decisions: If there is a bill introduced around crypto,
| we may engage here, but we normally wouldn't engage in policy
| decisions around healthcare or education for example.
|
| https://blog.coinbase.com/coinbase-is-a-mission-focused-comp...
| rStar wrote:
| you can work here, but you have no power.
| kotxig wrote:
| This is only a problem because we live in a world where political
| issues are strongly affiliated with political ideologies in a
| binary fashion - i.e. identity politics. Even so much as people
| interpret a company's intention to remain politically neutral and
| avoid making any political statements as "a lurch to the right".
| Why can't we think of it more as a "return to the centerground"?
|
| I think the inclusive apolitical approach will win out in the
| long term. I don't believe for a second that "not saying
| something is a statement in and of itself", and by subscribing to
| this idea you're bringing forward a style of authoritarianism the
| world is better off without.
|
| Given that identity politics is so rife in 2020, don't you think
| it's a wise move to divorce company decision making from the
| clutches of any specific political ideology? The people that say
| no are almost certainly the authoritarians.
|
| So much of this conversation seems stuck on the binary opposites
| (zero politics vs 100% politics), just like the way our politics
| is functioning in a binary fashion today. Obviously a company
| cannot be truly apolitical unless it hires no one and does
| absolutely nothing in the world, but we can at least minimize the
| surface area and allow topics less relevant to company objectives
| to the individuals outside of the workplace.
|
| It's a popular idea that institutions with power have a duty to
| wield it, which is a completely ridiculous and dangerous idea.
| Simply put, we shouldn't be co-opting the influence of our
| companies to satisfy our personal political agendas or resort to
| cancel-culture tactics in order to force them into speaking. In a
| landscape where this is regularly happening, the neutral position
| is better and safer for all of us and healthy political
| discourse.
| toomanybeersies wrote:
| I've been around the block enough times to realise that any tech
| job inevitably has morally murky dimensions.
|
| It's never in regards the big overarching social issues like
| racial politics though. It's the advertising companies you work
| with, the casinos and bookmakers (which is the only time I've
| made a moral stand at work), or people losing jobs that are
| replaced by automation.
| coddle-hark wrote:
| Not participating in morally abhorrent behaviour is admirable
| and really important. The problem, I think, is when people put
| it on themselves to police other's behaviour.
| devthrowawy wrote:
| The key, IMO, is to write software in the engineering industry
| not the tech industry. Plenty of interesting problems, large
| breadth and depth of knowledge across many disciplines, real
| business models, real product, really helping drive technology
| forward. It took me too long to realize that the 'tech'
| industry is mostly cult garbage looking for an exit.
| andrethegiant wrote:
| Forbidding the discussion of politics at work sounds a lot like
| Don't Ask, Don't Tell. I think Coinbase is on the wrong side of
| history here.
| rmrfrmrf wrote:
| Pretty funny that the company's fundraising/activist-friendly
| mission statement came back to bite it.
| dpc_pw wrote:
| I expect a lot companies and capital, given the COVID nudge, will
| accelerate moving to other locations and hiring remote, because
| they want to pay their employees to the their work, and not to go
| on moral crusades on company's time.
| j4nt4b wrote:
| If employees want to influence a company's political stance, then
| they've already lost, because employees are not shareholders.
| It's not their call to make.
|
| They would have a leg to stand on if they were part of a worker's
| cooperative, because then they'd be owners. The juicy job market
| for tech workers may obscure this fundamental fact, but when the
| rubber hits the road any overpaid engineer is still considered
| hired help and forever "below the salt". Until workers build up a
| co-op sector to compete with private sector companies, they will
| never have a say, no matter how much they kick and scream.
|
| So either sit your ass down and sell your soul like you already
| said you would, or get out there and start building. Not just for
| yourself, but for all of us. Because we will never have true
| democracy as long as most of the wealth the people generate gets
| sliced and diced at board meetings without even the veneer of
| representation.
| spicymaki wrote:
| I was looking for a response in general to this and I think
| your comment nails it for me. If you want to drive societal
| change you need to get off the bench and commit, and please do
| because the world needs more people to be engaged.
| j4nt4b wrote:
| Thank you. One way I look at it is, imagine working for
| somebody who pays you in political campaign donations to
| causes of your choice, then takes the rest of the money
| you've made for them and doubles that contribution for the
| other side. It's really a no-win situation for the worker.
| Impossible wrote:
| Uh aren't most employees shareholders in most public tech
| companies? I've definitely been a shareholder in every public
| company I've worked at.
| spicymaki wrote:
| This is true but in reality the percentage of ownership is so
| tiny that most regular employees have no say. This really
| just leaves billionaires, institutions or the C-suite with
| the power to control large companies.
| j4nt4b wrote:
| Yes, but have fun organizing anything meaningful when
| executives and large funds own enough shares to overrule any
| fraction of workers out of hand.
| thisisbrians wrote:
| I came here to say basically this. An employer is responsible
| for its own political positions because of how corporate
| governance is organized. Employees who disagree with said
| positions, whatever they may be, are free to terminate their
| employment if management doesn't agree to be lobbied by
| employees to assume certain positions. True say comes with
| ownership.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| There are other forms of cooperate governance than co-ops and
| corporations, and there are other ways to ensure non-investor
| stakeholders like employees (and the community) have a say in
| some business decisions. Unions are an obvious one. The German
| model for corporations is another: employees get an actual seat
| on the board with an actual voice and a vote, by law.
|
| None of these are perfect solutions, but any of them would be a
| step in the right direction. When manufacturing was the engine
| of economic growth in America, workers figured out how to get
| it to work for them. Tech is becoming the new engine now, and
| it's time for us (the workers) to figure out how to implement
| systemic changes to ensure our concerns are heard and
| addressed.
|
| As to your main point, I agree. Whinging about your employer
| won't change anything - the systems themselves need to be
| changed.
| cmsonger wrote:
| I understand the points of praise, but let me offer a counter
| argument. Companies have an obligation to defend the system that
| provided the environment in which they were formed and
| flourished.
|
| This election is a bit different than normal. I've never seen a
| sitting president that would not commit to the peaceful transfer
| of power. You really think that coinbase would be where it is if
| we had that for the last 50 year? You think silicon valley would
| be silicon valley?
|
| I don't.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| I applaud Coinbase's CEO on his position of keeping politics out
| of work. Other tech companies have been overrun with employee
| activism, which just means one political side has weaponized
| those companies in favor of their ideology. It is disrespectful
| to all their customers that don't align with those views,
| damaging societally when digital public squares (Facebook and
| Twitter) are corrupted by employee politics, and it is a
| distraction in a professional environment that could otherwise be
| operated apolitically. I hope other organizations follow
| Coinbase's example.
| gearhart wrote:
| This is an unpopular opinion on HN, and I'm not sure I agree
| with it, but I am delighted that you've made it here. It's
| something worth debating in this group.
| uniqueid wrote:
| Let's say you run a company and your government offers you,
| for some insane reason, a fat, juicy contract to boil kittens
| alive. If you accept it, does that make the company
| apolitical? Is that a good thing?
|
| The world hashed the issue out pretty thoroughly in the
| postwar years. I don't know if enough has changed since to
| warrant revisiting it.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| I fully agree.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| >I applaud Coinbase's CEO on his position of keeping politics
| out of work.
|
| It's not keeping politics out of work, it is a political
| standpoint in and of itself.
| detaro wrote:
| It's kinda interesting to see because the cryptocurrency space
| is surely one of the more political tech developments at the
| core - replacing fiat money, new financial instruments, self-
| governing contracts, ...?
| eeh wrote:
| The CEO is declaring the focus political issue is
| cryptocurrency.
|
| The focus is not whales, forests, ice caps, malaria.
|
| Why is this controversial?
| iovrthoughtthis wrote:
| Probably because none of these things exist in a vacuum.
| Simply because we give a title to an "area of political
| focus" doesn't mean that it exists in it's own silo,
| unimpaired by decisions in any other area of political
| focus.
|
| What happens when your area of political focus crosses
| tracks with another area of political focus and you're
| faced with a trolley problem? Do you simply steam ahead
| regardless of the overall impact or do you consider the
| overall impact?
|
| "That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen" [1]
| applies to all policies, not simply those undertaken by
| states.
|
| [1]: http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html
| eeh wrote:
| All entities including businesses commonly make tradeoffs
| between competing values. I am unaware how Coinbase plan
| to do this.
|
| Outside the mission, it sounds like Coinbase won't factor
| these matters beyond the usual legal/reputation, the same
| as the majority of businesses.
|
| Governments are best placed to guide prosocial behaviour.
| eeh wrote:
| For the record, I am pro sustainable fishing, sustainable
| foresty, tackling climate change, and eliminating malaria.
|
| I think governments and dedicated organisations are best
| placed to do this: they can better enforce compliance, and
| have greater visibility on all of our pressing needs.
| davidgerard wrote:
| for a start, you've just separated "cryptocurrency" from
| "ice caps", when Bitcoin generates country-sized quantities
| of CO2.
| eeh wrote:
| It sounds like Coinbase doesn't consider climate change
| to be within their mission.
|
| We need to place a place on carbon, and thus share
| responsibility, in proportion to use.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Interesting definition, so if his crypto platform
| (hypothetical) is getting used by mafia and for 'tax
| minimisation' thats apolitical? And if I raise a stink
| about it, I am an activist?
| eeh wrote:
| If a company is breaking the law, some countries offer
| whistleblower protections.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Well tax minimisation is not illegal - supposedly
| starbucks can pay less taxes in UK than I do alone
| throwaways885 wrote:
| Very different than campaigning for BLM or MAGA at work.
| nullc wrote:
| Yes, which can be interesting to both leftists, rightists,
| and whatever other directionist you might wish to delineate.
|
| It isn't politically neutral technology, sure-- but it's
| largely orthogonal to many other political concerns. This is
| good too, because an alternative money isn't particularly
| valuable unless it's useful to a broad spectrum of people.
|
| I could easily imagine a cryptocurrency org that didn't have
| a culture of leaving your politics/religion at home -- at
| least to the extent that they didn't directly interact with
| your work-- could quickly become an extremely toxic and
| unproductive place.
| mantap wrote:
| Cryptocurrency represents a kind of financial libertarianism,
| that people should be able to own their money and be their
| own bank. It doesn't have much to say about aspects of life
| outside of that. It is political because of vested interests.
| m12k wrote:
| To be fair though, keeping politics completely out of any
| aspect of life becomes increasingly hard when things like
| science and the definition of "truth" are being politicized. A
| statement like "I believe the 99% of climate scientists that
| say climate change is man-made" shouldn't be considered a
| political statement, yet here we are.
| gadders wrote:
| You could... not talk about it at work?
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Science isn't allowed at work?
| Rotten194 wrote:
| What is "it"? Things that are controversial? Where do we
| draw the line on that?
|
| Most people would agree that talking about your flight
| "around" the world is OK, even if it takes a side in the
| somehow-controversial debate on the shape of the earth.
|
| What about talking to your coworkers idly and you mention
| "Oh yeah I've been keeping my kids at home cause I'm
| worried about coronavirus". Controversial, some people
| think that's fake.
|
| Talking about how you got married last month? If you're
| gay, that's suddenly controversial.
|
| Talking to your manager about how you need to take time off
| because a family member died, they ask what happened, turns
| out they were shot by the police? Suddenly _very_
| controversial...
|
| Politics isn't some weird abstract thing, it's life and the
| events that are happening around us every day. If we live
| in a world where literally the shape of the earth is a
| marker of political identity -- how do you expect people to
| avoid mentioning topics that people might find
| controversial? Or do you think it's possible to draw a
| stark dividing line somewhere between "shape of earth" and
| "police reform" that can be justified in an objective way?
| nemo44x wrote:
| There's a difference between talking about things with
| colleagues and being an activist. I don't think anyone
| minds water cooler conversations about things. But using
| the company you work for as a base of activism is
| different. Actively creating a sub-culture within a
| company that polarizes or coerces employees is hostile.
| gadders wrote:
| I think the "don't be political" works both ways.
|
| If someone, say, brought up their gay partner to a
| colleague who is very religious, I'd expect the religious
| colleague to treat them courteously. I wouldn't expect
| them to tell them that they will burn in hell for all
| eternity.
|
| Maybe the line to be drawn is one of policy vs people. As
| a policy decision, you could be against gay marriage but
| on a personal level still be happy for a gay colleague
| that got married. Or happy that they are happy.
| jeromegv wrote:
| In what world is your work not impacted by climate change?
| How you use energy, what supplier you use, your carbon
| impact, the raw materials you use to make your products,
| etc.. This is all part of it. Even if you don't believe in
| it, the fact that you don't believe in it while other
| companies do will impact you! You can't just ignore all
| those things and pretend they don't exist, as a business
| owner it's just entirely impossible to ignore it.
| gadders wrote:
| That doesn't really come up in general conversation
| though, does it?
|
| I'm not talking about policy decisions by a business
| owner, I'm talking about when people have day to day
| discussions with other employees.
| Nursie wrote:
| In terms of climate science, energy use is very relevant to
| work.
| geekpowa wrote:
| Insisting that Facebook / Twitter workplace should be
| apolitical, is as persuasive as Wernher Von Braun and his
| rocket engineer colleagues insisting that their workplace was
| also apolitical.
| tsherr wrote:
| To understand your position, you're saying that if you take a
| job with a company, you must either take on the company's
| politics and ethics or leave?
|
| There's no room for trying to improve a company from the
| inside?
| eeh wrote:
| The CEO is saying the company will remain apolitical, outside
| of its mission.
| searchableguy wrote:
| Any statistical data that suggests the odds are in favor of
| changing it from inside?
| antris wrote:
| If you are being told when to come to work and when to leave,
| what to work on, how and where to work on it, how to dress,
| corrected on even the most subtle things that you are doing
| "wrong" from the managements perspective and expected to do
| as told, what hope do you have to have any influence on the
| values of the company?
|
| It's the norm that people in a workplace are primarily seen
| as cogs in the system, humans with needs and opinions as
| second. Any time the latter is perceived to potentially
| affect the former, you will be told to fall into line.
| sagichmal wrote:
| I don't know how long you've been out of the workforce, but
| I haven't had a job that told me when to arrive, when to
| leave, how or where to do my work, or what to wear, in
| almost 20 years.
| ponker wrote:
| Congratulations, you're one of the winners. Talk to your
| local McDonalds employee and you'll get a different
| story.
| sagichmal wrote:
| But we're not talking about McDonalds workers? We're
| talking about Coinbase.
| ponker wrote:
| Yes, but what's the reason to believe that Coinbase
| employees can impact the Coinbase culture more than
| McDonalds employees can? In the case we're discussing
| now, they tried, and the CEO told them "don't let the
| door hit you on your way out."
| sagichmal wrote:
| I have no idea what you think this conversation is about.
| [deleted]
| andymoe wrote:
| The cool thing is that while Coinbase gets to use its inherent
| power/leverage over workers to get a certain outcome (capital is
| a form of power btw) workers can use their inherent power
| (withholding labor, negotiating as a unit, building consensus
| etc) to get their desired outcome and behavior from the company.
|
| No one owes anyone anything and there are not really any rules
| here. Consequences and outcomes yes but no real rules.
|
| So the people that work at Coinbase took some action (walkout)
| and the CEO is taking some action (blog post/policy/vision
| clarification/severance offers to leave). His job is to convince
| and use his power to get his desired outcome. But employees have
| a similar amount of power to change the vision and direction of
| the company too. They don't often wield it well since it's been
| in business owners best interest to convince workers they don't
| have this power at all.
|
| It will be interesting to see if the employees realize any of
| this and how they respond.
| baryphonic wrote:
| They are free to leave. No one is essential at any job, no
| matter how much mom and dad and the college admissions
| department told her she that she was.
| meesles wrote:
| You're missing the point. By choosing not to leave the
| employees can wield influence over the company. The employees
| also don't need Coinbase; there are other companies paying
| the same and working on the same problems.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| I agreed with what Brian Armstrong said in his blog post and
| thought it was admirable to publicly take that position, but now
| I have even more respect for his dedication.
|
| I don't know if the severance package is good or not, but it
| seems generous and it gives employees who aren't aligned with the
| company an easy way out.
| vmception wrote:
| My LinkedIn right now is full of professionals writing about
| how Coinbase is wrong and unsupportable. That is surprising to
| me.
|
| I would like to see more mission focused companies.
|
| They can help the societies they are in with some unilateral
| initiatives like Netflix did with helping capitalize banks in
| certain communities, without discussing it or changing the
| focus.
| flyinglizard wrote:
| The guys who'd go on public platform to denounce Coinbase
| probably intersect with the type of people Coinbase wants to
| rid itself of.
|
| I fully support what Coinbase is doing. It seems very fair to
| all sides.
| vmception wrote:
| It doesn't change my stance on what I would prefer
| companies do but it seems like a multilayered issue on the
| tides to pay attention to here and at the very least makes
| me not want to espouse my own thoughts about "Yeah! mission
| focused companies!" publicly.
|
| Here are quotes from my feed:
|
| "The path to an IPO is to purge Black and Brown people from
| Coinbase ... this is very unbecoming of a federal
| contractor"
|
| "Over a dozen diverse crypto industry leaders [are] calling
| it out as racist."
|
| "Sweden took 60 years to admit its neutrality policy was
| racist. How long will it take Coinbase to do the same?
| Being neutral is a position in support of the status quo -
| it always has been."
|
| "Coinbase's CEO's recent statement of neutrality is
| unacceptable and complicit."
|
| An out of context comment unfortunately adding to the
| gradient of the same context: "IBM's first computer sold to
| Hitler. Ford converted cars to tanks sold to Hitler.
| Why???"
|
| The people posting are all identifying as black, in San
| Francisco Bay Area, and using their platform in support of
| black communities.
|
| What's going on is that there is more context than Brian
| Armstrong's post, there is the context of what actually
| occurred within Coinbase amongst Coinbase's employees,
| something I have an incomplete picture of. And I think all
| of us miss that.
|
| I like Brian Armstrong's post - in isolation. People with
| more context don't like it, and are galvanizing support
| against this very quickly. That's too bad. I hope Coinbase
| gets their IPO.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Do the people making the statements you quoted have more
| context/information, or are they just more vocal.
|
| In my experience, there has never been a shortage of
| people with practically no information communicating very
| strong opinions online?
| vmception wrote:
| It is a mixture of more context, more vocal, as well as
| people joining the fray with less context, assimilating
| to the same perspectives.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Based purely on the headline, it feels like the people
| who yell about it are the exact Twitter shitstorm party
| that tries to start a pitchfork mob everywhere, and if
| you just try to stay away from it, they'll form a mob
| against you for staying out of it.
|
| In other words, exactly the toxic group of people that
| this is trying to remove from the company.
| vmception wrote:
| I think that is pretty clear, but I think taking that
| approach of excising them is going to shoot themselves in
| the foot.
|
| It should be clear that this isn't "just" trying to be
| mission focused, that was very eloquently written and
| timely, but it is failing because it is a reaction to
| internal issues which wasn't clear to the rest of us. And
| as such it has stirred a hornets nest that also no longer
| wants to keep things inside the company.
|
| Many of the people it has stirred are also people that
| have been fighting for more inclusivity and also identify
| as part of underrepresented groups. People that feel like
| their voice isn't loud enough because they are so few
| inside the companies. This doesn't represent everyone in
| underrepresented groups, only that there is a significant
| overlap in the goals of inclusivity and people that want
| the company to be more welcoming by speaking out against
| inherently political nationalism, which the company
| doesn't want to do.
|
| I'm not offering any solution only observation.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| I think there are two groups: One that generally tries to
| treat human beings well, and is open to reasonable
| arguments, and one that attacks everyone who doesn't
| agree with their specific position. It's the difference
| between someone who makes a proposal how to improve
| inclusivity and tries to convince people that this is the
| right thing to do, and someone who will start attacking
| people who don't want to implement that proposal.
|
| The latter is the more visible one and being targeted by
| this, and in my opinion rightly so, because that behavior
| (attacking others) is toxic and helps nobody.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _" The path to an IPO is to purge Black and Brown
| people from Coinbase ... this is very unbecoming of a
| federal contractor"_
|
| Do normal people actually believe stuff like this???
| flyinglizard wrote:
| Depends on where you're from. US appears to be quite a
| bit more embracing of that viewpoint than people from
| other countries who aren't so well tuned to US societal
| sensitivities (which can be very difficult to navigate).
| curryst wrote:
| Normal as in average? No, that leans pretty far left.
| It's not particularly unusual to see though. My theory is
| that there is a very loud minority of people online that
| believe things like that (or are willing to exaggerate to
| that degree).
|
| Extremists abound on the internet.
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| As if purging was offering a generous severance package
| to employees who voluntarily quit...
|
| As if all Black/Brown people believe that Coinbase's
| stance here is wrong...
| koheripbal wrote:
| There is a lot of value in removing political activists from
| your company, and so it's worth paying them to leave.
|
| Aside from the combative toxic environment they generate, they
| are also often the source of disgruntled rogue employees that
| will generally behave improperly, misrepresent coworkers, leak
| documents, raise alarms about operations they don't understand,
| and generally draw the company into litigation.
|
| In a highly sensitive market like crypto, you don't want to
| gain unnecessary regulatory attention, and activists like this
| will be the first to testify against the company with their
| biased interpretation of internal operations.
|
| They're just poison. In the best case scenario, they are just a
| huge distraction - and in the worst they will cost you 10x
| their salary in legal drama.
| ryanmarsh wrote:
| True, hyper-political people of _any_ persuasion are
| generally toxic. Trust and alignment are essential to
| performance.
| stateofnounion wrote:
| > They're just poison.
|
| This. And like another commenter pointed out, it's not unique
| to one side or the other. Anyone who defines their entire
| existence in this left/right dichotomy is suffering from
| media-induced mental illness.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > There is a lot of value in removing political activists
| from your company, and so it's worth paying them to leave.
|
| Your company should be 100% political activists, but (at
| least during work hours) they should be focused on advancing
| the mission of your organization.
|
| Even within activist groups you have the exact same problem
| that Joe is talking about, e.g. at some point in the 90s
| Adbusters went from lobbying against advertising to just
| generally supporting any leftist cause. And that's why every
| highway (except in Vermont, Alaska, Hawaii, and Maine) is
| still lined with billboards 25+ years later. The only way for
| an organization to accomplish its mission is to actually
| focus on solving the specific problem they're trying to
| solve, not to get distracted by trying to fix every random
| problem that exists in the world.
| sieabahlpark wrote:
| > Your company should be 100% political activists...
|
| You don't really have a company at that point anymore.
| nullc wrote:
| Marin County California has banned billboards since 1935.
| maxwelljoslyn wrote:
| For an organization wishing to preserve its specific
| mission, I wonder if one positive step would be clearly
| defining the point at which the organization would say
| "mission accomplished" and pack itself up. Riffing on your
| example, suppose an anti-ad organization said, "We want to
| achieve a goal of 20/50 states banning highway ads. Once we
| get there, our organization will be wound down [in some
| way.]"
|
| There are reasons that might work badly, though. Without
| the org continuing to generate political pressure, public
| awareness, or money, the originally-achieved goal state
| could backslide. But ... change is inevitable. Perhaps at
| that point you try and get the org back together,; if you
| can, you can, otherwise you accept the world has moved on.
|
| Easier said than done.
| cactus2093 wrote:
| I saw this firsthand in May/June in the aftermath of the
| George Floyd killing. It was a pretty small company and there
| was one employee in particular who was very much an activist,
| though a number of employees of course felt very strongly
| about what was going on. The company genuinely tried to do
| their best to support them, encouraged this person to take a
| week off for mental health and from my perspective was making
| a real effort to be understanding and support this person and
| also to express support for the BLM movement as a whole.
|
| There was one manager in particular who really tried to do
| the right thing in supporting this employee. The manager
| convinced the marketing folks to make a pro-BLM post on
| LinkedIn, but then this employee got upset that it had not
| gone far enough and was too weakly worded. A good friend of
| the employee and former coworker at this company actually
| called out the company in the comments of the post on
| LinkedIn for not taking a stronger stand. The manager also
| convinced the executives to have the company donate money,
| and this kicked off a broader giving back initiative where
| they wanted everyone to vote on causes that the company could
| support in various ways. This caused even more backlash,
| because it had now lost site of the BLM focus and become a
| broader thing.
|
| By the end, the company was just cluelessly walking on
| eggshells with no idea how to not make things worse in their
| attempts at support. The employee was extremely frustrated,
| struggled to regain any level of respect for the company and
| stopped really performing in their job and ended up leaving a
| couple months later. I still very much believe nobody was in
| the wrong here, nobody involved was a bad person or even an
| insensitive person. It just proved to be very difficult to
| navigate this situation, there were too many ways for it to
| go wrong and the company didn't handle everything absolutely
| perfectly and so they just made things worse.
|
| Anyway, in the end I'm very convinced that everyone,
| including the activist employee, would have been much happier
| under the model as stated by Coinbase. And even if this
| person left or had never joined this company to begin with
| because of that policy, the result would have been very
| similar in the end, but without the weeks of frustration and
| stress and lost productivity all around.
| sushisource wrote:
| > I still very much believe nobody was in the wrong here
|
| This just doesn't strike me as reasonable. The employee was
| in the wrong. Clearly. Just because the thing you support
| is a moral and good thing to support doesn't mean you get
| to foist your activism upon everyone else around you. I
| care about endangered species conservation - but if I did
| what this person did and held the organization hostage to
| my demands I'd be looked at sideways, and rightfully so.
|
| It's not that there's no place for activism in the
| workplace, it's just that the line should be drawn at the
| point where it starts harming the organization as a whole.
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| It's tough to say that though. It's not like before Mr.
| Floyd's murder this employee was foisting things upon
| everyone else.
|
| Everyone's morals are the driving force in their life.
| Whatever you want to say, this much is generally true. If
| your morals come into conflict with something new your
| company is doing, you either speak up (and face
| consequences) or stay silent (and fail in upholding
| morality).
|
| That's not an easy choice. What would we do if we worked
| at IBM in the 1930s and 1940s for example?
| choppaface wrote:
| Do you think the outcome would have been different without
| COVID and WFH?
| zapdrive wrote:
| Let me guess the gender of the said employee. You know
| what, never mind.
| ojnabieoot wrote:
| I suspect your comment isn't really being offered in good
| faith, but can you name a specific example of a company where
| a coworker did one of these things:
|
| > leak documents, raise alarms about operations they don't
| understand, and generally draw the company into litigation
|
| and it was actually a case of misguided political activism
| rather than legitimate whistleblowing? I suppose maybe in
| slaughterhouses or animal testing laboratories, but
| definitely not with tech.
|
| > In a highly sensitive market like crypto, you don't want to
| gain unnecessary regulatory attention, and activists like
| this will be the first to testify against the company with
| their biased interpretation of internal operations.
|
| It is very difficult to not read this as "sometimes crypto
| companies need to break the law to make that cheddar, and you
| really don't want any of these radical 'companies should obey
| the law' activists getting in your way."
| thaeli wrote:
| It's a very minority view on HN, but important to keep in
| mind that there are quite a few people who consider what
| Snowden did "a case of misguided political activism".
| [deleted]
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| In my experience, the vast majority of employees don't want
| their workplace to become a political battleground. Even
| those who occasionally discuss politics at work and are
| mature enough to behave like adults about it.
|
| It's tempting to think of this in terms of Democrats vs
| Republicans or right vs left, but that's not really the
| domain of the most problematic employees. The most
| problematic employees are the ones who have given up on the
| notion of reasonable debate or disagreement and instead have
| become convinced that the other side is committing acts so
| terrible that fighting them at every juncture is the only
| acceptable thing to do. Strangely enough, the "other side"
| isn't just far-right or fad-left people, it becomes
| centrists, or people who don't vote, or people who don't want
| to engage in politics at work.
|
| When you've reached the point where a small handful of
| employees are fomenting outrage at their company for not
| putting a BLM statement on the company Twitter account, for
| example, the situation has arrived at a "with us or against
| us" false dichotomy.
|
| Generally, the only way to win with politics at the office is
| to not play. However, when one side decides that not playing
| is equivalent to being evil, everyone is forced to play. When
| everyone is forced to play by a handful of disgruntled
| employees, everyone loses.
|
| Paying to remove these people from a company makes a lot of
| sense. If you don't do something to remove them, the people
| who are sick of being dragged into political debates at work
| will slowly diffuse out of the company. The hyper-political
| employees are a loud minority, but the people who just want
| to do their jobs and remain professional are very much more
| common. Don't let the tail wag the dog.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| awb wrote:
| You could reasonably extend this to your friends and
| neighbors as well.
|
| Growing up, politics was private outside of the family dinner
| table. Any dedication to an injustice or a good cause was
| done through donating or volunteering. No yard signs, no
| shouting, no blaming.
|
| I understand that dramatic actions bring attention, but I
| just hope that we can start focusing more on doing our own
| part and leading by example rather than preaching and
| focusing on how much others are doing. This goes for everyone
| on the modern political spectrum.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Social media is the root of the problem here. All you have
| to do is make a post promoting the cause, and then you get
| a flood of little dopamine hits with each like.
| awb wrote:
| Social media is certainly an accelerant, but these issues
| of leading through blame rather than leading through
| example have been prevalent in our worst leaders for a
| long time.
| ffggvv wrote:
| sounds like my experience at google
| C1sc0cat wrote:
| I suspect its only some activists that Mr Armstrong want's rid
| of.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| If someone went around the Coinbase office demanding that the
| company speak out against abortion, I'm pretty sure Armstrong
| would want to get rid of that guy too.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| No one's disputing that.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| However if someone went around the office demanding that
| people self censor any speech deemed "political", that
| person would be celebrated.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I don't agree. In all the places I've worked, even the
| most apolitical ones, someone would be viewed quite
| negatively if they walked into the break room and tried
| to break up a private political discussion.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| So then someone who was attempting to enforce the CEO's
| mission would be viewed negatively? This feels self-
| contradictory.
|
| You can't say "We won't: Debate causes or political
| candidates internally" (quoting Armstrong) but
| simultaneously say that anyone who attempts to enforce
| that would be viewed negatively. That would imply that
| Armstrong would view _himself_ negatively for enforcing
| his own rule.
| Aunche wrote:
| You're assuming ill intent. The goal is to minimize
| workplace hostility, not to censor anyone. Let's say
| someone goes around snooping into people's conversations
| and overhears two coworkers casually talking about
| attending a protest and reports this. I'm guessing that
| person snooping around will be the only one who will be
| reprimanded.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I highly doubt that. Unrestrained political activism on
| either side has been shown to be a lose-lose situation for
| any large company. The only winning move is not to play (at
| work).
| UncleDiaz12 wrote:
| Seems to be a way to avoid possible future litigation.
| dwardu wrote:
| Brian should have said we don't mix politics and activism in
| our company, if you don't like it, leave. Which should have
| ended like that.
|
| On the other hand, it's a good move because it keeps things
| neutral. These annoyed employees should just take it and leave.
| theptip wrote:
| The problem with taking such a hardline position is that
| there is a significant switching cost borne by the employee
| when they leave, and so at the margin you'll have employees
| that don't buy in to the mission statement, don't like your
| new/restated position, but need the job/dislike job-hunting
| even more.
|
| So now you've created/agitated a population of disgruntled
| employees; this will tend to cause problems. Paying a
| generous severance is enough to lift most of these employees
| over the "activation threshold" and is (in my opinion) the
| correct good-faith way of managing the situation; it's saying
| "no hard feelings if you don't agree with this direction, and
| we respect/value your contributions thus far."
|
| Regardless of whether you agree with the object-level mission
| statement, I think that, having made the decision, this is a
| good example of strong leadership; it's important that
| everybody is bought in to the company mission, and you need
| to proactively filter out folks that aren't. But at the same
| time, you need to do so with respect; it's not necessarily a
| black mark for someone to no longer be a fit for the company
| or role, as both company and individual can change over time.
|
| This is the same sort of idea as when you part ways with an
| exec after a strategy shift (e.g. pivot from B2C to B2B;
| replace your consumer-facing head of sales with a B2B
| veteran). It's not necessarily the case that they aren't
| doing a job, just that they aren't a fit for the role as it
| now stands.
| electriclove wrote:
| Isn't this what he said though (just in a more polite tone)?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| unishark wrote:
| Seems pretty damn good severance to me. Four to six months of a
| SF salary?
|
| I wonder if the real goal here is just reduce headcount.
| moduspol wrote:
| I wonder if the real goal is to foist problematic employees
| onto competitors.
| jiscariot wrote:
| I'm not too familiar with SV culture, but wouldn't an
| employee exit from Coinbase for the next few months also
| act as a signal to future employers? Since google has
| already been bitten from both sides with their "bring your
| entire self to work" culture, you'd think they'd want to
| avoid ex-Coinbasers.
|
| Maybe I'm reading too much in to this.
| moduspol wrote:
| Honestly, I wouldn't think so. People can change / learn,
| too. If you've already ticked off your boss and coworkers
| at Coinbase with your politics, this might be an
| excellent time to get some severance, re-evaluate whether
| or not you should continue to do that in the workplace,
| and frame your resignation differently when applying
| elsewhere.
|
| Besides, I'd expect the "true believers" to find some way
| to outright brag to future interviewers they parted ways
| with Coinbase over moral / ethical objections.
| mrnobody_67 wrote:
| Foist... i see what you did there ;)
| chillwaves wrote:
| I would take the payout and go get another high paying job.
|
| Easy money. Not much to read about politics in the decision
| of getting paid for nothing.
| [deleted]
| kkhire wrote:
| What's there to admire? This is common sense and he should have
| set these expectations from the start. why are people
| discussing politics at work?
| [deleted]
| vowelless wrote:
| > What's there to admire?
|
| Which other Silicon Valley company is doing this?
| throwaway4715 wrote:
| Facebook
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| > why are people discussing politics at work?
|
| Probably because the work these companies do is frequently
| political.
|
| Let's be clear: What Coinbase is saying is, we the founders,
| who set the company's mission, and are doing so with a clear
| political view (rooted in libertarianism and so forth), are
| allowed to use the company to further our political ends.
|
| But the staff? Sorry, you have no voice.
|
| Maybe that's fine. The clear message to staff is: you are
| either onboard with our mission, or you can leave.
|
| But let's not pretend companies and workplaces are
| apolitical. That's, at best, deeply naive.
|
| Frankly, I wonder how much of what we're seeing now is due to
| the destruction of unionized labour, which were organizations
| explicitly designed to channel the political views of
| employees into collective action. Absent those structures, a)
| you get this bizarre perception that the workplace is
| apolitical (it's not), and b) staff no longer have a path
| whereby their views and values can be channeled and
| expressed.
| smooth_remmy wrote:
| There's a group you forgot to consider: the investors.
|
| What do the investors think? They are free to usurp the
| founders if they feel that Coinbase is not paying proper
| homage to social justice.
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| Certainly true, though to me that only reinforces my
| point.
|
| Investors invest in companies based on their perception
| of the value of a company, and that perception is of
| course coloured by political views.
|
| Heck, we have an entire financial movement called
| Socially Responsible Investing, something which is
| nakedly political and a clear acknowledgement that
| politics cannot be, and has never been, divorced from
| business.
|
| I find it infinitely more strange to think that
| workplaces can be apolitical at all. Choosing to work for
| Palantir or Coinbase or The Gates Foundation or Amazon is
| (in part) a political decision. It may not be a conscious
| or intentional political decision, but it's a political
| decision nonetheless.
|
| How could anyone think otherwise?
| chillwaves wrote:
| Movement to support the investor class is just another
| angle of politics. People forget this, since they are
| such a dominant wing in western society.
| nemo44x wrote:
| It's generally a small but vocal group. And I wouldn't call
| it politics so much as activism. A sort of religious zeal has
| made its way into our institutions like schools and
| universities. Some people have taken to it like a missionary
| would religion and believe it's their duty to spread the word
| everywhere at all times. The Inquisition was no different in
| this regard.
|
| You just have to read what the activism says. It says
| everything is racist, sexist, etc and that in every situation
| you must try and identify not if things were problematic but
| how they were. And then "do better", etc. so it's impossible
| for these people to separate their beliefs from their jobs.
|
| It's far beyond politics and more a religion than anything.
| It would be as if a very Christian employee made it their
| goal to point out everything that isn't within Christian
| morality and protesting the company to comply with the word
| of god.
| monoideism wrote:
| > It's far beyond politics and more a religion than
| anything.
|
| I believe this is a result of the fact that Americans have
| turned away from organized religion in recent years (note:
| I'm not religious myself). There seems to be something deep
| inside of most people that requires a shared spiritual
| experience. Wokism has emerged to fill that need.
| nitrogen wrote:
| I came to this realization when someone at a job was
| waving and thumping Cracking the Coding Interview like I
| remember people doing with the bible when I was growing
| up. I was a missionary in a "past life", non-religious
| non-believer now, and I know religion when I see it.
| aaronax wrote:
| This article really fleshes out what this thread is
| discussing: https://www.devever.net/~hl/newchurch
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| One of the guys that article cites clearly has some less
| savory beliefs about race (that I disagree with, people
| are mostly the same the world over) but man did he do a
| good job predicting the ideological battles lines of 2020
| for someone writing in 2012.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Read "Kindly Inquisitors" if you'd like a very thoughtful
| defense of Enlightenment ideas as it pertains to
| knowledge and speech. If you're impressed with someones
| prediction from 2012 then you'll be more amazed with
| someones analysis from 1995. This book is a classic and
| the author, Jonathan Rausch is highly respected.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Kindly-Inquisitors-Attacks-Free-
| Thoug...
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| It wasn't so much a prediction as an observation of an
| incipient trend that went dormant and re-emerged. Post-
| modern attacks on Enlightenment ideals such as free
| thought and free speech were common on campuses in the
| late 1980s and early 1990s, then went dormant in the
| mid-90s, then re-emerged in the early 2010s.
| nemo44x wrote:
| I think it has more cult dynamics than a church per-se.
| Seeing people end friendships and relationships with
| family members. "Unlearning" things, otherwise known as
| reprogramming. Seminars (that are expensive) and
| "required reading". Obsessive recruitment of new people
| to initiate. And then of course if you question things
| you'll be ostracized and exiled.
| monoideism wrote:
| I agree. It's more of a cult-type church than a
| mainstream church. That said, I think it's being driven
| by some of the same socio-spiritual needs.
| ytwySXpMbS wrote:
| I think this is painting a rather stereotyped view of
| people on the left. I share most of the views of the
| left, however don't end relationships with people over
| it, preach, or attend any seminars. I think you're seeing
| the vocal minority here, which is of course more
| outspoken as they care enough to talk about it. Apart
| from the most extreme people, I have had many productive
| conversations with people whose views were more left than
| mine and haven't been ostracised once.
| nitrogen wrote:
| You are of course right that most people aren't like
| this. This thread is about those few who are, and how
| they can end up dividing everyone else, unwillingly, into
| accolytes versus enemies. It's not safe to say "I am
| left/center/right/whatever but I don't think this is the
| way to go about it" around this type. It is a separate
| axis from left-right, and is maybe correlated with the
| authoritarian-libertarian axis.
| WJW wrote:
| There seems to be an obvious counterexample in the rest
| of the Western nations (ie Canada, Australia, most of
| western Europe) that have experienced a similar reduction
| in organized religion but have not seen a corresponding
| rise to political division. Certainly not to the degree
| that the USA has.
| 392c91e8165b wrote:
| Good point. My explanation for the discrepancy is that
| Canada, Australia and western Europe are more homogenous
| racially and ethnically than the US is, which makes them
| less vulnerable to the excesses of an ideology or
| religion-substitute that revolves around race and
| ethnicity.
|
| On some of the troop carriers going to Vietnam, soldiers
| starting fighting each other along racial lines; in
| response, the US military started a major initiative to
| promote racial tolerance in their training of soldiers
| and in their personnel policies. Similarly, according to
| my theory, the leaders of the other major institutions of
| the US realize that the performance of their institution
| depends on the different races getting along or at least
| not openly fighting each other, so they will exhibit a
| weaker tendency to push against a radical belief system
| that prioritizes racial tolerance than their counterparts
| in more homogenous countries will.
|
| Also, starting with the Puritans of England, the western
| Europeans that chose to emigrate to the US were on
| average more religious than those who chose to remain in
| western Europe.
| iratewizard wrote:
| The book Sapiens talks about this well. People have a
| limited number of relationships they can maintain in
| their head. The only way societies can form to be larger
| than that number is shared myth between people.
| University graduates are in large part taking on the role
| of clergy in this wokist cult.
|
| The cynical side of me sees it as America being
| transformed into an economic zone instead of a country.
| This is just what a religion looks like when you're
| binding people together in one large brutalistic finance
| zone.
| SavageBeast wrote:
| Thats a frightening and original idea Id never
| considered. Your observation makes lot of sense the more
| I think about it.
| nootropicat wrote:
| I think this article is going to interest you:
| https://gist.github.com/jart/b73868081a5e1a1c5cf0
|
| >Finally, our parasite will employ a strategy of
| politicization, insisting that everyone in a society be
| involved in the contest for political power. Since our
| memetic parasite is already bound to one or more
| political factions, politicization leaves no one with the
| option to ignore it, and simply live their lives.
| Neutrality is not acceptable. All those who are not
| actively infected, and who do not openly endorse the
| parasite, are by definition its enemies. And they will be
| crushed. The safest thing is to play along, and raise
| your children in the faith - even if you don't really
| believe, they will.
|
| >At this point we've established, at least to my
| satisfaction, that
|
| >(a) there is such a thing as Universalism;
|
| >(b) Universalism is an educationally-transmitted
| tradition that works just like any theistic religion, and
| is best understood as a descendant of Christianity;
|
| >Universalism, again, is a mystery cult of power. Its
| supreme being is the State. And all of the Universalist
| mysteries - humanity, democracy, equality, and so on -
| cluster around the philosophy of collective action.
| Christianity has been a state religion since Constantine,
| of course, but it always also included magical and
| metaphysical mysteries, which the advance of science has
| rendered superfluous at best, embarrassing at worst. So
| Universalism, unlike its ancestors, is not concerned with
| the Trinity or transubstantiation or predestination.
| Pils wrote:
| Obviously the solution to workplace politicization
| is...dissolving the federal government and appointing
| Eric Schmidt the CEO of a newly founded business-state?
|
| > One day in March of this year, a Google engineer named
| Justine Tunney created a strange and ultimately doomed
| petition at the White House website. The petition
| proposed a three-point national referendum, as follows:
|
| 1. Retire all government employees with full pensions.
|
| 2. Transfer administrative authority to the tech
| industry.
|
| 3. Appoint [Google executive chairman] Eric Schmidt CEO
| of America.
|
| https://thebaffler.com/latest/mouthbreathing-machiavellis
| voxl wrote:
| Yikes, talk about MAGA propaganda. Trump is a proto
| fascist, if Americans don't want to be apart of the new
| axis of evil they better be activists. This has nothing to
| do with calling everything racist or sexist, the fact that
| you think so has me suspicious of your views on the world.
| username90 wrote:
| This might come as a shock to you, but a large majority
| dislike political correctness no matter what group they
| belong to. They just go through the motions because they
| are attacked if they don't.
|
| > While 83 percent of respondents who make less than
| $50,000 dislike political correctness, just 70 percent of
| those who make more than $100,000 are skeptical about it.
| And while 87 percent who have never attended college
| think that political correctness has grown to be a
| problem, only 66 percent of those with a postgraduate
| degree share that sentiment.
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/large-
| majo...
| chillwaves wrote:
| Can you explain to me what constitutes "political
| correctness"?
|
| From where I stand, it just means treating people equally
| and not being an asshole.
|
| ETA: In considering all the worries of modern living, I
| have never once been concerned with using the wrong words
| for a group of people. Am I really the exception? It
| seems easy to call people by the terms they prefer. Not
| sure about which terms to use? Then I just ask.
|
| I am struggling to see the burden of being "PC".
| camdenlock wrote:
| It means conforming your speech to current political
| trends.
| chillwaves wrote:
| Can I have an example?
| aleister_777 wrote:
| Whitelisting/Blacklisting.
|
| Change of innocuous and unrelated terminology in source
| code and documentation without any technical
| justification. No shortage of those examples throughout
| the industry and open source.
| chillwaves wrote:
| So you are saying people have a problem with the term
| "blacklisting" ? I guess I live a sheltered life then.
| Nothing like this has remotely ever come up and I live in
| a major metro.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Many codebases are moving away from that term. Here's two
| large efforts that I am familiar with: https://chromium.g
| ooglesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/styl...
| https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=1o9zxsxl
| ev1 wrote:
| Yes. You can find PR's on Github and if the maintainer
| rejects it, accusations of racism and hate crimes.
|
| The acceptable term is something like
| allowlist/denylist/blocklist.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The poll didn't define it, so not all respondents
| necessarily understood it the same way, but in my
| experience it's generally used to refer to speech codes
| requiring people to take great care in how they speak and
| write to avoid accidentally giving offense. The recent
| controversy about the USC professor who said Na Ge in
| class, for example, would be a typical example.
| Talanes wrote:
| Which makes all of the claims you and the others have
| made as to what that data actually means basically
| useless. All we know is that a lot of people think some
| definition of political correctness is some definition of
| problem. That's barely information.
| chillwaves wrote:
| I have no idea what your example means.
|
| As far as speech codes, they seem very mild. I would not
| even call it an inconvenience. Are people mad that
| certain phrases are now considered slurs and not welcome
| in polite society?
|
| Ex. it is no longer appropriate to call someone a
| "retard," even in jest. Is this a problem?
|
| I'm still not understanding the meat of the objection to
| "PC".
| nemo44x wrote:
| Most people are against it. Around 80% for each racial
| group. A bit less for blacks at around 75%. It's like the
| 1 thing a super majority of us agree on.
|
| However, slice it up by income and education. Middle and
| especially upper-middle class people are generally for it
| much more than everyone "below" them but even they don't
| like it.
|
| From politics, republicans hate it a lot and democrats
| mainly hate. Except 1 group. Progressives love it with
| about 30% of them against it. They are the only group
| that likes it.
|
| It is elitist and no one likes it. Except the far left.
| Yet we are all forced to live with it.
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/large-
| majo...
| chillwaves wrote:
| > It seems like everyday you wake up something has
| changed ... Do you say Jew? Or Jewish? Is it a black guy?
| African-American? ... You are on your toes because you
| never know what to say. So political correctness in that
| sense is scary.
|
| I'm still struggling with the objection here, but this is
| ridiculous.
|
| It's ok to say "black". Is that hard to figure out? Ask a
| black person and they will say it's fine. The term
| "african-american" seems more nonsensical than anything
| -- not all black people identify with Africa.
|
| As to the rest, I don't care about popular opinion, that
| doesn't inform my world view. Still waiting to hear about
| the burden of "PC" because I have yet to hear a
| compelling case.
|
| And I have never once wondered whether or not I should
| call someone a "jew".
| vangelis wrote:
| Here's the report:
| https://hiddentribes.us/pdf/hidden_tribes_report.pdf
|
| Political correctness doesn't appeared to be defined. I
| assume if you asked people their opinions on concrete
| events versus a nebulous concept the results would be
| quite different.
| nemo44x wrote:
| You didn't even write "black person" with a capital "B"
| as in "Black person". In many places you'd be jumped on
| for this recent development.
| unishark wrote:
| Do a search for USC communications professor to
| understand the previous example.
|
| It's hard to defend insulting a person's intelligence,
| regardless of the word used. A better example would be
| referring to something inanimate like a company policy as
| "retarded". Even better is the purging of words like
| "master" from software. Or actors having to apologize for
| their Halloween costumes. It seems like every major
| comedian is complaining bitterly about political
| correctness lately, save perhaps for certain partisan
| ones.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| When people say they're concerned about political
| correctness, they're generally disputing your assessment
| that modern speech codes are very mild. Many people feel
| that modern speech codes are quite intense - that it
| requires significant study to identify all the terms and
| phrases that currently aren't welcome in polite society,
| and that complying with the list once you've studied it
| severely restricts the ideas you can express.
| chillwaves wrote:
| Would you like to provide an example that's in english?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Sure. One example would be that many companies (including
| my own) are now instructing engineers to avoid any public
| usages of the terms "whitelist" and "blacklist".
| Obviously this isn't the most important thing in the
| world, but it requires pretty significant mental effort
| on my part, since the terms had no racial connotations at
| all until a couple months ago.
| chillwaves wrote:
| It's telling that the only concrete example in english,
| though only from two of you, is the same one.
|
| It seems like there aren't a lot of examples to choose
| from.
|
| I have personally never heard of this concern, and as you
| mention it doesn't seem particularly taxing. I would like
| to understand better the consequence of misusing (or
| using) blacklist/whitelist. I very much doubt the fallout
| would be severe.
| nemo44x wrote:
| You just don't ever know how it will interpreted against
| you forcing an apology or more recently a written
| declaration that you are sexist/racist/etc and that you
| will "do better".
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It's the most recent and thus the most salient one for a
| lot of people in software. There are many other examples
| of neutral terminology that's become politically charged:
| "all lives matter", "color-blind", the OK hand gesture...
|
| I completely agree that none of these rules are
| individually taxing and that the consequences of breaking
| them are unlikely to be severe. But when taking
| everything in aggregate - the sum of all the rules I know
| about, the concern that there could be new rules I don't
| know about, the tiny but not unprecedented chance that I
| could face severe fallout - the net effect is stifling.
| Again, not the most important problem in the world or
| even the most important problem I personally face, but
| still a problem.
| vangelis wrote:
| What are you no longer allowed to say at work?
| 9HZZRfNlpR wrote:
| It just filled the gap of religion disappearing, people
| want to belong in groups. Maybe broad categorization but
| this religious activism seems to be more of an American
| thing, Europe is definetly more diverse when it comes to
| different issues.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| > religious activism seems to be more of an American
| thing
|
| I would argue it's a Reformed Protestant thing. Reformed
| Protestantism is the religious scaffolding of American
| culture.
| C1sc0cat wrote:
| Politics by definition is activism.
| spollo wrote:
| I'm curious, in the various responses to this comment
| people are really getting into this interesting concept of
| certain political ideologies replacing the church, and
| resembling a religious fanaticism in their application of
| these ideologies.
|
| My understanding is that we have had secular societies
| before, eg. the Soviet Union, China, which explicitly try
| to reduce practicing religion. Did this same kind of "new
| semi-religion appears to fill the void" event occur in
| those societies? Is it the particular "holy sacrements"
| that the west has adopted that is unique? Or are we unique
| in even having something arise the "fills the religious
| void"?
| Aunche wrote:
| It's easiest just to go along with the popular opinion so you
| don't stick out. Given that all the most valuable companies
| are taking stances about social issues, I'd wager that it's
| profitable to do so. I think it's admirable for being honest
| with his apolitical stance as opposed to just going along
| with the flow.
| neilv wrote:
| The article mentions Coinbase and Amazon, and we've also seen
| possibly related HR concerns from Google, Facebook, and others.
| Is this going to become a thing for many companies?
|
| My current presence on a career site mentions my long-time
| involvement in societal implications of technology. In my case,
| the relevance to work is that I'm drawn to some companies and
| roles, knowingly avoid some others, and some of my technical and
| product work is informed by, say, some understanding of
| security&privacy -- but it's _not_ that one day I 'll
| spontaneously become woke on some issue, and organize a march of
| employees to a media event where we denounce our employer and
| burn the founders in effigy.
|
| Given some news incidents in the last couple years, I'm wondering
| whether a job candidate looking like possibly an "activist" is
| going to become a standard factor for hair-trigger filtering by
| HR.
|
| Will there be new hiring rituals in which the people who read the
| interview prep books know the right shibboleth to convey that
| they're "totally non-political"?
| skybrian wrote:
| I think the path Coinbase is taking will only be possible for
| organizations that _have_ a clear mission, not the tech giants
| that do lots of things.
| mesozoic wrote:
| I love that I wish my company and more companies would be totally
| apolitical and now I'm very interested in working for Coinbase so
| kudos.
| tlogan wrote:
| We live in a different world now. Today, apolitical pretty much
| means "I'm white. And probably male. But definitely white."
| mardifoufs wrote:
| That's completely detached from reality and pretty much signals
| that you probably don't interact with minorities much.
|
| As a non white immigrant, I can tell you that in my experience
| _most_ PoC are apolitical. Much more so than white males as you
| say. And that 's not only true for first generation immigrants,
| but also for most of their children.
|
| Afro-americans are the only minority group I can think of that
| are actually pretty politically involved. So unless "white"
| only means "non black" for you, I really think you need to talk
| and get to know more "non whites".
| tlogan wrote:
| I guess I hang out with 'wrong' minorities. My group are
| parents with kids in sf unified (I would say 80% non white).
| I probably live in my own bubble.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| I think SF in general is a bubble, which is not necessarily
| a bad thing. It also depends also on the the economic class
| you belong to. In SF, and in tech especially, I'd say
| people are much more financially comfortable than the
| average. That means less urgent things to worry about, less
| work and more time for activism and that's regardless of
| race. There's a reason why historically the petit bourgeois
| were the vectors of revolution, radicalism, etc. Remember,
| first generation immigrants have chosen and often sacrified
| so much to be able to get here, of course they don't have
| as much things that they dislike than white people who have
| almost no other experience to compare things with. That
| inherent satisfaction directly means less interest in
| politics.
|
| So upper class second or third gen immigrants are much more
| into politics because... they are upper class. Not really
| because they aren't white. Because even then, I would still
| bet upper class white people are more politicized than PoC
| of the same economic class. Also, since I'd guess you are
| into politics, you are more likely to meet and bond with
| people who are into them too.
|
| If anything most of what I'm seeing these days is white
| people ,with huge white savior complexes & using minorities
| to score points, calling out other white people for not
| doing the same. Imo, I'd much, much rather be around an
| apolitical white friend who is just chill all around rather
| than be around someone who constantly thinks of me, my
| person & my identity as being political things because he's
| "on my side". I'm not saying that what you are doint at
| all, what I'm saying is that politics can dehumanize even
| people you think you are on the side of. ;)
| disposekinetics wrote:
| When someone uses the word apolitical I know they're usually
| another conservative trying to avoid the witch hunters.
| umeshunni wrote:
| As a non-white immigrant, I think it's mostly the other way.
| Most of us don't care as much for the US-style identity
| politics, but somehow it's all the white liberal upper middle
| class types who are always political and woke.
| devteambravo wrote:
| In theory, I would agree with the sentiment of not bringing
| politics to work, but this is 2020. We have Nazis marching in the
| streets. We have algorithms that don't "work" on brown people
| because they were built by and for white people. In practice,
| I've found that "no politics" at work means "let us be racist in
| peace".
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| Coinbase, and Armstrong, have been a blight on the BItcoin
| community since about late 2013, one only comparable to MTGOX in
| overall severity. They really showed that they had their origins
| in Goldman Sachs from that point onward and that their cronyist
| playbook would predictably be used as they did in the Legacy fiat
| system to their advantage.
|
| Their 'social activism' as its presented in that post includes
| trying to conflate BCash with Bitcoin to noobs who were unaware
| of the fork in order to bolster the price of a alt coin with no
| value or usecase just as mainstream attention (read: non-
| technical users) was being gained, and by extension they promoted
| Ver/Jihan/Bitmain's agenda and failed coup. If that dishonest
| behavior of their user's wasn't enough they would later report
| its users to the IRS and then, as released earlier this year [0]
| they are DIRECTLY offering Blockchain analytics to the IRS and
| DEA. And then ban Wikileaks account from their platform.
|
| I regret to say that as a Community we never learned our lesson
| in the MANY pitfalls of allowing the growth of a cancerous
| central point of failure after Mt Gox, and that the path of
| 'least resistance' to on-board people into this tech had many
| (predictable) dire consequences. I've used centralized exchanges
| before, but it didn't feel as a enthralling as when I went to a
| meetup, spoke to like minded people in the Community and bought
| some in a p2p manner--its really a night and day experience
| contrast. Or simply got tipped by total strangers online for a
| project or an idea I wanted to explore as I had in the early
| days.
|
| What were supposed to be training wheels to gradually create an
| ecosystem primarily driven to be a p2p currency, as was intended,
| became a crutch that atrophied and poisoned the general curiosity
| which denied it's users the rewards that often followed which
| made this really remarkable.
|
| This neglect has allowed Coinbase as a single entity to now hold
| a large percentage of the total Bitcoin in existence, not
| including the large amounts that they hold custody of its user's
| who simply do not take possession of their funds.
|
| To say Bitcoin can be a-political is grounded in the very
| ignorance that created the aforementioned consequences; it is by
| default the reaction to the perpetual failures of the
| politicizing of State-based currencies and the corruption of
| Central Banks. It's very Genesis Block states why it was created:
| as an alternative to the bailouts of 2008.
|
| I honestly don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that Coinbase
| represents the very worse, and the toxic nature of what YC can
| bring into existence. That sounds entirely scathing, and perhaps
| unwarranted to those unaware of the dire nature, but this is
| really no different than enabling how FAANG has created a
| business model that has pretty much them an extension of many
| countries Intelligence Agencies who directly sell their user's
| data/information to the highest bidder. The difference being that
| this Trojan horse was only possible because YC funded them in the
| early stages.
|
| Who's to say they won't, or haven't already, created another?
|
| 0: https://decrypt.co/31485/coinbase-license-analytics-irs-dea
| newobj wrote:
| I'd love to check in a year from now to see what de facto
| ideology their intended void of ideology has created. I wonder
| what it will be.
| telaelit wrote:
| Being "apolitical" is of itself a political decision to uphold
| the status quo, which is a problem considering how racist,
| sexist, and classist the status quo is. I would 100% take the
| exit package, I wouldn't want to work for a company that's okay
| with the status quo. I got into tech to make people's lives
| better, not to help oppressors oppress their victims more
| efficiently. But that's just my opinion.
| pornel wrote:
| This is going to work great for Coinbase. It's very helpful for
| employers to select for conformists who can be told to shut up,
| and not stand up for what they believe (unless they believe in
| the status quo and the company, which is called non-political).
|
| Selecting for groupthink^W mission is pretty important in the
| business of cryptocurrencies. Reduces chances of anyone having a
| different moral stance that would push them to become a
| whistleblower. It might even be a way to prevent employees
| unionizing. Any disagreement about policies is political, free
| speech is political, so this is perfect to pre-emptively censor
| every criticism.
| norswap wrote:
| Maybe. Or maybe they just want energy dissipating in political
| activism at work, it's fairly fashionable these days. The
| future will tell.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Is being apolitical really being a conformist? 20 years ago
| yes, but in the age of social media where every brand from
| banks to ice cream posted their stance on the BLM protests it
| would appear being political in the workplace is conformity.
|
| If what Brian Armstrong is saying here was considered the norm,
| this article wouldn't even be on the front page.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| I think the parent comment is just quite typical of modern
| political extremism. Where every actor must take a position
| on every issue, where failure to take the correct position is
| heresy, and where failure to take any position amounts to
| taking a position against the one of the extremist who is
| demanding that you take one (and is therefor also heresy).
|
| The role of an employee is to deliver value to the employer
| during their working hours. The role of the employer is to
| provide an income to the employee. It's insane to think that
| the role of the employer should be to further the political
| objectives of the employees. By that rationale, having any
| interaction with any party who's politics are different from
| yours in any way is conformism.
| disposekinetics wrote:
| This all makes Coinbase more attractive to me. I probably won't
| be deplatformed no matter my ideology which is a desireable
| trait.
| albedoa wrote:
| If Coinbase are more attractive to people who are worried
| about being "deplatformed" for their ideology, then they are
| _selecting_ for that group. You write "no matter my
| ideology" when you mean "despite my ideology".
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| Since non-progressive liberals are also being punished for
| being insufficiently woke, that's not the negative that you
| seem to think it is.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| Personally I find it attractive to get away from the
| ridiculous bullys who attack other people in the name of pc
| .. I'm not debating those issues .. especially not with
| hothead radicals who bully those with nuanced perspectives
| with personal attacks
| disposekinetics wrote:
| As a supporter of radically free speech, I'm selecting for
| the widest possible grouping. That's tolerance.
| ascorbic wrote:
| A supporter of radically free speech is attracted to a
| company because it bans political speech.
| disposekinetics wrote:
| Companies that have embraced politics have time and time
| again come down on the side of censorship, so it is the
| lesser of evils.
| artursapek wrote:
| On the contrary, the conformists are the ones he's trying to
| oust.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| a conformist is someone who conforms to a norm, there is no
| such thing as a conformist minority by definition. Are you
| thinking half of the employees are activists and he wants to
| kick them all out?
| artursapek wrote:
| The majority of people in Silicon Valley are liberals. The
| loud, troublesome activist liberals are who he is ousting.
| Just look at Google.
| paxys wrote:
| You probably haven't spent much time in Silicon Valley if
| you think that.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| crypto attracts a lot of misfits, so yes it seems it will be
| good for them. I doubt they are conformists though, i mean,
| being a conformist to a very minority opinion (anarcho-
| capitalism) is not really possible, is it?
| dannyr wrote:
| So Coinbase would not have open discussion of ideas, employees
| would hesitate to question managerial decisions. It would be
| amazing for a company to succeed with that culture.
| mattlutze wrote:
| We're all faced with a difficult challenge in how to balance
| personal expression and professional conduct. It's especially
| difficult as shelter-at-home mandates push our work lives into
| our private spaces.
|
| It's a good thing to try to be so generous with supporting an
| exit over values alignment. It's unfortunate, though not
| surprising, for Armstrong to want Coinbase to be like other for-
| profit financial firms -- quietly amassing wealth and influence
| vs. noisily in the spotlight.
| dang wrote:
| The thread on the original blog post is here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24610267
|
| It got relatively little discussion because it set off the
| flamewar detector (http://hnrankings.info/24610267/). Normally
| we'd turn that off in such a case, but we missed that one.
|
| Also: don't miss that there are multiple pages of comments in
| this thread. That's what the More link at the bottom points to.
| Or click:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24636899&p=2
| sbmthakur wrote:
| For true positives, do you down-weight them?
| quotemstr wrote:
| > Also: don't miss that there are multiple pages of comments in
| this thread.
|
| Is comment pagination still necessary?
| saagarjha wrote:
| I believe there is an explicit goal to remove pagination once
| the site can handle it. There was a couple days earlier this
| year where pagination was turned off.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| The pagination also breaks comment deep links that aren't on
| the first page - ie deep links to a comment after a 'more'
| johnyzee wrote:
| Sorry for the meta hijacking, but now that we're here, HN
| developers: Please penalize comments that jump the queue by
| responding to the top comment. There are frequently topics
| with hundreds of comments, where almost all are replies to
| the first comment, or the first comment of that comment, ad
| inifinitum.
|
| Reddit does it right by auto-folding comment trees once
| they reach a certain depth vs. upvotes.
| myroon5 wrote:
| the flamewar detector seems interesting:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23280488
|
| how often does it get triggered?
| Nacdor wrote:
| > how often does it get triggered?
|
| That's my least favorite part of HN: There's zero
| transparency in the moderation and a lot of it is extremely
| subjective.
| rcfox wrote:
| Here's how it works:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22159031
|
| You can disagree with how it's implemented, but it's not
| subjective.
|
| dang does a way better job of addressing moderation issues
| as they're happening than anything you'll see on Reddit
| (besides perhaps tiny, niche subreddits.) And at least he's
| not surreptitiously changing people's comments.
| (https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-
| stev...)
| saagarjha wrote:
| Not surreptitiously (at least to my knowledge, but of
| course that would be an oxymoron anyways), but the
| moderators do have the ability to edit comments and do so
| on occasion.
| nwsm wrote:
| > dang does a way better job than Reddit
|
| How is that a relevant comparison? Reddit is orders of
| magnitude larger (looks to be around 100 times more
| active users) and allows users to create public and
| private subreddits that can easily become echo chambers.
|
| HN moderation is not even in the same ballpark as what
| Reddit deals with.
|
| To be clear I'm not defending Reddit or even saying they
| do a good job; I'm just saying the comparison is not fair
| or useful.
| [deleted]
| Nacdor wrote:
| I'm not just talking about the "flame-war detection",
| although that system alone is extremely crude an
| ineffective (in my opinion).
|
| There are lots of other moderation features -- e.g.
| shadow bans and automatic vote penalties -- that are
| completely opaque but turn HN into a strong echo chamber.
|
| I also disagree with your point about Reddit. At least on
| Reddit you can easily track what was removed (there are
| entire subreddits dedicated to tracking what's been
| removed by moderators) and many subreddits provide
| explanations of why content was removed.
| floren wrote:
| > There are lots of other moderation features -- e.g.
| shadow bans and automatic vote penalties -- that are
| completely opaque but turn HN into a strong echo chamber.
|
| Every time I click "vouch" I wonder if a counter is being
| incremented on my account, or if a record of things I've
| vouched is being kept for moderator perusal. A chilling
| effect which certainly exists outside of HN, of course.
| krapp wrote:
| >Every time I click "vouch" I wonder if a counter is
| being incremented on my account, or if a record of things
| I've vouched is being kept for moderator perusal.
|
| There is. I've lost vouching privileges after the mods
| disagreed with my decisions. They don't tell you, either,
| you'll just notice one day that it no longer seems to
| work.
| dang wrote:
| A few times a day. We get notified each time, but we're not
| always online.
| shoulderfake wrote:
| I love what this CEO has done. Basically said fuck off with your
| political signalling, we wont be part of it, if you dont like it
| leave and heres some money
| [deleted]
| aazaa wrote:
| Awful article. It never even explains what "the mission is."
| Doesn't even link to the original Coinbase blog post.
| howlgarnish wrote:
| As a non-American, I find it truly bizarre (and sad) that's it's
| now controversial to publicly state that you're not taking sides.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| It's only controversial among the people who think that not
| wanting to fight whatever particular battle is in question that
| minute is an endorsement of the status quo.
| x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
| That's because it's now a religious fervor rather than
| politics.
| danielheath wrote:
| I'm unaware of any point in history where 'not taking sides' in
| a war was viewed favorably by either side.
|
| I'm fairly confident that there will be a civil war shortly
| after the election.
| doublesCs wrote:
| I'll bet you $100 there won't.
| adamisom wrote:
| Heck I'll raise that, and offer 20:1 odds to danielheath, I
| pay $400 if there's a civil war, he pays $20 if there's
| not.
| iso1631 wrote:
| How did the value of US dollar compared to other
| currencies change during the US civil war?
| adamisom wrote:
| Fair question. I guess I was thinking that a civil war
| would be heralded (e.g. by all major news outlets) before
| long-term effects started happening (like currency
| changes), but who knows.
| ryanobjc wrote:
| You gotta realize that millions, tens of millions, of Americans
| are white supremicists, look at black people getting shot by
| the police and think "they must be criminals they got what they
| deserved."
|
| We are having an (ongoing) argument in America as to who
| deserves what kinds of civil rights. Rights like marriage
| (which confers extensive legal rights), protection from being
| fired, fair treatment by the cops and legal system, and much
| more.
| anticristi wrote:
| I think it's worse. If you don't spray every single corner with
| an anti-racist message, you are automatically a racist:
| https://kubernetes.io/
| krapp wrote:
| It isn't possible to not take sides. It's only possible to
| support the status quo, either explicitly or implicitly, or
| else oppose it.
| [deleted]
| username90 wrote:
| Supporting the status quo would mean that you actively oppose
| those who try to change it. Being neutral means that you help
| neither those who try to change it nor those who try to keep
| it the same as before. They are not the same.
|
| Example: A person is being murdered near you. You flee. Did
| you support the persons murder by not engaging, and therefore
| letting it play out? No, you did not.
| eulenteufel wrote:
| I think inconvenience of activism plays a role here. I
| don't have to endanger my life by stopping a murderer. I
| should however at least call an ambulance if I see somebody
| bleeding to death on the street.
|
| Of course I didn't support the bleeding by not taking
| action to stop it, but I did have a responsibility to act.
| I think this responsibility to act is the issue here. If I
| was supporting anything or staying neutral are semantics
| that I don't see central to this issue.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| I don't understand this "us against them" mentality because
| it leaves no room for nuance.
|
| I strongly believe in PG's top of mind theory [1], and I
| don't see how you can achieve anything if you're constantly
| fighting for or against the status quo.
|
| Don't you believe it's possible to agree with certain
| viewpoints but not act on them?
|
| You also don't have to parade around your support during
| every waking moment, which is basically what Brian asked his
| employees not to do.
|
| [1] http://paulgraham.com/top.html
| darkwater wrote:
| > Don't you believe it's possible to agree with certain
| viewpoints but not act on them?
|
| Obviously you can choose to agree on something is not good
| and at the same time to not collaborate in changing it. But
| then you should acknowledge that you are helping the status
| quo with your attitude, and helping the status quo is also
| a political action (like most human actions, since we are a
| society).
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| In what way does inaction support the status quo? Someone
| living in their parents basement is not really affecting
| things either way, for example.
|
| This seems to basically be this meme:
|
| "We should improve society somewhat"
|
| "Yet you participate in society"
|
| https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/
| krapp wrote:
| > In what way does inaction support the status quo?
| Someone living in their parents basement is not really
| affecting things either way, for example.
|
| Yes, if you want to be pedantic, there exist possible
| states of being in which a person may have little to no
| effect on their environment by virtue of being physically
| isolated from it. Someone stranded on a desert island, or
| someone in a coma. A literal brain in a jar screaming
| into the void.
|
| But that's not what this discussion is about. "Inaction"
| in the context of this discussion refers to expressing a
| stance of political neutrality, not to literal physical
| inaction. The (apparently controversial) question is
| whether political neutrality is truly neutral.
| unishark wrote:
| Neutral is still neutral by the definition of the word.
| Your logical conflict comes from your metaphorical misuse
| of the word "support", which literally means to apply
| force to hold something in place. There an important
| distinction between someone applying such force and
| someone not doing so, just as between that person and
| someone applying force to topple the status quo. A person
| refusing to take sides is not applying force either way.
| I'm not "supporting" a scaffold if I don't help you cut
| it down. The fight remains only between you and the
| ropes.
| krapp wrote:
| > I'm not "supporting" a scaffold if I don't help you cut
| it down.
|
| Except that, in the case of society and politics, you and
| I are both the worker and the scaffold. You support my
| cutting down the scaffold by choosing to fall with it.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| It's just the trolley problem. Inaction often carries
| consequence. You're not supporting the scaffold but you
| are not concerned about the consequences of it remaining
| in place. And if we're talking about systems the
| difference between supporting the system and ignoring the
| consequences of the system are so small as to not be
| apparent.
| unishark wrote:
| You are free to criticize a neutral person for their
| inaction. That doesn't make it right to twist meanings
| and try to hurt them over it with a worse charge they are
| not guilty of.
|
| As for your last sentence, maybe those opposing "the
| system" were about to win, and by intervening against
| them I would prevent that. Now neutrality is apparently
| the same as supporting the opposition. Or we can just be
| accurate from the start and call me neutral.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| I don't think meanings are really being twisted it's just
| colloquial discourse with a smidge of rhetoric. If
| inaction leads to 'the opposition' gaining an advantage
| it's easy to see why people might see that as defacto
| support and describe it as such even if that support is
| quite passive. I can also appreciate you don't enjoy
| being characterised this way and can definitely see
| causing that discomfort as being part of the point.
| humanrebar wrote:
| I can think the status quo sucks and that proposed
| attitudes and alternatives suck too.
|
| Seeing a lack of acceptable options doesn't mean I am
| supporting any of them. That is a false choice.
|
| And, besides, maybe I am addressing the same problems in
| another way, it's just not apparent given the false
| choice framing. For instance, maybe I think fighting
| racism through political confrontation and segregation is
| a dead end, so I am fighting racism on a local or
| personal level. And maybe it's none of your business how
| that's going so far.
| krapp wrote:
| > For instance, maybe I think fighting racism through
| political confrontation and segregation is a dead end, so
| I am fighting racism on a local or personal level.
|
| ... that would mean you found an acceptable option.
|
| Whereas if you were against racism, but never bothered to
| do anything about it, then you would be implicitly
| supporting the status quo.
|
| Support goes beyond simple ideology. It includes social
| pressure, enforcing or reinforcing cultural norms and
| systems of privilege, even where and how you spend your
| money.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| I agree ... but the problem is that this discourse isn't
| operating in the context of a common meta-ethical
| framework. It isn't just that we just disagree about the
| empirical evidence of a few (important) policies or
| disagree about about a few key moral values (or tradeoffs
| between values) it is that we are no working from the
| same moral frameworks. We are finally seeing the legacy
| of postmodernism becoming mainstream and it doesn't
| operate from the same assumptions that were crafted in
| the enlightenment. Luckily enlightenment values still
| dominate background presumptions for meta-ethical
| discussions, but this is why you see references to
| religion in this thread, the aesthetics of the discourse
| have many similarities.
| samastur wrote:
| No, what he said is that no issue is big enough to distract
| him and Coinbase from making as much money as possible
| (setting aside how truthful he was).
|
| It's also not a question of us against them. What we decide
| to do or not do all has a meaning, even just standing on
| the side. It is certainly possible to agree with viewpoints
| without acting on them, but it's not possible to support
| them.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| > No, what he said is that no issue is big enough to
| distract him and Coinbase from making as much money as
| possible (setting aside how truthful he was)
|
| Even if we take his words cynically, is this the wrong
| thing to do if that is the path he's chosen?
|
| Context switching is very hard for an individual let
| alone an organization, and no one will ever agree what
| the most important issue(s) is/are (Racism, poverty,
| climate change, etc).
|
| The way I see it is that it's about picking your battles.
| It's impossible to support and act on every good cause
| out there. I don't understand what you expect people to
| do.
| samastur wrote:
| I think it is the wrong thing to choose, but he is
| obviously free to take it as we all are. I don't expect
| him to do anything though and I don't think my take was
| cynical either. If problems we are facing in 2020 are not
| big enough to distract him from his focus, then it is
| difficult to imagine what would.
|
| I agree that you can't support every good cause you agree
| with, but choices we make do say something about our
| priorities. What none of us has a right to is that others
| will not judge us for them.
| anwalters wrote:
| I agree with the basic premise: productive people do not
| have time to engage in petty fights.
|
| On the other hand, there are many situations where there is
| a silent majority of productive people who would literally
| need to speak up only _once_ to topple an unfair system.
|
| The unfair system can be an open source project that has
| been hijacked by a small group of ideologists, it can be
| bad working conditions in ware houses.
|
| Certainly in the case of the open source project it would
| require just on mail per silent majority member to express
| dissent and shut down the bureaucrats.
|
| Yet, even in the simplest case it does not happen. So there
| seem to be more powerful forces at play than just lack of
| time: Lethargy, craving irrational authority, prisoner's
| dilemma (who speaks up first).
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| I have a theory that for worse or for better, the silent
| majority of productive people are more inclined to work
| with what they've got than attempt to change the system
| because attempting to change the system is generally
| unproductive.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| Some are also wary of unintended consequences .. complex
| systems almost never respond to changes as you imagine
| they would.
| vendiddy wrote:
| I feel this way. I would like to change the system, but
| if I get pulled into every cause I'll never get anything
| done.
|
| It doesn't mean I won't speak up about anything, but I am
| picking my battles.
| zajio1am wrote:
| > I don't understand this "us against them" mentality
| because it leaves no room for nuance.
|
| IMO it is just a rhetorical trick / social manipulation
| tool. On a landscape of political positions, there is a
| status quo area X. Who is against status quo is in non-X
| (complement to X). There is a side who wants to change
| status quo to position Y, which is a small and specific
| subset of non-X (which is necessary, because 'away from X'
| is not consistent position / direction).
|
| The fair approach would be to negotiate with other members
| of non-X (and perhaps some border members of X) for
| political support and get some compromise position with
| majority support.
|
| The "us against them" is just a way to manipulate (by guilt
| trip or other ways) members of non-X to support position Y,
| without giving any consessions for them and their
| positions. It may help for that goal if position Y is not
| explicitly stated, and the side is just marked / marketed
| as non-X.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Even if you're right, it's the "I'm remaining
| apolitical/status quo" types who are at least permitting you
| to hold opposing viewpoints even if they personally disagree.
| It's the activists who are trying to remove all dissent.
| krapp wrote:
| >it's the "I'm remaining apolitical/status quo" types who
| are at least permitting you to hold opposing viewpoints
| even if they personally disagree. It's the activists who
| are trying to remove all dissent.
|
| No, that's just partisan hyperbole. No one is "permitting"
| me to hold an opposing viewpoint, nor is anyone trying to
| "remove all dissent."
| doitLP wrote:
| So do many Americans. It is a vocal and proselytizing minority
| getting outsized coverage that makes it seem like "everyone
| feels this way".
| sneak wrote:
| Does the country in which you live have a status quo of the
| regular imprisonment, enslavement, and public executions of a
| specific race of people?
|
| That's the issue in the USA, and "not taking sides" on that
| matter is, well, an issue, because it means you don't care
| about human rights.
| username90 wrote:
| Police biggest issue isn't racism. If it is then Mississippi
| has the least racist police and therefore the best police.
| Should all other police departments work to be more like
| Mississippi? I don't think so, their police kills a lot of
| people, just that they kill proportionally as many whites as
| they kill blacks. I think the New York police is doing an a
| lot better job even though they proportionally kill many
| times more blacks than whites.
|
| The problem is that the American police kills a lot of
| people, not that it kills a lot of blacks. It kills a lot of
| whites as well compared to European police.
|
| https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/states
| zo1 wrote:
| That is not an issue in America. Can you point us to some
| proof/evidence? It might be an issue in some Middle-eastern
| and African countries, though.
| tnolet wrote:
| This is kinda equivalent to Bush's "if you're not with us,
| you're with the terrorists".
| howlgarnish wrote:
| If you're trying to demonstrate just how ridiculous political
| polarization in the US has become, you're doing a pretty
| great job.
| sneak wrote:
| Human rights aren't a partisan issue.
| [deleted]
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >Human rights aren't a partisan issue.
|
| Guns and fetuses beg to differ.
|
| (Though at least in US politics both issues seem to be
| trending slowly toward majority agreement and becoming
| non-partisan issues.)
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Very few people are against "human rights".
|
| There is, however, very real controversy about whether
| and the extent to which various rights are included in
| the bundle of human rights; and some of those divide
| along US partisan lines.
| jimbobimbo wrote:
| It's not the amount of rights that's the issue, it's what
| is the source of rights.
|
| Conservatives (and US declaration of independence) posit
| that rights are from God (i.e. preexist government, if
| you don't want to bring God into discussion), while
| democrats view government as the source of the same.
|
| Depending which side you are on, your view on the role of
| government is very different (protect the rights vs.
| create the rights).
|
| I think this perspective explains why e.g. Supreme Court
| Justice position is so highly contested. If your position
| is that government's role is to protect rights, then
| judge is just a person who reads the law or the case and
| tells you if it's aligned with the Constitution or not.
| If you're on the opposite side, judicial system is just
| another vehicle to create new rights and laws, bypassing
| less predictable (due to its representation model)
| Congress.
| ericmay wrote:
| If you're talking about the US here, can you expand on your
| comments? I'm very confused about what you're trying to get
| across here.
| paul_f wrote:
| LOL. Thank you for filling out the form. HR will be in
| contact shortly.
| michaelt wrote:
| I have a theory this is a consequence of tech companies wanting
| to move things online and become 'platform owners', leasing and
| ad-supporting everything rather than selling it.
|
| After all, nobody would complain if the KKK had brought
| Microsoft Office licenses, any more than they'd complain if the
| KKK had brought food at wal-mart.
|
| But many tech companies have realised how profitable it is to
| be Facebook or Github. They own the domain, their name's in the
| banner at the top of the page and the name of the native app,
| they pay all the hosting costs and make all the ad money, and
| they've put themselves in the situation where they _can_ censor
| users.
|
| When we in tech moved away from "we just sell the stuff, none
| of our business what you do with it" and made "what you do with
| it" the core of our businesses, we were walking into the realm
| of politics whether we realised it at the time or not.
| eyeball wrote:
| > After all, nobody would complain if the KKK had brought
| Microsoft Office licenses, any more than they'd complain if
| the KKK had brought food at wal-mart.
|
| Oh yes they would. Selling to the KKK would make Microsoft
| and Walmart KKK supporters.
| michaelt wrote:
| Wal-mart doesn't know if that shopper is on their way to
| the KKK cook-out. If you've heard someone proposing wal-
| mart should start IDing shoppers to check them against a
| blacklist of undesirables, they were trolling you.
| eyeball wrote:
| By not verifying that every customer is in lock step with
| the party line, Walmart is actively supporting racism.
| iso8859-1 wrote:
| How can it be "active" if they are doing less work?
| shemnon42 wrote:
| This is a good example of "Poe's Law"
|
| > without a clear indicator of the author's intent, it is
| impossible to create a parody of extreme views so
| obviously exaggerated that it cannot be mistaken by some
| readers for a sincere expression of the views being
| parodied.
| mdifrgechd wrote:
| Something I've found about recent "activism" (not sure if
| that's the best word) is that the supporters act like it's not
| enough to acknowledge and agree with the activists aims, but
| that these aims must in fact be the most important issue the
| world faces, and if you're not 100% committed you are against
| them.
|
| I think this 'My cause is "the" cause' has arisen as an
| escalation in the fight for attention. And I think it's a big
| element in peoples view that not taking sides is controversial
| - "if you're not choosing to focus all your attention on my pet
| cause, you don't care about X"
| vowelless wrote:
| It's a very evangelical phenomenon. These "activists" are no
| different than religious proselytizers. Maybe this is a very
| American thing due to the strong historical presence of the
| evangelical church.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| Religious groups did this forever, it's thinkable other
| serious people watched the resulting loyalty and borrowed
| the tools. Peer pressure is literally how indoctrination
| worked since prehistoric time, it's simply generalized to
| any idea now.
| specialp wrote:
| Or also you can be for the cause, but if you are not for
| every single thing done in the name of that cause, you are
| against them. Or worse, with "the other side" (as if all
| issues only have a binary choice)
|
| It really does remind me of the "family values" religious
| conservatives of the past. Proving how pure and wholesome
| they are and competing on it by doing more and more things
| that aren't just living a good honest life, but are trying to
| infringe on the lives of others. All to show your circle of
| other supposedly pure friends how godly you are. So it takes
| a noble cause which is to live an honest and good life and
| perverts it into a strange contest of virtue.
| rattray wrote:
| Thanks - this explanation ("the attention economy causes
| aggressive activism") resonates and somehow makes me feel
| better about the situation.
|
| It can be disheartening to see friends and movements I agree
| with turn to aggressive rhetoric and evangelism. But the fact
| that it's yet another symptom of a broken (social) media
| environment is a nice reminder that it's not their fault so
| much as it is an expected result of a bad system.
|
| Of course, it's equally sad/disheartening that our modes of
| societal discourse and decision-making have gotten this bad,
| but it's a theoretically solvable problem (eg; legislation
| and a good facebook competitor) and it doesn't involve me
| feeling bad about people I like.
| goldwind wrote:
| Switzerland was neutral during WWII but still sold stuff to
| Deutschland.
|
| Just weigh it up like that. I might have to delete the app
| jiofih wrote:
| This must feel harsh for those on the receiving end, but is the
| right thing to do. It is not effective to try and turn every
| company into a rights activism group just because it is a group
| of people.
|
| This may be a sign that it's become increasingly hard to organize
| or take part in such activism outside of work. What happened?
| paulgb wrote:
| > What happened?
|
| I'm partial to Aaron Levie's take on this[1]:
|
| > An alternative take on the importance of companies taking a
| stand on critical social issues that impact our employees and
| communities: when there's a vacuum of leadership from the
| government in dealing with these topics, businesses often need
| to lead more than ever.
|
| When we have had presidents who were willing to condemn white
| supremacy, we tended not to call on CEOs to.
|
| 1. https://mobile.twitter.com/levie/status/1311007294033854464
| cwkoss wrote:
| Makes me think of "Fascism should more properly be called
| corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate
| power"
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Note that "corporate power" here actually refers to
| primarily to _labor unions which operated in coordination
| with capital_ of the Catholic corporatist social doctrine,
| which was a major ideology of the late 19th and early-to-
| mid-20th century, competing against both capitalist
| opposition to labor organization and socialist approaches
| to labor organization.
| tossAfterUsing wrote:
| > When we have had presidents who were willing to condemn
| white supremacy, we tended not to call on CEOs to.
|
| https://twitter.com/robsmithonline/status/131113297546835968.
| ..
| paulgb wrote:
| Last night he was given the chance to unequivocally condemn
| the Proud Boys and instead told them to "stand back and
| stand by", which the group themselves has taken as a rally
| cry. Just like how after Charlottesville, white
| supremacists took his ambiguous response as a sign of
| approval.
|
| He doesn't condemn, he validates with just enough
| deniability that people can make lists like the one you
| posted, while everyone who is following along sees exactly
| what is happening.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Last night he was given the chance to unequivocally
| condemn the Proud Boys and instead told them to "stand
| back and stand by_
|
| Let's be honest here: if Trump had "unequivocally" said
| "I condemn White Supremacy", what would have happened,
| practically? Do you think for a second that the media
| would have suddenly "let him off the hook"? Problem
| solved? No more white supremacy talk?
|
| There is footage of him disavowing the KKK, and David
| Duke, going back 20 years, believe it or not. Has it made
| a difference?
|
| The fact that question was even asked demonstrates just
| how far the US political system has fallen. Kind of
| embarrassing. The fact that Trump doesn't simply repeat
| the condemnation -- for whatever that's worth -- is sad
| and polarizing. But let's not pretend it changes anyone's
| opinion on anything.
|
| > _He doesn 't condemn, he validates with just enough
| deniability_
|
| Much like many Democrats did with regards to the looting
| and burning of cities.
| SamReidHughes wrote:
| More like, he unambiguously condemned Neo nazis and white
| nationalists right after Charlottesville, so don't repeat
| that lie. We have the freaking video. https://www.twitter
| .com/BarrettWilson6/status/13111436668917...
|
| And the Proud Boys' leader looks pretty black for a white
| supremacist.
| jiofih wrote:
| This is what I hear: he says white supremacists should be
| "totally condemned" which is as harsh as an indictment
| from a 6 year old. And then proceeds to say that the
| media treated them unfairly, and the "other side" was
| worse because they dressed in black and used riot gear.
|
| If you say a group should be condemned but then proceed
| to justify their actions it's barely a slap on the wrist,
| and coming from the president the lack of a strong
| response is actually a form of encouragement.
| Izkata wrote:
| > If you say a group should be condemned but then proceed
| to justify their actions
|
| Uh no, he's saying "white supremacists" and "proud boys"
| are two different groups.
| skinkestek wrote:
| Did you follow that debate closely? Because it seems like
| a lot more nuanced than the media put it.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Yes, I watched it and his "stand back and stand by"
| direction to the Proud Boys wasn't nuanced at all.
|
| In fact, the media tends not to report on the added
| emphasis on the "stand by", which served to minimize the
| "stand back".
| Can_Not wrote:
| "stand back" was barely a good thing to say, but adding
| "stand by" is means "and get ready to attack later".
| chillwaves wrote:
| Trump speaks in code, so it's hard to take any of his
| words at face value. This could be interpreted as
| "nuance" or, in context with a pattern of behavior, it
| can be seen as an sly sort of encouragement -- which is
| how the Proud Boys are taking his comment.
|
| If the way the comment was received is incorrect, then it
| is up to Trump to correct it. Obviously, he will not be
| doing so.
|
| You can draw your own conclusions.
| paulgb wrote:
| I did, unfortunately. I haven't really followed the
| media's portrayal of it, but I do know that the Proud
| Boys' website now says "stand back and stand by"
| prominently on their home page above a call for recruits.
| skinkestek wrote:
| English is not my first language but I think it was the
| host who introduced that term?
|
| Also he was pushed really hard and seemed willing to
| denounce violent far right, not just in sweeping terms.
|
| Also: Contrast this to Biden (who could easily be my
| favorite except for his candidate for vice president) who
| AFAIK refuse to denounce ANTIFA _at all_.
|
| I dislike Trump and I am scared by how many seems to be
| close to worshipping him as a family values guy despite
| his two broken marriages and other problems.
|
| That said, I think he will easily win again this year.
| Why?
|
| - underdog sympathy: media tackles him harder and it
| seems easy to see as an unbiased observer (Again: not a
| native speaker, but at least I don't want either of them,
| although in Bidens case that is more because of his
| choice of vice president candidate.)
|
| - BLM is out everyday to remind people to vote for a law-
| and-order president
|
| - the Left still underestimating the discontent in the
| working class
|
| - Trump simultaneously bringing home troops and
| strengthening the armed forces so people won't lose their
| lives or their jobs (for now).
|
| - His support for law enforcement (unlike HN-ers many
| people seems to support the police)
|
| - He is actually wildly successful in certain areas. He
| has actually managed to get more peace in the Middle East
| than a number of other presidents, including Obama who
| got the Nobel peace price.
|
| That said: I don't like him.
|
| I'd rather have any decent engineer or business(wo)man or
| teacher who knows a bit about politics, can keep their
| mouth shut at times etc.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > English is not my first language but I think it was the
| host who introduced that term?
|
| It was not.
|
| Relevant portion of the transcript:
|
| WALLACE: "Are you willing tonight to condemn white
| supremacists and militia groups..."
|
| TRUMP: "Sure..."
|
| WALLACE: "And to say that they need to stand down and not
| add to the violence in a number of these cities as we saw
| in Kenosha, and as we've seen in Portland"
|
| TRUMP: "Sure, I'm prepared to do it, but I would say
| almost everything I see is from the left-wing not from
| the right-wing. I'm willing to do anything, I want to see
| peace..."
|
| WALLACE: "Then do it, sir."
|
| BIDEN: "Do it, say it."
|
| TRUMP: "What do you want to call them? Give me a name."
|
| WALLACE: "White supremacists and right-wing militias"
|
| BIDEN: "Proud Boys"
|
| Trump: "Proud Boys, stand back and stand by. But I'll
| tell you what, somebody's got to do something about
| Antifa and the left."
| brandmeyer wrote:
| Closely related, but in the opposite direction: the Waltons
| (of Wal-Mart), Koch brothers (industrial conglomerate
| including such banal brands as Molex), and Green family (of
| Hobby Lobby) all got involved because they thought that they
| needed to take a critical stand on issues where they thought
| a leadership vacuum existed. They felt that the government
| wasn't doing enough to support their notion of an ideal way
| of life.
|
| The country is tearing itself apart right now because we
| really do have two camps with opposite beliefs that each feel
| they are fighting for the survival of the nation itself. Read
| what the other side says about themselves, and not just what
| your side says about them.
| zo1 wrote:
| Or that it's becoming _easier_ to perform activism within work
| contexts? Especially with left-leaning causes that always sound
| good, justified and fair in principle, so they are easy for
| public /PR-sensitive companies to adopt without rocking the
| boat.
|
| Essentially that means that for the company, it ends up being a
| win-win situation. They satisfy their employees' urges to
| perform activism and they get brownie points from the public
| for promoting a "noble" sounding cause with minimal effort, all
| the while not having to rock the boat by having to defend their
| opinion because it's defacto assumed to be good and justified.
| E.g. have a look at the whole Goya Foods incident to find out
| what happens if a company happens to support a non activist-
| approved point of view.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| Assuming there's enough non-activists in the company to
| actually get some real work done while the primadonnas are
| blowing hot air and ganging up on the the next victim
| humanrebar wrote:
| Workplaces and ZIP codes are more homogeneous than they used to
| be.
| tehjoker wrote:
| If one were to engage with the works of leftist thinkers, one
| would recognize that the workplace is actually the central
| point for activism as it is where one seizes the means of
| production.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| Seizes or sabotages .. it's all a matter of perspective
| meheleventyone wrote:
| It could also be a sign that people feel more empowered to
| express themselves in work and feel that a workplace that
| values their ideals is preferable to one that doesn't.
| Particularly in tech where we're all quite comfortably off we
| can worry about these things higher up the hierarchy of needs.
|
| It will be interesting to see where this takes the culture of
| Coinbase.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| It could also be related to excessive narcissism! A zeitgeist
| of the times ..
| Apocryphon wrote:
| If you're going to talk zeitgeists, it could also be
| millenarianism, as the belief that the old order is
| dwindling and about to blow away and must be replaced with
| something better, the belief in a reckoning, is far from
| exclusive to either side of the political spectrum but
| instead is present everywhere.
| rjkennedy98 wrote:
| > It could also be a sign that people feel more empowered to
| express themselves in work
|
| The cynic in me feels like it's a casual way for engineers to
| feel better about themselves.
|
| It's no wonder to me that this "bring your whole self to
| work" nonsense sprung up at ad-tech companies like Google.
|
| And by the way - the political stuff never is about anything
| that Google does. I haven't seen any tax law, anti-trust, or
| privacy protests at Google.
| sagichmal wrote:
| It is incorrect to think of the things under discussion here as
| "rights activism", as something unrelated to the mission of the
| company.
| hardwaresofton wrote:
| > This may be a sign that it's become increasingly hard to
| organize or take part in such activism outside of work. What
| happened?
|
| I might be over-simplifying but the vast majority of people
| most affected by political decisions no longer have the incomes
| and free time to partake in such activism.
|
| For example if you cared about something like workers' unions
| (let's assume the relatively well-run, non-corrupt version),
| the people in the best place to perform the activism do not
| feel they need the unions because they have the spare income
| and time (ex. tech workers at TechCompanyX). Those who would be
| most helped by the activism (ex. workers in TechCompanyX's
| factories/warehouses/wherever) have grueling work schedules and
| lower pay.
| rswskg wrote:
| What a joker 'right-wing radicalization which has resulted in
| widespread political violence'
|
| ha.
| toastal wrote:
| Between this and blocking VPNs so I have to be vulnerable to use
| their service when assets are on the line, I'll be looking for my
| own exit
| andrethegiant wrote:
| That it's being framed as politics is way off the mark. What's
| being discussed at the workplace isn't foreign policy; it's
| authoritarianism vs democracy. That's an existential threat.
| People are getting executed in the street by those supposed to
| serve and protect, and business leaders want employees to "just
| be apolitical"? Asking employees to ignore an existential threat
| is like asking humans to not experience emotion, to the tune of
| "Just ignore the chaos around you and do your job, peasant." It's
| wrong to enforce people to ignore the injustices that affect
| them.
| [deleted]
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > That it's being framed as politics is way off the mark
|
| No, it's not, at all.
|
| > What's being discussed at the workplace isn't foreign policy
|
| Well, I mean, it often is, but clearly that's not what you are
| centrally focussed on.
|
| > it's authoritarianism vs democracy
|
| That's still politics even when it isn't foreign policy, but
| it's not a mutually exclusive category with foreign policy.
|
| > People are getting executed in the street by those supposed
| to serve and protect
|
| Domestic racial and political repression is, very much,
| politics.
|
| As is asking people to shut up about it.
|
| > Asking employees to ignore an existential threat is like
| asking humans to not experience emotion,
|
| No, it's asking workers to not act out on their emotion and
| behave as the industrial tools and consumables ("human
| resources") which is their use in capitalism.
| kkhire wrote:
| I've never worked in the Bay Area, so could just be OOL but I'm
| genuinely surprised that this is such a big deal, or that this
| blog post got so much praise.
|
| Never discussed politics at any of the companies I've worked for,
| we were always too busy with...work!
| moduspol wrote:
| Virtually every meaningful task humans have accomplished has
| been a result of groups of us putting aside our differences to
| unite and focus on solving the problem at hand.
| demygale wrote:
| What if the problem at hand is ending structural racism in
| the workplace?
| moduspol wrote:
| "Structural racism" is a coded term. We have laws against
| discrimination and HR departments across the country
| bending over backwards to avoid lawsuits... but you're not
| asking about the problems those are intended to solve.
|
| When you ask a question like that, what you're really
| asking is, "why don't workplaces have the outcomes I expect
| along racial lines when it comes to hiring, compensation,
| promotion, and more?" And implicitly, "why can't workplaces
| be forced (or force themselves) toward meeting the outcomes
| I expect?"
|
| Those are different questions, but they're encoded in
| yours. And they don't really apply to the topic at hand.
| tehjoker wrote:
| Avoiding lawsuits is not at all the same as attempting to
| deal with the issue honestly as opposed to framing it in
| the same light as some new kind of competitive
| marketplace.
| [deleted]
| jcims wrote:
| >groups of us
|
| not 'all of us'
| jeromegv wrote:
| ??? Nice way to rewrite history. Would you say the civil
| rights movement was successful because it wanted to put aside
| differences? Or because they fought for their rights, their
| difference, and the privileged majority had to make
| concessions?
| jcims wrote:
| It's actually a perfect example. It's hard to imagine
| everyone fighting for civil rights was previously aligned
| on all fronts or agreed with everything that was done along
| the way.
| moduspol wrote:
| > Would you say the civil rights movement was successful
| because it wanted to put aside differences?
|
| Absolutely. Everyone involved with the movement put aside
| their differences to focus on the same goal.
|
| It would not have been as successful if everyone showing up
| for a rally was expected / coerced into supporting other
| political issues.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Yes very much so. They found the moral high ground and were
| able to persuade people on our shared humanity. No one
| "had" to do anything. People were compelled to as they were
| persuaded that we had immoral systems in terms of
| individuals civil rights.
|
| A universal appeal to shared humanity is an approach that
| works. Shaming people into a type of morality will only
| invite pushback.
| md_ wrote:
| For some historical context, contemporaneously, the Civil
| Rights movement was highly controversial and, among white
| Americans, fairly unpopular; it's _exactly_ the kind of
| thing that would have been described as politics best
| left out of the workplace.
|
| "In 1964, in a poll taken nine months after the March on
| Washington, where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have
| a Dream" speech, 74 percent of Americans said such mass
| demonstrations were more likely to harm than to help the
| movement for racial equality. In 1965, after marchers in
| Selma, Alabama, were beaten by state troopers, less than
| half of Americans said they supported the marchers."
|
| (Taken from
| https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/10/the-
| nex...)
| nemo44x wrote:
| I think we're conflating certain actions with certain
| messages. The words of that speech struck a nerve with
| people because of its universal appeal to humanity. It's
| oft quoted line of "...judged by content of their
| character, not the color of their skin" is still
| universally praised because of that.
|
| Compare this to today's thoughtless and abrasive slogans
| or the writings of today's favored thought leaders on
| this and how divisive now only are the ideas but the
| tactics being used to coerce people into compliance.
|
| So yeah, people at the time may have had a distaste for
| some of the tactics but the messaging was very popular.
| The riots that took place later on in the decade were a
| disaster and led to a new, mainstream form of
| conservatism led by Nixon.
| md_ wrote:
| I don't know if I understand your point. Are you saying
| that the 74% unfavorable view of civil rights
| demonstrations suggests that Americans disfavored
| demonstrations but nonetheless were strongly supportive
| of MLK's speech _at_ such a demonstration?
|
| That strikes me as a level of nuance that is frankly
| unlikely.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Within a year of that speech the 24th Amendment was
| ratified to the constitution and the Civil Rights Act of
| 1964 was passed. He won the Noble Prize a little over a
| year later. I'd say people agreed with the message above
| all else because he truly appealed to a shared, universal
| humanity. This couldn't be done, especially in that era,
| without a large amount of people supporting this. An
| Amendment - think about that and what it takes! It almost
| has to be universal for that to happen. People supported
| these ideas. It is a myth they didn't and the evidence is
| the product of them.
|
| I don't think these landmark legal events occurred
| because people demonstrated so much what the man and his
| supporters were saying. I believe people miss the forest
| for the trees and think if they just get a group of
| people together they're somehow right or will get their
| way. But it's about what you have to say and how you say
| it that matters. Peacefully organizing is a great vehicle
| for that but you still need the goods.
|
| The violence that happened in the later 1960's set so
| much of it back IMO.
| md_ wrote:
| Hmm, to your first part: maybe. Adam Serwer (in that same
| article) argues that exposure to tales of southern
| violence, after the Civil War, was instrumental in
| changing northern Republicans' willingness to push civil
| rights legislation. So, similarly, in the 1960s.
|
| Yet your conclusion is far too final: it's not a "myth"
| that people didn't support these changes; some people did
| and some didn't, as with anything. At one point in the
| end of 1964, a majority of people oppose the protests
| that led to these changes.
|
| And in fact, the 24th Amendment faced substantial
| opposition from southern states; I'm not able to find
| contemporaneous opinion polls (and I'd be interested if
| you have any), but it's far from the case that it was
| without controversy!
|
| I strongly disagree with your last line, however--not
| because violence is acceptable or productive,
| necessarily, but because your interpretation exculpates
| reactionaries who regrouped and pushed back against such
| changes, which I think is a highly relevant lesson for
| the Trump era:
|
| Race is _such_ a good predictor of a vote for Trump. The
| simplest explanation for Trump 's rise is that he is a
| counterreaction to the election of the first Black
| President.
|
| So too with the success of a cynical Southern Strategy
| following on the heels of the Civil Rights Era.
| jcims wrote:
| Why? If you asked the same question today about BLM you
| would also see a divergence between the two. Almost
| certainly not to the degree to which a strong majority
| favor the notion but disapprove of the demonstrations,
| but there's going to be a difference.
| md_ wrote:
| I don't know offhand of any high quality opinion surveys
| asking about approval of _demonstrations_ vs _BLM_ in
| general, so I don't know if your hypothesis is born out.
|
| However, opinion polls _do_ show a _correlation_ between
| support for _BLM_ and coverage of demonstrations:
| https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/support-for-black-
| lives....
| UncleMeat wrote:
| That's not true. The CRM was deeply unpopular to the
| general population. King was seen as a rowdy agitator.
| The CRA was passed despite public opinion, not because
| the activists managed to convince the population that
| they were human beings. The CRA was so deeply unpopular
| that it caused a fundamental change in the structure of
| our political boundaries that has lasted for 60 years.
| King himself explicitly shamed the "white moderate"
| rather than courting them.
| CPLX wrote:
| It's pretty common for the problem at hand to be a group of
| violent extremists attempting to seize power.
| nullc wrote:
| Coming from the east coast (and maybe a little from an earlier
| era) I also find the attitude on this stuff a little
| mystifying.
|
| "In my day" -- it was just _poor form_ to bring up that kind of
| stuff at work. If you did so at all, you usually tried to avoid
| being "that person". You don't get to choose each person you
| work with, so it pays if everyone puts in a bit of extra effort
| to not give anyone else a hard time.
|
| I think some of these work politics issues--in particular
| around the bay area-- is partially a product of extremely
| homogeneous work forces (at least politically), partially poor
| work-life balance cultures (no life outside work), partially
| social networking (massively increasing the visibility of your
| co-workers out of work activities), and <???>-- I don't feel I
| really have a complete understanding of what is going on.
|
| Maybe a factor is a breakdown in our wider culture's ability to
| see people who disagree as being people who are still good
| people with reasonable points but just have different
| understandings or priorities (or even just to patronize them as
| stupid or uninformed). But instead perhaps there is a trend to
| rapidly decide people we disagree with are irredeemably evil
| just based on a soundbitized version of some insanely
| complicated political trade-off (or maybe even just by
| association)... But I'm not really sure how much that breakdown
| is actually happening compared to the appearance of it
| happening in the reporting funhouse mirror ("Reasonable people
| do a reasonable thing" said no headline ever).
|
| Some of it might also be due to a transition from products to
| services-- people seem a lot more willing to view product sales
| as anonymous and totally transactional, while they seem to view
| a service as something more akin to a marriage.
|
| A big downside of reactions like coinbases' might be that in
| what I would consider the traditional regime there was still an
| opportunity for employees to bring a little bit of their
| politics to work-- so long as they were professional and not
| obnoxious about it, or in places where there were genuine
| interactions with work ("How about lets not buy the toner
| cartages made from clubbed baby seals?") ... but if you can't
| count on people to control themselves and you're forced to set
| bright line policies then there is probably a lot less room for
| people to be reasonable.
| kleinsch wrote:
| I worked for companies on the east coast, then moved to SF
| and now work at a big tech company. The companies I worked
| for on the east coast were mostly B2B, so we were focused on
| making a good product for businesses so they'd pay us more
| money. Big tech companies recruited for a long time with the
| pitch that we're changing the world. That has brought in a
| bunch of employees who joined bc they want their employment
| to make a positive change in the world. Companies are now
| realizing the conflict being a neutral platform poses to
| these people - if I have a belief that my employment should
| make a positive change in societal issues, how could I work
| somewhere that I believe contributes to making things worse?
| nullc wrote:
| > if I have a belief that my employment should make a
| positive change in societal issues, how could I work
| somewhere that I believe contributes to making things
| worse?
|
| Why the binary presentation, though?
|
| You can make the world better by doing a single thing well
| and respecting your customers (and their all-kinds-
| diversity) while doing it. Even if you're not _directly_
| contributing to BigIssue by doing it, the people who are
| presumably need to be able to count on a reliable supply
| chain that gives them the tools /services/resources they
| need.
|
| Unless your work has serious atypical externalities, just
| doing what you're doing doesn't itself make things worse --
| it make fail to do the absolute maximum it could possibly
| to to make one specific thing better, but if that's your
| focus you should be working on that thing directly. In a
| reasonable organization there should be a lot of
| opportunity to put your thumb on a scale towards
| continually improving all sorts of things-- without
| inviting disruption and discord --by threading the needle
| and nudging all the free choices in the right direction and
| respecting that other reasonable people can have different
| priorities.
|
| There are an neigh uncountable number of travesties and
| injustices in the world and finite time and resources to
| fight for them... but as a society we can't stand strong to
| face any of the big issues if the water taps aren't
| flowing, the power isn't on, the communications lines
| aren't communicating, the spread-sheets aren't spreading,
| the trash (literal and figurative) isn't getting collected,
| and whatnot. We have to prioritize, triage, and focus on
| what we can accomplish.
|
| And someone-- many many someones, in fact-- has to be the
| shoulders we stand on as our tallest reach for the stars.
|
| Besides, if advocacy was really what people were sold on in
| large numbers how can we explain the literal order of
| magnitude compensation differences for rank and file
| engineering staff at tech companies and tech roles in non-
| profits? :) I think that asks me to believe that there were
| many people who's next alternative to a google role was
| taking a $40k/yr 501c3 job and google was foolish enough to
| offer that person a mid-six-figure compensation package.
| kleinsch wrote:
| > Unless your work has serious atypical externalities,
| just doing what you're doing doesn't itself make things
| worse
|
| Most of the big tech companies are all encompassing
| enough that they all have serious externalities.
|
| - Amazon and Microsoft face protests that they enable ICE
|
| - FB faces protests that they enable Trump to promote
| hate speech
|
| - Google faced protests over a possible Pentagon contract
|
| > how can we explain the literal order of magnitude
| compensation differences for rank and file engineering
| staff at tech companies and tech roles in non-profits
|
| Keep in mind that a decent percentage of employees of big
| tech companies are non-eng. The comp is still better than
| outside, but not the order of magnitude you see for eng.
|
| In general, are you surprised that people want to have
| their cake and eat it too? :P There is a group for whom
| changing a specific issue is their top priority and
| they'll accept below-market comp to work at a nonprofit.
| There's a much larger group, especially among younger
| generations, who want both top of market comp and to feel
| like they're changing the world, and the tech companies
| promised they could have it all.
|
| A number of people in big tech are facing the decision
| of: should I keep working at a company whose values I may
| no longer agree with? Or should I quit (possibly taking a
| cut in pay, perks, scope, caliber of eng, etc), since I
| may not find a big tech company whose values I completely
| agree with? I haven't seen a trend towards leaving yet,
| but the fact that the stock of big tech has been going
| through the roof has made it sting even harder to leave
| now, so I'll be curious when the market run ends how this
| ends up.
| names_are_hard wrote:
| I suspect that when the market takes a turn for the worse
| we'll see a lot of attrition from the big companies to
| startups. When the golden handcuffs become bronze, many
| employees will be free to seek self actualization
| elsewhere.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I've worked on the east coast for the early half of my
| career, and no company has ever mentioned "making a
| positive change in the world" as a pitch for the job. I was
| hired to fix bugs and connect two API layers to each other
| so that a set top box could ship or so we could release the
| next version of a display driver. There was plenty of
| political diversity in the office: people from all across
| the political spectrum. Yet, we all worked together fine,
| and you almost never heard an actual political argument.
| Occasionally it would come up as a polite conversation at
| lunchtime. The rare minute it got heated, someone would
| maturely step in and say, hey, guys, let's get back to work
| and put it aside, and that was that. This is in stark
| contrast to the stories you hear out of west coast tech
| companies today! How have we managed to screw this up so
| badly?
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| I yearn for the return of that attitude, polite
| conversation of differences and the tolerance and
| rational discussion of nuanced issues which makes it
| possible.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| I wonder what % of SV employees actually did move there for
| "making a better place blabla". It always souded as a pure
| marketing signal , like those old Benneton ads. I can
| understand that people who work for wikipedia do it, but
| not the big tech sector. It's particularly hard to believe
| it considering the cynicism of the current "total
| compensation"-oriented generation of tech crowd.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| A large group of people, maybe even a majority, believe
| in the general idea that technology can help solve social
| problems. Then you have a company that says they make the
| world a better place. Of course you're going to get some
| people who legit want to do that, and believe the scale
| and scope of the operation allows this to actually
| happen! Then they're very upset when, for instance, their
| spreadsheet software is used to track how to steal
| refugee children from their parents and sell them to
| adoption services. It's going to take some adjustment to
| convince these people that the company that says they're
| making the world a better place is simply constantly
| lying, and only exists for profit.
| ffggvv wrote:
| i think its also frankly because they recruit from elite
| universities that push social activism and safe spaces
| constantly
| cblconfederate wrote:
| I often wonder about the other side: Why do people who work in
| SV seem so militant on political issues? After all they live in
| a very privileged space (or "bubble") which is severely
| disconnected from the reality of most of the Earth, and even
| nearby american cities. I don't know enough about the
| demographics of the region and what can drive this behaviour
| but it is full of contradictions. For example, while they all
| seem invested in political causes, and seem to be using
| donations as a way to show virtual support to causes, I notice
| that they rarely venture into actual politics themselves.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| A combination of factors .. here's some ideas
|
| A cognitive limitation that it's hard to see the bubble we
| are in.
|
| Being smart at the things in our bubble makes us over-
| confident about things we really don't have deep nuanced
| experience about.
|
| We don't know what we don't know, but we think we do .. until
| we gain enough experience to appreciate life's complexity and
| our own limitations.
| hnrodey wrote:
| >After all they live in a very privileged space (or "bubble")
|
| It's my personal view that so much of the current political
| vitriol is because as a society, we've run out of things to
| worry about. We've reached critical mass of people solving
| Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and therefore, we are dwelving in
| to other arenas where we are feeling neglected.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| I have a much more benigh benign theory: The end of mass
| entertainment. When we no longer listen to the same
| music/watch the same movies/ same tv, it's hard for people
| to come up common themes in discussions. Politics doesnt
| fit in that because usually countries have one government,
| and everyone has an opinion on politics, it's too easy
| stevehawk wrote:
| because they are over educated and wealthy and it lends
| itself to the thought of "if i'm this smart and this
| successful how could i be wrong and why don't you want this
| life?"
| throwaway4715 wrote:
| SV companies sell candidates on changing the world and
| disrupting the status quo. They literally target and recruit
| the type of people who would want to discuss politics at work.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > we were always too busy with...work!
|
| I think that's one side effect of having these gargantuan,
| hugely profitable tech companies. They can essentially have a
| huge portion of their workforce be unproductive if the
| essential "money machine" at each company (e.g. AdWords at
| Google) is running smoothly.
|
| Other, smaller companies can't afford to have as much fat in
| their workforce, so their workers need to be actually focused
| on, you know, work, and if they're not, their lack of
| productivity is much more visible.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Never discussed politics at any of the companies I've worked
| for, we were always too busy with...work!_
|
| Same, and that's the conundrum.
|
| "Activist" employees put others on the spot by querying
| coworkers' political views and expecting discussion. And for
| those who have had their head in the sand for the past few
| years, things like "being a Joe Rogan fan" are now considered
| unacceptable politics.
| tarkin2 wrote:
| But most company's work becomes political now.
|
| You only want to work on a feature for a social media platform?
| No politics there, right?
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| Most companies? Maybe most SV ones?
| andy_ppp wrote:
| I am caught in two minds on this, I'm personally _extremely_
| political, but I want to clearly understand both sides of
| arguments as deeply as I possibly can. For example I often argue
| things in my own mind from a conservative, let's keep everything
| stable, work hard, individual responsibility POV even though I
| firmly believe probably 80% of people's success is down to luck
| and consequently think a strong welfare state and 99% inheritance
| tax is the correct way to run things.
|
| Now bringing these ideas to work and using that as a vehicle for
| change is not something I'm comfortable with, but if you as a
| company have a mission, you can't expect your staff to not also
| have missions that might be aligned or orthogonal to the company.
|
| It might make your company work better getting rid of politics
| (that disagrees with yours anyway) from the workplace by paying
| people. I wonder if it leads to a filtering out of potentially
| difficult conversations that people should have.
|
| Anyway I'm against corporate stuff like this and I think you can
| cut this down quite a lot without the fluff. I wonder what the
| specific internal conversations were to prompt this public plea
| for apolitical-ness outside of the company's political mission.
| sieabahlpark wrote:
| > I firmly believe probably 80% of people's success is down to
| luck and consequently think a strong welfare state and 99%
| inheritance tax is the correct way to run things.
|
| So you think wealth is based on 80% luck and your solution is
| to reset the family wealth every time?
|
| So a family who isn't "lucky" can't pass on their little wealth
| to their children and have that compound over time? You'd
| prefer the children get the reset button?
|
| You have some flawed understanding of how people can actually
| increase the probability to generate wealth.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| Every company has a mission, some are just more explicit about
| it.
|
| I spent a lot of years as a traveling consultant. Every company
| I visited broadcast it's culture and in doing so, it's mission.
| It's in the way companies bring products to market, it's in the
| words it uses to describe itself. It's in the way it treats its
| employees.
|
| The mission could be "We want to line the pockets of the
| founder's family." It could be "we want to build products that
| make people's lives better in these distinct ways." It can even
| be "We want to shine this turd just long enough to get acquired
| by our largest competitor." As employees, we buy in one way or
| another.
|
| Each of those is a mission, just a very different mission from
| the way Coinbase is positioning _their_ mission.
| dogman144 wrote:
| I think the common challenge leaders are facing is the missions
| employees bring into the offie in fact aren't particularly
| aligned or orthogonal to the company's mission.
|
| This is exacerbated by a decade+ of claiming the company is
| "making the world a better place by X," when really of course
| it's not. It's selling ads or what have you.
|
| So, I think part of the insistence to bring politics into work
| is also driven by that - the employees were sold a bill of
| moral goods at 23, slowly realize the company doesn't actually
| have the PR mission it says it does because it's a profit
| seeking company, and employees start trying to overcorrect.
|
| At least CB is being open about what they're about :shrug:.
|
| Probably a matter of pick your poison.
| mysterEFrank wrote:
| That's a great severance package
| dvdhnt wrote:
| I'm sorry to tell everyone but this entire premise is insincere.
|
| Sure, 50 years ago MAYBE this would have been valid, but I'm
| doubtful.
|
| Are we going to ignore that companies in Germany were profiting
| off of the Nazi regime? Lockheed-Martin, BAE, etc pushing us into
| infinite war. Oil and gas companies lying about climate change.
| Coinbase is taking the side of those types of companies.
|
| Climate change has been hijacked as a political issue. Lobbyists
| from companies are constantly arguing in favor of more damaging
| and exploitive rules for society.
|
| So, no you can't be apolitical. Armstrong is being selfish and
| privileged. He's signaling to employees that they need to shut up
| and make money. If I was working there, I'd be glad this was
| exposed now instead of later.
| KKKKkkkk1 wrote:
| My buddy works at a FAANG that has a strong corporate position on
| BLM, LGBTQ rights, and climate change. In fact, all of the FAANGs
| do. Anyone kicked out of Coinbase that will pass the interviews
| will be welcomed with open arms, regardless of political
| positions.
|
| I speculate that this is a way for Coinbase to carry out its
| first round of layoffs.
| zalkota wrote:
| They'll do fine! BLM is a a step down from a Terrorist
| organization.
| kats wrote:
| Two weeks the same CEO campaigned against Apple's App Store
| policies on Twitter, and totally made it out to be a moral issue
| when it benefitted him.
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/1304490208...
|
| "There are many unbanked and underbanked people in the world who
| have no ability to get a loan to buy a home, or start a business,
| so this kind of technology has enormous potential to improve the
| world over time, even if it is still early days."
|
| "I greatly admire Apple as a company, and think they build
| amazing products, but their restrictions on the app store, in
| particular around cryptocurrency, are not defensible in my view,
| and they are holding back progress in the world."
|
| The way that Coinbase puts pressure on Apple is the same as what
| Coinbase's politically-active employees are doing.
| x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
| Well, it's also core to Coinbase's mission statement. Brian
| rightfully wants to keep Coinbase focused only on political
| issues that are part of the company mission.
| grey-area wrote:
| No position on politics is also a position (for the status quo).
| nec4b wrote:
| No it is not.
| choppaface wrote:
| What's up with the 7 year exercise window? All contracts I've
| seen lately have adopted the modern 10 year window. Bonus to
| cover exercise + 83b is also now more common for non-execs now. 7
| years sounds like they chose something less than the max
| intentionally.
|
| Furthermore, 6 months severance is on the lighter side for 3yrs
| of service in cases where the company did something remotely
| controversial. Setting the aside the issue of allowing politics
| at the workplace or not, actual implementation of the policing
| invites all sorts of non-standard harassment and first amendment
| claims. Any of the lawyers in the Bay Area who helped Uber
| employees negotiate severance could likely get a deal like this
| doubled, especially if the employee is a manager or senior-level.
| While 6 months of salary is nothing to scoff at, there's a time
| and a place for major company ideology changes and COVID is not
| the time to make employees worry about their employment.
| bananaface wrote:
| How would a lawyer negotiate this up? They aren't firing
| people, they're just offering people to option to leave. Do
| employees here have any legal leverage?
| choppaface wrote:
| No leverage through the offer or blog post itself, but if
| they have evidence of harassment or other misconduct, and
| screenshots from Slack, then it's more likely for a potential
| claim to result in additional severance versus any sort of
| litigation, especially since Coinbase is now inviting
| departures and inevitable conflict.
|
| Being an adversarial employee when working on an exit package
| certainly is FAR from necessary, but it's also not at all
| necessary to put people out of a job during COVID due to
| _culture changes_.
| woah wrote:
| Is there any evidence of harassment or people being put out
| of a job?
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| There won't be if everyone takes the exit package.
| detaro wrote:
| I'm not sure "major company ideology change" is accurate here.
| From what I've seen, it looks to me as if the CEO is doubling
| down on his previous stance after being pressured about
| changing it recently.
| echelon wrote:
| It would be so ironic if _every_ Coinbase employee took this
| exit. It 's not like there isn't more work out there.
|
| The longer I work, the less I put up with dehumanizing actions
| from the top. You only live for so long. Why be told to your face
| that you're _just a resource_.
| Dirlewanger wrote:
| Please show me a modern tech company that treats its employees
| fairly, pays decent wages, whose mission to actually bring
| about good change in society, is profitable and won't go under
| next year, and doesn't say they support X social movement on
| Twitter for cheap PR points.
| renewiltord wrote:
| There are so many startups like this. If you're plugged into
| the ecosystem you know that this is a luxury for those who
| have found overwhelming product market fit. Not even just
| ones who've found a market. Overwhelming fit. Because then
| you make so much money you have time for this stuff.
|
| Lots of successful companies who've found current fit and are
| chugging along.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| It's a bitter truth but it's true. Everyone at a company,
| except the founders, are essentially resources to help the
| company along with it's mission.
|
| And I have no problem with this, when I decided to work for a
| company that relationship is you provide them your services for
| pay. If you like the company and feel you are treated well,
| stay. If you don't like it there, leave, it's that simple.
| ponker wrote:
| The state of politics today, as a base layer under and inside
| _everything_ , is such that politics _cannot_ be kept out of
| work. Look at something very straightforward like Covid-19, an
| airborne disease. For reasons that I can 't explain, attitudes
| towards this virus in the US are political, such that there is a
| strong correlation between one's view of the severity of this
| virus and one's attitudes towards the legal status of abortion.
|
| A company deciding between "everyone work from home" or "everyone
| come into the office and sit in open seating" has to engage with
| the realities of what the virus is, which necessitates taking a
| stand on issues which are political.
|
| This is doubly impossible for Coinbase since cryptocurrency is
| the most overtly political area of technology.
| Zenbit_UX wrote:
| Why is a company wanting to be apolitical is controversial? That
| should be the default, is this an American thing like how masks
| and healthcare are controversial?
|
| I would expect a government to have proper separation from church
| and state, so why is it weird to want a company to separate
| politics and mission?
|
| I can't see any good coming from being in a work environment
| where the company supports a political issue I'm strongly
| against, it would make co-workers and myself feel like opponents
| and likely make for a hostile work environment.
| eli wrote:
| Forbidding debate is taking an implicit stance in favor of the
| status quo.
| defertoreptar wrote:
| Or it's just acknowledging that it can be disruptive and
| divisive at a place where your goal is to focus and
| communicate effectively.
| sdfqasdghj2 wrote:
| I don't see this press release as forbidding debate. This is
| simply saying that the company won't be taking a stance. That
| shouldn't stop individual employees discussing political
| topics as long as they can act like adults and not create a
| hostile environment.
| seneca wrote:
| > I don't see this press release as forbidding debate.
|
| It specifically does:
|
| > We won't: Debate causes or political candidates
| internally
| manigandham wrote:
| No, it's just stating that the workplace is neutral. It's not
| for or against anything. You can do that on _your_ time
| instead.
| eli wrote:
| Blocking even the discussion of change is the definition of
| conservatism. It's explicitly against change and implicitly
| for the status quo.
| manigandham wrote:
| That is not the definition of conservatism, and a limit
| on discussion is not implicitly for anything. It's your
| own subjective interpretation if you think it's for the
| status quo.
|
| This isn't complicated. For example: People may be on
| both sides of climate change, but not discussing it in
| the workplace doesn't mean the company is for or against
| anything. Apply this to any other topic that has nothing
| to do with the business.
| yunohn wrote:
| The homepage of the privacy-focused adtech company you run,
| highlights California's new Privacy law.
|
| Have you considered that this means your workplace has a
| clear political stance on privacy?
| manigandham wrote:
| Sure, the company provides services that help others
| comply with regulations and thus favors those
| regulations. Just like any other corporation that prefers
| regulations that help drive it's business.
|
| Our workplace is still neutral though, and we don't
| discuss politics. To be extra clear: Whether you're for
| or against privacy regulations is not relevant. Whether
| the law is changing and will increase our revenues is
| relevant. See the difference?
| yunohn wrote:
| I see that you think there's a difference. But you've
| admitted that politics is a topic you discuss. In fact,
| lots of companies spend money to actively make said laws
| bend in their favor.
|
| The difference is less straightforward than you make it
| out to be.
| manigandham wrote:
| Since you consider everything to be political, then
| everything is politics and there is no discussion without
| it. It's a tautological inevitability.
|
| However there is a difference in that _we don 't discuss
| personal opinions on politics_. We talk about changes,
| and whether those changes are good for the business.
| That's a pretty clear line that you seem to be refusing
| to accept even though our team understands it perfectly.
| staz wrote:
| > Since you consider everything to be political, then
| everything is politics and there is no discussion without
| it. It's a tautological inevitability.
|
| but that's kind of the point. Pretty much any human
| discussion (or interaction for that matter) _can_ be
| viewed through a political lens by someone.
|
| Thus by declaring to forbid political discussion, you are
| just declaring a blanket right to ban any discussions
| that inconvenience you by judging them political.
| manigandham wrote:
| No, we don't constantly live with theoretical extremes in
| our day to day life and can operate without political
| discussion, like our company and many others do.
|
| And yes, corporations can set the rules of the workplace
| they maintain. It is not about "inconvenience" but to
| avoid chaos and improve productivity. You are free to do
| as you wish outside of the workplace, including choosing
| a company that lets you say whatever you want. I applaud
| and encourage this freedom on both sides.
| staz wrote:
| Corporations may be people to you but their rules are
| written by actual humans, using their existing political
| biases. And it usually the people at the top choosing
| them
|
| You might think that a discussion you are having is not
| political because for you it's "common sense", "obvious"
| and "surely everyone reasonable agree" but that's not
| forcibly the case.
|
| If an employee says a thing you don't agree with, for you
| it is a political statement and you shut it as such.
|
| If you make a political statement an employee don't agree
| with they shut up and don't contradict you because they
| don't want to lose their job.
| manigandham wrote:
| > _" Corporations may be people to you"_
|
| I never said this. What does this have to do with
| anything?
|
| > _" If an employee says a thing you don't agree with,
| for you it is a political statement and you shut it as
| such."_
|
| No. Disagreement on something doesn't not mean that it's
| political. Most reasonable people can easily figure out
| the difference: Talking about weather or our tech stack
| is not political. Talking about immigration policy is. So
| we discuss the former without the latter, just like
| millions of other people in many companies. It's not
| difficult.
|
| > _" If you make a political statement"_
|
| I don't. That's what no political discussion means and it
| applies to everyone. Why do you assume people can't
| follow their own rules?
|
| Overall, if you don't like the rules of the workplace
| then leave. That's the whole point of this policy and
| exit package. You're not entitled to stay and discuss
| whatever you want, and thinking that you can is a very
| privileged expectation.
| staz wrote:
| > I never said this. What does this have to do with
| anything?
|
| You said "Corporations can set rules" and I wanted to
| punctuate the point that theses rules don't come from the
| nether.
|
| > I don't. That's what no political discussion means and
| it applies to everyone. Why do you assume people can't
| follow their own rules?
|
| I meant no insult to your character. The point is you
| think everyone agree with your list on what is political
| is political or not and I don't.
|
| To give examples:
|
| You might say "I arrived late again, I wish they would
| build a new highway" and I'm thinking it's political
| because really they should build more subway
|
| I might say "I have a cat it's nice, I recommend it to
| everyone" and you might think it's political because you
| think cats are decimating the bird wild life and should
| be banned"
|
| > Talking about weather
|
| Not the example I would have used in your place with
| climate change...
|
| > or our tech stack
|
| Open source/ closed source is a political debate for
| example. But they are also some who dismiss technologies
| based on their country of origin.
|
| So again you might think you follow the rule because for
| you it's not a political statement but for me it might be
| and inversely.
| manigandham wrote:
| None of those examples are political in so far as to be a
| problem. Reasonable people understand this. Maybe that's
| the major issue: the boundary of reasonable is being
| pushed to the extremes by those who are unwilling to
| accept anything else.
| staz wrote:
| so it's only really political and forbidden when it's a
| problem for you
| username90 wrote:
| Apolitical workplaces works just fine in practice, you
| are just fearmongering.
| staz wrote:
| I didn't intend to instill fear, sorry that there is a
| comprehensions.
|
| I don't believe that apolitical workplaces actually
| exist. That you can view workplaces as apolitical is
| either ignorance or privilege
| username90 wrote:
| If people aren't proselyting their views on how the
| country should be run then it is apolitical. This is the
| norm. You must be very damaged if you think this is
| impossible.
| staz wrote:
| I will not do a repeat of the discussion on how
| supporting the status quo is in itself a political
| statement.
|
| But you must be very naive if you think how a company is
| run has no effect on how a country is run.
|
| Fifty year ago in the US whether your company had
| segregated bathroom or not was a proselyting of their
| views on how the country should be run.
|
| Now it whether trans should be allowed to use the
| bathroom they want.
|
| Why? Because they are political decision taken from the
| people working there.
| yunohn wrote:
| I don't think "everything" is meant to be taken so
| /literally/.
|
| It is your personal opinion on privacy that led to the
| founding of the company. It is most likely your
| employees' personal opinions that made them choose to
| work at your company vs Google or FB's ad divisions.
|
| But let's discuss a more relevant political topic. Your
| name, manigandham, implies you are of Asian origin. The
| /political/ immigration laws determine your/parents'
| existence in the USA. If the company you/they worked for
| was serving/assisting organisations that would invalidate
| your legal residence, would you not be concerned? Or
| would you help the project succeed & accept your fate
| once ICE came knocking?
| manigandham wrote:
| And yet we don't discuss opinions in the workplace. I
| don't see why that is so difficult to understand.
|
| I caution against making this personal because it's a
| poor argument and unproductive. But since you asked: I
| was born in India, legally immigrated to the USA, and am
| now a naturalized US citizen. I have never feared ICE or
| any part of the US Government, and fully support legal
| immigration, strong borders, and proper law enforcement.
| Corporations do not affect my citizenship or residence,
| that's a matter of state and law. If I didn't like what a
| company was doing, I would simply not work for them. None
| of this requires discussing my political opinions at
| work.
|
| Speech and action are not the same, and nobody is forcing
| you to work anywhere you don't want to. If you don't like
| the rules of limited discussion or anything else the
| company does, then leave. This Coinbase policy is
| specifically designed to give you a very comfortable
| exit. What's the problem?
| yunohn wrote:
| This is a very personal topic, for the people that are
| being "political".
|
| Claiming you no longer care about this, after becoming a
| naturalized citizen, is a prime example of the "I have
| mine" philosophy. You would not be able to quit a company
| while on an immigrant visa, to protest your company's
| problematic workings. This is not a fair view, and you
| know that.
| manigandham wrote:
| 1) The topic is political discussions at work. You made
| this thread personal by asking about my background
| instead of arguing the merits. What issues others are
| personally affected by has nothing to do with this.
|
| 2) What do you know about what I care about or my
| philosophy? I said I support strong borders and law
| enforcement. This does not stop others from becoming
| citizens, nor do I have any responsibility to anyone
| else.
|
| 3) You choose the company you work for, and you can
| always quit. That doesn't mean there are no consequences
| but that's life, and life isn't fair.
|
| You're conflating several topics with random tangents and
| have attempted to personally attack me with assumptions,
| strawman scenarios and mischaracterizations. Nothing
| you've said is a reason to break the rules of the
| workplace and discuss whatever you want, especially when
| you have the alternative of leaving (and the company is
| offering a generous package to do so). The entitlement
| that you stay employed and yet break the rules and create
| disturbance is the very epitome of the privilege you
| claim exists in those that choose to actually follow
| those rules. This is precisely the attitude that this
| company (and many others) are trying to avoid. I'll end
| this thread here as there's nothing more to discuss.
| username90 wrote:
| > Forbidding debate is taking an implicit stance in favor of
| the status quo.
|
| If the reformists are winning outside the company then the
| status quo is in the reformists favor and thus forbidding
| debate is pro change. For example now, Biden is favored to
| win so status quo is Biden wins, so a company forbidding
| political debate is liberal.
|
| For Coinbase specifically, all their US locations are in blue
| states, making the status quo Democrat no matter how you see
| it.
|
| Edit: Anyway, your argument doesn't make sense, you aren't in
| favor of the status quo unless you fight to bring it back
| after things change or you fight to keep it from changing.
| Also you aren't pro the status quo just because you prevent
| people you pay money to waste time arguing with each other
| instead of doing their job.
| vaccinator wrote:
| https://us.123rf.com/450wm/robson309/robson3092002/robson309...
| vaccinator wrote:
| The separation between government and church in the US is
| about 0.001inch or basically no centimeter... You'd be lucky
| if the president doesnt talk about god daily
| jpdb wrote:
| > Why is a company wanting to be apolitical is controversial?
|
| Because there's really no such thing as, "apolitical."
|
| If you offer web-hosting to a group of white nationalists, this
| is a political action.
|
| "Apolitical" is what people who are ok with the status quo use
| as a dog-whistle to avoid responsibility.
| chii wrote:
| > If you offer web-hosting to a group of white nationalists,
| this is a political action.
|
| no it's not - you're just offering a service for a fee. As
| long as the service is not illegal, and you're not under-
| charging (which can be considered a political donation), then
| it's apolitical.
|
| Deliberately choosing not to conduct business with a certain
| group because of their political ideology, on the other hand,
| _is_ a political action.
| cribbles wrote:
| Deliberately choosing to _not not_ conduct business with
| certain groups on the basis of their political ideologies
| is a political action. It implies a disposition toward
| trade and exchange that is itself political.
|
| Consider the fact that you cannot legally offer a service
| or a fee to terrorist groups (however that may be defined),
| money launderers, industries from countries under
| sanctions... the list goes on.
|
| These limitations are political in nature and could be
| revised, expanded, or eschewed via _political action._ But
| even if they were all eliminated, this would not constitute
| a "depoliticization" of trade: such an action could be
| characterized variously as libertarian, free-market,
| laissez-faire, or something of that nature but it would
| nevertheless be explicitly political.
| sammex wrote:
| I don't agree. Selling a gun to a hunter is not the same as
| selling a gun to a known child murderer. Both is "just"
| selling a gun but they are very different in practice.
| zajio1am wrote:
| If seller offers guns to general public (e.g. gun shop)
| and child murderer does not have restriction on gun
| ownership as a part of their sentence, then not selling
| gun is not a political action, it is an extra-judicial
| punishment.
| hexis wrote:
| Yes, but this distinction doesn't require a corporate
| policy to implement. One transaction is legal and the
| other is not.
| ozorOzora wrote:
| Would you like to mandate background checks for every
| potential customer?
| stevehawk wrote:
| ya, one would be illegal
| chii wrote:
| Does your view change if the gun was sold to a republican
| vs a democrat? Or a communist?
| diegoholiveira wrote:
| You can't take responsibility for what someone will do
| with your product. This is insane. If someone buy your
| car, how can you make sure he will not use for kidnap
| someone?
| eli wrote:
| Of course you can. We just sell cigarettes it's not our
| fault problem of people smoke them and get sick?
| austhrow743 wrote:
| Absolutely that yes. Cigarette salesmen are performing a
| valuable service.
| manigandham wrote:
| Society is much better when we have individual freedom
| and responsibility, which includes the ability of people
| to make bad decisions.
| eli wrote:
| And here "freedom" means you are forbidden from
| discussing certain topics at work?
| manigandham wrote:
| Yes. The environment and time is controlled by your
| employer to maximize productivity for the business.
| You're free to do whatever you want on personal time,
| including not working for a company you don't like.
|
| Usually people making your argument also say that private
| corporations can and should moderate speech. Do you
| support that? If so, then why do you disagree with
| workplaces banning topics?
| eli wrote:
| Setting aside whether business can or should regulate
| employee speech: can you expand on how them doing so
| makes people more free?
| manigandham wrote:
| You're misunderstanding the concept. Individual freedom
| means you're free to make your own choices and then take
| responsibility for those choices. This freedom is
| protected by your rights granted by the state.
|
| Corporations setting workplace rules have no impact on
| your freedoms. You're free to work there or quit, or
| suffer the consequences of breaking their rules.
| diegoholiveira wrote:
| People make dumb things like smoking. We already know
| that prohibition doesn't work. Putting warnings in the
| cigarets doesn't work either. So, the next thing would be
| the seller give a speech about how bad cigarets its for
| each sale?
| solidasparagus wrote:
| If you take a look at the history of smoking, it's very
| clear that education and taxes DO work.
| [deleted]
| Redoubts wrote:
| Yes you can, and this is why know-your-customer laws
| exist. This isnt black and white, and depends on the kind
| of transaction. But if I'm selling cars, and someone
| comes in looking shifty, and says they want a big SUV to
| mow people down with, then claiming "I'm just a merchant
| with no responsibility on end use" is honestly weak
| bullshit.
| diegoholiveira wrote:
| > looking shifty
|
| How do you decide this? Your intuition? The clothes
| someone is using? The way his talk?
| [deleted]
| cblconfederate wrote:
| This is not a mainstream view. Maybe it's a 2020-american
| thing that every action and company and invention is judged
| by its political potential, but most people wont agree that
| Gutenberg is to be blamed for what politicians did.
| xnyan wrote:
| This is not an opinion, politics is the exercise of power.
| If you are making decisions, you are exercising political
| power. Apolitical means "We're going to make political
| decisions but we are not going to engage with any debate or
| discussion about them and you are not allowed to either."
| cblconfederate wrote:
| people make decisions, companies don't. That's the
| problem, people see the company as a political vehicle,
| akin to a political party. That's wrong on so many
| levels, primarily on the level that it's a well-funded
| for-profit organization with the means to cause
| undemocratic, arbitrary political damage. Blame
| individuals as much as you want for their politics, don't
| use the overfunded big tech as a trojan horse to destroy
| democratic balances.
| mrtksn wrote:
| >If you offer web-hosting to a group of white nationalists,
| this is a political action
|
| How so? I would say that this is a risk of exposure to
| politics but hardly a political action.
| Angostura wrote:
| > a 100% chance of exposure.
| rmc wrote:
| Because you're providing material aid to that group, and
| _you 're saying there's nothing wrong with doing that_.
| rjkennedy98 wrote:
| But not to JUST that group. You are also providing
| "material aid" to every other group that uses your
| service which is what makes it apolitical.
|
| We have a system for resolving political differences in
| America. It's called elections. There is no reason why
| every business transaction needs to evaluated on
| political grounds. In fact tolerance and commerce have
| historically been key to maintaining a peaceful
| democracy.
| [deleted]
| mrtksn wrote:
| By offering I understand selling it the same way like
| selling it to everyone else. If by "aid" and by
| "offering" you mean giving it away as a gift or similar
| then yes - definitely political.
|
| I see a case where it can be political, like creating a
| mechanism to protect specific group from the others
| however simply doing business is not a political action
| by itself.
|
| There's also possibility to be a political action where
| it's widespread to deny services to certain groups but
| even that is a stretch because it can also be a good
| business opportunity.
| buro9 wrote:
| > Because there's really no such thing as, "apolitical."
|
| This a thousand times.
|
| I've tried to be apolitical in a "least damage" way, but it
| is not possible. You are supporting someone who is doing
| something abhorrent either explicitly or implicitly.
|
| In tech we are huge enablers, and when we support implicitly
| we need to accept that we are enabling behaviour that all
| employees would find unacceptable. Whether it is individuals,
| management, directors, the board - the accountability for
| that is at all levels but definitely starts and stops at the
| top.
|
| That employees are left to fight this shows a lack of
| accountability at the other levels - but it isn't apolitical
| of the company, no... now the company has chosen to go from
| implicitly supporting behaviour enabled by them to explicitly
| supporting that behaviour.
| luckylion wrote:
| > You are supporting someone who is doing something
| abhorrent either explicitly or implicitly.
|
| This comment might make somebody have an idea which will
| then change the world for the worse. Have you supported
| that idea implicitly? I'd argue no, but if you look at it
| purely from an consequentialist perspective, then sure, you
| did.
|
| > That employees are left to fight this
|
| But they aren't "left to fight" anything. They're asked not
| to try to use the company to further their personal
| political goals.
| analyte123 wrote:
| All I see here is that you shouldn't use Grafana if you
| don't want to have your service arbitrarily terminated
| because of a random news article or a couple calls by
| activists.
| yunohn wrote:
| This is on-point. Others here seem to be oblivious to
| reality:
|
| White guy at webhost: We took the white supremacists' money,
| so this is totally legal.
|
| Black colleague: Sure, but now they're using the website to
| display anti-black ideology and actively plan rallies to
| remove my rights.
|
| White guy: This is politics and I'm trying to be apolitical.
| Please lobby the courts if you have a problem.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| You could just as easily write an example where someone of
| a particular religion (pick any one, they all have a list
| of things they find immoral) doesn't like it when the web
| host takes the money of some group that furthers something
| the religion objects to. Everyone has to hold their nose
| sometimes.
| yunohn wrote:
| I think what we're seeing these days is that people don't
| want to "hold their noses" any longer. It's not making
| the world a better place.
| bobjordan wrote:
| I see no proof the unbounded political activism is making
| the world a better place. For example, crowds running up
| onto people's dinner and demanding fists raised in
| solidarity. I think videos circulating of that kind of
| stuff has somewhat tragically introduced regression. It
| definitely doesn't belong in most workplaces.
| yunohn wrote:
| It's easy to choose an example that you don't like. Are
| you sure there are no examples you can agree with?
| disruptalot wrote:
| That's exactly how it should work.
|
| > using the website to display anti-black ideology and
| actively plan rallies to remove my rights.
|
| When it's not a crime and it's completely based on your
| subjective view: you're kidding yourself if you think that
| process is going to be a just measure. Likely, it's just
| going to be a free for all, whoever gets offended at what.
|
| Let me add another colleague to your mix.
|
| Asian guy: I don't agree on these statements. I'm quitting
| if we remove this content.
|
| You see where this is going?
| yunohn wrote:
| Objectively speaking, it's your privilege that makes this
| issue seem subjective enough to dismiss it so.
| username90 wrote:
| What would you say if these grassroots movement talked
| webshots into taking down all BLM sites for promoting an
| officially recognized terrorist organization? Would you
| still be in favor of workplace politics?
|
| Currently you are privileged since the side you like has
| the power. If you aren't fine with the situation if you
| lose that privilege then you aren't fine with workplace
| politics.
| yunohn wrote:
| I don't think the BLM movement is "in power". That seems
| woefully misinformed.
|
| Moreover, BLM and such movements aim to overcome white
| privilege to enable the equal treatment of colored
| people. I can see why this may feel aggressive to a white
| person, and your argument about sides confirms that.
| username90 wrote:
| > I don't think the BLM movement is "in power". That
| seems woefully misinformed.
|
| Then why aren't their webpages being taken down while
| pages from some of the opposite sides are? So to me it is
| pretty obvious that people supporting BLM have more power
| than the people supporting white nationalism.
|
| > Moreover, BLM and such movements aim to overcome white
| privilege to enable the equal treatment of colored
| people. I can see why this may feel aggressive to a white
| person, and your argument about sides confirms that.
|
| I don't even live in the US, nothing the BLM movement
| does affects me. I do know that Trump made it an official
| terrorist organization though, so it would be fairly easy
| to argue for takedown of their sites if you don't like
| them.
| yunohn wrote:
| A white supremacist like Trump classifying an opposing
| movement like BLM as a terrorist organisation, is exactly
| the problem.
| username90 wrote:
| Yes, which is why we shouldn't let companies take down
| websites just based on workers political views, since
| then the BLM sites would likely get taken down if the
| views of their workers were right wing.
| zepto wrote:
| Seems like you are just gaslighting this person rather
| than explaining your position.
| claudeganon wrote:
| > I would expect a government to have proper separation from
| church and state, so why is it weird to want a company to
| separate politics and mission
|
| Because this is a non sequitur? You're making appeals to
| protections enshrined in law to prevent the government from
| limiting the freedom and rights of individuals, when almost no
| such protections exist in the workplace. Why do people organize
| in their workplace? Because there exists no bill of rights for
| workers to prevent equivalent abuses of corporate power and
| hierarchy that are ostensibly so tyrannical when done by the
| government.
|
| A better question would be why America has a two-track system
| of rights, where one must constantly defend their violation
| from the government, but also completely abandon them the
| moment they walk into their workplace.
| adambyrtek wrote:
| > A better question would be why America has a two-track
| system of rights, where one must constantly defend their
| violation from the government, but also completely abandon
| them the moment they walk into their workplace.
|
| One argument could be that it's much easier to change jobs
| than to change citizenship.
| claudeganon wrote:
| This argument doesn't address the discrepancy. "I can move
| from one job, where my boss can fire me for anything I do
| or say arbitrarily to another where my boss can for me for
| anything I do or say arbitrarily" does not explain why
| protection of speech is so important in one context, but
| not the other. The vast majority of people don't rely on
| the government for their immediate material needs, so why
| should they need so much protection from the government as
| opposed to the bosses who have this leverage over them?
| [deleted]
| rubyfan wrote:
| This seems to be more prevalent at companies with younger
| workers and often more associated with tech companies and the
| West Coast (of the US).
| [deleted]
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| The replies to your comment exemplify Coinbase's delicate
| position, or more specifically why you can't be apolitical
| while physically located in a monoculture like the Bay Area.
|
| Outside of the monoculture, it's actually extremely easy to be
| apolitical at work and people seem to get along despite
| extremely different personal views of each other (for example,
| being non-Mormon in Salt Lake City).
| Vosporos wrote:
| > Why is a company wanting to be apolitical is controversial?
|
| The fact that a company can emancipate itself from the
| political scene is nothing but a libertarian fantasy. And the
| fact that professional lobbyists exist show that they _do_
| influence the political life of a country.
| helen___keller wrote:
| My 2c:
|
| * Companies, like the rest of the world, are now
| hyperconnected. We have slack and email and so on. This makes
| it a lot easier for similar interests to connect across a
| massive organization, which is a boon for special interest
| groups, like anime, or magic the gathering. Or politics.
|
| * Companies muscle in on workers' identity. Workers respond to
| work over email/slack during their off hours. Workers pop open
| the laptop at home, even pre-covid. Companies try to justify
| this with a sense of pride, you should be PROUD to work for the
| great conglomerate XYZ. And guess what? If I'm proud to work
| for XYZ, as a worker I'm going to expect a consistent worldview
| that XYZ is aligned with my values. But my values are also tied
| up in my politics, so now I'm expecting my workplace's values
| to be consistent with my politics.
|
| * The simple fact is that many companies are overwhelmingly a
| monoculture in terms of politics. It's easier to make your
| workplace political when 90% or 85% of employees are liberal
| anyways, as opposed to say 60%. This is largely a demographic
| thing, at many companies the target demographic for hiring is a
| strong overlap with certain political ideology (You are looking
| to hire a young, 25 year old computer scientist living in a big
| blue city who graduated from PresigiousUniversity. What
| politics do you think this person likely subscribes to?).
| username90 wrote:
| Cities and people with STEM jobs tend to be right wing in
| Europe though, since you vote right when you earn more and
| cities have more money. So if you intend to be a global
| company you will have a mix of right and left wing opinions.
| At local companies the Engineers I worked with were right
| wing, then when I worked for Google the local engineers were
| still mostly right wing but the company culture was very
| left. Felt very strange, especially since so many concepts
| people take for granted in USA are very different here.
| eeh wrote:
| > Companies muscle in on workers' identity.
|
| Great point. Maybe this is it?
|
| I have been skeptical of work activism, but maybe it makes
| given the size of the lever (vs alternative activism
| options).
| solidasparagus wrote:
| > You are looking to hire a young, 25 year old computer
| scientist living in a big blue city who graduated from
| PresigiousUniversity. What politics do you think this person
| likely subscribes to?
|
| I think people too readily assume that these people are blue,
| but you have to remember that academia (and tech in general)
| tends to have strong social pressure to either be blue or
| hide your political beliefs. There is likely a very large
| contingent of closet republicans.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| It's one thing to be a closet Republican, another thing to
| be against putting up even an anodyne corporate statement
| about BLM/racial intolerance.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| That's doubtful in polarized conditions.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| And we have to remember that even the categories here are
| highly artificial; even people who'd never describe
| themselves as closet Republicans don't necessarily agree
| with whatever specific aspect of politics a company might
| try to target. There are a couple of California ballot
| propositions I have in mind where polling is _very_
| divergent from what you 'd expect reading any kind of
| public discussion about them.
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| Companies are inherently political. If nothing else they
| support capitalism and oppose taxation and worker's rights.
| adamzapasnik wrote:
| I think it used to be like that?
|
| My dad taught me not to talk about politics nor religion in a
| workplace. I think it's for the best.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| I think all of the people (in this thread, and at Coinbase,
| and at Amazon, etc.) could use a reminder that opening the
| door to politics in the workplace includes open support for,
| say, Donald Trump, too.
| hejja wrote:
| in a perfect world it would. but it doesn't.
| sdfqasdghj2 wrote:
| It's sad. We ought to be able to debate important topics
| without people getting upset and emotional and ruining each
| others lives.
| ledauphin wrote:
| this is undoubtedly true, but also undoubtedly easier said
| than done. we don't seem to be wired as a species to have
| difficult conversations without feeling emotions amd having
| those emotions affect our relationships.
| rhino369 wrote:
| You can do that anywhere. Just don't do it with a captive
| audience.
|
| And the people most inclined to discuss politics in the
| work place tend to be the people who take it personally.
| ukd1 wrote:
| I read the original post from Brian as; you can, but at
| work one should work. Coinbase isn't paying folks to debate
| politics, they're paying someone to further the company
| mission.
| trident1000 wrote:
| We essentially have terrorist organizations like the ACLU that
| hound companies until they meet their demands. Thats a primary
| reason why.
| quesera wrote:
| Some people would argue that -- in some exceptional
| circumstances -- claiming "apolitical" is the equivalent of
| Switzerland's "neutrality" in WWII.
| dmos62 wrote:
| If a person refuses to be political (e.g. vote), that's
| stygmatized, because it's irresponsible. The same should hold
| for a group of people (like a company).
| dkural wrote:
| When one guy is hitting another one in the head, a "this is not
| my concern" stance tends to benefit the guy doing the hitting.
| another_sock wrote:
| The West Coast and its inhabitants live in a bit of a unique
| bubble and assume that the rest of the world see things in the
| very progressive manner they do, and expect that companies will
| march in lockstep with this sort of unique bubble. It's a very
| internalized unrecognized sort of expectation, but that's
| because so many companies have accepted these expectations
| completely. The rest of the country doesn't really care about
| this stuff, but media and tech related companies are
| disproportionately west coast so it gives an inaccurate picture
| as to what is going on.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| > " _The West Coast and its inhabitants live in a bit of a
| unique bubble and assume that the rest of the world see
| things in the very progressive manner they do._ "
|
| That's tarring with rather a broad brush. There are a lot of
| old school liberals on the west coast who strongly disapprove
| of the progressives and their behavior, including myself. The
| progressives' "You are either with us or against us" rhetoric
| is diametrically opposed to the liberal "I disapprove of what
| you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say
| it." philosophy.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > There are a lot of old school liberals
|
| It's kind of funny to hear DLC/Clintonian Third Wayists
| described as "old-school liberals", since when they rose to
| dominance "liberal" in American politics meant about what
| "progressive" is used for now and they were very much
| associated with the _conservative_ wing of the Democratic
| Party, with an economic policy that synced up so well with
| that of the Republican Party that the period between their
| rise and the sharp rightward jump of the Republican Party
| that was a response to the resulting shift of the left edge
| of the Overton Window became known as the "neoliberal
| consensus" period in economic policy.
|
| The real old-school liberals _are_ the progressives.
| another_sock wrote:
| Yes and every year those old school liberals get less and
| less, especially on the West Coast, because they are seen
| as being right wing as you can tell by the many new normal
| West Coasters in this thread.
| cashewchoo wrote:
| I work remotely from the midwest for a CA tech company.
|
| I was surprised that other people were surprised that there's
| a confederate flag spray-painted on a car-sized piece of
| corrugated steel that's been beside the interstate (on
| private property) for years now that I see every time I drive
| between two cities.
|
| Similarly the number of confederate flag shirts and, recently
| facemasks.
| swiley wrote:
| This doesn't sound like an apolitical mission to me, in fact it
| sounds like quite the opposite. They're doing their absolute
| best to eliminate potential traitors.
| RIMR wrote:
| Because running a business is a way we participate in society,
| and society is run by politics, so being "apolitical" as a
| company feels like a willful ignoring of the social
| consequences of your business practices.
|
| You cannot separate the business practices of a financial
| institution from politics. It simply isn't possible. To attempt
| to do so is a political statement in an of itself, and quite
| frankly, it isn't a good one.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| Coinbase is not "apolitical". Proof-of-work cryptocurrency is
| an explicitly libertarian political project and an
| environmental disaster.
|
| This is just the boring old dodge that "politics I agree with
| is apolitical, why are you being so controversial!"
| happytoexplain wrote:
| >Why is a company wanting to be apolitical is controversial?
|
| It depends on how extreme the politics of the society are. It
| only sounds like there's an obviously "right" answer to you
| because you're used to living your entire life in a society
| where politics aren't that extreme yet from your point of view.
| But for many other people, the line was crossed in recent
| years.
| dangerface wrote:
| > It depends on how extreme the politics of the society are.
|
| I live in Northern Ireland the politics of my society are
| very extreme when its allowed in the workplace, group A kills
| group B and vice versa.
|
| Calling out the extremists and forcing them to apolitical in
| the work place is necessary to stop them from killing every
| one.
|
| You can argue that this is a call for centrism and the status
| quo and it is, but it makes sense for this to be the status
| quo simply because extremists like to kill anyone that
| doesn't agree with their politics, this is true across
| history, country and race.
|
| There is an obvious right answer because I have seen what
| happens when extremism is made the status quo.
| Reedx wrote:
| > Why is a company wanting to be apolitical is controversial?
|
| It's wild. That was standard not long ago. Most companies, even
| in tech, were apolitical. Maybe there would be some watercooler
| chat near the election with that one coworker who was really
| into politics, but that was about it. People mostly didn't know
| or care what the politics of their coworkers were. If they did,
| it wasn't a big deal and would still be friendly regardless.
|
| But now many are convinced they are warriors in a never-ending
| existential war. Then it's hard to understand why someone isn't
| a warrior.
|
| _" We're about to die! What are you doing, not fighting? You
| must choose a side. You're with us or against us!"_
|
| Normally this happened on a 4 year cadence[1]. Locusts would
| descend to rally the troops, warn of impending doom, have the
| battle (vote), and then go hibernate for a few years. But now
| it's non-stop. The war just never ends. It bleeds into
| everything. Those who choose to not participate in the war or
| don't engage in the approved way are looked at with suspicion,
| accused of being the enemy.
|
| 1. https://benlandautaylor.com/2018/09/22/the-four-year-
| locusts...
| koheripbal wrote:
| Just before the 2016 election, we issued an internal memo
| that political and/or religious conversations were not
| appropriate.
|
| Not a RULE, but guidance that it can be divisive and that
| folks should concentrate on work during work hours, whilst
| physically at work.
|
| One person quit as a result - and, frankly, everyone was
| relieved. She was a hateful person that wouldn't shut up
| about her politics.
|
| I agree - it's crazy that this is controversial. We are a
| much stronger and more unified company as a result of this
| policy.
| hooande wrote:
| The issue here is that the company HAD a political mission, and
| decided to change that. Some employees may have joined
| specifically because of the company's politics and now they can
| leave.
|
| Church and state are separate because you don't get to choose
| your birth citizenship. But you do get to choose where you you
| seek employment. As long as the company is upfront about their
| politics when you take the job, it's up to you to decide to
| work there. ie, don't take a job at a christian bookstore if
| you aren't christian
| geofft wrote:
| Coinbase _is_ a deeply political company already. Here are some
| political claims that they support that are not universally
| agreed upon:
|
| - Cryptocurrencies are good and should be legal.
|
| - Private ownership of unrestricted amounts of capital is good.
|
| - Central banks controlling the money supply are bad.
|
| - The ability to send and receive money across borders and
| avoid capital controls is, in general, good.
|
| - The existence of corporations is good.
|
| - Venture capital is good, as is making money for the stock
| exchange.
|
| - Reporting large amounts of customer information to federal
| tax agencies is bad and should be fought in court.
|
| - Spying on individuals on behalf of governments with poor
| human rights records is bad, and moreover, having supported
| this work makes you ineligible to be an employee. (This is new
| as of March 2019; previously, the company did not have a
| position here.)
|
| Now, these are entirely reasonable positions to take (in the
| sense that they're well within the Overton window, at least in
| the US), but they're absolutely political positions! (If it
| helps, note that the negation of all of these is a political
| claim.)
|
| I'd understand the argument if it's something like "I don't
| want my company to mandate that I support expanded bike lanes
| on Market St." or whatever, but it's very silly to pretend that
| a company doesn't have a mission in the world or that its
| mission doesn't have political aspects. If you don't agree that
| cryptocurrency is making a positive difference in the world,
| why are you even there?
|
| (And even so, I think it would be entirely rational for the
| company to say, "It's okay if individual employees disagree,
| but as a company, expanded bike lanes on Market St. is
| important to our business because it's how half the company
| commutes to work.")
| DSingularity wrote:
| You can't operate in a liberal society (liberal in the sense
| that we favor human liberty and freedom) and demand that your
| employees suppress their opinions. It's a contradiction.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Except that every company that's taken a political stance
| _has_ demanded that their employees suppress their opinions,
| unless those opinions are extreme left-wing opinions.
| klyrs wrote:
| Define "extreme left." Do you mean stalinism or maoism? Are
| these companies in favor of exterminating the aristocracy
| through lethal force? Do you mean marxism? Are these
| companies that are in favor of peacefully gifting their
| workers with the means of production, and equalizing pay
| for all employees? Show me these leftist corporations.
|
| Or are you referring to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and
| subsequent Supreme Court rulings as the "extreme left"?
|
| Or do you mean it in the Fox News sense, where any
| disagreement with the president is "extreme left"?
| username90 wrote:
| Equality of outcome is extreme left, California
| subscribes to it pretty hard. The left we have in Europe
| are much saner.
| klyrs wrote:
| Europe is a pretty diverse legal landscape, but it looks
| like quite a few countries there have had affirmative
| action for over a decade. Is California _extreme_ or is
| it somewhat more progressive? Because I consider Stalin,
| Mao, etc. to be the extreme left and California to be
| extremely conservative by comparison.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action
| username90 wrote:
| There are different kinds of left. California is not
| economically extreme left.
|
| Edit: About Europe, we almost never practice affirmative
| action the same way as US does. It mostly is "If two
| applicants has equal merit you are free to choose the
| disadvantaged one". See this court case for example:
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-47335859
|
| In USA there are many examples of worse students being
| accepted thanks to affirmative action, and it is
| defensible in court.
| klyrs wrote:
| > There are different kinds of left. California is not
| economically extreme left.
|
| I see. This is a confusion of the economic "left/right"
| axis with the social "progressive/regressive" axis.
| Mainstream media does tend to collapse those axes, along
| with the "authoritarian/libertarian" axis, but this is
| intellectual laziness that doesn't even represent
| american bipartisan politics faithfully. We can do
| better.
| username90 wrote:
| Personally I am economically left of California and
| socially right of them. I prefer higher taxes, spend
| those taxes to help the poor get better opportunities,
| and then evaluate based on merit. California instead
| prefer to do lower taxes, let poor suffer and then give
| them bonus points in selection processes.
| wwright wrote:
| I (and many others) are of the opinion that you can't truly be
| apolitical; claiming to be so is its own form of politics (and
| generally one that supports the status quo).
|
| Politics is ultimately about how we engage and collaborate with
| each other as a society, not just which "party" you like. The
| very act of being a company is very relative to the laws and
| regulations your country has, which are of course determined by
| politics.
|
| Coinbase is specifically a company about cryptocurrency. Crypto
| is directly related to a how governments manage their own
| currency, the right to privacy, law circumvention (see Alpha
| Bay), and so on. How can they truly be neutral on all of these
| issues that are directly relevant to the business they do?
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| > claiming to be so is its own form of politics (and
| generally one that supports the status quo).
|
| sure if someone says that they believe drug use should not be
| criminalized but also claim to be apolitical and do nothing
| to help make drug use legal, it follows that they are
| supporting the status quo of actually keeping drug use
| illegal.
|
| However if that status quo is changed by the actions of
| others who do want drug use to be legalized and the
| apolitical person does nothing to try to oppose this new
| status quo it can be reasonably assumed that they were in
| fact apolitical.
|
| Then you might say that their politics is to support the
| Status quo, but that is probably only in regards to the
| things they don't care strongly enough about to do anything
| about one way or another. Which is the case with most people.
|
| Most people throughout history have been apolitical in this
| way - if you give them something to decide regarding an issue
| they have no strong opinions on they will most likely do
| nothing and let the status quo prevail.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| Should toilets be political too? Which would you use?
| marcinzm wrote:
| Toilets are political which is why certain places have
| moved to uni-sex toilets.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| I mean the porcelain friend specifically. Which party
| symbols should it be ordained with?
| shireboy wrote:
| The original post specifically said they would be involved in
| things directly related to their mission. So conceivably they
| would be involved in privacy, currency, etc. What I think
| they are opting out of is the pressure on businesses and
| individuals to support every cause du jur or denounce the
| latest fad outrage.
|
| While you can't be apolitical, you can be measured, polite,
| balanced, and recognize there is an appropriate time and
| place for everything. You can recognize that there is only
| time and energy for so many things. You can also recognize
| that much of politics is manufactured outrage and theater.
| Opting out of all of the daily outrage cycle as a business or
| individual in favor of contemplative attention to things that
| truly matter to you on a 10 to 15 year scale seems like a
| very reasonable approach to me.
|
| Claiming that people doing so "support the status quo" or "if
| you're not with us you're against us" is groupthink and
| coercive at best, and a mob mentality at worst.
| thinkloop wrote:
| When companies say they are being apolitical they mean more
| narrowly political - ignoring as much as possible the things
| that do not affect their core business. Does coinbase have to
| have a declared position for whether there should be a Mexico
| wall, or gun rights, or abortion - not really. What about BLM
| or gay rights? They probably have to have some minimal
| position like "we treat everyone equally", but that's also
| different than donating to the protests or conversely
| declaring support for the police union, etc.
| RestlessMind wrote:
| > How can they truly be neutral on all of these issues that
| are directly relevant to the business they do?
|
| I can see why a company might want to engage in a little bit
| of politics, particularly when it is tied to its very own
| existence. But that doesn't mean it should be engaging in all
| kinds of politics at all the times. So we are talking about
| "truly apolitical" vs "mostly apolitical" vs "not at all
| apolitical".
|
| It seems Coinbase wants to be "mostly apolitical" here.
| chii wrote:
| > you can't truly be apolitical;
|
| that's one of those "you're either with us or against us"
| type of deal - which is not the right way to deal with
| anything imho.
|
| You _can_ be apolitical - as in, you do not let your
| political views affect what you do. You keep your political
| views private. You do not try to change anyone else's
| political views as part of your job.
| dmos62 wrote:
| > not let your political views affect what you do
|
| That's a political stance. As long as you're part of
| society, you'll always have a political stance. That's what
| the other commentor was getting at.
|
| Why would you ever want your views to not influence what
| you do? If not yours, whose perception would you use to
| inform what you do? And why would you want to keep your
| views private?
|
| If you think that your views are so inappropriate or
| unimportant that you can't share them, that's a view in of
| itself and that's what people will see.
|
| > You do not try to change anyone else's political views as
| part of your job
|
| Whether you should try to actively change someone's view is
| a big question. It's a very different question than whether
| or not you should have/share your worldview. Whether you
| like it or not, your views are what they are because of
| others sharing theirs (explicitly or implicitly).
| chii wrote:
| > It's a very different question than whether or not you
| should have/share your worldview.
|
| the very act of sharing your view (implying it's
| unsolicited) is trying to change someone else. Let me use
| as an obnoxious example: vegans trying to sell the idea
| of veganism to non-vegans.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| > that's one of those "you're either with us or against us"
| type of deal
|
| And as the saying goes, if I'm either with you or against
| you, then I'm against you. It doesn't matter what your
| object-level goals or values are, because you have clearly
| stated that you care more about using those goals as a
| pretence to attack anyone who isn't willing to subordinate
| themselves to your particular movement than about actually
| achieving said object-level goals.
| TheCraiggers wrote:
| > that's one of those "you're either with us or against us"
| type of deal - which is not the right way to deal with
| anything imho.
|
| I think it's more like saying you can't truly be unbiased.
| Try as you might, it's arguably impossible to truly be
| unbiased when making decisions an interacting with people.
| Journalists try their best, by presenting "just the facts"
| but even that is tough as which facts you chase down and
| which you deem important is colored by your biases. The
| flavor of words you write is also thus colored. I know they
| go through lots of training to account for this, and the
| truly great journalists we know of are mostly those that
| achieved some measure of success here, thus earning the
| respect of their peers and those that they interview.
|
| So, you can try to be apolitical, but it's perhaps one of
| those impossible goals, because our political views are a
| form of bias, and if highly trained journalists still have
| trouble with this, everyone else will as well.
|
| Companies are change agents, even if it's just to get
| people to use their product over somebody else's. But in
| Coinbase's case, it's more than that. They're trying to
| change the way the world exchanges goods and money. That
| would be a big change to how we all live, and thus it
| touches on politics in many places. As far as Coinbase is
| concerned, this makes sense. Many people are finding that
| just "having a job to collect a paycheck" is not fulfilling
| enough. They want to change the world as part of their jobs
| too. So they find jobs that align with their views. Awesome
| for them.
| luckylion wrote:
| > I think it's more like saying you can't truly be
| unbiased. Try as you might, it's arguably impossible to
| truly be unbiased when making decisions an interacting
| with people.
|
| That's the point of blinding yourself to the people you
| interact with, isn't it? If you pick and choose who to do
| business with, I agree. If you have a website where
| people buy things that get mailed to them, there is no
| biased decision making.
|
| > if highly trained journalists still have trouble with
| this, everyone else will as well
|
| Not sure about this bit. Journalists today (at least for
| Europe) tend to be politically active first, journalists
| second. They view their role as educators of the masses,
| not information presenter, that is, to explain to their
| audience, why they should believe whatever the journalist
| believes, not provide facts to their audience and let
| them decide. I don't see a lot of evidence for individual
| journalists and even less so companies trying to be
| neutral.
|
| I understand the argument to be more that, if you don't
| actively fighting for whatever you believe should be the
| way society operates, then you're implicitly actively
| fighting for whatever way it currently operates. I don't
| agree with that at all. It would include that a doctor
| who saves a person's life without checking whether they
| are for or against some issue would be considered putting
| their weight on one side of the issue. They're not, they
| are doing their job and saving a life.
| TheCraiggers wrote:
| > Not sure about this bit. Journalists today (at least
| for Europe) tend to be politically active first,
| journalists second.
|
| Then that is pretty sad. But, not surprising, and it's
| often the same way across the pond. Take a look at the
| Journalism Code of Ethics [0] and see if your news
| sources abide by it. _This_ is what I hold my reporters
| accountable to, as much as I can.
|
| Needless to say, I disagree that what you describe should
| be considered OK and normal.
|
| > It would include that a doctor who saves a person's
| life without checking whether they are for or against
| some issue would be considered putting their weight on
| one side of the issue. They're not, they are doing their
| job and saving a life.
|
| Agreed. But, have you thought about why the Hippocratic
| Oath exists in the first place? The very point of it is
| to force doctors to consider all lives equal and, to the
| best of their ability, ignore their personal beliefs and
| do their job. It's literally trying to prevent people
| from following their base instincts. Very similar to the
| Journalism Ethics, in a way. That said, it's not perfect;
| there are many studies showing that, statistically,
| minorities have higher rates of mortality and other
| adverse effects in hospitals. That's not causation, but
| it does point to some potential troubling behaviors.
|
| Anyway, I digress. Not all jobs are considered equal,
| which should be obvious. If you only want to save the
| lives of your favorite political party, you should
| _really_ not become a doctor. Or you will hopefully be
| found and reported by other doctors / law enforcement
| and rightly put in prison. Programmers, for better or
| worse, do not have the same issues.
|
| [0] https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp
| luckylion wrote:
| > Programmers, for better or worse, do not have the same
| issues.
|
| I think they do, and we generally expect everyone to
| behave that way, but we're making it very explicit for
| doctors and lawyers and some other professions. Of
| course, it's not as immediate when you're dealing with
| programmers, but viewing the economy not as a total war
| with temporary alliances between buyers and sellers but
| as a way to get things done with the market place being
| the most efficient way to do so (which, I believe, is the
| more appropriate way, and it's also the way we look at it
| from the nation state perspective which will happily
| disable the market place in times of war or catastrophic
| events), discriminating with regards to politics when
| selling your services is throwing sand in the machine.
|
| It's not outlawed for many professions (but usually is
| once you have a monopoly in some location), but it's
| neither wide-spread, nor encouraged or accepted, I
| believe.
| Larrikin wrote:
| It's only possible to believe this if you are in a majority
| with a majority opinion. If this was 60 years ago, during
| Jim Crow, is the apolitical thing for a company to do when
| it comes to their workers? Were companies in the right to
| have separate bathrooms, to hire less or no minorities so
| that they didn't have to maintain separate facilities?
| Saying those acts are ok is a political opinion endorsing
| Jim Crow simply because it was the law.
|
| The entire mission of a company doesn't have to be front
| and center in politics but there is no such thing as being
| apolitical for any company interacting with the world in a
| meaningful way
| michaelt wrote:
| IMHO it's job-dependent.
|
| For example, can you be a gun shop owner without being pro-
| gun? Some would say actions speak louder than words.
|
| On the other hand, if you own a bakery being apolitical is
| a lot simpler. Avoid the Masterpiece Cakeshop case and
| there's as little politics as you'll find anywhere.
| amyjess wrote:
| > For example, can you be a gun shop owner without being
| pro-gun? Some would say actions speak louder than words.
|
| That's a false dichotomy. There are multiple stances on
| guns besides "guns should be completely unregulated" and
| "civilians shouldn't be allowed to own guns".
|
| Working at a gun shop is, for example, very compatible
| with the notion that people should be subject to buying
| background checks before being able to buy a gun. After
| all, it's the brick-and-mortar gun shops who have to
| abide by background checks; the more these shops dominate
| the market, the smaller the market will be for gun shows
| where such background checks aren't required.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| You're repeating a common misunderstanding about gun
| shows here which is that there are different rules for
| gun shows. There aren't. All licensed firearms sellers,
| i.e. all the people with booths, must do all the same
| background checks they would when selling from their
| stores. Meanwhile, all the non-gun-dealers (i.e.
| attendees) follow the same rules they would any other
| time of the year, which is that private-party
| transactions don't require background checks in some
| states. But that would be the same as if they sold a gun
| on Facebook or whatever. The dealers at the gun show are
| all doing the background checks as required by federal
| law (and additionally many states have more checks and/or
| waiting periods that also must be obeyed).
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| Mormons can own liquor stores but generally Mormons are
| thought of as being against alcohol.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| A counterexample is mysql: its licensing scheme combines
| both proprietary and copyleft ideas.
| saalweachter wrote:
| I don't know what political issues affect bakeries today,
| but infamously, being any sort of consumer business in
| the US (particularly in the South) in the 1950s and 1960s
| was extremely political.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >For example, can you be a gun shop owner without being
| pro-gun
|
| What do you mean "pro-gun"?
|
| You're fundamentally trying to reduce something that's a
| range to a binary and you're gonna lose a lot of accuracy
| doing that.
|
| There's lots of gun shops owned by fudds who support
| various things from the "anti gun" wish list. Just by
| virtue of being older the "people who own gun shops"
| demographic is likely less extreme on the pro-gun
| spectrum than the average person on the pro-gun spectrum.
|
| Obviously this is gonna generalize pretty well to other
| issues. Anyone running an abortion clinic is gonna be
| pro-life to some extend but selling the service doesn't
| necessarily mean they're at the super extreme end of it.
| frob wrote:
| It's funny you bring up bakeries. In 1905, the Supreme
| Court ruled that a NY law limiting daily working hours
| for bakers was unconstitutional under the 14th amendment
| (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lochner_v._New_York).
| The point of the law was to keep overworked and tired
| bakers from making a mistake and blowing the place up
| (aerated flour is quite the accelerant). This ruling
| began the era of the Lochner court during which many of
| the labor protections we take for granted like child-
| labor laws and overtime protection were struck down under
| the 14th. Fortunately, we have since pivoted, but that
| bakery owner's seemingly benign decision to work his
| employees a bit harder had massive political
| ramifications for years.
|
| It's not as easy as one thinks to just steer clear of
| politics. Just about everything has an impact.
| pythonaut_16 wrote:
| One might make the argument for related vs unrelated
| politics. (Though the line between what's related and
| unrelated is fairly subjective)
|
| A bakery is obviously going to have an interest in
| politics directly related to operating a bakery and the
| employment laws affecting it. A bakery might reasonably
| avoid political stances on something unrelated, such as
| nuclear power, foreign conflicts, etc.
| seneca wrote:
| The announcement from Coinbase specifically says that
| issues concerning working conditions are in bounds:
|
| > Of course, employees should always feel free to
| advocate around issues of pay, conditions of employment,
| or violations of law, for instance. Hopefully the above
| sets some clear guidelines.
| cupofjoakim wrote:
| This is a bit off topic from the original discussion, but
| I think you definitely can be a gun shop owner and be
| against guns at the same time, albeit still in a
| political sense. Having a gun shop provides you with the
| best possible venue for educating your customers about
| guns "from the inside", hence being able to push your
| agenda in the long term.
|
| That being said, running a gun shop is definitely a
| political statement. I guess you could control what you
| sell as well, like "I only sell hunting rifles - for
| hunting" and refusing to sell hand guns or automatic
| rifles. Sorry for the example of guns, I'm swedish and
| have no insight in what is commonplace in US gun stores.
| astrea wrote:
| But owning a gun shop would by its very nature makes you
| pro-gun from a conflict of interest standpoint. Your very
| livelihood would require that the laws stay lax. It might
| even require that you actively advocate against any
| proposed legislation that might damage your business. To
| remain apolitical or even anti-gun would be failing your
| duties to your family, employees, and shareholders (if
| you have any) to grow and sustain the business and keep
| them fed, housed, employed, and paid.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > But owning a gun shop would by its very nature makes
| you pro-gun from a conflict of interest standpoint.
|
| No it most certainly doesn't. A person can hold the
| opinion that many people can engage in some activity
| responsibly, while not everyone can.
|
| Being a gun store owner that favors regulation on the
| ownership of guns is not all that different from a beer
| brewer that favors regulation of drinking age or laws
| against operating vehicles while inebriated.
|
| Ignoring morality for a moment, there's a business
| argument in there too. A bunch of drunk hooligans causing
| car accidents is bad for business. Anyone in the business
| of dealing in "harmful" products is aware of potential
| public backlash from irresponsible people and will seek
| to mitigate that in some form.
| astrea wrote:
| Sure, I suppose our disconnect comes from two things: 1.
| The laws I imagined when I was drafting my comment were
| more akin to taking away guns completely, not something
| like more stringent background checks or cool down
| periods. That was my mistake 2. I personally believe the
| dollar has more political power than any vote by way of
| directly enabling or disabling the ability to act in any
| manner. In that regard, I feel that businesses are
| political in, for example, the supply chain activities
| (environmental impact, labor practices, etc) that they
| choose to fund. Merely by existing and directing money
| towards real world consequences, a business is political.
| Mxs2000 wrote:
| "Hunting" rifles and semi-automatic rifles that are
| erroneously referred to as "assault rifles" are
| functionally the same. Almost nowhere can you readily buy
| automatic rifles.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Lots of hunting rifles have an internal magazine with a
| smallish fixed capacity.
|
| That's functionally quite different from a rifle with
| easily swapped external magazines with high capacity.
|
| Chambering also matters a little bit. Weapons with a
| military lineage tend to have smaller rounds than rifles
| for big game. The smaller rounds make it easier to pack
| large amounts of ammunition and reduce fatigue.
|
| Of course assault rifle is a meaningless term, but that's
| a result of many efforts to warp the discourse and not
| because the weapons used for war are literally the same
| as a weapon that is sufficient for hunting.
| Loughla wrote:
| Not to dive too far into the politics or semantics of
| this, but I feel like OP meant "hunting" rifles to mean
| "bolt-action" or "single-shot" type rifles.
|
| Also, OP didn't actually say anything about semi-
| automatic rifles, at all. So it's really a nothing
| statement to make that distinction; I guess I took the
| bait, though.
|
| For most people, the debate about "assault rifles" seems
| to be a misunderstanding about the language being used by
| the other side. For people who label semi-automatic
| rifles as "assault rifles", they think of hunting rifles
| as small capacity, bolt-action rifles. Whereas folks like
| you do not make that distinction.
|
| It's so weird to see that conversation play out, and
| realize that neither side understands the most basic
| definitions of the other. It's super common in gun
| debates. And very, genuinely strange.
| leetcrew wrote:
| > It's so weird to see that conversation play out, and
| realize that neither side understands the most basic
| definitions of the other. It's super common in gun
| debates. And very, genuinely strange.
|
| it's not symmetrical that way. the way gun control
| advocates use "assault rifle" is usually pretty vague. I
| have friends who would call a semi-automatic MP5 an
| "assault rifle". to a gun enthusiast, an "assault rifle"
| is a specific type of gun that is quite difficult to
| legally own as a civilian. I suspect 2A folks understand
| what the other side means by "assault rifle" (as well as
| they do themselves, at least), but choose not to give it
| the dignity of acknowledgement.
|
| the inverse occurs in discussions about racism. the left
| uses "racism" to mean "power + prejudice", while the
| right understands it simply as "discrimination on the
| basis of race". folks on the right don't necessarily
| understand through context which definition is being used
| (if they're even aware of the "power + prejudice"
| definition). folks on the left absolutely understand the
| source of confusion, but pretend they don't to leave
| their interlocutors looking stupid.
|
| in both cases, you essentially have one side mocking the
| other for not having done their homework. not unfair imo,
| but probably not the most productive way to have the
| discussion.
| skinkestek wrote:
| To be honest, in the second case I refuse to acknowledge
| because it is newspeak: redefinition of words to mean
| whatever benefits the party now. (it has been a few years
| since I read 1984, but I think I remember this
| correctly.)
|
| It is immediately clear even as a foreigner what racism
| really means and whoever tries to redefine it as a
| general slur deserves to be called out for it, just in
| the same way as they try to redefine assault rifle to
| mean any scary looking gun.
|
| That said, have my vote: you seem reasonable.
| leetcrew wrote:
| I can see why you would feel that way, but I don't think
| it's malicious usually.
|
| the way I look at it is the "power + privilege"
| definition comes from "racism" as an academic term of
| art, a meaning that everyone engaged in a certain kind of
| study/research agrees on. a comparable example from CS
| would be "syntax" vs "semantics". when people scold
| someone for arguing over semantics, they mean something
| more similar to the CS definition of "syntax". if you, a
| CS person, interpret them using the CS definition of
| "semantics", it would sound quite ridiculous. I often see
| left-leaning people (esp college educated) using certain
| words with their academic meanings. they're not being
| deliberately misleading, but they don't always do a good
| job of handling the confusion that ensues when addressing
| a broader audience.
| wavefunction wrote:
| Assault rifles are marketed as "sporting" rifles by their
| manufacturers. My rifle doesn't accept detachable
| magazines which is one of the features of
| assault/sporting rifles.
| falcor84 wrote:
| I'm not one of them myself, but I know people who would
| argue that the ubiquity of sugary foods in our diets is a
| bigger net negative to society than guns.
| [deleted]
| hirundo wrote:
| It's an easy case to make:
|
| Causes of death (U.S., approx., annually) strongly
| related to metabolic health which is strongly affected by
| diet:
|
| Heart disease: 635k, Cancer: 598k, Stroke: 142k,
| Alzheimer's: 116k, Kidney disease: 50k
|
| Causes of death related to guns:
|
| Suicide: 21k, Homicide: 11k, Accident/Negligence: 500
| leetcrew wrote:
| I don't totally disagree, but you have to go a little
| further to really make the point. excess sugar seems to
| cause more deaths than guns, but how many years does it
| take off of people's lifespan? a poor diet killing
| someone at 65 instead of 78 is not quite as bad as a
| healthy 20yo being shot dead in an instant. to go even
| further, what's the cumulative impact to quality of life,
| even if one does live to a ripe old age?
| RIMR wrote:
| There's still plenty of room for nuance.
|
| As an example: I strongly oppose oil pipelines, but a
| couple of years ago I had to assist with emergency network
| maintenance on a very large, very controversial pipeline
| that I do not like at all. My job required me to do what I
| was hired to do, and I didn't let my politics get into the
| way. The issue was resolved in a couple of hours, and I
| returned back to the projects I was working on for other
| customers.
|
| But we still had a conversation at our company about what
| it means to support customers that we were uncomfortable
| with, and we ultimately decided that the views of employees
| should help guide how we conduct ourselves as a business.
| That if we noticed that our customers are doing harm, and
| we believe ourselves to be contributing to the harm, we
| should voice our concern and decide if we are operating
| morally and ethically.
|
| The pipeline was whitelisted, because we don't actually
| help build it on native land, and we don't help drill the
| oil out of the Earth. We only help keep the sensors
| working, and those ultimately exist to keep the pipeline
| from failing and doing damage.
|
| But we have preemptively decided that there are certain
| businesses that could use our services to contribute to
| harm, and so we have a process for keeping ourselves in
| check.
|
| I worry about "apolitical" companies, as they have decided
| that they no longer care about judging the moral or ethical
| issues surrounding their business decisions, and have
| instead decided to operate entirely based on what is legal.
|
| And it goes without saying that acting in accordance with
| the law is not the same as acting morally and ethically.
| iovrthoughtthis wrote:
| You can be apolitical in that you are not interested in
| politics.
|
| But:
|
| 1. Doing so is a political decision. 2. Your views shape
| your perspective and there will be actions and omissions
| that you take that impact politics in ways that you are
| unaware of.
| phpnode wrote:
| If everything is political then nothing is political and
| the term loses all meaning
| iovrthoughtthis wrote:
| Perhaps that is because, in this instance the term
| "political" has 2 meanings which we need to tease out to
| see why your statement is false.
|
| 1. Political intent - acting or omitting to act because
| of a political view point. 2. Political outcomes - the
| results of actions or omissions to act which impact
| politics.
|
| I guess my point is that your actions and omissions have
| political outcomes whether you want them to or not.
|
| We should also agree what "politics" means. I'm not
| simply referring to the science of government but to the
| decisions around the distribution of power, resources and
| status in groups of people.
| fwn wrote:
| > I guess my point is that your actions and omissions
| have political outcomes whether you want them to or not.
|
| It does not even stop there. If we choose to understand
| what's political in this way everything that humans
| choose to relate to (even things that do not exist beyond
| human imagination) have, of course, probably some
| influence on political outcomes.
|
| Rain, an escaped alligator from the local zoo, the color
| of a button in a web form, etc.
|
| I think that this second idea of what's political is
| merely the realization that we can choose to view
| everything according to it's political impact. Like a
| pair of glasses we might wear or might want others to
| wear.
|
| ...to stick with my example: One might end up making a
| long term study on how news about escaped zoo animals
| affect election outcomes. That might lead to surprising
| results. It's just not always guaranteed to be a very
| productive use of time.
|
| I think there's probably a healthy middle ground here.
| It's not hard to argue that there's some reasonable moral
| expectations regarding company decision making. Like,
| don't construct gas chambers. (Local example from my
| German home region.)
|
| On the other side it's easy to see that insisting on
| questioning every minor decision will lead to almost
| instant gridlock.
|
| That's why I think that both radical positions are pretty
| hard to defend. A better society might hide behind
| pragmatic decision making with some reasonable, probably
| even academically shallow moral questioning of ones own
| actions. Not in corporate apathy or zealotry.
| adamsea wrote:
| You're constructing a hypothetical "what-if" that
| sometimes _could_ be true, but is not _guaranteed_ to be
| true.
|
| I could just as well say "no one should ever argue
| anything because then people could argue about every
| little thing and it would be impossible to do anything at
| all."
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I don't think it's a hypothetical. Overpoliticization is
| already at this point. There was a week or so at my
| company where a slack bot would automatically scold us
| for not being inclusive if we used the word "guys".
| adamsea wrote:
| What is the situation at your company currently?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| There's still a soft ban on some terms like "slave",
| "whitelist", etc., but "guys" is allowed again.
| iovrthoughtthis wrote:
| What is your point?
| fwn wrote:
| My point is your parent is right and you are wrong.
|
| Artificially extending what's seen as political to excess
| is a pointless exercise that removes all meaning and
| usefulness from the concept.
|
| That's bad because a shared understanding of some
| political sphere (which comes into existence through its
| boundaries) is really important for democratic discourse.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| That sounds nice, but how, and as importantly _who_
| decides what those boundaries are?
| [deleted]
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| You can have political stance, you just don't need to put
| it everywhere.
| iovrthoughtthis wrote:
| Sure but you can't help the fact that your actions and
| omissions to act have political outcomes.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| People do make big sacrifices when they work for an
| employer. They literally sell a sizable fraction of their
| lives which they could spend doing something else.
| m12k wrote:
| That's an easy stance to have just as long as nobody is
| trying to politicize your gender, sexuality, skin color,
| ethnicity or other things that you literally can't do
| anything about or go anywhere without. Your skin color is
| either white or "political". Your gender is either male
| or "political". Your sexuality is either straight or
| "political". If you are not in the group that is
| protected under the status quo, then being asked to not
| "politicize everything" is the same as being asked to
| accept being stepped on. They didn't pick this fight, the
| people that decided to politicize their very person did.
| derefr wrote:
| I think you and at least the person you're responding to
| are using different meanings of "political" here.
|
| When the people in this thread are arguing for being
| apolitical, they're arguing for companies not being
| involved in seeking to lobby for change in _formal,
| legislated_ power structures. They're not arguing for
| companies to not take a stance in _cultural_ power
| imbalances, because to them, power imbalances enforced by
| a government and power imbalances enforced only by social
| norms are _not the same thing_ , and only the former is
| actually covered by the term "politics", i.e. _the thing
| that politicians do for their job_. The latter, in most
| countries, is usually just called _social_ -- and there's
| nobody arguing that companies should avoid taking
| _social_ stances.
|
| Forming a company to do something is inherently a
| _social_ stance -- a stance in any culture-wars that
| might be shifted by the product or service the company
| provides. But forming a company to do something _isn't_
| inherently a _political_ stance. For a company to take a
| political stance, someone from the company would need to
| actually talk to a politician at some point, _in their
| capacity as_ a representative of a company -- i.e. to do
| the thing we call "lobbying."
|
| Tangent: associating "politics" with attention paid to
| _cultural, non-legislated_ power imbalances, is really
| mostly a US thing. I think this _might_ be because most
| other developed, democratic countries have a lot fewer
| such _cultural, non-legislated_ power imbalances; for
| painful historically-segregationist reasons, their entire
| populations are mostly formed out of what in the US would
| be considered a single mostly-uniform voting bloc. And so
| _politicians_ in most countries, can't really base their
| platforms on the _cultural_ stances of any particular
| bloc -- there's not enough variation in such stances that
| highlighting one would win you any points.
|
| The US is unique in that it ended up as one country
| composed of many extremely-divergent blocs, but with
| there being basically no _formally-recognized,
| legislated_ divisions between most such groups+. Compare
| to all-of-Europe or all-of-Asia (which are the most
| sensible comparisons, given the land areas involved): the
| people within those _continents_ have long ago assorted
| into relatively-like-thinking groups, splitting off into
| their own smaller countries, historically not granting
| citizenship to those who are "not like them", and so
| becoming each much more internally-uniform in both makeup
| and viewpoints. (And then, if one of those countries went
| on to conquer the other, the introduced power-imbalance
| would be a formal, political one, with real legislation
| -- the sort of thing you do "politics" about --
| determining the relative power of the two sub-nations
| within the new merged nation.)
|
| + The US _does_ have one formally-recognized, legislated
| division, where both sides explicitly sit at a
| negotiating table within government: that division being
| the one between native /indigenous Americans and
| N-generations-naturalized-immigrant Americans. And guess
| which group in the US _isn't_ heavily invested in the
| culture war? That's right, the native population. Because
| they form a _politically_ distinct group -- effectively
| an annexed nation, as above -- whose problems are raised
| to the level of _actual_ politics, rather than social
| debate.
| iovrthoughtthis wrote:
| Yes, you're right, we're using somewhat different
| definitions interchangeably.
|
| No, I think that many are arguing for companies not to
| take a stance in cultural as well as legislative power
| balances. (I would argue that legislative power
| structures and cultural power structure are not so easily
| separated, as they inform each other).
|
| Both concepts are covered by the term "politics". The
| colloquial "office politics" is just such an example of
| that.
|
| To sum up, I appreciate the direction you took to uncover
| the crux of disagreements that ate going on but I feel
| that your analysis is flawed because you assert that the
| issue is cut down a particular line (which I believe it
| is not) and then invalidate the opposing half through a
| projected misuse of the term "political" (when it is in-
| fact mot a misuse of the term "politial").
|
| To your aside: I would hesitate to say that this is a
| uniquely US thing. Womens rights would appear, to my
| relatively lay self, to still be a prevalent source of
| cultural and legislative power imbalance in many
| countries and blocs across the world.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| The only people who are actually in career (and sometimes
| physical) danger based on their political views in
| America right now are right-wing Trump supporters.
| koheripbal wrote:
| It's very destructive to discourse to force people to
| polarize to one side or another. Most people when
| intimidated to "choose sides" will choose the side of the
| person NOT trying to pressure them into taking sides.
|
| To give you an idea of the types of historical figures
| that used the "you're either with us or against us" most
| famously...
|
| Benito Mussolini
|
| Vladimir Lenin
|
| George W Bush after 9/11
|
| Recep Erdogan
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27re_either_with_us,_or
| _ag...
| pjc50 wrote:
| It's also kind of destructive to say that people you
| disagree with are like Mussolini, but here we are.
| iovrthoughtthis wrote:
| You are mischaracterising the point and assuming bad
| intent.
|
| What I am saying is that your actions and omissions have
| political outcomes whether you want them to or not.
| refurb wrote:
| Right, and the person you're replying to is stating that
| many questionable political leaders have used that same
| argument to bully people into submission.
| [deleted]
| ecocentrik wrote:
| Taking a non binary position is still a position.
| Ignoring the divisive nature of political discourse
| doesn't keep one from having to deal with the political
| and economic reality that it's creating for everyone.
| Crypto itself is fairly heavily married to libertarian
| politics which most now see as the gateway to the
| unfairness->nihilism dialogue being promoted by the right
| as a cover for their political machinations.
|
| Crypto is also very capable of moving huge amounts of
| money from hostile foreign nations to disruptive factions
| anywhere in the world. Claiming libertarian alliances
| could be an easy cover for those kinds of activities.
| That whole space has been a cesspool.
| baron_harkonnen wrote:
| You really don't see the irony that you believe your
| side, what you currently view as "neutral" is so
| absolutely unquestionable that any one who critiques it
| should be silenced?
|
| You're not even allowing for the idea of opposition to
| exist which is a radical view pretty similar to the ones
| held by all the people you have mentioned.
| dangerface wrote:
| You're not even allowing for the idea of opposition to
| exist which is a radical view pretty similar to the ones
| held by all the people you have mentioned.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| No one is saying opposition to the so called status quo
| should be silenced. Simply that political advocacy may be
| outside the scope of your role as an employee for your
| company.
| [deleted]
| mint2 wrote:
| You seem to be arguing anyone who is political is either
| for or against every political issue if they aren't
| allowed to claim to be neutral in general.
|
| But to people who are arguing that being "neutral" is
| actually a political stance and usually supporting of the
| status quo, you try to say they're tantamount to
| Mussolini.
|
| Really? Someone disagrees with you so your go to response
| is to bring up Mussolini?
| bluntfang wrote:
| >It's very destructive to discourse to force people to
| polarize to one side or another.
|
| Do you mind quoting the GP on where you feel like he's
| trying to force people to polarize and why that makes you
| feel that way?
|
| edit: Could those downvoting me please make an effort to
| help me understand parent comment's viewpoint instead of
| making low effort downvotes? I really don't feel like
| asking for clarification on something warrants a downvote
| without response.
| baron_harkonnen wrote:
| The view you just described is active support for the
| status quo.
|
| One fairly non-controversial part of the status quo right
| now is our dependence on fossil fuels and co2 emissions to
| keep our economy running.
|
| Saying "I'll keep my views private" means I'm giving an
| okay to what's happening now. If every individual shares
| the thinking at every company then it is impossible to even
| imagine how the most catastrophic climate change can be
| avoided.
|
| Beyond even this example, it's is politically naive to
| believe there is some "normal". The status quo today is the
| politics of the current dominant power (which is largely
| market forces). Agreeing to be "apolitical" is actively
| support of this system. Your view is the one that is
| strongly "with us or against us" in that any opinion other
| than the dominant political ideology is supposed to be
| silenced at work.
|
| "Just do you job and don't voice contrary opinions" is a
| pretty radical political opinion if you ask me, so your
| definition of "apolitical" is only "A"-political because
| you are so intensely in opposition to non-status quo
| beliefs that you disregard them completely.
| specialp wrote:
| Perhaps I want the status quo at my job. If I worked
| somewhere truly objectionable I would quit working there
| and rally against it in my own time. I get paid to
| produce services that we sell. I don't get paid to change
| the world as powerful as we'd like to think we are. Also
| I don't expect my employer to pay me to be an activist
| unless they really wanted to. I have every other hour
| than the 40 I work to do whatever I want.
|
| I admire people that are willing to put in the time to
| advocate what they believe is right and just. And they
| are free to do that whether I agree with them or disagree
| with them. I just don't want to be at work where just
| coming in and wanting to do your job is considered
| insufficient and you have to be saving the world somehow.
| That doesn't mean that I disagree with the cause or won't
| contribute in my own time. I just want us working on the
| goal for our company. It could work both ways. Like what
| if an oil company gave you days off to counter protest at
| climate change events? If you did not attend, it would be
| questionable and perhaps ruin your career. So I think as
| a whole we support activism because it is the activism we
| like but it might not always be that way.
| rbecker wrote:
| > The view you just described is active support for the
| status quo. [..] fossil fuels and co2 emissions to keep
| our economy running.
|
| So there's really no difference between doing nothing,
| and donating to FUD campaigns against climate science?
| They're both equally _active_ in their support for fossil
| fuels, both equally "apolitical"? Or have you diluted
| the term "apolitical" to the point of meaninglessness, if
| it can describe such wildly different behavior?
|
| Would you describe yourself as "actively supporting" Kony
| (or some other, similar warlord)?
| adamsea wrote:
| No one said _equally_ active.
|
| This is an extreme example but imagine someone knocks on
| your door and says "help, the secret police are after
| me."
|
| You don't help them, and, you don't turn them in.
| flyingfences wrote:
| > The view you just described is active support for the
| status quo.
|
| A passive stance is, by definition, not active support
| for anything.
|
| Coinbase is actively working on financial infrastructure.
| That's what they "actively" do.
|
| > Saying "I'll keep my views private" means I'm giving an
| okay to what's happening now.
|
| No, it means that what's happening now is, while
| certainly important to many employees as people, not a
| part of or in any way related to the company's business.
| glenda wrote:
| The financial infrastructure that Coinbase is working on
| brushes up against the lines drawn by the law in many
| countries. Working with Bitcoin could be seen as a
| somewhat political act in itself.
| mc32 wrote:
| No I don't think so. Upper management yes. Not rank and
| file. It's like if the company vision failed and their
| next big product fails. That's on management but not on
| the rank and file.
| flyingfences wrote:
| Yes, it would be a necessarily political act in direct
| furtherance of the company's mission, not a misdirection
| of finite resources and effort.
| tikititaki wrote:
| > A passive stance is, by definition, not active support
| for anything
|
| You are sitting at a bus stop and you see a man having a
| heart attack in front of you with nobody else around. If
| you call the authorities and send for an ambulance, you
| will save his life. If you don't, he will die.
|
| Whether you just passively sit there and wait for the
| bus, or whether you take action to save the man's life,
| you are making a decision and that decision will have
| consequences.
|
| There is no such thing as being apolitical. Not making a
| choice is making a choice.
| winston_smith wrote:
| The reason the word 'political' exists is that some
| things are very political and many things aren't. To be
| political in your example would be to base your decision
| to call an ambulance on whether the victim is wearing a
| maga hat or blm shirt. To be apolitical is to set aside
| your and their views of government and focus on the thing
| at hand that has very little to do with government, which
| is that someone is dying and you can save them with a
| phone call.
| baron_harkonnen wrote:
| > A passive stance is, by definition, not active support
| for anything.
|
| Passive support for the status quo is that we all have to
| work and survive in this world. If you have to work for
| an airline to live, but hate what co2 emissions is doing
| for this world, you are passively supporting the
| currently political narrative.
|
| Insisting that any belief that is non-status quo be
| silenced is active political action. You can pretend that
| it's passive, but that is just a cowardly way of
| abdicating political responsibility.
| [deleted]
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| "Silenced" strikes me as a uselessly broad category. If I
| tell my friends to stop yelling about politics because
| we're trying to have a nice dinner, that isn't an active
| political action.
| joyeuse6701 wrote:
| So, if I tell you about the issues of South African
| droughts in Capetown and now that you know this but
| haven't done anything about it and any excuse you give me
| like 'I don't live there' or 'I don't have the time' or
| 'I don't have the money', don't those all fall under 'we
| all have to work and survive' and thus you're passively
| supporting the status quo of bad things?
|
| I think the next step is then I can assail you with facts
| of every bad thing going on in this world and if you do
| nothing about it, you're cowardly abdicating your
| political responsibility, neh?
|
| I might go a step further with your position and say that
| silence/speaking out are really two sides of the same
| coin. After all, silence and 'talk' is cheap. If you
| really want to fight the status quo you ought to commit
| your life and the majority of your money to the causes
| you believe in.
| baron_harkonnen wrote:
| > thus you're passively supporting the status quo of bad
| things?
|
| Absolutely, as a relatively well-off Westerner, me and my
| way of life absolutely are the direct and indirect cause
| of a lot of violence and harm around the world. I
| likewise creates a lot of CO2. Filling up my gas tank
| causes a lot of bloodshed. Doing this things is a part of
| the life I am used to, but absolutely yes I am passively
| supporting these things.
|
| An activist against these things will likely take active
| steps to resist this passive support.
|
| > if you do nothing about it, you're cowardly abdicating
| your political responsibility, neh?
|
| No. My point is precisely if I tell you "we don't talk
| about those things, it's not polite, I want this to be an
| apolitical statement" that I am switching from passively
| supporting the status quo to actively. But by claiming
| that this is somehow "apolitical" that is the cowardly
| abdication of political responsibility. What I mean here
| is being responsible for your political choices.
|
| Saying that "wow I do passively contribute to co2
| emissions, I don't know what to do about it but I don't
| like it." is taking political responsibility. Say "don't
| talk about that at work!" and claiming your taking the
| neutral ground is abdicating that responsibility.
|
| > If you really want to fight the status quo you ought to
| commit your life and the majority of your money to the
| causes you believe in.
|
| This is literally the definition of activism, and I of
| course support it. But the source of all activism is
| 'talk', which is not a cheap as you make it out to be.
| People who 'talk' about unions at Google tend to lose
| jobs. People who 'talk' about questionable legal
| practices at their company tend to lose jobs. And 'talk'
| is the seed of activism.
| throwaways885 wrote:
| > People who 'talk' about unions at Google tend to lose
| jobs.
|
| Let's just not let facts get in the way of feelings, eh?
| winston_smith wrote:
| If I followed you around at work all day pestering you
| about obscure political issues irrelevant to your job,
| you wouldn't be able to get any work done.
| davorak wrote:
| Sure but I have not seen anyone advocating for that in
| this thread.
| chii wrote:
| > If you have to work for an airline to live, but hate
| what co2 emissions is doing for this world, you are
| passively supporting the currently political narrative.
|
| no that's just surviving. It's not politically supporting
| "the status quo".
|
| > abdicating political responsibility.
|
| implying that everyone _has_ to have some political
| responsibility.
|
| Not everyone cares enough - they believe climate change,
| but they also don't want to expend energy fighting it -
| that' snot a political stance. It sucks, but that's the
| majority of people.
| sagichmal wrote:
| Yes: everyone in a society necessarily has political
| responsibility.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| Being apolitical at work is not active support for the
| status quo. It's simply not using your role as an
| employee for your company as a vehicle to advance your
| political agenda. An agenda which is most likely
| irrelevant to the mission of your company.
|
| You can be apolitical at work while still opposing the so
| called status quo with your vote. Or you can oppose the
| status quo in an explicitly political organization
| outside of your job.
| baron_harkonnen wrote:
| > your political agenda
|
| And the alternative is the company's political agenda. So
| you are saying we must all, 8+ hours a day, support our
| employers political agenda, and then in the time
| remaining we can try to counteract that a bit.
|
| If you think political action begins and ends at the vote
| then you have a lot to learn about the nature of politics
| in practice.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| You aren't being paid to promote your political agenda,
| you are being paid to perform your function as an
| employee. If you don't support your company's agenda, why
| would you work there?
| ptd wrote:
| Usually money.
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| If you feel like a change should be made at a company
| you'd probably advocate for it.
|
| You just believe that 'politics' is outside the scope of
| the company. Other's believe that it is not.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| > You just believe that 'politics' is outside the scope
| of the company. Other's believe that it is not.
|
| I believe this is a strawman. The issue at hand is
| political issues that are explicitly irrelevant to the
| mission of the company.
|
| Issues that are relevant to the company should be
| discussed and potentially acted upon, if that furthers
| the agenda of the company (and not just some irrelevant
| political agenda that you might be passionate about).
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| I have seen companies claim that the things that their
| customers do with their product is not their
| responsibility. They have claimed that they are right to
| ignore that issue because they believe it is "political".
|
| Naming something as political can be used to shutdown
| conversation that can and should be happening in a
| company.
|
| Let's get concrete with this:
|
| Do you feel like a soft drink maker has an obligation to
| disengage with countries that have set up systemic
| discrimination and regularly violate human rights
| conventions?
|
| It really doesn't seem within the mission of providing
| the world with sugary carbonated water.
|
| It's hard to imagine cutting ties with a country due to
| disagreement with how they treat their population as non-
| political.
|
| And yet 34 years ago this happened:
|
| https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-
| xpm-1986-09-18-mn-11241-...
|
| But wait you say: it's just a prudent business decision
| because the economics were against them and it was a "PR"
| win.
|
| It doesn't matter. It's political.
|
| This is an inherently political statement:
|
| "Our decision to complete the process of disinvestment is
| a statement of our opposition to apartheid and of our
| support for the economic aspirations of black South
| Africans." -Donald R. Keough
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| That was a decision that the leadership of that company
| made. I don't see how that justifies employees bringing
| their irrelevant politics into an environment.
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| Employees were publicly advocating for boycotts and
| performing strikes at the time.
|
| https://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1982/07/cok
| e.h...
|
| EDIT: why did you assume it was a decision made solely by
| leadership and that employees or other stakeholders did
| not have a publicly held opinion?
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| > why did you assume it was a decision made solely by
| leadership and that employees or other stakeholders did
| not have a publicly held opinion?
|
| Was my assumption wrong? Did the leadership of that
| company not make that decision?
| baron_harkonnen wrote:
| You honestly don't see how what you're describing is a
| fairly radical political opinion? You are now arguing
| that you should choose your means of survival as a
| political statement. If you don't lock-step agree with
| the politics of tech companies in general, you should
| find a lower salary someplace else that agrees more with
| your political beliefs.
|
| I would love if people who are privacy advocates could
| get facebook salaries working for the EFF.
|
| It looks like what you are advocating here is that not
| only should you silence non-status quo opinions, but your
| income should strongly correlated with your alignment
| with dominant political powers.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| If you think that politics is an overriding consideration
| at all times - that every hour you spend working for
| someone is an hour spent supporting their political
| agenda - I don't think you have any choice but to choose
| your means of survival as a political statement. I agree
| that this is a pretty bad outcome, which is why I'd
| encourage you not to embrace such totalizing views of
| politics.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| The premise of your argument is that you have no choice
| in your employment, which is false. There are hundreds of
| tech companies to work for, if not thousands.
|
| No one is forcing climate change activists to work for
| oil companies. As a corollary it would be absurd for a
| climate change activist to argue that oil companies must
| employ them to allow their companies to be destroyed from
| the inside out.
|
| I'm simply saying your employer does not pay you to
| advance any agenda other than their own and that using
| your employer's time to advance a political agenda
| irrelevant to theirs is theft, for lack of a better term.
| chii wrote:
| > choose your means of survival as a political
| statement...[or] find a lower salary someplace else that
| agrees more with your political beliefs.
|
| or, compare how much you like a higher salary, vs a
| company that agrees with your political views. And choose
| appropriately.
|
| What's not appropriate is to choose the company with the
| highest salary, but whose owner's political views differ
| from your own, and then try to change that to something
| more suitable to your own. Or use such a position as
| leverage to push your own political views to a wider
| audience than you could on your own.
| sagichmal wrote:
| This is entirely appropriate. Why do you think it isn't?
| almost_usual wrote:
| A lot of people need to lie to themselves and others that
| they're not complete sell outs who forfeited their morals
| for a high salary. Being loud at work and social media is
| one way of doing that. It ends up with no real traction
| in reality though because the companies they work for
| don't prioritize it over profits.
| claudeganon wrote:
| > What's not appropriate is to choose the company with
| the highest salary, but whose owner's political views
| differ from your own, and then try to change that to
| something more suitable to your own.
|
| Why is that inappropriate exactly? If my boss' opinion is
| "unions shouldn't exist because I think I'm entitled to
| treat people however I want/play them off each
| other/depress wages" why am I not allowed to rebel
| against that and organize with my coworkers? In fact, the
| right to do this very thing is enshrined in law.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| > What's not appropriate is to choose the company with
| the highest salary, but whose owner's political views
| differ from your own, and then try to change that to
| something more suitable to your own. Or use such a
| position as leverage to push your own political views to
| a wider audience than you could on your own.
|
| Very well put and I'm terrifyingly surprised at how many
| people are arguing for the opposite. That is literal
| subversion.
| rank0 wrote:
| Did you read the Coinbase blog post? The conversation has
| really devolved away from the original topic. Coinbase
| issued a statement saying they are focused on their
| mission as a for-profit company. You're spinning it into
| something its not.
|
| "I don't think companies can succeed trying to do
| everything. Creating an open financial system for the
| world is already a hugely ambitious mission, and we could
| easily spend the next decade or two trying to move the
| needle on global economic freedom."
|
| What exactly do you disagree with about their statement?
| What are you proposing that Coinbase do differently?
| Should they collectively vote to align the company with a
| political party?
|
| It's a business not an activist group.
| almost_usual wrote:
| I think what they're suggesting is an employee who
| focuses more attention on work at work will outperform
| the employee who doesn't. It doesn't matter what the
| subject is.
| guipsp wrote:
| To put food on the table
| 0xCMP wrote:
| While we're focused on the purely "Political" agenda in
| this conversation, politics of a company include anything
| from how on-calls work to how sick days are counted.
|
| You can work at a company and advocate for changing
| things and it can be as comparatively small as ensuring
| on-call rotations are fair to ensuring the company voices
| support for and takes actions in line with supporting
| Black Lives Matter. These are all political in the spirit
| described up thread as saying that politics is the
| _figuring out and deciding_ of these issues as a group.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| Personal monetary relationship between employee and
| employer is business, not politics.
| chii wrote:
| > politics of a company
|
| that's not a political stance - that's negotiating your
| working conditions. It's private and individual, and only
| affect you (and your colleagues). It doesn't affect
| society at large whether you have on-call or how sick
| days are counted _at_ your place of employement.
|
| But to use your position as an employee to push for
| universal sick leave, or for BLM, which affects society
| at large, not just yourself, is a political stance.
| justinclift wrote:
| > ... that's negotiating your working conditions. It's
| private and individual, and only affect you (and your
| colleagues).
|
| No. That's an "it depends" thing. If the "political
| issue" in question is something team or working condition
| related then it's not necessarily private and individual
| affecting only you.
|
| Some people will care about that and want to potentially
| co-ordinate. Other people won't consider it important,
| and/or have other priorities.
| _jal wrote:
| > It's private and individual, and only affect you
|
| You must be aware of the existence of unions. You're
| mentioning US-political concerns, so you're almost
| certainly familiar with the notion that the mere
| existence of unions is highly political. Whether or not
| you are a union member, union activities effect US
| workplaces.
|
| Ignoring their existence in this discussion is itself a
| political position.
| 0xCMP wrote:
| You take for granted current working conditions which
| were won via hard-fought political battles and which
| affect us to this day.
|
| Also what about Maternity leave? Paternity leave? Are
| those not political?
|
| How is negotiating working conditions not related to "how
| we engage and collaborate with each other as a society"?
| It's inherently (little p) political even if the
| engagement is at a company similar to how politics on
| your local HOA is still politics.
|
| edit: typo
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| I think you're conflating issues relevant to the business
| of the company, which might be considered political, and
| political issues which are irrelevant to the business of
| the company. The former is okay, the latter is not. The
| subject of OP is the latter.
| sagichmal wrote:
| Broadly, it's incorrect to claim the issues at hand here
| are irrelevant to the business of the (or any) company.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| What issue are you claiming is relevant to the business
| of every company?
| sagichmal wrote:
| In this case: basic and functional equality of the
| members of a society. Like pornography, this is hard to
| define precisely, but I know when the violations are
| egregious enough, and the functional equality of black
| Americans through in the eyes of the police right now is
| certainly egregious enough.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| Police brutality of black Americans is simply and
| factually not relevant to the business of every company.
| ryanobjc wrote:
| It's very brave if you, in the middle of a pandemic, to
| say that "sick days are private and have no impact on
| society at large."
|
| You must have missed March and April when sick days at
| "essential work" (such as grocery stores, restaurants,
| coffee shops, and more) was in fact a matter of national
| conversation: sick people going to work spread disease.
| The number of sick days was also of debate: most low wage
| jobs don't offer more than 1 sick day a month or two. Not
| so good when someone needs two weeks off.
|
| This kind of short sightedness and inherent support of
| the status quo as "it's fine, I see no problem here" is
| exactly what the other commenter(s) are talking about.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| The decision of how many sick days, etc. is relevant to
| the business of the company. Social justice movements
| like "black lives matter" are not relevant to the mission
| of companies like Coinbase, as determined by their
| leadership.
| sagichmal wrote:
| > Social justice movements like "black lives matter" are
| not relevant to the mission of companies like Coinbase
|
| That's the whole issue, and you're just affirming the
| consequent by saying this. Structural equality is
| unavoidably the concern of every person and group in a
| society.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| > Structural equality is unavoidably the concern of every
| person and group in a society.
|
| Inspiring but simply false
| ryanobjc wrote:
| Ah yes good point - it's of concern to every FAIR MINDED
| member of the group.
|
| Lest we forget, there are many people who support the
| structural inequality.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| > it's of concern to every FAIR MINDED member of the
| group.
|
| Also false. Many fair minded people simply don't have
| time to concern themselves with politics.
|
| Not to mention that in many cases political actors who
| justify their actions on the premise of "structural
| inequality" end up reducing fairness.
| sagichmal wrote:
| Not having the time to concern yourself with politics
| isn't a position of neutrality or agnosticism. You can
| only adopt that position if the status quo of a society
| provides you sufficient protection, stability,
| prosperity, etc. to allow you to tune it out. If those
| conditions aren't true, it's not possible to "not concern
| yourself with politics" in a Maslow's hierarchy sense.
| And so doing so is unavoidably a tacit defense of the
| status quo.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| Also false, many people who you would claim are affected
| by "structural inequality" and who are more focused with
| improving their individual conditions also do not have
| time to concern themselves with politics.
|
| Example is myself. I am a child of poor immigrants. I am
| neither white nor wealthy. I do not care about involving
| myself in your politics, I spend my time focused on
| working and being productive for the sake of supporting
| my family. Frankly your politics destroyed my country.
| sagichmal wrote:
| By definition, if you're able to ignore politics, you are
| not part of the demographic that I'm describing.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| What demographic are you describing?
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > I do not care about involving myself in your politics
|
| This is a political stance. You have involved yourself in
| politics. There's really no way out.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| You're twisting words to make your point vacuously true.
| I do not care about changing federal government policy or
| who runs the federal government. Call that whatever you
| like, doesn't mean I have ever received special benefits
| from the system any more than anyone else. That is my
| stance because I have better things to do with my time,
| like being productive.
| randomperson321 wrote:
| > we must all, 8+ hours a day, support our employers
| political agenda
|
| Isn't this the whole point of work? Exchanging your own
| preferences and time for money?
|
| > in the time remaining we can try to counteract that a
| bit
|
| Ideally you wouldn't be working for a company who is
| diametrically opposed to your own beliefs. This is why I
| will never work for Facebook.
| wwright wrote:
| > Isn't this the whole point of work? Exchanging your own
| preferences and time for money?
|
| In our current economic system, yes for some people; but
| less so for some individuals, and again even less in
| economies with UBI.
|
| A founder, for instance, is often not looking to trade
| preferences but instead to actually make an impact on the
| world while sharing in the profit of that impact. This is
| different than just trading things away: you are
| collaborating actively. Of course, that's currently
| mostly available for small groups such as founders and
| small-business owners.
|
| And you may note that... all of this has political
| ramifications :) Small business owners are heavily
| impacted by political regulation; the ability of workers
| to organize and take a joint ownership over their work is
| governed by laws too.
|
| None of this exists in a vacuum. We are who we are
| because of who we all are, and we do what we do because
| of what we all do. That's political. Some people just
| want others to be passive.
| baryphonic wrote:
| Yes. When you join a company, you are signing onto their
| political agenda. If you don't believe that, then I
| wonder if you'd have an aversion to working for Jeffrey
| Epstein.
| sagichmal wrote:
| > Being apolitical at work is not active support for the
| status quo.
|
| It certainly can be.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| It can be but not must be and in most cases likely isn't.
| skinkestek wrote:
| Will you be OK with everyone else doing the same,
| including people you deeply disagree with?
|
| Because those people also have strong opinions, not
| because they are evil, but because from their point of
| view it is the right thing to do.
|
| I'd say: unless you are OK with both Trump supporters,
| Biden supoorters, Pro-Lifers, Pro-Choice etc etc all
| bringing their politics to work, be careful about trying
| to use work for politics.
|
| Edit: let me also add the Communist party, Jehovas
| Witnesses, the Catholic Church, Hinduism (a number of my
| colleagues wanting to learn meditation got stuck between
| two factions arguing loudly and angrily about some detail
| regarding reincarnation), the local NRA and everyone
| else. Unless you want to accept them doing activism on
| company time: don't be the one who starts it.
|
| > in opposition to non-status quo beliefs that you
| disregard them completely.
|
| Many of us disagree strongly with the status quo because
| we find it is _way too little_ conservative.
|
| Do you really want us to start using harder tactics
| instead of sticking to our current strategy:
|
| - hoping the kids on the left will grow up soon.
| Traditionally in generation after generation they abandon
| the dumbest ideas after a decade or so. (And yes, this
| holds true for me too, I was influenced by socialism as a
| teenager even though I never torched anything.)
|
| - be nice so that others will be nice to us, or at least
| think twice who they want to support
|
| - stand up for others and hope others will stand up for
| us (and yes, despite me being deeply "conservative" that
| also means standing up for immigrants. I do that.)
|
| - vote
|
| - pray
|
| - depending on location: make sure we are able to defend
| ourselves and our families if police cannot be expected
| to do so (we don't need to think about that here as crime
| rates are low and police arrive quickly if you need them)
| RestlessMind wrote:
| > The view you just described is active support for the
| status quo.
|
| Not really. I can do my job from 9 to 5 in a non-
| political way and then actively try to change the status
| quo on evenings and weekends. That doesn't align with how
| you are describing being apolitical at work means.
|
| > If every individual shares the thinking at every
| company then it is impossible to even imagine how the
| most catastrophic climate change can be avoided.
|
| Because many individuals can sincerely believe that the
| way to deal with climate change goes via individual or
| citizen advocacy groups changing cultural attitudes and
| then exerting pressure on the Governments to bring in the
| necessary regulations. Companies should not be engaged in
| climate change politics (or global poverty or abortion
| rights) if they want to avoid it.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I don't agree. Opponents of the status quo can get an
| advantage by _defecting_ from an apolitical equilibrium,
| by bringing politics into spaces where people who
| disagree with them aren 't willing to. But when everyone
| starts being political, opponents of the status quo lose,
| because almost by definition their views are less
| popular.
| meragrin_ wrote:
| It is not active support for the status quo. No one is
| saying to quit being political entirely. Just during work
| hours.
| fourstar wrote:
| > "Just do you job and don't voice contrary opinions" is
| a pretty radical political opinion if you ask me, so your
| definition of "apolitical" is only "A"-political because
| you are so intensely in opposition to non-status quo
| beliefs that you disregard them completely.
|
| Which is your personal opinion on the matter. What do I
| suggest for you? Start your own company and allow your
| employees to have their political views expressed as part
| of your ethos (or Manifesto if you can relate more to
| that).
| diab0lic wrote:
| > The view you just described is active support for the
| status quo.
|
| I hear this all the time but I cannot for the life of me
| figure out why it is "active support" isn't it at most
| passive support? If you were actively supporting it,
| you'd be taking political actions and therefore not being
| apolitical?
| justinclift wrote:
| > The view you just described is active support for the
| status quo.
|
| It's really not.
|
| It's just not giving a shit about whatever the thing is
| the political argument is about, instead putting time and
| care into other things you consider more important. eg
| kids, family, etc.
| sagichmal wrote:
| It is.
| [deleted]
| rmc wrote:
| I think the issue is "How do you decide what is political
| and what isn't?" e.g. if you're a communist, then the
| existence is shareholders is political support for
| capitalism. So how do you remain "apolitical" then?
| adamsea wrote:
| I think the answer is, you both use your own intelligence
| and judgement, and both talk with and listen to other
| people.
| chii wrote:
| > So how do you remain "apolitical" then?
|
| Outside of your job, you can be as politically active as
| you wish. Nobody is saying you should stop all political
| activism.
|
| But if i walk into a store intending to buy something, i
| don't want to be blasted with any political message or be
| asked to sign up for a rally or donate to some cause i
| don't care about.
|
| And an employee should work on the job they are being
| hired to do, not spend work time undertaking political
| activism unless explicitly allowed by their boss (for
| example, your company may allow you time off for charity
| or such activities).
|
| If, for example, your political view is that of
| communism, then you will have to suffer in silence in the
| USA while working for shareholders/owners of property. Or
| quit your job if you cannot stand it. What you can't do
| is use your job as a resource to push that view further
| than you could on your own.
| throwaway936482 wrote:
| So that's unions out then. Sounds like a political stance
| to me if you ban people from advocating for collective
| bargaining in the workplace.
| chii wrote:
| collective bargaining starts at the level of government -
| not within the workplace. It would obviously be in the
| interest of the employer to stop it from starting up.
|
| So you take this political stance outside of work. If
| enough people can be convinced that collective bargaining
| is a good idea, it will get enshrined into law. Employers
| will have to comply.
|
| On the other hand, organising during work time (which is
| being paid for by your employer) is unethical - and
| regardless of my feelings of the idea of collective
| bargaining, it should not be done on someone else's dime.
| klyrs wrote:
| > collective bargaining starts at the level of government
| - not within the workplace. It would obviously be in the
| interest of the employer to stop it from starting up.
|
| I dunno where you live, but organizing _at work_ is a
| protected right that workers have in the US and Canada
| (and other jurisdictions, but that 's where I've been
| employed). An employer forbidding that is actually a
| violation of labor law.
| username90 wrote:
| > the existence is shareholders is political support for
| capitalism
|
| You are only political when you try to change the minds
| of others. Just existing is never political support for
| anything. If the communist argues that the shareholders
| shouldn't exist then he is political. If the company
| fires the communist for thinking that shareholders
| shouldn't exist (lets say he said that on his own time,
| so he wasn't political at company time) then they are
| political. If the company allows pro capitalist opinions
| but not pro communist opinions they are also political.
| moultano wrote:
| In January 2017, several of my coworkers were banned from
| reentering the country to go home to their families, while
| they were on business trips to visit other offices. How is
| anyone supposed to be apolitical in that context? How are
| the people who can't ever come home supposed to pretend
| everything is fine?
|
| A functional definition of privilege is that politics
| doesn't matter that much to you. No matter how it turns
| out, you'll be fine, so you're able to mentally
| compartmentalize it and go about the rest of your business.
| There are many people whose lives are not like that, and
| it's unreasonable to expect them to treat politics as a
| game separate from real life.
| winston_smith wrote:
| > mentally compartmentalize it and go about the rest of
| your business. There are many people whose lives are not
| like that, and it's unreasonable to expect them to treat
| politics as a game separate from real life.
|
| I bet the closeted gay folks in countries where that's a
| death sentence would MUCH rather have their coworkers
| compartmentalize their views.
| deeeeplearning wrote:
| >A functional definition of privilege is that politics
| doesn't matter that much to you.
|
| Not only nonfunctional but moronic as well. You don't
| understand privilege or politics evidently.
| username90 wrote:
| > A functional definition of privilege is that politics
| doesn't matter that much to you.
|
| The more privileged a group is the more they tend to be
| involved in politics. So a better definition is that
| privilege is when you have time and energy to spend on
| politics.
| moultano wrote:
| Having the time and energy to devote to it is not the
| same thing as whether it materially changes your life.
| Often those things are anticorrelated.
| winston_smith wrote:
| > A functional definition of privilege is that politics
| doesn't matter that much to you
|
| You're even more privileged if you're so confident in
| your job security and the popularity of your political
| views that you can spend your working hours advocating
| them without worrying that it'll affect your ability to
| feed your family.
| moultano wrote:
| An Iranian immigrant can't _help_ but advocate for their
| political views simply by existing. Living and working in
| the US is an assertion that they should have the legal
| right to do so. Simply by being glad to have them as a
| coworker (the most anodyne possible affirmation that
| everyone generally expects from the people around them)
| you are making a political statement. If I say, "I'm
| glad you were able to make it home," I'm expressing
| support for the court case that invalidated the executive
| order that allowed them to come home.
|
| As long as some parts of politics are working to harm the
| people you work with, coexisting with them and exchanging
| pleasantries is political.
| username90 wrote:
| Right, so said Iranian immigrant is for the status quo
| where he is allowed to work in the US and therefore would
| be in favor of banning discussions related to it, no?
| Enabling discussions would favor the people who want
| change, that is the people who want to kick him out, is
| that really what you want, do you want to help him get
| kicked out?
|
| This is roughly how the people who argue against Coinbase
| decision sounds.
| moultano wrote:
| It was obviously not the status quo, because they were
| banned from the country.
|
| Companies should advocate for the rights of their
| employees. They should demand their employees treat each
| other with respect. Both of those stances will often
| conflict with some people's politics and there's no way
| around it.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > You keep your political views private.
|
| In nearly every case, the people who are claiming to
| encourage politics in the workplace are actually demanding
| allegiance - try supporting the other side and see how they
| feel.
| Zigurd wrote:
| That is not what the parent comment is arguing. It is
| arguing that cryptocurrency has heavy political baggage it
| cannot shed. That is evident in the kinds of people
| attracted to cryptocurrency. There are many tribes, but, to
| take one example, there are a lot of enthusiasts who think
| central banking and/or national currency is a conspiracy of
| some kind.
|
| They think that cryptocurrency eliminating the ability of
| nations to set monetary policy, or to enable people with
| enough means to escape from the impact of monetary policy,
| is a good thing. This is politics baked into the product
| cryptocurrency companies create, and it is part of their
| "mission."
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| Those policies aren't baked into the product. They're
| baked into the people. That's a huge difference.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| But they are baked into the product. Coinbase's success
| depends on the success of the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
| That is fundamentally related to questions of wealth
| inequality, banking, state economies, and crime.
|
| Would you say that Facebook is an apolitical product
| since it is just its users that are affecting public
| behavior?
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| Banking has purely technical user experience problems due
| to stagnation, that cryptocurrency doesn't have.
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| Absolutely I'd say that! If a tool just improves
| communication efficiency, that efficiency improvement
| doesn't necessarily mean that the medium is political.
|
| If coinbase and its cryptocurrencies improve the means of
| wealth and capital exchange, that doesn't mean that
| cryptocurrencies are political. That makes it a tool,
| just as a shovel and rifle are tools. How they're used by
| people is what makes them potentially political.
|
| Facebook's choice to moderate content that isn't
| advertiser friendly is what makes it political, not the
| fact that it improves communication. They're deciding
| what other people see. Cryptocurrencies make no such
| choices for users.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| > Facebook's choice to moderate content that isn't
| advertiser friendly is what makes it political, not the
| fact that it improves communication. They're deciding
| what other people see. Cryptocurrencies make no such
| choices for users.
|
| Coinbase has. They've done things like blacklist wallets
| that they believe were involved in crimes or scams.
| chii wrote:
| > they believe were involved in crimes or scams.
|
| which is not a political action. You can argue they are
| acting extra-judicially - which is true, but it's not a
| political action. If coinbase refuses to serve a customer
| because they are anti-whatever-political-stance-of-
| coinbase, then coinbase is acting politically.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Sure it is. How is this different than refusing to work
| with ICE because you believe what they are doing is
| illegal or wrong? Scammer wallets were never given any
| trial.
| spongechameleon wrote:
| Coinbase is an exchange for people to access
| cryptocurrency. The gradual adoption of cryptocurrencies
| weakens central governments' currencies. Their entire
| business is by nature, political.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Yes but it is also subject to the powers of the market.
| As lonng as they don't use lobbying to give their product
| an unfair advantage, it's (literally) people paying with
| their wallets.
| throwaway936482 wrote:
| If you think that the market is a apolitical I have some
| socialists who'd like a chat...
| hejja wrote:
| Libertarian.
| [deleted]
| Igelau wrote:
| I know I posted it recently and it was poorly received, but
| it needs to be repeated because people forget.
|
| > Politics:
|
| > the activities associated with the governance of a country
| or other area, especially the debate or conflict among
| individuals or parties having or hoping to achieve power.
|
| If you think it means:
|
| > how we engage and collaborate with each other as a society
|
| You're biting at a hook baited with identity politics. That's
| a curated opinion that politicians are glad you've accepted
| because it's choked you from imagining that apolitical
| positions exist.
|
| It's absolutely possible to be apolitical. It may be hard to
| do so. It may be possible to claim to be "apolitical" in a
| way that gains political leverage. That's dishonesty and it's
| a different topic.
| [deleted]
| dangerface wrote:
| > How can they truly be neutral on all of these issues that
| are directly relevant to the business they do?
|
| These are issues with consumers and state not the business.
| username90 wrote:
| > I (and many others) are of the opinion that you can't truly
| be apolitical; claiming to be so is its own form of politics
| (and generally one that supports the status quo).
|
| If someone just does their job with people no matter who they
| are then they are not political. Being gay is not political.
| Being trans is not political. Being black is not political.
| Saying that gays/trans/black people shouldn't exist or
| doesn't belong is political. Saying that everyone needs to
| care about gay/trans/black rights is political. A trans
| person and a fundamental Christian who works well together
| without bringing up either political stance are not
| political. If the fundamental Christian makes a fuzz then he
| is political and should be reprimanded. If the trans person
| digs into the Christians opinions until they find something
| to get angry about and then get angry they are political.
|
| I don't see why this is concept would be so hard to
| understand.
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| > If someone just does their job with people no matter who
| they are then they are not political.
|
| And what happens when it's not the case? When people don't
| just treat people of foo group normally, and it's happening
| throughout the company? What should foo group do?
|
| Ask the company to get to an apolitical state where they
| can just do their job? Let people in the company know that
| it's going on? By you definition, that's political and
| wrong. Or do they just bear the cost of it while others
| continue doing what they're doing?
|
| > I don't see why this is concept would be so hard to
| understand
|
| Because (In my opinion) you're starting with a
| fundamentally flawed premise that there isn't already
| politics in the work place. There always has been. The
| important difference is that the only thing that gets
| branded as "politics" is anything different from the status
| quo. If it's politics aligned with the status quo it's not
| seen as politics even when it it.
|
| A similar example. I'm not taking a stand on it in any way
| here, but kneeling during the national anthem before a
| football game was considered a political act (which it is).
| One response was "keep politics out of football" (parallel
| to our discussion here). But again similar to our
| discussion here it was glossing over the fact that playing
| the national anthem before a sporting event is an extremely
| political action to begin with (ex. Should we play the
| national anthem before a game of Jeopardy?).
|
| Saying there wasn't politics before / by default, is just
| turning a blind eye to the existing politics because it's
| the status quo.
| lucaspm98 wrote:
| What that person can do in order of difficulty is talk to
| the person/group that they are made uncomfortable by,
| approach their manager about the issue, take the issue to
| human resources, leave for a competitor that will likely
| win in the long run with a better work environment, or
| ultimately sue for being discriminated based on a
| protected class.
|
| None of these options require a company to adopt a
| political platform.
| csixty4 wrote:
| > Being trans is not political.
|
| Until that trans person needs to go to the bathroom.
| username90 wrote:
| You don't have closed off bathrooms? Anyway, denying them
| a bathroom to go to probably breaks some workplace laws.
| I agree that we need workplace laws, and if a company can
| refuse to accommodate the basic needs of a worker without
| breaking any laws then the laws needs to change, which of
| course is politics.
| adamsea wrote:
| > ... and if a company can refuse to accommodate the
| basic needs of a worker without breaking any laws then
| the laws needs to change, which of course is politics.
|
| Voila :)
|
| Now, to take another example - paternity leave in the
| United States - should there be a workplace law requiring
| more of it, like many other countries?
|
| Political! :)
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| My sister's husband is a software engineer at a bank, and
| the health insurance plan they use specifies that men can
| have their wife covered under the plan, rather than a
| gender-neutral spouse and it doesn't count civil unions.
| Now this has worked out fine for them, but the choice for
| the bank to use this healthcare plan means that same-sex
| couples don't have equal access. So just existing as a gay
| person can be political.
| lordlimecat wrote:
| This is a blog about the company's direction, not about
| whether it will perfectly conform to the ideals laid out. The
| CEO is not claiming that they are apolitical, but that that
| is their goal.
|
| >Politics is ultimately about how we engage and collaborate
| with each other as a society,
|
| An organization can be apolitical in which clients it takes,
| how it applies its agreements and rules, and its involvement
| in the campaign process.
|
| >How can they truly be neutral on all of these issues that
| are directly relevant to the business they do?
|
| They do not need to take a stance on law circumvention or the
| right to privacy other than to uphold the law and maximize
| customer value.
| arcticbull wrote:
| > They do not need to take a stance on law circumvention or
| the right to privacy other than to uphold the law and
| maximize customer value.
|
| The products and tools and services they sell are
| specifically designed to permit the circumvention of the
| law.
|
| They are no different than people who make lockpicks in
| that respect. Technically the company couldn't care less
| what you do with the lockpicks. Maybe you're a hobbyist, or
| a locksmith. _Maybe_.
|
| Some of their employees may be okay looking the other way,
| but not all of them will be. Based on the way this is going
| down it sounds like there was some internal drama about
| this, and they feel like it's best to part ways with the
| pro-law crowd.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| What products are specifically designed to permit the
| circumvention of the law?
| arcticbull wrote:
| Cryptocurrencies.
| [deleted]
| celticninja wrote:
| certain roles require you to be apolitical, i'm thinking of
| employees of a national civil service whose role is to
| implement policy not decide it. If you had to quit when a
| party you didnt support was in power it would cause huge
| problems for continuity of services. Essentially then the
| civil service becomes political, which is really what it
| should not be.
| deeeeplearning wrote:
| >I (and many others) are of the opinion that you can't truly
| be apolitical
|
| Well frankly you and many others in this country are morons.
| The past few years are evidence of that.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Personal attacks aren't welcome here.
| conistonwater wrote:
| Like that famous song,
|
| "Don't say he's hypocritical, say rather that he's
| apolitical. 'Once the rockets are up, who cares where they
| come down, that's not my department', says Wernher von
| Braun."
| dcolkitt wrote:
| > I (and many others) are of the opinion that you can't truly
| be apolitical; claiming to be so is its own form of politics
|
| This seems like a fallacy. X may be undesirable, but it's
| impossible to completely rid ourselves of X. Therefore it's
| pointless to even worry about reducing X. Thermodynamics
| tells us that we can't ever reach absolute zero. Therefore I
| don't have to put the groceries away in the refrigerator.
|
| No person or organization can be completely apolitical, but
| they can aim to be minimally political. And that difference
| is substantial. Only a maximal postmodernist would dispute
| that the NRA is orders of magnitude more political than the
| IETF.
|
| Similarly we strive for our courts to be free of bias.
| However jurists are flesh and blood. They'll get hungry or
| sleep and that will affect their mood. Yet we'd all be
| horrified if a judge openly declared "Ya know what? I hate
| Dutch-Americans and plan to rule against them in every case
| regardless of the facts"
| geofft wrote:
| I think the analogy works the other way. Thermodynamics,
| like politics, is a thing we can't be rid of. Therefore,
| even if you don't care about the exact temperature of your
| groceries, put them in the fridge. If you have a bag of
| fresh bread, milk, and frozen meat, it's a lot better to
| stick the whole bag in the fridge than leave the whole bag
| in the counter. Obviously it would be even better to put
| them away properly, but if you want to not care as much as
| possible, you still have to care a little bit. There's no
| way to avoid it completely, and ignoring it doesn't make it
| go away and is certainly not meritorious.
|
| The NRA is "more political" in the sense of their daily
| activities, of course, but I think you could construct a
| great argument that the IETF has more impact on world
| politics (or, let's say, the governments of the world) than
| the NRA. Everyone knows the NRA is taking an absolutist
| give-everyone-an-AR-15 stance; they work very hard on it,
| but at this point they're almost an anchor. Some parts of
| the US give easy access to guns, and they're going to do so
| regardless. Other parts (NYC, where I live) make it very
| hard to access guns, and the NRA isn't able to do much
| more. And the rest of the world doesn't care. Meanwhile,
| the IETF, in how it chooses to distribute power to network
| operators vs. service providers vs. end users, which
| protocols it facilitates standardization work on, who is in
| the room, what sorts of threats cryptographic protocols
| protect against, etc., has a lot of influence on who has
| power over digital communications.
|
| I think I'd even argue that it's more important for someone
| at the IETF to be aware of the political implications of
| their work than someone at the NRA. The NRA has an
| obviously political mission; whether you choose to pay
| attention to it in how you do your job and what you
| prioritize or not, you're going to further that mission.
| (Imagine, for instance, being a gun-control advocate at the
| NRA and see how much impact you'll have.) The IETF's
| mission is more open-ended, which means you can develop
| protocols to facilitate government surveillance or to
| subvert it, depending on what you think is more important.
| adamsea wrote:
| First - the neutrality of a judge _is_ political. It is an
| expression of their support of the law of the land - namely
| the system of justice. Judicial neutrality, is in fact,
| special.
|
| > This seems like a fallacy. X may be undesirable, but it's
| impossible to completely rid ourselves of X. Therefore it's
| pointless to even worry about reducing X.
|
| No one said anything about it being pointless.
|
| And, no one said undesirable. Politics isn't good or bad.
| It's just part of life. In the sense that people are
| inherently social and will always be discussing, civilly or
| not, how things should be done.
|
| To me, if I live in a democracy, what _would_ be
| undesirable is a citizen who is _not_ , in some form or
| fashion, active in the body politic since a democracy
| depends on an active (and educated) citizenry in order to
| function! :).
| cblconfederate wrote:
| it's correct that crypto is against all politics, and thus
| coinbase is de facto far-libertarian, or anarchocapitalist.
| That doesn't prevent it from creating "an apolitical culture"
| in their workplace. Just like how , today , a libertarian
| might work for the Fed or something. I thought their point is
| that the politics of individual workers won't distract from
| the company's "mission" (whatever that is, i assume it's the
| product).
|
| that said i think it's wrong to ascribe political motives to
| every move and claim that nobody can be a-political in
| public. Political belongs to the public sphere and not
| everyone wants to live in there.
| mc32 wrote:
| Politics is too personal and can only lead to discord among
| employees. There is little upside to politics being in the
| open in an established company. It may be useful in
| attracting talent at some point, but at another point it
| becomes a liability, unless your company is a PAC or
| something of the sort. If you serve a wide audience or have a
| wide workforce, it's less headache if workers separate their
| politics from their work unless the employer is paying you to
| be political.
| philipov wrote:
| Yes, and choosing to have such a policy about political
| discussion is a political act that supports the status quo
| by quashing dissent. Therefore, many people who are not
| happy with the status quo are upset by companies that do
| this.
| Aunche wrote:
| The problem is that people can't have political
| discussion without taking things personally. Many people
| thought that the James Damore memo was objective, but
| other people found it offensive. In the end, neither side
| really "won" and in the end, it just made the work
| environment more toxic. Even if you believe that Damore
| is sexist, people like him are inevitably going to exist
| at a company of hundreds of thousands, so it's best if
| everyone stayed quiet.
| mc32 wrote:
| I don't want to have to manoeuver and tiptoe around shit
| all day long. I don't want to have to think about whom I
| might unwittingly offend today because of something that
| happened yesterday that I'm unawares of today. I'm not
| seeking to offend anyone, but I also don't want have keep
| a twitterpulse of what's woke today vs yesterday.
|
| I want a predictable workplace where people understand
| we're not perfect and sometimes make untacful remarks
| without meaning to hurt. I want a forgiving workplace one
| where minor peccadilloes aren't picked apart by vultures
| looking to score points.
|
| There are big issues we can agree on. Energy, climate,
| crime, justice, etc., from a big picture perspective
| rather than an activist perspective. Activism is tiring.
| People get exhausted. Long term, people just want to make
| a living and be left alone if they are not being
| negative. You can't live in a world where activism is a
| way of life like Cuba. Listen to the "Commandant" brother
| no 1. We have to up bread production right after we
| recite the revolutionary manifesto one more time before
| we join hands in community work for the revolution". No,
| let me be in peace.
| bluntfang wrote:
| >I want a predictable workplace where people understand
| we're not perfect and sometimes make untacful remarks
| without meaning to hurt. I want a forgiving workplace one
| where minor peccadilloes aren't picked apart by vultures
| looking to score points.
|
| Just going off this one statement, if you want a
| forgiving workplace, does that mean you have to own your
| mistakes and ask for forgiveness when you make an
| "untactful remark"? It sounds like seeking forgiveness
| will require you to do things like "think[ing] about whom
| I might unwittingly offend today because of something
| that happened yesterday that I'm unawares of today."
| mc32 wrote:
| I want people to understand we all come with flaws. That
| PC policing is toxic and it's better to give people the
| benefit of doubt rather than going all in on them being
| "bad". Take compliments for example. Most often they are
| just nice things people say to each other. But in the
| wrong environments they can be taken (interpreted) as
| offensive as well as they can also be intimidating
| (unwanted). But in some circles by default (rather than
| exception) they are considered risky.
| bluntfang wrote:
| >I want people to understand we all come with flaws.
|
| I feel like the best way to make room for people to
| understand that is to acknowledge your own flaws
|
| For instance when you make an inappropriate comment,
| owning up to it by letting everyone know that you made an
| inappropriate comment and are making an effort to stop
| saying inappropriate things.
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| Some of your coworkers might want to drive to work
| without fearing that they'll be profiled, pulled over,
| and arrested or shot. They'd also like to be in peace.
| mc32 wrote:
| Let's take something like Tibet or Xinjiang or Crimea,
| etc. All have good grounding for people to see where
| things might be wrong. I still don't think that
| discussion should happen in the workplace agitating
| management to be active and organizing coworkers into
| friends and foes. If you have a political interest in
| that thing do it outside of work --it may involve like
| minded coworkers but don't bring this to work. Exception
| is Union organizing, that necessarily involves workers
| and management.
| [deleted]
| vowelless wrote:
| > Politics is ultimately about how we engage and collaborate
| with each other as a society,
|
| It is so sad that people increasingly have this view.
| Politics was never how "we engaged and collaborated in
| society".
| clinta wrote:
| Politics is discussing when it is justified and appropriate
| to use violence. For enforcing laws, collecting taxes
| ect...
|
| All peaceful human interaction falls outside of that.
| Loughla wrote:
| I legitimately do not understand defining collecting
| taxes as violence. That's like the third time I've seen
| this type of argument on HN.
|
| I don't get it. Can you please explain that to me?
| jacobr1 wrote:
| Most tax collection is completed without violence in
| practical sense. But taxes are backed by the threat of
| violence. If you don't pay them, you can be charged with
| a crime and ultimately imprisoned. And if you try to
| resist imprisonment that is enforced with armed agents of
| the state who will use force to compel you. Taxes aren't
| voluntary.
|
| This is an old libertarian argument, which when taken to
| its narrow logical conclusion says all taxes are
| fundamentally theft and immoral. The primary counter-
| argument is to suggest that the property or wages being
| taxed aren't "fully" the possessions of the taxed
| individual or entity. If you are receiving wages in part
| because of the state apparatus, then the wages weren't
| fully yours to begin with. Various forms of social
| contract theory are used to justify taxes.
|
| The other main argument is probably more utilitarian.
| Your right to property only extends to the extent that it
| is socially valuable in comparison to other rights and
| responsibilities. Property is this model isn't a
| fundamental right, but one mechanism used in combinations
| with others to maximize human welfare.
| throwaways885 wrote:
| I mean, I agree with you, but it's still not work
| appropriate discussion.
| [deleted]
| dangerface wrote:
| > I (and many others) are of the opinion that you can't truly
| be apolitical; claiming to be so is its own form of politics
|
| This is a Kafka trap
| jwalton wrote:
| > How can they truly be neutral on all these issues that are
| directly relevant to the business they do?
|
| They most definitely will not be neutral on policy decisions
| that affect their business, and if you go read their blog
| post they said exactly that:
|
| > If there is a bill introduced around crypto, we may engage
| here, but we normally wouldn't engage in policy decisions
| around healthcare or education for example.
| Allower wrote:
| If you don't know how to separate social issues from
| politics, well shit, that's the whole problem isn't it.
| Figure it out or continue being a moron dragging civilization
| back into the dark ages.
| knorker wrote:
| That's one way to see it. But it seems the general trend is
| that every company needs to be political on every issue.
|
| Where employees seem to spend more time on social justice
| than building the product the company is selling.
| vidarh wrote:
| Indeed, the choice to "be apolitical" is itself a political
| choice.
| ballenf wrote:
| All these arguments just feel like people wanting the
| benefits of owning a company without doing the work or taking
| the risk.
|
| When you accept employment at a company, you do so on their
| terms -- including whether political activism on the job is
| permitted.
|
| If you want to set the terms of employment, start or buy a
| company. Or, I guess, get laws passed that outlaw companies
| from having a policy you disagree with.
|
| Whether being apolitical is itself political or not is a
| circular argument -- for some it is, for some it isn't. And
| that difference is itself a difference of political opinion
| of the same kind as the others.
| Aunche wrote:
| > How can they truly be neutral on all of these issues that
| are directly relevant to the business they do?
|
| Coinbase didn't say they would be neutral about all issues,
| just issues that aren't related to their business. Obviously
| if the government wants to ban cryptocurrency, they're going
| to lobby against it.
| pracer wrote:
| You are confusing people with companies. A person is
| political, a company should not. Otherwise, you are siding
| with totalitarian regimes that decide which services or
| rights you have based on what you think or believe. It was
| tried in the past, good luck for that.
| Nursie wrote:
| When things like climate science have been turned into
| political issues, this is next to impossible.
| lliamander wrote:
| Apolitical doesn't just mean "supporting the status quo". It
| can mean "improving the world along a particular dimension
| with a coalition that cuts across historic factions". That's
| what Coinbase is trying to do, and (for example) open source
| has historically been.
|
| Making a workplace political means excluding people who
| believe in the mission but don't share your views on things
| irrelevant to that mission. This is dumb for a couple
| reasons:
|
| * you've now hamstrung the mission your organization was
| ostensibly about
|
| * the people you excluded are still out there. Even if you no
| longer have to work with them, you do have to share a society
| with them. And now they're going to form their own
| organizations and become more polarized.
|
| It may be a cost worth bearing in some circumstances, but
| generally you want to keep the number of people excluded in
| this manner to a minimum.
| baryphonic wrote:
| > I (and many others) are of the opinion that you can't truly
| be apolitical; claiming to be so is its own form of politics
| (and generally one that supports the status quo).
|
| This is a fairly untenable position. Suppose there is an
| alien civilization somewhere with a similarly complex
| organization as our own society. You have no stake or
| opinions in the outcomes of what they do. You might even have
| beliefs that might give rise to politics ("I don't want earth
| destroyed," for instance), but in a real sense, you are
| apolitical with respect to that civilization. That doesn't
| make you in favor of the status quo, it just means that you
| don't know or care what's going on there.
|
| Bringing it closer to home, you'll realize that you have
| similar apolitical beliefs with respect to a small town in a
| neighboring country, or maybe the government policy of the
| Central African Republic.
|
| You might object that in these cases, a person is by
| construction unaware of the goings-on in distant places;
| however, I think the contrary argument is more absurd. The
| contrary argument is that as soon as someone merely knows
| about a political issue, she is then forced to choose,
| without her consent, that she is in favor of the status quo.
| That's not a tenable way to treat people with respect, not to
| mention organize society. And loads of people intentionally
| ignore the goings-on in politics.
|
| So then, if people can be apolitical about certain or even
| most issues, certainly someone could be apolitical about all
| but the most mundane issues (like the governance of a
| family).
|
| Further, the status quo is not a political issue; it's the
| condition of living in some reality. Human collective action
| is only one component that shapes our status quo. Many are
| beyond human control. So the mere existence of a status quo
| does not imply that anyone "chooses" it.
|
| That I think is the error. A person can have no opinion and
| withdraw from politics. That is apolitical. Constructing the
| concept in such a way that forces them to pick a side of a
| line in the sand excludes the middle ground, and is also
| profoundly disrespectful and unfair.
| mancerayder wrote:
| >I (and many others) are of the opinion that you can't truly
| be apolitical; claiming to be so is its own form of politics
| (and generally one that supports the status quo).
|
| The Far Left and the Far Right, and college activists
| everywhere, tend to agree with this statement.
|
| Everyone else finds the idea of a forced battle, which is
| what you said entails, to be the beginnings of
| authoritarianism (or bullying if taken at an individual
| level).
| [deleted]
| bredren wrote:
| I think this is the premise of of The Witcher series.
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| I worked at a media company with a reach of 400 million ADI. We
| had internal meetings more or less instructing employees how to
| vote. Our hand curated content intentionally catered to this
| same narrative.
|
| It was completely politically biased. I was hired when the
| company was neutral but over the years the extreme left
| narrative settled in and we tended to only hire people with the
| same ideologies.
|
| Executive discussions revealed it was an intentional culture
| shift to attract candidates.
| dgellow wrote:
| Did it go well for the people and the company?
| langitbiru wrote:
| So what does the future hold? Will there be left-leaning
| companies and right-leaning companies? What if I am centrist?
| So when I apply for a job, do I have to make sure my
| political leaning fits with the employer? Brave, brave new
| world.
| bananaface wrote:
| I wouldn't worry about it. The issue will burn itself out.
| Courting a culture of loud, demanding people with an axe to
| grind is a much better short-term strategy than long.
| sdfqasdghj2 wrote:
| > We had internal meetings more or less instructing employees
| how to vote.
|
| Is that legal?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Yes, unfortunately. Most states don't have any law against
| employers politically pressuring their employees.
| lordlimecat wrote:
| If it can be construed as threatening or coercive, it
| appears that many actually do:
|
| https://www.grubblawgroup.com/employee-rights-and-
| informatio...
| paul7986 wrote:
| Any & all politics at work is unacceptable period..you are there
| to do the job you accepted and agreed to do. Nothing more! Go
| create your own company that embraces and hires only activists
| with various views...I wonder how successful such a company would
| be?
|
| I was taught politics isn't polite to talk about it.... illogical
| (what politics are to me ...a pissing match driven by
| billionaires on each side fueling fires for their side and their
| sheep almost mindlessly following along ) views aren't a
| welcoming or warm human experience that fosters teamwork.
|
| All companies should follow with this stance ..letting all know
| discussing politics at XYZ company is frowned upon and if
| troubles arise from it (other employees feeling harassed and or
| uncomfortable by it; report it) then XYZ company isn't the place
| for you!
| sneak wrote:
| The blog post he made, which was a whole lot of words to say
| "We're _not_ going to say Black Lives Matter, so stop asking ",
| was really something else.
|
| I see a lot of people praising the "not taking sides" thing. This
| presumes a false two-parties dichotomy that is endemic in the
| discussion of US social issues.
|
| Really though, you can choose the status quo of widespread human
| rights abuses in the US, or you can choose to speak out against
| it. Those are the sides, and pretending that it maps to the tired
| and ongoing US electoral culture brawl is, well, "inaccurate" and
| "misleading" at best.
|
| Coinbase has chosen, but they've done all sorts of weasel words
| to avoid the appearance that what they've chosen is anything
| other than a vote for the status quo.
|
| This is not about "discussing politics", insofar as who-to-vote-
| for, et c. This is about the (really quite political) issue of
| whether or not you're fine with the state of human rights in US
| society, or not.
|
| It's a bummer that they've decided that they're fine with the
| current situation, because it really sucks terribly for a lot of
| people: so badly that many people can't just "go to work and
| ignore it".
|
| To see people praising this viewpoint is... baffling.
| thu2111 wrote:
| _you can choose the status quo of widespread human rights
| abuses in the US, or you can choose to speak out against it.
| Those are the sides_
|
| No, there is a third side where actually the majority of people
| sit: you reject the premise.
|
| There are no widespread human rights abuses in the USA. It is
| not a country that is constantly abusing people's human rights,
| a term which is worth observing, is vague and politically
| highly charged to begin with.
|
| Even if you take BLM, the stats show that their beliefs are
| wrong. The American police are not systemically racist
| according to actual data, let alone the rest of society. If
| their beliefs are wrong then it isn't a question of whether you
| choose the "status quo" or to "speak out against it".
| ponker wrote:
| There's something that makes me very uneasy about companies and
| individuals having to go on the record saying "Black Lives
| Matter" or being ostracized. It feels like a shibboleth, like
| kids reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, like the Parsley
| Massacre, like a kid twisting another kid's arm saying "Say
| uncle! Say uncle!"
|
| That said, I don't think Armstrong's blog post made a strong
| argument against these kinds of mantras.
| sneak wrote:
| Well, the reason that's happening is that a lot of people
| benefit a lot from a widespread culture of white supremacy,
| and the systems, to use the popular terms, need to be
| actively dismantled, because they were actively designed and
| have been (and continue to be) actively maintained.
|
| Disambiguating those who haven't thought much about it simply
| because it doesn't affect them from people who _actively don
| 't give a shit about human rights and would prefer things
| stay as they are_ is a critically important thing to happen
| in our society.
|
| Additionally, in the cryptocurrency space, there are a lot of
| cryptoracists (i.e. from kryptos: "hidden") who are just sort
| of skating by, assumed to be decent. An analogous situation
| was when the POTUS was asked recently to commit to a peaceful
| transition of power following the election. Not saying
| anything, posed that question, is saying something quite
| loudly.
|
| The very plain statement that sums up this situation nicely
| is:
|
| > If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have
| chosen the side of the oppressor.
|
| I think that's plainly true, and anyone who doesn't see a
| _massive problem_ with the status quo is, at the very least,
| a little bit of a contributor to that problem.
|
| Pretending that the way our world works is someone else's
| problem is not tenable whilst _hiring_ and _building things_
| in that very world. You 're moving in a direction, and the
| effects of that direction cannot be ignored as they exist
| within a moral and ethical framework.
| disruptalot wrote:
| You've prescribed here numerous viewpoints that are each
| fiercely debated and you expect everyone to take it as a
| package or be on the "status quo".
| bluntfang wrote:
| This is a very low effort comment. Can you go through the
| effort of describing the viewpoints you find fiercely
| debated and why you think that, please?
| ponker wrote:
| The core assertion that there is an epidemic of police
| killings of Black men is contradicted by a study from a
| Black Harvard professor who claims that white and black
| men are killed at the same frequency by police, and that
| the real problems are 1) a disproportionate number of
| police engagements with black men and 2) an epidemic of
| police killings in general.
| bluntfang wrote:
| Can you link to the study if you're going to use it in
| your explanation please? What about other studies?
| Shouldn't we be using the scientific method for these
| things??
| ponker wrote:
| https://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/empirical-
| ana...
| bluntfang wrote:
| Just curious, have you read the abstract? It seems like
| you're cherry picking from it.
| ponker wrote:
| I have read the abstract but my point was not really
| about the paper itself. Imagine a group that made you say
| "the Earth is round!" or they'd throw a rock through your
| window. Frankly, I'd just say the earth is round. But I
| would still have a problem with this.
| bluntfang wrote:
| Yeah reality is a little more complicated than that,
| isn't it? Imagine a large group of people yelling that
| the earth is flat, and that's causing people to die on
| one side of the globe because so many people think that
| the earth is flat that they've decided to stop sailing to
| that side of the globe and can't get supplies there fast
| enough. We've got to get people to say that the earth is
| round because believing otherwise is dismissing the fact
| that their false information is literally killing people,
| and those people dying from this false information is
| their own fault and they should just pick themselves up
| by their bootstraps.
| ahpearce wrote:
| This is exactly it. People in this thread are saying "I don't
| understand why it's so crazy to say 'I'm not taking sides'"...
| Well because it clearly communicates that you still think there
| are "two sides", and that they're equivalent. That is clearly
| not the case, and if someone thinks otherwise, I don't even
| know how to have a conversation with them.
| birracerveza wrote:
| Absolutely not. You're just not explicitly endorsing one
| side, potentially having people from "the other side" boycott
| your business because of that. Or simply because it has no
| relevance to what you're actually doing.
|
| Why is it that you NEED to explicitly pick a side? Especially
| if you are a business. In that case, everyone knows that your
| only interest is increasing revenue. That's it. Everything
| else is PR stunts in order to increase revenue.
|
| I prefer "taking no sides" rather than plastering BLM or LGBT
| sponsors for the sole purpose to appeal to that crowd.
| lucaspm98 wrote:
| Take a step back here, what are the widespread human rights
| abuses? Very few people are against human rights, that would be
| truly uncontroversial. The issue seems to be when what are
| labeled as human rights aren't actually human rights, or they
| are bundled together with divisive add-ons or an overall
| political stance.
| sneak wrote:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/2020PoliceBrutality/
| mythrwy wrote:
| The current situation in these big tech companies reminds me a
| little bit of Wahhabism and the founding of modern Saudi Arabia.
|
| Initially the king used the Wahhabi extremists as troops and it
| was quite a successful partnership. But eventually it went sour
| as the king tried to modernize the country bringing in phone
| lines and roads and he was attacked by his former extremist
| friends who were opposed to the sinful modern world. Eventually
| the king enlisted the aid of the British with airplanes and
| machine guns and the Wahhabi were subdued (with a large number
| being killed).
|
| A couple of parallels and potential lessons here.
|
| Beware of getting in bed with unreasonable and fanatical
| extremists. They will turn on their former benefactors fairly
| quickly and the danger often isn't worth the risk.
|
| And, if you are an fanatical extremist (not passing judgement on
| just noting), you likely won't actually ever take power for long
| and will be quickly disposed of when no longer useful or you
| become problem which you will shortly. Cynical people will take
| advantage of your idealism for their own purposes but you won't
| see the benefits.
| chillwaves wrote:
| Is there no irony in your parallel with Wahhabism to social
| justice activists?
|
| The people who put money above all are their own form of
| extremist. I guess it is normalized to the point of being a non
| consideration, meanwhile the planet burns.
| [deleted]
| sidcool wrote:
| What's their mission?
| davidgerard wrote:
| listing dead shitcoins on one of the few exchanges that still
| has banking relationships, so a16z can dump its massive bags on
| retail
| iandanforth wrote:
| I believe this stance is dangerous for the company. The founder
| has exhibited and is overtly displaying here traits that are
| known predictors of fraud.
|
| https://www.icpas.org/information/copy-desk/insight/article/...
|
| Encouraging explicitly amoral stances from companies and
| retaliatory actions such as this may be appealing to some but is
| ultimately harmful to the company and society in general. That's
| a debatable assertion of course but the more we learn about white
| collar crime and companies which disregard the harms they do the
| more we find that individuals lacking empathy are core players.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| Ad hominems seem to be modus operandi for pc bullies
| objclxt wrote:
| Brian Armstrong wants to have it both ways. He wants employees to
| focus "on the mission", and not bring societal politics and
| activism into the workplace. Fair enough. For better or for
| worse, we live in a capitalist system, and companies are not
| first and foremost social justice organisations. I am not
| unsympathetic to the problems he is trying to solve.
|
| But he also wants to influence politics and laws to benefit his
| company. Coinbase pays hundreds of thousands of dollars to
| lobbyists and lobbying companies around the world to advocate for
| their position (this is all public information).
|
| He seems to believe that you can separate "political decisions
| that benefit Coinbase" and "political decisions that are
| irrelevant to Coinbase", but you can't. They're all
| interconnected. It's naive to pretend otherwise.
| Guthur wrote:
| We do not live in a free market capitalist system, which is
| blatantly obvious from things like government bailouts of big
| banks during GFC and huge encroachment of government within
| areas such as healthcare.
|
| And so for better or worse we're actually in some socialist
| capitalist system. Blaming capitalism for problems that are
| often rooted in bad government is often just wrong.
| Closi wrote:
| As someone who works for a mostly apolitical organization - it
| depends on the issue.
|
| For example, the company refuses to take a stance on:
|
| - Brexit (even though it will negatively impact them)
|
| - Elections or any vote (even though again, this impacts them)
|
| But for example actively campaigns on:
|
| - Agricultural issues (It's in the food industry)
|
| The company VERY strongly supports LGBT rights and minority
| rights, and will raise money for charities, but typically this
| does not transfer into support of individual political policies
| or parties.
|
| The view is effectively that the company has lots of customers,
| and we shouldn't alienate them if they have opposing views, and
| that taking a strong political stance outside our industry can
| look like we are not respecting opposing viewpoints that our
| customers or competitors may have.
| danpalmer wrote:
| What's the difference between strongly supporting LGBT rights
| and strongly supporting remaining in the EU?
|
| Both likely affect the company significantly, both are
| (unfortunately) political issues, both (unfortunately)
| alienate people.
|
| It seems the only distinction here is that Brexit is a closer
| call in the UK. Is there another way of looking at it?
| zo1 wrote:
| My take on it: Most LGBTQ+ rights issues are almost
| entirely settled and agreed on anyways at the greater
| societal level. You'd be hard pressed to find an
| appreciable amount of people that rationally want to take
| away normal, everyday rights from LGBTQ+ individuals. Sure
| there are _exotic_ and controversial discussion points
| (E.g. child transitioning, odd bathroom laws, etc) but no
| normal business touches those issues with anything but a
| ten-foot pole and vague "messages of support". Brexit, on
| the other hand, is probably a 50-50 split within the
| overall population in terms of support and is an
| arguable/defendable position that rational people can and
| do make.
| anoncake wrote:
| One is a human rights issue, the other is not.
| iuguy wrote:
| Brexit is absolutely a human rights issue. The leave
| campaign specifically talked up withdrawing from EU human
| rights laws and agreements.
| mountainb wrote:
| It's not true that "LGBT Rights" are value-free. Promoting
| LGBT rights also alienates members of the largest religious
| groups in the world, including those that are majority-non-
| European like Islam and Catholicism. Being a practicing L, G,
| B, or T or pro any of them is against sharia, the Catechism,
| and against the rules of many major Protestant sects like
| Mormons. Gay marriage is expressly against the rules of most
| major global belief groups that are not the US and its
| Marshall Plan colonies.
|
| Without a lot of double speak, there is no such thing as a
| 'universally tolerant' corporate policy because different
| legal, social, and religious moral frameworks are mutually
| incompatible. In the US people just prefer to pretend that
| post-Protestant Woo-ism is universally friendly to everyone.
| literallycancer wrote:
| Funny you should say that, as the Marshall Plan terms were
| quite generous and the countries that refused them due to
| commie pressure are now significantly worse of in terms of
| GDP per capita, etc.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| So many of these major companies are extremely vocal about
| LGBT+ rights but it's all just lip service, the second it
| comes down to money the whole thing goes out the window.
|
| Look at Apple they were very proud to tell us about their
| pride themed watch face and emoji, yet some developer
| within Apple had to write the if statement to disable these
| graphics if the device is in Russia [1]. By choosing to
| take a stance on these issues but not willing to take the
| monetary loss you're causing someone in your organisation
| to write that if statement which could even be interpreted
| as an active act of oppression to LGBT+ people.
|
| If your company truly holds these values then there
| shouldn't be even a question about giving up that revenue
| for the greater good. Until that moment then its just
| performative, taking advantage of those communities for the
| sake of advertising and headlines.
|
| If money is more important which we know it is because you
| wrote the if statement, well maybe leave politics at the
| door then.
|
| [1] : https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/31/17803638/apple-
| watch-prid...
| mountainb wrote:
| A 'principled stand' in Russia would be to accept all the
| legal punishments that would come from flouting Russian
| law and the moral conventions of the dominant religion in
| Russia. That would be consistent with the principles of
| 'civil disobedience.'
|
| However, globocorps do not do that. They are woke where
| the educated elite are aggressively secular and the laws
| support it, and they are profit focused and 'business-
| first' where it isn't. The US educated elite is under a
| mistaken impression that its secularism is 'tolerant' or
| 'universal' when it is actually rather parochial,
| particular, and incompatible with most of the largest
| global faith groups. The US outlook is also incompatible
| with Chinese political culture, and China will control
| the largest and most significant economic power bloc over
| the next 30 years -- no one else will be close, including
| the rapidly declining US.
| Gormisdomai wrote:
| Your high level point about universal tolerance stands -
| but you might like to challenge some of your object level
| assumptions about world religions and LGBT. Iranian
| theocratic leadership for example officially does not think
| that being trans is against sharia and the nation carries
| out more gender reassignment surgeries than any country
| except Thailand (not that their treatment of trans people
| is perfect by any means).
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_rights_in_Iran
| mdpye wrote:
| From the article you link:
|
| > They sanction funds for sex reassignment surgery in
| order to fit all of their citizens
|
| > into the category of either male or female without any
| grey area for those who are homosexual
|
| > or transgender.
|
| So support the T specifically for the purposes of denying
| the L, G and B. Grandparent looks at least 3/4 correct to
| me...
| fernandotakai wrote:
| i hope you realize that homosexuals in iran are sometimes
| forced to transition just so they don't get killed.
|
| >Iran is one of a handful of countries where homosexual
| acts are punishable by death. Clerics do, however accept
| the idea that a person may be trapped in a body of the
| wrong sex. So homosexuals can be pushed into having
| gender reassignment surgery - and to avoid it many flee
| the country.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29832690
| Gormisdomai wrote:
| Yeah Iran remains massively homophobic and hostile to
| LGBT rights - the variety of approaches taken shows that
| there is scope for the laws to be interpreted as
| compatible. I'd argue that claiming that LGBT rights are
| irreconcilable with Islamic law makes things worse
| overall.
| mountainb wrote:
| Sodomy is illegal in Iran. This has statute citations,
| but I don't know where Iranian laws are posted.
| https://pridelegal.com/iran-lgbt-laws/
|
| Point being there is no such thing as a universally
| 'tolerant' moral system -- no matter what stance you
| profess to take on a given issue of this type, it will be
| discriminatory against very large groups of people
| (billions of them).
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| A past employer decided to publish a rainbow themed
| design for LGBTQ pride and rolled back the UAE version of
| the website following feedback from clients there.
| Gormisdomai wrote:
| I think "impossible to reconcile with the codified
| teachings of religion X" and "would receive negative
| feedback / appear intolerant to people currently
| practicing religion X" are different claims. Though I
| totally agree the latter is a good argument for why
| "universal tolerance" is not a straightforward concept.
|
| Specifically: I'm disputing the theological claim "Being
| a practicing L, G, B, or T or pro any of them is against
| sharia, the Catechism, and against the rules of many
| major Protestant sects like Mormons." That's not really a
| settled question.
| yyy888sss wrote:
| But they are not the same. Every company and organisation will
| advocate for itself by advertising, lobbying, legal battles
| etc. Brands will also adopt a LGBT pride/BLM/etc campaign as
| soon as they think it provides good publicity. The aim of all
| this is to help the company/org. It's not the same as employees
| bringing up their social or political views while at work.
| md_ wrote:
| Companies do not merely advertise or lobby for specific
| regulations that affect their industry: they spend money to
| elect specific politicians who take positions on laws that
| affect that company's employees, in and out of the workplace.
| howlgarnish wrote:
| No, companies spend money to elect politicians who will
| favor them, and the fact that those politicians have to
| have positions on social issues as well is (for companies)
| an unavoidable negative. Hobby Lobby type companies with an
| active social agenda are a tiny minority.
| md_ wrote:
| Yes, I think we're saying the same thing. :)
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Ah, so these companies lobby for policies that have no
| impact on any social issues, like taxes and immigration?
| They have no effect on my life?
| username90 wrote:
| Lobbying about taxes and immigration is working as
| intended since it is just telling politicians what
| policies would benefit said company. It is important for
| politicians to know about it when they make policies so
| they can better consider pro's and con's.
|
| However lobbying for for laws such as for/against gay
| marriage or religious rights is unrelated to their
| business. Then the company is used to exert some
| individuals political influence instead of just being a
| business.
|
| Of course politicians are sometimes corrupt and get
| favors from the companies and then go to do whatever the
| companies lobbyist tells them to, that is what people
| usually mean when they mention "lobbying". But lobbying
| itself isn't inherently a malicious or political act, in
| its purest form it just conveys information so
| politicians can make better decisions.
| md_ wrote:
| Lobbying isn't an inherently political act?
| [deleted]
| ivanbakel wrote:
| That attitude reifies the company - the company itself is
| nothing more than the collection of people who work together
| to drive it. Political stances, even for business purposes,
| come from the individuals who make up the company leadership,
| not out of some abstract organisation.
|
| In that sense, it's terribly unfair to forbid employees to
| bring up politics at work. After all, their bosses are doing
| it: and not only that, their bosses are using _their
| employees '_ productivity to empower those political views.
| chii wrote:
| > their bosses are using their employees' productivity to
| empower those political views.
|
| that's because the bosses (an owner of the company) is
| paying for it. Presumably, doing so reduces the amount of
| money the company can make (since employee time is diverted
| away to an unproductive, but political action).
|
| The employee, however, do not have this right, because if
| they are doing so not under the instruction of the owner of
| company, they are taking away their productivity that
| they've sold to the company (for their wage/salary).
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| Proportion is important - bringing politics up occasionally
| (rarely), peacefully, and in proportion to other topics ..
| is very different to crusading about it, bullying about it,
| being emotional and irrational and losing sight of others'
| perspectives.
|
| Those strongly emotional actions are a whole different
| thing and it's dishonest to use mild language to describe
| those behaviours as 'bringing it up' and more accurate to
| call it something such a 'arguing about politics instead of
| working'.
|
| Viewed in that light is it unfair to forbid employees to
| regularly argue about politics instead of working?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| This is the textbook definition of "have it both ways" and
| "hypocrisy"
| bJGVygG7MQVF8c wrote:
| It's not just a matter of publicity -- the non-profit / NGO
| sector is a vector for oligarchical / corporate political
| influence.
|
| Corporate lobbying is a problem. People who can't seem to
| fathom that political litmus tests among employees are an
| _intensification_ of that problem are useful idiots for power
| they claim to object to.
| PavleMiha wrote:
| > He seems to believe that you can separate "political
| decisions that benefit Coinbase" and "political decisions that
| are irrelevant to Coinbase", but you can't. They're all
| interconnected. It's naive to pretend otherwise.
|
| I agree that it's hard and maybe impossible to make a hard line
| that separates the two, but wouldn't you agree that some
| political decisions are way more specific to Coinbase than
| others? Specifically the CEO sets out a pretty clear
| distinction: "If there is a bill introduced around crypto, we
| may engage here"
| [deleted]
| nilkn wrote:
| I have to say most companies I've worked for have subscribed to
| the policies in Armstrong's blog post, and it has worked very
| well. But these companies were mostly outside the Bay Area.
|
| I suspect the Bay Area is extremely nondiverse and homogeneous,
| and folks there aren't actually used to having to work with and
| get along with people who strongly disagree with them on
| politics. In that kind of monoculture, it's easy to think that
| politics can and should be part of work life. In a much more
| diverse workforce, though, it rarely works well.
|
| If Coinbase is going to be remote-first, as they recently
| announced, the company's employees are certainly going to
| encounter a level of diversity they haven't been exposed to in
| the Bay Area. This could be preparation for that.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| > I suspect the Bay Area is extremely nondiverse and
| homogeneous, and folks there aren't actually used to having
| to work with and get along with people who strongly disagree
| with them on politics
|
| This is extremely ironic given the hiring practices of Bay
| Area companies.
| fernandotakai wrote:
| from what i've seen, bay area companies try to be racially
| diverse (and mostly fail) but don't try to be culturally
| diverse.
|
| everyone might look different, but they 100% think the same
| way.
| chrischattin wrote:
| I think he's referring to diversity of ideas, not
| superficial attributes like race/gender/sexual
| preference/etc. A group of people that look different but
| all have the same world view is not a diverse group, imo.
| sharpneli wrote:
| They're only superficially diverse, perhaps due to the
| homogeinity of the Bay Area.
|
| Basically the companies only look at skin color and what's
| between your legs. As long as you have an American middle
| class/upper class upbringing or at the minimum had your
| education in certain American universities. So culturally
| they are pretty much identical.
|
| From this point of view a white, black and asian American
| middleclass teenagers that have had identical education are
| wildly different and bring diverse viewpoints. Whereas a
| French, Italian and a Polish person would be non diverse.
| Even though the latter group has massively different
| cultural background compared to the first group.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| >If Coinbase is going to be remote-first, as they recently
| announced, the company's employees are certainly going to
| encounter a level of diversity they haven't been exposed to
| in the Bay Area.
|
| A _lot_ of companies are going to get some serious culture
| shock if they increase their remote hiring.
| gkop wrote:
| > I suspect the Bay Area is extremely nondiverse and
| homogeneous
|
| Yes it's fair to say that about Bay Area _tech companies_.
| The geographic region that is the Bay Area however features
| extraordinarily diverse demographics:
| https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/10/14/three-bay-area-
| cities...
| [deleted]
| jcims wrote:
| >I suspect the Bay Area is extremely nondiverse and
| homogeneous
|
| I moved there from Ohio to work for a FAANG for six months.
| It's not nearly as bad on the ground as it might seem but you
| do witness spectacles with much more frequency.
|
| Racially and culturally its definitely not homogenous but
| there aren't any black folks to be found. Alameda county is
| the only one around the bay to break double digit
| percentages, mostly because of Oakland. SF at ~6% is on par
| with Colorado Springs and Portland lol. The rest (Santa
| Clara, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Napa, Marin, etc etc) are on
| the order of 1-2% black, and based on my short experience
| living and working there I imagine a good chunk of those are
| immigrants.
|
| I had no idea and when I first noticed it I got extremely
| creeped out. Not because I'm some diversity champ, it's just
| that everybody else is there and you realize there's clearly
| some kind of filter at work.
| renewiltord wrote:
| SF did shove black people out with urban renewal but aren't
| demographics mostly like this in the West since the slave
| trade wasn't as extensive?
|
| The real indicator for the tech industry's lack of
| diversity is that CA's 39% Hispanic population reflects as
| some minor fraction of the tech population.
|
| Some extraordinary filter is occurring somewhere that's
| keeping Hispanic people out. Not alleging malice, just the
| scale is so huge.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Whilst this is true it's clear that plenty of individuals let
| alone companies go through life only caring about and acting on
| issues that directly impact them regardless of the larger scope
| of impact.
| Zenbit_UX wrote:
| He addressed the lobbying for crypto related issues in the plog
| post, something to the affect that we may engage in political
| lobbying when it relates strongly to our core mission.
|
| That seems fair to me, lobbying for crypto and maybe even
| internet privacy laws wouldn't seem outside the mission to
| better his company but publicly declaring support for one
| candidate or another would. Likewise getting involved in a non-
| crypto centric mission like BLM would be quite far outside its
| mandate.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| I disagree that we live in a capitalist system, the lobbying
| you mention in your post clearly points to that.
|
| Companies do what works better for them, which means: - Earn
| money - Retain employees
|
| Political discussions will definitely make some employees feel
| uncomfortable or unwelcome (unless you have an entirely
| homogeneous company). This is deeply unfortunate and troubling
| (I blame education and the media for people incapacity to have
| a discussions without feeling triggered) but it's today
| polarised reality. Preventing or discouraging polarising
| discussions on the private properties of the company sounds
| like a sensible choice.
|
| Political moves from the company will definitely have some
| trade-offs but have less of an impact on employees. This is not
| zero (I remember some Google or Amazon employees leaving over
| their company's political choices) but it's far less common.
| simias wrote:
| Reading these comments I feel like the root of the issue is the
| collapse of American democracy. It's a bit grandiloquent but
| that's definitely how it looks like. If workers trust that "We,
| the people" are still in charge on the big picture then it
| doesn't make sense to bring politics at work. Just vote.
|
| Now if you feel like your power as a citizen has dwindled and you
| can't meaningfully enact change through democratic means, it
| makes sense to try and "weaponize" your job, especially if you
| work for a powerful company and you're a valuable highly skilled
| worker.
|
| But in the end if you're dissatisfied with your company and you
| know that there's a fundamental ideological incompatibility it
| probably makes more sense to just quit, especially when you're a
| software dev and you can probably find some other job fairly
| easily.
|
| I guess an other possibility would be to have proper unions but
| for some reason I don't see that happening in the USA any time
| soon...
| claudeganon wrote:
| > If workers trust that "We, the people" are still in charge on
| the big picture then it doesn't make sense to bring politics at
| work. Just vote.
|
| This is a bizarre, ahistorical sentiment. Go read about the
| history of labor struggle in the US. Even when everyone could
| vote, the organizing of workplaces and response by their
| employers was far more contentious and violent than anything
| that's going on today.
| Aunche wrote:
| Part of Coinbase's purpose is to provide its workers with a
| safe environment and fair compensation, even if it's not
| explicitly written in their mission statement. As such,
| protesting dangerous work conditions and collectively asking
| more pay is directly related to a company's mission. What
| happened at Coinbase was that workers walked out because
| their CEO didn't want to Tweet about the latest social issue
| du jour. It's very difficult to imagine what anyone seeks to
| accomplish with this.
| simias wrote:
| Can you give an example of what you have in mind? I must
| admit that, being European, I don't really have a good grasp
| of the history of American worker struggles.
|
| Here in France I can't quite think of something really
| similar to Silicon Valley activists. When I think about
| worker-led revolts I think of Germinal or Mai 68, when the
| proletariat (and, in the case of Mai 68, the students and
| then the proletariat) fought for better working conditions
| and more rights.
|
| I don't think that's very similar to the time of activism
| we're talking about here. For one thing IT workers are not
| exactly the lowest dregs of the proletariat, it's a very
| privileged position with much better working conditions that
| most. Beyond that the fight is not usually for the direct
| benefit of said workers ("higher salaries!" or "fewer hours!"
| or "better food at the corporate restaurant!") but more
| ideologically motivated. An obvious instance of this is the
| very polarizing firing of Brendan Eich from Mozilla (that's
| still making waves all these years later). Doing that didn't
| directly change anything material for Mozilla's employee, it
| was motivated by ideology. The only thing that comes close I
| think is videogame devs complaining about their bad working
| conditions, but I don't think that's what we're talking about
| here.
|
| Conversely the 1984's UK miner strike wasn't triggered
| because the National Coal Board had said something
| homophobic. It's just not comparable, IMO.
|
| The lack of violence is also easy to explain: violence is the
| weapon of those that have no other way to be heard.
| Developers in the silicon valley can make themselves heard
| without having to burn their company-provided MacBooks and
| taking their managers hostage at the next SCRUM Sprint
| planning.
| lukeschlather wrote:
| > I don't think that's very similar to the time of activism
| we're talking about here.
|
| I think that was exactly the OP's point. The kind of
| activism we're talking about here is low-key activism by
| privileged people. I can't think of any examples either -
| that didn't mean they didn't happen, it just means they
| weren't important enough to make the history books because
| they were settled without any violence.
| claudeganon wrote:
| There was all kinds of trade union opposition to the
| Vietnam War, which is really no different from tech workers
| protesting against collaboration with the military and
| other violent state forces. Many of the leading figures in
| the Civil Rights Movement also came from labor organizing
| backgrounds, and while unions like the AFL-CIO have mixed
| records, support from organized labor was crucial to it
| success.
|
| The cleavage you're describing between ideological and
| material concerns is one that was introduced as part of the
| neoliberal ideology of the 1970s, in which Capital
| intentionally carved out a narrow space for identitarian
| claims to better defend itself from the multi-constituency
| groups that were attacking it in the 1960s. But it doesn't
| reflect the real history of how solidarity functioned in
| the period.
|
| There is certainly a shift in white-collar workers
| beginning to understand themselves in terms more akin to
| their working class predecessors, especially as it relates
| to hierarchy and power dynamics in companies. But this is
| not too terribly surprising given that massive wealth
| inequality has produced an even greater degree of
| proletarianization, even among the highly educated
| workforce. Google has more contract employees than regular
| employees now, for example.
| bernie_simon wrote:
| I'm old enough to remember the Vietnam War and the AFL-
| CIO of the day was staunchly anti-communist and pro-war.
| Most of the opposition to the war before Nixon became
| president came from the pacifist left and student led
| organizations like the SDS.
| claudeganon wrote:
| I already cited the AFL-CIO's conservatism. Under
| McCarthyism, most real leftists had been purged from the
| leadership of large unions. What you say about the
| students is true, but an incomplete picture. If you want
| a better one, check out Philip Foner's _US Labor and the
| Vietnam War._
| joshuamorton wrote:
| Most of the current tech activism is for things like salary
| transparency and employee representation/governance.
|
| These are progressive ideals pushed usually by people who
| share other progressive ideals, but employee representation
| is not itself ideologically motivated.
| ok_coo wrote:
| A good example would be to take a look at the Pinkertons.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_(detective_agency)
| smsm42 wrote:
| Well, democracy is not just voting. Most of it actually happens
| before voting. I mean Russia has voting, Belarus has voting,
| USSR had voting, Iran has voting, I'm not sure whether North
| Korea has voting but they certainly could have. To have
| properly functioning democracy you need the support system that
| leads to responsible, informed voting and that provided
| feedback mechanisms between the government and the population.
| Which includes a vivid and robust public discussion of the
| topics important for people.
|
| This is what is breaking down I feel. And what we're seeing is
| just a symptom - employers want to ban workplace politics not
| because politics and participation is bad per se, but because
| it has become so dirty and vicious that allowing it can
| literally destroy the company. You can't efficiently work
| together with people you hate, and I definitely feel like hate
| has become the primary weapon and the primary drive of US
| politics. It is basically required from anybody who plays in it
| to hate your opponent, and to hate everybody who doesn't march
| in lockstep with you. If you don't, you're probably secretly in
| league with "them" and must be targeted for hate yourself.
| There's no respectful disagreement, there's no difference of
| opinion allowed, there's no assumption of good will and willing
| to work through disagreements. The slogan of the day is "burn
| it all down". Of course there's only two ways for the company
| to survive in such environment - either everybody thinks the
| same and wrongthinkers are expelled - thus ensuring all hate is
| directed outside the company - or ban the politics and keep the
| hate outside the place of employment. Third way would be to
| actually remove the hate from the equation, but it doesn't look
| like there are enough grownups around for this to happen.
|
| > I guess an other possibility would be to have proper unions
|
| I don't see how the unions - especially US unions which are
| completely partisan - would help anything, except making the
| union shop inaccessible to those who isn't willing to join
| union's party.
| hnmullany wrote:
| You know ... there's a reason that US Unions are partisan,
| which is that the Republican party has been on a mission to
| destroy them since Reagan and has largely succeeded.
| smsm42 wrote:
| Union's popularity has been falling for years and years:
| https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/480481-unions-decline-
| ag... and for a good reason - as soon as you don't force
| people to join, turns out not everybody wants to.
|
| And the polarization of unions is far from a forced move. I
| do not think Republicans made this happen:
| https://www.zerohedge.com/political/democratic-socialists-
| am...
|
| It's more like that centralized top-down economy is much
| more comfortable for the union leadership than chaotic
| horizontal competitive economy. It's much easier to enforce
| certain policy by the power of the government than
| negotiate it privately with each employer. That makes
| unions a natural ally of socialists. And of course there's
| nothing like government subsidies and regulations - which
| can be exchanged for votes and donations - to hide the
| inefficiencies of inflexible unionized setups and deflect
| the competitive threats from more agile and enterprising
| newcomers. Again, here the unions are the natural allies of
| centralized regulatory state. And the effects of this are
| pretty obvious: https://nypost.com/2018/08/25/why-nyc-is-
| priciest-city-in-th... https://www.nj.com/news/2018/06/mone
| y_for_nothing_working_th...
|
| That's not Republican party's fault.
| cbHXBY1D wrote:
| >I guess an other possibility would be to have proper unions
| but for some reason I don't see that happening in the USA any
| time soon...
|
| I think this will happen sooner rather than later. As the
| market gets flooded with more and more engineers, tech workers
| will continue to get more and more proletarianized.
| Unionization will be the natural avenue for workers to get a
| slice of the pie.
| infamouscow wrote:
| I wonder if that eventually leads the software industry into
| having professional licensing.
| smsm42 wrote:
| I don't think people earning 5x-6x median wage, not counting
| stock incentives, are what Marx mean when he wrote about
| proletariat. Outside of Hollywood stars and top sportsmen,
| one would struggle to find a less oppressed category of
| workers.
| frankish wrote:
| This is why I'm frustrated with the idea that we need to enact
| change and policies at the federal level. The federal
| government should just exist to protect our liberties and
| organize national defense. Everything else should be organized
| more locally at the community level where voters actually have
| some skin in the game.
|
| It's the same idea as how modern agile companies run, small
| teams that work in the same environment, have more
| empathy/trust of one another, and are able to make compromises
| in order to have stability and direction within the team.
|
| Additionally, we shouldn't be trying to put all of our eggs in
| one basket. Should we have single-payer healthcare nationally?
| No one knows if that's the most appropriate solution for all of
| the US, but why not let cities or communities try various
| localized healthcare strategies out for themselves. Each may
| try things differently. Some may work and some may fail. Other
| places can see how things worked elsewhere and either decide to
| improve, not implement, or take verbatim what another local
| government has done. You influence change by setting an example
| and letting others decide for themselves, not by trying to
| force the world to behave as a small subset of people want.
|
| Having multiple baskets is essential for enabling different
| ideas and perspectives, especially if the bad ideas were to win
| out. I firmly believe humans are not meant to have such large
| scale societal structures where communities are expected to
| encompass an entire nation. You care more about and think more
| similarly to your neighbor than you do someone three thousand
| miles away.
| prions wrote:
| > This is why I'm frustrated with the idea that we need to
| enact change and policies at the federal level. The federal
| government should just exist to protect our liberties and
| organize national defense. Everything else should be
| organized more locally at the community level where voters
| actually have some skin in the game.
|
| You'd think that after months of "locally led" covid
| responses in the US that this naive take would somehow become
| less popular.
|
| Whether small-government enthusiasts like it or not, the US
| is highly interconnected on almost every level. There are
| certain things that absolutely require federal responses.
| Things like pollution and viruses absolutely need to be
| handled from a nation wide perspective. How would healthcare
| work as a piecemeal implementation across local lines? Its
| almost as if "letting localities decide" is a nice way of
| ensuring something will fail without forcing it outright.
|
| Your argument is implying that the federal government is
| somehow ineffective, but given the federally led improvements
| across the last century - from roads to environmental
| regulations, public health and even the internet just shows
| that you're either ignorant of intentionally dishonest.
| T-hawk wrote:
| It's not so much about locality - it's about _competition_.
| Locality is just the means to that.
|
| Everyone wins when competitors try different things and
| find out what's efficient and what works well and what
| doesn't. Marijuana legalization and gay marriage started as
| experiments by states and localities, which could find and
| set the example to be adopted federally.
|
| Everyone loses when an entrenched monopoly (here the
| federal government) can forcibly impose one way of doing
| things with no room for deviation.
| Traster wrote:
| Everyone doesn't win when competing localities of
| government try different things. What actually happens is
| Amazon shops around for _enormous_ public subsidies for
| its HQ, bankrupting local and state govnerments. We 're
| in a world of globalised companies and expecting some
| backwater county in Arkansas to negotiate with Huawei is
| just absurd.
|
| For the same reason that Google tells Congress 'You need
| to let us run free to fight those Chinese giants', the US
| needs federal level regulation to play on the same level
| as those companies, if it had the guts.
| bhupy wrote:
| > What actually happens is Amazon shops around for
| enormous public subsidies for its HQ, bankrupting local
| and state govnerments.
|
| I'll offer a different take: taxation (and budgets) are
| just the price we pay to society for a basket of
| services. There's some optimum price / optimum basket.
| This competition allows different societies to lower
| their price (taxes) or lower their basket of services
| based on the democratic needs of that society. Some
| societies will value job creation more than short-run
| costs to the budget, and others will not. It's not
| surprising at all that the city that didn't have a whole
| lot of jobs chose the former (via the democratically
| elected government), and the city that already had a lot
| of jobs (NYC) chose the latter, also via a similarly
| selected government.
| bhupy wrote:
| None of this is unique to the US -- the EU is similarly
| "interconnected", as is Switzerland. Subsidiarity and
| decentralization aren't new ideas, and are generally the
| prescribed solution to unlock governance in a large &
| heterogenous polity.
|
| > from roads
|
| The Interstate Highway System, while technically
| impressive, essentially entrenched the US as a car-centric
| society from the top-down.
|
| > public health
|
| The vast majority of our healthcare problems can be
| attributed to the fact that it's tied to employment, which
| was caused by Federal policies.
|
| > even the Internet
|
| DARPA falls under "organize national defense". The EU also
| has EU-level agencies that work on space research (ESA).
| Advanced research can also be organized among the States in
| a CERN-like model.
|
| On the flip-side, US States are larger than many nations.
| The State of Massachusetts has more people than Norway, and
| enjoys a similar HDI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of
| _U.S._states_and_territ...
|
| Insofar as "localities" are ill-suited to governing, the
| States are a sufficient mechanism for top-down control.
| pm90 wrote:
| > The Interstate Highway System, while technically
| impressive, essentially entrenched the US as a car-
| centric society from the top-down.
|
| Its been _effective_. It achieve the goals it set out to
| do. We discovered that focusing on highways and cars was
| ultimately not very good. But it achieved the goal it set
| out to do, so I don 't get what your point is.
|
| > The vast majority of our healthcare problems can be
| attributed to the fact that it's tied to employment,
| which was caused by Federal policies.
|
| This is an absurd argument. What are you even trying to
| convey? That the Federal Government should take charge of
| providing healthcare? OK then.
|
| Medicare/Medicaid/ACA are all Federal policies and
| provide healthcare to millions who wouldn't get that
| otherwise.
|
| > DARPA falls under "organize national defense". The EU
| also has EU-level agencies that work on space research
| (ESA). Advanced research can also be organized among the
| States in a CERN-like model.
|
| Again not sure what your point is. EU has Federal
| agencies too, yeah, so what?
|
| > Insofar as "localities" are ill-suited to governing,
| the States are a sufficient mechanism for top-down
| control.
|
| Hard disagree. While States have been great for
| introducing and experimenting with new ideas, spreading
| those ideas across the country requires Federal
| Investment and oversight. Obamacare traces its origins to
| Romneycare in Mass, but it required Federal dollars to
| bring it to the rest of the country.
| bhupy wrote:
| > We discovered that focusing on highways and cars was
| ultimately not very good. But it achieved the goal it set
| out to do, so I don't get what your point is.
|
| That's exactly the thing we're arguing _against_ -- a
| monopoly /monolith doesn't necessarily know whether the
| goal is the correct one. Enterprises rely on competition
| to arrive at the "correct" goal. The argument is to allow
| State actors to do the same. Discovering that something
| is "not very good" after experimenting on 300+ million
| people is worse than running those experiments and
| observing those failures more locally at the State level,
| where failures impact fewer people. GP commenter made the
| same argument, as follows:
|
| "Additionally, we shouldn't be trying to put all of our
| eggs in one basket. Should we have single-payer
| healthcare nationally? No one knows if that's the most
| appropriate solution for all of the US, but why not let
| cities or communities try various localized healthcare
| strategies out for themselves. Each may try things
| differently. Some may work and some may fail. Other
| places can see how things worked elsewhere and either
| decide to improve, not implement, or take verbatim what
| another local government has done. You influence change
| by setting an example and letting others decide for
| themselves, not by trying to force the world to behave as
| a small subset of people want."
|
| I don't know that I agree that healthcare systems should
| be fragmented at the city level, but there's really no
| reason why States shouldn't drive healthcare policy and
| try different approaches. Switzerland, Denmark, the UK,
| Singapore, and Germany all have wildly different
| healthcare systems -- all with their own merits and
| demerits. There isn't a single system that is objectively
| "the best". States can enact the policies that the
| citizens want the most, and we can see for ourselves how
| they do.
|
| > This is an absurd argument. What are you even trying to
| convey? That the Federal Government should take charge of
| providing healthcare? OK then.
|
| And this is an absurd reading of that argument. The
| argument is that we got to where we have because the
| Federal government started off by 1) imposing wage
| ceilings that resulted in employers offering health
| insurance to get around those, 2) enacted a tax deduction
| to incentivize employers to keep doing this after the
| wage ceilings were lifted, and 3) instituted a mandate
| for employers to provide health insurance. These are all
| terrible policies, all advanced at the Federal level. It
| should then follow that we should _reduce_ the degree to
| which the Federal government makes these decisions, not
| increase them. You don 't promote a bad decision maker,
| you fire them.
|
| > Medicare/Medicaid/ACA are all Federal policies and
| provide healthcare to millions who wouldn't get that
| otherwise.
|
| Medicare subsidizes healthcare for overwhelmingly rich
| people (old people are the richest cohort in America,
| owing to a lifetime of accrued income). Does that mean we
| shouldn't subsidize healthcare for any old people? No,
| not at all -- Medicare was just local optima. ACA
| entrenched employer-sponsored health insurance via the
| employer mandate. Are individual mandates bad policy? No,
| not at all, that's how Swiss healthcare works. But ACA
| was more than just that, and got us stuck in local
| optima.
|
| Again, that's the entire point -- when we give a monopoly
| sole decision-making power, it's _very difficult_ to get
| ourselves out of local optima, especially when the polity
| is as ideologically polarized / heterogenous as ours.
|
| > Again not sure what your point is. EU has Federal
| agencies too, yeah, so what?
|
| Exactly. The argument is not that the US should have 0
| Federal agencies, it's just that it should look more like
| the EU, writ large. One of the foundational principles of
| the EU is "subsidiarity" -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
| /Subsidiarity_(European_Union). I (and ostensibly, also
| GP) argue that the US ought to follow this model.
|
| > Hard disagree. While States have been great for
| introducing and experimenting with new ideas, spreading
| those ideas across the country requires Federal
| Investment and oversight. Obamacare traces its origins to
| Romneycare in Mass, but it required Federal dollars to
| bring it to the rest of the country.
|
| Yeah but that's just because most of that taxation goes
| to the Federal government. There's no reason that can't
| change, and for the majority of one's taxes to go to
| their State government. Today, I pay around ~30% of my
| income to the Federal government and ~10% to my State.
| The argument is to make that the other way around, so
| that you don't _need_ Federal dollars to bring things at
| the State level. This is exactly how it works in
| Switzerland, where the top marginal rate at the Federal
| level is ~10%, and Cantonal rates vary between 16-30%.
| Switzerland isn 't some "libertarian" hell hole, it's one
| of the most prosperous nations on the planet. Likewise,
| the EU's leaves taxation entirely to its Member States,
| and not only do they do just fine, some of their States
| are arguably more prosperous than the US.
| vinay427 wrote:
| > None of this is unique to the US -- the EU is similarly
| "interconnected", as is Switzerland.
|
| I live in Switzerland, and the response here to the virus
| and most other incidents are far more federally managed
| than the cantonal system would imply to someone
| accustomed to US states, in my opinion. If forced at
| gunpoint to generalize, the simplest explanation I would
| use having lived in both countries is that in Switzerland
| the cantons have more independence in execution, while in
| the US they have more freedom in legislation.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| >None of this is unique to the US -- the EU is similarly
| "interconnected",
|
| The EU gave us the Greek and Irish financial crises and
| Brexit.
| bhupy wrote:
| If your argument is that there is variance within the EU,
| you can make the argument that there is just as much
| variance within the US -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L
| ist_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
|
| Pointing at Greece kind of makes the point: you get to
| isolate the failures, and Greece doesn't get to hold back
| Germany, France, Denmark, Sweden, et al. On the flip
| side, EU Citizens aren't at each others' throats about
| everything because they are largely enfranchised at the
| Member State level.
|
| You can't say either of this about the US.
|
| > Irish financial crises
|
| Yeah but then as of 2015, Ireland became the fastest
| growing economy in the EU. As of today, it is among the
| top 10 wealthiest countries in the world.
|
| > and Brexit
|
| Yes, and now the UK no longer gets to sabotage the EU.
| pm90 wrote:
| Exactly this.
|
| The libertarian "Minimize the federal government" is an
| extremely misguided fanatical view which is devoid of any
| fact-based reasoning. Federal investments have lead to
| transformative change in most sections of the US economy.
| Federal Reserve keeping the interest rates low and
| providing unlimited liquidity is whats keeping the stock
| market from tanking today. Federal investments will be key
| to de carbonizing the US economy and reducing income
| inequality (e.g. by increasing the minimum wage).
| slumpt_ wrote:
| Careful criticizing libertarianism on here. This is the
| hive.
|
| A lot of survivorship bias on here and folks who want to
| think everyone can pull themselves up by their
| bootstraps, get rid of taxation and large government etc
| etc
|
| It completely neglects marginalized people.
| beambot wrote:
| "I am, at the Fed level, libertarian;
|
| at the state level, Republican;
|
| at the local level, Democrat;
|
| and at the family and friends level, a socialist.
|
| If that saying doesn't convince you of the fatuousness of
| left vs. right labels, nothing will."
|
| - Nassim Taleb, Skin in the game
| frankish wrote:
| You nailed it. Admittedly only listened to him on JRE, but
| I strongly agree with this concept.
| bradlys wrote:
| > But in the end if you're dissatisfied with your company and
| you know that there's a fundamental ideological incompatibility
| it probably makes more sense to just quit, especially when
| you're a software dev and you can probably find some other job
| fairly easily.
|
| While true that you could find "some other job" - it likely
| won't be a job that pays as well or has some other detestable
| attribute. If you have a pathological disagreement with
| companies collecting lots of data - you're going to have a hard
| time finding a company paying you $400k+/yr as an IC software
| dev.
|
| If you're not wealthy (bought real estate before the big boom)
| or come from a family of wealth (they bought you a house) -
| you're going to have hard time in many cities only going with
| companies that you can find almost no ideological
| incompatibility with. And, turns out, a lot of these major
| cities that are very expensive also happen to have most of the
| job listings. God forbid you move to BFE and the few places
| that hire ICs stop hiring. You'll have to upheave your entire
| life and move - or pray you can find a suitable remote job.
|
| Like most of us - you sacrifice your ideology because it isn't
| compatible with living in a capitalistic world and you've
| decided you're also not ready to be a martyr. You stand to lose
| a lot in the developed world (as you start with a lot more than
| those in less developed places) - martyrdom isn't worth it
| then. Only when you're independently wealthy can you truly make
| decisions based on your ideology. Making the presumption here
| that everyone wants a middle class to upper middle class
| American lifestyle (SFH, 2 cars, live in a somewhat desirable
| area, kids, retirement savings, etc.).
| seneca wrote:
| > Now if you feel like your power as a citizen has dwindled and
| you can't meaningfully enact change through democratic means,
| it makes sense to try and "weaponize" your job, especially if
| you work for a powerful company and you're a valuable highly
| skilled worker.
|
| I think you're close, but not quite right. I think what has
| happened is that ideas well outside the Overton Window have
| become popular with a couple small, but very vocal, groups.
| Their ideas aren't very popular with most people, so they can't
| achieve their desired outcomes democratically. They therefore
| try to "weaponize" their jobs in influential institutions, like
| Software companies, to gain influence over the rest of society.
| human_person wrote:
| Erica Joy (Director of eng at Github) had an interesting take on
| this. https://twitter.com/EricaJoy/status/1311178025275289600
|
| "coinbase engineers walked off [in June] because brian wouldn't
| say "Black Lives Matter," he posted it so they'd get back to
| work, now he's having an executive "YOU AREN'T THE BOSS OF ME!"
| meltdown* about it" and "this looks a whole lot like the play
| certain advisors tell CEO's to run when they need to extend their
| runway. whether or not they backfill the people who leave will
| tell the tale. guess it's time to watch linkedin."
| ghgdynb1 wrote:
| Although I think we differ in terms of our sentiment, I'm
| really glad to see a plausible hypothesis about the proximate
| motivation for Brian's decision posted.
|
| Erica's theory that this is a way of trimming payroll while
| eliminating personnel Brian sees as problematic seems to fit
| all the facts about the pressures Brian and Coinbase are
| feeling right now.
|
| While I'm not sure this will turn out to be a bad thing for the
| world, it's a lot clearer why now & why Coinbase with this in
| mind.
| young_unixer wrote:
| That speaks much worse about herself than it does about
| Coinbase.
| thelock85 wrote:
| This won't end well. The moment Coinbase articulates anything
| remotely related to an underlying set of values or business
| ethics, the accusations of politicization (and hypocrisy) will
| come flying.
|
| I believe that corporations are not governed or regulated to
| support activism writ large, but there has to be room for dissent
| (even if it ends in separation). How else do you arrive at a
| shared definition of "economic freedom"?
|
| Is the next step amorality?
| [deleted]
| erik_landerholm wrote:
| What do you mean next step? You can process anyone's money, it
| good for business. Name one money processing entity that's ever
| taken a stand against...anything?
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| In the last few years cancel culture and pc overgrowth has
| locked entire industries out of the major online money
| processing networks ..
|
| Visa, paypal, stripe .. etc
| Applejinx wrote:
| VISA.
| thelock85 wrote:
| Apologies if I'm missing the mark on your question.
|
| If the first step is "apoliticism or we'll help you find the
| door" then isn't a potential next step "amorality or we'll
| help you..."?
|
| Again not arguing that any CEO should nurture activism
| (though I personally might like it), but healthy dissent is
| important for solving hard problems, and not every hard
| problem is purely logical.
|
| If my company's mission is to create an open financial system
| for the world, how can we possibly do that without holding
| space for the multitude of values, beliefs, and political
| opinions across the world about financial systems?
|
| Seems one way would be to take an amoral stance on the
| multitudes and stick to a tightly held definition of what an
| open financial system means.
| erik_landerholm wrote:
| Sorry, I probably wasn't clear. Coinbase is saying it is an
| amoral middleman. In my mind there is no next step. And if
| you look at the history of money processors, this is the
| default and probably the only way they ever operate.
| skybrian wrote:
| It's not about being apolitical. The question is whether they
| can draw a line between mission-related politics (related to
| cryptocurrency, employment, or just how to do business) and all
| other politics. There is no clear line to be drawn, so it's a
| judgement call, and it will be debated.
| thelock85 wrote:
| > draw a line between mission-related politics and all other
| politics
|
| Agreed. I wonder if they will take some word smithing to the
| mission statement. Even with the clarification and
| interpretation presented in the blog post, "economic freedom"
| encompasses a lot of "other politics". It is a helluva
| juggling act to want a diverse, thriving team, and a singular
| shared definition of economic freedom across that team.
|
| More practically, I wonder how it will be debated. Who within
| the organization has confidence to debate where the line is
| drawn beyond what the CEO has shared? Is it the board?
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| I always thought it's quite normal for people to work
| together despite not having all the same ideas and
| definitions. That those flowery words on a mission
| statement are not precise or exact, and will never stand up
| to all situations and expectations.
|
| Perhaps it's not really that important, and there's not
| even much point debating it for the organisation .. people
| at work could instead get on with the work they are doing
| and offering value to society through the outcome of their
| work. Of course they could do various activism in other
| ways, without inflicting it excessively on their colleagues
| just because they are earning a living across the hallway
| from them ..
| thelock85 wrote:
| Yes, and our current socio-political state has this CEO
| bringing more precision to the flowery mission statement.
|
| > without inflicting it excessively on their colleagues
|
| This is the tricky part. In a transition from the old
| normal to the new normal, I believe it's important to
| recognize who may have always been excessively afflicted
| but didn't have the platform. Or conversely, who may have
| never felt excessively afflicted and had full discretion
| over their professional platform.
|
| It's the eternal theme of monoculture vs.
| multiculturalism. The Coinbase CEO is acknowledging both
| sides of the coin, and maintaining focus on one side (pun
| intended). I don't think that's right or wrong. It is
| what it is.
|
| There is more than enough willing talent to keep the line
| he has drawn in the sand, but will people look back years
| from now and question the veracity of the original
| mission despite evident success (e.g. Facebook making the
| world more open and connected)?
| chasing wrote:
| There's no such thing as an apolitical organization the size of
| Coinbase.
| anm89 wrote:
| I see this as strategically genius whether you agree with it or
| not. He's totally neutered the ability of employees to take
| strong political stances within the company going forward and
| he's made it clear where the company stands in away that makes it
| very hard for people to come back later and defend staying if
| they were interested in these kinds of politics.
|
| If you want to stay focused on building a company and not on
| debating the subjective merits of sociopolitical systems, this is
| a winning move.
| SquishyPanda23 wrote:
| Meh it's not strategically genius. The crypto community is
| hugely political and right-libertarian leaning. He's just
| signalling that he's not going against that trend.
|
| > He's totally neutered the ability of employees to take strong
| political stances
|
| He absolutely has not. I'm sure they will continue to take hard
| right-libertarian stances that are common in the cryptocurrency
| world.
| jlokier wrote:
| "There are many unbanked and underbanked people in the world
| who have no ability to get a loan to buy a home, or start a
| business, so this kind of technology has enormous potential
| to improve the world over time, even if it is still early
| days."
|
| - Brian Armstrong, 2 weeks ago
|
| Seems to me that's not at all a hard right-libertarian
| stance.
| andrew_ wrote:
| Makes me wish I had the skillset necessary to apply. Sounds
| like a phenomenal place to work.
| paxys wrote:
| Whether it is a strategically genius move or not will depend on
| the eventual outcome. No tech company, especially one in the
| bitcoin/fintech sector, can pretend to be completely
| apolitical. So putting out public blog posts and setting strict
| policies that apply to employees may not fly well when the
| company or its leadership/executives themselves don't follow
| them down the line.
| baryphonic wrote:
| I agree. Further, I think this is a giant signal to what I
| suspect is a majority of the industry who are really exhausted
| about the politicization of everything, and simply want to work
| toward a goal they find interesting. Those of us who want to
| focus on actual work and not solving the totality of global
| problems (or at least those problems visible to wealthy,
| highly-educated knowledge workers concentrated in a handful of
| American metro areas) will have a strong incentive to look at
| companies like Coinbase.
|
| I'm curious to see if Spotify management might copy this.
| yholio wrote:
| Hypocrisy is rampant with some Coinbase figures that cry out for
| "acknowledging the injustice and inequality that affects many
| current and future Coinbase users."
|
| Good God, your firm exists to facilitate trading in speculative
| assets peddled by libertarian internet millionaires and that just
| so happen to be exceptionally useful for laundering money -
| enabling a whole online industry of shadow markets that were
| thought impossible a decade ago.
|
| I understand that your values dictate that association with this
| unsavory bunch is an acceptable compromise when pitted against
| the grave dangers of government overreach and surveillance - I am
| of the same opinion. But social revolutionaries you are certainly
| not, just opportunists speaking the slogans of the day while
| lining their own pockets. So Armstrong's sincerity and lack of
| pretense is refreshing.
| J-dawg wrote:
| > _Good God, your firm exists to facilitate trading in
| speculative assets peddled by libertarian internet millionaires
| and that just so happen to be exceptionally useful for
| laundering money - enabling a whole online industry of shadow
| markets that were thought impossible a decade ago_
|
| This is a fantastic sentence. One of those times when I wish I
| could upvote more than once.
|
| Arguably even more puzzling are the social activists at
| Facebook etc. They work for a platform that has interfered with
| democracy, has been proven to cause or exacerbate mental health
| problems, tramples over privacy, and at the very least is
| deliberately designed to be addictive and waste a lot of
| people's time.
|
| It is strange that people can (claim to) care so deeply about
| the welfare of certain identity groups, yet work for a company
| that shows contempt for humanity as a whole.
| [deleted]
| secondcoming wrote:
| I don't see why he's offering them any sort of package to leave,
| it's not like they're being made redundant. It's very generous
| but sets an odd precedent. It's like it's a compensation payment
| for not being allowed to make the workplace toxic.
| throwaways885 wrote:
| An active incentive for them to piss off, rather than them
| going underground in their activism.
| throwaway4715 wrote:
| People say having internal debate is a disadvantage, but all the
| companies that are famous for having it make more money than
| everyone else.
| roamerz wrote:
| I read his blog post and commend him on his insight and
| leadership. Politics can be divisive, destructive and at best
| distractive. One nutjob on either side of the coin (haha?) could
| be a risk to the integrity of the company of whole not to mention
| all of the other pitfalls if internal strife. Where I work there
| is plenty of differing opinion on politics but professionalism,
| respect and empathy have kept us pretty much whole. I think the
| problems of divisiveness are enhanced by remote working as the
| comradery gained by being at work in person is lost and that is
| essential in helping soak up bad feelings. Anyhow just my 2
| cents.
| ketzo wrote:
| That's my problem with all of this. Purely mission-focused
| companies sound great -- in a vacuum. A totally apolitical
| workplace _could only_ exist in a vacuum.
|
| Politics is not something that happens twice a year in a voting
| booth, or even something that happens on TV; it's how you and I
| engage with civic society at large, and to say that the workplace
| should, or even _could_ be divorced from that seems almost silly.
|
| Coinbase doesn't walk to talk about politics at work? That's
| neat, and sounds nice. But they're making that statement in a
| time where "not talking about politics" is something that very
| much works in favor of some groups and against others.
|
| I know that we're engineers, and we want to spend our days
| building and shipping. I wouldn't ever fault anyone for that
| desire. But we have to acknowledge the fact that neutrality
| favors, and will always favor, one side of a debate. To protest
| that politics are something that "doesn't happen here" is to bury
| one's head in the sand.
| coryfklein wrote:
| Totally depends on the form of the "politics at work". If we're
| talking about in-depth dialectic aimed at learning and problem
| solving then I'm all in.
|
| Some other forms that I'd be happy to eliminate:
|
| * Virtue signalling via preaching the doctrine of the party
| predominant at the company
|
| * Bob from IT talking endlessly about his pet theory of Soros
| conspiracies
|
| * Portraying politically grey areas as completely black-and-
| white and deplatforming those that disagree
|
| After reading The Toxoplasma of Rage[1] I can't help but regard
| the vast majority of current politics with a great deal of
| cynicism.
|
| [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-
| rage...
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