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Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission

• throwawaysea 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      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 6y ago
    I fully agree.
  • detaro 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      The CEO is declaring the focus political issue is cryptocurrency. The focus is not whales, forests, ice caps, malaria. Why is this controversial?
      • ClumsyPilot 6y ago
        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 6y ago
          If a company is breaking the law, some countries offer whistleblower protections.
          • ClumsyPilot 6y ago
            Well tax minimisation is not illegal - supposedly starbucks can pay less taxes in UK than I do alone
      • iovrthoughtthis 6y ago
        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 http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html
        • eeh 6y ago
          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.
  • m12k 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      You could... not talk about it at work?
      • TulliusCicero 6y ago
        Science isn't allowed at work?
      • Rotten194 6y ago
        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 6y ago
          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.
  • geekpowa 6y ago
    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 6y ago
    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?
    • antris 6y ago
      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 6y ago
        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 6y ago
          Congratulations, you're one of the winners. Talk to your local McDonalds employee and you'll get a different story.
          • sagichmal 6y ago
            But we're not talking about McDonalds workers? We're talking about Coinbase.
            • ponker 6y ago
              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."
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • M2Ys4U 6y ago
    >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.
• ZephyrBlu 6y ago
  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.
  • dwardu 6y ago
    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.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • electriclove 6y ago
      Isn't this what he said though (just in a more polite tone)?
    • theptip 6y ago
      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.
• mattlutze 6y ago
  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.
• howlgarnish 6y ago
  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.
  • krapp 6y ago
    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.
    • ZephyrBlu 6y ago
      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 http://paulgraham.com/top.html
      • darkwater 6y ago
        > 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 6y ago
          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/ https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/
• jiofih 6y ago
  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?
  • meheleventyone 6y ago
    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.
    • rjkennedy98 6y ago
      > 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.
      • matthewdgreen 6y ago
        > the political stuff never is about anything that Google does Huh? https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/27/18114285/google-employee-china-censorship-protest-project-dragonfly-search-engine-letter https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/27/18114285/google-employee...
    • hackerfromthefu 6y ago
      It could also be related to excessive narcissism! A zeitgeist of the times ..
• choppaface 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      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 6y ago
        Is there any evidence of harassment or people being put out of a job?
        • 6y ago
• objclxt 6y ago
  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.
  • yyy888sss 6y ago
    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_ 6y ago
      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 6y ago
        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_ 6y ago
• yholio 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    > 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.
• onion2k 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      "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 6y ago
        Yeah, he would've been better off ending the sentence before that statement.
    • britch 6y ago
      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 6y ago
        > 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.
• md_ 6y ago
  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.
  • 5thaccount 6y ago
    > 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 6y ago
    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.
    • md_ 6y ago
      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.
• neilv 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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.
• pornel 6y ago
  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.
  • disposekinetics 6y ago
    This all makes Coinbase more attractive to me. I probably won’t be deplatformed no matter my ideology which is a desireable trait.
    • albedoa 6y ago
      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 6y ago
        Since non-progressive liberals are also being punished for being insufficiently woke, that's not the negative that you seem to think it is.
        • albedoa 6y ago
          No idea what you are trying to say here. You are intent on reading more than is there.
      • hackerfromthefu 6y ago
        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
• kkhire 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      What if the problem at hand is ending structural racism in the workplace?
      • jcims 6y ago
        >groups of us not 'all of us'
      • moduspol 6y ago
        "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 6y ago
          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.
• grey-area 6y ago
  No position on politics is also a position (for the status quo).
  • nec4b 6y ago
    No it is not.
• ponker 6y ago
  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.
• sneak 6y ago
  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.
  • ponker 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      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.
• sidcool 6y ago
  What's their mission?
  • davidgerard 6y ago
    listing dead shitcoins on one of the few exchanges that still has banking relationships, so a16z can dump its massive bags on retail
• Zenbit_UX 6y ago
  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.
  • swiley 6y ago
    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.
  • vaccinator 6y ago
    https://us.123rf.com/450wm/robson309/robson3092002/robson309200200036/140083706-united-states-one-dollar-bill-reverse-side-with-in-god-we-trust-motto-.jpg?ver=6 https://us.123rf.com/450wm/robson309/robson3092002/robson309...
    • vaccinator 6y ago
      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 6y ago
    > 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 6y ago
      > 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.
• dalbasal 6y ago
  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?
• goldwind 6y ago
  Switzerland was neutral during WWII but still sold stuff to Deutschland. Just weigh it up like that. I might have to delete the app
• rburhum 6y ago
  How can you be “apolitical” and pay lobbyist to push crypto-friendly govt legislation? https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary?cycle=2020&id=F191419 https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary...
  • disruptalot 6y ago
    That would be clearly in line with their mission?
  • aVx1uyD5pYWW 6y ago
    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-company-af882df8804 https://blog.coinbase.com/coinbase-is-a-mission-focused-comp...
• rmrfrmrf 6y ago
  Pretty funny that the company's fundraising/activist-friendly mission statement came back to bite it.
• tlogan 6y ago
  We live in a different world now. Today, apolitical pretty much means “I’m white. And probably male. But definitely white.”
  • disposekinetics 6y ago
    When someone uses the word apolitical I know they’re usually another conservative trying to avoid the witch hunters.
  • mardifoufs 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      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 6y ago
        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. ;)
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• ycombonator 6y ago
  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.
• dvdhnt 6y ago
  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.
• cmsonger 6y ago
  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.
  • xvector 6y ago
    > Companies have an obligation to defend the system that provided the environment in which they were formed and flourished. No, the only thing companies are obligated to do is what they want to do (usually profit), within the boundaries of the law. There’s no obligation to support the environment in which you flourished. A particularly ruthless company might actively work against that environment to prevent competitors. And it’d be fine - use the law to define what a company can or cannot do instead of depending on personal (company) responsibility.
• echelon 6y ago
  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.
  • _fat_santa 6y ago
    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.
  • Dirlewanger 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      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.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
• throwaway4715 6y ago
  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 6y ago
  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.
• ldd 6y ago
  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.
  • _fat_santa 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      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 6y ago
        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.
• toastal 6y ago
  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
• thelock85 6y ago
  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?
  • erik_landerholm 6y ago
    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?
    • thelock85 6y ago
      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 6y ago
        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.
    • Applejinx 6y ago
      VISA.
• Melting_Harps 6y ago
  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 https://decrypt.co/31485/coinbase-license-analytics-irs-dea
• shoulderfake 6y ago
  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
• aazaa 6y ago
  Awful article. It never even explains what "the mission is." Doesn't even link to the original Coinbase blog post.
• dangerface 6y ago
  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.
• vibrolax 6y ago
  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.
• nrmitchi 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      Agreed. Putting Coinbase on my shortlist for sure.
    • justAnotherNET 6y ago
      I would consider an offer from coinbase over FAANG now based solely on this move by their CEO. I say this as someone who has worked at Apple, and bluntly told multiple Facebook-email bearing recruiters to F off.
    • muzika 6y ago
      For sure! I would much rather work at a politically neutral company.
  • chillacy 6y ago
    There's probably a handful of people who had already interviewed and were on their way out in the next few weeks who got a lucky break today.
• dogman144 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    > 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 6y ago
      Talking about gen pop. Obviously Coinbase is aware of it, and their stance makes a lot more sense when analyzed that way.
• telaelit 6y ago
  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.
• toomanybeersies 6y ago
  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.
  • devthrowawy 6y ago
    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.
  • coddle-hark 6y ago
    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.
    • beerbajay 6y ago
      What about other people's abhorrent behavior?
• andymoe 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      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.
  • andymoe 6y ago
    I think perhaps Marco’s thread on this more clearly articulates what I was trying to get at. Maybe y’all disagree but it does not really matter... it only matters how the power is wielded and who benefits and how. https://twitter.com/polotek/status/1311431871474003968?s=21 https://twitter.com/polotek/status/1311431871474003968?s=21
• andy_ppp 6y ago
  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.
  • poulsbohemian 6y ago
    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.
  • sieabahlpark 6y ago
    > 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.
• iandanforth 6y ago
  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/summer-2015/the-psychology-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 6y ago
    Ad hominems seem to be modus operandi for pc bullies
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• rStar 6y ago
  you can work here, but you have no power.
• andrethegiant 6y ago
  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.
  • x3n0ph3n3 6y ago
    Not quite -- he's rebounding from internal demands that he make particular political speech and seeing employees "walk out" when he didn't. None of the issues are relevant to Coinbase and its mission and he doesn't want that distraction in his company.
• dang 6y ago
  The thread on the original blog post is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24610267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24610267 It got relatively little discussion because it set off the flamewar detector (http://hnrankings.info/24610267/ 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24636899&p=2
  • myroon5 6y ago
    the flamewar detector seems interesting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23280488 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23280488 how often does it get triggered?
    • Nacdor 6y ago
      > 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 6y ago
        Here's how it works: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22159031 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-steve-huffman-edit-comments https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-stev...)
        • nwsm 6y ago
          > 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.
• mythrwy 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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.
• secondcoming 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    An active incentive for them to piss off, rather than them going underground in their activism.
• subsubzero 6y ago
  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.
  • eddof13 6y ago
    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
    • cft 6y ago
      Certainly. If I was looking for a job, I would rank it very high because of this.
      • xoxoy 6y ago
        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 6y ago
          Fight racism and stereotypes with more racism and stereotypes, that'll work.
          • whymauri 6y ago
            Where is the racism in the GP comment?
            • 6y ago
• paul7986 6y ago
  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!
• simias 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    > 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.
    • simias 6y ago
      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.
• deleted 6y ago
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• sk5t 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      Weird how a social conscience or civil rights hurt certain businesses and get interpreted as anti-capitalist.
    • sk5t 6y ago
      Do you then agree that Coinbase is forcing a certain set of politics on its employees?
      • x3n0ph3n3 6y ago
        No, it's telling people to leave their politics at home and focus on work at work.
• j4nt4b 6y ago
  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.
  • Impossible 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      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 6y ago
      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 6y ago
    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.
• newobj 6y ago
  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.
• human_person 6y ago
  Erica Joy (Director of eng at Github) had an interesting take on this. https://twitter.com/EricaJoy/status/1311178025275289600 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 6y ago
    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 6y ago
    That speaks much worse about herself than it does about Coinbase.
    • kthxbye123 6y ago
      I think quite the opposite. We give far, far too much cultural deference to megalomaniacal executives and petty business tyrants; it’s refreshing to see them called out on their bullshit. More refreshing would be seeing more CEOs, founders, and VCs forced to cede control to employees, but I’ll take what we can get.
      • loco5niner 6y ago
        I don't see how saying "let's focus on work" leads you so call someone megalomaniacal.
    • 6y ago
• devteambravo 6y ago
  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".
• ketzo 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage...
• mesozoic 6y ago
  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.
• andrethegiant 6y ago
  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 6y ago
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  • dragonwriter 6y ago
    > 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.
• KKKKkkkk1 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    They’ll do fine! BLM is a a step down from a Terrorist organization.
• chasing 6y ago
  There's no such thing as an apolitical organization the size of Coinbase.
• anm89 6y ago
  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.
  • paxys 6y ago
    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.
    • heavyset_go 6y ago
      > No tech company, especially one in the bitcoin/fintech sector, can pretend to be completely apolitical Especially when the company in question makes significant political donations[1]. [1] https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/?contributor_name=coinbase https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/?...
      • kristjansson 6y ago
        Interesting, all of the transactions with Coinbase as contributor have memo fields like x.yyyzzz BITCOIN SOLD VIA COINBASE - PURCHASER UNKNOWN and are followed subsequently by transactions with an (apparent) natural person as contributor with memo fields like x.yyyzzz Bitcoins, Contributions Previously Disclosed So it looks like those PACs reported contributions twice, once naming the actual contributor, and once naming Coinbase. I'm not sure why they'd do that - perhaps to head off FEC questions about deposits from Coinbase? Regardless, those don't seem to be contributions directly from Coinbase, but rather artifacts of campaign finance reporting. On an aside, there are some transactions that jump out e.g. line B of [1] where the PAC appears to have netted $5665 for 7.49 BTC in the closing days of 2017(!). Looking further, it seems like their reporting occasionally exchanged BTC for ETH, and the contribution reported makes sense for latter. Still, for a moment it was fun to imagine that someone got a screaming deal on a heap of BTC the day after Christmas 2017 [1]: https://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/fecimg/?201801319091289865 https://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/fecimg/?201801319091289865
• kotxig 6y ago
  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.
• dpc_pw 6y ago
  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.
• rswskg 6y ago
  What a joker 'right-wing radicalization which has resulted in widespread political violence' ha.
• kats 6y ago
  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/1304490208457494528 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 6y ago
    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.
    • tkel 6y ago
      Look at the race of the people who are unbanked, and tell me then that it isn't relevant
    • matthewdgreen 6y ago
      The degree to which you are taken seriously when you announce that a thing should happen because you care that “it will make the world better” is tightly related to your credibility as a person who cares about making the world better. When you announce that the only causes you support are those that directly enrich you, you’ll find that people are more skeptical of that claim. Agree or disagree, but it’s why PR has existed for decades (centuries.)
  • siculars 6y ago
    He was kind of very up front about being solely focused on economic freedom. Coinbase’s mission is to create an open financial system for the world. This means we want to use cryptocurrency to bring economic freedom to people all over the world. This is squarely in line in trying to push Apple to be more amenable on this issue.
• 0df8dkdf 6y ago
  >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 6y ago
    Being able to keep work and politics separate is a privilege of a successfully-functioning democracy.
• deleted 6y ago
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• mysterEFrank 6y ago
  That's a great severance package
• fataliss 6y ago
  It opens up a whole can of worms though. What's "political"? Nowadays anything uncomfortable is brushed aside as political? Racism? Political! Gender inequality? Definitely political! Wealth in... you see where I'm going with this. So what that screams to me is this will to bubble up Coinbase with people happy in the current status quo, whatever that is!
• edouard-harris 6y ago
  A few comments have asserted that if an existing company chooses to be apolitical, that may itself be a political act. This sounds clever, but it's not correct. At the highest level, a company is a group of people who get together to 1) set an impactful goal, and then 2) work very hard to achieve it. The first part — the setting of the goal — is the political act. Disagreements at this level are good, and broadly healthy. But the second part — the achieving of the goal — is purely a practical act. Here, your guiding principle is to take those actions, and only those actions, which you believe will give you the highest chance of achieving your goal. Politicizing a company contradicts this principle: to the extent that you make the act of achievement more political, you are also making it less practical. To the extent that you allocate more budget, focus, and optimization power to X, you are also taking it away from Y. If you make the act of achievement less practical, someone else may beat you to your goal. Your company will be less impactful than it could have been, and may even die as a result. What Brian is saying here is: we set our goal in 2012 when we started Coinbase. We are now engaged in the practical act of achieving it. If you have a goal that's different from the one we set, no problem. Here is some money: you may use it, if you choose, to find an organization whose goals you support.
  • stjohnswarts 6y ago
    So since global warming is more or less a political statement these days, would advocating for climate change mitigating philosophy being built into the company's DNA be political to you and therefore not allowed? Say it's a company that makes widgets that are completely orthogonal to climate change.
    • edouard-harris 6y ago
      This is a great question. As posed I'd say the answer is yes, though I'd dispute the characterization of "not allowed". All I'm saying is that: 1) There exists a zero-point of politicization for this widget company; 2) In this scenario that zero-point corresponds to the decision, "do not bake climate mitigation into company's DNA"; and 3) That decision is one necessary component of the policy that maximizes the company's chance of hitting its goal. I'm not saying anything prescriptive at all — just highlighting that tradeoffs that are being made, whether or not one is intentional in making them.
• TedShiller 6y ago
  This makes sense. The problem with recent political activism in companies has been that it isn't fair. It has been acceptable to advocate for liberal causes (for example for affirmative action), but not for conservative ones (against affirmative action). It might be ok if both were allowed equally. But if only one viewpoint is allowed, that's not really democracy.
  • a2tech 6y ago
    Oh? Do you thinj companies like fox media corp or Raytheon are places where you can push for liberal political activism? Because I can tell you you would be incorrect. Those companies have a clear opinion on those matters and will not be kind to liberal activism.
    • someguydave 6y ago
      https://www.raytheon.com/diversity/erg https://www.raytheon.com/diversity/erg
  • deleted 6y ago
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  • djrobstep 6y ago
    Try criticizing the people with actual power (military, police, entrenched big biz) and see what real "political correctness" really looks like.
    • nine_k 6y ago
      Haven't we seen a ton of criticism towards police last spring and summer? I remember myself walking past a few "defund NYPD" demonstrations, watched over by police officers keeping their cool.
  • thekashifmalik 6y ago
    This is exactly it! If you spout liberal ideas at a conservative company, you will find disagreement. If you spout conservative ideas at a liberal company (most of SF tech), you will find yourself out of a job.
• jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
  I've always seen these attempts at "being apolitical" to be roundabout ways of discriminating against people who have left-leaning political beliefs. Despite claiming to be apolitical and neutral these kinds of places always seem to cater more to conservatives, neoliberals and white supremacists.
• Khaine 6y ago
  I wish more companies would take this approach
• junon 6y ago
  TIL political neutrality in a company workplace is a controversial issue...
• ponker 6y ago
  If Coinbase is going to be completely apolitical are they permissive of any political activity outside of the office? If a Coinbase employee goes to a white supremacist rally with a tiki torch, and posts it on their personal Facebook visible to other Coinbase employees, are those employees forbidden to discuss it at work? Is this considered permitted behavior at Coinbase?
• scared2 6y ago
  It's called hush money
• abstractbarista 6y ago
  I think this is great.
• rednerrus 6y ago
  Spotify needs to do this before they let activists ruin that company.
• muzika 6y ago
  Would be great if liberal tech companies could give similar benefits to whoever wants to leave because their political views don’t align with the company’s views. I don’t talk about politics at my workspace because I know only one side is welcome there.
• beerbajay 6y ago
  ITT: a bunch of people who think there is a distinction between life and politics and are privileged enough to be able to pretend the status quo is ok for everybody
• anarchop 6y ago
  Until recently blacklivesmatter.com about section touted that the movement “(we) are trained marxists”. Sorry but you’re not racist if you not a marxist. This is straight up Bolshevist tactics. More companies should take an assertive stance against these regressive tactics.