Hacker News Reader

Comment by xoxoy | Hacker News Reader

I wonder what triggered this blog post - sounds like there must have been some recent internal controversies.

But this just sounds like 1) an excuse to fire people and 2) a warning to never talk about politics at work.

The same woke activism as everywhere else.

"many employees were interpreting our mission [of creating an open financial system for the world] in different ways. Some people interpreted the mission more broadly, to include all forms of equality and justice. ... Coinbase has had its own challenges here, including employee walkouts."

Because cryptocurrency has a lot of non-liberal people of various kinds, the culture war could be hitting Coinbase even harder than other companies.

cryptocurrency is inherently political. bitcoin was created in part in retaliation against a fiat currency system that continues to be propped up by central bankers

i think it would be hard to talk about crypto without constantly talking about regulators, governments, central banks, etc etc etc

Addressed in the article: "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. ... We don’t engage here when issues are unrelated to our core mission, because we believe impact only comes with focus. We don’t advocate for any particular causes or candidates internally that are unrelated to our mission, because it is a distraction from our mission. Even if we all agree something is a problem, we may not all agree on the solution."

Just because something is political doesn't require you to take a stand on every other political issue.

Isnt it clear that it s politically libertarian, or anarcho-capitalist? Still, why does work have to mix with political campaigning?

Pure speculation but I guess the usual stuff that happens in every other Silicon Valley IT company today:

Some employee or a group an employees decided they didn't like one of Coinbase's client because of their political affiliation and wanted to kick them out because they think they have a say as to who Coinbase should do business with and who they shouldn't.

If it is really the case then, I'm actually surprised Coinbase management had the balls to put out a statement like that, in a era where activists deem "inaction as complicity".

That's the thing about being good at your job in our field though...you essentially do get a say, because we're hard to replace. If you are genuinely good, you can get a new job with a 6 figure income in a matter of days, weeks at most. It will take the company months to replace you, probably 6 at least until the new hire is working even close to your capacity. It wasn't until I started to have to do the hiring that I realized just how hard it was..... finding good tech workers is a long, expensive, time consuming process, and in the end it's still 30% luck whether the hire is going to be both good at the job and a cultural fit.

> because we're hard to replace.

Are we? the fact that a CEO has to remind their employees that they are working in a business and this isn't some college campus makes me think we aren't.

>probably 6 at least until the new hire is working even close to your capacity

If you're focused on the company mission yes. If you're spending your time and energy on other goals, particularly when that involves trying to get other employees to spend their time and energy on other goals, nah the new hire will be beating your capacity on day one just by not being as much of a net negative.

> in a era where activists deem "inaction as complicity".

My guess is that they realized dealing with the shitstorm once is cheaper (in terms of the damage it does) than dealing with smaller shitstorms constantly.

This is just a wild guess, but for awhile it seemed like every US company from Doritos to Bank of America was posting corporate social media in support of activist causes. There is a certain strain of thought in the activist community that failing to be an activist is to be complicit with existing oppression. I even saw some companies get pushback for being late/not being enthusiastic enough in their expressions of support, to the point of resignations under pressure.

It takes courage to make a statement like this in the current political context. I have found the crypto industry in general to be more open-minded than other subsets of tech

Reply on news.ycombinator.com