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Comment by tsherr | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

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.

In the IT industry there's this different type of subtle authority. "Yeah you can come as you please" But your daily meeting is at 10am and everyone must be there. Oh, and you must be present at least until X pm because there must be enough overlapping hours, so your wiggle room becomes even smaller. "You make your own hours, overtime is totally not expected" But people who take time off the least and do the most (sometimes unpaid) overtime get promoted etc. etc. If you take what they say literally, you say goodbye to any chance of promotion and might even get called out as a "non-teamplayer". They will wait until you realize you will never go forward in the company like this and either you start doing overtime or quit.

"Unlimited vacation days" is the biggest joke. Seriously, there's nothing stopping you from never showing up to work? In reality it's a way to make sure nobody ever takes time off if they want to have any chance of promotion.

Congratulations, you're one of the winners. Talk to your local McDonalds employee and you'll get a different story.

But we're not talking about McDonalds workers? We're talking about Coinbase.

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."

I have no idea what you think this conversation is about.

Any statistical data that suggests the odds are in favor of changing it from inside?

The CEO is saying the company will remain apolitical, outside of its mission.

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