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Comment by vmception | Hacker News Reader

I was willing to support the general message Brian Armstrong put out, but with the added context and chronology I cannot.

I would say that this kind of mission statement can only work if done at the beginning, as reacting in response to the work environment described by their employees was doomed for failure.

I know many people like Brian Armstrong, and the investors. They are all cut from a similar cloth and they honestly have no clue how to react. They don't know how to get women on a panel, they don't know how to get qualified people of color in positions to change things. They are just told what they did wrong and just shut themselves off from it. The very people with power to change anything get marginalized themselves. And yes, some - not all - of them actually are not interested in inclusion or really are racist and sexist. But for the former, there is room to empathize with these kind of people to steer their energy in more productive ways.

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From Coinbase's "About us"[1]

> They don't know how to get women on a panel

2 out of 7 members of the exec team are women.

> they don't know hot to get qualified people of color in positions to change things

4 out of 7 members of the exec team have last names of Choi, Chatterjee, Grewal, Gupta.

It's almost as if you have strong biases (or delusions) and didn't even do a basic fact check before making bold claims against Coinbase.

[1] https://www.coinbase.com/about

Yeah my point was about empathizing with people being expected to make statement after statement, instead of vilifying them when they stop jumping when people say jump. Aside from the topic sentence of that paragraph it was no longer about Coinbase.

I’m saying we can all address this better.

Where is the Hispanic and Black representation? I see 3/15 people on that page being women, not a very strong point for a group that is 50% of the population.

This is the standard SV makeup. Do a random sample of any large tech company and this is the team you’d get. This tells me they’re not doing anything different.

There are not enough qualified black people in that job market, what is this that Americans have that difficult to grok?

If true, what are they doing to change that? When I was at Google there were zero paths to bring in people with potential and train them up. I’m guessing it is the same at Coinbase. Doing nothing to address the problem then pointing at your H1Bs and patting yourself on the back.

I would guess through the same system everyone else qualifies through, weather it be Google or someone else.

Your local governments have to push the education forward instead of doing these racist affirmative action rules.

The talent pools exist, they can definitely increase recruiting at different schools.

America is where it is by not even tapping into the productivity of basically up to half of its population across various demographics, imagine if it did.

honest Q: why is it their job to fix this?

also: for companies that are global in nature, with global operations, offices, employees, etc. is it right to take on the issues of the country where they have an office? (or are HQ-ed, or have X% of employees (even if majority)?)

Why not other things? Why aren't the issues of the impoverished of India an issue w/ tech companies, especially given the large presence of "well to do" Indians or upper-casters?

If corporations were not involved in our politics in the US it would be fine. You don’t get to shape the laws of a country then wash your hands of responsibility for the people.

Our healthcare relies on our employment, they fund politicians, write laws. They are very much the lords of the modern era and they need to act in the interest of people, or lose their corporate personhood.

As for the globalist perspective, I agree. We should care how people up the supply chain live. I understand the issues in the US significantly better than those in China or India though. For those issues, give them visibility and work toward a solution. It doesn’t have to be either or.

Americans think that is

a) bullshit

b) even if it wasn't bullshit, the companies improve with the representation to adequately ship products to markets that they would otherwise ignore

c) both kinds of people are benefits to the companies, as there is a greater priority to address markets than cater to egos of internal employees

> Where is the Hispanic and Black representation?

Coinbase aspires to be a global company. What does "Black" even mean in that context? People with dark skin color? If so, a broad portion of South Asians and sub-Saharan Africans would qualify.

What does Hispanic mean? Would Spanish people qualify?

Did you mean only in the context of the USA? If so, how is that different than the Nationalist jingoism of Donald Trump, where you want US-centric population representation in a global company?

> What does Hispanic mean? Would Spanish people qualify?

Yes. The word has a definition - even an official one by the Census Bureau.

Why should any company or board reflect the population?

When companies do not reflect the population then it shows that some races do not have the same opportunity as others.

Do you think there are zero differences in races and that one race wouldn't naturally drift towards particular roles or industries more than another race? Because this point of view isn't supported by data.

Asians, a minority by every measurement, are over-represented in STEM classes to the point that Harvard and others actively discriminate against them.

Studies have shown, repeatedly, that blind hiring (stripping names from resumes, showing only experience) actually worsens diversity. This means companies generally give more opportunity to black, Asian and other minority groups.

If you measure some quantity using biased sampling, you're invariably going to see biased results. The assumption that the biased results in this scenario are due to lack of opportunity, racism, etc are unfounded. Correlation is not causation.

Yes, but that's not at the hiring level but at education level. You can't expect every single tech company to be representative of the population since there simply aren't that many female/black/whatever engineers

Why is it racist or sexist to not to be interested in "inclusion" (which actually means "quotas", right?)

I would think that progressive activism is the minority rather than the default view.

Isn't it the racially discriminatory stance to make decisions based on race?

I think most rational people would rather make decisions purely on competence and facts, not identity.

> They don’t know how to get women on a panel

> they don’t know how to get qualified people of color in positions to change things

These aren’t the kinds of things that someone running a business should be concerned with.

Don’t be condescending. Women and “people of color” don’t need to be rescued and hoisted up into a business artificially. They are perfectly capable of joining the workforce through the same doors as all other people.

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