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Comment by 6c9be5fc6b39 | Hacker News Reader

The article implies that a number of the Black people who left did so because the compliance division was relocated and they didn't want to relocate with it. It doesn't say how many people's decisions were influenced by annoying work crap that they interpreted as discrimination.

This is a really dishonest article. It tries to lead one to believe things (e.g. that 15 Black people left Coinbase because they were belittled in meetings) without stating it outright or making a case for it. Just insinuation spun up from a few concrete situations that themselves are mostly vague or not obviously discrimination (the gun and drugs thing being the obvious exception).

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Well, the article starts from the premise that an abnormally large percentage of Coinbase's black employees left over a short period of time. It then uses a large body of circumstantial evidence to (pretty convincingly, in my opinion) portray the culture at Coinbase as hostile to employees of color. Not really sure how that's dishonest.

The article fails to mention the generous 4-6 month severance package that was being offered at the same time as the relocation of the division. Of course a bunch of employees will take the 6 months paid vacation over moving.

This is the level of dishonesty that I've come to expect from the NYT. Any fact that does not fit their narrative basically doesn't exist.

Better treatment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25233702

Do you have inside information that this was the case? Because I'm sure that would be quite compelling to hear.

To clarify, I assume the generous severance you're referring to is not the generous severance Coinbase offered employees as part of their no-politics-at-work approach, because the timelines don't match.

as others have pointed out when this is brought up, this seems out of order to me. the relocations required in the story that caused the team’s exodus occurred prior to the severance package tied to coinbase’s new corporate stance on workplace social justice advocacy.

however, i am not sure that is relevant given the immediate example of a team member who was allowed to work remote. also, i am not sure it is relevant given the fact that there are many other underpinnings for the story’s thesis.

It didn't come across as dishonest at all, but your post did.

> The article implies that a number of the Black people who left did so because the compliance division was relocated and they didn't want to relocate with it. It doesn't say how many people's decisions were influenced by annoying work crap that they interpreted as discrimination.

And mentions the one white person was allowed to stay remote. Pretty dishonest to leave that detail out, no?

> This is a really dishonest article. It tries to lead one to believe things (e.g. that 15 Black people left Coinbase because they were belittled in meetings) without stating it outright or making a case for it. Just insinuation spun up from a few concrete situations that themselves are mostly vague or not obviously discrimination (the gun and drugs thing being the obvious exception).

After reading it it seems a lot left because of constant issues of discrimination - being told to be in meetings in front of cameras to pretend to be diverse, but being ignored in meetings of consequence. Being told to relocate, but applied unequally. Having meetings about BLM and a month later the boss says "leave it at the door." The guns and drugs comment, the black inferiority comment, those are absolutely damning.

This is how racism/discrimination thrive - by playing in the margins, doing things that aren't provable (they never have an email that says "we're discriminating against you!" so therefore it didn't happen or other arguments of that type), giving bad performance reviews after complaints are made, etc. Much like saying "oh it was a joke!"

And finally the icing on the cake:

> Ms. Sawyerr said she had talked with four other Black employees about bringing a discrimination lawsuit against Coinbase, but the others backed out after being offered hefty severance payments in exchange for confidentiality agreements.

These are multiple people's experience with this company - and there are clearly others who were paid not to say anything.

The article clearly does what it set out to do - show the experiences of people who lived in what they believed to be a toxic work culture. I'm inclined to believe them.

You are omitting the fact that the one white employee switched to working out of the NYC office. There's no mention of a black employee making the same request and it being denied, just the request to wfh being denied for both white and black employees.

And then you are extrapolating two uncorroborated anecdotes of inappropriate comments as evidence of widespread discrimination.

According to the article, the white employee was not required to relocate to NYC, but rather was allowed to continue to work from their home in Philadelphia.

And, of course, the article has many more complaints than this one!

"Ms. Milosevich said the white employee lived in Philadelphia and was allowed to commute to and work from the company’s New York office"

Unless I am missing something seems pretty clear the employee switched from WFH in Philadelphia to commuting to NYC to work at that office.

Even if that's the case, the treatment is still obviously disparate:

* The PHL employee has been given their choice of office to work from.

* The Black employees were required to relocate, not just show up at a particular office on a schedule.

Were the Black employees offered the opportunity to work out of the NYC office?

I don't see anything in the article that implies the PHL employee was given a choice of office. For all we know they made the request after CB decided against WFH teams.

If we take the articles claims at face value, what we know is:

* There was an existing compliance department.

* It had several remote team members.

* The company opened a compliance office in PDX.

* The company required Black team members to relocate to PDX or apply for new jobs.

* The company allowed a non-Black team member to remain in PHL and work out of the NYC office.

* Multiple sources claimed that the PHL employee was allowed to continue working remotely.

* The stated reason for demanding the relocation of the Black team members was to have the whole compliance team working from one place, a goal that obviously wasn't served by having someone else working out of PHL and NYC.

Maybe the sources in this article are lying (of course, you can rebut any claim that way), but apart from that, I'm not sure how this complaint is easily knocked down.

It's unclear but I think when it's mentioned PHL employee is able to work remote, they mean they are able to work out of the NYC office which is remote relative to the PDX office. It was not my read that they are working remote from home.

Your wording speculates on how the communication around remote was delivered in an unfavorable light. We know the decision was made to end WFH/remote, and one employee managed to get permission to work from the NYC office. A more realistic (still speculative) scenario imo:

-Company announces end of wfh/remote for a team. Folks are asked to relocate to PDX. -Employee asks for permission to work from NYC. Request is approved.

Group employee relocations are a big deal. You are leaving out the part where the stated rationale for that relo is to have the team all together in one place. Instead, the real rationale appears to have been to have all the Black employees all together in one place (or, just as pausibly, that the relo was in fact a soft RIF of that group of employees).

@tptacek: you are imputing a motivation out of thin air. having fought hard for wfh/remote at companies against it, I can imagine far more benign reasons to be plausible.

No company does a group relocation without expecting to lose several members of the team. They're essentially all RIFs. I've tried to keep my analysis as dispassionate as I can in this part of the thread. I think the facts as asserted in the article speak pretty clearly, and the bulleted list I provided upthread recites those facts pretty much directly and in ways you haven't disputed.

So you admit you just spent several comments lying in the hope your opponent wouldn't go to the bother of pointing out the evidence?

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