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Comment by xenadu02 | Hacker News Reader

If you've never done this sort of thing before: there's a huge market for these "external consultants". Their unstated job (and reputations) are as whitewashing firms. You hire them to ensure there is "no evidence" of anything done wrong. The primary purpose is to create a credible defense in lawsuits but PR purposes are also common. Firms that find problems suddenly see their business dry up because most companies don't want this kind of honest evaluation (it just creates a problem and potentially exposes you to liability).

Without access to information about the firm doing the work, the report, or the underlying data it is impossible to know if a real investigation was done or not.

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To repeat the grandparent, what else can they do?

Many of the "issues" bought up in this article aren't even problematic. It says John Russ left because Armstrong took public stance that he wanted Coinbase to focus on crypto space stuff.

Coinbase's stance there is fair, reasonable and moral. It is desirable that some companies just do what it says on the tin. If Russ had a reason for quitting that was race-related then the NYT didn't uncover it.

For starters, they can publish the results of the external investigation they paid for, which is something other companies in similar situations have done. Then we can assess the credibility of that report. This seems pretty basic, so it's surprising to see people asking "what else can Coinbase do?".

That would probably violate privacy. It is unclear to me whether they can do that.

Whose privacy? Coinbase's?! They wouldn't be the first company to publicly publish an internal report (voluntary or not; such documents routinely go public via the justice system).

The employee's. If someone makes a complaint to HR it might easily be illegal to investigate then broadcast it to the world accompanied with a "this employee is full of it" style message. Doing that might, for example, damage that employees prospects of finding employment or reveal specific personal details. Certainly appalling form, probably illegal.

You are, due respect, basically just making this up. Companies publish investigator reports of bias and discrimination somewhat regularly. It's possible that Coinbase contractually can't disclose the reports they've already commissioned --- in which case they probably ought not to have tried to refute the article with them --- but they can certainly commission a new one that they can disclose. It's a 600+ employee company; the cost of the report is a rounding error.

As it stands, the kernel of Coinbase's defense here is "we paid for a secret report and it says we're great". Reasonable people can find that response unpersuasive.

The amount of speculation with regards to this topic among “engineers” and “innovators” is kind of amazing.

The HN community appears to be no more rational or evidence-based finders of fact than those found in the comments section of Fox News or the New York Times.

What hope do we have if the creators and maintainers are prone to the same proclivities as the users?

It’s always amusing to me that people are shocked HN isn’t actually that much smarter than any other internet community. The relative level of pretentiousness though is off the charts

Eh, I think it’s a bit hyperbolic to compare it to the commenters on the aforementioned sites, but yeah I mostly agree. Given the site’s founders and general audience it’s not really shocking though. I still prefer it over say Reddit, mostly because the more focused nature makes it easier to find the actual smart comments.

I agree there is some great content here, and there’s definitely a lot less nonsense compared to reddit. I do think some of the smaller subreddits are just as good as here though

> Companies publish investigator reports of bias and discrimination somewhat regularly.

Are you thinking of a specific example? I don't recall ever seeing this apart from sometimes a short statement on an outcomes (which Coinbase has given us - they found the complaints baseless [0]).

> ...but they can certainly commission a new one that they can disclose.

I did mention law but this isn't fundamentally a legal argument. I was just saying I'd expect there to be a law, given what releasing a detailed report would entail about employee privacy. I'd be ropeable if someone did that to me after I complained to HR and the story got international attention.

Companies have no role at all in airing internal dirty laundry of employees to Hacker News. Coinbase's position is an employee made a baseless claim - in my book it would probably be a very poor precedent for them to start broadcasting details globally. Best case, utterly unfair because of the power imbalance between a company and an individual employee. Worst case, a smear campaign. All cases, unhelpful except for the enjoyment of pundits Hacker News comment threads.

[0] EDIT Rather than replying - "all of whom found no evidence of wrongdoing and concluded the claims were unsubstantiated" https://blog.coinbase.com/upcoming-story-about-coinbase-2012...

Sure, an example would be the Uber Covington & Burling report.

I don't know where this "baseless claim" thing comes from; the only foundation you have for that belief is that Coinbase said so. The point of an external report is not having to take Coinbase's word for it. What's funny is paying for an external report, then not showing it to anybody, or even disclosing who did it, and relying on that external report as evidence.

Here's a reasonable question: is the reason Coinbase won't disclose the external reports they commissioned because they can't, because their investigators won't allow them to, because neither are willing to stake their reputations on the interpretation Coinbase drew from them? If not, how do you know that?

Do you have a link? I searched quickly and you might have been mislead by lazy titling. They released the recommendations of the report - I can find that very quickly [0] - but the actual investigation isn't obvious.

And that was investigating stuff Susan Fowler had already attacked them publicly on. I'm not going to try and look up all the details but it is probably a different set of circumstances.

[0] https://www.uber.com/newsroom/covington-recommendations/ and then https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1s08BdVqCgrUVM4UHBpTGROLXM...

Redaction is commonly used on sensitive, non-germane information - this is not an unsolved problem.

This stance is so ridiculous on it's face that I'm more likely to believe that you're Brian Armstrong than someone else.

> Coinbase's stance there is fair, reasonable and moral

The 60 people who left makes it clear this is not agreed upon. HN has already played out this debate on the original post so I'll save going into it here, but it's disingenuous to say that Russ didn't quit because of race-related policy, whether or not you think the policy is race-related.

That said, putting out that "apolitical stance" in the direct wake of George Floyd/BLM is unavoidably tied. As others have said, timing is key. If they had the policy from day 1, they might have a leg to stand on. It seems likely in context with this article (and frankly, to many before this) that Coinbase's apolitical stance is not a rejection of all politics but a tacit rejection of George Floyd/BLM. No one should be surprised about a diversity problem in such a company.

This "what else can they do?" question stems from a criminal judicial standard of guilt and conviction, but that is not where this discussion exists. To think that Coinbase must be innocent and needs to prove that over many former employees being on the record + clear statistical issues that all align with the narrative the company has set with previous actions shows a central flaw in the tech community's approach to racism and politics.

I realize the question does not direct say that they must be innocent, but the implications and assumptions here are important to note, and certainly lean in that direction.

> The 60 people who left makes it clear this is not agreed upon.

Did all 60 people leave because of Coinbase's political stance, or did some leave because of the generous severance package of 4-6 months pay that the CEO offered in September?

I know that if I were looking to make a life change, I'd seriously consider that offer even if I liked the politics.

We can only speculate on the numbers, but it can always be a both/and situation. This culture/environment itself can be part of the reason for wanting that life change.

But forget number speculation, we have concrete proof of this in the article:

> another employee who left in October was John Russ, the head of marketing and the company’s highest ranking Black employee, who had been hired three months earlier.

> In a brief phone interview, Mr. Russ would only say that he disagreed with Mr. Armstrong’s new position and left as a result.

> We can only speculate on the numbers,

We can, but we can only do this because people in the comments are independently informed. The NYT repeatedly emphasized 60 people leaving (across two articles) but never mentioned the severance.

Can anecdotally list 5 people who opportunistically took the package and were planning to make moves anyhow

Are there other non-crypto political stances Coinbase has taken? It seems to me that this was just the first time they needed such a policy. I certainly wouldn't have anticipated the possibility of a new political slogan that almost every major company is forced to chant.

Many companies regularly work within mainstream political action such as LGTBQ+ rights, data privacy, homelessness, local housing or public works, and children's orgs such as Big Brother Big Sister. While these vary in controversiality, relevancy, and apolitical nature, it's not at all uncommon to see companies working in these areas (and others unlisted). Often companies grow into them along with size and profits, so I don't know if Coinbase historically can be taken as sign of consistency either. What Coinbase did was effectively say "well now that BLM has entered mainstream politics and other companies are taking stances, we no longer feel that the mainstream politics of the industry are agreeable to us."

The George Floyd spark very much "outed" Coinbase here, because it became an issue you couldn't avoid taking a side on. That's just the state of the world and you're right that they couldn't have anticipated it, but they chose to make a clear stance rather than trying to ride the thin line, and they became less diverse for it. I don't know why anyone would be surprised their prior actions match that recent stance.

Again, I'm trying to avoid the philosophical "Should companies be political" debate that's already been hashed, but simply stating how their actions translate in the current landscape.

>The George Floyd spark very much "outed" Coinbase here, because it became an issue you couldn't avoid taking a side on.

You said this so casually. It's an axiomatic truth that everyone has to 'take a stand', implying that you have to call it out, and in a context moreover where not a single person applauded the murder of Floyd. How disingenuous for you to call it a stand, implying that there's a debate. Instead what you mean is, sign up to a calling out of the police. What betrays the problem at hand, why companies cannot feasibly all be political by nature, is that there a zillion possible social causes that one could rationally argue are impossible to call out, from shootings domestically (1100 in my city this year so far), to corporate malfeasance (sweat shops overseas, finance fraud), to foreign policy (bombings of middle eastern countries).

If you and I worked together and you stood up and demanded everyone call out the Floyd thing, outed as you call it, you and I would be debating the above points in front of everyone.

THAT is why companies should allow for an apolitical space.

He’s asking specifically about Coinbase. Referencing how “most companies” do things isn’t relevant to his question.

And can you explain to me why one is absolutely required to publicly vocalize their stance on the George Floyd issue? How is not wanting to speak on the topic in the workplace equivalent to being racist?

Seems like an application of the "white silence is violence" principle.

Vox (among others) wrote a piece on it: https://www.vox.com/2020/6/3/21278245/antiracist-racism-race...

Can this principle be universally applied?

I'm not sure. I think it probably applies in personal life. But is there an imperative to 1) bring it into the workplace, and 2) to fall in line with any specific group and their chosen preferred language/actions?

I'm equivocal on both of these.

In the case of (1), why should the act of fighting injustice pause by some notion of decorum at work? Where should our priorities and values lie?

In the case of (2), many people have good reasons to find the prevailing leftist/progressive rhetoric distasteful. But right now the groups who espouse that rhetoric are also the most active and most effective groups taking action right now. If you aren't with them, who exactly are you with? Or so the rhetoric might go.

If (1) is true, shouldn't companies have the right to fire you due to political reasons / disagreement?

That's a good question. I don't have a good answer.

If Wired's reporting is accurate (https://www.wired.com/story/turmoil-black-lives-matter-polit...), Coinbase did try to ride the line, but a bunch of activists demanded for Armstrong to publicly chant the slogan and eventually went on strike until he did.

Then they made their choice - their employees believed their company was not supporting them as people and forced the issue. Coinbase then chose its side. Is there anything more to say?

From those actions alone you can't determine if Coinbase rejected George Floyd/BLM, or rejected all kinds of slogan chanting that the CEO was pressured to chant by strikes.

It was, after all the first time he was pressured that way.

I disagree from my interpretation of what we do know. They could have made the case about that specifically if they wanted to, but they decided to deflect with a blanket policy on politics. To say we can't determine anything is silly - we're making best guess judgements, not trying Coinbase in court for murder.

I've made this comment elsewhere, but I really would love to know why people are digging in so hard here. Let's just call a spade a spade.

> you couldn't avoid taking a side on.

Pretty sure there’s only one “side” anybody’s actually ever taken there.

You can't be saying that the country is completely unified over this issue... what do you mean by this?

Because everyone from the left to the Heritage Foundation condemned the murder.

What most don't condone is burning down buildings and attacking and harassing diners.

BLM is the ultimate motte and bailey.

Do most condone the lack of consequences for the police?

We are in dynamic world and businesses need to stay away from politics and focus on its core value. Someone leaving has nothing to do with racism. We live in a time where few people and the media are manipulating the rest.

Note that I am Black too.

When penguin employees are having a cry about a guy that published a book with all the life advice a good father would give, I'm really not surprised there's people out there shoving their hands out looking for or concessions not granted to anyone else.

It's a uniquely American thing that the academic grifters with nothing better to do are desperately trying to import here as well.

> Armstrong took public stance that he wanted Coinbase to focus on crypto space stuff.

I don't think that he would have taken that public stance if he didn't feel that the company was being distracted internally by racial justice issues. It being a fair response is highly dependent on those internal conversations.

And the NY Times reports that prior to this conversation there was a public meeting where Black employees brought up difficult experiences at Coinbase. Being told that people should leave politics at home or leave the company is a horrible response to complaints about discrimination.

Well, I don't know what is going on in Coinbase. But the NYT has in the past overplayed the race card with no evidence.

Now I'm happy to agree that the retention rate of black people at Coinbase raises some questions. But the NYT, having asked those questions, came up with no particular evidence of racism.

The major piece of evidence that these issues are substantially due to race is that the NYT felt it warranted a hit piece. That is weak evidence. Being passed over for promotion and feeling unappreciated - which they lead with - isn't evidence. Most of us have been passed over for promotion plenty of times. Most people are unappreciated too.

On the contrary, they came up with several examples of biased behavior, including an instance where the Black members of a team were required to relocate while a non-Black member wasn't, an instance where a Black team member was subjected to to insults about drug dealing and guns from their manager, recruiting team member claims that Black candidates were less capable, the fact that Coinbase employs Black workers at less than half the average of the industry, and the fact that Black workers were dismissed in meetings, to the point where a pattern of repeated HR complaints occurred.

Starting with the assumption that they are racist, that is the tip of a nasty iceburg.

Starting with the assumption it is a pretty normal company, that is a list mostly of stuff that nobody should care about.

If someone can articulate what the HR complaints are about then that might be evidence. But complaints to HR are expected - that is why HR gets hired. They are there to deal with HR complaints. And read resumes.

> including an instance where the Black members of a team were required to relocate while a non-Black member wasn't

This one is stupid. Am I meant to believe they are revealing their racist ways by hiring black people then asking them to relocate, racistly? This is bog standard sucks-to-work-in-support activity. Miserable working conditions, but nothing to do with skin colour. A similar thing happened to my father back in the day. He certainly wasn't black.

Racism is endemic in the US. It was founded with the notion that black people were basically livestock. We've slowly and fitfully moved away from that, but the problem is far from over. With any company we should assume that both personal and systemic bias are present. Which is why well-run companies work to counter that.

> Racism is endemic in the US. It was founded with the notion that black people were basically livestock.

The existence of slavery in the past isn’t driving the current race issues in the US so much as fallout from much more recent segregation policies. Nobody alive today was a (or was born to) a slave and the majority of the states that make up the United States were not even part of the country during the civil war.

To claim racism is endemic now because of slavery is lazy. Racism is endemic because segregation didn’t end until approximately the same time as TCP/IP was being invented!

> so much as fallout from much more recent segregation policies.

The existence of slavery and the view that Black people could be treated as livestock are why we had segregation policies.

The existence of slavery fueled white anger towards the idea that the "livestock" were suddenly being allowed to go to the same places and use the same services as white people. The generations of people who owned slaves raised the generations of people that enforced segregation, and those generations raised the people today who enforce racial discrimination and oppose racial justice.

And like you said, this isn't far-back history, segregation in the US was recent. People have this flowery view that racism just went away and that slavery just suddenly stopped mattering. But the effects are still very much with us today. A few generations isn't enough to eliminate a culturally pervasive, harmful ideology.

Agreed, with one caveat. It isn't "people" who think that racism just went away. It's white people.

Right, good catch.

It's important to keep in mind that Black communities (and a lot of other marginalized communities) as a group don't really have these debates as much, because it's completely obvious to them that they aren't being treated equally.

But how, in a democracy founded on the notion of equality, did segregation become a policy? How did the people who passed those laws get it into their heads that it would be a useful thing to do?

A democracy founded on the notion that all white male property owners were equal and slavery was acceptable? Some fancy words in a fancy document doesn't override the actual reality of who was considered equal or not.

I agree plenty of history happened in between, but your notion that they're unrelated is absurd. Nobody today learned English from Alexander Hamilton, but nonetheless we not only understand the Federalist Papers just fine, we live by many of the ideas he expressed. Culture is handed down.

If you'd like to better understand that, I'd suggest you read Kendi's "Stamped from the Beginning", who gives an intellectual history of America's racist ideas. I also think you're mistaken to lay the current troubles at the feet of formal segregation policies, which were only active in one part on the US. Maybe go read "Sundown Towns", which shows that all across America we had towns with de-facto segregation without formal policies. And it takes only a glance at modern maps showing race to see we haven't solved the problem.

>>they came up with several examples of biased behavior,

In none of those examples is there proof of racial bias.

I'm not sure what you're looking for here. Are you saying that it is untrue that there are Black employees who feel that racial issues are being handled poorly at Coinbase? Because that's what the article says. It sounds like you're looking for enough information to make a judgement of whether the company is racist, in an innocent until proven guilty sort of way. But that is very much not the point.

You took one example and ignored the rest. It’s not like NYT wrote this article simply because Russ left. What about the employees who were asked to be present for photo shoots to show workplace diversity but who felt ignored and talked down to during meetings? That sounds problematic. If it were a couple of employees it’s one thing but when most of your black employees leave because of what they feel is racism in the workplace that’s harder to ignore. It doesn’t necessarily prove there was racism, but it’s certainly a red flag.

They probably wrote it because Coinbase stood up to BLM activists internally and the NYT is the media arm of BLM. But you get these accusations constantly against companies. "I felt ignored in meetings therefore the firm is sexist and racist". No, that happens to people all the time, including white men. A better explanation is maybe you weren't saying anything worth listening to in meetings, or you feel you were but your manager disagreed.

when most of your black employees leave because of what they feel is racism in the workplace that’s harder to ignore

They weren't ignoring it. Some of these people weren't even saying they felt that way to Coinbase - one of the people who claims she was bullied also claims nobody told her how to make an official complaint and that's why Coinbase have no record of her views. Complaining to HR has to be the easiest task in any modern corporation; if she couldn't figure out how to do even that then we probably found the explanation for why she felt unappreciated: maybe she just sucked. Or maybe she's made up this supposed racism after she left, as part of achieving other ends (like getting in the NYT).

> What about the employees who were asked to be present for photo shoots to show workplace diversity but who felt ignored and talked down to during meetings?

That is extremely vague. Is it a red flag? Yes. Does it imply racism? No. It doesn't even guarantee there is a problem or a systemic trend for that matter.

If there are 3 red flags and some actual evidence of racism then that is one thing. But there isn't. Even the number of black people quitting - what is the expected retention rate in that team? Most people quit due to dodgy managers, so people quitting points to a dodgy manager before it points to racism.

How is it not racist to showcase your black employees for appearances and then turn around and condescend them?

You've squeezed a bit into the premise of that question. If, why and how persistently someone was ignored are very relevant questions that we have no facts on. And what the subject of the meeting was.

We know that Alysa Butler felt unappreciated. I'm hesitant to believe the NYT is even representing her opinions fairly. If you read what they've written about carefully, the article doesn't have her accusing Coinbase of any sort of racism, the NYT is just weaving her experience into a story that they construct elsewhere (normal practice in newspapers). A 'diversity problem' is different from racism. 25 year olds being ignored in meetings is not a new phenomenon either in my experience.

And you’re completely ignoring the fact that they are using these employees who they hired for an actual job as props for diversity brochures. Is that really just a “diversity problem”? To use your employees as token figures? Not every racist act has to be consciously malicious. It at the very least implies it, diversity problem honestly just sounds like a euphemism.

> And you’re completely ignoring the fact that they are using these employees who they hired for an actual job as props for diversity brochures.

Yeah, I am completely ignoring that. "My presence in the workplace was excessively celebrated" isn't a complaint. There is nothing there to respond to.

If you want to argue that could technically be racist behaviour I agree, but typically when people talk about racism they are actually going to serious issues like money, power or personal safety. Photos taken for promotional material is not something that needs a defence - it is a frivolous thing to argue about. Any company might do that.

They can do nothing, once someone calls you 'racist' you're racist for good.

I don't know the details of the story, but the thing is with baseless accusations of racism is that it's a perfect slander, one can never prove innocence once proclaimed guilty.

What are you trying to say? over 16 people are just lieing! Whatever dude, you're privilege to not have to face the bs. Then why don't you go get the details before you start talking smack

> Coinbase's stance there is fair, reasonable and moral

this is a self-evident conclusion being hawked as a premise, and the rest of the comment doesn't do much to mold this premise into an argument

> If Russ had a reason for quitting that was race-related then the NYT didn't uncover it.

There's an unfalsifiability in this rhetoric, because someone leaving for race-related reasons in an industry that either: a) has "subtle racists" b) is funded by "subtle racists" c) functionally aids and/or abets "subtle racists" through inaction

would be incentivized to not specify these things, as these industries (finance and crypto) optimize for relationships almost as much (if not ==) to the amount they optimize for merit. And that's not even getting into clauses baked into employment termination contracts. So you have a scenario where you can't actually "prove" race was a primary motivator for quitting because: a) if it were a "subtle racist" co-worker, they're probably using euphemism a2) if they're a "not subtle racist" co-worker, it would embarrass the employer for keeping that person on the book swhen the reputational cost exceeds the cost of sourcing and hiring someone who's not a not subtle racist" b) If the person wants to work in tech again, relationships will likely be burned as a direct or indirect result of airing out a company's dirty laundry c) Could be sued for violating non-disparagement clauses (prices out anyone who doesn't have the security to burn the bridge between them and a growth industry)

If the point of your comment was to use a number of premises that aren't empirical, and border on dogmatic, then I misunderstood, and apologize for trying to search for rhetoric where it was not intended to be found.

If the purpose of the statements above where to be rhetorical or logical, then we're getting into a place where we're asking for evidence that would be difficult for someone with said evidence to do without them, say, being financially and occupationally secure enough to burn the bridges between them and: - Coinbase - Coinbase's Investors - Coinbase's Investors' LPs - Coinbase's Investors' companies - Every other company that either doesn't question whether they are less meritocratic than they believe, or doesn't question whether or not they can replace the problematic superstar employees

Imagine if the consultants had in fact found discrimination. Would the company ever report that publicly? Maybe there was or wasn't discrimination, but there is zero reason to conclude based on somebody chosen and paid for by the company.

Which all boils down to that old quote: "lies, damned lies, and statistics".

Political parties have pet Think Tanks and Consulting Companies and various other organisations that only exist to massage the existing data into the desired narrative.

Look for the data points that indicate 'normal' and orbit that. When the inevitable questions about X% of the African-American workforce quit within Y time, just point to the stats that say 'normal'. Find some other outlier statistic to point out that random groupings happen, use this to try and dismiss this scenario as a one-off random event; coincidence.

Kids: learn your statistics! You'll be able to cheat your way into at least a couple of promotions throughout your career. (What I actually mean is: learn your statistics so you can spot when you're being cheated).

> If you've never done this sort of thing before: there's a huge market for these "external consultants". Their unstated job (and reputations) are as whitewashing firms.

There are consultancies whose reputations depend on reporting only unvarnished truth to their clients. That way the client can reliably handle and eliminate actual discrimination, and defend themselves against false claims. I'm not sure that a whitewashing firm would be as valuable as all that.

I think that’s unfair, not all corporations are big bad monoliths trying to crush the little guy. The New York Times article is a hit piece, and main stream media’s continuation of constantly looking to create racial tension.

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