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> European countries literally have no legal concept of at-will employment. They have strong social nets that make quitting your job much easier, and more prevalent unions that fight to improve working conditions (all of these things are, gasp, political! incidentally)

This isn't what is debated here. What is debated is whether Coinbase should display a Black Lives Matter flag on its website and whether employees should be debating about Black Live matters, "Free Palestine", ICE and immigration policies or other wedge issues on the clock.

In Europe the very premise of that question would be completely absurd, and thanks to that both right wingers and left wingers can coexist in the same workplace by behaving professional. This is almost impossible today in the tech sector in USA.

I don't see how at-will employment is related here.

This is Coinbase. The vast majority of the employees there are not stuck in a job they wish they could leave but can't. These are some of the most privileged employees in the world.

The bigger issue is like the OP stated, the state of politics in the US. How does at-will employment relate to issues like not working with certain government institutions because you disagree with their purpose?

Coinbase isn't trying to avoid political arguments over healthcare, they're trying to avoid employees rallying together and changing the company to further their personal political beliefs.

> European countries literally have no legal concept of at-will employment. They have strong social nets that make quitting your job much easier, and more prevalent unions that fight to improve working conditions...

> By comparison employment in the US is messed up enough that if you leave your job you lose your health insurance. Companies with great policies can sometimes retain employees on that basis alone!

I think this is an argument in favor of what Brian is doing at Coinbase, though. The problem is that in the current political climate, people are intimidated and discouraged from becoming politically engaged out of fear that if their views are unpopular enough, even many years in the future, their coworkers will circulate petitions to get them fired.

If we as a people were capable of civil disagreement and didn't do things like circulate petitions to get our coworkers fired, maybe it wouldn't be necessary for Coinbase to do what they did.

I think we're mixing up different political topics here.

The one I think you're talking about is the US workers' struggle to defend or increase basic worker rights. Which indeed is a political struggle of workers versus management.

If I'm not mistaken, the Coinbase case is about social justice types of topics like feminism, BLM, trans rights, colonialism, the like.

My point is that positions like Brian's require there to be a clear and bright line between "political" and "not political". I think it's at least slightly easier to draw that line in European workplaces where the nature of employment is not as politically fraught.

Just to take two of your examples: feminism and trans rights. Both have healthcare implications. Your employer controls your healthcare. Should the healthcare provided by your employer cover birth control? Abortion? Conversion therapy? This mix is inevitable.

We might as well call it what it is: troublemakers.

People that are so politically activist at work that they dis-proportionally impact the business. By sowing division, distracting from the work, spoiling morale. And sometimes worse, like stealing data or airing dirty laundry publicly.

I'm not going to touch the morality of it, I'm merely painting the picture of what it is.

There's more companies where this is an issue, Google had plenty such incidents, Basecamp, Facebook, the like.

I can't help but feel like you've made your mind up and aren't interested in listening to any other perspective. Your reply addresses absolutely nothing in the post it's replying to. Perhaps we just leave the conversation here, I don't see it going anywhere fruitful. I wish you all the best.

I'm open to different perspectives but you're not even on topic. Let me simplify it even further: Brian fired the woke.

The thing you're talking about, worker conditions, is not what the article is about. It's not a different perspective, it's an entirely different topic.

But anyway, have a good day regardless.

I always hear this argument that the employer controls your health care in the U.S. and it is quite wrong. The employer MAY offer one or more options for a subsidized health care plan in which the employer contributes some or all of the cost of the selected plan. There is zero requirement for an employee to select or use such a plan, and there is absolutely nothing stopping an employee from seeking an alternative plan or additional uncovered treatments through other means available to them.

Maybe there is a point to be made about the overall cost of health care plans being too expensive for an individual to afford without the employer subsidy, but that is orthogonal to "employer control" of healthcare.

> Maybe there is a point to be made about the overall cost of health care plans being too expensive for an individual to afford without the employer subsidy, but that is orthogonal to "employer control" of healthcare.

No, it's not. A choice in which the alternative is unattainable (or simply worse) is a Hobson's choice, and the direct result is that Americans with full-time employement are dependent on employer-subsidized healthcare.

If Coinbase employees didn't feel they can weigh in on what their health insurance should cover, I would certainly agree that's a problem, but I'd be very surprised if that's the case. Armstrong's announcement acknowledged that there will be some cases where political engagement is inevitable because it intersects with the company's business. Remember that this position came in direct response to an incident where Coinbase employees demanded that the company publicly endorse a specific political slogan on the topic of police brutality - regardless of how blurry the line is in general, I hope we can agree that Coinbase's business doesn't have much to do with the police.

Why should any insurance cover elective procedures? You could also add things like beauty surgeries, hair transplant, lasik surgeries etc. (I know that EU insurances often cover birth control, but I think that's mostly because it's a drug prescribed by a doctor so it fits into the framework... I don't think it should cover birth control (except maybe for young people before they start working) - that's not insurance, it's just a subscription service so you're better off buying it directly.)

Birth control is prescribed by a doctor for a wide variety of things, including chronic health conditions. If you think insurance shouldn’t cover birth control because it’s consistent, do diabetics also not deserve to have insulin covered, or high blood pressure people their statins?

Sure, in that case if it’s medically indicated and not elective, that’s a different situation.

Why does a workplace get to determine what is and isn’t medically elective for a woman to take birth control? Isn’t that political too?

Obviously it is. But for people defending all kinds of status quo, it's a political act just trying to change it. Trying to keep it as it is, it's seen as "normal" or apolitical.

I'm not arguing about politics, I'm putting in question the whole idea of making voluntary (not sure if that's the correct term - definitely not elective as I was corrected above) medical procedures available through insurance. Insurance is meant for unpredictable and unforeseen exceptional events. Wanting to have beauty surgery, or contraception, or lasik surgery, etc. isn't such. You could still argue that these should be covered by insurance, but that's simply economically inefficient - you're essentially paying for a subscription service, with the middle man taking a cut - why not just buy it yourself?

I see the confusion. American health insurance doesn’t really fit the term insurance as you define it above. I agree, insurance should be for catastrophic events. But in the US, a health plan is expected to cover all your medical expenses, minus co-pays or deductibles. Perhaps there should be a different term for it.

I'm not sure whether you include trans healthcare among "shouldn't be covered", so here's my 2 cents:

- Most of Europe prescribes hormones upon a medical indication. This leads to bad gatekeeping; I've been told to see 3 different professionals before starting hormones.

- Anecdotally, I'm on grey market hormones while waiting, without any bloodwork - before starting those hormones, I've had suicidal ideations on a daily basis.

- This seems to be backed by data as well: Ideation rates are reported to be 37-83% and attempt rates are reported to be 9.8-44%. [0]

Given the frequent outcomes of depression and suicide, I think it's fair to say that trans healthcare is not optional and should be fully covered.

[0] https://doi.org/10.1037/sgd0000235

"Elective" in "elective procedure" doesn't mean "optional and potentially frivolous." It just means "not emergent", or put differently it means you won't die if you don't have it right now.

Kidney stone surgery is elective. Cancer resection is elective. Most heart surgery is elective. Most brain surgery is elective.

I assume you're not arguing that health insurance shouldn't cover these things, because that would be extremely foolish. It may, though, be worth acquainting yourself with at least the basic terminology of the field about which you want to argue, because overlooking this point makes you seem as if you don't really know what you're talking about.

What’s the correct term?

To the best of my knowledge, there exists no term in the medical lexicon denoting the category of "interventions 'tomp believes should not be covered in some or all cases by health insurance."

what category does "beauty plastic surgery" fall under, if not "emergency" or "elective"?

Cosmesis is elective.

Neither of us is going to convince one another; you very evidently have strongly held opinions about how medicine should be practiced, whereas I know some things about how it is. That being so, I see no point in continuing this line of discussion any further. Should you feel otherwise, I hope you enjoy it.

The core reasons seems to be that you seem to keep misrepresenting my arguments.

I'm not talking about "practicing medicine" at all, just about who pays for what.

Ensuring patients are able to access the treatments ordered for them, or at least trying to do that, qualifies as part of the practice of medicine. That's why medical practices have billing departments to deal with insurance on the patient's behalf, rather than requiring cash up front and letting patients figure their own way through the reimbursement process.

The problem isn't that I'm misrepresenting your arguments, such as they are. The problem is that, instead of finding out how this stuff actually works and understanding why it works the way it does, you prefer to continue insisting on your opinions, which are as apparently uninformed as strongly held.

I don't see what you hope to achieve by this save wasting someone time, and my test suite just finished running, so it'll have to be someone else's time from here.

You're right, maybe I'm just unfamiliar with how health insurance works in the US.

In Europe, neither public nor private insurance covers beauty surgeries (at least the ones I'm familiar with).

You can afford pretty much anything you need as a trans person by working a year as a software engineer. Healthcare is bad in the USA? Do medical tourism, they have great doctors overseas.

Medical tourism is not convenient or even guaranteed to be a trusting experience. Two things that would be very important for many high ticket medical procedures.

Of course everyone knows that feminism has nothing to do with basic workers rights because a women's place is in the home.

/sarcasm

> Companies with great policies can sometimes retain employees on that basis alone!

So I recently quit a FAANG and they sent me a COBRA notice with the cost of their insurance benefit. You can get great FAANG insurance for about $10k a year, which is peanuts for a Silicon Valley engineer. We need to dispel the myth that Silicon Valley engineers are working for health insurance.

>"We need to dispel the myth that Silicon Valley engineers are working for health insurance."

The OP was referring to US companies in general not FAANG companies, which are outliers by many measures. If you read the sentence before the one your quoting it provides the context:

"By comparison employment in the US is messed up enough that if you leave your job you lose your health insurance."

Also smaller companies generally pay significantly more per employee than a megacorp does. And this is the amount one assumes when COBRA kicks in. Also for 10K I'm guessing you have an individual plan and are not covering family dependents which would also add significantly to the premium.

We need to dispel the myth that everyone that works at a Silicon Valley company is an engineer.

Coinbase in particular will have legions of support people (who do you think answers the phone/customer emails?). I would bet that $10k (or maybe $15k for a family) is a meaningful fraction of the annual compensation for many roles at Coinbase.

"who do you think answers the phone/customer emails?"

In my experience, nobody at all.

Sorry, it's a common crypto joke.

COBRA means you’re still getting insurance through your (former) employer. How much does the same insurance benefit cost if you buy it fully on your own?

In my experience you can’t even buy a similar plan as an individual. And definitely not at the same price.

Apples to apples comparison is very hard because the plans are all different. But having bought insurance from the state marketplace it two US states, I'd say around $500 USD/month.

This matches my recent experience. I researched plans on Washington state's health marketplace and found that while the available plans were generally much cheaper than COBRA, their coverage for out-of-network or out-of-state care was limited (e.g. "emergency" care only, where the definition of emergency is vague and up to the insurer). And even if you are careful to get taken to an "in-network" hospital, there are plenty of horror stories about inadvertently getting treated by an "out-of-network" provider while inside and being on the hook for the entire bill.

I couldn't find a marketplace plan that didn't give me real doubts about the possible financial impact of traveling to other states(!) so I decided to suck it up and pay for COBRA for peace of mind. Of course, COBRA will run out after 18 months, but I plan to get another corporate job before then.

TL:DR if you have (or recently left) a fancy corporate job here, you have access to a group plan with nice coverage. If you have to buy an individual plan, it seems you cannot get the same level of coverage even if you're willing to pay for it, and the available coverage leaves you with the risk of huge medical bills if you suddenly need healthcare while simply traveling within the country.

> . And even if you are careful to get taken to an "in-network" hospital, there are plenty of horror stories about inadvertently getting treated by an "out-of-network" provider while inside and being on the hook for the entire bill.

This is no longer legal in any state as of July 1st of this year.

> Bans out-of-network charges for ancillary care (like an anesthesiologist or assistant surgeon) at an in-network facility in all circumstances.

https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2021/07/01/hhs-announces-rule...

That is an improvement indeed. Thanks for correcting me!

I normally just lurk, but this could effect someone's plans and is slightly incorrect.

This change was enacted December, 2020 with a July 1 deadline to confirm it would be enacted.

It doesn't go into effect until January 1, 2022 and does not apply to charges incurred before then.

It also only applies to federal plans (including "Obamacare" plans, but not necessarily private plans.

The language of the subsection addressing this is poorly constructed, so be careful.

The HHS link provided above by secabeen has those details and links to further information

I got a plan from the marketplace in Washington state for around 550/month. It was called a Silver plan, but it didn't cover very much. I kept getting bills a year after my services for things that I thought were covered and that my doctor said would be covered. And I looked into the benefits sheets while choosing my healthcare. Yes, I didn't get the highest priced one, but if Silver doesn't cover very much, I'm not confident "Gold" will. Also my experience with some corporate plans is that even though technically things are covered, sometimes the waiting times of a few months for urgent things mean they basically aren't.

> Is it really any wonder that “politics” ends up being an issue in the workplace?

It's still a wonder for me, I don't follow your reasoning at all. How does this force people into being antagonistic and fighting over politics in the workplace? If anything, this should put a pressure on workers to not stand out and keep their mouth shut, so that they wouldn't risk loosing coveted employer-provided insurance.

I don't get it. You argue that employment is more tenuous at US companies for various reasons... therefore employees want to stick their necks out by engaging in politics? Shouldn't we expect the opposite?

Breaking points in history are still breaking points.

Aside from that your comparison with Europe is quite flawed (there are plenty "at-will employment" type of constructions possible here, you don't get unemployment benefits if you quit yourself, etc.) these are all tech workers who have new employers lining up to hire them. They are not blue collar workers in an Amazon warehouse who have to relieve themselves in a bottle and get terminated by an algorithm for failing to meet quota's.

But besides all that I fail to see how any of what you just said are arguments to make the workplace a political Twitter-style fight pit?

You make at least three times as much as people in Europe, while the cost of living isn't three times higher. You can save this money in case something bad happens. If you're a minimum wage worker that's a different story. But we're talking about software engineers here. A standing desk and wrist exercises solve most of your possible work-related injuries.

Not everyone at tech company is a software engineer or makes that type of money.

I was going to post this, but couldn't have said it better.

The stakes of a job are quite a bit higher in the US, and it goes beyond healthcare.

The quality of a great many social foods in the US, from primary schooling to transit access and many others, are governed by your job. The social safety nets that exist kick in only at the extremes, of destitution (Medicaid) or age (Medicare).