6 ms·

I see this as strategically genius whether you agree with it or not. He's totally neutered the ability of employees to take strong political stances within the

by anm89 6y ago

I see this as strategically genius whether you agree with it or not. He's totally neutered the ability of employees to take strong political stances within the company going forward and he's made it clear where the company stands in away that makes it very hard for people to come back later and defend staying if they were interested in these kinds of politics. If you want to stay focused on building a company and not on debating the subjective merits of sociopolitical systems, this is a winning move.

paxys 6y ago
Whether it is a strategically genius move or not will depend on the eventual outcome. No tech company, especially one in the bitcoin/fintech sector, can pretend to be completely apolitical. So putting out public blog posts and setting strict policies that apply to employees may not fly well when the company or its leadership/executives themselves don't follow them down the line.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  > No tech company, especially one in the bitcoin/fintech sector, can pretend to be completely apolitical Especially when the company in question makes significant political donations[1]. [1] https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/?contributor_name=coinbase https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/?...
  - kristjansson 6y ago
    Interesting, all of the transactions with Coinbase as contributor have memo fields like x.yyyzzz BITCOIN SOLD VIA COINBASE - PURCHASER UNKNOWN and are followed subsequently by transactions with an (apparent) natural person as contributor with memo fields like x.yyyzzz Bitcoins, Contributions Previously Disclosed So it looks like those PACs reported contributions twice, once naming the actual contributor, and once naming Coinbase. I'm not sure why they'd do that - perhaps to head off FEC questions about deposits from Coinbase? Regardless, those don't seem to be contributions directly from Coinbase, but rather artifacts of campaign finance reporting. On an aside, there are some transactions that jump out e.g. line B of [1] where the PAC appears to have netted $5665 for 7.49 BTC in the closing days of 2017(!). Looking further, it seems like their reporting occasionally exchanged BTC for ETH, and the contribution reported makes sense for latter. Still, for a moment it was fun to imagine that someone got a screaming deal on a heap of BTC the day after Christmas 2017 [1]: https://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/fecimg/?201801319091289865 https://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/fecimg/?201801319091289865
    - rb12345 6y ago
      That's most likely from donations in Bitcoin. The PACs actually want real-world dollars, so sell any cryptocurrency recieved immediately. i that case, there's an entry for the "x.yyyzzz bitcoins were donated" part, and then one for "we sold x.yyyzzz via Coinbase for $n dollars". Overall, that translates to "we received $n dollars from $blah in the form of x.yyyzzz bitcoins", which presumably keeps the regulators happy.
- anm89 6y ago
  Of course only time will tell. I'm simply predicting that it was a wise move. Also the company is not claiming to be apolitical. They are saying they don't want employees individually engaging in politics while acting on behalf of the company. I'm sure coinbase has plenty of political objectives. On some level business is politics. Especially a crypto company, which makes it even more important not to have your employees politically organizing in a way that could appear represents your companies politics with out any executive oversight.
  - matthewdgreen 6y ago
    The company just extended a massive bonus and exercise extension to any employee that thinks they can get a better job. This is basically an invitation for the most talented people to exit the building ASAP even if they agree strongly with the Founders’ politics. This isn’t genius: it’s a mass layoff.
    - anm89 6y ago
      I guess we'll see what happens.
SquishyPanda23 6y ago
Meh it's not strategically genius. The crypto community is hugely political and right-libertarian leaning. He's just signalling that he's not going against that trend. > He's totally neutered the ability of employees to take strong political stances He absolutely has not. I'm sure they will continue to take hard right-libertarian stances that are common in the cryptocurrency world.
- jlokier 6y ago
  "There are many unbanked and underbanked people in the world who have no ability to get a loan to buy a home, or start a business, so this kind of technology has enormous potential to improve the world over time, even if it is still early days." - Brian Armstrong, 2 weeks ago Seems to me that's not at all a hard right-libertarian stance.
  - eli 6y ago
    That the world is full of underserved people who should be helped by...this for-profit corporation?
    - jlokier 6y ago
      You're projecting an exclusiveness that is just not there in the quote. Nowhere does it argue that this corporation should be the only one helping. If anything, "this kind of technology" means the opposite of exclusivity, namely that Coinbase is part of a larger system than themselves, made of multiple corporations and other entities, and the people themselves, using this kind of technology, which it is claimed together help the underserved. Or are you trying to argue that this for-profit corporation, or all for-profit corporations, should not be aiming to help underserved people?
      - eli 6y ago
        Nope just that there’s nothing at all incongruous with that quote identifying an underserved market and libertarian politics.
andrew_ 6y ago
Makes me wish I had the skillset necessary to apply. Sounds like a phenomenal place to work.
baryphonic 6y ago
I agree. Further, I think this is a giant signal to what I suspect is a majority of the industry who are really exhausted about the politicization of everything, and simply want to work toward a goal they find interesting. Those of us who want to focus on actual work and not solving the totality of global problems (or at least those problems visible to wealthy, highly-educated knowledge workers concentrated in a handful of American metro areas) will have a strong incentive to look at companies like Coinbase. I'm curious to see if Spotify management might copy this.
eli 6y ago
You will build a less diverse and necessarily worse company this way.
- refurb 6y ago
  Really? I'd say it would be more diverse since people wouldn't feel like their opinions were verboten or that they had to "play along" in order to get along.
  - pm90 6y ago
    I'm not sure if you're deliberately being obtuse. But if you're not: the currently accepted meaning of diversity in the workplace is : > Cultural diversity means that a group contains people of different races, religions, ages, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, socioeconomic statuses, nationalities, and more. Their agreements or disagreements on political viewpoints are not what makes a pool of employees culturally diverse.
- anm89 6y ago
  As the other poster already mentioned, I would posit the exact opposite.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

by anm89 6y ago

paxys 6y ago

Whether it is a strategically genius move or not will depend on the eventual outcome. No tech company, especially one in the bitcoin/fintech sector, can pretend to be completely apolitical. So putting out public blog posts and setting strict policies that apply to employees may not fly well when the company or its leadership/executives themselves don't follow them down the line.

heavyset_go 6y ago
> No tech company, especially one in the bitcoin/fintech sector, can pretend to be completely apolitical Especially when the company in question makes significant political donations[1]. [1] https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/?contributor_name=coinbase https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/?...
- kristjansson 6y ago
  Interesting, all of the transactions with Coinbase as contributor have memo fields like x.yyyzzz BITCOIN SOLD VIA COINBASE - PURCHASER UNKNOWN and are followed subsequently by transactions with an (apparent) natural person as contributor with memo fields like x.yyyzzz Bitcoins, Contributions Previously Disclosed So it looks like those PACs reported contributions twice, once naming the actual contributor, and once naming Coinbase. I'm not sure why they'd do that - perhaps to head off FEC questions about deposits from Coinbase? Regardless, those don't seem to be contributions directly from Coinbase, but rather artifacts of campaign finance reporting. On an aside, there are some transactions that jump out e.g. line B of [1] where the PAC appears to have netted $5665 for 7.49 BTC in the closing days of 2017(!). Looking further, it seems like their reporting occasionally exchanged BTC for ETH, and the contribution reported makes sense for latter. Still, for a moment it was fun to imagine that someone got a screaming deal on a heap of BTC the day after Christmas 2017 [1]: https://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/fecimg/?201801319091289865 https://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/fecimg/?201801319091289865
  - rb12345 6y ago
    That's most likely from donations in Bitcoin. The PACs actually want real-world dollars, so sell any cryptocurrency recieved immediately. i that case, there's an entry for the "x.yyyzzz bitcoins were donated" part, and then one for "we sold x.yyyzzz via Coinbase for $n dollars". Overall, that translates to "we received $n dollars from $blah in the form of x.yyyzzz bitcoins", which presumably keeps the regulators happy.
anm89 6y ago
Of course only time will tell. I'm simply predicting that it was a wise move. Also the company is not claiming to be apolitical. They are saying they don't want employees individually engaging in politics while acting on behalf of the company. I'm sure coinbase has plenty of political objectives. On some level business is politics. Especially a crypto company, which makes it even more important not to have your employees politically organizing in a way that could appear represents your companies politics with out any executive oversight.
- matthewdgreen 6y ago
  The company just extended a massive bonus and exercise extension to any employee that thinks they can get a better job. This is basically an invitation for the most talented people to exit the building ASAP even if they agree strongly with the Founders’ politics. This isn’t genius: it’s a mass layoff.
  - anm89 6y ago
    I guess we'll see what happens.

SquishyPanda23 6y ago

Meh it's not strategically genius. The crypto community is hugely political and right-libertarian leaning. He's just signalling that he's not going against that trend. > He's totally neutered the ability of employees to take strong political stances He absolutely has not. I'm sure they will continue to take hard right-libertarian stances that are common in the cryptocurrency world.

jlokier 6y ago
"There are many unbanked and underbanked people in the world who have no ability to get a loan to buy a home, or start a business, so this kind of technology has enormous potential to improve the world over time, even if it is still early days." - Brian Armstrong, 2 weeks ago Seems to me that's not at all a hard right-libertarian stance.
- eli 6y ago
  That the world is full of underserved people who should be helped by...this for-profit corporation?
  - jlokier 6y ago
    You're projecting an exclusiveness that is just not there in the quote. Nowhere does it argue that this corporation should be the only one helping. If anything, "this kind of technology" means the opposite of exclusivity, namely that Coinbase is part of a larger system than themselves, made of multiple corporations and other entities, and the people themselves, using this kind of technology, which it is claimed together help the underserved. Or are you trying to argue that this for-profit corporation, or all for-profit corporations, should not be aiming to help underserved people?
    - eli 6y ago
      Nope just that there’s nothing at all incongruous with that quote identifying an underserved market and libertarian politics.

andrew_ 6y ago

Makes me wish I had the skillset necessary to apply. Sounds like a phenomenal place to work.

baryphonic 6y ago

I agree. Further, I think this is a giant signal to what I suspect is a majority of the industry who are really exhausted about the politicization of everything, and simply want to work toward a goal they find interesting. Those of us who want to focus on actual work and not solving the totality of global problems (or at least those problems visible to wealthy, highly-educated knowledge workers concentrated in a handful of American metro areas) will have a strong incentive to look at companies like Coinbase. I'm curious to see if Spotify management might copy this.

eli 6y ago

You will build a less diverse and necessarily worse company this way.

refurb 6y ago
Really? I'd say it would be more diverse since people wouldn't feel like their opinions were verboten or that they had to "play along" in order to get along.
- pm90 6y ago
  I'm not sure if you're deliberately being obtuse. But if you're not: the currently accepted meaning of diversity in the workplace is : > Cultural diversity means that a group contains people of different races, religions, ages, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, socioeconomic statuses, nationalities, and more. Their agreements or disagreements on political viewpoints are not what makes a pool of employees culturally diverse.
anm89 6y ago
As the other poster already mentioned, I would posit the exact opposite.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]