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Is "apolitical" stance a bad thing? Isn't it the default, safe? I lived in country where you had to be "political" to be in management, it didn't end up well (

by krzyk 6y ago

Is "apolitical" stance a bad thing? Isn't it the default, safe? I lived in country where you had to be "political" to be in management, it didn't end up well (East Europe, Soviet Union), I always (naively?) thought that West countries were wiser. So I prefer companies to not mess with politics.

eli 6y ago
This has been discussed extensively in the previous threads on Coinbase, but banning the discussion of certain topics in the workplace is itself a political stance. Very much so.
- JPKab 6y ago
  Is banning discussion of religion in the workplace a political/religious stance? Or is it just an attempt to be decent and get people to do the thing they were hired to do, which is to make their investors more fucking money? As a shareholder in several tech companies, I don't like the idea of people having discussions like these on my dime. How many bugs that were never fixed with Youtube Music, for example, could have been fixed if there weren't shit heads sitting around having flame wars on my fucking dime?
  - DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
    > Is banning discussion of religion in the workplace a political/religious stance? (Please forgive any flawed logic below - I assure you it's an oversight. I'm posting this in good faith.) I'd say yes, but basically in the same way Coinbase's band on political speech in the office is a stance. Consider religious people whose theology holds that they should attempt to convert everybody in their circles, even their professional circles. It seems to me that banning that is tantamount to saying either (a) their theology is wrong, or (b) it's not wrong but the employer is resisting it regardless, or (c) the business has no place for employees holding those beliefs.
    - tomp 6y ago
      It’s actually (d) they can do that just not in the office or during working hours.
- asdff 6y ago
  It's as political as banning goofing off at work. You aren't hired to spend the working day debating politics with your co workers, just like you aren't hired to blow off the day playing Halo in the back room with your coworkers. You are hired to do the tasks described in your job and that alone.
  - jes5199 6y ago
    this “just do your job” talk only comes out when we’re talking about activism. the rest of the time y’all are saying “we’re a family of co-owners trying to change the world”
  - eli 6y ago
    I hire a whole person who, along with the company itself, exists in society and is not an automaton judged only by how many widgets are produced.
- jiuahweruihawi 6y ago
  Have they banned the discussion of certain topics entirely? Or have they just said that they don't want the company as an entity to get involved with these topics? There's a difference between saying "we don't think it's appropriate for us to take an official stance on X, but feel free to discuss X on your lunch breaks like you would any other topic" and "thou shalt not mention X in any context while an employee of this company"
Pfhreak 6y ago
"Apolitical" is the default. It's another way of saying, "The way things are is fine". The problem is that this is, in itself, a political stance. An example could be climate change. If Coinbase is doing nothing to make energy more green (even if that's just writing amicus briefs or blog posts), then they are effectively saying, "The way things are is fine."
- Miraste 6y ago
  Companies aren't, and shouldn't be, superPACs. Getting Coinbase to use green energy is the job of government regulations and incentives, not political crusades from Coinbase's management. If the government isn't doing this, it's a problem to solve with different policy makers, not by trying to force all companies to have party platforms.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  No, they are effectively saying "Those issues are outside the scope of the purpose of our organization". That's not the same thing.
- sequoia 6y ago
  > "Apolitical" is ... another way of saying, "The way things are is fine". I disagree strongly & think you're dead wrong here. Apolitical in the workplace is saying "we come to work to align on & collaborate in working towards shared goals and those goals are what we should be focused on at work. People who share this goal (coinbase, make money, promote crypto whatever) may vote R, D, or not vote at all. We can all still work together on our shared goal." It means people with different views can work together on stuff they do agree on rather than "I can't work with anyone who doesn't vote the same as me" which is what social-justice-in-the-workplace seems to lead to, for better or worse. It is NOT an endorsement of the status quo, it's a recognition that you and I might both oppose the status quo for completely different reasons that have nothing to do with work.
  - thundergolfer 6y ago
    The work you do together is political. It of course isn’t necessarily directly engaged with USA national politics, but it’s directly engaged in politics. Politics is a very broad and encompassing concept. It isn’t synonymous with some nation’s representative political system.
JPKab 6y ago
My wife is mostly liberal from a US political perspective, but happens to be opposed to abortion. I happen to disagree in nuanced ways with her on this topic. My business. According to my coworkers, who discovered this because they saw her bumper sticker when she picked me up one day, this is because she is "ignorant and doesn't know the facts" and "if she knew the facts she wouldn't think that way" and that I "need to talk to her and explain them." They think that, due to their profession, they are intelligent, and therefore anyone who disagrees with them about a complex topic is either less intelligent or uninformed. It's the epitome of youthful arrogance. Naturally, none of them have kids and really don't see the nuance of the issue. It's insufferable, and at one point I was getting ready to clobber a guy who I am 100% positive has never been hit in his life. Politics should be left out of work. And yes, by convincing a broad spectrum of the American public that Trump won the election because of a few facebook ads bought by Russian assets, instead of simply saying that they had a shitty candidate, the Democratic party has essentially pressured tech companies to have political filtering on their staff. If Facebook had Republicans working at senior levels in their company, they would have been subjected to even more harassment from Dem leaders who scapegoated them for their loss in 2016. Facebook has former Democratic party operatives at high levels in their company. They don't and can't have anyone from the Republican party. They get unending amounts of shit for Thiel being on their board.
- lazyasciiart 6y ago
  But you're completely wrong. Facebook does have Republicans at senior levels in their company - Republicans as in "Joel Kaplan, vice-president of global public policy at Facebook, manages the company’s relationships with policymakers around the world. A former law clerk to archconservative justice Antonin Scalia on the supreme court, he served as deputy chief of staff for policy under former president George W Bush from 2006 to 2009, joining Facebook two years later." https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/03/facebook-politics-republicans-right https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/03/facebook-... https://popular.info/p/the-republican-political-operatives https://popular.info/p/the-republican-political-operatives
- kmonsen 6y ago
  I think it is a bit more nuanced than that, and that the line is really hard to draw. If you wife for example got a manager that thought the females had no place in the workplace and should be a stay at home wife and was open about this, would that be ok? If you are gay, and your manager loudly say that being gay is a sin, would that be ok? I get that it can feel like the other way too, it probably feels hostile to be conservative in a fairly liberal company. But being open and supportive of all your employees seems like good and understandable business decision. That of course includes being welcoming to conservative people. If you think your coworkers are a disgrace, no matter the reason, I think it would be smart to not make this known.
libraryatnight 6y ago
When you come out with a policy like this as a response to this https://www.wired.com/story/turmoil-black-lives-matter-political-speech-coinbase/ https://www.wired.com/story/turmoil-black-lives-matter-polit... it's not apolitical, it's just giving yourself a formal policy note to point to for any future need to tell people to "shut the fuck up and get to work"
beervirus 6y ago
> Isn't it the default, safe? Not in tech. If you're not actively competing to be more woke than the next guy, then you're a literal nazi and your silence is violence.
sneak 6y ago
See, this is intentional. They’re squishing the widespread (and somewhat bipartisan) support for the Black Lives Matter movement, a protest movement against police abuse, into the phrase “political activism”, which isn’t entirely untrue. The problem is that “political activism” also encompasses the ongoing american culture war, which indeed does not belong at work in any capacity. Reasonable people don’t want to engage with the culture war at work, and, increasingly, ever. They want you to think the latter when they mean the former, and support them. The problem is that the “activism” they’re complaining about isn’t the culture war, it’s the fact that there was a widespread social movement to protest racist police abuse, and Coinbase management didn’t feel it important enough for them to participate. Many of their staff took an issue with that, which has absolutely nothing to do with the sort of “who are you voting for?” thing that springs to mind when you think of “political activism at work”. Don’t get me wrong, advocating for human rights is indeed political activism, which is why their technique is so effective. It’s intentionally designed to deceive you.
- jiuahweruihawi 6y ago
  Black Lives Matter (the movement, not the slogan), are an extremely contentious and divisive group whose founders have described themselves as "trained Marxists" and whose demands go include abolishing capitalism, abolishing the police and "disrupting the Western nuclear family". People bearing the banners of this organisation have spent the last six months rioting (causing dozens of deaths), burning down entire communities, destroying countless small businesses and livelihoods, and much more. If you support BLM's wider goals and you think the violence is justified, we can agree to disagree. But if you think that all of the above is so anodyne and non-controversial that it transcends politics, then you're the exact kind of person that Coinbase wants to jettison.
john_moscow 6y ago
Fellow Eastern European immigrant here. It's hopeless, dude. It's USSR 2.0 being built in our lifetimes. People here didn't see where this road ends, so they've got no idea what awaits them.
- nickpp 6y ago
  Count me as well. It is horrifying how otherwise well intentioned people are busy pushing the society we were escaping to into the society we were running away from.
  - HappyDreamer 6y ago
    What are the political opinions you have in mind? (that could cause USSR-2 to happen?) And what were/are the different opinions of (some) employees at Coninbase that triggered this whole thing in the first place? > pushing the society we were escaping to into the society we were running away from This is too abstract for me. Would it be weird if I asked for concrete examples? (of how society is getting pushed in a bad direction)
    - nickpp 6y ago
      Some current trends that remind me of the horrors we lived before 1990 in Eastern Europe: 1. Blind worship of "equality" 2. Control and censure of language, communication and media 3. Demonization of money, successful people and corporations 4. Politicization of workplace and professional activities 5. Politicization of schools and academia 6. Polarization between "right" thinking and "evil/unacceptable/deplorable" people 7. Politically connected minorities overwriting democracy 8. Ceding more and more power and responsibility to governments from individuals and NGOs 9. Governmental intrusion in more and more aspects of our lives 10. More and more rules and regulations in our everyday lives in the name of stopping evil/wrong elements 11. Fall of meritocracy 12. Wishful thinking ignoring evidence of reality 13. Using guilt for historical misdeeds done by forefathers to silence contemporary groups I could go on, but I think this is a sufficient sample.

by krzyk 6y ago

eli 6y ago

This has been discussed extensively in the previous threads on Coinbase, but banning the discussion of certain topics in the workplace is itself a political stance. Very much so.

JPKab 6y ago
Is banning discussion of religion in the workplace a political/religious stance? Or is it just an attempt to be decent and get people to do the thing they were hired to do, which is to make their investors more fucking money? As a shareholder in several tech companies, I don't like the idea of people having discussions like these on my dime. How many bugs that were never fixed with Youtube Music, for example, could have been fixed if there weren't shit heads sitting around having flame wars on my fucking dime?
- DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
  > Is banning discussion of religion in the workplace a political/religious stance? (Please forgive any flawed logic below - I assure you it's an oversight. I'm posting this in good faith.) I'd say yes, but basically in the same way Coinbase's band on political speech in the office is a stance. Consider religious people whose theology holds that they should attempt to convert everybody in their circles, even their professional circles. It seems to me that banning that is tantamount to saying either (a) their theology is wrong, or (b) it's not wrong but the employer is resisting it regardless, or (c) the business has no place for employees holding those beliefs.
  - tomp 6y ago
    It’s actually (d) they can do that just not in the office or during working hours.
asdff 6y ago
It's as political as banning goofing off at work. You aren't hired to spend the working day debating politics with your co workers, just like you aren't hired to blow off the day playing Halo in the back room with your coworkers. You are hired to do the tasks described in your job and that alone.
- jes5199 6y ago
  this “just do your job” talk only comes out when we’re talking about activism. the rest of the time y’all are saying “we’re a family of co-owners trying to change the world”
- eli 6y ago
  I hire a whole person who, along with the company itself, exists in society and is not an automaton judged only by how many widgets are produced.
jiuahweruihawi 6y ago
Have they banned the discussion of certain topics entirely? Or have they just said that they don't want the company as an entity to get involved with these topics? There's a difference between saying "we don't think it's appropriate for us to take an official stance on X, but feel free to discuss X on your lunch breaks like you would any other topic" and "thou shalt not mention X in any context while an employee of this company"

Pfhreak 6y ago

"Apolitical" is the default. It's another way of saying, "The way things are is fine". The problem is that this is, in itself, a political stance. An example could be climate change. If Coinbase is doing nothing to make energy more green (even if that's just writing amicus briefs or blog posts), then they are effectively saying, "The way things are is fine."

Miraste 6y ago
Companies aren't, and shouldn't be, superPACs. Getting Coinbase to use green energy is the job of government regulations and incentives, not political crusades from Coinbase's management. If the government isn't doing this, it's a problem to solve with different policy makers, not by trying to force all companies to have party platforms.
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
No, they are effectively saying "Those issues are outside the scope of the purpose of our organization". That's not the same thing.
sequoia 6y ago
> "Apolitical" is ... another way of saying, "The way things are is fine". I disagree strongly & think you're dead wrong here. Apolitical in the workplace is saying "we come to work to align on & collaborate in working towards shared goals and those goals are what we should be focused on at work. People who share this goal (coinbase, make money, promote crypto whatever) may vote R, D, or not vote at all. We can all still work together on our shared goal." It means people with different views can work together on stuff they do agree on rather than "I can't work with anyone who doesn't vote the same as me" which is what social-justice-in-the-workplace seems to lead to, for better or worse. It is NOT an endorsement of the status quo, it's a recognition that you and I might both oppose the status quo for completely different reasons that have nothing to do with work.
- thundergolfer 6y ago
  The work you do together is political. It of course isn’t necessarily directly engaged with USA national politics, but it’s directly engaged in politics. Politics is a very broad and encompassing concept. It isn’t synonymous with some nation’s representative political system.

JPKab 6y ago

My wife is mostly liberal from a US political perspective, but happens to be opposed to abortion. I happen to disagree in nuanced ways with her on this topic. My business. According to my coworkers, who discovered this because they saw her bumper sticker when she picked me up one day, this is because she is "ignorant and doesn't know the facts" and "if she knew the facts she wouldn't think that way" and that I "need to talk to her and explain them." They think that, due to their profession, they are intelligent, and therefore anyone who disagrees with them about a complex topic is either less intelligent or uninformed. It's the epitome of youthful arrogance. Naturally, none of them have kids and really don't see the nuance of the issue. It's insufferable, and at one point I was getting ready to clobber a guy who I am 100% positive has never been hit in his life. Politics should be left out of work. And yes, by convincing a broad spectrum of the American public that Trump won the election because of a few facebook ads bought by Russian assets, instead of simply saying that they had a shitty candidate, the Democratic party has essentially pressured tech companies to have political filtering on their staff. If Facebook had Republicans working at senior levels in their company, they would have been subjected to even more harassment from Dem leaders who scapegoated them for their loss in 2016. Facebook has former Democratic party operatives at high levels in their company. They don't and can't have anyone from the Republican party. They get unending amounts of shit for Thiel being on their board.

lazyasciiart 6y ago
But you're completely wrong. Facebook does have Republicans at senior levels in their company - Republicans as in "Joel Kaplan, vice-president of global public policy at Facebook, manages the company’s relationships with policymakers around the world. A former law clerk to archconservative justice Antonin Scalia on the supreme court, he served as deputy chief of staff for policy under former president George W Bush from 2006 to 2009, joining Facebook two years later." https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/03/facebook-politics-republicans-right https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/03/facebook-... https://popular.info/p/the-republican-political-operatives https://popular.info/p/the-republican-political-operatives
kmonsen 6y ago
I think it is a bit more nuanced than that, and that the line is really hard to draw. If you wife for example got a manager that thought the females had no place in the workplace and should be a stay at home wife and was open about this, would that be ok? If you are gay, and your manager loudly say that being gay is a sin, would that be ok? I get that it can feel like the other way too, it probably feels hostile to be conservative in a fairly liberal company. But being open and supportive of all your employees seems like good and understandable business decision. That of course includes being welcoming to conservative people. If you think your coworkers are a disgrace, no matter the reason, I think it would be smart to not make this known.

libraryatnight 6y ago

When you come out with a policy like this as a response to this https://www.wired.com/story/turmoil-black-lives-matter-political-speech-coinbase/ https://www.wired.com/story/turmoil-black-lives-matter-polit... it's not apolitical, it's just giving yourself a formal policy note to point to for any future need to tell people to "shut the fuck up and get to work"

beervirus 6y ago

> Isn't it the default, safe? Not in tech. If you're not actively competing to be more woke than the next guy, then you're a literal nazi and your silence is violence.

sneak 6y ago

See, this is intentional. They’re squishing the widespread (and somewhat bipartisan) support for the Black Lives Matter movement, a protest movement against police abuse, into the phrase “political activism”, which isn’t entirely untrue. The problem is that “political activism” also encompasses the ongoing american culture war, which indeed does not belong at work in any capacity. Reasonable people don’t want to engage with the culture war at work, and, increasingly, ever. They want you to think the latter when they mean the former, and support them. The problem is that the “activism” they’re complaining about isn’t the culture war, it’s the fact that there was a widespread social movement to protest racist police abuse, and Coinbase management didn’t feel it important enough for them to participate. Many of their staff took an issue with that, which has absolutely nothing to do with the sort of “who are you voting for?” thing that springs to mind when you think of “political activism at work”. Don’t get me wrong, advocating for human rights is indeed political activism, which is why their technique is so effective. It’s intentionally designed to deceive you.

jiuahweruihawi 6y ago
Black Lives Matter (the movement, not the slogan), are an extremely contentious and divisive group whose founders have described themselves as "trained Marxists" and whose demands go include abolishing capitalism, abolishing the police and "disrupting the Western nuclear family". People bearing the banners of this organisation have spent the last six months rioting (causing dozens of deaths), burning down entire communities, destroying countless small businesses and livelihoods, and much more. If you support BLM's wider goals and you think the violence is justified, we can agree to disagree. But if you think that all of the above is so anodyne and non-controversial that it transcends politics, then you're the exact kind of person that Coinbase wants to jettison.

john_moscow 6y ago

Fellow Eastern European immigrant here. It's hopeless, dude. It's USSR 2.0 being built in our lifetimes. People here didn't see where this road ends, so they've got no idea what awaits them.

nickpp 6y ago
Count me as well. It is horrifying how otherwise well intentioned people are busy pushing the society we were escaping to into the society we were running away from.
- HappyDreamer 6y ago
  What are the political opinions you have in mind? (that could cause USSR-2 to happen?) And what were/are the different opinions of (some) employees at Coninbase that triggered this whole thing in the first place? > pushing the society we were escaping to into the society we were running away from This is too abstract for me. Would it be weird if I asked for concrete examples? (of how society is getting pushed in a bad direction)
  - nickpp 6y ago
    Some current trends that remind me of the horrors we lived before 1990 in Eastern Europe: 1. Blind worship of "equality" 2. Control and censure of language, communication and media 3. Demonization of money, successful people and corporations 4. Politicization of workplace and professional activities 5. Politicization of schools and academia 6. Polarization between "right" thinking and "evil/unacceptable/deplorable" people 7. Politically connected minorities overwriting democracy 8. Ceding more and more power and responsibility to governments from individuals and NGOs 9. Governmental intrusion in more and more aspects of our lives 10. More and more rules and regulations in our everyday lives in the name of stopping evil/wrong elements 11. Fall of meritocracy 12. Wishful thinking ignoring evidence of reality 13. Using guilt for historical misdeeds done by forefathers to silence contemporary groups I could go on, but I think this is a sufficient sample.