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I see it the other way around. (Almost) everything is political. The mission of the company is not disjoint from the society it is embedded in. Things have beco

by yokaze 6y ago

I see it the other way around. (Almost) everything is political. The mission of the company is not disjoint from the society it is embedded in. Things have become divisive by being able to ignore and blend out the opposing views. By not talking and listening to one another. This is just one more step in that direction. Funnily enough, I think it has been extrapolated by Neal Stephenson in Diamond Age. We will end up having parallel societies which define themselves not by geographic boundaries, but by affiliation. A North Korean community could be your neighbour.

tupputuppu 6y ago
Do you have an example where in a political company both views were heard? Typically the whole discussion around overly political workplaces revolves around west coast tech companies, which are a monoculture of liberalism. Republican views are definitely not heard or dealt with.
jcims 6y ago
> (Almost) everything is political. I think people are talking past each other with the word 'political'. Some may define it as the execution of governance, and others may define it as partisan gamesmanship, and of course lots around and in between.
oh_sigh 6y ago
How should I properly demonstrate my wokeness while pooping? What about when I'm walking my dog? If everything is political I don't want to be seen as one of those complicit through silence while doing the dishes types of people.
disposekinetics 6y ago
>(Almost) everything is political. I'm curious what your definition of political is, because my gut feeling is that (Almost) nothing is political.
- nemothekid 6y ago
  Do you believe end to end encryption is political? Do you believe that companies should disable E2E encryption in order to be "apolitical" in the eyes US's attorney general? How do you believe Coinbase, a cryptocurrency corporation, will remain "a political" in the design of their systems given the changing political climate around crypto? Does that just mean bowing down to whatever the administration says? Do you believe Coinbase will remain "apolitical" is the US begins to enact policy that causes Coinbase users to find alternatives? Do you believe Coinbase employees will have no opinion on the way the justice department handles cryptocurrency?
  - chii 6y ago
    But you're deliberately avoiding the point that coinbase wants to make - which is that if the topic is relevant to the business (as determined by the owners of the business), then it's considered on-topic for work place political discussion and activism. But if it's unrelated to the business, then the business is no place to undertake such activism.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > I'm curious what your definition of political is, because my gut feeling is that (Almost) nothing is political. Politics is more than just the rituals of government officials or what gets written about in the politics section of the newspaper: > Politics (from Greek: Πολιτικά, politiká, 'affairs of the cities') is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations between individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics) For instance, this effort to create an "apolitical workplace" could probably be understood as political project to stamp out elements of bottom-up democratic political culture in favor of a more autocratic political culture. At work we keep our heads down and follow the edicts (mission) of our leaders.
- yokaze 6y ago
  From entering "define political" in Google: 1. relating to the government or public affairs of a country. Not the one the parent probably means: 2. (DEROGATORY) done or acting in the interests of status or power within an organization rather than as a matter of principle. Whatever a company does, it relates in some way to the public affairs of a country. Either in what you offer, or what you need to produce your offer. Your company is hopefully affecting the public affairs of your country in more than one way. And that I think had very much a place at work. The delineation between public affair and private matter seems to be quite arbitrary at times. I would say abortion is a private matter, or who you marry or which combination of sex chromosomes you have, but all those things are very high on the list of things being discussed. Here I have to say, I'm more likely to give the point, that those topics are not professionally relevant, but neither is sports.
skybrian 6y ago
Missions are often in pursuit of political goals. (It's a political stance that promoting the use of cryptocurrency is good, and not one I share.) But, this doesn't mean an organization has to take a position on every hot-button political issue. Even the Biden campaign, a a political organization if there ever was one, needs to focus on getting their candidate elected, and not on things that divide Democrats. To agree on a mission doesn't mean people on the organization need to agree on everything. Putting aside any differences on stuff not related to the mission is important in being able to work together as a team.
- RIMR 6y ago
  But that's not what is being addressed. Not getting involved in "every hot-button political issue" is clearly advisable, but Coinbase is preemptively deciding that all political conversation is off the table while they run a highly unregulated multi-billion dollar currency exchange. There are going to be political issues that involve Coinbase, and if they're deciding already to ignore any role they play in society, we need to be highly critical of every decision they make moving forward.
  - yokaze 6y ago
    Exactly: Being "apolitical" is a political decision. In this case: Don't question what we are doing (in the larger picture) or what our impact is.
  - samatman 6y ago
    This has been explicitly contradicted by several of their communications, including the one which launched this thread.
  - mandelbrotwurst 6y ago
    Coinbase is far from unregulated, they're subject to and enforce the same KYC rules that banks do, go ahead and try to buy some BTC there anonymously and see how far you get.
yeetawayhn 6y ago
If everything is political, then nothing is.
- zorpner 6y ago
  Could you clarify what you mean by this?
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    If you define “political” in such a way that nothing can be “apolitical” then the word “political” completely loses its meaning. The whole point of any adjective is to distinguish between things. It’s a tautology.
  - maximente 6y ago
    one can also think of what it means if almost everything is unique, or almost everyone is smart, etc.
- int_19h 6y ago
  One's preferred flavor of ice cream is apolitical. But anything that involves more than one person, and actual or potential conflicts between people, is political. Status quo, as a whole, is political. And that constitutes a much larger part of our lives than is traditionally acknowledged. Which is itself, also, a political matter, because designating a subset of actual politics as "officially politics", and then marginalizing that subset, is one way to slow down further political developments in that department.
  - Rebelgecko 6y ago
    I don't think your comment is entirely true. For example I think a lot of purchases of the Bernie Sanders flavored ice cream from Ben & Jerry's had nothing to do with the actual taste of the ice cream.
- scottlocklin 6y ago
  "Everything is political" is literally the working definition of totalitarianism.
throwaway894345 6y ago
The mission of the company isn’t completely disjoint from the broader political context, but relevance isn’t a binary proposition. If Google’s mission is to make the world’s information more accessible, and it stopped everything and put all of its efforts toward (for example) minimizing unjust police killings, how much closer to its mission would it be than if it focused on making search better (even if we assume all Google employees have exactly the same idea about how to achieve it)? I would argue that investing in search is an astronomically better investment with respect to Google’s mission. Never mind how unproductive that effort would certainly be, considering how divisive this topic has become (to be clear, the division is about whether or not unjust police killings are strongly racially biased, not whether or not unjust police killings are ideal). I agree that our divisiveness is caused by an unwillingness to listen to one another, but I don’t think avoiding discussion in the workplace is making us less willing to listen. People have lots of opportunities to listen to opposing views outside of the workplace, and yet many positively pride themselves on ignoring dissenting opinions—ostracizing one’s family for wrongthink is a veritable badge of honor in certain ideological communities. I don’t see how bringing that divisiveness into the workplace is going to soften those people. If someone is deeply committed to ignorance and divisiveness, allowing them to proselytize at work doesn’t seem fruitful (everyone who is not committed to ignorance has likely already considered their views) and is very likely going to be harmful. On the other hand, there is a chance that by ignoring politics at work, people might have a chance to build relationships with reasonable people (who they otherwise would have written off or persecuted for heresy) which might have a deradicalizing effect (if you look up to someone who is charitable, honest, and open minded, you are probably more likely to emulate those qualities yourself).
- xmprt 6y ago
  I think a lot of governments would be much quicker to regulate companies like Google and Facebook if they weren't also fighting for these political issues. At the end of the day, these political stances help further the companies original mission.
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    This comment doesn't make much sense to me. I'm not sure if you're talking about political stances that are meaningfully related to the company's mission, and in either case how that would affect governments' willingness to regulate those companies. Are you simply arguing that governments would be more willing to regulate Google if Google didn't spend so much lobbying against regulation? In that case, obviously (this is pretty much tautologically true), but how does that relate to what we're discussing? If we're talking about political stances like "police shootings are unjustly biased against black people", then that's about as unrelated to Google's mission as one could imagine. It seems like mental gymnastics either way.
knorker 6y ago
> (Almost) everything is political. Only in a world where words have no meaning.
- kelnos 6y ago
  That's an uncharitably pedantic way of looking at it. I think the parent meant that (almost) every endeavor will have some element of politics in it. That doesn't mean the word "politics" has no meaning.
  - samatman 6y ago
    That's an uncharitable way of looking at it. I think the parent meant that the more you use the term "political" to refer to everything, the less meaning "political" has. That only means the word "politics" has no meaning at the limit.
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    > I think the parent meant that (almost) every endeavor will have some element of politics in it This is textbook pedantry. Obviously "don't discuss politics in the workplace" means "don't discuss divisive topics, especially when they're not particularly relevant to your work". Of course everything is "technically political", but that's not how anyone uses "political" except when they're trying to argue in bad faith (specifically engaging in tautology).
    - bcrosby95 6y ago
      Gay marriage is a divisive topic in the USA. A gay man talking about his wedding around the water cooler is political. A straight man talking about his wedding around the water cooler is not political. The only non-political choice is not allowing either to occur. Because if you allow both, that is a political statement. If you only allow one, that is too. The funny thing about politics is: a company doesn't get to choose what topics are divisive. People do. All it takes is one person to strongly hold a belief in the office to make it political.
claydavisss 6y ago
"everything is political" = "people who agree with me can be as loud as they like"
drivingmenuts 6y ago
I tend to treat politics and religion as subjects best dealt with on my own time. The company is paying me to get results for the company, not the larger society. If I somehow disagree with the perceived politics, I’m free to seek other employment. Implicit in this position is that the company doesn’t get to dictate either politics or religion handled in my personal time.
- tzs 6y ago
  So if you have a job you like, at a company that up to now has been only making products that you have no problem with, and they started working on something that you found morally reprehensible and assigned you to work on it, either you would work on it without bringing up your concerns or you would quit?
  - drivingmenuts 6y ago
    If I worked for a toy maker who suddenly decided to make land mines disguised as teddy bears, then I would absolutely have to quit, if we were in a disagreement over why this should happen. If I knew that they manufactured these land mine bears before I started, I wouldn’t be there anyway.
  - zaroth 6y ago
    The problem is almost never an issue of the ethical nature of the company's own product or service. The "politicization" problem is largely around social activism that is adjacent to the company's mission. Which is why Coinbase is saying specifically there are politics which are central to their mission that they still must naturally engage with. I think any engineer who has a moral quandary about the work the are doing should absolutely take it up with management, up to including whistle-blowing or resigning. Professional Engineers put their license on the line with this, mere computer engineers may not have so much at stake professionally but are equally ethically bound.
  - chii 6y ago
    > you would work on it without bringing up your concerns or you would quit? let me reverse this, and present a different scenario. You are doing your job, but you feel strongly about a certain political movement (be it BLM or abortion rights, or whatnot). You tell your boss that you are going to spend some work time to talk to other employees and may be convince them to join your cause. What should the boss do? Let you work on it without bringing up their concern? Or fire you?
titanomachy 6y ago
I think the relevant distinction that Brian makes is not "political vs not-political" but "relevant or not relevant to the business". It seems they are comfortable engaging on political issues that are directly related to what they are doing. For example, affirmative action is arguably a political topic, but it would be on the table for discussion at Coinbase because it's relevant to how they hire.
- yokaze 6y ago
  With that, I can more easily agree. I am then not sure how it devolved (in my opinion) into being "apolitical". I definitely see the point of keeping a company focused on its task, though probably we have then the same discussion with different terms.
  - rocqua 6y ago
    Not, as a company, taking a stance on Trump v Biden would probably be an example of being apolitical.
novok 6y ago
You only have so much time, money, energy and attention, and they are choosing that they do not want to actively spend that energy on active activism as a company outside of their company mission.
jariel 6y ago
" (Almost) everything is political. " Serving coffee is not political. Planning the network installation is not political. Code reviews, cleaning your office, optimizing the VM, getting a bandwidth deal, negotiating the SaaS pricing, choosing ingredients for the new dish, figuring out how many loads of gravel are needed for the landfill, picking a guy to fix the fence ... It's 99% not political. Google search is barely political, ads are a little bit. Social Media is political and not that-that much more. It's 100% fine for you to 'work on something consistent with your political views' but at the same time just 'pick the place' instead of 'making the place' inherently political.
- tupputuppu 6y ago
  What's funny is that traditional media has just as much issues with misinformation and bias, yet the whole discussion around how content related to the election might not be straight and honest revolves completely around tech companies. For some reason it's just the west coast tech companies where information or search is political, but with traditional media it's not?
- juniper_strong 6y ago
  > Google search is barely political Search for "american mathematician" on Google and the first six images that come back with the search results are of black mathematicians, 3 of them women. That is political. Nothing wrong with female or black mathematicians, the more the better, but that's not how it went down. If I worked at Google and they asked me to code that, I would have said, "Sure, I can do that", which would be a non-political decision, but whoever decided on how that should be implemented was making a political decision.
  - jariel 6y ago
    Yes, it's political but in the grand scheme of searches, it's almost irrelevant. 99.99% of searches are just searches, and that's it.
    - juniper_strong 6y ago
core-questions 6y ago
> The mission of the company is not disjoint from the society it is embedded in. If it cannot be disjoint, then it seems like it has become a requirement for it to be aligned in only one acceptable direction - hence why Coinbase's move is apparently controversial. Failure to actively support the standardized and approved message is apparently not acceptable! > This is just one more step in that direction. One more misstep. The combination of this effect with polarization means it's only a matter of time before someone realizes there's actually going to be a market for legitimately countercultural companies that reach out to those who don't walk the new party line. Since there's enough of them to elect a president, it's probably high time for some brave company to take you up on your suggestion that everything be political.
ineedasername 6y ago
You can make a connection between the work you do and society at large without getting into unproductive arguments on company time. Think that sort of thing has value? That's fine: do it outside of the time the company carves out for you to perform your normal duties.
konjin 6y ago
The only people who could think that are people who do not have to deal with people different to them in their daily life at all. Having three shades of skin tone on software developers that all went to Stanford does not count for your difference quota. Money is money, and the money of a jew, nazi, gay, christian, muslim or pedophile are all equally good. Anyone rejecting money because they don't agree with where it comes from is either lying or about to be eaten alive by someone who doesn't. There is a reason why everyone in China is trying to escape to our system, while they have invented personal money - in the form of your social score.
notSupplied 6y ago
I certainly agree that the mission of a company can (and preferably) be more than just for profit. However, "to be political" is still a pretty wide range of possible missions. Who calls the shots about what you're going to be political about, and which side you take? And when a group of employees disagree with the shots being called, what kinds of reactions are appropriate or not? I'll take a shot: - I think compelled activism is inappropriate. You know, the "silence is violence" stuff. - I think expecting to have power to set a company's political agenda and expressing anger when you don't get your way is inappropriate. That power belongs to the board. Employment and stock-options are not "fractions of board seats".
- chii 6y ago
  > Employment and stock-options are not "fractions of board seats". i agree that employment is not "fractions of board seats. But stock options (when converted to stock) holds voting power, and thus _do_ represent "factions of board seats". Very little amount, but an amount nonetheless.
  - fakedang 6y ago
    Stock options are mostly for common stock, which don't give you voting power anyways.
    - zepto 6y ago
      Generally common stock has voting power.
- randmeerkat 6y ago
  I’ll take a shot at responding: I would argue that the board wouldn’t exist without the people that make up the company. I would also argue that with monied interests and lobbyists in Washington, one of the last places that people can really effect societal change is at the work place. Companies have become the power center in American politics, so of course activism is going to rise up there. As far as compelled activism goes, I feel that silence _is_ violence. “The Only Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil is that Good Men Do Nothing” (JFK, Burke, Mill...)
kova12 6y ago
If I could separate myself from certain segments of our society and never have to deal with them ever again, I'd gladly do that. However I don't keep my fingers crossed. They are too dependent on my money to implement their policies, I doubt they will ever leave productive members alone
GoblinSlayer 6y ago
Activists never planned to try to talk and listen and went too far in this direction. If it keeps going, at some point it becomes untenable and needs to stop. It's not business' job to teach activists how to live, they must figure it out by themselves.
webmaven 6y ago
> Funnily enough, I think it has been extrapolated by Neal Stephenson in Diamond Age. We will end up having parallel societies which define themselves not by geographic boundaries, but by affiliation. A North Korean community could be your neighbour. Perhaps less Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age, and more Cory Doctorow's Eastern Standard Tribe: https://craphound.com/category/est/ https://craphound.com/category/est/

by yokaze 6y ago

tupputuppu 6y ago

Do you have an example where in a political company both views were heard? Typically the whole discussion around overly political workplaces revolves around west coast tech companies, which are a monoculture of liberalism. Republican views are definitely not heard or dealt with.

jcims 6y ago

> (Almost) everything is political. I think people are talking past each other with the word 'political'. Some may define it as the execution of governance, and others may define it as partisan gamesmanship, and of course lots around and in between.

oh_sigh 6y ago

How should I properly demonstrate my wokeness while pooping? What about when I'm walking my dog? If everything is political I don't want to be seen as one of those complicit through silence while doing the dishes types of people.

disposekinetics 6y ago

>(Almost) everything is political. I'm curious what your definition of political is, because my gut feeling is that (Almost) nothing is political.

nemothekid 6y ago
Do you believe end to end encryption is political? Do you believe that companies should disable E2E encryption in order to be "apolitical" in the eyes US's attorney general? How do you believe Coinbase, a cryptocurrency corporation, will remain "a political" in the design of their systems given the changing political climate around crypto? Does that just mean bowing down to whatever the administration says? Do you believe Coinbase will remain "apolitical" is the US begins to enact policy that causes Coinbase users to find alternatives? Do you believe Coinbase employees will have no opinion on the way the justice department handles cryptocurrency?
- chii 6y ago
  But you're deliberately avoiding the point that coinbase wants to make - which is that if the topic is relevant to the business (as determined by the owners of the business), then it's considered on-topic for work place political discussion and activism. But if it's unrelated to the business, then the business is no place to undertake such activism.
ardy42 6y ago
> I'm curious what your definition of political is, because my gut feeling is that (Almost) nothing is political. Politics is more than just the rituals of government officials or what gets written about in the politics section of the newspaper: > Politics (from Greek: Πολιτικά, politiká, 'affairs of the cities') is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations between individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics) For instance, this effort to create an "apolitical workplace" could probably be understood as political project to stamp out elements of bottom-up democratic political culture in favor of a more autocratic political culture. At work we keep our heads down and follow the edicts (mission) of our leaders.
yokaze 6y ago
From entering "define political" in Google: 1. relating to the government or public affairs of a country. Not the one the parent probably means: 2. (DEROGATORY) done or acting in the interests of status or power within an organization rather than as a matter of principle. Whatever a company does, it relates in some way to the public affairs of a country. Either in what you offer, or what you need to produce your offer. Your company is hopefully affecting the public affairs of your country in more than one way. And that I think had very much a place at work. The delineation between public affair and private matter seems to be quite arbitrary at times. I would say abortion is a private matter, or who you marry or which combination of sex chromosomes you have, but all those things are very high on the list of things being discussed. Here I have to say, I'm more likely to give the point, that those topics are not professionally relevant, but neither is sports.

skybrian 6y ago

Missions are often in pursuit of political goals. (It's a political stance that promoting the use of cryptocurrency is good, and not one I share.) But, this doesn't mean an organization has to take a position on every hot-button political issue. Even the Biden campaign, a a political organization if there ever was one, needs to focus on getting their candidate elected, and not on things that divide Democrats. To agree on a mission doesn't mean people on the organization need to agree on everything. Putting aside any differences on stuff not related to the mission is important in being able to work together as a team.

RIMR 6y ago
But that's not what is being addressed. Not getting involved in "every hot-button political issue" is clearly advisable, but Coinbase is preemptively deciding that all political conversation is off the table while they run a highly unregulated multi-billion dollar currency exchange. There are going to be political issues that involve Coinbase, and if they're deciding already to ignore any role they play in society, we need to be highly critical of every decision they make moving forward.
- yokaze 6y ago
  Exactly: Being "apolitical" is a political decision. In this case: Don't question what we are doing (in the larger picture) or what our impact is.
- samatman 6y ago
  This has been explicitly contradicted by several of their communications, including the one which launched this thread.
- mandelbrotwurst 6y ago
  Coinbase is far from unregulated, they're subject to and enforce the same KYC rules that banks do, go ahead and try to buy some BTC there anonymously and see how far you get.

yeetawayhn 6y ago

If everything is political, then nothing is.

zorpner 6y ago
Could you clarify what you mean by this?
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  If you define “political” in such a way that nothing can be “apolitical” then the word “political” completely loses its meaning. The whole point of any adjective is to distinguish between things. It’s a tautology.
- maximente 6y ago
  one can also think of what it means if almost everything is unique, or almost everyone is smart, etc.
int_19h 6y ago
One's preferred flavor of ice cream is apolitical. But anything that involves more than one person, and actual or potential conflicts between people, is political. Status quo, as a whole, is political. And that constitutes a much larger part of our lives than is traditionally acknowledged. Which is itself, also, a political matter, because designating a subset of actual politics as "officially politics", and then marginalizing that subset, is one way to slow down further political developments in that department.
- Rebelgecko 6y ago
  I don't think your comment is entirely true. For example I think a lot of purchases of the Bernie Sanders flavored ice cream from Ben & Jerry's had nothing to do with the actual taste of the ice cream.
scottlocklin 6y ago
"Everything is political" is literally the working definition of totalitarianism.

throwaway894345 6y ago

The mission of the company isn’t completely disjoint from the broader political context, but relevance isn’t a binary proposition. If Google’s mission is to make the world’s information more accessible, and it stopped everything and put all of its efforts toward (for example) minimizing unjust police killings, how much closer to its mission would it be than if it focused on making search better (even if we assume all Google employees have exactly the same idea about how to achieve it)? I would argue that investing in search is an astronomically better investment with respect to Google’s mission. Never mind how unproductive that effort would certainly be, considering how divisive this topic has become (to be clear, the division is about whether or not unjust police killings are strongly racially biased, not whether or not unjust police killings are ideal). I agree that our divisiveness is caused by an unwillingness to listen to one another, but I don’t think avoiding discussion in the workplace is making us less willing to listen. People have lots of opportunities to listen to opposing views outside of the workplace, and yet many positively pride themselves on ignoring dissenting opinions—ostracizing one’s family for wrongthink is a veritable badge of honor in certain ideological communities. I don’t see how bringing that divisiveness into the workplace is going to soften those people. If someone is deeply committed to ignorance and divisiveness, allowing them to proselytize at work doesn’t seem fruitful (everyone who is not committed to ignorance has likely already considered their views) and is very likely going to be harmful. On the other hand, there is a chance that by ignoring politics at work, people might have a chance to build relationships with reasonable people (who they otherwise would have written off or persecuted for heresy) which might have a deradicalizing effect (if you look up to someone who is charitable, honest, and open minded, you are probably more likely to emulate those qualities yourself).

xmprt 6y ago
I think a lot of governments would be much quicker to regulate companies like Google and Facebook if they weren't also fighting for these political issues. At the end of the day, these political stances help further the companies original mission.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  This comment doesn't make much sense to me. I'm not sure if you're talking about political stances that are meaningfully related to the company's mission, and in either case how that would affect governments' willingness to regulate those companies. Are you simply arguing that governments would be more willing to regulate Google if Google didn't spend so much lobbying against regulation? In that case, obviously (this is pretty much tautologically true), but how does that relate to what we're discussing? If we're talking about political stances like "police shootings are unjustly biased against black people", then that's about as unrelated to Google's mission as one could imagine. It seems like mental gymnastics either way.

knorker 6y ago

> (Almost) everything is political. Only in a world where words have no meaning.

kelnos 6y ago
That's an uncharitably pedantic way of looking at it. I think the parent meant that (almost) every endeavor will have some element of politics in it. That doesn't mean the word "politics" has no meaning.
- samatman 6y ago
  That's an uncharitable way of looking at it. I think the parent meant that the more you use the term "political" to refer to everything, the less meaning "political" has. That only means the word "politics" has no meaning at the limit.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  > I think the parent meant that (almost) every endeavor will have some element of politics in it This is textbook pedantry. Obviously "don't discuss politics in the workplace" means "don't discuss divisive topics, especially when they're not particularly relevant to your work". Of course everything is "technically political", but that's not how anyone uses "political" except when they're trying to argue in bad faith (specifically engaging in tautology).
  - bcrosby95 6y ago
    Gay marriage is a divisive topic in the USA. A gay man talking about his wedding around the water cooler is political. A straight man talking about his wedding around the water cooler is not political. The only non-political choice is not allowing either to occur. Because if you allow both, that is a political statement. If you only allow one, that is too. The funny thing about politics is: a company doesn't get to choose what topics are divisive. People do. All it takes is one person to strongly hold a belief in the office to make it political.

claydavisss 6y ago

"everything is political" = "people who agree with me can be as loud as they like"

drivingmenuts 6y ago

I tend to treat politics and religion as subjects best dealt with on my own time. The company is paying me to get results for the company, not the larger society. If I somehow disagree with the perceived politics, I’m free to seek other employment. Implicit in this position is that the company doesn’t get to dictate either politics or religion handled in my personal time.

tzs 6y ago
So if you have a job you like, at a company that up to now has been only making products that you have no problem with, and they started working on something that you found morally reprehensible and assigned you to work on it, either you would work on it without bringing up your concerns or you would quit?
- drivingmenuts 6y ago
  If I worked for a toy maker who suddenly decided to make land mines disguised as teddy bears, then I would absolutely have to quit, if we were in a disagreement over why this should happen. If I knew that they manufactured these land mine bears before I started, I wouldn’t be there anyway.
- zaroth 6y ago
  The problem is almost never an issue of the ethical nature of the company's own product or service. The "politicization" problem is largely around social activism that is adjacent to the company's mission. Which is why Coinbase is saying specifically there are politics which are central to their mission that they still must naturally engage with. I think any engineer who has a moral quandary about the work the are doing should absolutely take it up with management, up to including whistle-blowing or resigning. Professional Engineers put their license on the line with this, mere computer engineers may not have so much at stake professionally but are equally ethically bound.
- chii 6y ago
  > you would work on it without bringing up your concerns or you would quit? let me reverse this, and present a different scenario. You are doing your job, but you feel strongly about a certain political movement (be it BLM or abortion rights, or whatnot). You tell your boss that you are going to spend some work time to talk to other employees and may be convince them to join your cause. What should the boss do? Let you work on it without bringing up their concern? Or fire you?

titanomachy 6y ago

I think the relevant distinction that Brian makes is not "political vs not-political" but "relevant or not relevant to the business". It seems they are comfortable engaging on political issues that are directly related to what they are doing. For example, affirmative action is arguably a political topic, but it would be on the table for discussion at Coinbase because it's relevant to how they hire.

yokaze 6y ago
With that, I can more easily agree. I am then not sure how it devolved (in my opinion) into being "apolitical". I definitely see the point of keeping a company focused on its task, though probably we have then the same discussion with different terms.
- rocqua 6y ago
  Not, as a company, taking a stance on Trump v Biden would probably be an example of being apolitical.

novok 6y ago

You only have so much time, money, energy and attention, and they are choosing that they do not want to actively spend that energy on active activism as a company outside of their company mission.

jariel 6y ago

" (Almost) everything is political. " Serving coffee is not political. Planning the network installation is not political. Code reviews, cleaning your office, optimizing the VM, getting a bandwidth deal, negotiating the SaaS pricing, choosing ingredients for the new dish, figuring out how many loads of gravel are needed for the landfill, picking a guy to fix the fence ... It's 99% not political. Google search is barely political, ads are a little bit. Social Media is political and not that-that much more. It's 100% fine for you to 'work on something consistent with your political views' but at the same time just 'pick the place' instead of 'making the place' inherently political.

tupputuppu 6y ago
What's funny is that traditional media has just as much issues with misinformation and bias, yet the whole discussion around how content related to the election might not be straight and honest revolves completely around tech companies. For some reason it's just the west coast tech companies where information or search is political, but with traditional media it's not?
juniper_strong 6y ago
> Google search is barely political Search for "american mathematician" on Google and the first six images that come back with the search results are of black mathematicians, 3 of them women. That is political. Nothing wrong with female or black mathematicians, the more the better, but that's not how it went down. If I worked at Google and they asked me to code that, I would have said, "Sure, I can do that", which would be a non-political decision, but whoever decided on how that should be implemented was making a political decision.
- jariel 6y ago
  Yes, it's political but in the grand scheme of searches, it's almost irrelevant. 99.99% of searches are just searches, and that's it.
  - juniper_strong 6y ago

core-questions 6y ago

> The mission of the company is not disjoint from the society it is embedded in. If it cannot be disjoint, then it seems like it has become a requirement for it to be aligned in only one acceptable direction - hence why Coinbase's move is apparently controversial. Failure to actively support the standardized and approved message is apparently not acceptable! > This is just one more step in that direction. One more misstep. The combination of this effect with polarization means it's only a matter of time before someone realizes there's actually going to be a market for legitimately countercultural companies that reach out to those who don't walk the new party line. Since there's enough of them to elect a president, it's probably high time for some brave company to take you up on your suggestion that everything be political.

ineedasername 6y ago

You can make a connection between the work you do and society at large without getting into unproductive arguments on company time. Think that sort of thing has value? That's fine: do it outside of the time the company carves out for you to perform your normal duties.

konjin 6y ago

The only people who could think that are people who do not have to deal with people different to them in their daily life at all. Having three shades of skin tone on software developers that all went to Stanford does not count for your difference quota. Money is money, and the money of a jew, nazi, gay, christian, muslim or pedophile are all equally good. Anyone rejecting money because they don't agree with where it comes from is either lying or about to be eaten alive by someone who doesn't. There is a reason why everyone in China is trying to escape to our system, while they have invented personal money - in the form of your social score.

notSupplied 6y ago

I certainly agree that the mission of a company can (and preferably) be more than just for profit. However, "to be political" is still a pretty wide range of possible missions. Who calls the shots about what you're going to be political about, and which side you take? And when a group of employees disagree with the shots being called, what kinds of reactions are appropriate or not? I'll take a shot: - I think compelled activism is inappropriate. You know, the "silence is violence" stuff. - I think expecting to have power to set a company's political agenda and expressing anger when you don't get your way is inappropriate. That power belongs to the board. Employment and stock-options are not "fractions of board seats".

chii 6y ago
> Employment and stock-options are not "fractions of board seats". i agree that employment is not "fractions of board seats. But stock options (when converted to stock) holds voting power, and thus _do_ represent "factions of board seats". Very little amount, but an amount nonetheless.
- fakedang 6y ago
  Stock options are mostly for common stock, which don't give you voting power anyways.
  - zepto 6y ago
    Generally common stock has voting power.
randmeerkat 6y ago
I’ll take a shot at responding: I would argue that the board wouldn’t exist without the people that make up the company. I would also argue that with monied interests and lobbyists in Washington, one of the last places that people can really effect societal change is at the work place. Companies have become the power center in American politics, so of course activism is going to rise up there. As far as compelled activism goes, I feel that silence _is_ violence. “The Only Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil is that Good Men Do Nothing” (JFK, Burke, Mill...)

kova12 6y ago

If I could separate myself from certain segments of our society and never have to deal with them ever again, I'd gladly do that. However I don't keep my fingers crossed. They are too dependent on my money to implement their policies, I doubt they will ever leave productive members alone

GoblinSlayer 6y ago

Activists never planned to try to talk and listen and went too far in this direction. If it keeps going, at some point it becomes untenable and needs to stop. It's not business' job to teach activists how to live, they must figure it out by themselves.

webmaven 6y ago

> Funnily enough, I think it has been extrapolated by Neal Stephenson in Diamond Age. We will end up having parallel societies which define themselves not by geographic boundaries, but by affiliation. A North Korean community could be your neighbour. Perhaps less Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age, and more Cory Doctorow's Eastern Standard Tribe: https://craphound.com/category/est/ https://craphound.com/category/est/