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From Coinbase's preemptive rebuttal[1]: "we hired an external consultant in August of this year who specializes in data science and diversity and inclusion to

• zpeti 6y ago
  Nothing, they refused to participate in valley politics and are now the enemy. They can do nothing. In the eyes of NYT reporters and similar, they are evil.
• tptacek 6y ago
  Did they disclose who the "external investigators" are? It matters. There are firms you can hire to rubber stamp a conclusion and others who with serious reputations.
• pvg 6y ago
  The external investigators were hired and paid for by Coinbase and we know nothing about the details of their findings (or who they even were) other than that single mention in the company's own blog post. There's no mention in the post about 'data' shared with the NYT, they just told them the investigations cleared them. Here's NYT's version: Ms. Milosevich said Coinbase hired a consultant over the summer who did interviews and looked at the company’s history, and found “no evidence of structural bias.” “Employees reported a strong culture, fair employee treatment, high employee satisfaction and high energy for belonging, inclusion and diversity,” she said. Managers in the customer support team, where many of the Black employees work, wrote their own report last month.
  • treis 6y ago
    As far as I can tell the NYTimes was unable to find evidence either. There's no corroborating witness, emails, slacks, voicemails, statistics, or anything else concrete that you can point at in the article. It's a collection of accusations and color to lend them credence. When a group of people say they see smoke I tend to believe them. But I'm also not a national news paper. I'd have like to see the NYTimes get some concrete facts before making such a serious accusation.
    • yunohn 6y ago
      The NYT are not the police/FBI. They do not have access to those things, unless employees are able to exfiltrate said info at significant personal risk.
      • treis 6y ago
        Seems a bit incongruous to suggest that people willing and able to accuse Coinbase of racism in the NYTimes are not willing or able to exfiltrate evidence of those accusations.
        • pvg 6y ago
          These are right in the article: wrote in a Slack message that was viewed by The Times. according to a copy of the message seen by The Times according to a copy reviewed by The Times.
          • treis 6y ago
            None of those are messages/documents contain racist action by anyone at Coinbase. They are (1) a reaction to a blog post, (2) a reaction to a letter, and (3) a conclusion in a report. They are not concrete evidence of racism.
            • pvg 6y ago
              I'm not sure what your standard is, you said 'corroborating evidence'. This is evidence that corroborates what the employees told the NYT. Now you're at 'concrete evidence'. What would that be? That someone yelled racial slurs at employees and then handed out signed receipts? The coinbase 'prebuttal' doesn't concretely dispute much either, it says you're going to see some stuff in the NYT that's 'hard to read'. If anything, it's striking how little both pieces disagree about the employees' allegations.
• slg 6y ago
  >What else can they do if they are really innocent? Innocent of what exactly? At a certain point whether the leadership of Coinbase is racist or not doesn't matter. What matters is their actions. The article says "roughly three-quarters of the Black employees" left the company over a 6 month span due to feelings of being discriminated against. That isn't an accusation. It is a fact. It also isn't something that will just happen accidentally. That alone is a problem that demands urgent attention regardless of what is in the hearts of Coinbase's leadership team.
  • oh_sigh 6y ago
    It's a fact, but it means nothing without context. I punched a man in the face yesterday. To determine if I'm a violent person it's important to know whether I punched a man who was pushing his child on a swing set, or whether I punched a man who was crawling through a window in my home.
    • slg 6y ago
      What context would exonerate Coinbase of fostering an environment that results in 75% of its Black employees feeling discriminated against? And if that context existed, why didn't Coinbase mention it in their preemptive rebuttal?
      • zpeti 6y ago
        How about the CEO refusing to align with far left politics? Whether you think that is good or bad, that could well be the reason for them leaving, but it doesn't actually mean that there was overt racism.
        • tptacek 6y ago
          I don't understand the premise here. Most of their Black employees left, not their far left employees.
          • 6y ago
• acdha 6y ago
  They could respond to the specific points raised in the article. An “independent” investigation setup, run, and reviewed only by the alleged perpetrator isn’t exactly definitive - especially if you see the points in the article where they acknowledge the complaints are valid (note the non-denial about the only white person in the compliance group getting an offer which wasn’t extended to anyone else) and think about how a “cull through our historical data” might not yield the full story if, as described, not everyone had formal reports included in that data because they were not informed or discouraged from doing so. “Unsubstantiated” only means they couldn’t prove it, not that it didn’t happen or even that all of the possible evidence was fully disclosed.
• vmception 6y ago
  "Proving innocence" is as tone deaf as their autistic CEO (who in the article is quoted himself as saying his behavior is because he's on the spectrum.) Brian Armstrong shut himself in because he doesn't want to deal with it. He doesn't know how to deal with it. All of Coinbase's actions are guided by the consequences, for example, they never needed to address their flash crash because they just needed to placate customers while they were closing a 9 figure funding round announced a few weeks later. They aren't worried about precedent, they are worried about keeping the ship afloat long enough to sell shares to Robinhood traders. This strategy works. They can also create an inclusive environment that allows them to address underserved markets more accurately. They didn't.
  • acdha 6y ago
    The people I know who are or have children on the spectrum would take issue with your opening sentence. Armstrong might find that a convenient excuse but it shouldn’t erase all of the effort most people put into being considerate.
    • vmception 6y ago
      It was only about the excuse the CEO made, not about anyone else. Direct all of that energy at him for the representation he is making about people on the spectrum. If he wants to lean on that as a crutch on all of his organizational decision making skills, then we absolutely get to call him out on that all the time until he does something different.
• xenadu02 6y ago
  If you've never done this sort of thing before: there's a huge market for these "external consultants". Their unstated job (and reputations) are as whitewashing firms. You hire them to ensure there is "no evidence" of anything done wrong. The primary purpose is to create a credible defense in lawsuits but PR purposes are also common. Firms that find problems suddenly see their business dry up because most companies don't want this kind of honest evaluation (it just creates a problem and potentially exposes you to liability). Without access to information about the firm doing the work, the report, or the underlying data it is impossible to know if a real investigation was done or not.
  • roenxi 6y ago
    To repeat the grandparent, what else can they do? Many of the "issues" bought up in this article aren't even problematic. It says John Russ left because Armstrong took public stance that he wanted Coinbase to focus on crypto space stuff. Coinbase's stance there is fair, reasonable and moral. It is desirable that some companies just do what it says on the tin. If Russ had a reason for quitting that was race-related then the NYT didn't uncover it.
    • bra-ket 6y ago
      They can do nothing, once someone calls you 'racist' you're racist for good. I don't know the details of the story, but the thing is with baseless accusations of racism is that it's a perfect slander, one can never prove innocence once proclaimed guilty.
      • KirinDave 6y ago
        If a San Francisco denizen says to you, "I stepped in human poop" you don't say, "Pics or it didn't happen." That's becuse it's a common occurrence. It's plausible it happened. The same is true of racism in Silicon Valley and the adjoint areas. Being less racist is actually the unusual condition that requires proof.
        • 6y ago
• not_a_moth 6y ago
  > What else can they do if they are really innocent? They can choose to ignore the NYT, since during the trump years it's been laid bare that they're a political publication.
  • acdha 6y ago
    This is the same NYT which is widely agreed to have helped elect Trump by aggressively covering a number of stories about Clinton, including an entire series based on the Clinton Cash book written by right-wing activists? Or is your objection that their reporting isn’t politicized in a way which supports your preferred outcome?
• caffeine 6y ago
  It's important that they investigate what is alleged, and fix whatever wrongdoing they find. If any individual was treated unfairly, that individual can sue under discrimination law, for a private apology and settlement. But beyond that, it's also important that there be NO public apology or acceptance of the idea that refusing to espouse activist politics makes a company intolerant. I think it's admirable Coinbase is taking a stand to keep activism out of the workplace. Treating people fairly is required; tolerating campaigning in a private enterprise is not.
• danShumway 6y ago
  > So external investigators didn't find anything wrong This feels like a trap that we don't fall into in other areas. This is an external consultant is paid by the company, whos reviews and future job prospects are based on being an attractive hire for other companies accused of racist action. There's obviously a huge conflict of interest there. At HN we would recognize that conflict of interest if we were talking about binding arbitration. We would recognize that conflict of interest if we were talking about a security consultant that was dismissing security disclosures from 3rd-parties. It's a little disappointing to me to see unequal standards applied here. The question is, is what the NYT is saying plausible, is there evidence of this going on? And yeah, the story sites specific examples, interviews specific employees, and cites complaints from managers. It seems completely plausible to me. I don't get why people are suddenly so eager to buy into corporate narratives about structural racism and bias, when they would never buy into those same corporate narratives about issues like privacy and security. Every time an Apple or a Google thread comes up, our comment section is filled with people calling them out as disingenuous; it's filled with people who are willing to read between the lines on their policies and press releases. We have no shortage of people in those threads who are willing to extrapolate or judge those companies based on the past actions of the industry. But when it comes to representation, suddenly all of that goes out the window? Representation and bigotry even just as general topics are a huge blind spot for HN that we need to get better at talking about. We need to be less dismissive of these claims. We need to take racial discrimination more seriously, because it is a serious problem in tech.