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Without the additional context from the article, I think citing 75% is a bit misleading. "When Coinbase announced it would be opening an office in Portland, Or

Without the additional context from the article, I think citing 75% is a bit misleading. "When Coinbase announced it would be opening an office in Portland, Ore., several Black employees in the compliance department who worked remotely were told to move there or reapply for new jobs, four former employees said." "All of the Black workers in the compliance division ended up among the group of 15 who left." Without concrete evidence of discrimination in the article, my mind jumps to this being the pivotal cause of the stats, one team getting asked to relocate and that team being disproportionate in its demographics. I know from co-workers that the company once had a strong stance against remote work and made limited exceptions. I can see that being a source of a lot of discontent. Asking folks to move to a new city is a big ask too; I could see the company having handled that poorly. On the upside CB shifted to remote-first which should be great for being able to have a more diverse workforce. And contrary to some of the comments here, I take that as strong evidence of the ability for our leadership team to acknowledge mistakes and course correct.

slg 6y ago
Ok, let's accept what you say as fact and ignore that an exception was made for the single White employee in that department which wasn't made for any of the Black employees you are referencing. Let's also ignore the weirdness of 40% of the company's Black employees being on a single seemingly small team. That still leaves 7 other employees in other departments who left the company in a 6 month window due to feeling discriminated against. 35% is obviously a better number than 75%, but it doesn't allow you to dismiss this problem.
- cbthrow91 6y ago
  Just went back to double check the article and am actually not certain how you are getting to the number 75%. 11 employees cited a complaint to HR according to the article. Where are you getting the denominator for total number of black employees in 2019? There's a data mismatch between the CB blog post and the article. CB cites that only 2-3 formal complaints were filed iirc. 11 employee complaints matches pretty closely with the PDX group. -- FWIW I'm not dismissing the complaints. I've worked and studied in places where I've felt like an outsider; I've seen people make inappropriate comments about race+stereotypes in past work environments; I've also seen people make fishing claims of racial discrimination. I wasn't on those teams in 2019, so the truth is I simply don't know. From what I see today and the lack of concrete evidence in the article, I do have some doubts about the overall impression the article tries to give. I have the sense that certain information might have been omitted that might paint a clearer picture. I could totally be wrong as well.
  - slg 6y ago
    The first sentence of the second paragraph of the article. >The 15 people worked at Coinbase, the most valuable U.S. cryptocurrency start-up, where they represented roughly three-quarters of the Black employees at the 600-person company. "[R]oughly three-quarters" implies there were likely either 19 or 21 employees Black employees at the company since 20 would be exactly three-quarters. I was just using 75% and 20 employees because that is the best estimate we got. The article also stated clearly that 8 Black employees were part of the PDX group. The Coinbase rebuttal was worded very specifically. >only three of these people filed complaints during their time at Coinbase. The New York Times wasn't being as narrow with their counting and they said: >11 of them informed the human resources department or their managers about what they said was racist or discriminatory treatment There is obvious middle ground between these two quotes. 11 people complained to their manager or HR at some point including potentially after they left the company however only 3 filed official complaints while working there. Keep in mind that simply complaining about something to a coworker isn't the same thing as "filing" a complaint. If this middle ground scenario transpired as I described, doesn't the NYT's recounting sound much closer to the truth than CB's? Also ask yourself who has a bigger incentive to stretch the truth here. Is it the newspaper that could instead report on literally anything else or the company that is being accused of discrimination?
    - klyrs 6y ago
      > Keep in mind that simply complaining about something to a coworker isn't the same thing as "filing" a complaint. It really depends on the HR department, too. In most, reporting something as seemingly straightforward as an overt sexual assault will raise the question "how do you want to proceed." But they might not lay out what your actual options are -- or worse, they might just offer an ear and won't offer to act unless you demand it. Sometimes, they'll make it quite clear that a complaint will be a huge pain in the ass for everybody involved, especially the person reporting. HR should understand that there can be direct and indirect blow-back; that reporting misbehavior (especially of management, or worse, HR) can have both real and perceived consequences for the person reporting. HR departments cannot, generally, be trusted to police themselves if you can't go to them or above them, the only other option is the labor relations board. So much of the time, marginalized employees will either suck it up and endure the abuse, or quietly leave to keep their reputation intact. So if anything, I see the discrepancy of 3 official reports and 11 complaints as a weak signal about how seriously HR takes complaints about racism at the company.
- 2-tpg 6y ago
  > ignore that an exception was made for the single White employee Let's not ignore that this exception is being positioned as being based on skin color (racist motives), not job role, tenure, exceeding expectations, caregiving responsibilities, or any other plausible reason for an exception. That's a laughable, yet dangerous take. Incredibly inflammatory and accusatory. Either Coinbase is an incredibly racist and black-unfriendly company, or some people would like you to believe that, and these accusations can all be unravelled to crying wolf, accusing others of downright illegal acts, without even filing a formal complaint to help others not suffer the same fate.
  - slg 6y ago
    As I have said elsewhere in this thread, these harmless explanations for something that can be perceived as discriminatory are perfectly reasonable when there are only a few isolated incidents. However their believability has an inverse relationship to the number of accusations. When there is a clear pattern of behavior, as their is in this instance, it gets harder and harder to argue it is anything other than discriminatory. And at a certain point the motive for these decisions doesn't even matter. If an overwhelming majority of Black employees feel they are being discriminated against at work, that is a huge failing for a company whether there is active discrimination happening or not.
    - 2-tpg 6y ago
      It does not work that way (logically). Listing a 100 weak, baseless arguments is a debating tactic to confuse your opponents, not allowing them to address and debunk specifics (and if they still manage: "The lady doth protest too much, methinks"). It also creates the appearance of smoke. More likely: There is a activist political trend now, that has picked up a lot of steam. In that political view, society is racist, and whites at best profit from this, at worst contribute to this. Anything bad happening to a person of color is then used to accuse the racist system, or even individuals, of a heinous act, to force their hands to adopt your view, or deplatform them and their criticism as an obstacle to growth of your movement, for personal gain, as revenge for inequality, or as a coping mechanism. Far easier to argue/reason/imagine that, than that Coinbase makes WFH exceptions due to skin color, or that black employee are correctly assessing skills and experience of co-workers and correctly identifying racism on skin color, when passed over for a promotion. And if you don't believe that racism is really a driver at Coinbase, the correct course seems to be to attack these allegations for what its actually doing, not to support it by falling victim to this poor-argument overload and resigning because it is too hard, or too sensitive, or too taboo, to call out this damaging and horrific behavior.

slg 6y ago

Ok, let's accept what you say as fact and ignore that an exception was made for the single White employee in that department which wasn't made for any of the Black employees you are referencing. Let's also ignore the weirdness of 40% of the company's Black employees being on a single seemingly small team. That still leaves 7 other employees in other departments who left the company in a 6 month window due to feeling discriminated against. 35% is obviously a better number than 75%, but it doesn't allow you to dismiss this problem.

cbthrow91 6y ago
Just went back to double check the article and am actually not certain how you are getting to the number 75%. 11 employees cited a complaint to HR according to the article. Where are you getting the denominator for total number of black employees in 2019? There's a data mismatch between the CB blog post and the article. CB cites that only 2-3 formal complaints were filed iirc. 11 employee complaints matches pretty closely with the PDX group. -- FWIW I'm not dismissing the complaints. I've worked and studied in places where I've felt like an outsider; I've seen people make inappropriate comments about race+stereotypes in past work environments; I've also seen people make fishing claims of racial discrimination. I wasn't on those teams in 2019, so the truth is I simply don't know. From what I see today and the lack of concrete evidence in the article, I do have some doubts about the overall impression the article tries to give. I have the sense that certain information might have been omitted that might paint a clearer picture. I could totally be wrong as well.
- slg 6y ago
  The first sentence of the second paragraph of the article. >The 15 people worked at Coinbase, the most valuable U.S. cryptocurrency start-up, where they represented roughly three-quarters of the Black employees at the 600-person company. "[R]oughly three-quarters" implies there were likely either 19 or 21 employees Black employees at the company since 20 would be exactly three-quarters. I was just using 75% and 20 employees because that is the best estimate we got. The article also stated clearly that 8 Black employees were part of the PDX group. The Coinbase rebuttal was worded very specifically. >only three of these people filed complaints during their time at Coinbase. The New York Times wasn't being as narrow with their counting and they said: >11 of them informed the human resources department or their managers about what they said was racist or discriminatory treatment There is obvious middle ground between these two quotes. 11 people complained to their manager or HR at some point including potentially after they left the company however only 3 filed official complaints while working there. Keep in mind that simply complaining about something to a coworker isn't the same thing as "filing" a complaint. If this middle ground scenario transpired as I described, doesn't the NYT's recounting sound much closer to the truth than CB's? Also ask yourself who has a bigger incentive to stretch the truth here. Is it the newspaper that could instead report on literally anything else or the company that is being accused of discrimination?
  - klyrs 6y ago
    > Keep in mind that simply complaining about something to a coworker isn't the same thing as "filing" a complaint. It really depends on the HR department, too. In most, reporting something as seemingly straightforward as an overt sexual assault will raise the question "how do you want to proceed." But they might not lay out what your actual options are -- or worse, they might just offer an ear and won't offer to act unless you demand it. Sometimes, they'll make it quite clear that a complaint will be a huge pain in the ass for everybody involved, especially the person reporting. HR should understand that there can be direct and indirect blow-back; that reporting misbehavior (especially of management, or worse, HR) can have both real and perceived consequences for the person reporting. HR departments cannot, generally, be trusted to police themselves if you can't go to them or above them, the only other option is the labor relations board. So much of the time, marginalized employees will either suck it up and endure the abuse, or quietly leave to keep their reputation intact. So if anything, I see the discrepancy of 3 official reports and 11 complaints as a weak signal about how seriously HR takes complaints about racism at the company.
2-tpg 6y ago
> ignore that an exception was made for the single White employee Let's not ignore that this exception is being positioned as being based on skin color (racist motives), not job role, tenure, exceeding expectations, caregiving responsibilities, or any other plausible reason for an exception. That's a laughable, yet dangerous take. Incredibly inflammatory and accusatory. Either Coinbase is an incredibly racist and black-unfriendly company, or some people would like you to believe that, and these accusations can all be unravelled to crying wolf, accusing others of downright illegal acts, without even filing a formal complaint to help others not suffer the same fate.
- slg 6y ago
  As I have said elsewhere in this thread, these harmless explanations for something that can be perceived as discriminatory are perfectly reasonable when there are only a few isolated incidents. However their believability has an inverse relationship to the number of accusations. When there is a clear pattern of behavior, as their is in this instance, it gets harder and harder to argue it is anything other than discriminatory. And at a certain point the motive for these decisions doesn't even matter. If an overwhelming majority of Black employees feel they are being discriminated against at work, that is a huge failing for a company whether there is active discrimination happening or not.
  - 2-tpg 6y ago
    It does not work that way (logically). Listing a 100 weak, baseless arguments is a debating tactic to confuse your opponents, not allowing them to address and debunk specifics (and if they still manage: "The lady doth protest too much, methinks"). It also creates the appearance of smoke. More likely: There is a activist political trend now, that has picked up a lot of steam. In that political view, society is racist, and whites at best profit from this, at worst contribute to this. Anything bad happening to a person of color is then used to accuse the racist system, or even individuals, of a heinous act, to force their hands to adopt your view, or deplatform them and their criticism as an obstacle to growth of your movement, for personal gain, as revenge for inequality, or as a coping mechanism. Far easier to argue/reason/imagine that, than that Coinbase makes WFH exceptions due to skin color, or that black employee are correctly assessing skills and experience of co-workers and correctly identifying racism on skin color, when passed over for a promotion. And if you don't believe that racism is really a driver at Coinbase, the correct course seems to be to attack these allegations for what its actually doing, not to support it by falling victim to this poor-argument overload and resigning because it is too hard, or too sensitive, or too taboo, to call out this damaging and horrific behavior.