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1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

• chairmanwow1 5y ago
  Love that Armstrong did this at Coinbase. I want to work at work, not worry about the political opinions of my coworkers.
  • vkou 5y ago
    It must be nice to have the privilege to not need to worry about the political opinions of your coworkers. I take it most people don't see your existence, as you are, as a political problem?
    • imgabe 5y ago
      If any of your coworkers have threatened to stop you from existing you should call the police.
      • DoreenMichele 5y ago
        Marginalized peoples are often not threatened overtly. They often cannot prove their case to the satisfaction of the not marginalized. For some groups, calling the police is the last thing they would do.
        • imgabe 5y ago
          If you can’t prove something, there’s a strong possibility it’s not real. There’s a reason that we require proof when you accuse someone of wrongdoing.
          • DoreenMichele 5y ago
            That's one possibility. Sure. The fact that you feel comfortable stating it and implicitly dismissing the very real concerns of marginalized peoples is both part of the problem and ironic evidence that for some people it's not only useless to complain, it's actively counterproductive and will draw attacks against them.
            • imgabe 5y ago
              I’m all for addressing concerns. But how is anyone supposed to address a concern like “there are vague imperceptible threats to my existence all around me which I can neither articulate nor provide evidence of”? What, exactly, are you proposing Coinbase or any or company should do, specifically?
              • DoreenMichele 5y ago
                People are often well aware of what's going on and they dismiss it if you try to complain. And I wasn't talking about Coinbase. I was just backing up a random internet stranger's observation that "it must be nice... etc."
              • throw_m239339 5y ago
                > I’m all for addressing concerns. But how is anyone supposed to address a concern like “there are vague imperceptible threats to my existence all around me which I can neither articulate nor provide evidence of”? What, exactly, are you proposing Coinbase or any or company should do, specifically? That's the whole idea behind "microaggressions", anything can be deemed a threat, it only depends on the alleged victim's perception, it's cunning, like every 'intersectional', it's full of sophism, doublespeak, newspeak, absurdity yet a lot of FAANG adopted this framework without thinking. Well now they have to deal with activist employees who are there just to betray or embarrass their very employer and harass other employees into ideological submission.
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    • remarkEon 5y ago
      >I take it most people don't see your existence, as you are, as a political problem? I want to point out that this is a perfect example of how absolutely mind numbing and toxic it is to interact with a lot of these "woke" types. OP made an benign comment ("I want to work at work, not worry about the political opinions of my coworkers.") and its taken in the maximally worst way possible. There's no nuance, and no room for debate or discussion, where you immediately assume that the people you interact with want you dead or worse (your "existence").
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      • plorg 5y ago
        If a trans person walked into my office their existence would be a political problem, because none of my coworkers or company leadership accept the legitimacy of trans identity. It isn't that the person's physical safety is in danger (necessarily), but merely being present makes them the subject of politics. And those politics are generally hostile. I have a trans friend who was qualified for an open position, and I asked her about it, but it was clear there was no way she would even be applying. Now, I'm thousands of miles away from Silicon Valley, in a much smaller town than most posters here. But I think this kind of thinking is toxic wherever you work. If you push out anyone who might challenge the structure (formal or informal) of your company without taking a good look at who that structure is serving, you're going to reject a lot of good people. And you're going to reinforce any existing biases already in the company.
        • ravel-bar-foo 5y ago
          I'm in South Korea. We don't have many trans people here, the mainstream feminist movement is anti-trans, and most of the mainstream Christian movements are anti-LGBT. (My boss is Catholic.) Despite this, when we had a trans person visit my workplace ... absolutely nothing happened. They had lunch with us, nobody said anything about their gender, sexuality, or appearance, and they never mentioned it. Conversation was the same as for non-trans visitors. Now, I don't know if this is because the people in my workplace are especially tolerant, if they were afraid of confrontation, or if they lacked a lens through which to interpret the visitor, but something sounds really weird to me about your workplace. Are the people in your region so vocally political as a matter of course? Are you in the bible belt? What does it mean to acknowledge the existence of a trans person?
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    • civilized 5y ago
      Do you imagine that marginalized people go around worrying about what the political opinions of their coworkers might be? It sure isn't what I do. It sure isn't what my wife or her friends do. Each of us has a lot of woke white colleagues who are super concerned about everyone's political opinions, though. Super concerned that we know they have good ones, super concerned that everyone thinks the same as they do. A black woman at our institution took it upon herself to send a letter to her very white department explaining that their obsession with the hidden racism of "brown bag seminars" wasn't helping any actual black people. It hasn't made our woke white colleagues any less exhausting, but I appreciated her speaking out.
  • sneak 5y ago
    Work, including who you work for, is an inherently political act. The set of coworkers you have is a result of their and your political opinions. He didn't simply ban politics at work, however: he just refused to acknowledge the Black Lives Matter movement. Prior to that Coinbase had Black History Month events they conducted; now they don't.
    • asabjorn 5y ago
      > Work, including who you work for, is an inherently political act. Are you arguing that for instance working for a machine tooling company such as MAG is an inherently political act? If so, how? What about working on a farm. How is that political? What about working as a contractor for building homes. How is that political? > The set of coworkers you have is a result of their and your political opinions. I know many in silicon valley that disagree with critical social justice (CSJ) that work at companies that have been successfully taken over by critical social justice activists to push the CSJ doctrine. Are you arguing that those people work with their woke colleagues and a woke company for political reasons? If so, how? > He didn't simply ban politics at work, however: he just refused to acknowledge the Black Lives Matter movement. Prior to that Coinbase had Black History Month events they conducted; now they don't. A lot of enterprises are regulated by politicians, so of cause they have an interest in better regulations, but what we are referring to here is radical activism for a social revolution. Activist employees turning companies into vehicles for doing activism for a radical social revolution like critical social justice is rather new. Most agree that this is inappropriate and disruptive to the core company mission. Most of us are tired of our woke colleagues and their constant focus on politics over the company mission, always whining. I understand that you disagree with this.
      • sneak 5y ago
        > but what we are referring to here is radical activism for a social revolution. It's not radical any longer, and it's nowhere near a revolution that is being asked for. This is a straw man. Millions are in the streets for basic human rights. This isn't a fringe position ("radical") and it's not an unreasonable demand ("revolution").
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• amznthrwaway 5y ago
  Coinbase is an exceptionally political company, run by a CEO who is incredibly whiny, demanding that nobody criticize him in any manner other than not doing business with him. He is thin-skinned, weak, and lacks the strength, backbone, and will required to remain successful as a leader, particularly of a company that will always have some controversy. His new stance as a hyper-political leader, who leads one of the most politically charged companies in existence is the reason that I have stopped doing business with coinbase. Unfortunately, I have some eth staked there that I cannot withdraw, but I look forward to an eventual future where I never do business with them again. Other exchanges work well and don’t have a permanent victim complex.
• justinsaccount 5y ago
  > The biggest lesson I took away from the whole ordeal is that if you believe something is the right path, it's worth speaking up about it, even if it's controversial. Unless you work at Coinbase, right?
  • afavour 5y ago
    Yeah that made me laugh, too. Feels like the word “politics” is very effective when used to limit your employees: you have something you feel strongly about in the workplace? Fantastic! Oh, it’s “political” (and yes, I’ll be the one determining what qualifies)? Well then no bueno, sorry. We’re mission focused.
    • rglover 5y ago
      He's not being political, he's getting his company to focus.
      • malermeister 5y ago
        Focus on "the mission", which is itself an ancap political project.
      • woodruffw 5y ago
        Focus on what, exactly? Bitcoin is not exactly an apolitical industry. But even more generally: Armstrong's profile on Twitter includes his (ostensible) mission of "creating more economic freedom in the world." That's a very political mission, even by milquetoast American standards!
        • BurningFrog 5y ago
          > Focus on what, exactly? Focus on building a successful profitable company. Surely you just pretend to not know this?
          • woodruffw 5y ago
• sergiotapia 5y ago
  "We have a much more aligned company now, where we can focus on getting work done toward our mission. And it has allowed us to hire some of the best talent from organizations where employees are fed up with politics, infighting, and distraction." BIG takeaway. The people on your team attract similar kinds of people to your team. Good for Coinbase. Lots of good lessons here.
  • sagichmal 5y ago
    They lost almost half of their engineering team. Product development has almost stalled. I dunno, man.
    • mikeklaas 5y ago
      Do you have a source for that?
      • sagichmal 5y ago
        Friends in engineering at Coinbase?
        • staysafeanon 5y ago
          Not a source. I have friends in engineering at Coinbase. They've doubled their engineering team and development has skyrocketed.
          • sagichmal 5y ago
            (laughs) OK dude.
    • StanislavPetrov 5y ago
      Their profits went from $56.4 million in Q1 2021 to $102.6 million in Q2. I think they are doing fine without the woke.
    • staysafeanon 5y ago
• teg4n_ 5y ago
  This man spends way too much time on Twitter and not enough time learning the rules and regulations of the industry the company he leads participates in.
  • randomhodler84 5y ago
    The mission is off track. He should stop listing garbage and stick to Bitcoin. Crap like that shiba inu token are absolute scams, like most EVM tokens. They do nothing, add nothing, and trading them on chain just enriches the miners, or off chain, the exchange. Say what you like about dogecoin, at least it’s a long standing L1 blockchain with developers and history/transactions.
    • arcticbull 5y ago
      They're all basically the same. All the arguments you have against anything not-bitcoin apply to bitcoin except bitcoin is older and way more power intensive. Doge is a better currency for a lot of reasons. Also its funny. List one, may as well list 'em all.
      • randomhodler84 5y ago
        They aren’t the same. I’m not knocking dogecoin — it’s a real Nakamoto blockchain, a real working product. I’d rather folks bought BTC but hey, any software fork of Satoshi client is better than the scamfactory enabled by Eth.
        • qeternity 5y ago
          > I’d rather folks bought BTC Why? Presumably because you're long BTC. With all due respect, you make a lot of handwavy comments about ERC-20 scams and I agree with you, but aside from a highly speculative investment, BTC is nothing. It failed as a currency. It failed as a unit of account. Now the narrative has shifted to "store of value" which only anyone without an understanding of what that means could say. What does BTC do that DOGE doesn't do? Or any other scam coin? It's all speculation, you have happen to find one more acceptable (and it so happens the one you're probably invested in).
• fshbbdssbbgdd 5y ago
  I think the reality is that Coinbase is so obviously a rocketship that the CEO could say anything and they’d have no trouble with recruitment or retention. Existing employees have stock grants worth millions, and new employees are getting great offers. The people who will take these jobs are generally going to be bullish on crypto. If you expect crypto to become a bigger piece of the economy in the future, it would be crazy to give up the opportunity to own a bunch of Coinbase stock. I’d spend a year listening to Brian Armstrong tell me that my thetans need adjusting for 5000 shares of Coinbase.
  • woodruffw 5y ago
    It's a story as old as time: investors (and employees with equity) will put up with just about any yahoo and their dictates (and noxious politics) as long as the money keeps rolling in. The pathetic handwringing here about "virtue signaling" and Coinbase's struggles is the height of farce.
    • throw_m239339 5y ago
      > It's a story as old as time: investors (and employees with equity) will put up with just about any yahoo and their dictates (and noxious politics) as long as the money keeps rolling in. It's a tech company, it's not a YMCA nor a progressive PAC. Obviously, a large number of people here just can't tell the difference anymore, but that's only a cultural issue, not a technical one. The only thing obnoxious here is the people not realizing they can't have their way everywhere and can't impose their stupid petty identity politics everywhere they go.
  • joshuamorton 5y ago
    COIN has lost 25% since IPO (in that time, GOOG, FB, MSFT, AAPL, HOOD are up, PP is even, and SQ is down marginally), and their offers aren't particularly better than <anywhere else>, so it doesn't seem like this is true. Like, even if you think crypto is going to be super relevant, there's tons of other cryto startups. Coinbase has or had first mover advantage, but that's no longer an enormous advantage.
• tptee 5y ago
  If the mission was to expel all of your black employees...mission accomplished I guess
  • exolymph 5y ago
    "One of the biggest concerns around our stance was that it would impact our diversity numbers. Since my post, we've grown our headcount about 110%, while our diversity numbers have remained the same, or even improved on some metrics." What that means in terms of black employees precisely, idk. But isn't it kinda racist to assume black people are a monolith with universally shared opinions? I can assure you that's not the case.
    • tptee 5y ago
      What are their diversity numbers? What are their metrics? Are diverse hires paid fairly? I ask because they have a concrete history of discrimination towards black employees! https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/29/technology/coinbase-pay-employees.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/29/technology/coinbase-pay-e... https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/27/technology/coinbase-cryptocurrency-black-employees.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/27/technology/coinbase-crypt...
• greenie_beans 5y ago
  it's so ironic to me that he prides himself over the "no politics" policy, yet calls his company "mission-focused". the mission is cryptocurrency, which is very political.
  • malermeister 5y ago
    "No politics" (that don't match mine, that is).
    • jiveturkey 5y ago
      indeed. akin to "data driven"
  • Aunche 5y ago
    It's not ironic. It's literally the point of why he's calling it "mission-focused" and not "apolitical." If the almost all members of the NAACP happened to be pro-crypto, do you it's reasonable for it's members to pressure its leadership to spread the adoption of crypto?
    • greenie_beans 5y ago
      you missed my point. i'm arguing that coinbase is in the business of pushing their own politics, via cryptocurrency, which is very much a political thing at this point. yet, their workers can't discuss other politics. it's very ironic and hypocritical. and yes, i think the members of NAACP would be pushing crypto if that's what they felt was a priority for their cause. i don't understand your logic? edit: i believe that being apolitical is just as a political stance as being political.
      • tesselator 5y ago
        Sounds like joining a charity that focuses on topic X and trying to get them to focus about topic Y. Join a charity that focuses on topic Y instead.
• skadamat 5y ago
  Can we just all talk about ... how poorly designed the map visualization they chose was? What are these clown colors, so many different ones.
• gorwell 5y ago
  Every company that continues to let itself get embroiled in Twitter's Political Topic of the Week is at such a distinct disadvantage it will ultimately fail. It's inevitable if you extrapolate. They won't survive the evolutionary process and will get selected out, only earning themselves a Darwin Award. Imagine a rowing team where half the team rows in one direction and the other half rows another direction. They never agree on which direction to row and the direction constantly changes. Even if it's just a dedicated 5% rowing somewhere else, it's going to throw the whole boat off course. Or they're not rowing at all and just yelling at each other on Slack all day. Compare with a team that focuses on the mission, all rowing in the same direction. It's not hard to see who is most likely to reach the finish line. The age old wisdom of not bringing your personal politics and religion into work is wisdom for good reason.
  • emsy 5y ago
    At least they would be rowing, but political activism is not work. Imagine going to the barber and instead of cutting your hair he would lecture you on the hardship of Guatemalan shepherds.
    • notafraudster 5y ago
      Barbers famously talk about politics while cutting your hair. This is like a quintessential part of barber shop culture. Barbers that don't talk about partisan politics normally talk about some parapolitical thing, like cultural gripes, or sports, or other things that have a pretty similar valence. I've had my hair cut in like 5 different countries by dozens of different barbers who speak different languages, come from different generations, the barber themselves are male or female, and I don't remember the last haircut that didn't bring up something that was either explicitly or expansively political.
      • beaned 5y ago
        Dunno what barbers you go to, I've been to a lot across many states and talking partisan politics has never been a common theme among them. I can't remember the last haircut that did involve political talking, it seems mostly avoided. Maybe it's more common outside the US?
• chroem- 5y ago
  The amount of frothing vitriol in this thread makes it clear that Armstrong made the correct choice. Public discourse in the Bay Area has become completely toxic.
  • emsy 5y ago
    Not only that, but you can see why places like Twitter need 4 years to change a font. It looks like tech in general is undermined by highly unprofessional people and this whole thread is a testament to that.
    • philosopher1234 5y ago
      Frankly: Good. Tech needs some undermining.
    • motoboi 5y ago
      People have no idea how social networks really work. And what makes a successful one. Maybe it’s the font, we just don’t now. Maybe one more character can totally kill Twitter. Better keep the changes to a minimum until you figure out what to do.
  • strategyanalyst 5y ago
    This nation is extremely divided. I don't think you can run any organization that is political effectively. Even completely political organizations will have to control political discussions at workplace. US Government is moving into that direction and we are seeing a far less political Senate and Congress that is rarely focussed in any discussion as a joint entity. The two teams in legislative bodies rarely 'talk' to each other on political topics. Most discussions are now procedural and political debate in almost all public forums is completely dead.
  • sagichmal 5y ago
    I'm always so delighted that when someone says something stupid, and people say that it's stupid, there's precisely this response somewhere in the comments. It's just so (chef's kiss) perfect and wonderful.
• cbtacy 5y ago
  Must be nice to have such privilege and entitlement.
• deleted 5y ago
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• throwawaysea 5y ago
  Glad to see leaders showing a spine and taking a stand against the institutional takeover (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_march_through_the_institutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_march_through_the_institu...) we've seen elsewhere from activists, particularly at tech giants like Google or Facebook or Amazon. I often see vague claims that "everything" is political, but it is pretty easy to use one's common sense and separate out what is political and what isn't. Bringing politics to work makes it hostile towards large cohorts of employees and customers, and distracts from the mission, which is to provide utility to customers in a viewpoint- and politically-neutral manner. Other companies need to revert to that neutral way of operating again, and get rid of employees who spend more time on personal advocacy than doing their job.
• lettergram 5y ago
  My favorite is the recruiting page for coinbase. Which imo is overtly political https://www.coinbase.com/careers https://www.coinbase.com/careers
  • krrrh 5y ago
    I don't see any political statements on that page that aren't aligned with creating an "open financial system for the world & increasing economic freedom". The point isn't to not be political, it's about not being political about stuff that isn't related to the mission.
• adamgordonbell 5y ago
  Brian Armstrong was on Tyler Cowen and Tyler asked him if bitcoin was a zero sum game, in a round about way: COWEN: I’ve seen estimates that about 20 percent of bitcoin has been lost, or people don’t have their passwords, or it’s somehow abandoned or whatever. Let’s say that 20 percent were found. Those people would be better off, right? They’d have more wealth. Who is then worse off? ARMSTRONG: Yes, I suppose you have dilution, and you have inflation if you’re increasing the money supply somehow like that. COWEN: Then if we ask the general question that the social value of bitcoin — bitcoin in general — again, clearly a benefit to the people who bought at low prices. They in essence found bitcoin. But if someone else in the system is losing an equal amount, why think that the social value of bitcoin is positive? ARMSTRONG: Who’s losing the equivalent amount in this case, just so I understand? COWEN: I don’t know exactly who, but someone else has less purchasing power, right? Bitcoin isn’t apples. You can’t eat it for lunch. ARMSTRONG: It’s not clear to me that bitcoin is a zero-sum game. COWEN: But what is that? When do I get my apples, so to speak? Where do they come from? ARMSTRONG: Well, anybody can participate of course. I think, now, about probably 10 percent of Americans and maybe 60 or 70 million people globally have crypto, at least. So it’s been growing a lot. Brian didn't seem to understand the question and it left me a bit unimpressed. https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/brian-armstrong/ https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/brian-armstrong/
  • extr 5y ago
    Very interesting. Similar theme to a point Tyler made awhile ago, that I think he touches on even explicitly in this interview, about how if BTC gets to $100K or $200K, you have a bunch of billionaires running around that have essentially done "nothing" to earn it. Seems like it would just exacerbate inequality. Anyone can participate, as long as you're reasonably tech-savvy, and have disposable income to invest (gamble) with.
  • boc 5y ago
    It's hard to find a serious economist who doesn't see major flaws with bitcoin. It's because bitcoin was designed by engineers, not economists. Bitcoin could only have been created by engineers - it misses a few fundamental tests of currency that any practicing economist would have "fixed" during the design phase. So we are left with bitcoin, which looks silly to most experts but is basically a religion to those who only see the technical merits of the project. If we run the experiment all the way out, we end up with a ruling class based simply on time and fervor of adoption of a random piece of tech that appeared 10 years ago. If we run it allll the way out we have a bunch of bitcoin billionaires constantly fearing for their lives because they are essentially walking piggybanks, ripe for kidnapping and torturing their wealth away via rubber hose cryptography.
• ctur 5y ago
  I wrote this in an email turning down a chance explore opportunities at Coinbase. > To me, diversity and social justice are critically important. I have the luxury of being selective in where I put my time and energy and it is important those values align with my career. I appreciate aspects of being "mission focused" but I think that there is a gulf between my personal values and Coinbase's values such that I would not be comfortable in the environment. I can't speak for anyone else but I think I'm not a terrible engineer and I definitely ruled them completely out of the realm of places I'd be willing to work.
  • b9a2cab5 5y ago
    Considering Coinbase isn't seeing any attrition above normal for tech and isn't having issues recruiting, I think nobody really cares. Also, if you're white and claim diversity and social justice to be "critically important" then why don't you give up your job so that a minority can take it?
    • deleted 5y ago
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  • jamiequint 5y ago
    Sounds like their policy of discouraging wokes, who want to use their job as a cudgel for their own political views, from applying to their company is working.
    • philosopher1234 5y ago
      What do you know about OP? What if OP is an extremely productive programmer who lives to build product and has a huge impact, but also cares about black people or LGBTQ+ people? So he's worthless to coinbase? Thats insane.
      • errantmind 5y ago
        False dichotomy. You can have political opinions and simultaneously not feel the need to express them at work.
• brailsafe 5y ago
  Startups are still doing this mission thing? When is the lie that they're not just awful companies like every other going to stop working?
• scop 5y ago
  > How could something be so negative in the press, but turn out to be incredibly positive with every stakeholder. The question of our era! Certainly "every" is misapplied in his quote, but his core message of overwhelming private positivity in light of negative press is worth pondering.
  • rockbruno 5y ago
    I actually think this has a pretty obvious answer. The "press" consists of the same people rambling on Twitter: woke anxious 20 year olds who, instead of going to therapy, insist that instead that's who they are and it's the entire world who needs to change. At the same time, the people who can see through the bullcrap are happy that they can finally do their work.
  • sagichmal 5y ago
    Yes. All of the "private" correspondence he's received, which of course he cannot share, has been overwhelmingly positive. Indeed.
  • marcus_holmes 5y ago
    The press are trying to tell a story. If that story will sell better taking a negative angle on an event, then the story will be negative. It's not personal, or even political (depending on the organisation). It's just business.
• tootie 5y ago
  This seems like a gross abuse of the phrase "mission focused" to mean "operating for profit with total blinders on to the wider world". With a very appropriate photo of the 90s Bulls being a group of self-serving egomaniacs who put winning above everything else. My current employer (a non-profit) uses the term "mission focused" to mean "we are serving the public good even when it isn't profitable and acknowledging our role in society". I think the latter is what younger employees are increasingly embracing to some degree. The former is still creating the most successful companies because they operate without a conscience.
  • krrrh 5y ago
    He defined mission-focused in the original memo pretty clearly and succinctly. > What is the scope of our mission? > Coinbase’s mission is to create an open financial system for the world. This means we want to use cryptocurrency to bring economic freedom to people all over the world. This is difficult and important work, and every employee at Coinbase signed up because they are excited about this mission. It's not operating with total blinders on the wider world, becoming profitable as a startup often requires having a vision of positively changing the world. Armstrong wants people who care about the mission quoted above, period. There are people who are passionately committed to this, yet have totally different opinions on abortion, marginal tax rates, racial politics, bail reform. There's no reason to think you can predict any of these for an individual based on adherence to the mission statement. Achieving change on the one thing that matters to everyone also requires that you have viewpoint diversity on the things that don't, because your current and potential customer base sure does. To the extent that mission creep enforces conformity across a range of issues, you narrow the range of people who would be comfortable working at your company to an increasingly small pool, and you limit access to the sort of insights that lead to a better product. The alternative is to have separate pillow companies for conservatives and liberals, which is ridiculous.
    • tootie 5y ago
      I think saying that work and politics are completely separate is naive and a cop out to avoid responsibility. You joke about pillow companies but as far as I'm concerned MyPillow is run by an insurrectionist and an undemocratic authoritarian. Similarly I will not participate in an organization that doesn't value diversity, honesty, and our environment. I would not, for example, feel comfortable working somewhere like Chick-fil-A knowing the owner opposes human rights. Some people have decided that basic decency or acceptance of reality (ie vaccines or climate) are a political opinion when they're not. And companies who think it's not their problem are also wrong.
• jrockway 5y ago
  What mission did they focus on and how did it go? All I see here is "I wrote a controversial screed and many people tolerated it and kept showing up to work." That's great and all, but what sort of new things did it unlock? How do you compare it to the world where you didn't write the screed? It all feels like a heap of bullshit to me -- if you're in the right industry, you can be the worst manager on the planet and your company can still do okay. He's just saying that his household name company in a booming industry did all right last year. We all kind of expected that, it would be nearly impossible to not make money in Coinbase's position. (Like what if nobody merged any code last year and didn't launch any features? They'd still be doing great!) My controversial opinion is that companies like Apple and Amazon did well in spite of their leaders' quirks. AWS would have been a great business even if Jeff Bezos didn't fire people recovering from cancer. The iPhone still would have been a hit if Jobs didn't bring someone to tears over a bug in their code. I think you can make great products AND be nice to your employees, and maybe even let them discuss how black lives matter at work.
  • refenestrator 5y ago
    Noisy echo chambers are uninclusive to anyone who doesn't hold that precise political viewpoint. We both know that the program goes way beyond "black people shouldn't be indiscriminately shot", its driven by people who are addicted to social media and perpetually pushing for another rush of outrage. I'd prefer not to be around that, personally.
    • fancifulfiend 5y ago
      It seems like Brian Armstrong is the only person using social media to push for fabricated outrage. Anyone complaining about “wokeness” is talking about an issue that only exists in the minds of true bigots. It’s a boogeyman that they use to punch down. No one is forcing Armstrong to say stupid shit constantly.
      • Jensson 5y ago
        Even Google fires woke bigots now and then, so it is certainly a real issue.
• tims33 5y ago
  I think it is great the company went the direction they did and I'm glad Brian is happy with it. The commentary that I find frustrating is about the "retaliatory and intellectually dishonest hit pieces." The press does suck in many ways, but when you're own a massive chunk of a $65B company you should expect some negative press and be prepared. It makes him sound like he isn't open to dissent which is an incredibly privileged stance.
  • onelovetwo 5y ago
    does it mean he should not point out the obvious dishonest hit piece simply because the company is valued at x amount?
    • sieabahlpark 5y ago
      He meant to say he just has to deal with absolutely wrong pieces and accept them as factual statements against Coinbase.
    • tims33 5y ago
      It doesn't come off as simply pointing out. How does he know it's obviously dishonest? The author likely felt otherwise. It just comes off as an entitlement that wasn't necessary.
  • alentist 5y ago
    > Criticizing retaliatory and intellectually dishonest hit pieces makes him sound like he isn't open to dissent Non-sequitur.
• fleddr 5y ago
  Just want to say how ridiculous this is from a European perspective. I know nothing better than for any company to be mission focused. You go to work to do work. And you do so with a degree of neutrality, as you can't pick your colleagues, yet still need to cooperate with them. This doesn't mean you can't say anything at all, it means you shouldn't be overly divisive or confrontational. A company isn't your personal Twitter playground. If you do have something political to say, a grave social justice error in the company's policy for example, you can still be reasonable about it. To mention it respectfully and proportional to the issue, rather than going nuclear. I work in a tech hub in Europe that has 80 nationalities, people from all walks of life. Any ethnicity, sex, gender, sexuality, religion and political conviction you can think of and we all get along just fine with zero tensions. It's a joy actually, to work with people wildly different from yourself, whom you normally might not meet if it wasn't for work. We don't even have rules on politics, because they're not needed. Nobody brings politics or activism to work. This brand of aggressive identity-based political activism really is a manifestation of the deplorable state of US politics. It's really quite rich to take home 200K a year and feel oppressed. Such a thing is only possible in the US, the rest of the world laughs at you.
  • afavour 5y ago
    As a European living and working in the US: your comparison is very shortsighted. European countries literally have no legal concept of at-will employment. They have strong social nets that make quitting your job much easier, and more prevalent unions that fight to improve working conditions (all of these things are, gasp, political! incidentally) By comparison employment in the US is messed up enough that if you leave your job you lose your health insurance. Companies with great policies can sometimes retain employees on that basis alone! Is it really any wonder that “politics” ends up being an issue in the workplace when your employer literally controls your access to healthcare? All of this stuff is emblematic of a deeply unhealthy relationship with employment in the US. Despite widespread agreement that this arrangement is bad, the US political system is broken enough that changing it feels all but impossible. CEOs like Brian are taking a hard stance against the effects while ignoring the causes. You’re right that such a thing is only possible in the US, you’re just wrong about the reasons why.
• saurik 5y ago
  > One of the biggest concerns around our stance was that it would impact our diversity numbers. Since my post, we've grown our headcount about 110%, while our diversity numbers have remained the same, or even improved on some metrics. My understanding is that they started off really bad, right? They had 3/4s of their black employees resign before that post and were at 3%. I guess they could have gotten worse, but being proud to be where you were when this whole thing started is a bit awkward. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/27/technology/coinbase-cryptocurrency-black-employees.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/27/technology/coinbase-crypt... > One by one, they left. Some quit. Others were fired. All were Black. 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. Before leaving in late 2018 and early 2019, at least 11 of them informed the human resources department or their managers about what they said was racist or discriminatory treatment, five people with knowledge of the situation said. Numbers aside, this thread is really difficult to take seriously due to the (hypocritical) inclusion of this tweet, which seems to undermine the rest of his thesis (that speaking up for things you believe in is a distracting waste of time that is bad for business). > The biggest lesson I took away from the whole ordeal is that if you believe something is the right path, it's worth speaking up about it, even if it's controversial. And also like, did anyone actually disagree that being a profit-driven company can be profitable? The tl;dr of this entire thread to me is "putting profits above people and morals was every bit as profitable as I thought it would be: thus, I'm vindicated". I would expect to see the same thing from Big Tobacco, Big Oil, Big Copyright, etc.... we also see this same argument from companies like Apple and Facebook: "we are making tons of money, and so our actions are not only useful, they were justified". > While the media reports were mostly negative, and it even spawned some retaliatory and intellectually dishonest hit pieces, the reaction both from employees and people I spoke to in private was overwhelmingly positive. Finally, the issue I have here is that the vast majority (again: we are talking 97%) of Coinbase employees are not black, which calls into question this entire metric: an "overwhelmingly positive" reaction from the overwhelming majority is... underwhemling.
  • celeduc 5y ago
    > the reaction both from employees and people I spoke to in private was overwhelmingly positive. Overwhelming positive reaction from subordinates (whose paychecks he signs), and peers who are also tech/finance bros. Sounds like a statistical universe to me!
• aaomidi 5y ago
  How has the diversity of talent changed in this one year?
• RNCTX 5y ago
  What's the mission? Not being a reliable financial exchange, I hope, they already failed at that. (1) [1]: https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/coinbase-says-hackers-stole-cryptocurrency-least-6000-customers-2021-10-01/ https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/coinbase-says-hacke...
• qqtt 5y ago
  > we're operating in an environment of virtue signaling and fear of speaking up. Well, which is it? Are people speaking up too much (virtue signalling), or not enough (fear of speaking up)? Perhaps the people speaking up aren't saying what you want to hear, and you imagine a hidden majority of people who agree with you that you can convince yourself you are right, through a "invisible argument of authority" towards these abstract people who you know exist but don't speak up out of fear, but surely agree with you and outnumber the other voices. I find the usage of the term "virtue signalling" a bit disappointing. Yes, there are a subset of opportunists who are dishonestly using social platforms for their own gain - but such people are in such a minority that pretending they should dominate the conversation is throwing the baby out with the bath water. People are trying to organize to make society better, more inclusive, right the systematic wrongs of the past, and build a better future. Dismissing the majority of these people with a dismissive term like "virtue signalling" is not only being insensitive, it's callous and belittling. The first thing you should realize is that the "virtue signalling" happening is due to voices being oppressed and voices not being heard for too long. There are uncomfortable conversations that need to happen and these voices should be heard. It's all good and fair that you decided those conversations should not happen in the context of your company and to make the judgement as a leader that it serves only as a distraction, but to use a callous term like "virtue signalling" in the context of these conversations shows the true character of the person conveying this message - and personally, that is not a leader I would want to follow along with any mission.
• fay59 5y ago
  Charitably, “don’t want to be distracted by politics” means “the status quo works for me”. This doesn’t mean anyone at Coinbase is ill-intentioned, but given the status quo, there’s a lot of people it won’t work for.
  • bad_username 5y ago
    No, it means "if the status quo doesn't work for me, I focus on changing it outside of my work". Like I work out outside of my dining room and sleep outside of my garage.
    • civilized 5y ago
      People bemoan the dissolution of boundaries between work and personal life, then go around passionately advocating for the further dissolution of those boundaries.
• bob229 5y ago
  Social justice and crypto are both cancer
• facet1ous 5y ago
  So in fairness I haven't followed this in the news very closely, but after initially feeling negative about this decision I've started to come around to it. US politics has become extremely draining, divisive, and aggressive - particularly in high partisan-lean areas. It's flat out exhausting talking with people about politics, even those who I agree with, and it just gets worse every year. Polling has shown people sort themselves by political ideology first and everything else in life second. I see fewer and fewer options available, but to just run from it. I don't see it getting better any time soon. The company I previously worked for spent an enormous amount of time (and money) facilitating discussions appeasing these divides and focusing on social justice, etc. Not only is there no hope for any given company to realistically solve for societal-wide problems or find an approach that satisfies everyone in this manner, but it's painfully obvious they don't truly care about these topics either. Having people come "talk" about racism or putting on inclusion workshops doesn't result in real action. Things like "diversity" are mangled and manufactured into company metrics where data is awkwardly bucketed by "ethnicity". Are we expected to believe HR departments who group half of the world together as "Asian" as taking diversity seriously? I've come away from every company I've worked for with the cynical impression that that their "social justice" efforts are simply to minimize inner anger, strife, and liability. And for leaders, if you commit to being a "politically engaged" workplace it means everything you do is twice as vulnerable. You are walking on eggshells even if you aren't instigating any sort of animosity - what if you weren't paying attention to the news and didn't speak up about a particular political event? What if you didn't say enough? What if you were misinterpreted? I can understand why Coinbase doesn't want to go there anymore - they can achieve the same goal if nobody says anything at all. I'm not arguing nefarious forces don't exist or aren't important. I care deeply about many of the commonly-discussed social issues that we're dealing with today. I've personally witnessed blatant racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination first-hand at work. But those things can be solved for at a company level - trying to treat our general political environment is well beyond anything any corporation can manage nor should we expect it to be their responsibility. Companies should focus on refining things that are in their control, like practicing transparent & fair hiring, enforcing anti-discrimination policies, and ensuring equal-opportunity internally. But I think you can fairly draw the line there.
• wly_cdgr 5y ago
  "Mission focused company" is just such a funny euphemism for "I don't want my serfs getting distracted from making money for me by more important things"
• gwelson 5y ago
  The thing I hate about this line of thinking is the supposed "distractions" of being mission-focused are nearly all related simply to basic rights/dignities for marginalized groups. I don't think anyone is saying companies need to take a strong stance on every political issue, but merely saying "we as a company believe the lives of our Black employees matter" or "we as a company welcome and accept our LGBTQ+ employees and don't tolerate anyone who doesn't" are just...basic things you need to do in 2021. They aren't a distraction, I would say not saying them is a distraction. In all of the discussion around the blog post from Armstrong last year and the similar discussion around Basecamp, I never once saw an example cited of these so-called distractions from being mission-focused that wasn't just affirming the basic dignity of a group of people. I don't understand why doing so should be controversial. Anyone who doesn't fully and unambiguously support the right of Black people to not be killed randomly and of LGBTQ+ people to exist simply doesn't belong in polite, modern society. How is this controversial? I simply cannot imagine working at a place that doesn't recognize the humanity of their workers. Utterly baffling and heartless mindset.
  • _3u10 5y ago
    Perfect. There are many companies that want to do these performative acts. I like to work with companies and buy from companies that don’t make these statements but also don’t use slave labour to make their products. (Nike) You can have your values and I can have mine.
  • poszlem 5y ago
    There is a difference between people/companies that believe that lives of black people matter and those that claim that BLACKLIVESMATTER. There is a difference between people/companies that believe that women need to have the same rights as men and those that claim to be feminists. There is a difference between people/companies that believe that gays/lesbians are normal people and those who put rainbows everywhere.
    • saurik 5y ago
      > There is a difference between people/companies that believe that lives of black people matter and those that claim that BLACKLIVESMATTER. FWIW, in this case, that "difference" might be that Coinbase was simultaneously treating their black employees poorly--dare I say, as "second class citizens"--while actively refusing to take a few seconds to agree with something as banal/obvious as "black lives matter". The BLM statement struggle was merely a catalyst for what were already existing and somewhat long-standing racial tensions brewing inside the company that had led people to feel that, with its actions, the company did not in fact care about its black employees... context you can't just pretend didn't exist going into Brian's "let's not talk about this and everyone go back to work" post. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/27/technology/coinbase-cryptocurrency-black-employees.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/27/technology/coinbase-crypt... > The tensions at Coinbase came to a head in June, after the police killing of George Floyd. As many tech leaders publicly voiced support for Black Lives Matter protests, Black employees at Coinbase said on the Slack messaging platform that they were hurt by the silence of Mr. Armstrong and other executives about the matter. They organized a meeting where several of them told executives, often through tears, about their difficult experiences at the company, eight people who attended said. Take careful note: this wasn't "merely" "our difficult experiences in the world", this was "our difficult experiences at the company". Seriously: too much of this comment thread seems to be hyperfocused on BLM statements--as I guess y'all really think taking a few minutes and a couple sentences to acknowledge that in solidarity somewhere is somehow a horrible distraction--while ignoring that this had started in the background of "Coinbase is mistreating its black employees so much that it had already lost 3/4s of them" (and that's before Brian's post, so a lack of strong improvement since then is telling). This is way more concrete than these abstractions. > But according to 23 current and former Coinbase employees, five of whom spoke on the record, as well as internal documents and recordings of conversations, the start-up has long struggled with its management of Black employees. > “It was the first time I realized what racism felt like in the modern world,” said Layllen Sawyerr, a compliance analyst who is Black. “I felt like I was being bullied every day at work.” She said she filed a discrimination complaint with Coinbase’s legal department before quitting in 2018.
• dmix 5y ago
  > 3/ One of the biggest concerns around our stance was that it would impact our diversity numbers. Since my post, we've grown our headcount about 110%, while our diversity numbers have remained the same, or even improved on some metrics. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Reddit is at scale a sentence like this often means they’ve established a dominant monoculture and squashed out the ‘annoyances’..
  • poszlem 5y ago
    If there is one thing I've learned from a company that went woke was that the supposed diversity that it reached was merely superficial. They hired people from all the minorities necessary and ended up with culture that was even more monolithic than before. No dissent allowed. I am a bisexual dude, and nobody at work (sans my closest friends) know about it because it's none of their business. I did not disclose it during my interview, I don't want them to ask me about it.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • wreath 5y ago
      This has been my observation as well. Such companies pat themselves on the back for hiring a diverse group who actually think the same _despite_ coming from different backgrounds or have different skin color.
  • babelfish 5y ago
    What I take from that statement is "We have not meaningfully tackled any of the issues of discrimination in the workplace that our Black employees have continuously attempted to bring to our attention", such as the ones u/saurik linked in his comment.
    • seoaeu 5y ago
      Yeah, if the most positive thing you can claim is "the rest of our Black employees didn't quit" then that is really saying something. I liked how he bragged about improving on some undisclosed metrics though, as though that kind of thing isn't trivial to game or even outright lie about
• poszlem 5y ago
  In the perfect world people would just ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and went on their merry way if they didn't agree with Coinbase. The reason why there is so much vitriol in the comments here is that to some people there is nothing more scary than a prospect of companies realising that doing social activism can be really TERRIBLE to their bottom line and it IS POSSIBLE to have a nice, friendly, healthy company without going full woke.
  • Jensson 5y ago
    The woke biggest fear is that people realize that only about 5-10% are woke so you can ignore them without much consequences no matter how much of a fuzz they make on twitter. They try to make a fuzz here at HN as well but just like the real world they aren't the majority here either.
    • poszlem 5y ago
      This is quite disturbing, see all those accounts created 30 minutes ago: - https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=fancifulfiend https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=fancifulfiend - https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=workersrights https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=workersrights - https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tesselator https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tesselator I wonder what's going on with HN moderation.
      • Zababa 5y ago
        > I wonder what's going on with HN moderation. The front line is automatic software. Then there's us with stuff like flagging and downvoting. The rest is handled by a small team.
        • jimbob45 5y ago
          It’s just one dude now, right? I thought sctb or whatever his name was dipped.
          • 5y ago
• EastSmith 5y ago
  PG's note on the thread is very interesting: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1445305326820020227 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1445305326820020227
  • downWidOutaFite 5y ago
    I didn't find that interesting. "Twitter opinion" is a laughable stereotype. Is the idea that the right-wing "red pilled" don't form online mobs?
    • pseudalopex 5y ago
      Maybe they thought Paul Graham trafficking in laughable stereotypes had interesting implications for Y Combinator and Hacker News.
• victor22 5y ago
  Fuck coinbase and their token casino, they are more of the old system bitcoin wants to replace
• readme 5y ago
  The attitude that if someone doesn't overtly support your cause, that it means they are your enemy is a terrible one.
• smashah 5y ago
  "Don't bring politics to work" = "Don't bring your politics to work" One person's every day life is considered by another to be "political".
• zht 5y ago
  they asked me for additional information to "verify my identity" (after 4 years of using coinbae just fine). after 6 weeks my account is still frozen
• dudeinjapan 5y ago
  As a companion piece, see Jonathan Haidt's discussion of "telos": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gatn5ameRr8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gatn5ameRr8
  • lloydde 5y ago
    Unfortunately, “telos” is misused when the author’s data is singularly focused on the US.
• koonsolo 5y ago
  So does a "Championship team" mean you get paid like a champion? Or does it just mean you have to work like a champion, and get a 1% raise when you're working like crazy? Just curious because I don't know coinbase that well.
  • renewiltord 5y ago
    Everyone I know at Coinbase is not only doing well but working less hard than at Facebook.
  • dyeje 5y ago
    They pay extremely well, yes. You can look at levels.fyi for specifics.
• ThinkBeat 5y ago
  In short? Leave politics at home.
• prayingforexits 5y ago
  I was able to chat to Brian about this the other night. I think it’s under appreciated how brave it was to do this on the precipice of multiple fundraising / liquidity events and in the eye of the storm of cancel culture generally. Kudos to the Coinbase team.
• Molly666 5y ago
  I can also recommend paying attention to the decentralized p2p ecosystem Utopia p2p. Its developers have released a private coin Сrypton and recently released a stablecoin UUSD https://u.is/en/currencies.html https://u.is/en/currencies.html . Therefore, this project is very well suited for anonymous transactions.