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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

by 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.
refenestrator 5y ago
Cryptocurrency mining consumes the same amount of power as Argentina or whatever the figure is, for no benefit. If wrapping a rainbow flag around it and studiously noting everyone's pronouns made that "ok", it'd frankly be even more perverse.
- seoaeu 5y ago
  An easier comparison: cryptocurrency uses nearly 10x the amount of power Google does!
- doopy1 5y ago
  "For no benefit" is not an objective read. A lot of folks are benefitting. IMO the environmental impact of crypto is also completely overstated. There are issues so much bigger than crypto's energy consumption that it's basically just a rounding error.
  - pcthrowaway 5y ago
    1% of global energy consumption is hardly a rounding error. I'm massively excited for the potential of cryptocurrency, but there's a reason ETH is moving to PoS, and newer PoW projects aren't getting the same kind of traction.
    - nefitty 5y ago
      What do you consider the potential of cryptocurrency to be? Specifically, which of those potentials excites you?
      - john2x 5y ago
        Two words: “cha ching!”
      - pcthrowaway 5y ago
        Just a few: - Decentralized payment infrastructure that can't be taken down. - Currency that isn't issued by a government - Open financial applications - Pseudonymous payments (depending on the crypto) - Infrastructure for fully transparent payments and analysis of value flows (governments and institutions should be using these) - applications whose source can be verified. Even if a web application you use promises they handle your data securely and publish source code, there's no guarantee what they're running is actually what they've published. Decentralized applications can be interacted with and viewed by anyone (even if compiled to bytecode, you can verify the contracts they've published are accurate) - Decentralized governance (the potential of this is massive, even moreso when coupled with decentralized identity) - Access to financial instruments typically only accessible to institutions. - A global, border-agnostic payment network
kdkmfmfkf 5y ago
Oh come on, you know as well as anyone that what he means is that he doesn't feel the need to divide his staff racially and promote resentment through wasting corporate time and money on consultants holding seminars on the faux-intellectual critical theories of race that have grown out of the grievance studies departments in universities. Stop gaslighting people. Not every company needs to shove the hideous and racist critical theories of race and gender down its employees throats. Some of us prefer rewarding individual merit, and the principles of equality and fairness to mandated racial diversity and ideological homogeneity
jhhh 5y ago
This kind of post only works if you get to judge their mission statement as insincere. Could you, without looking it up right now, identify what Coinbase's mission statement is? What specific actions do you think they've taken that you read as being misaligned with their stated mission and caused you to only believe they care about profit?
poorjohnmacafee 5y ago
The goal in Western capitalism is to create wealth for stakeholders. Those stakeholders can then get involved in politically impactful projects as wealthy individuals if they have a conscience. As competitive, innovative companies they will bring wealth and better lives to their communities long term. There are many good reasons for this system. Wanting companies to play politics means they will be choosing sides of a political establishment or party, and it is divisive to our society. You should not want to divide our society even if you think you're obviously right and they're obviously wrong. America does this more than any other nation, arguably because their media constantly does it. Shoving politics at others is still fundamentally divisive.
- BigRedDog1669 5y ago
  You are assuming only the wealthy should drive politics. The employee driven politics is happening because they don't have money to shape politics and this is the only way they see of having an effect. Not saying it is good, but the idea the money buys politics kind of leads to this.
  - alentist 5y ago
    They are assuming no such thing. You are simply putting words into people's mouths, shamelessly. But perhaps it's not such a bad thing for you to push people away from your position with such shameless behavior.
- MadeThisToReply 5y ago
  > The goal in Western capitalism is to create wealth for stakeholders. *shareholders.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > > The goal in Western capitalism is to create wealth for stakeholders. > *shareholders. * capitalists (“shareholders” are one form, in relation to corporationa.)
mensetmanusman 5y ago
People define mission and public good differently.
temp8964 5y ago
No. You are mission focused to profit and at the same time you are also serving public good. This is how the society works. You don’t have to care about any social issues at all to contribute to the society!

by tootie 5y ago

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.

refenestrator 5y ago

Cryptocurrency mining consumes the same amount of power as Argentina or whatever the figure is, for no benefit. If wrapping a rainbow flag around it and studiously noting everyone's pronouns made that "ok", it'd frankly be even more perverse.

seoaeu 5y ago
An easier comparison: cryptocurrency uses nearly 10x the amount of power Google does!
doopy1 5y ago
"For no benefit" is not an objective read. A lot of folks are benefitting. IMO the environmental impact of crypto is also completely overstated. There are issues so much bigger than crypto's energy consumption that it's basically just a rounding error.
- pcthrowaway 5y ago
  1% of global energy consumption is hardly a rounding error. I'm massively excited for the potential of cryptocurrency, but there's a reason ETH is moving to PoS, and newer PoW projects aren't getting the same kind of traction.
  - nefitty 5y ago
    What do you consider the potential of cryptocurrency to be? Specifically, which of those potentials excites you?
    - john2x 5y ago
      Two words: “cha ching!”
    - pcthrowaway 5y ago
      Just a few: - Decentralized payment infrastructure that can't be taken down. - Currency that isn't issued by a government - Open financial applications - Pseudonymous payments (depending on the crypto) - Infrastructure for fully transparent payments and analysis of value flows (governments and institutions should be using these) - applications whose source can be verified. Even if a web application you use promises they handle your data securely and publish source code, there's no guarantee what they're running is actually what they've published. Decentralized applications can be interacted with and viewed by anyone (even if compiled to bytecode, you can verify the contracts they've published are accurate) - Decentralized governance (the potential of this is massive, even moreso when coupled with decentralized identity) - Access to financial instruments typically only accessible to institutions. - A global, border-agnostic payment network

kdkmfmfkf 5y ago

Oh come on, you know as well as anyone that what he means is that he doesn't feel the need to divide his staff racially and promote resentment through wasting corporate time and money on consultants holding seminars on the faux-intellectual critical theories of race that have grown out of the grievance studies departments in universities. Stop gaslighting people. Not every company needs to shove the hideous and racist critical theories of race and gender down its employees throats. Some of us prefer rewarding individual merit, and the principles of equality and fairness to mandated racial diversity and ideological homogeneity

jhhh 5y ago

This kind of post only works if you get to judge their mission statement as insincere. Could you, without looking it up right now, identify what Coinbase's mission statement is? What specific actions do you think they've taken that you read as being misaligned with their stated mission and caused you to only believe they care about profit?

poorjohnmacafee 5y ago

The goal in Western capitalism is to create wealth for stakeholders. Those stakeholders can then get involved in politically impactful projects as wealthy individuals if they have a conscience. As competitive, innovative companies they will bring wealth and better lives to their communities long term. There are many good reasons for this system. Wanting companies to play politics means they will be choosing sides of a political establishment or party, and it is divisive to our society. You should not want to divide our society even if you think you're obviously right and they're obviously wrong. America does this more than any other nation, arguably because their media constantly does it. Shoving politics at others is still fundamentally divisive.

BigRedDog1669 5y ago
You are assuming only the wealthy should drive politics. The employee driven politics is happening because they don't have money to shape politics and this is the only way they see of having an effect. Not saying it is good, but the idea the money buys politics kind of leads to this.
- alentist 5y ago
  They are assuming no such thing. You are simply putting words into people's mouths, shamelessly. But perhaps it's not such a bad thing for you to push people away from your position with such shameless behavior.
MadeThisToReply 5y ago
> The goal in Western capitalism is to create wealth for stakeholders. *shareholders.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > > The goal in Western capitalism is to create wealth for stakeholders. > *shareholders. * capitalists (“shareholders” are one form, in relation to corporationa.)

mensetmanusman 5y ago

People define mission and public good differently.

temp8964 5y ago

No. You are mission focused to profit and at the same time you are also serving public good. This is how the society works. You don’t have to care about any social issues at all to contribute to the society!