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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 wor

by 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.
- Zababa 5y ago
  You make at least three times as much as people in Europe, while the cost of living isn't three times higher. You can save this money in case something bad happens. If you're a minimum wage worker that's a different story. But we're talking about software engineers here. A standing desk and wrist exercises solve most of your possible work-related injuries.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - aiisjustanif 5y ago
    Not everyone at tech company is a software engineer or makes that type of money.
- 5560675260 5y ago
  > Is it really any wonder that “politics” ends up being an issue in the workplace? It's still a wonder for me, I don't follow your reasoning at all. How does this force people into being antagonistic and fighting over politics in the workplace? If anything, this should put a pressure on workers to not stand out and keep their mouth shut, so that they wouldn't risk loosing coveted employer-provided insurance.
- fleddr 5y ago
  I think we're mixing up different political topics here. The one I think you're talking about is the US workers' struggle to defend or increase basic worker rights. Which indeed is a political struggle of workers versus management. If I'm not mistaken, the Coinbase case is about social justice types of topics like feminism, BLM, trans rights, colonialism, the like.
  - afavour 5y ago
    My point is that positions like Brian's require there to be a clear and bright line between "political" and "not political". I think it's at least slightly easier to draw that line in European workplaces where the nature of employment is not as politically fraught. Just to take two of your examples: feminism and trans rights. Both have healthcare implications. Your employer controls your healthcare. Should the healthcare provided by your employer cover birth control? Abortion? Conversion therapy? This mix is inevitable.
slownews45 5y ago
I used to work with kids in an international program. I had a hard "mission focused" rule. Most of the social justice type advocacy talk about political topics would be banned under this rule (along with a lot of other stuff about back home like what they owned etc). Kids whose parents would have hated each other getting along well, making friendships, etc. In the long run, seeing this humanity in each other (I think) will contribute more to some large benefits than always going to war on every issue. Some examples - Student (jewish) whose dream was to join IDF to kill "terrorists" vs kid whose parents were palestinian (and hated jews). The kid who talked trash about blood transfusions for some reason - with a friend whose medical form had a history of them. Some crazy wealth disparities (the private jet kids with the extended passport filled with stamps vs kid who saved mowing money to go on program). Stripped of all the baggage from back home (and with no cell phone / internet access etc), working together (outdoor program), no parents spoiling them (for the spoiled ones) or whaling on them (one or two parents from south still do this) - very cool to see what happens (in most cases).
- fleddr 5y ago
  A beautiful story, thanks for sharing. I can only attest from both travel and work that exposure to other cultures and peoples destroys any and all bias.
- Zababa 5y ago
  Thank you for sharing that. It's nice to see examples of what we can do when we focus on what unites us, vs what divides us.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
olegious 5y ago
Having worked in both (EU and US) I have seen both sides. I saw the trend (identity based politics) starting to appear in tech in Europe, for example "we shouldn't try to win business from company X due to their stance on issue Y" came up multiple times in company all hands (500 person company).
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  That’s disappointing but I suppose it is to be expected since the Internet allows cultural exports at light speed. I am reminded of the recent warning from the French education minister (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/world/europe/france-threat-american-universities.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/world/europe/france-threa...): > French politicians, high-profile intellectuals and journalists are warning that progressive American ideas — specifically on race, gender, post-colonialism — are undermining their society. “There’s a battle to wage against an intellectual matrix from American universities,’’ warned Mr. Macron’s education minister.
saurik 5y ago
> 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. > Any ethnicity, sex, gender, sexuality, religion and political conviction you can think of and we all get along just fine with zero tensions. This really sounds like you are blaming the black employees at Coinbase for standing up for themselves, and that if they just sat back down and took whatever hand they were being dealt that there would be "zero tensions"... which I guess hinges awkwardly on what you mean by "tensions"? https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/27/technology/coinbase-cryptocurrency-black-employees.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/27/technology/coinbase-crypt... I encourage you to read this article--which, FWIW, I'm sure is one of the articles Brian Armstrong here is calling a "hit piece" in his Twitter thread--as this wasn't merely some abstract issue of "politics": black employees at Coinbase felt they were being actively discriminated against.
- fleddr 5y ago
  Sorry, I lack the privilege to read that article.
  - finiteseries 5y ago
    Here you go: http://archive.today/EMPL2 http://archive.today/EMPL2 Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
    - fleddr 5y ago
      I wasn't trolling, I really can't read it. Also not on that archive link.
- tayo42 5y ago
  This is interesting, never saw this article. I don't get why people struggle so much dealing with black people? Like just be empathetic and assume the best. I guess so many people are just racist. It's just crazy.
tinyhouse 5y ago
> Just want to say how ridiculous this is from a European perspective. What is ridiculous? What Brian said? the response? I'm not following.
- fourstar 5y ago
  It’s ridiculous in his homogenous untainted bubble. Guy is doing mental gymnastics with himself to appear morally superior.
- fleddr 5y ago
  Saying you're a mission focused company and this being somehow controversial is ridiculous. Every company should be mission focused. As his post demonstrates, it turns out to not be controversial at all. A handful of people left and after a few weeks the Twitter mob stops. Then you're left with reasonable people to do the job, which is the point of any company.
  - sagichmal 5y ago
    > A handful of people left They lost close to half of their engineering team, significant percentages of their operations teams, and many senior leaders.
    - comp_throw7 5y ago
      What? Only 5% of the company took the buyout: https://www.coindesk.com/business/2020/10/08/5-of-coinbase-employees-take-severance-offer-over-apolitical-stance/ https://www.coindesk.com/business/2020/10/08/5-of-coinbase-e...
    - fleddr 5y ago
      Maybe you're mixing this up with Basecamp?
fourstar 5y ago
Which euro country? Seems like you haven’t experienced the workplace woke-ism yet. Don’t worry, though. It will be soon in every euro country that isn’t already. After all —- globohomo wokeness is America’s biggest export. Good on Coinbase and I’ll vehemently defend them for it after experiencing it first hand.
- zapita 5y ago
  What is “globohomo wokeness”?
  - refenestrator 5y ago
    My band's name.
president 5y ago
Just know that there is a large majority of Americans that hold this view but don't speak up due to potential of being cancelled or fired.
- fleddr 5y ago
  I wouldn't expect anything else, and the article basically confirms the point. It shows the massive divide between the Twitter world and the real world. Nobody wants real life Twitter.
femiagbabiaka 5y ago
> 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. I’m sure this statement is not true, (racism and sexism don’t exist in Europe now?) but even supposing it is, there are very few companies in the U.S. that are this diverse. And the state of our labor rights in comparison to the EU is atrocious. In the first place, at-will employment, a right wing policy, is to be blamed for how easy it is to fire people for political reasons. It’s easy to strawman an anonymous group of “aggressive identity-based political activists”, much more difficult to reckon with the real differences in the political economy of the EU vs the U.S.
- b9a2cab5 5y ago
  Sure there are. Have you walked into any FAANG office? There are a huge variety of West/East European nationalities and East/Southeast Asians. That's representative of over half the world's population right there. You can probably find an engineer from every single one of the ex-Soviet countries in an NYC Google office. I suppose by diversity you mean the right kind of diversity then?
  - fleddr 5y ago
    "Diversity" can be so confusing and misunderstood. The example I gave, extreme diversity, is not the standard in my country, this tech hub is the exception. I've also worked in teams consisting of only white men. The inconvenient reality is that I couldn't detect a meaningful difference in the quality or quantity of output in either team. As said, I did enjoy the increased diversity from a personal perspective, so there's that. The reason for the roughly equal output is that the team of white men was also diverse. Pointing at a group of people with the same skin and concluding they're all the same is ignorant. It's factually untrue. Likewise, assuming a team is diverse/better due to them having a mix of ethnicities or other aspects, may also not be the case. Don't get me wrong, there are cases where it matters, but also cases where it doesn't.
    - 5y ago
Aunche 5y ago
One thing that I've noticed is that Americans are hyper-focused on raising awareness. Most people should realize that Coinbase making a statement about BLM would lead to zero progress towards the advancement of Civil Rights. However, for some people, it's so important that they'd sacrifice their job for it.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ayngg 5y ago
Coinbase hits a unique intersection of outrage here since it provokes vitriol from both people who hate cryptocurrency, and those that are outspoken progressives, both of which are large demographics on HN. Like when you think about it, how is this a big deal in any way? I think the fact that people are making a big deal out of it is a bigger deal than whatever Coinbase's internal practices are here.
- sneak 5y ago
  I love cryptocurrency and don't care much for american progressivism. It's still pretty obvious to me that Coinbase is run by scumbags, like Uber and Google are.
  - solveit 5y ago
    Can you name a company in, say, the top 50 largest companies by market cap that isn't run by scumbags? The intent of the question is to divine whether you think Coinbase in particular is a problem, or whether you have a problem with big companies in general.
    - TylerE 5y ago
      Berkshire Hathaway?
    - sneak 5y ago
      From what I know as an outsider: Tesla, TSMC, Netflix, Adobe, Toyota.
      - nogss 5y ago
        I’m sorry, you’re going with the company whose CEO referred to a man who heroically rescued trapped children as a pedophile?
renewiltord 5y ago
I mean, that makes sense. Culturally, that society has, at crucial times, decided to “just follow orders” even when the orders were reprehensible. It is not particularly surprising that Europeans don’t rock the boat. Nobody brings politics or activism to work and that has yielded certain outcomes over the last century. I actually prefer the mission-focused thing but I wouldn’t be convinced by the Europeans who are notorious conformists.

by fleddr 5y ago

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.

Zababa 5y ago
You make at least three times as much as people in Europe, while the cost of living isn't three times higher. You can save this money in case something bad happens. If you're a minimum wage worker that's a different story. But we're talking about software engineers here. A standing desk and wrist exercises solve most of your possible work-related injuries.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- aiisjustanif 5y ago
  Not everyone at tech company is a software engineer or makes that type of money.
5560675260 5y ago
> Is it really any wonder that “politics” ends up being an issue in the workplace? It's still a wonder for me, I don't follow your reasoning at all. How does this force people into being antagonistic and fighting over politics in the workplace? If anything, this should put a pressure on workers to not stand out and keep their mouth shut, so that they wouldn't risk loosing coveted employer-provided insurance.
fleddr 5y ago
I think we're mixing up different political topics here. The one I think you're talking about is the US workers' struggle to defend or increase basic worker rights. Which indeed is a political struggle of workers versus management. If I'm not mistaken, the Coinbase case is about social justice types of topics like feminism, BLM, trans rights, colonialism, the like.
- afavour 5y ago
  My point is that positions like Brian's require there to be a clear and bright line between "political" and "not political". I think it's at least slightly easier to draw that line in European workplaces where the nature of employment is not as politically fraught. Just to take two of your examples: feminism and trans rights. Both have healthcare implications. Your employer controls your healthcare. Should the healthcare provided by your employer cover birth control? Abortion? Conversion therapy? This mix is inevitable.

slownews45 5y ago

I used to work with kids in an international program. I had a hard "mission focused" rule. Most of the social justice type advocacy talk about political topics would be banned under this rule (along with a lot of other stuff about back home like what they owned etc). Kids whose parents would have hated each other getting along well, making friendships, etc. In the long run, seeing this humanity in each other (I think) will contribute more to some large benefits than always going to war on every issue. Some examples - Student (jewish) whose dream was to join IDF to kill "terrorists" vs kid whose parents were palestinian (and hated jews). The kid who talked trash about blood transfusions for some reason - with a friend whose medical form had a history of them. Some crazy wealth disparities (the private jet kids with the extended passport filled with stamps vs kid who saved mowing money to go on program). Stripped of all the baggage from back home (and with no cell phone / internet access etc), working together (outdoor program), no parents spoiling them (for the spoiled ones) or whaling on them (one or two parents from south still do this) - very cool to see what happens (in most cases).

fleddr 5y ago
A beautiful story, thanks for sharing. I can only attest from both travel and work that exposure to other cultures and peoples destroys any and all bias.
Zababa 5y ago
Thank you for sharing that. It's nice to see examples of what we can do when we focus on what unites us, vs what divides us.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

olegious 5y ago

Having worked in both (EU and US) I have seen both sides. I saw the trend (identity based politics) starting to appear in tech in Europe, for example "we shouldn't try to win business from company X due to their stance on issue Y" came up multiple times in company all hands (500 person company).

throwawaysea 5y ago
That’s disappointing but I suppose it is to be expected since the Internet allows cultural exports at light speed. I am reminded of the recent warning from the French education minister (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/world/europe/france-threat-american-universities.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/world/europe/france-threa...): > French politicians, high-profile intellectuals and journalists are warning that progressive American ideas — specifically on race, gender, post-colonialism — are undermining their society. “There’s a battle to wage against an intellectual matrix from American universities,’’ warned Mr. Macron’s education minister.

saurik 5y ago

> 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. > Any ethnicity, sex, gender, sexuality, religion and political conviction you can think of and we all get along just fine with zero tensions. This really sounds like you are blaming the black employees at Coinbase for standing up for themselves, and that if they just sat back down and took whatever hand they were being dealt that there would be "zero tensions"... which I guess hinges awkwardly on what you mean by "tensions"? https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/27/technology/coinbase-cryptocurrency-black-employees.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/27/technology/coinbase-crypt... I encourage you to read this article--which, FWIW, I'm sure is one of the articles Brian Armstrong here is calling a "hit piece" in his Twitter thread--as this wasn't merely some abstract issue of "politics": black employees at Coinbase felt they were being actively discriminated against.

fleddr 5y ago
Sorry, I lack the privilege to read that article.
- finiteseries 5y ago
  Here you go: http://archive.today/EMPL2 http://archive.today/EMPL2 Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
  - fleddr 5y ago
    I wasn't trolling, I really can't read it. Also not on that archive link.
tayo42 5y ago
This is interesting, never saw this article. I don't get why people struggle so much dealing with black people? Like just be empathetic and assume the best. I guess so many people are just racist. It's just crazy.

tinyhouse 5y ago

> Just want to say how ridiculous this is from a European perspective. What is ridiculous? What Brian said? the response? I'm not following.

fourstar 5y ago
It’s ridiculous in his homogenous untainted bubble. Guy is doing mental gymnastics with himself to appear morally superior.
fleddr 5y ago
Saying you're a mission focused company and this being somehow controversial is ridiculous. Every company should be mission focused. As his post demonstrates, it turns out to not be controversial at all. A handful of people left and after a few weeks the Twitter mob stops. Then you're left with reasonable people to do the job, which is the point of any company.
- sagichmal 5y ago
  > A handful of people left They lost close to half of their engineering team, significant percentages of their operations teams, and many senior leaders.
  - comp_throw7 5y ago
    What? Only 5% of the company took the buyout: https://www.coindesk.com/business/2020/10/08/5-of-coinbase-employees-take-severance-offer-over-apolitical-stance/ https://www.coindesk.com/business/2020/10/08/5-of-coinbase-e...
  - fleddr 5y ago
    Maybe you're mixing this up with Basecamp?

fourstar 5y ago

Which euro country? Seems like you haven’t experienced the workplace woke-ism yet. Don’t worry, though. It will be soon in every euro country that isn’t already. After all —- globohomo wokeness is America’s biggest export. Good on Coinbase and I’ll vehemently defend them for it after experiencing it first hand.

zapita 5y ago
What is “globohomo wokeness”?
- refenestrator 5y ago
  My band's name.

president 5y ago

Just know that there is a large majority of Americans that hold this view but don't speak up due to potential of being cancelled or fired.

fleddr 5y ago
I wouldn't expect anything else, and the article basically confirms the point. It shows the massive divide between the Twitter world and the real world. Nobody wants real life Twitter.

femiagbabiaka 5y ago

> 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. I’m sure this statement is not true, (racism and sexism don’t exist in Europe now?) but even supposing it is, there are very few companies in the U.S. that are this diverse. And the state of our labor rights in comparison to the EU is atrocious. In the first place, at-will employment, a right wing policy, is to be blamed for how easy it is to fire people for political reasons. It’s easy to strawman an anonymous group of “aggressive identity-based political activists”, much more difficult to reckon with the real differences in the political economy of the EU vs the U.S.

b9a2cab5 5y ago
Sure there are. Have you walked into any FAANG office? There are a huge variety of West/East European nationalities and East/Southeast Asians. That's representative of over half the world's population right there. You can probably find an engineer from every single one of the ex-Soviet countries in an NYC Google office. I suppose by diversity you mean the right kind of diversity then?
- fleddr 5y ago
  "Diversity" can be so confusing and misunderstood. The example I gave, extreme diversity, is not the standard in my country, this tech hub is the exception. I've also worked in teams consisting of only white men. The inconvenient reality is that I couldn't detect a meaningful difference in the quality or quantity of output in either team. As said, I did enjoy the increased diversity from a personal perspective, so there's that. The reason for the roughly equal output is that the team of white men was also diverse. Pointing at a group of people with the same skin and concluding they're all the same is ignorant. It's factually untrue. Likewise, assuming a team is diverse/better due to them having a mix of ethnicities or other aspects, may also not be the case. Don't get me wrong, there are cases where it matters, but also cases where it doesn't.
  - 5y ago

Aunche 5y ago

One thing that I've noticed is that Americans are hyper-focused on raising awareness. Most people should realize that Coinbase making a statement about BLM would lead to zero progress towards the advancement of Civil Rights. However, for some people, it's so important that they'd sacrifice their job for it.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

ayngg 5y ago

Coinbase hits a unique intersection of outrage here since it provokes vitriol from both people who hate cryptocurrency, and those that are outspoken progressives, both of which are large demographics on HN. Like when you think about it, how is this a big deal in any way? I think the fact that people are making a big deal out of it is a bigger deal than whatever Coinbase's internal practices are here.

sneak 5y ago
I love cryptocurrency and don't care much for american progressivism. It's still pretty obvious to me that Coinbase is run by scumbags, like Uber and Google are.
- solveit 5y ago
  Can you name a company in, say, the top 50 largest companies by market cap that isn't run by scumbags? The intent of the question is to divine whether you think Coinbase in particular is a problem, or whether you have a problem with big companies in general.
  - TylerE 5y ago
    Berkshire Hathaway?
  - sneak 5y ago
    From what I know as an outsider: Tesla, TSMC, Netflix, Adobe, Toyota.
    - nogss 5y ago
      I’m sorry, you’re going with the company whose CEO referred to a man who heroically rescued trapped children as a pedophile?

renewiltord 5y ago

I mean, that makes sense. Culturally, that society has, at crucial times, decided to “just follow orders” even when the orders were reprehensible. It is not particularly surprising that Europeans don’t rock the boat. Nobody brings politics or activism to work and that has yielded certain outcomes over the last century. I actually prefer the mission-focused thing but I wouldn’t be convinced by the Europeans who are notorious conformists.