"we hired an external consultant in August of this year who specializes in data science and diversity and inclusion to cull through all of our historic data related to diversity ... and conduct a high volume of interviews with employees representing all background, functions, and tenures to understand the employee experience. The independent investigation concluded that there was no evidence of structural bias in hiring, promotions or performance evaluations."
"All of those complaints were thoroughly investigated, one through an internal investigation and two by separate third-party investigators, all of whom found no evidence of wrongdoing and concluded the claims were unsubstantiated. We have shared this information with the reporter."
So external investigators didn't find anything wrong and the data was shared with the NYT reporter. What else can they do if they are really innocent?
[1] https://blog.coinbase.com/upcoming-story-about-coinbase-2012...
Without access to information about the firm doing the work, the report, or the underlying data it is impossible to know if a real investigation was done or not.
Many of the "issues" bought up in this article aren't even problematic. It says John Russ left because Armstrong took public stance that he wanted Coinbase to focus on crypto space stuff.
Coinbase's stance there is fair, reasonable and moral. It is desirable that some companies just do what it says on the tin. If Russ had a reason for quitting that was race-related then the NYT didn't uncover it.
Political parties have pet Think Tanks and Consulting Companies and various other organisations that only exist to massage the existing data into the desired narrative.
Look for the data points that indicate 'normal' and orbit that. When the inevitable questions about X% of the African-American workforce quit within Y time, just point to the stats that say 'normal'. Find some other outlier statistic to point out that random groupings happen, use this to try and dismiss this scenario as a one-off random event; coincidence.
Kids: learn your statistics! You'll be able to cheat your way into at least a couple of promotions throughout your career. (What I actually mean is: learn your statistics so you can spot when you're being cheated).
There are consultancies whose reputations depend on reporting only unvarnished truth to their clients. That way the client can reliably handle and eliminate actual discrimination, and defend themselves against false claims. I'm not sure that a whitewashing firm would be as valuable as all that.
Innocent of what exactly? At a certain point whether the leadership of Coinbase is racist or not doesn't matter. What matters is their actions. The article says "roughly three-quarters of the Black employees" left the company over a 6 month span due to feelings of being discriminated against. That isn't an accusation. It is a fact. It also isn't something that will just happen accidentally. That alone is a problem that demands urgent attention regardless of what is in the hearts of Coinbase's leadership team.
I am not comfortable with promoting the framing of the article to an automatically established fact. The only solid fact here is people leaving and the inferred reason is racial discrimination. I am not saying this inference is likely to be wrong or not, but that it is nonetheless an inference and not a fact. The article also doesn't let the reader know how those numbers compare to the baseline attrition of the company, i.e. what percentage of the other demographic groups have left in the same time period, which tends to be pretty high in the startup scene. Racial discrimination at workplace being pretty seriously illegal in the US these employees would have a strong recourse against it and NYT can not possibly provide a superior standard of factuality for those accusations.
I punched a man in the face yesterday. To determine if I'm a violent person it's important to know whether I punched a man who was pushing his child on a swing set, or whether I punched a man who was crawling through a window in my home.
Ms. Milosevich said Coinbase hired a consultant over the summer who did interviews and looked at the company’s history, and found “no evidence of structural bias.”
“Employees reported a strong culture, fair employee treatment, high employee satisfaction and high energy for belonging, inclusion and diversity,” she said.
Managers in the customer support team, where many of the Black employees work, wrote their own report last month.
When a group of people say they see smoke I tend to believe them. But I'm also not a national news paper. I'd have like to see the NYTimes get some concrete facts before making such a serious accusation.
This feels like a trap that we don't fall into in other areas. This is an external consultant is paid by the company, whos reviews and future job prospects are based on being an attractive hire for other companies accused of racist action. There's obviously a huge conflict of interest there.
At HN we would recognize that conflict of interest if we were talking about binding arbitration. We would recognize that conflict of interest if we were talking about a security consultant that was dismissing security disclosures from 3rd-parties. It's a little disappointing to me to see unequal standards applied here.
The question is, is what the NYT is saying plausible, is there evidence of this going on? And yeah, the story sites specific examples, interviews specific employees, and cites complaints from managers. It seems completely plausible to me.
I don't get why people are suddenly so eager to buy into corporate narratives about structural racism and bias, when they would never buy into those same corporate narratives about issues like privacy and security. Every time an Apple or a Google thread comes up, our comment section is filled with people calling them out as disingenuous; it's filled with people who are willing to read between the lines on their policies and press releases. We have no shortage of people in those threads who are willing to extrapolate or judge those companies based on the past actions of the industry. But when it comes to representation, suddenly all of that goes out the window?
Representation and bigotry even just as general topics are a huge blind spot for HN that we need to get better at talking about. We need to be less dismissive of these claims. We need to take racial discrimination more seriously, because it is a serious problem in tech.
If any individual was treated unfairly, that individual can sue under discrimination law, for a private apology and settlement.
But beyond that, it's also important that there be NO public apology or acceptance of the idea that refusing to espouse activist politics makes a company intolerant.
I think it's admirable Coinbase is taking a stand to keep activism out of the workplace.
Treating people fairly is required; tolerating campaigning in a private enterprise is not.
They can choose to ignore the NYT, since during the trump years it's been laid bare that they're a political publication.
(who in the article is quoted himself as saying his behavior is because he's on the spectrum.)
Brian Armstrong shut himself in because he doesn't want to deal with it. He doesn't know how to deal with it. All of Coinbase's actions are guided by the consequences, for example, they never needed to address their flash crash because they just needed to placate customers while they were closing a 9 figure funding round announced a few weeks later. They aren't worried about precedent, they are worried about keeping the ship afloat long enough to sell shares to Robinhood traders. This strategy works.
They can also create an inclusive environment that allows them to address underserved markets more accurately. They didn't.
*At the end the article says at the end of 2019 there's 31 Black employees of 1000. At the beginning of the article about the beginning of 2019 it's about 20 of 600 before 15 Black employees quit.
Companies can be incredibly callous about retention issues, especially if fixing them involves noticing which managers are responsible for behaving badly towards their staff.
Well we allow those companies to continue to dismiss their interactions with most of the people in the company as "retention issues," so I think I can spot an actual cause here. Roll in typical treatment of customers as barriers to profit and we have a theme starting.
The headline also mentions that black people were fired, but never follows up on it.
Wow.
The only group I've seen it be permissible to make stereotyped observations about in the last decade in an SF tech office is european/indian/chinese workers. FWIW I don't think that's okay either; we should be striving to make an inclusive workspace for everyone.
As a South Asian minority, this is also my experience. The racism, stereotyping and stigma against South Asians feels more acceptable and totally unrecognized.
I work at a FAANG and a massive percentage of employees are rabidly anti-racist, and wouldn't stand for anything like that. Are coinbase employees just cut from a different cloth?
I get nervous when I make a comment about Zoom being insecure because it's Chinese around Chinese coworkers, and I can at least point to its bad track record on security and how Five Eyes members are treating Huawei.
A job in a competitive industry is probably the first area where a lot of people first see social promotion end as younger more capable people surpass them. This is going to be especially true for people who have received the benefits of affirmative action up until this point in their lives.
https://blog.coinbase.com/upcoming-story-about-coinbase-2012...
> One Black employee said her manager suggested in front of colleagues that she was dealing drugs and carrying a gun, trading on racist stereotypes. Another said a co-worker at a recruiting meeting broadly described Black employees as less capable. Still another said managers spoke down to her and her Black colleagues, adding that they were passed over for promotions in favor of less experienced white employees. The accumulation of incidents, they said, led to the wave of departures.
Impossible!
Also seems like lack of making a statement is now a workplace risk according to the tone of the article.
Many of the comments question whether the accusations are even true or collusive attack because of an unfounded accusation that black people tend to be SJWs (stereotyping). Others blame affirmative-action, bad schools, etc. (classic misdirection). Some even venture into the possibility that a black person complaining about being passed over for promotion might just not be good enough for the job and then just blame discrimination rather than facing the truth (pure gaslighting). Others just go on to attack the New York Times (attacking the messenger). I am waiting for the data science guru to synthesize statistics about how everything is just fine!
I am not going to pretend to be the arbiter of truth here, but can we just take a moment to imagine the possibility that racism (specifically against black Americans) is a problem in America in 2020? Is it such a stretch of the imagination? I mean if we can unquestioningly believe that cryptocurrency is viable currency, we can certainly give the benefit of the doubt to the black workers who have abandoned the company.
> Some even venture into the possibility that a black person complaining about being passed over for promotion might just not be good enough for the job and then just blame discrimination rather than facing the truth (pure gaslighting). [emphasis mine]
Let's consider the possibility, but please don't expect us to just accept it's true. And please don't expect us not to consider other possible alternatives.
But even considering another alternative explanation to something related to discrimination gets you on the list of racists/deserving-of-cancellation/etc. There is always room for debate, especially in a case like this where information is sparse. Forcibly shutting down anyone who wants to exercise their thinking is just socially acceptable censorship.
There are some kinds of topics that I can immediately guess will invite certain kinds of comments on HN, and I've learned to just take a deep breath and ignore them. (If it gets really bad, I go catch up on that other Web site that does over-the-top criticism of HN, so that I don't feel like the only one.) On rare occasions, I've tried to engage some of the, but it's just draining.
However, when not enough people speak up, that can send an implicit message that some life-sucking background noise from others is OK with everyone else, when it's not.
Which is that, if you can share?
People seem to be trying to apply a criminal prosecution level standard for proof/evidence, one that is almost never applied to other companies on non hot button issues or generally on HN. You highlighted the specific hoops people are jumping through well. I hope maybe people can examine why they are so motivated to use this hypocritical double standard to defend this company they have no direct ties with.
For example, people can disagree on the merits of e.g. affirmative action, but if former CoinBase employees are alleging that lower-qualified white employees are being promoted in favor of higher-qualified black employees, then that's a serious matter that you ought to address before pivoting the conversation to other topics. Hiring bias is institutional racism, and allegations of such bias should be thoroughly investigated. But, it's probably easier for some people to talk about affirmative action, but harder for the same people to discuss promotion practices that are biased against black employees. I hope that people who feel eager to talk about the former are also prepared to address the latter.
Also seeing some of the comments, I would like to remind some people not to make racial equality issues into black versus Asian. Both groups experience racism (often different kinds of racism), racial equality is not a zero-sum game, and surely we can find good-faith solutions that help one group without pushing down another.
It's rational to be antagonistic in such a situation.
Then perhaps you can find it in you to empathize with the black folks who are scared of the police, and can begin to understand BLM. You have something in common with them.
Secondly, have you compared that to the damage inflicted by racists not being held accountable in society currently?
people say the same about sexual harassment accusations, once a video, or admittance comes out silence...
most of the times people want there to be videos and solid evidence to believe - but you yourself know that in 2020 we have members of the police force actively killing an meting out their own law upon black people
why is is so hard to believe that behind closed doors people can act and behave in discriminatory ways towards black people?
shall we start walking with little microphones and cameras to work? is this what black people should deal with going to work?
Two guys and a gal were fired after Donglegate. People's lives are being turned upside-down in many ways by social media, whether its discussion of justice issues or sex tapes or your dog or your toast going viral. Discriminatory behavior has long been documented in employment, housing sales and rentals, financial services, etc -- just today I was reading about the riots in Cicero in 1951, when a mob of thousands attacked an apartment building in Cicero, IL into which a black couple attempted to move -- and now some of this behavior is being caught on video, unsurprisingly.
Sure, you can be antagonistic, but as doctors have discovered with malpractice, it's actually more productive and more optimized on a financial level to be gracious. Doctors who are honest and express sympathy and empathy, with an apology [1], when things go poorly are far less likely to be sued for malpractice (more links in linked article). Similarly, when you'd done something that appears to someone else to be racist, why not simply apologize (even something like, "Sorry, that was not my intention!") and then try to do better, even ask how you can do better?
If you are committed to an ideology of white supremacy, then of course this doesn't make sense as a next move. But if you're a normal person who just does things that in retrospect do come across as thoughtless or uninformed, like asking your Asian-American colleague where they're really really from and complimenting them on their English, or telling your Black colleague that you're surprised at how articulate they are, or giving a nine-year-old female chess genius a doll when she just wants a chess set... why not just apologize and do better next time?
The world is made of imperfect people who are all gonna die anyway. Most likely no one will care about your reputation in 100 years, even your great-grandkids (I knew my great-grandparents and I only knew a bit about them). So use this time to actually do your part to make the world better -- why not? It will most likely make you feel better, feel you have more integrity, and you'll be happier.
[1] https://www.natlawreview.com/article/you-had-me-i-m-sorry-im...
>"You don't have sufficient evidence, so we are going to go with whatever non-race based reason I can find as the cause"
Seeking evidence about an event is a worthy activity, but becomes a fools errand when the audience is sympathetic if not outright supportive of the wrongdoers.
That's not honest and that's not why I asked for proof.
It all feels of gaslighting and has a shit ton of people buying into it.
At the end of the day, the best thing for Coinbase employees to do is to jump ship to a competitor (I for one, am happy to give a referral to any Coinbase employee who is leaving due to all this) - but absolutely vile that they would try to buy-out all POC in the company.
What makes you think POC are equivalent with woke activists? That seems a bit like stereotyping to me. It also seems to contradict actual data.[1] While most black Americans agree that racial issues are still serious problems, they tend not to endorse the extreme progressive interpretations and policy recommendations.
If I were to guess, tech workers are much more likely to be progressive activists than workers in most other industries. This includes the (shamefully small) number of black tech workers as well. But at the same time, almost all of the activists are white.
[1] see appendix 1.1.1 https://hiddentribes.us/pdf/hidden_tribes_report.pdf
Hence the baseless personal attacks.
And, they are in denial, since if it wasn't a problem for them they would not question the story.
Sharing stories does help. Racism is rooted in lack of exposure to diversity. It may never be eradicated but working to end it among every new generation is worthwhile IMO.
Uh, have a talk with South African whites sometimes.
And isn't American Deep South, with its 30-50 per cent black population, considered stereotypically racist, while you have a lot of anti-racist movements in mostly white places like Oregon and New England?
It does not work in Europe either. For example, the far-right Rassemblement National has most support on the French Riviera and Corsica, places where the Arab and African populations are very numerous. It struggles to gain support in Bretagne, where there is little immigration.
Israel is very diverse and the level of ethnic and religious violence there is massive.
I am Slavic myself; traveling around former Yugoslavia, I heard things that would absolutely stun American readers. There are people absolutely ready to slit throats of the villagers two kilometers away, just because of a different religion.
From your comments, I hear the conviction that upon meeting people from a different culture, everyone will rejoice and cherish the changes. You do not take into account a possibility that two cultures may, upon contact, develop a serious conflict, perhaps even ending in war.
Diverse places like Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia, former USSR, the Caucasus, Lebanon, Iraq or lately Western European metropoles seem to be a hotbed of conflicts.
The biggest racists that I know grew up in an environment with the most diversity (talking about EU here, not US). It also shows in political results, where extreme right is most voted on in diverse environments.
Both empirically (it's the most multicultural tech scene I ever witnessed), and in principles (one of the core tenets of crypto is precisely eliminating discrimination), crypto would be among the most counter productive fields for a racist to spend their time on.
Of course I'm not discounting the fact that humans are often irrational and incoherent, so it seems fair to give the benefit of the doubt to both parties until we have more information.
> it's the most multicultural tech scene I ever witnessed
Coinbase's own (unrefuted) numbers show they are far worse than other tech companies. Where is your conception based off of?
> one of the core tenets of crypto is precisely eliminating discrimination
As this thread as made clear if you go to the bottom of the comments, stated principles and actual beliefs/actions often don't match in tech. Closeted republicans in tech compared to the leaning of corporate action is a great example of that. In some ways, Coinbase said the quiet part out loud with their apolitical stance. When that happened, tons of people flocked to applaud them, both on HN and in the VC industry. All of this perfectly aligns with finding racism within said company, and the tech industry as a whole.
Systemic racism is insidious, for so many reasons, and one of them is that it is not always overt. I believe the aggrieved commenters reacting to SJW boogeymen are not ‘racists’, in the sense that they are not consciously discriminating against people different from themselves. But voicing racism is only the tip of the iceberg! Systemic racism is baked into the system, that’s what makes it systemic!
Some of the important questions we (white // male // straight // what have you, fill in your own) need to ask ourselves are like:
How many Black friends do I have? (Nowhere near as many as White friends. That makes intuitive sense: almost everyone in my building is White, same for my job, most of my friends’ friends are White too... But what choices do I make on a daily basis that reinforce that? What different choices could I make to actually expand the range of people I have a chance to interact with?)
How can we better address inequality? (I have a doctorate and I’ll admit it, I’m a bit of a snob, and I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished. My strong preference is to hire based on merit: I’ve worked with incompetent people, unfortunately; and I would be pissed if I wasn’t rewarded for my own merit. But there’s a lot of backstory that got me here: private schools, SAT prep classes, I wasn’t bullied, my own computer, not having to have a job to support my family, not being sick, my native English language skills, I’m handsome and charming and tall and well educated and know lots of lingo and have shared experiences with most hiring managers I’ve met—all of these things helped me a lot to get to where I am now. Systemic racism comes into the picture because there are real social structures that have prevented Black and other minority communities from having access to these same resources. Just a few off the cuff examples: Jim Crow, urban food deserts, underfunded public schools, shitty computers at the public library. Merit hiring seems to me a lot less fair when I consider friends of mine who don’t have that ‘merit’ because of factors that were determined far out of their control.)
What would it be like for me to feel uncomfortable or unwelcome or unappreciated at my job? (Technical customer calls are always a boys club, and I’m good at banter w Midwestern ag tech b2b customers. But shit, I sure notice when they mispronounce a coworker’s name, or start a call w our group of men and women as ‘well, gentlemen’, or crack a dick pun. And it makes me sad to imagine what it would feel like to be the odd one out.)
Systemic racism isn’t going away, or easy to fix. We all ought to start giving some real thought to the unconscious choices we make that contribute to tech feeling like a blanket unwelcome industry for a whole lot of people. Smart, kind, creative, strong people, passionate people, worthwhile people.
———
Edit to add that there were supposed to be emojis sprinkled throughout there, which made clear when I was joking...so you should assume the best in me throughout ;D
Let's assume that I am 100% certain of all the accusations. How many types of comments do you expect to see about this? Condemn the company, point out systemic racism doesn't just affect Coinbase but everything, offer condolences and sympathy, support efforts to reduce racism. All of these comments exist in the thread.
What if I don't believe all the accusations are true? There are multitudes of reasons why that could be the case, which reflects in the number of possibilities being commented on. By your own contention, racism is a problem in America, so you would expect at least some of the comments to be racist, or at least controversial. You seem to have focused only on the worst ones, ignoring the discussions that followed them, whether positive or negative. You've ignored all the nuanced positions or straw-manned them. You're dismissive of people's comments or concerns while simultaneously asking people to not be dismissive of your concerns. I really don't get it.
* They suggest that Black people are in general SJWs
* They attempt to litigate affirmative action rather than the claims in the article
* They argue that Black employees passed over for promotion were underqualified.
* They dismiss the entire article on the basis of it having appeared in the New York Times.
Take issues with any of these specific complaints if you want, but don't pretend that the comment simply said "there aren't enough anti-Coinbase comments here", because they didn't say that at at all.
The comments section on HN do not leave me feeling like racism is being given enough consideration within the community.
Why not do something useful instead of just waste minutes and photons?
And it's not "my one black friend was a victim of racism this one time." It's just generally harder to get a job. It's just generally harder to get promoted. It's just generally harder to be taken seriously relative to your white peers.
And that's why these responses from Coinbase are unsatisfying. Every company and every hiring process has elements of racism in it. We haven't escaped the biases that permeate our culture. There are companies that are aware of these biases and work hard to minimize their impact, and there are companies that stick their heads in the sand and say 'nope, no racism here! Find me actual proof!'.
If it’s hard to believe because you haven’t lived it, then is listening to the multitudes of people also not enough?
Edit: so apparently the blacks I know, and who would agree with a lot of the comments here, don't exist...
I’m sure racism exists but that type of overt racism that this article suggests, in the middle of SF especially in tech, is hard to believe.
So I take the accounts of some sort of systemic racism within Coinbase with a lot of skepticism. Especially the account of the support people who were forced to move to Portland. It sounds like all except one person was forced to move to Portland and both white and black people were asked. There’s a lot missing in that accusation which makes me think they are twisting things out of proportion.
I would love a more detailed account or talking with others. Could there be racists working in Coinbase? Sure. But this article doesn’t cover enough for me to not be skeptical without getting both sides of the story.
That’s why Customer Service isn’t treated like the Rock Stars that Sales or Engineering is treated like in a company.
It also tends to have the most natural turnover, and tends to be the lesser skilled positions in a software company (not often requiring specializations, like developers).
I would say that this kind of mission statement can only work if done at the beginning, as reacting in response to the work environment described by their employees was doomed for failure.
I know many people like Brian Armstrong, and the investors. They are all cut from a similar cloth and they honestly have no clue how to react. They don't know how to get women on a panel, they don't know how to get qualified people of color in positions to change things. They are just told what they did wrong and just shut themselves off from it. The very people with power to change anything get marginalized themselves. And yes, some - not all - of them actually are not interested in inclusion or really are racist and sexist. But for the former, there is room to empathize with these kind of people to steer their energy in more productive ways.
> They don't know how to get women on a panel
2 out of 7 members of the exec team are women.
> they don't know hot to get qualified people of color in positions to change things
4 out of 7 members of the exec team have last names of Choi, Chatterjee, Grewal, Gupta.
It's almost as if you have strong biases (or delusions) and didn't even do a basic fact check before making bold claims against Coinbase.
I’m saying we can all address this better.
This is the standard SV makeup. Do a random sample of any large tech company and this is the team you’d get. This tells me they’re not doing anything different.
I would think that progressive activism is the minority rather than the default view.
Isn't it the racially discriminatory stance to make decisions based on race?
I think most rational people would rather make decisions purely on competence and facts, not identity.
> they don’t know how to get qualified people of color in positions to change things
These aren’t the kinds of things that someone running a business should be concerned with.
Don’t be condescending. Women and “people of color” don’t need to be rescued and hoisted up into a business artificially. They are perfectly capable of joining the workforce through the same doors as all other people.
This is a company that took the time to write a damage control pre-buttal to an NYT story, so you can safely assume they have a canned answer about it deployed to their recruiting teams. So the key here would be the "probing questions" part.
And, who knows? Coinbase might convince you that their heart is in the right place on this issue.
Whether you go on with the job or not should be based entirely on how you personally feel about the situation. Maybe this bothers you but you’d like the opportunity to make a difference and try to shift the culture. Maybe you’re so bothered by it that you don’t want to work for them at all. Maybe it bothers you, but not enough to change your course. Maybe something else.
I think the one important thing to do is that, if you do pull out of the process, let them know why. Hiring people costs a lot of money, and perhaps seeing that there are actual consequences for letting their corporate culture be what it seems to be might help to drive home the message that this stuff matters enough to affect their bottom line, and that they should therefore take it seriously.
> I do already have a (very) good job, so I don't "have" to have this and can afford to just drop it.
I understand the getting an interview struggle, but you have time and comfort here to wait and find a better option. My one counterpoint in my head (change from the inside) is ruled out if Coinbase isn't receptive to the change at a leadership level, which seems to be the case here. I think you do the most good here by explicitly dropping out and telling them this is the reason why. Maybe if they won't listen to their own employees, they will listen to the labor market.
The company is heavily capitalized and clearly mismanaged.
I can see why investors might put money in Coinbase; they can place bets on many horses. But for a full time job? I'd advise friends to work elsewhere.
I wouldn’t turn down an opportunity just because of a (probably biased) article. Get Coinbase’s side of the story during your interview and decide for yourself.
Think long term.
It's like the kid getting caught doing drugs who claims it was their first time so they should be let off, odds are it wasn't their first time.
Clearly, the CEO was not distressed at the events, and wanted to minimize anyone else's negative feelings about the matter because it wasn't important to him.
A better CEO might recognize that this issue was important to the social fabric and therefore is also important to his company's mission.
Black people are more than capible of holding their own in corporate america, but they've been disenfranchised and disabused by crappy social policies and generational complex trauma stemming back to the 1600's in America, compounded by familial and community abandonment.
The net result of this is you have a bunch of basically abandoned children that, when they get into an adult environment, especially a tech environment, they can't function. Then, the devil incarnate comes along and says an environment of high emotional regulation (professional standards and boundaries) where people strive to develop cognitive function (think through their problems) and work as teams (because we all have to specailize) is "whiteness" because people are explaining the basics to them, or they can't negotiate because they get very nervous, or a myiad of other issues that really boil down to development.
It is a terrible lie, many things that aren't really racist become racist because all of a sudden we are discovering this group of disabused people don't have the development they need to have to function in that environment, are getting left behind, and have no clear path to attainment. Then the media vultures come in and "monetize" them.
And in some cases, they make people feel threatened and not physically but intellectually, and some narcisstic people feel like they've been dressed down a few notches which is BS.
You're American, some goat farmer is going to come over and invent the next big thing, put you out of work, then you're going to go work fixing robots and make 4x what you were making. Deal with it, leave your cultural identity on the boat.
So first of all, be the best you can be. You have nothing to feel guilty over by doing that and working towards that.
Second, recognize this group has been through an incredibly difficult time and more importantly, that survival instinct and moral perspective are important to really listen to and to play chess with. Keep "whiteness" and "blackness" out of the discussion and just stick to this as a navigation exercise.
Third, keep in mind a lot of them are impatient and angry. That isn't your doing, the best you can do is offer them an ear, mentorship if they ask for it, and a straightforward and fair explination.
As long as people demand x/y hires to be of a certain race or color, the companies will have to continue hiring for diversity, and not for the best qualified candidates.
Stop counting who is who, and the market will take of itself.
I’m not saying the two are related, but the latter was seen as a problem and these forced diversity quotas were instituted.
yes the truth is shades of gray that article doesn't really give any answers to, but the unwillingness of others in these comments to even consider the possibility of some racism, discrimination, etc. experienced by others is just disheartening
So now, in order to protect ourselves against bad faith actors, we have to be extremely skeptical of victimhood claims. I agree, it is sad.
You are forced to hire a certain percent of POC. Doesn't matter if they are a poor fit for the company. Doesn't matter if they are not even a good fit for the job. Doesn't matter if they are not even capable of doing the job. You can't wait to hire a POC that is a good fit or capable, or you are violating the law.
It is also difficult to fire the forced hires once you are forced to hire them. Instead of just saying "they sucked at their job" you have to play all kinds of games to fire someone that is a POC hire. All companies face this issue and until its addressed (By removing affirmative action) there will always be this dysfunctional divide.
This also causes a harmful feedback loop to POC that are simply not up to the task and always think they are being targeted (because they are) rather than upping their skill set or working on their professionalism.
And here come the downvotes.
Interesting. Are Asians or Indians not “people” or “of color” in this worldview?
Please note this is not a slight against women, immigrants, or anyone else. They obviously have valid discrimination claims. But if you work in a community where less than 1% of African-American students are scoring at grade level in mathematics, and your company claims it is "diverse" yet hires no local African-Americans, there is still a serious problem in your community that should be addressed. (It's OK if you don't care, as long as you don't pretend otherwise). So please do not conflate hiring "people of color" with hiring any specific group.
* By "African-American" here I mean descendants of slaves who lived in the USA, and are thus severely disadvantaged because of it, having actual wealth stolen without any legal means available for recovery. I do understand that "African-American" is commonly used to mean any black U.S. resident.
Interestingly, a growing number of activists prefer the term ADOS (American descendants of slavery) because it makes precisely this distinction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Descendants_of_Slaver...
I hate this kind of sloppy writing. who added that, the colleague or the manager?
EDIT: Downvoted. I guess clarity in the NYT isn't allowed to be questioned..
> Default to trust: We assume positive intent amongst our teammates, and assume ignorance over malice. We have each other’s backs.
> some of what I’ve written above will be misinterpreted, whether accidentally or on purpose. [1]
If you assume positive intent then no one would misinterpret your words "on purpose".
[1] https://blog.coinbase.com/coinbase-is-a-mission-focused-comp...
Racism deserves no place in modern society, and Coinbase execs should be ashamed.
Up until yesterday I was very confused at how a tech company could be accused of racism while simultaneously having a (presumably) vast over-representation of Asians who - to the surprise of some - are a minority.
I have since learned [0] that there are literally a large group of people who have redefined "racism" to "unequal distribution of privileges between white people and people of color".
I think it would be necessary for the NYT to be using that definition here to distinguish this from an ordinary labour dispute. I've seen non-black teams where half or more the people quit.
[0] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/white-fragility-de...
So you're the one redefining the meaning of the word.
In an era of smartphones and viral videos, the fact that we don't have a single audio/video recording exposing the racism seems rather suspect. I'm not saying that is proof of anything. But something to consider.
The idea that coinbase, a silicon valley/SF/etc company, would discriminate, especially against black people, is hard for me to believe. But I'm open to anything. Certainly even if the company doesn't have a culture of bias, it may have a few bad apples.
> If the numbers haven’t changed, it’s definitely because there wasn’t a real intention to do so
This is a lie. Everyone who works in tech knows that companies are bending over backwards to hire black employees. The problem is the lack of qualified employees. Even unqualified black employees are being hired just to say "we have more black employees today than last year". It's been like this for a few years now. That tech companies had no real intention to hire black employees is simply a lie.
> When Mr. Armstrong wrote his blog post in September asking employees to leave their outside interests at the door, he was celebrated and praised by several tech investors.
So this is why we have a nytimes article. It's a political attack masquerading as a employment bias issue. Got it.
Do you regularly record interactions with your coworkers, on the chance they may say something incriminating? I don't, and I expect most would not try to record things at work unless they go into a meeting expecting it to end poorly.
> The problem is the lack of qualified employees.
This sounds awfully similar to the argument made against women: qualified women just don't apply! Unfortunately, that is not actually true. http://isitapipelineproblem.com/
You seem to accept Coinbase/Brian Armstrong's words without question. Why do you feel that the Black employees' words must be critiqued to hell and back?
That's a silly response and you know it. If there was systematic racism, as the article seems to be implying, then yes, I would record it. I would record it even if it wasn't directed at me but someone else. If more than 50% of the black employees are leaving due to "racism" then of course I would record it. Wouldn't you? If a manager was being racist towards your co-worker, wouldn't you record it? Or are you a racist?
> This sounds awfully similar to the argument made against women: qualified women just don't apply!
No. I'm saying there is not a lot of black students getting CS degrees/etc. Hence the lack of qualified employees. It's a supply problem, not a demand problem.
> You seem to accept Coinbase/Brian Armstrong's words without question.
No. I specifically said I didn't in the comment you replied to. I said I am open to the idea of racism but I find it very unlikely.
> Why do you feel that the Black employees' words must be critiqued to hell and back?
The difference between you and me is that I just want the truth and you want to push an agenda. I think everyone's words should be critiqued "to hell and back". Including the ceo, black employees and most definitely the political activists at the nytimes. How else are you going to get to the truth?
If I'm so upset at work that I'm about to publicly call someone a racist? Yeah, I usually gather some evidence rather than just smear them.
Just throwing accusations works in 2020, however.
I'll go ahead and file this in the 'In other news, water is wet' category.
1. Coinbase has real problems of discrimination
2. Coinbase is being targeted at a smearing campaign, for not playing ball with the ideology of de-jure of some circles. It is kinda like a repeat of 2003: "if you are not with us (for the Iraqi war), then you are with the terrorist" mantra of conservative circles to justify their war.
The truth, is probably somewhere in between. Also, NYT has become heavily biased/activist type of journal. While they don't straight up lie, they often omit many important details in their story, in order to justify their conclusion.
Also, the "if you're not with us, you're with them" mantra rests on the assumption that supporting the status quo means furthering terrorism/racism/whatever. In 2003 that was provably false given that there was no link between Iraq and Al Qaeda and no evidence of Saddam's supposed WMDs. I think the situation with regards to racial justice in 2020 is much more complex and not quite analagous.
That's also my experience with the media on the left. It's not straight-up fake news. But it's more misleading news. The infamous "women earn 78 cents for every dollar a man make". Which gives you the impression that a man and a woman both working at the same role doing the same work and woman makes 20% less than man. While in reality this is just an abject misrepresentation of the actual stat and weaponized for political gain. But unfortunately, this will not qualify as fake news.
I mean the inciting incident for this was the protests against Police Brutality and Black Lives Matter as a response to the George Floyd killings specifically.
We're not talking about politically correct speech, or "safe spaces" or "cancel culture" or people getting fired over bad twitter joke.
The context here is a societal-wide movement to take meaningful action on data-supported systemic inequalities and discrimination, action that will require political will, individual will, and yes, major corporate support to have any likelihood of success.
Bitcoin NOT Coinbase.
IMHO, that theory is like many others today: It's attractive - it simplifies everything and even makes it quantifiable - but does not stand up to a moment's scrutiny.
Almost everything Coinbase has comes from their community: Liberty; peace; political functionality and stability; economic stability; the rule of law; property rights; the free market; the wealth of the market they sell to; the education and wealth of employees, customers, and partners (including the massive public education and healthcare systems - imagine how their company would survive Coronavirus without the public health system and eventual free vaccine); the physical infrastructure of housing, roads, food, power, etc., all kept functioning and safe; the incredible technology stack they build upon, from mathematics to basic literacy to electricity to materials to more proximate tech (the Internet, Web, TCP/IP, and of course the cryptocurrency technology). No matter what Coinbase does, they add only a sliver on top of what's come before.
It's just an absurd, transparent rationalization for selfishness to try to justify being a parasite, for not contributing to it and being responsible for making it work. Our community is us; nobody else will make it work. And it's sociopathic to say that, about part of our community, 'I don't care what happens to African-Americans'.
But being a sociopath and buying into this transparently false argument has become trendy and admired by a vast swath of powerful people in American business, as if ignoring problems will solve them. I used to wonder if they really were smarter than others, but recently I've concluded that they follow the herd and are easily manipulated as much as other people are (and I could have seen it earlier in financial bubbles, etc.). And as they've followed the herd in disparaging liberalism and postmodernism, rather than thinking critically about them, they've unilaterally disarmed themselves, willingly discarded the tools that would protect them from being deceived, confused, and led.
But we have an entire institution dedicated to solving these types of problems - the government. We don't want corporations trying to "make it work" or "contributing" - we want people to pay their taxes so the government can execute its mission.
It's a meme, a cover story for not doing your part. It's our community, our society. It depends on each person, every one of us, every day.
In other news, What is a crypto company even doing in SV?
I’m not saying they’re racist, but they’re clearly not anti-racist.
I find the "anti-racist" philosophy of Kendi et al. to be misguided at best and divisive and racist at worst.
That's pretty much what it is, and it cannot be realized in our lifetimes to say the least.
>I shouldn't be any more concerned with skin color than hair color or eye color.
And yet, there are others who will never get to hold those aspirations.
>divisive and racist at worst
Sad, yet unsurprising.
One would hope an amazing company that doesn't cover it's ass when it turns out the executive couldn't give a hoot about the treatment of black people and now everyone knows
Notwithstanding, such a position places zero restrictions on doing the same with your own money..but corporations make for more interesting headlines than the individuals that run them.
you run a company and tell people they will feel included and then they face discrimination... well your house is on fire, you are the leadership and decide not to use you position to do anything
but yeah let’s make it zero sum and say that looking after the investor means that we can treat black people with some decency
BS
It feels very unfortunate that Coinbase's response on Medium has turned off commenting. There is no way to ask questions such as what is the third party firm that investigated and are those results public.
It is funny that Coinbase says we talked to our ColorBlock ERG (the internal diversity group) to hear their comments and questions. Then, the very next sentence says Brian told them what he thinks, but nothing about what they think or had questions about.
Ah, the ol’ James Damore defense.
The only allegation in the article is that Brian Armstrong did not speak or make decisions at meetings, and attributed this to being on the spectrum. The full quote is:
>"Mr. Armstrong rarely spoke or made decisions in meetings, the current and former employees said, leaving them uncertain about his opinions. In a staff meeting this summer, he said he knew his style made many employees uncomfortable and attributed it to being "on the spectrum,” according to a recording of the event."
There's nothing wrong or "bad" about managers who don't speak and make quick decisions at meetings. It's just a management style, and it's disingenuous IMHO to spin it as some kind of bad behaviour.
I mean honestly what is there to think about? What are the other stakeholders he’d need to consult, racists? What other considerations, what is the other side, what downside is there about being against harassment?
Every educated person could issue a quick decision: reprimand the people harassing your black employees! So surely you can see why it makes “the inability to quickly condemn and reprimand harassers” is bad.
He adopted some really fucking stupid, untested, non mainstream cultural policy. Of course there are going to be consequences. Am I the only person who sees he’s bad at this job? And that it is a complete and utter insult to people with actual social disabilities when he blames “being on the spectrum” for being bad at his job?
Coinbase is a medium-sized privately-held company. Reading through those comments, they had some minor issue with a few employees and a relocation plan. This may or may not have involved discriminatory and/or racist behavior.
How is that a story in the New York Times? Or rather: Why is that a story in the New York Times?
It's obviously not because a particularly terrible thing has allegedly been done to those 15 people. This kind of labor case is literally business as usual for courts.
The NYT pursuing an agenda that has probably more to do with the company's stance on politics, and perhaps also an agenda wrt. crypto-currencies.
