"The Synthetix (SNX) project, one of the biggest ecosystems in decentralized finance (DeFi), recently launched the Hadar upgrade, which enabled tokenized real-world assets like Brent oil and the Nikkei stock index."
The article describes Synthetix as a means for speculating on real-world assets through the trading of tokens representing equity actually held on other exchanges. However, the tokens themselves merely underly the SNX crypto actually being exchanged.
IOW, it's just another vessel for speculating which purports to be backed by real financial assets in the same way Tether purports to be backed by cash.
You are omitting the fact that the one white employee switched to working out of the NYC office. There's no mention of a black employee making the same request and it being denied, just the request to wfh being denied for both white and black employees.
And then you are extrapolating two uncorroborated anecdotes of inappropriate comments as evidence of widespread discrimination.
According to the article, the white employee was not required to relocate to NYC, but rather was allowed to continue to work from their home in Philadelphia.
And, of course, the article has many more complaints than this one!
I don't see anything in the article that implies the PHL employee was given a choice of office. For all we know they made the request after CB decided against WFH teams.
If we take the articles claims at face value, what we know is:
* There was an existing compliance department.
* It had several remote team members.
* The company opened a compliance office in PDX.
* The company required Black team members to relocate to PDX or apply for new jobs.
* The company allowed a non-Black team member to remain in PHL and work out of the NYC office.
* Multiple sources claimed that the PHL employee was allowed to continue working remotely.
* The stated reason for demanding the relocation of the Black team members was to have the whole compliance team working from one place, a goal that obviously wasn't served by having someone else working out of PHL and NYC.
Maybe the sources in this article are lying (of course, you can rebut any claim that way), but apart from that, I'm not sure how this complaint is easily knocked down.
It's unclear but I think when it's mentioned PHL employee is able to work remote, they mean they are able to work out of the NYC office which is remote relative to the PDX office. It was not my read that they are working remote from home.
Your wording speculates on how the communication around remote was delivered in an unfavorable light. We know the decision was made to end WFH/remote, and one employee managed to get permission to work from the NYC office. A more realistic (still speculative) scenario imo:
-Company announces end of wfh/remote for a team. Folks are asked to relocate to PDX.
-Employee asks for permission to work from NYC. Request is approved.
Group employee relocations are a big deal. You are leaving out the part where the stated rationale for that relo is to have the team all together in one place. Instead, the real rationale appears to have been to have all the Black employees all together in one place (or, just as pausibly, that the relo was in fact a soft RIF of that group of employees).
@tptacek: you are imputing a motivation out of thin air. having fought hard for wfh/remote at companies against it, I can imagine far more benign reasons to be plausible.
No company does a group relocation without expecting to lose several members of the team. They're essentially all RIFs. I've tried to keep my analysis as dispassionate as I can in this part of the thread. I think the facts as asserted in the article speak pretty clearly, and the bulleted list I provided upthread recites those facts pretty much directly and in ways you haven't disputed.
Without the additional context from the article, I think citing 75% is a bit misleading.
"When Coinbase announced it would be opening an office in Portland, Ore., several Black employees in the compliance department who worked remotely were told to move there or reapply for new jobs, four former employees said."
"All of the Black workers in the compliance division ended up among the group of 15 who left."
Without concrete evidence of discrimination in the article, my mind jumps to this being the pivotal cause of the stats, one team getting asked to relocate and that team being disproportionate in its demographics.
I know from co-workers that the company once had a strong stance against remote work and made limited exceptions. I can see that being a source of a lot of discontent. Asking folks to move to a new city is a big ask too; I could see the company having handled that poorly.
On the upside CB shifted to remote-first which should be great for being able to have a more diverse workforce. And contrary to some of the comments here, I take that as strong evidence of the ability for our leadership team to acknowledge mistakes and course correct.
Ok, let's accept what you say as fact and ignore that an exception was made for the single White employee in that department which wasn't made for any of the Black employees you are referencing. Let's also ignore the weirdness of 40% of the company's Black employees being on a single seemingly small team. That still leaves 7 other employees in other departments who left the company in a 6 month window due to feeling discriminated against. 35% is obviously a better number than 75%, but it doesn't allow you to dismiss this problem.
> ignore that an exception was made for the single White employee
Let's not ignore that this exception is being positioned as being based on skin color (racist motives), not job role, tenure, exceeding expectations, caregiving responsibilities, or any other plausible reason for an exception. That's a laughable, yet dangerous take. Incredibly inflammatory and accusatory.
Either Coinbase is an incredibly racist and black-unfriendly company, or some people would like you to believe that, and these accusations can all be unravelled to crying wolf, accusing others of downright illegal acts, without even filing a formal complaint to help others not suffer the same fate.
As I have said elsewhere in this thread, these harmless explanations for something that can be perceived as discriminatory are perfectly reasonable when there are only a few isolated incidents. However their believability has an inverse relationship to the number of accusations. When there is a clear pattern of behavior, as their is in this instance, it gets harder and harder to argue it is anything other than discriminatory.
And at a certain point the motive for these decisions doesn't even matter. If an overwhelming majority of Black employees feel they are being discriminated against at work, that is a huge failing for a company whether there is active discrimination happening or not.
It does not work that way (logically). Listing a 100 weak, baseless arguments is a debating tactic to confuse your opponents, not allowing them to address and debunk specifics (and if they still manage: "The lady doth protest too much, methinks"). It also creates the appearance of smoke.
More likely: There is a activist political trend now, that has picked up a lot of steam. In that political view, society is racist, and whites at best profit from this, at worst contribute to this. Anything bad happening to a person of color is then used to accuse the racist system, or even individuals, of a heinous act, to force their hands to adopt your view, or deplatform them and their criticism as an obstacle to growth of your movement, for personal gain, as revenge for inequality, or as a coping mechanism.
Far easier to argue/reason/imagine that, than that Coinbase makes WFH exceptions due to skin color, or that black employee are correctly assessing skills and experience of co-workers and correctly identifying racism on skin color, when passed over for a promotion. And if you don't believe that racism is really a driver at Coinbase, the correct course seems to be to attack these allegations for what its actually doing, not to support it by falling victim to this poor-argument overload and resigning because it is too hard, or too sensitive, or too taboo, to call out this damaging and horrific behavior.
Maybe it doesn't work like that in high school debate clubs, but it works like that in the law. Look up concepts like circumstantial evidence and disparate impact.
We can infer someone is guilty of a crime from a collection of evidence suggesting they are guilty even without direct evidence.
We can also punish someone for discrimination simply for exhibiting a pattern of discrimination regardless of intent to discriminate.
Take it to court then. Collect circumstantial evidence and allow for an objective ruling on discrimination and racism in the workplace. If the circumstantial he-said she-said is of any substance, you can prove your guilt.
Don't do trial by (social) media. Especially when your accusations are incredibly heavy and damaging. Don't play judge when you are not capable of objectively looking at all the presented evidence.
Coinbase presented their side of the story: nothing went to court. No investigation found anything of substance. If the circumstantial evidence was so strong to hold up in court, why didn't it?
For the law, intent is of utmost importance. For (social) media, just "circumstantial evidence" of exhibiting patterns of discrimination is enough to act. It is not enough to act, if you are a decent person.
>Ms. Sawyerr said she had talked with four other Black employees about bringing a discrimination lawsuit against Coinbase, but the others backed out after being offered hefty severance payments in exchange for confidentiality agreements.
It never went to court because almost everyone involved was incentivized for it to not end up in court. Going to court is often a difficult, expensive, and likely damaging path to pursue for victims of a variety of crimes. The lack of a court case has nothing to do with the amount of evidence or the truthfulness of the accusations here.
>For the law, intent is of utmost importance. For (social) media, just "circumstantial evidence" of exhibiting patterns of discrimination is enough to act. It is not enough to act, if you are a decent person.
Once again, you are factually wrong with this comment. People can be thrown in jail based purely on an overwhelming amount of circumstantial evidence and companies can be punished for discriminatory behavior even if there is documented proof that there was no intent to discriminate.
Of course she said that. Big bad company silenced her co-suiters with money, after their spy devision learned that she was bringing suit. Now she has no recourse to go court herself, she absolutely needed those four other employees.
> The lack of a court case has nothing to do with the amount of evidence or the truthfulness of the accusations here.
It allows me to disqualify it as hearsay, and it allows you to think they offered severance payments, with the purpose to keep legit actual racism out of the courts.
Intent is of utmost importance for the law. Every lawyer and judge will agree to that. Punishment is increased for bad willful intent.
I give up. Clearly there is no point to this discussion anymore if you are going to dismiss any possible reporting as hearsay if it isn't argued in court. So I will simply leave this from the American Bar Association.[1]
> In contrast, a disparate-impact claim does not require proof of an intention to discriminate. Instead, showing that a facially neutral employment practice has a disproportionately adverse impact on a protected group states a prima facie case of unlawful disparate-impact discrimination.
What do you know, intent isn't needed for a valid case of discrimination.
We can also punish someone for discrimination simply for exhibiting a pattern of discrimination regardless of intent to discriminate.
No. That's totalitarian and evil. If someone is not intending to discriminate, then they are not guilty of anything and should not be "punished". It's not even slightly reasonable to expect every possible way of slicing a group of people to be reflective of the average gender/race data of the overall population because people are different: that's the entire argument for diversity to begin with.
That's the basic position that is alienating so many hundreds of millions of people and convincing them this kind of activism is toxic. It's why Trump won the first time and did much better than predicted the second. It's why this thread is full of people that think the NYT is being manipulative and deceptive. You may not punish people simply for not having enough black/women employees if they haven't actually done anything to discrimate: end of story.
Please respond to the actual comment made, not something you made up. No where did GP suggest that if every way you slice a group based on gender and race data isn't perfect they'll get in trouble.
They stated that discrimination, even if done without intent, is still discrimination. Please respond to that statement.
And how do you define discrimination if intent doesn't matter? If decisions don't matter then the only way to define discrimination is via observed results: if you have no black employees, it must be discrimination, even if nobody ever actually discriminated in an objective way. Which means you'd be punished for not matching some theoretical demographics.
The whole notion is ridiculous. The fact that California takes this stuff so seriously just makes it look like it's throwing away its tech lead, as viewed from afar.
You seem to be acting as this is some new extreme leftist view of discrimination. This comes from Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. You can find all the details and definitions here[1].
Affirmative action has always been a racist hypocrisy. The fact that there have always been leftists campaigning for it is irrelevant, as it's by far more common. America is indeed structurally racist: against whites and (sometimes) Asians. The fact that this has a long history doesn't make recent trends any more acceptable.
No one was talking about affirmative action, but ok.
And you reveal your true motivation when you say something like "America is indeed structurally racist: against whites". No one with any semblance of objectivity would agree with that.
> We can also punish someone for discrimination simply for exhibiting a pattern of discrimination regardless of intent to discriminate.
It is scary, right? "We can also punish" hides behind the "we", unclear if they mean "We, the people, the court system" or "We, the racial justice movement, public opinion". Then what is this "punishment"? A bad article in the NYT? Calling up your network and suppliers with a 100 people (with too much time and too much anger) to cancel you for being racist? Jail time or a fine for illegal activity?
They are power hungry, totalitarian, and evil. Other comments talk of "subconscious racism" or "white privilege". This comment demands responsibility for outcomes they perceive as unjust, where it is very unjust to demand demographic parity, when it is not possible to attain that, without severely dropping in quality (there are not enough Black people in tech to fill those positions with talent). So they demand you pay/invest to increase Black people in tech. But if too vocal or direct about it, they accuse you of "stating in general that Black people are less capable" as if reasoning from racist motives. So don't look to closely at the reason for not being able to hire as much Black people as society, activist, or the board wants you to.
This activism is a very strong and dangerous and toxic meme. It leads to Qanon levels of delusion, accusing criticism of racism, so it can't be attacked. Where Qanons see the deepstate and pedophiles when looking at government or big business, these activists see a racist society and neo-Nazi's when looking at government or big business. You can't change their minds. They've been in Whatsapp groups for years, pointing out targets for collective actions, and finding counters to often used criticism. It's why no activist would use the word "Identity Politics" even though that's the animal's name (evil Neo-Nazis use that term to attack our efforts!).
So that's why you hear: reverse racism is impossible! Racism has to do with power, and whites have all the power! When nearly every white person can recount cases of being discriminated against, and how terrible it made them feel. Accused of cultural appropriation for liking rap music. Challenged by Black men for having a Black girlfriend. Chosen as victim of robbery, because perceived weak and rich. Accused of getting your promotion, not due to hard work, but because your white old boys network favored your dumb white ass over a Black deserving queen.
If this NYT article was about over-representation of not white Libertarian crypto bros, but of over-representation of Jewish people in positions of power, you'd hear a different tune. Even suggesting that clear fact labels you as anti-Semitic. Apparently white people don't have enough shared culture, shared activism, to make racist anti-male anti-white anti-autist hit pieces like this controversial, even though we supposedly run the world, actively suppress entire races and genders, and create non-inclusive companies out of principle.
Just went back to double check the article and am actually not certain how you are getting to the number 75%. 11 employees cited a complaint to HR according to the article. Where are you getting the denominator for total number of black employees in 2019?
There's a data mismatch between the CB blog post and the article. CB cites that only 2-3 formal complaints were filed iirc.
11 employee complaints matches pretty closely with the PDX group.
--
FWIW I'm not dismissing the complaints. I've worked and studied in places where I've felt like an outsider; I've seen people make inappropriate comments about race+stereotypes in past work environments; I've also seen people make fishing claims of racial discrimination.
I wasn't on those teams in 2019, so the truth is I simply don't know.
From what I see today and the lack of concrete evidence in the article, I do have some doubts about the overall impression the article tries to give. I have the sense that certain information might have been omitted that might paint a clearer picture. I could totally be wrong as well.
The first sentence of the second paragraph of the article.
>The 15 people worked at Coinbase, the most valuable U.S. cryptocurrency start-up, where they represented roughly three-quarters of the Black employees at the 600-person company.
"[R]oughly three-quarters" implies there were likely either 19 or 21 employees Black employees at the company since 20 would be exactly three-quarters. I was just using 75% and 20 employees because that is the best estimate we got. The article also stated clearly that 8 Black employees were part of the PDX group.
The Coinbase rebuttal was worded very specifically.
>only three of these people filed complaints during their time at Coinbase.
The New York Times wasn't being as narrow with their counting and they said:
>11 of them informed the human resources department or their managers about what they said was racist or discriminatory treatment
There is obvious middle ground between these two quotes. 11 people complained to their manager or HR at some point including potentially after they left the company however only 3 filed official complaints while working there. Keep in mind that simply complaining about something to a coworker isn't the same thing as "filing" a complaint.
If this middle ground scenario transpired as I described, doesn't the NYT's recounting sound much closer to the truth than CB's? Also ask yourself who has a bigger incentive to stretch the truth here. Is it the newspaper that could instead report on literally anything else or the company that is being accused of discrimination?
> Keep in mind that simply complaining about something to a coworker isn't the same thing as "filing" a complaint.
It really depends on the HR department, too. In most, reporting something as seemingly straightforward as an overt sexual assault will raise the question "how do you want to proceed." But they might not lay out what your actual options are -- or worse, they might just offer an ear and won't offer to act unless you demand it. Sometimes, they'll make it quite clear that a complaint will be a huge pain in the ass for everybody involved, especially the person reporting. HR should understand that there can be direct and indirect blow-back; that reporting misbehavior (especially of management, or worse, HR) can have both real and perceived consequences for the person reporting. HR departments cannot, generally, be trusted to police themselves if you can't go to them or above them, the only other option is the labor relations board. So much of the time, marginalized employees will either suck it up and endure the abuse, or quietly leave to keep their reputation intact.
So if anything, I see the discrepancy of 3 official reports and 11 complaints as a weak signal about how seriously HR takes complaints about racism at the company.
CX folks at CB are doing God's work. Nothing but respect for them on my eng team at CB. At past companies I had to do a lot more legwork to dive into an issue; our CX folks are incredibly technical and have great instincts on identifying, grouping, and triaging issues as well as providing just the right amount of context.
I’m speaking from the perspective of the customer. They might be top knotch but if it’s understaffed and underesourced then no one can be set up for success when they have to face the wrath of a million customers when the site goes down on the slightest uptick in volume due to a large move.
I find this hard to imagine without someone getting reprimanded. Not disbelieving the person's quote, but not accepting it as fact either. Seems like it would be easy to get corroborating witnesses for a situation that inappropriate.
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.
People treat you with contempt and ridicule if you complain about being unfairly treated. They hide behind objective processes that give cover to be biased. If process A, B, and C are objective, A+B+C can still yield terrible, biased outcomes. Witnesses and data simply doesn’t matter without empathy and understanding.
A lot of people traffic in blatant stereotypes in the guise of some kind of positive statement, which makes reprimands less likely. I once had a speaker tell us - in a diversity seminar! - about specific racial groups he thinks are too timid to speak up for themselves.
Our execs have short text guides on how to work best with them and everyone on my team has been encouraged to share similar. The default assumption is everyone should be working together to accommodate on how we can all work best together.
I've been in environments where certain communications styles are labeled more correct or ideal. So I've really loved this guidebook + accommodation approach.
I went into this article with an open mind about there possibly being toxicity I haven't witnessed w/i the company. But tbh the evidence comes up short and just doesn't match with what I've seen. I have interviewed at companies where some level of toxicity was easy to pick up on during the onsite (eg Uber during peak growth years).
My fear is that this article might scare away diverse folks from Coinbase, and possibly even crypto at large given some of the descriptions about the industry at the end. CB is a really great company for any curious nerd to join. I'd also say the Ethereum community and associated startups+labs are especially welcoming and friendly.
>CB is a really great company for any curious nerd to join.
Not if they're black or brown, apparently. I have no idea how you could say this is a 'great' company after reading this article. Like my mind is actually blown.
I work on a diverse team at CB that has engagement scores through the roof. And you don't need to know the survey data to know that; just join us for lunch. We're curious, we care about each other, and we care about the mission.
The NYTimes is like the Daily Prophet for muggles. Don't over-index on a hit piece.
You mention diversity. Do any black folks work on your team? Do you think it’s possible that black engineers are treated well and black CX are treated poorly?
On my direct team nope. I can imagine folks being treated differently in Eng vs CX at other companies, and have seen that. I have trouble imagining that at CB, but anything's possible.
CB stands out in my career for the number of good human beings I've gotten to meet and work with. And my read when I see Brian, Emilie, Surojit, and Manish speak at weekly AMAs is they genuinely care about everyone in the company. It's a gut instinct, and so far I have no personal experience or anecdotal from within my circles to the contrary.
My sister used to work in CX (outside of tech) and it was really damaging work for her. It'd be devastating for me to learn our folks are not supported.
You are wrong, apparently. 4 out of 7 members of the exec team have last names indicating they are people of color. Check yourself: https://www.coinbase.com/about
If the head of product and the head of engineering are brown people, I am very confident that CB is a great place to join for brown nerds since culture flows from the top.
Really missing the forests for the trees, here. It's clear that there are under-represented groups at CoinBase that are routinely discriminated. It is unthinkable to me for HN readers to defend that, but here we are regardless.
Maybe I should have used the term 'under-represented minorities,' because I don't see a single black or latino person (admittedly, this is what I meant as 'brown' since I'm Hispanic).
> It is unthinkable to me for HN readers to defend that
> admittedly, this is what I meant as 'brown'
I mean, if you are going to use 'brown' to exclusively refer to latinos when half the world (or more?) is brown, then obviously you are going to sow confusion on forums like HN with participants across the globe.
I think it’s much less an issue with people who have relocated and spent a few years adapting to us, but to succeed with foreign cultures you have to know how directly they prefer to communicate. Dave Barry tells this story:
(Beth) “… and then we want to take a plane from Point A to Point B.”
(Japanese travel agent) “I see. You want to take a plane?” “Yes.”
“From Point A?” “Yes.”
“To Point B?” “Yes.”
“Ah.” “Can we do that?”
“Perhaps you would prefer to take a train.” “No, we would prefer to take a plane.”
“Ah-hah. You would prefer to take a plane?” “Yes. A plane.”
“I see. From Point A?”
This mystified his wife but apparently between Japanese this is virtually screaming “THERE IS NO PLANE, YOU ZITBRAIN!”
Yeah, for working with non-American employees this kind of training would make a lot of sense. This guy in particular was talking about American Latinas, though.
Being timid is strongly connected to your upbringing, your upbringing is strongly connected to culture and culture is strongly connected to race.
Sure, saying "X are too timid" is a stereotype, but pointing out at a diversity seminar that you should be extra observant around X because they tend to not speak up for themselves is just good advice. Many cultures value being quiet and doing your job a lot more than others, and those values get passed down by parents for at least a few generations after immigrating. If that group doesn't have a good support structure (no BLM equivalent), that only adds to the fear of speaking out.
If you're a manager that gets many complaints from group Y but very few from group X, knowing that might lead you to do some more investigating and discover group X is being treated even worse, they're just not reporting it. Using a heuristing to optimise your search given imperfect information, if you will.
See, that's the kind of thing I've never understood - how could it not be connected? Race has been historically mostly a geographic thing. You'd see Asian people in Asia, African people in Africa, etc. Anyone else had to have immigrated, or is the child of an immigrant however many generations ago. Culture is also very geographic. Immigrants tend to bring their culture with them (which is a good thing!) and parents usually want to raise their children at least partially in their culture.
Eh, I'm not sure what point I was trying to make, and to be clear I don't think your comment was racist.
Culture is obviously correlated with race in some respects. It's when you start talking about the reason behind some of those correlations that you risk (rightly or wrongly) being called a racist.
> 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.
As a South Asian minority, this is also my experience. The racism, stereotyping and stigma against South Asians feels more acceptable and totally unrecognized.
"The Synthetix (SNX) project, one of the biggest ecosystems in decentralized finance (DeFi), recently launched the Hadar upgrade, which enabled tokenized real-world assets like Brent oil and the Nikkei stock index."