1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company(twitter.com)
twitter.com
1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company
https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/1443727729476530178
611 comments
Every company that continues to let itself get embroiled in Twitter's Political Topic of the Week is at such a distinct disadvantage it will ultimately fail. It's inevitable if you extrapolate. They won't survive the evolutionary process and will get selected out, only earning themselves a Darwin Award.
Imagine a rowing team where half the team rows in one direction and the other half rows another direction. They never agree on which direction to row and the direction constantly changes. Even if it's just a dedicated 5% rowing somewhere else, it's going to throw the whole boat off course. Or they're not rowing at all and just yelling at each other on Slack all day. Compare with a team that focuses on the mission, all rowing in the same direction. It's not hard to see who is most likely to reach the finish line.
The age old wisdom of not bringing your personal politics and religion into work is wisdom for good reason.
Imagine a rowing team where half the team rows in one direction and the other half rows another direction. They never agree on which direction to row and the direction constantly changes. Even if it's just a dedicated 5% rowing somewhere else, it's going to throw the whole boat off course. Or they're not rowing at all and just yelling at each other on Slack all day. Compare with a team that focuses on the mission, all rowing in the same direction. It's not hard to see who is most likely to reach the finish line.
The age old wisdom of not bringing your personal politics and religion into work is wisdom for good reason.
I think the reality is that Coinbase is so obviously a rocketship that the CEO could say anything and they’d have no trouble with recruitment or retention. Existing employees have stock grants worth millions, and new employees are getting great offers. The people who will take these jobs are generally going to be bullish on crypto. If you expect crypto to become a bigger piece of the economy in the future, it would be crazy to give up the opportunity to own a bunch of Coinbase stock. I’d spend a year listening to Brian Armstrong tell me that my thetans need adjusting for 5000 shares of Coinbase.
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.
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.
Love that Armstrong did this at Coinbase. I want to work at work, not worry about the political opinions of my coworkers.
This seems like a gross abuse of the phrase "mission focused" to mean "operating for profit with total blinders on to the wider world". With a very appropriate photo of the 90s Bulls being a group of self-serving egomaniacs who put winning above everything else. My current employer (a non-profit) uses the term "mission focused" to mean "we are serving the public good even when it isn't profitable and acknowledging our role in society". I think the latter is what younger employees are increasingly embracing to some degree. The former is still creating the most successful companies because they operate without a conscience.
As a companion piece, see Jonathan Haidt's discussion of "telos":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gatn5ameRr8
So does a "Championship team" mean you get paid like a champion? Or does it just mean you have to work like a champion, and get a 1% raise when you're working like crazy?
Just curious because I don't know coinbase that well.
Just curious because I don't know coinbase that well.
> How could something be so negative in the press, but turn out to be incredibly positive with every stakeholder.
The question of our era! Certainly "every" is misapplied in his quote, but his core message of overwhelming private positivity in light of negative press is worth pondering.
The question of our era! Certainly "every" is misapplied in his quote, but his core message of overwhelming private positivity in light of negative press is worth pondering.
The attitude that if someone doesn't overtly support your cause, that it means they are your enemy is a terrible one.
Charitably, “don’t want to be distracted by politics” means “the status quo works for me”. This doesn’t mean anyone at Coinbase is ill-intentioned, but given the status quo, there’s a lot of people it won’t work for.
I wrote this in an email turning down a chance explore opportunities at Coinbase.
> To me, diversity and social justice are critically important. I have the luxury of being selective in where I put my time and energy and it is important those values align with my career. I appreciate aspects of being "mission focused" but I think that there is a gulf between my personal values and Coinbase's values such that I would not be comfortable in the environment.
I can't speak for anyone else but I think I'm not a terrible engineer and I definitely ruled them completely out of the realm of places I'd be willing to work.
> To me, diversity and social justice are critically important. I have the luxury of being selective in where I put my time and energy and it is important those values align with my career. I appreciate aspects of being "mission focused" but I think that there is a gulf between my personal values and Coinbase's values such that I would not be comfortable in the environment.
I can't speak for anyone else but I think I'm not a terrible engineer and I definitely ruled them completely out of the realm of places I'd be willing to work.
My favorite is the recruiting page for coinbase. Which imo is overtly political
https://www.coinbase.com/careers
https://www.coinbase.com/careers
What mission did they focus on and how did it go? All I see here is "I wrote a controversial screed and many people tolerated it and kept showing up to work." That's great and all, but what sort of new things did it unlock? How do you compare it to the world where you didn't write the screed? It all feels like a heap of bullshit to me -- if you're in the right industry, you can be the worst manager on the planet and your company can still do okay. He's just saying that his household name company in a booming industry did all right last year. We all kind of expected that, it would be nearly impossible to not make money in Coinbase's position. (Like what if nobody merged any code last year and didn't launch any features? They'd still be doing great!)
My controversial opinion is that companies like Apple and Amazon did well in spite of their leaders' quirks. AWS would have been a great business even if Jeff Bezos didn't fire people recovering from cancer. The iPhone still would have been a hit if Jobs didn't bring someone to tears over a bug in their code.
I think you can make great products AND be nice to your employees, and maybe even let them discuss how black lives matter at work.
My controversial opinion is that companies like Apple and Amazon did well in spite of their leaders' quirks. AWS would have been a great business even if Jeff Bezos didn't fire people recovering from cancer. The iPhone still would have been a hit if Jobs didn't bring someone to tears over a bug in their code.
I think you can make great products AND be nice to your employees, and maybe even let them discuss how black lives matter at work.
How has the diversity of talent changed in this one year?
What's the mission?
Not being a reliable financial exchange, I hope, they already failed at that. (1)
[1]: https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/coinbase-says-hacke...
Not being a reliable financial exchange, I hope, they already failed at that. (1)
[1]: https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/coinbase-says-hacke...
>
3/ One of the biggest concerns around our stance was that it would impact our diversity numbers. Since my post, we've grown our headcount about 110%, while our diversity numbers have remained the same, or even improved on some metrics.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Reddit is at scale a sentence like this often means they’ve established a dominant monoculture and squashed out the ‘annoyances’..
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Reddit is at scale a sentence like this often means they’ve established a dominant monoculture and squashed out the ‘annoyances’..
The thing I hate about this line of thinking is the supposed "distractions" of being mission-focused are nearly all related simply to basic rights/dignities for marginalized groups. I don't think anyone is saying companies need to take a strong stance on every political issue, but merely saying "we as a company believe the lives of our Black employees matter" or "we as a company welcome and accept our LGBTQ+ employees and don't tolerate anyone who doesn't" are just...basic things you need to do in 2021. They aren't a distraction, I would say not saying them is a distraction.
In all of the discussion around the blog post from Armstrong last year and the similar discussion around Basecamp, I never once saw an example cited of these so-called distractions from being mission-focused that wasn't just affirming the basic dignity of a group of people. I don't understand why doing so should be controversial. Anyone who doesn't fully and unambiguously support the right of Black people to not be killed randomly and of LGBTQ+ people to exist simply doesn't belong in polite, modern society. How is this controversial?
I simply cannot imagine working at a place that doesn't recognize the humanity of their workers. Utterly baffling and heartless mindset.
In all of the discussion around the blog post from Armstrong last year and the similar discussion around Basecamp, I never once saw an example cited of these so-called distractions from being mission-focused that wasn't just affirming the basic dignity of a group of people. I don't understand why doing so should be controversial. Anyone who doesn't fully and unambiguously support the right of Black people to not be killed randomly and of LGBTQ+ people to exist simply doesn't belong in polite, modern society. How is this controversial?
I simply cannot imagine working at a place that doesn't recognize the humanity of their workers. Utterly baffling and heartless mindset.
> we're operating in an environment of virtue signaling and fear of speaking up.
Well, which is it? Are people speaking up too much (virtue signalling), or not enough (fear of speaking up)? Perhaps the people speaking up aren't saying what you want to hear, and you imagine a hidden majority of people who agree with you that you can convince yourself you are right, through a "invisible argument of authority" towards these abstract people who you know exist but don't speak up out of fear, but surely agree with you and outnumber the other voices.
I find the usage of the term "virtue signalling" a bit disappointing. Yes, there are a subset of opportunists who are dishonestly using social platforms for their own gain - but such people are in such a minority that pretending they should dominate the conversation is throwing the baby out with the bath water.
People are trying to organize to make society better, more inclusive, right the systematic wrongs of the past, and build a better future. Dismissing the majority of these people with a dismissive term like "virtue signalling" is not only being insensitive, it's callous and belittling.
The first thing you should realize is that the "virtue signalling" happening is due to voices being oppressed and voices not being heard for too long. There are uncomfortable conversations that need to happen and these voices should be heard.
It's all good and fair that you decided those conversations should not happen in the context of your company and to make the judgement as a leader that it serves only as a distraction, but to use a callous term like "virtue signalling" in the context of these conversations shows the true character of the person conveying this message - and personally, that is not a leader I would want to follow along with any mission.
Well, which is it? Are people speaking up too much (virtue signalling), or not enough (fear of speaking up)? Perhaps the people speaking up aren't saying what you want to hear, and you imagine a hidden majority of people who agree with you that you can convince yourself you are right, through a "invisible argument of authority" towards these abstract people who you know exist but don't speak up out of fear, but surely agree with you and outnumber the other voices.
I find the usage of the term "virtue signalling" a bit disappointing. Yes, there are a subset of opportunists who are dishonestly using social platforms for their own gain - but such people are in such a minority that pretending they should dominate the conversation is throwing the baby out with the bath water.
People are trying to organize to make society better, more inclusive, right the systematic wrongs of the past, and build a better future. Dismissing the majority of these people with a dismissive term like "virtue signalling" is not only being insensitive, it's callous and belittling.
The first thing you should realize is that the "virtue signalling" happening is due to voices being oppressed and voices not being heard for too long. There are uncomfortable conversations that need to happen and these voices should be heard.
It's all good and fair that you decided those conversations should not happen in the context of your company and to make the judgement as a leader that it serves only as a distraction, but to use a callous term like "virtue signalling" in the context of these conversations shows the true character of the person conveying this message - and personally, that is not a leader I would want to follow along with any mission.
Brian Armstrong was on Tyler Cowen and Tyler asked him if bitcoin was a zero sum game, in a round about way:
https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/brian-armstrong/
COWEN: I’ve seen estimates that about 20 percent of bitcoin has been lost, or people don’t have their passwords, or it’s somehow abandoned or whatever. Let’s say that 20 percent were found. Those people would be better off, right? They’d have more wealth. Who is then worse off?
ARMSTRONG: Yes, I suppose you have dilution, and you have inflation if you’re increasing the money supply somehow like that.
COWEN: Then if we ask the general question that the social value of bitcoin — bitcoin in general — again, clearly a benefit to the people who bought at low prices. They in essence found bitcoin. But if someone else in the system is losing an equal amount, why think that the social value of bitcoin is positive?
ARMSTRONG: Who’s losing the equivalent amount in this case, just so I understand?
COWEN: I don’t know exactly who, but someone else has less purchasing power, right? Bitcoin isn’t apples. You can’t eat it for lunch.
ARMSTRONG: It’s not clear to me that bitcoin is a zero-sum game.
COWEN: But what is that? When do I get my apples, so to speak? Where do they come from?
ARMSTRONG: Well, anybody can participate of course. I think, now, about probably 10 percent of Americans and maybe 60 or 70 million people globally have crypto, at least. So it’s been growing a lot.
https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/brian-armstrong/
I was able to chat to Brian about this the other night. I think it’s under appreciated how brave it was to do this on the precipice of multiple fundraising / liquidity events and in the eye of the storm of cancel culture generally.
Kudos to the Coinbase team.
Kudos to the Coinbase team.
PG's note on the thread is very interesting: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1445305326820020227
This man spends way too much time on Twitter and not enough time learning the rules and regulations of the industry the company he leads participates in.
> The biggest lesson I took away from the whole ordeal is that if you believe something is the right path, it's worth speaking up about it, even if it's controversial.
Unless you work at Coinbase, right?
Unless you work at Coinbase, right?
So in fairness I haven't followed this in the news very closely, but after initially feeling negative about this decision I've started to come around to it.
US politics has become extremely draining, divisive, and aggressive - particularly in high partisan-lean areas. It's flat out exhausting talking with people about politics, even those who I agree with, and it just gets worse every year. Polling has shown people sort themselves by political ideology first and everything else in life second. I see fewer and fewer options available, but to just run from it. I don't see it getting better any time soon.
The company I previously worked for spent an enormous amount of time (and money) facilitating discussions appeasing these divides and focusing on social justice, etc. Not only is there no hope for any given company to realistically solve for societal-wide problems or find an approach that satisfies everyone in this manner, but it's painfully obvious they don't truly care about these topics either. Having people come "talk" about racism or putting on inclusion workshops doesn't result in real action. Things like "diversity" are mangled and manufactured into company metrics where data is awkwardly bucketed by "ethnicity". Are we expected to believe HR departments who group half of the world together as "Asian" as taking diversity seriously? I've come away from every company I've worked for with the cynical impression that that their "social justice" efforts are simply to minimize inner anger, strife, and liability. And for leaders, if you commit to being a "politically engaged" workplace it means everything you do is twice as vulnerable. You are walking on eggshells even if you aren't instigating any sort of animosity - what if you weren't paying attention to the news and didn't speak up about a particular political event? What if you didn't say enough? What if you were misinterpreted? I can understand why Coinbase doesn't want to go there anymore - they can achieve the same goal if nobody says anything at all.
I'm not arguing nefarious forces don't exist or aren't important. I care deeply about many of the commonly-discussed social issues that we're dealing with today. I've personally witnessed blatant racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination first-hand at work. But those things can be solved for at a company level - trying to treat our general political environment is well beyond anything any corporation can manage nor should we expect it to be their responsibility. Companies should focus on refining things that are in their control, like practicing transparent & fair hiring, enforcing anti-discrimination policies, and ensuring equal-opportunity internally. But I think you can fairly draw the line there.
US politics has become extremely draining, divisive, and aggressive - particularly in high partisan-lean areas. It's flat out exhausting talking with people about politics, even those who I agree with, and it just gets worse every year. Polling has shown people sort themselves by political ideology first and everything else in life second. I see fewer and fewer options available, but to just run from it. I don't see it getting better any time soon.
The company I previously worked for spent an enormous amount of time (and money) facilitating discussions appeasing these divides and focusing on social justice, etc. Not only is there no hope for any given company to realistically solve for societal-wide problems or find an approach that satisfies everyone in this manner, but it's painfully obvious they don't truly care about these topics either. Having people come "talk" about racism or putting on inclusion workshops doesn't result in real action. Things like "diversity" are mangled and manufactured into company metrics where data is awkwardly bucketed by "ethnicity". Are we expected to believe HR departments who group half of the world together as "Asian" as taking diversity seriously? I've come away from every company I've worked for with the cynical impression that that their "social justice" efforts are simply to minimize inner anger, strife, and liability. And for leaders, if you commit to being a "politically engaged" workplace it means everything you do is twice as vulnerable. You are walking on eggshells even if you aren't instigating any sort of animosity - what if you weren't paying attention to the news and didn't speak up about a particular political event? What if you didn't say enough? What if you were misinterpreted? I can understand why Coinbase doesn't want to go there anymore - they can achieve the same goal if nobody says anything at all.
I'm not arguing nefarious forces don't exist or aren't important. I care deeply about many of the commonly-discussed social issues that we're dealing with today. I've personally witnessed blatant racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination first-hand at work. But those things can be solved for at a company level - trying to treat our general political environment is well beyond anything any corporation can manage nor should we expect it to be their responsibility. Companies should focus on refining things that are in their control, like practicing transparent & fair hiring, enforcing anti-discrimination policies, and ensuring equal-opportunity internally. But I think you can fairly draw the line there.
"Don't bring politics to work" = "Don't bring your politics to work"
One person's every day life is considered by another to be "political".
One person's every day life is considered by another to be "political".
it's so ironic to me that he prides himself over the "no politics" policy, yet calls his company "mission-focused". the mission is cryptocurrency, which is very political.
In short?
Leave politics at home.
Leave politics at home.
> One of the biggest concerns around our stance was that it would impact our diversity numbers. Since my post, we've grown our headcount about 110%, while our diversity numbers have remained the same, or even improved on some metrics.
My understanding is that they started off really bad, right? They had 3/4s of their black employees resign before that post and were at 3%. I guess they could have gotten worse, but being proud to be where you were when this whole thing started is a bit awkward.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/27/technology/coinbase-crypt...
> One by one, they left. Some quit. Others were fired. All were Black. The 15 people worked at Coinbase, the most valuable U.S. cryptocurrency start-up, where they represented roughly three-quarters of the Black employees at the 600-person company. Before leaving in late 2018 and early 2019, at least 11 of them informed the human resources department or their managers about what they said was racist or discriminatory treatment, five people with knowledge of the situation said.
Numbers aside, this thread is really difficult to take seriously due to the (hypocritical) inclusion of this tweet, which seems to undermine the rest of his thesis (that speaking up for things you believe in is a distracting waste of time that is bad for business).
> The biggest lesson I took away from the whole ordeal is that if you believe something is the right path, it's worth speaking up about it, even if it's controversial.
And also like, did anyone actually disagree that being a profit-driven company can be profitable? The tl;dr of this entire thread to me is "putting profits above people and morals was every bit as profitable as I thought it would be: thus, I'm vindicated".
I would expect to see the same thing from Big Tobacco, Big Oil, Big Copyright, etc.... we also see this same argument from companies like Apple and Facebook: "we are making tons of money, and so our actions are not only useful, they were justified".
> While the media reports were mostly negative, and it even spawned some retaliatory and intellectually dishonest hit pieces, the reaction both from employees and people I spoke to in private was overwhelmingly positive.
Finally, the issue I have here is that the vast majority (again: we are talking 97%) of Coinbase employees are not black, which calls into question this entire metric: an "overwhelmingly positive" reaction from the overwhelming majority is... underwhemling.
My understanding is that they started off really bad, right? They had 3/4s of their black employees resign before that post and were at 3%. I guess they could have gotten worse, but being proud to be where you were when this whole thing started is a bit awkward.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/27/technology/coinbase-crypt...
> One by one, they left. Some quit. Others were fired. All were Black. The 15 people worked at Coinbase, the most valuable U.S. cryptocurrency start-up, where they represented roughly three-quarters of the Black employees at the 600-person company. Before leaving in late 2018 and early 2019, at least 11 of them informed the human resources department or their managers about what they said was racist or discriminatory treatment, five people with knowledge of the situation said.
Numbers aside, this thread is really difficult to take seriously due to the (hypocritical) inclusion of this tweet, which seems to undermine the rest of his thesis (that speaking up for things you believe in is a distracting waste of time that is bad for business).
> The biggest lesson I took away from the whole ordeal is that if you believe something is the right path, it's worth speaking up about it, even if it's controversial.
And also like, did anyone actually disagree that being a profit-driven company can be profitable? The tl;dr of this entire thread to me is "putting profits above people and morals was every bit as profitable as I thought it would be: thus, I'm vindicated".
I would expect to see the same thing from Big Tobacco, Big Oil, Big Copyright, etc.... we also see this same argument from companies like Apple and Facebook: "we are making tons of money, and so our actions are not only useful, they were justified".
> While the media reports were mostly negative, and it even spawned some retaliatory and intellectually dishonest hit pieces, the reaction both from employees and people I spoke to in private was overwhelmingly positive.
Finally, the issue I have here is that the vast majority (again: we are talking 97%) of Coinbase employees are not black, which calls into question this entire metric: an "overwhelmingly positive" reaction from the overwhelming majority is... underwhemling.
The amount of frothing vitriol in this thread makes it clear that Armstrong made the correct choice. Public discourse in the Bay Area has become completely toxic.
The commentary that I find frustrating is about the "retaliatory and intellectually dishonest hit pieces." The press does suck in many ways, but when you're own a massive chunk of a $65B company you should expect some negative press and be prepared. It makes him sound like he isn't open to dissent which is an incredibly privileged stance.