What Kind of Company Is Coinbase?
By: Lyra Naeseth
Tags: Leadership, Fascism, Culture, Technology, Cryptocurrency

I read on:

Everyone is asking the question about how companies should engage in broader societal issues during these difficult times, while keeping their teams united and focused on the mission.

Huh. I have found it only natural for my team to not be “focused” on the same things they were last year. I’ve been much more worried about how little tech companies have changed course or rethought their purpose.

Our industry has already long focused on shipping as fast as we could, and scaling as big as we could, ignoring the “external” societal issues our work inflamed. We said we wanted to “change the world”, and maybe we should’ve learned more about it first.

But I’m afraid those aren’t the challenges this post was about. I read on:

Coinbase has had its own challenges here, including employee walkouts.

… huh.

I didn’t know Coinbase was having employee walkouts. What are employees challenging with these walkouts; what are they objecting to?

The day after I read the post, I came across a Twitter thread by Erica Joy that tells at least some of that story. It’s context I wish I’d had when first reading Brian Armstrong’s post about “difficult times” at Coinbase, and I’m going to reprint it here almost verbatim:

so let's start back in june. in the wake of the horrendous murder of george floyd, companies were doing their white text on black background “standing with the Black community” statements. even google, who had been mum on racism for their entire existence, said something. you know what’s coming next. coinbase did not release one of these statements. the only hint at support of Black lives, or even the Black community, was the coinbase twitter account retweeting [this tweet] from brian [where he says “Black Lives Matter”]. now you may read that tweet and the following thread and think how did the person who wrote that thread also write this blog post. i’ll tell you how: he had no choice but to post* that thread. […] why do i think he had no choice? well, something happened at coinbase that likely forced his hand: a large portion of the coinbase engineering team walked off the job just before that thread went up because brian wouldn’t say “black lives matter.” now i said “post” because i don’t think he wrote that thread. i’d bet my paycheck on it. i strongly believe he posted the thread that a (crisis?) comms person wrote for him so his engineering team would get back to work. the blog post is more reflective of his true feelings. i believe having his hand forced by that walkoff pissed him off and he’s retaliating: with the blog post, with the policy changes, and the other internal coinbase changes (slack channels for asking execs questions have been deleted, all hands questions must now be pre-vetted).

This is why I’ve been much more worried about how little change we’ve seen in tech companies, than worried our recent discussions are too “disruptive”.

Remember when we were proud of the word “disruption”? Proud of the stodgy, bloated incumbents we would sweep aside, and unleash whole tides of human creativity and ingenuity?

Why is it so hard to look in the mirror, and see who we’ve become?