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.

As it stands, the kernel of Coinbase's defense here is "we paid for a secret report and it says we're great". Reasonable people can find that response unpersuasive.

The HN community appears to be no more rational or evidence-based finders of fact than those found in the comments section of Fox News or the New York Times.

What hope do we have if the creators and maintainers are prone to the same proclivities as the users?

Are you thinking of a specific example? I don't recall ever seeing this apart from sometimes a short statement on an outcomes (which Coinbase has given us - they found the complaints baseless [0]).

> ...but they can certainly commission a new one that they can disclose.

I did mention law but this isn't fundamentally a legal argument. I was just saying I'd expect there to be a law, given what releasing a detailed report would entail about employee privacy. I'd be ropeable if someone did that to me after I complained to HR and the story got international attention.

Companies have no role at all in airing internal dirty laundry of employees to Hacker News. Coinbase's position is an employee made a baseless claim - in my book it would probably be a very poor precedent for them to start broadcasting details globally. Best case, utterly unfair because of the power imbalance between a company and an individual employee. Worst case, a smear campaign. All cases, unhelpful except for the enjoyment of pundits Hacker News comment threads.

[0] EDIT Rather than replying - "all of whom found no evidence of wrongdoing and concluded the claims were unsubstantiated" https://blog.coinbase.com/upcoming-story-about-coinbase-2012...

I don't know where this "baseless claim" thing comes from; the only foundation you have for that belief is that Coinbase said so. The point of an external report is not having to take Coinbase's word for it. What's funny is paying for an external report, then not showing it to anybody, or even disclosing who did it, and relying on that external report as evidence.

Here's a reasonable question: is the reason Coinbase won't disclose the external reports they commissioned because they can't, because their investigators won't allow them to, because neither are willing to stake their reputations on the interpretation Coinbase drew from them? If not, how do you know that?

And that was investigating stuff Susan Fowler had already attacked them publicly on. I'm not going to try and look up all the details but it is probably a different set of circumstances.

[0] https://www.uber.com/newsroom/covington-recommendations/ and then https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1s08BdVqCgrUVM4UHBpTGROLXM...

The 60 people who left makes it clear this is not agreed upon. HN has already played out this debate on the original post so I'll save going into it here, but it's disingenuous to say that Russ didn't quit because of race-related policy, whether or not you think the policy is race-related.

That said, putting out that "apolitical stance" in the direct wake of George Floyd/BLM is unavoidably tied. As others have said, timing is key. If they had the policy from day 1, they might have a leg to stand on. It seems likely in context with this article (and frankly, to many before this) that Coinbase's apolitical stance is not a rejection of all politics but a tacit rejection of George Floyd/BLM. No one should be surprised about a diversity problem in such a company.

This "what else can they do?" question stems from a criminal judicial standard of guilt and conviction, but that is not where this discussion exists. To think that Coinbase must be innocent and needs to prove that over many former employees being on the record + clear statistical issues that all align with the narrative the company has set with previous actions shows a central flaw in the tech community's approach to racism and politics.

I realize the question does not direct say that they must be innocent, but the implications and assumptions here are important to note, and certainly lean in that direction.

Did all 60 people leave because of Coinbase's political stance, or did some leave because of the generous severance package of 4-6 months pay that the CEO offered in September?

I know that if I were looking to make a life change, I'd seriously consider that offer even if I liked the politics.

But forget number speculation, we have concrete proof of this in the article:

> another employee who left in October was John Russ, the head of marketing and the company’s highest ranking Black employee, who had been hired three months earlier.

> In a brief phone interview, Mr. Russ would only say that he disagreed with Mr. Armstrong’s new position and left as a result.

We can, but we can only do this because people in the comments are independently informed. The NYT repeatedly emphasized 60 people leaving (across two articles) but never mentioned the severance.

The George Floyd spark very much "outed" Coinbase here, because it became an issue you couldn't avoid taking a side on. That's just the state of the world and you're right that they couldn't have anticipated it, but they chose to make a clear stance rather than trying to ride the thin line, and they became less diverse for it. I don't know why anyone would be surprised their prior actions match that recent stance.

Again, I'm trying to avoid the philosophical "Should companies be political" debate that's already been hashed, but simply stating how their actions translate in the current landscape.

You said this so casually. It's an axiomatic truth that everyone has to 'take a stand', implying that you have to call it out, and in a context moreover where not a single person applauded the murder of Floyd. How disingenuous for you to call it a stand, implying that there's a debate. Instead what you mean is, sign up to a calling out of the police. What betrays the problem at hand, why companies cannot feasibly all be political by nature, is that there a zillion possible social causes that one could rationally argue are impossible to call out, from shootings domestically (1100 in my city this year so far), to corporate malfeasance (sweat shops overseas, finance fraud), to foreign policy (bombings of middle eastern countries).

If you and I worked together and you stood up and demanded everyone call out the Floyd thing, outed as you call it, you and I would be debating the above points in front of everyone.

THAT is why companies should allow for an apolitical space.

And can you explain to me why one is absolutely required to publicly vocalize their stance on the George Floyd issue? How is not wanting to speak on the topic in the workplace equivalent to being racist?

Vox (among others) wrote a piece on it: https://www.vox.com/2020/6/3/21278245/antiracist-racism-race...

I'm equivocal on both of these.

In the case of (1), why should the act of fighting injustice pause by some notion of decorum at work? Where should our priorities and values lie?

In the case of (2), many people have good reasons to find the prevailing leftist/progressive rhetoric distasteful. But right now the groups who espouse that rhetoric are also the most active and most effective groups taking action right now. If you aren't with them, who exactly are you with? Or so the rhetoric might go.

It was, after all the first time he was pressured that way.

I've made this comment elsewhere, but I really would love to know why people are digging in so hard here. Let's just call a spade a spade.

Pretty sure there’s only one “side” anybody’s actually ever taken there.

What most don't condone is burning down buildings and attacking and harassing diners.

BLM is the ultimate motte and bailey.

Note that I am Black too.

It's a uniquely American thing that the academic grifters with nothing better to do are desperately trying to import here as well.

I don't think that he would have taken that public stance if he didn't feel that the company was being distracted internally by racial justice issues. It being a fair response is highly dependent on those internal conversations.

And the NY Times reports that prior to this conversation there was a public meeting where Black employees brought up difficult experiences at Coinbase. Being told that people should leave politics at home or leave the company is a horrible response to complaints about discrimination.

Now I'm happy to agree that the retention rate of black people at Coinbase raises some questions. But the NYT, having asked those questions, came up with no particular evidence of racism.

The major piece of evidence that these issues are substantially due to race is that the NYT felt it warranted a hit piece. That is weak evidence. Being passed over for promotion and feeling unappreciated - which they lead with - isn't evidence. Most of us have been passed over for promotion plenty of times. Most people are unappreciated too.

Starting with the assumption it is a pretty normal company, that is a list mostly of stuff that nobody should care about.

If someone can articulate what the HR complaints are about then that might be evidence. But complaints to HR are expected - that is why HR gets hired. They are there to deal with HR complaints. And read resumes.

> including an instance where the Black members of a team were required to relocate while a non-Black member wasn't

This one is stupid. Am I meant to believe they are revealing their racist ways by hiring black people then asking them to relocate, racistly? This is bog standard sucks-to-work-in-support activity. Miserable working conditions, but nothing to do with skin colour. A similar thing happened to my father back in the day. He certainly wasn't black.

The existence of slavery in the past isn’t driving the current race issues in the US so much as fallout from much more recent segregation policies. Nobody alive today was a (or was born to) a slave and the majority of the states that make up the United States were not even part of the country during the civil war.

To claim racism is endemic now because of slavery is lazy. Racism is endemic because segregation didn’t end until approximately the same time as TCP/IP was being invented!

The existence of slavery and the view that Black people could be treated as livestock are why we had segregation policies.

The existence of slavery fueled white anger towards the idea that the "livestock" were suddenly being allowed to go to the same places and use the same services as white people. The generations of people who owned slaves raised the generations of people that enforced segregation, and those generations raised the people today who enforce racial discrimination and oppose racial justice.

And like you said, this isn't far-back history, segregation in the US was recent. People have this flowery view that racism just went away and that slavery just suddenly stopped mattering. But the effects are still very much with us today. A few generations isn't enough to eliminate a culturally pervasive, harmful ideology.

It's important to keep in mind that Black communities (and a lot of other marginalized communities) as a group don't really have these debates as much, because it's completely obvious to them that they aren't being treated equally.

If you'd like to better understand that, I'd suggest you read Kendi's "Stamped from the Beginning", who gives an intellectual history of America's racist ideas. I also think you're mistaken to lay the current troubles at the feet of formal segregation policies, which were only active in one part on the US. Maybe go read "Sundown Towns", which shows that all across America we had towns with de-facto segregation without formal policies. And it takes only a glance at modern maps showing race to see we haven't solved the problem.

One could plausibly debate the level of it. But to sweepingly declare there's absolutely no evidence isn't so much a claim of fact as a declaration of willful ignorance. Which, unfortunately, is part of why racism is still endemic. See, for example, Loewen's "Sundown Towns", where the later chapters show how America's ongoing de-facto segregation, which was born out of the Nadir, both depends on and creates the sort of refusal to see the obvious that you engage in here.

That also isn't the strongest evidence. It's just one of the easiest to understand. But given that you're going to strain at gnats and swallow camels even with the pretty basic ones, I'll leave finding the rest as an exercise to the reader.

You ignore the evidence showing unarmed black Americans are 25 times less likely to be shot by police than unarmed white Americans in a given interaction with similar circumstances, because it doesn't fit your victimhood narrative.

You've done nothing but lob ad hominem at me for not agreeing with your completely baseless and unscientific quackery/dogma.

In none of those examples is there proof of racial bias.

when most of your black employees leave because of what they feel is racism in the workplace that’s harder to ignore

They weren't ignoring it. Some of these people weren't even saying they felt that way to Coinbase - one of the people who claims she was bullied also claims nobody told her how to make an official complaint and that's why Coinbase have no record of her views. Complaining to HR has to be the easiest task in any modern corporation; if she couldn't figure out how to do even that then we probably found the explanation for why she felt unappreciated: maybe she just sucked. Or maybe she's made up this supposed racism after she left, as part of achieving other ends (like getting in the NYT).

That is extremely vague. Is it a red flag? Yes. Does it imply racism? No. It doesn't even guarantee there is a problem or a systemic trend for that matter.

If there are 3 red flags and some actual evidence of racism then that is one thing. But there isn't. Even the number of black people quitting - what is the expected retention rate in that team? Most people quit due to dodgy managers, so people quitting points to a dodgy manager before it points to racism.

We know that Alysa Butler felt unappreciated. I'm hesitant to believe the NYT is even representing her opinions fairly. If you read what they've written about carefully, the article doesn't have her accusing Coinbase of any sort of racism, the NYT is just weaving her experience into a story that they construct elsewhere (normal practice in newspapers). A 'diversity problem' is different from racism. 25 year olds being ignored in meetings is not a new phenomenon either in my experience.

Yeah, I am completely ignoring that. "My presence in the workplace was excessively celebrated" isn't a complaint. There is nothing there to respond to.

If you want to argue that could technically be racist behaviour I agree, but typically when people talk about racism they are actually going to serious issues like money, power or personal safety. Photos taken for promotional material is not something that needs a defence - it is a frivolous thing to argue about. Any company might do that.

I don't know the details of the story, but the thing is with baseless accusations of racism is that it's a perfect slander, one can never prove innocence once proclaimed guilty.

this is a self-evident conclusion being hawked as a premise, and the rest of the comment doesn't do much to mold this premise into an argument

> If Russ had a reason for quitting that was race-related then the NYT didn't uncover it.

There's an unfalsifiability in this rhetoric, because someone leaving for race-related reasons in an industry that either: a) has "subtle racists" b) is funded by "subtle racists" c) functionally aids and/or abets "subtle racists" through inaction

would be incentivized to not specify these things, as these industries (finance and crypto) optimize for relationships almost as much (if not ==) to the amount they optimize for merit. And that's not even getting into clauses baked into employment termination contracts. So you have a scenario where you can't actually "prove" race was a primary motivator for quitting because: a) if it were a "subtle racist" co-worker, they're probably using euphemism a2) if they're a "not subtle racist" co-worker, it would embarrass the employer for keeping that person on the book swhen the reputational cost exceeds the cost of sourcing and hiring someone who's not a not subtle racist" b) If the person wants to work in tech again, relationships will likely be burned as a direct or indirect result of airing out a company's dirty laundry c) Could be sued for violating non-disparagement clauses (prices out anyone who doesn't have the security to burn the bridge between them and a growth industry)

If the point of your comment was to use a number of premises that aren't empirical, and border on dogmatic, then I misunderstood, and apologize for trying to search for rhetoric where it was not intended to be found.

If the purpose of the statements above where to be rhetorical or logical, then we're getting into a place where we're asking for evidence that would be difficult for someone with said evidence to do without them, say, being financially and occupationally secure enough to burn the bridges between them and: - Coinbase - Coinbase's Investors - Coinbase's Investors' LPs - Coinbase's Investors' companies - Every other company that either doesn't question whether they are less meritocratic than they believe, or doesn't question whether or not they can replace the problematic superstar employees

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.

It is a fact claim that has yet to be disputed on the record by anyone who is in position to dispute it. All media outlets have their biases, but the most prominent ones tend not to make up easily refuted lies. In the claim you are referencing, they say three quarters of the black employees left over a six month period. If that's a lie, Coinbase can simply say so. But they probably won't because it is probably true.

The reasons why are more up to interpretation. Probably no way to get a firm answer on this since many of these people have signed NDAs or otherwise won't talk on the record. But I don't think it's reasonable to claim, without evidence, that the NYT is lying about the proportion of black employees that left over the given time period.

Fact space is infinite, which ones we choose to surface and which ones we leave behind is called framing. Technical name for making the audience believe that relevant facts are not relevant and saliencing irrelevant ones as relevant is called bullshitting (For further reading see the essay “On Bullshit” by Harry Frankfurt) and bullshits are much harder to weed out than factual inaccuracies in themselves.

NYT, like any major publication, is not leveling outright falsehoods, but they are finessing around bullshitting. We don’t know, because we depend on them or likes of them to make sense of the events and surface the most relevant information in the first place. Like I said, I personally find it concerning that there is no mention of the baseline attrition rate in a high churn SF labor market, that there is no mention of the lack of serious legal action despite serious discrimination allegations, that there is no distinguishing between discrimination, feelings of discrimination and the types of discrimination; we don’t know if propensity for political activism is confounding the reason for those employee’s departures. Coinbase is explicitly discriminating against political activisim that they don’t deem relevant to their mission, rightly or wrongly not only it is not illegal, it is their right to exercise if they believe it would serve their company or customers better. It feels like NYT wants to penalize this act of “rebellion” by clumping all of these together, emphasize the racial angle and produce an aura of wrongdoing by that adjacency. There might as well be wrongdoing, but in that case courts are the machinery equipped to extract the relevant facts and bring justice to it. Not for-profit publications with very complex power relations and a core competency of shaping narratives. To give an obvious example, NYT the prominent media outlet once also played a role in manufacturing the public consent for Iraq invasion by surfacing such “questions”, “suspicions” while burying relevant facts. It would be naive to buy their narrative wholesale (or any single outlets narrative for that matter).

This explanation's believability has an inverse relationship with the number of claims. I could buy the idea that a couple people perceived "normal annoying work crap" as discrimination, but would that happen 15 times? 75% of the Black employees left the company in a 6 month window. You don't see anything like that at any other company.

This is a really dishonest article. It tries to lead one to believe things (e.g. that 15 Black people left Coinbase because they were belittled in meetings) without stating it outright or making a case for it. Just insinuation spun up from a few concrete situations that themselves are mostly vague or not obviously discrimination (the gun and drugs thing being the obvious exception).

This is the level of dishonesty that I've come to expect from the NYT. Any fact that does not fit their narrative basically doesn't exist.

Better treatment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25233702

however, i am not sure that is relevant given the immediate example of a team member who was allowed to work remote. also, i am not sure it is relevant given the fact that there are many other underpinnings for the story’s thesis.

To clarify, I assume the generous severance you're referring to is not the generous severance Coinbase offered employees as part of their no-politics-at-work approach, because the timelines don't match.

> The article implies that a number of the Black people who left did so because the compliance division was relocated and they didn't want to relocate with it. It doesn't say how many people's decisions were influenced by annoying work crap that they interpreted as discrimination.

And mentions the one white person was allowed to stay remote. Pretty dishonest to leave that detail out, no?

> This is a really dishonest article. It tries to lead one to believe things (e.g. that 15 Black people left Coinbase because they were belittled in meetings) without stating it outright or making a case for it. Just insinuation spun up from a few concrete situations that themselves are mostly vague or not obviously discrimination (the gun and drugs thing being the obvious exception).

After reading it it seems a lot left because of constant issues of discrimination - being told to be in meetings in front of cameras to pretend to be diverse, but being ignored in meetings of consequence. Being told to relocate, but applied unequally. Having meetings about BLM and a month later the boss says "leave it at the door." The guns and drugs comment, the black inferiority comment, those are absolutely damning.

This is how racism/discrimination thrive - by playing in the margins, doing things that aren't provable (they never have an email that says "we're discriminating against you!" so therefore it didn't happen or other arguments of that type), giving bad performance reviews after complaints are made, etc. Much like saying "oh it was a joke!"

And finally the icing on the cake:

> 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.

These are multiple people's experience with this company - and there are clearly others who were paid not to say anything.

The article clearly does what it set out to do - show the experiences of people who lived in what they believed to be a toxic work culture. I'm inclined to believe them.

And then you are extrapolating two uncorroborated anecdotes of inappropriate comments as evidence of widespread discrimination.

And, of course, the article has many more complaints than this one!

Unless I am missing something seems pretty clear the employee switched from WFH in Philadelphia to commuting to NYC to work at that office.

* The PHL employee has been given their choice of office to work from.

* The Black employees were required to relocate, not just show up at a particular office on a schedule.

Were the Black employees offered the opportunity to work out of the NYC office?

* 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.

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.

If an employee was sexually harassing female employees, should the company do something or should it not babysit employees?

Glad you agree.

Sexual harassment is not a crime, it's a workplace tort (and always a tort by the employer, regardless of who the active harasser is.) It's true that some acts which would also potentially make the employer liable for sexual harassment are also crimes, but it's also worth noting that, even where an act creating potential harassment liability is also a crime, that (1) the burden of proof in a criminal case is higher than for a civil tort, so there is no guarantee, even with the same evidence and the same jury that a criminal conviction would be rendered when there would be harassment liability, (2) the police and public prosecutor have no obligation to take action even if there is a crime, whereas the company does have an enforceable legal obligation to take effective action to prevent harassment, (3) even if the police take action and the prosecutor files charge, and a conviction eventually results, criminal process takes time during which the accused may be free, and, in the absence of effective action by the employer, continue harassing and increasing the employers harassment liability.

So the company should just call the Police and wash their hands or be responsible and have an appropriate sexual harassment policy, train their employees on how to identify and deal with sexual harassment, have a clear procedure on how to file and deal with complaints.

Maybe you will call such things "babysitting", I say its being responsible.

"should the company do something or should it not babysit employees?"

The company is doing something by not babysitting the employees. Not baby sitting the employees is the only correct option here.

>So the company should just call the Police and wash their hands

Yes they should call the police, and it's not "washing their hands". Sexual harassment is a criminal offence. Your employer shouldn't be "handling" that like they shouldn't be "handling" rape.

>have an appropriate sexual harassment policy, train their employees on how to identify and deal with sexual harassment, have a clear procedure on how to file and deal with complaints.

The policy is the law. Adults shouldn't have their employer telling them that sexual harassment is a no no.

>Maybe you will call such things "babysitting", I say its being responsible.

The responsible thing is to involve the authorities when one of your employees is committing a crime. Simple as that.

No its not. If you ever work in big companies you will know that.

> Adults shouldn't have their employer telling them that sexual harassment is a no no.

Yes they do,

Assuming you are a male, you might be unknowingly harrasing female employees just by having a boys will be boys attitude. So an employer has to give you training and explain you why its wrong.

Some people use throwaway accounts to harass other employees on social media, if your employer gave you the training you would have learnt that is wrong.

> The policy is the law.

Exactly, now you get it, the company may get into legal trouble if they dont have an official policy or they make it super difficult to report complaints.

> The responsible thing is to involve the authorities when one of your employees is committing a crime. Simple as that.

No its not simple as that, just telling the victim to go to authorities is just washing your hands, a responsible company also makes sure that victims can file a complaint with the management. Not all victims want to file a police complaint, that does not mean they the abuser should get away with harassment. The company should still investigate and fire the abuser and then file a complaint with the victim's permission.

These are some of the aspects which you will understand if you been through some training.

Where did "innocent until proven guilty" go?

No, the company should investigate and have evidence, one way or the other, beyond just the complaint before any kind of final action, though there are some interim precautionary mitigations that are might be appropriate, often.

> Where did "innocent until proven guilty" go?

“Innocent until proven guilty” is a maxim of criminal law; a company treating potential harassers as if the company were either the state enforcing criminal law or, worse, as if it could act only following the state enforcing criminal law will eventually find itself in quite deep civil liability for harassment.

No, the company isn't equipped for this and this is the role of the police and judicial system.

> “Innocent until proven guilty” is a maxim of criminal law; a company treating potential harassers as if the company were either the state enforcing criminal law or, worse, as if it could act only following the state enforcing criminal law will eventually find itself in quite deep civil liability for harassment.

That's why the company isn't enforcing anything and delegating the task to the competent authorities. In this case the police.

Many people have been victim of wrongful firing and huge damages to their personal life due to rash decisions being taken by companies based on a single complaint from someone.

It's literally not; sexual harassment is a civil, not criminal, offense. The police have no concern with it at all, except that some sexual harassment is also a crime (e.g., rape, solicitation of prostitution, etc.)

But employers have legal liability for sexual harassment, which only gets more severe as it continues and they fail to act, whether or not there is a crime involved.

They cannot delegate this responsibility to the police.

That's why I included the judicial system.

> But employers have legal liability for sexual harassment, which only gets more severe as it continues and they fail to act, whether or not there is a crime involved.

It happening is required to be based on a suite or investigation. Again, a company isn't equipped to proceed with such an investigation on it's own.

This is the logical fallacy "appeal to the majority". Just because most companies do something doesn't necessarily mean it's moral, required, logically correct, etc.

>Assuming you are a male, you might be unknowingly harrasing female employees just by having a boys will be boys attitude.

"Boys will be boys" is not the legal definition of sexual harassment, so no.

>So an employer has to give you training and explain you why its wrong.

They do that to cover their ass from "hostile work environment" legal suits. This is not baby sitting.

>Some people use throwaway accounts to harass other employees on social media, if your employer gave you the training you would have learnt that is wrong.

There's nothing a company can do in that instance, no one would even know if it is company related. If the harassment veers off into criminal territory, then police should be called.

>Exactly, now you get it, the company may get into legal trouble if they dont have an official policy or they make it super difficult to report complaints.

Apparently you still don't get it. Companies shouldn't babysit employees if they're committing such crimes. Employers shouldn't be babysitting employees when it comes to crimes such as sexual harassment, rape, etc. These should be directed to the police. QED.

>No its not simple as that, just telling the victim to go to authorities is just washing your hands

It's by definition not "washing their hands" because these crimes are not something the company should be babysitting employees over.

>a responsible company also makes sure that victims can file a complaint with the management.

No responsible company would make or direct a victim to "file an internal complaint" if they are victims of a crime. That is by definition irresponsible.

>Not all victims want to file a police complaint, that does not mean they the abuser should get away with harassment.

That's on them. If you're being victimized, reporting the crime should be the only legal recourse. Companies are not in the business of handling justice, period.

>The company should still investigate and fire the abuser and then file a complaint with the victim's permission.

The last thing we need are companies replacing the role that police, laws, the judicial system, etc. provide.

If an employee is being victimized, the employer should 100% work with authorities to ensure justice is met.

>These are some of the aspects which you will understand if you been through some training.

I understand companies not wanting workspaces to be unfriendly, but "unfriendly" isn't illegal. Period.

Apparently you still don't get it.

I do. Stop projecting about "not getting it".

I fully explained the position, and why your original example falls through.

QED.

It's IMAX-level projection.

>Some people dont want to deal with police complaint.

And if they don't want to, it's not the companies place to babysit and play judge and jury.

>If you dont understand that you will never get it.

If you don't understand that it's not the company's place to play the judicial branch (and may be illegal for them to), then you'll never get it.

It is by definition the wrong thing to do.

QED.

It's absolutely the companies enforceable legal obligation to effectively prevent (including terminating ongoing) sexual harassment even if there is no crime, crime report, or criminal law enforcement action.

Sexual harassment overlaps with a variety of crimes, but it doesn't require a crime, and the employer is civilly liable for it no matter if the individual causing the problem has committed or been investigated for a crime or not.

yes it, why do you support people who abuse, why should they still be kept in the company if the evidence is credible?

So does it mean now you understood why some people dont want file a police complaint?

I don't, and neither should the company, which is why they should call the police.

>why should they still be kept in the company if the evidence is credible?

Company is free to fire criminals if they want, no issues there. Many don't hire criminals to begin with, since your criminal history is public.

>So does it mean now you understood why some people dont want file a police complaint?

This is non-sense. If you're the victim of a crime, report the crime to the police.

Sexual harassment generally is not a crime (though it overlaps with some crimes), and even if there is a crime involved the police and public prosecutor are under no obligation to do anything about it.

The employer, however, is under an enforceable legal obligation to do something about harassment.

They are not yet criminals though.

> If you're the victim of a crime, report the crime to the police.

and you still dont get it.

Thankfully even if the world doesn't act that way, the majority (for now) aren't evil enough to also blatantly proclaim that this is also fine.

What about:

> people's rights to have consensual interactions and relationships with each other are more important than their right to be treated "fairly" whatever that actually means.

The important point here is that we don't have a good working definition of "fair" that is universally agreed upon. The only ethical way to live in a society of people who fundamentally disagree is by optimising for consent.

While you are focused on how your political view is the “right one”, @thegrimmest is more focused on how people should coexist when they all hold strong-but-different ideas of what is fair, and which of those will ultimately go down in history as ”moral progress” is yet unknown.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

[1] - https://www.americanbar.org/groups/gpsolo/publications/gp_so...

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.

They stated that discrimination, even if done without intent, is still discrimination. Please respond to that statement.

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.

[1] - https://www.eeoc.gov/statutes/title-vii-civil-rights-act-196...

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.

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.

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 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?

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.

This is a tall assumption. People are more complicated than that, and so are their identities. What if you are a pro-life, strongly Catholic black person? I can definitely see the pro-diversity campaigners balking at the "pro-life" component of your identity.

Really? "Most other tech firms" do this?

That doesn't sound like "most companies" in the tech industry actively seeking and hiring minorities. Perhaps they do and articles like these are deceptive?

Apple does "For the past five years, we’ve continued to hire more women and underrepresented minorities every year." https://www.apple.com/diversity/

Facebook does "We’re committed to building a workforce that’s as diverse as the communities we serve" https://www.facebook.com/careers/facebook-life/diversity

I would look up others but I think those three make the point. Companies are actively hiring underrepresented minorities. Yes some people think more effort should be put in but to say it isn't happening is being ignorant of reality.

I was questioning the assertion that it was most companies. Three companies, no statistics showing actual improvement, that doesn't make the point. Thanks for the links. It looks like Google is having trouble achieving this goal, since the article you linked shows the same percentage of minorities year to year. Apple says they have made progress, which is good. The facebook link doesn't have any numbers. Apple says "53% of new hires in the U.S. are from historically underrepresented groups in tech" but it doesn't give a timeframe or provide statistics that show how much of their workforce is minority or how much improvement they have made. I'm not sure that public relations boilerplate actually translates to a commitment to a diverse workforce.

Also I think you mean Trevor Noah and not Noah Trevor.

(One good source: White & Laird).

Lol, that’s understating it a bit. The president elect said “you ain’t black” to black people who even consider Trump. An old white man confidently telling black people their identity is jeopardized if they even consider not voting for him.

White & Laird's book is super interesting. Check it out.

Learning the true context is most important. This could be done by corroborating allegations for example.

N = 15 while p ≈ 20. It has been a while since I have taken a stats class, but that sample seems plenty large enough to me.

>Learning the true context is most important. This could be done by corroborating allegations for example.

Corroborating is exactly what journalists do. From the article:

>five people with knowledge of the situation said.

>But according to 23 current and former Coinbase employees, five of whom spoke on the record, as well as internal documents and recordings of conversations

>according to a recording of the session shared with The New York Times

>In a company email he sent later, which was also shared with The Times

>wrote in a Slack message that was viewed by The Times.

>three people briefed on the situation said

>according to a recording of the event

>according to a copy of the message seen by The Times

>according to a copy reviewed by The Times.

>two people with knowledge of the situation said

The NYT talked to dozens of people, watched/listened to multiple recordings, and viewed numerous emails and Slack messages. This story is corroborated.

> 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.

These have no corroboration, even though they allegedly happened in front of multiple coworkers.

edit: Sorry, I'm the poster from above, I just posted from my phone which has a different account logged in that I originally intended to give hiring advice unlinked to my main account(opsec fail).

Let's use another example in which evidence is hard to find: sexual assault. If one woman accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault, the burden of proof for her story is high. She would need some pretty strong evidence to get Cosby charged let alone convicted. She probably wouldn't even receive coverage in the mainstream media without some other form of evidence. However the entire situation would change if she was one of 60 women coming forward. Suddenly the burden of proof for that first woman is greatly diminished. Each individual's story is corroborated by someone else having a very similar story.

Our culture is full of anecdotes and stories that serve as a warning why this is a very bad idea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_witch_trials

Isn't there like 400 million guns in private hands in the US? If so, the assumption that pretty much anyone you meet in the street might have concealed gun on them is not absurd per se.

But speaking about it aloud seems strange, yes.

"passed over for promotions"

This is the oldest workplace complaint ever and happens in racially homogeneous countries all the time. Favoritism in the workplace is probably as old as the pyramids.

Yes that's what was asked; which ones?

> especially when n=15(if this was a statistical study on insulin response to artificial sweeteners, people would be saying the sample size is too small to draw conclusions)

And those people would be wrong. It's incorrect to dismiss a study based on sample size without a discussion of significance and effect size in the context of the data.

Moreover I reject the premise that you should be assessing this story quantitatively rather than qualitatively. But if you insist: what are your priors on whether or not a given company engaged in discrimination, and how do these change if you're told 75% of employees of a particular demographic stated there was discrimination?

> what are your priors on whether or not a given company engaged in discrimination, and how do these change if you're told 75% of employees of a particular demographic stated there was discrimination?

I completely agree that it's a very bad look. It is probably even more likely than not that given those facts, it is due to racism. I guess the question comes down to, philosophically, how one answers the following question: In the quest to eradicate racism and racists, is it better to be over-zealous and destroy a few non-racists to make sure you get all the actual racists(the chemo approach) - or is it better to be slightly more circumspect and let a few racists slip through the cracks so that far fewer non-racists are punished (the US judicial system ideal)?

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.

There is a pattern of behavior minimizing the scope and impact of abusive or discriminatory actions across the tech industry, and it is very prevalent on this site as well.

The simple reality is that unless an employee is able to obtain clear, slam-dunk evidence of directly legally actionable abuse or misconduct, then it is a huge personal risk to come forward. Most businesses that are large enough to have systemic problems have enormous resources to litigate against those claims.

In contrast, for employees to collect and use evidence, it is required that they: a) experience the abuse or discrimination, repeatedly b) collect evidence and documentation of that behaviour c) exfiltrate that evidence in contravention of legal contracts that can include NDAs, binding arbitration clauses, morality/non desparagement clauses, etc d) be in a strong enough financial position to defend against litigation e) be confident enough in their own skills, reputation, and network to be able to give up future career prospects based on A-D.

And this is just from the 5 minutes it took me to compose this message.

I get that HN is a bastion of support for meritocracy, and that founder worship is a strong bias for many on this forum, but as a community, and as an industry we have got to stop undermining and destroying the folks trying to hold people and firms accountable for bad behavior.

You are correct that the people in the article that either filed complaints, or spoke with the New York Times risked repercussions, but not all of the folks the Times spoke with are identified. People were willing to talk, but not necessarily on the record, or to be identified. That is because they are fearful of reprisal, based on past experiences and observations.

That is the biggest challenge for people confronting systemic issues like racism, poverty, homelessness, or any number of topics. It's not enough for victims to stand up for themselves, because there is a systemic imbalance in the ability to pursue remedies through the courts or other means. Getting justice in civil matters often boils down to the size of a victims pocket book (and especially in contrast to pocket books of the people or organizations that have made that person a victim). There are so many individuals who have left the tech industry after experiencing bad behaviour, discrimination, and abuse, and any one of those people could be the next Hedy Lamarr or Philip Emeagwali, and the industry is worse for not having those people in it.

Again, as a community we do our peers a disservice by not trusting them when they say there is a problem, especially when they are so consistently proven right.

You're arguing against a straw man here. I did not say that the only acceptable proof was an on the record statement. Anonymous corroboration or reporting a general description of an e-mail to preserve anonymity would be fine. There's nothing even like that.

>Getting justice in civil matters often boils down to the size of a victims pocket book

That's not really true. Susan Fowler blew up Uber with a single blog post. The difference is making specific accusations and providing some level of detail. There's essentially none of that in the NYTimes piece.

And you are arguing in bad faith; there are several parts of the article that detail exactly what you are looing for.

In the second paragraph, the article indicates that 11 of the folks who left notified HR or their managers.

In the third paragraph one of the named victims states she made several reports.

In the sixth paragraph 5 on the record employees and 18 off the record employees, and internal documents and recordings are claimed as evidence.

Despite this, Coinbase only reports three official complaints in the year many of these folks left.

Coupled with the stream of hot garbage that Brian Armstrong has proposed trying to position as being "Mission Focused", in the middle of a pandemic, massive, ongoing riots, and political instability just illustrates how utterly tone deaf the leadership at Coinbase is.

> Susan Fowler blew up Uber with a single blog post.

Yes, you correct. You also have to look at the facts; Susan is an excellent writer, and based on her book, she already had some measure of experience speaking truth to power. Coupled with the fact that she was already recognized as a talented engineer and a published author, it's not surprising her blog post was as well received as it was.

Susan also wrote about her experience with her own voice and had receipts to show how bad it was. I certainly don't want to down play the issues that women in tech face, but it's also well known that people of color frequently have different social and economic circumstances than white or white-presenting folks (and it's not me saying this -- she calls out in her book the casual anti-semitism she faced from folks who didn't know she is Jewish).

Everything you list is an accusation. What I am looking for is:

(1) Person X said this racist thing happened.

(2) The event in (1) is (a) true, and (b) backed up by a corroborating witness, this email, some document, etc

>You also have to look at the facts; Susan is an excellent writer, and based on her book, she already had some measure of experience speaking truth to power.

If the NY Times doesn't have reporters that can do that then they should fire the ones they have and find some that can.

You are offhandedly discounting the reported experience of more than 20 people, many of whom have come forward with evidence.

You did that! You said Susan Fowler was effective because she was able to speak truth to power. Implying that this article is ineffective because the writer doesn't know how to speak truth to power.

>You are offhandedly discounting the reported experience of more than 20 people, many of whom have come forward with evidence.

No I didn't. I said I tend to believe them.

I would like to challenge the perception of issues as systematic being a universal fact. You first have to accept that groups, as opposed to individuals, are responsible for action. This doesn't seem to hold up. Any delineation of people into any sort of groups is arbitrary. Corporations are legal fiction. Actions are perpetrated by individuals.

I would like to live in a society that optimizes for enthusiastic consent in, and at-will termination of all interactions and relationships for any reason whatsoever. This seems to be the only reasonable way to live in a society of people who disagree about fundamental things. To take this to the extreme, if you want to run a company full of racists, and be racist in your hiring policy, you should be able to do so. It is quite possible to support this standard of liberty without being racist oneself. I may disagree with what you say and all.

wrote in a Slack message that was viewed by The Times.

according to a copy of the message seen by The Times

according to a copy reviewed by The Times.

The 'other side' of this is a Coinbase blogpost that says 'we hired a consultant who told us we don't have such problems'. You are certainly free to decide which of these is better supported.

That's like scientists finding a negative result, and not getting it published. Skilled scientists don't let that happen often.

I don't believe that in the editing room they went: "Next item. The Coinbase controversy. Let's do an objective investigation of this and see what we find." But I won't accuse the NYT of bad faith, economic/journalistic incentives are sufficient to explain that angle, fishing for further controversy for a company with an already bad reputation (deserved or not).

Notice the NYT article even wrote negatively of Coinbase's diversity efforts: Supposedly, black people where shoed into photos, to make the company look good to the outside, but were never promoted or listened to (implying, because they were black, and white Libertarian autist tech bro's don't listen to or promote their black employees as a matter of principle). With such an angle about questionable motives, it is neigh impossible to do anything right. It is "we already determined you are wrong, now where is your apology?".

Did the editorial show that Coinbase is engaging in illegal discrimination practices? No, but they sure implied it.

Would it be problematic to encourage diverse representations to show up for company photos, if you did not ignore them for advancement? On its own, I think that's just common sense, and taking some PR advantage of the costly diversity programs.

A random/unplanned company photo I was in, was circulated online, to falsely claim that my company only hires white people. Felt really bad, especially for my multiracial colleagues present in that photo. Can you even give this movement what they want, without accusations of pandering/fake concern?

> Not specifically require Black employees to relocate to different cities while giving non-Black employees the opportunity to work out out whatever the nearest office is.

I refuse to believe that Coinbase based that decision on skin color, and I find it hard to believe anyone else sees that differently. As such, to follow this rule, you would have to overturn your decision -- based on rationale --, because it happens to negatively impact a person with a specific skin color. How is this a decent decision: "Sorry Chad, we can't let you work from home to care for your mother, because we just told some black-skinned support engineers to relocate, and we don't want to specifically require black people to relocate, and allow white people to work from home."? How is that fair? To who? It suddenly becomes justified if Chad was black, or if you allow everyone to work from home?

Sure. You can:

* Not specifically require Black employees to relocate to different cities while giving non-Black employees the opportunity to work out out whatever the nearest office is.

* Treat Black employees respectfully in meetings.

* Not allow people who manage Black employees to mock them for being drug dealers and for carrying weapons.

* Not allow recruiting team members to discuss the merits of different races and their likelihood of success as candidates in hiring team meetings.

This all seems pretty basic?

Incidentally: I don't know what the "movement" you're referring to is. I've been in this industry since the 1990s, and these seem like rules that would have been equally germane in 1995.

I'm not trying to zing you with that, but am noticing a persistent subtext on this thread that attempts to equate Black people not wanting to be discriminated against with some larger basket of "far-left politics". Plenty of conservatives have the same objections to racial bias as whatever the "movement" we're talking about here is. Ironically, among Democrats (Black people overwhelmingly identify with the Democratic party for historical reasons), Black people trend significantly more conservative.

Are you under the impression that Coinbase makes Work-From-Home decisions based on the skin-color of their employees?

If yes (which it seems like to me), I'd like to learn more about that, and your reasoning. Am I oblivious to modern work-place racism? Imperceptive? Naive? Defending vile racists? I'd like to reconsider those questions on a more informed ground. My (and your) view kinda hinges on that impression and its truth.

I can understand why Black employees would have that impression, but if it's not true, then I also see that as problematic.

> I am under the impression that Coinbase demanded that the Black employees of the compliance group relocate to PDX so that the whole group could work out of the same office, and then exempted a white worker in the same group from that requirement.

Did it matter for this demand that one group was Black and the other was white? Or did this just happened to be the unfortunate outcome, which is bad optics if you focus on skin color attributes, and such bad optics should be avoided?

I am still not too sure. Can you remove "Black" and "white" from your impression and still say the same thing, or is it essential to your impression, and telling of a problematic work environment?

We don’t have details who exactly was required to relocate and who weren’t. Coinbase’s compliance department is huge made of multiple teams, so it’s not just the handful of people mentioned in this article.

(I wonder how many people apply this level of corroboration requirement to forward-looking statements about the benefits of bitcoin?)

Take this article on the US Meat Animal Research Center (https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/20/dining/animal-welfare-at-...) as a good example of an organizational misconduct investigation done right. Dr. Keen told the Times they're doing some abusive things to the animals. So the Times talked to a bunch of employees, and reviewed a bunch of documents, in order to make sure they could accurately and concretely describe specific instances of wrongdoing. This is the quality of journalism the New York Times is generally known for. It would be a much worse article - both less fair to the research center and less convincing about the accusations - if they hadn't dug in like that.

It seems like your criticism is that the article implies that Coinbase's executive management has racial bias problems, and the article doesn't establish that bias to your satisfaction. But that's always going to be a problem with news articles. Some will present evidence that is dispositive to you, some won't.

I find the reporting in this piece damning. I understand how others would view it more charitably. That's what we're meant to be discussing. Less productive: a discussion of the legitimacy of the reporting itself.

(For what it's worth, the article's lede is well-corroborated, and I agree it provides strong evidence of a serious problem with retention of black employees.)

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.

Direct all of that energy at him for the representation he is making about people on the spectrum.

If he wants to lean on that as a crutch on all of his organizational decision making skills, then we absolutely get to call him out on that all the time until he does something different.