I used to work with kids in an international program. I had a hard "mission focused" rule. Most of the social justice type advocacy talk about political topics would be banned under this rule (along with a lot of other stuff about back home like what they owned etc).

Kids whose parents would have hated each other getting along well, making friendships, etc. In the long run, seeing this humanity in each other (I think) will contribute more to some large benefits than always going to war on every issue.

Some examples - Student (jewish) whose dream was to join IDF to kill "terrorists" vs kid whose parents were palestinian (and hated jews). The kid who talked trash about blood transfusions for some reason - with a friend whose medical form had a history of them. Some crazy wealth disparities (the private jet kids with the extended passport filled with stamps vs kid who saved mowing money to go on program).

Stripped of all the baggage from back home (and with no cell phone / internet access etc), working together (outdoor program), no parents spoiling them (for the spoiled ones) or whaling on them (one or two parents from south still do this) - very cool to see what happens (in most cases).

A beautiful story, thanks for sharing.

I can only attest from both travel and work that exposure to other cultures and peoples destroys any and all bias.

Thank you for sharing that. It's nice to see examples of what we can do when we focus on what unites us, vs what divides us.

As a European living and working in the US: your comparison is very shortsighted.

European countries literally have no legal concept of at-will employment. They have strong social nets that make quitting your job much easier, and more prevalent unions that fight to improve working conditions (all of these things are, gasp, political! incidentally)

By comparison employment in the US is messed up enough that if you leave your job you lose your health insurance. Companies with great policies can sometimes retain employees on that basis alone! Is it really any wonder that “politics” ends up being an issue in the workplace when your employer literally controls your access to healthcare?

All of this stuff is emblematic of a deeply unhealthy relationship with employment in the US. Despite widespread agreement that this arrangement is bad, the US political system is broken enough that changing it feels all but impossible. CEOs like Brian are taking a hard stance against the effects while ignoring the causes.

You’re right that such a thing is only possible in the US, you’re just wrong about the reasons why.

> European countries literally have no legal concept of at-will employment. They have strong social nets that make quitting your job much easier, and more prevalent unions that fight to improve working conditions (all of these things are, gasp, political! incidentally)

This isn't what is debated here. What is debated is whether Coinbase should display a Black Lives Matter flag on its website and whether employees should be debating about Black Live matters, "Free Palestine", ICE and immigration policies or other wedge issues on the clock.

In Europe the very premise of that question would be completely absurd, and thanks to that both right wingers and left wingers can coexist in the same workplace by behaving professional. This is almost impossible today in the tech sector in USA.

This is a lazy stereotype. European nations generally spend more on welfare, but the social justice stuff, which is now a defining part of the current "left", seems to be overwhelmingly produced in and exported from the U.S. and plenty of locals resent it as an inorganic cultural import. The entire obsession with "whiteness" looks extra weird on a continent where the population has been mostly white since the Stone Age, but yes, some of our less than stellar intellectuals still try to transpose (and impose it) here.

Also, compared to the U.S., Europe is decidedly more tribal. There is a sense of national identity forged by foreign occupations and attacks, especially among the smaller or weaker nations, that produces a lot of entrenched, insecure nationalism. Americans, being the top dogs of the world's pack for generations, generally do not understand how nationalism can arise from conditions of humiliation and victimhood, or only limit this understanding to their own black population, thus misunderstanding the European political currents a lot.

If a quarter of your population was forcibly deported to Siberia (which happened in the Baltics recently enough that witnesses are still alive), you will be a lot more jaded and distrustful than if you have no concept of such threats.

That’s true for economic issues, but Coinbase wasn’t facing tension from those. This whole thing is on the social side, and there are definitely hot-button social issues Europe faces that aren’t brought up at work (e.g. migrants)

> The reason it’s absurd in Europe is because Europe is a very “left” leaning region (its more that America is just so wildly conservative and in the pockets of capitalists). Many European countries do not have a political party that is even as right leaning as the Democratic Party within the USA.

Europe isn't "left" leaning at all. Most of Europe is culturally conservative. It's just like unlike the USA, Europeans believe in strong central governments and even the right usually don't question welfare state.

But it says nothing about Europe and wedge issues like homosexuality, immigration, ...

The fact the far right in countries like France for instance have high voting scores should dispel any sense of Europe being "left leaning".

> Many European countries do not have a political party that is even as right leaning as the Democratic Party within the USA.

This is completely false. Every European country has a far right party, that holds "traditional" view on wedge issues and is opposed to the US made idea of "diversity".

I don't know why americans think Europe is somehow "left leaning", this has never been the case. The divide is more along the lines of "globalists" which are classical liberals and pro EU, and nationalists/isolationists, which are anti-EU, anti-globalism. Both camps have their socially liberal and culturally conservative parties.

No I'm not missing any point. You are making up a point that has absolutely nothing to do with the actual situation at Coinbase.

The political debate at Coinbase was never about "safety net" at all. It's about petty identity politics. You are trying to make the discussion about "safety net" when that discussion has nothing to do about "safety net" at first place.

What do employees demanding a company makes a statement about "Black Live Matters" or "Free Palestine" has to do with "safety net"? Absolutely nothing.

We're talking about US Tech workers here, which are already well compensated by their employer.

Black Lives Matters is important because companies discriminate against black people and there is police discrimination and brutality against black people and whoever the police deem undesirable in the US, not just in one or two regions, but in every sizeable city in the US. So it's hard to see your friends discriminated against and employers (the only entity with enough political power to effect change in the us) making the problems worse. And amazon and other tech companies fund city council seats and fuel tons of money to defeat referendums that hurt their profit. Yes, ideally politics would be fought over outside the corporate sphere but due to politicians mostly only listening to corporations in the US at the federal and city level, that isn't possible.

> companies discriminate against black people

They actively discriminate for black people.

> there is police discrimination against black people in the US, not just in one or two regions, but in every sizeable city in the US

Source? Did you control for crime rates? Violent crime rates? Armed encounters?

I don't see how at-will employment is related here.

This is Coinbase. The vast majority of the employees there are not stuck in a job they wish they could leave but can't. These are some of the most privileged employees in the world.

The bigger issue is like the OP stated, the state of politics in the US. How does at-will employment relate to issues like not working with certain government institutions because you disagree with their purpose?

Coinbase isn't trying to avoid political arguments over healthcare, they're trying to avoid employees rallying together and changing the company to further their personal political beliefs.

> European countries literally have no legal concept of at-will employment. They have strong social nets that make quitting your job much easier, and more prevalent unions that fight to improve working conditions...

> By comparison employment in the US is messed up enough that if you leave your job you lose your health insurance. Companies with great policies can sometimes retain employees on that basis alone!

I think this is an argument in favor of what Brian is doing at Coinbase, though. The problem is that in the current political climate, people are intimidated and discouraged from becoming politically engaged out of fear that if their views are unpopular enough, even many years in the future, their coworkers will circulate petitions to get them fired.

If we as a people were capable of civil disagreement and didn't do things like circulate petitions to get our coworkers fired, maybe it wouldn't be necessary for Coinbase to do what they did.

I think we're mixing up different political topics here.

The one I think you're talking about is the US workers' struggle to defend or increase basic worker rights. Which indeed is a political struggle of workers versus management.

If I'm not mistaken, the Coinbase case is about social justice types of topics like feminism, BLM, trans rights, colonialism, the like.

My point is that positions like Brian's require there to be a clear and bright line between "political" and "not political". I think it's at least slightly easier to draw that line in European workplaces where the nature of employment is not as politically fraught.

Just to take two of your examples: feminism and trans rights. Both have healthcare implications. Your employer controls your healthcare. Should the healthcare provided by your employer cover birth control? Abortion? Conversion therapy? This mix is inevitable.

We might as well call it what it is: troublemakers.

People that are so politically activist at work that they dis-proportionally impact the business. By sowing division, distracting from the work, spoiling morale. And sometimes worse, like stealing data or airing dirty laundry publicly.

I'm not going to touch the morality of it, I'm merely painting the picture of what it is.

There's more companies where this is an issue, Google had plenty such incidents, Basecamp, Facebook, the like.

I can't help but feel like you've made your mind up and aren't interested in listening to any other perspective. Your reply addresses absolutely nothing in the post it's replying to. Perhaps we just leave the conversation here, I don't see it going anywhere fruitful. I wish you all the best.

I'm open to different perspectives but you're not even on topic. Let me simplify it even further: Brian fired the woke.

The thing you're talking about, worker conditions, is not what the article is about. It's not a different perspective, it's an entirely different topic.

But anyway, have a good day regardless.

If Coinbase employees didn't feel they can weigh in on what their health insurance should cover, I would certainly agree that's a problem, but I'd be very surprised if that's the case. Armstrong's announcement acknowledged that there will be some cases where political engagement is inevitable because it intersects with the company's business. Remember that this position came in direct response to an incident where Coinbase employees demanded that the company publicly endorse a specific political slogan on the topic of police brutality - regardless of how blurry the line is in general, I hope we can agree that Coinbase's business doesn't have much to do with the police.

You can afford pretty much anything you need as a trans person by working a year as a software engineer. Healthcare is bad in the USA? Do medical tourism, they have great doctors overseas.

Medical tourism is not convenient or even guaranteed to be a trusting experience. Two things that would be very important for many high ticket medical procedures.

Why should any insurance cover elective procedures? You could also add things like beauty surgeries, hair transplant, lasik surgeries etc. (I know that EU insurances often cover birth control, but I think that's mostly because it's a drug prescribed by a doctor so it fits into the framework... I don't think it should cover birth control (except maybe for young people before they start working) - that's not insurance, it's just a subscription service so you're better off buying it directly.)

"Elective" in "elective procedure" doesn't mean "optional and potentially frivolous." It just means "not emergent", or put differently it means you won't die if you don't have it right now.

Kidney stone surgery is elective. Cancer resection is elective. Most heart surgery is elective. Most brain surgery is elective.

I assume you're not arguing that health insurance shouldn't cover these things, because that would be extremely foolish. It may, though, be worth acquainting yourself with at least the basic terminology of the field about which you want to argue, because overlooking this point makes you seem as if you don't really know what you're talking about.

What’s the correct term?

To the best of my knowledge, there exists no term in the medical lexicon denoting the category of "interventions 'tomp believes should not be covered in some or all cases by health insurance."

what category does "beauty plastic surgery" fall under, if not "emergency" or "elective"?

Cosmesis is elective.

Neither of us is going to convince one another; you very evidently have strongly held opinions about how medicine should be practiced, whereas I know some things about how it is. That being so, I see no point in continuing this line of discussion any further. Should you feel otherwise, I hope you enjoy it.

The core reasons seems to be that you seem to keep misrepresenting my arguments.

I'm not talking about "practicing medicine" at all, just about who pays for what.

Ensuring patients are able to access the treatments ordered for them, or at least trying to do that, qualifies as part of the practice of medicine. That's why medical practices have billing departments to deal with insurance on the patient's behalf, rather than requiring cash up front and letting patients figure their own way through the reimbursement process.

The problem isn't that I'm misrepresenting your arguments, such as they are. The problem is that, instead of finding out how this stuff actually works and understanding why it works the way it does, you prefer to continue insisting on your opinions, which are as apparently uninformed as strongly held.

I don't see what you hope to achieve by this save wasting someone time, and my test suite just finished running, so it'll have to be someone else's time from here.

You're right, maybe I'm just unfamiliar with how health insurance works in the US.

In Europe, neither public nor private insurance covers beauty surgeries (at least the ones I'm familiar with).

Birth control is prescribed by a doctor for a wide variety of things, including chronic health conditions. If you think insurance shouldn’t cover birth control because it’s consistent, do diabetics also not deserve to have insulin covered, or high blood pressure people their statins?

Sure, in that case if it’s medically indicated and not elective, that’s a different situation.

I'm not sure whether you include trans healthcare among "shouldn't be covered", so here's my 2 cents:

- Most of Europe prescribes hormones upon a medical indication. This leads to bad gatekeeping; I've been told to see 3 different professionals before starting hormones.

- Anecdotally, I'm on grey market hormones while waiting, without any bloodwork - before starting those hormones, I've had suicidal ideations on a daily basis.

- This seems to be backed by data as well: Ideation rates are reported to be 37-83% and attempt rates are reported to be 9.8-44%. [0]

Given the frequent outcomes of depression and suicide, I think it's fair to say that trans healthcare is not optional and should be fully covered.

[0] https://doi.org/10.1037/sgd0000235

Why does a workplace get to determine what is and isn’t medically elective for a woman to take birth control? Isn’t that political too?

I'm not arguing about politics, I'm putting in question the whole idea of making voluntary (not sure if that's the correct term - definitely not elective as I was corrected above) medical procedures available through insurance. Insurance is meant for unpredictable and unforeseen exceptional events. Wanting to have beauty surgery, or contraception, or lasik surgery, etc. isn't such. You could still argue that these should be covered by insurance, but that's simply economically inefficient - you're essentially paying for a subscription service, with the middle man taking a cut - why not just buy it yourself?

I see the confusion. American health insurance doesn’t really fit the term insurance as you define it above. I agree, insurance should be for catastrophic events. But in the US, a health plan is expected to cover all your medical expenses, minus co-pays or deductibles. Perhaps there should be a different term for it.

Obviously it is. But for people defending all kinds of status quo, it's a political act just trying to change it. Trying to keep it as it is, it's seen as "normal" or apolitical.

I always hear this argument that the employer controls your health care in the U.S. and it is quite wrong. The employer MAY offer one or more options for a subsidized health care plan in which the employer contributes some or all of the cost of the selected plan. There is zero requirement for an employee to select or use such a plan, and there is absolutely nothing stopping an employee from seeking an alternative plan or additional uncovered treatments through other means available to them.

Maybe there is a point to be made about the overall cost of health care plans being too expensive for an individual to afford without the employer subsidy, but that is orthogonal to "employer control" of healthcare.

> Maybe there is a point to be made about the overall cost of health care plans being too expensive for an individual to afford without the employer subsidy, but that is orthogonal to "employer control" of healthcare.

No, it's not. A choice in which the alternative is unattainable (or simply worse) is a Hobson's choice, and the direct result is that Americans with full-time employement are dependent on employer-subsidized healthcare.

Of course everyone knows that feminism has nothing to do with basic workers rights because a women's place is in the home.

/sarcasm

> Companies with great policies can sometimes retain employees on that basis alone!

So I recently quit a FAANG and they sent me a COBRA notice with the cost of their insurance benefit. You can get great FAANG insurance for about $10k a year, which is peanuts for a Silicon Valley engineer. We need to dispel the myth that Silicon Valley engineers are working for health insurance.

We need to dispel the myth that everyone that works at a Silicon Valley company is an engineer.

Coinbase in particular will have legions of support people (who do you think answers the phone/customer emails?). I would bet that $10k (or maybe $15k for a family) is a meaningful fraction of the annual compensation for many roles at Coinbase.

"who do you think answers the phone/customer emails?"

In my experience, nobody at all.

Sorry, it's a common crypto joke.

COBRA means you’re still getting insurance through your (former) employer. How much does the same insurance benefit cost if you buy it fully on your own?

In my experience you can’t even buy a similar plan as an individual. And definitely not at the same price.

Apples to apples comparison is very hard because the plans are all different. But having bought insurance from the state marketplace it two US states, I'd say around $500 USD/month.

This matches my recent experience. I researched plans on Washington state's health marketplace and found that while the available plans were generally much cheaper than COBRA, their coverage for out-of-network or out-of-state care was limited (e.g. "emergency" care only, where the definition of emergency is vague and up to the insurer). And even if you are careful to get taken to an "in-network" hospital, there are plenty of horror stories about inadvertently getting treated by an "out-of-network" provider while inside and being on the hook for the entire bill.

I couldn't find a marketplace plan that didn't give me real doubts about the possible financial impact of traveling to other states(!) so I decided to suck it up and pay for COBRA for peace of mind. Of course, COBRA will run out after 18 months, but I plan to get another corporate job before then.

TL:DR if you have (or recently left) a fancy corporate job here, you have access to a group plan with nice coverage. If you have to buy an individual plan, it seems you cannot get the same level of coverage even if you're willing to pay for it, and the available coverage leaves you with the risk of huge medical bills if you suddenly need healthcare while simply traveling within the country.

> . And even if you are careful to get taken to an "in-network" hospital, there are plenty of horror stories about inadvertently getting treated by an "out-of-network" provider while inside and being on the hook for the entire bill.

This is no longer legal in any state as of July 1st of this year.

> Bans out-of-network charges for ancillary care (like an anesthesiologist or assistant surgeon) at an in-network facility in all circumstances.

https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2021/07/01/hhs-announces-rule...

I normally just lurk, but this could effect someone's plans and is slightly incorrect.

This change was enacted December, 2020 with a July 1 deadline to confirm it would be enacted.

It doesn't go into effect until January 1, 2022 and does not apply to charges incurred before then.

It also only applies to federal plans (including "Obamacare" plans, but not necessarily private plans.

The language of the subsection addressing this is poorly constructed, so be careful.

The HHS link provided above by secabeen has those details and links to further information

That is an improvement indeed. Thanks for correcting me!

I got a plan from the marketplace in Washington state for around 550/month. It was called a Silver plan, but it didn't cover very much. I kept getting bills a year after my services for things that I thought were covered and that my doctor said would be covered. And I looked into the benefits sheets while choosing my healthcare. Yes, I didn't get the highest priced one, but if Silver doesn't cover very much, I'm not confident "Gold" will. Also my experience with some corporate plans is that even though technically things are covered, sometimes the waiting times of a few months for urgent things mean they basically aren't.

>"We need to dispel the myth that Silicon Valley engineers are working for health insurance."

The OP was referring to US companies in general not FAANG companies, which are outliers by many measures. If you read the sentence before the one your quoting it provides the context:

"By comparison employment in the US is messed up enough that if you leave your job you lose your health insurance."

Also smaller companies generally pay significantly more per employee than a megacorp does. And this is the amount one assumes when COBRA kicks in. Also for 10K I'm guessing you have an individual plan and are not covering family dependents which would also add significantly to the premium.

> Is it really any wonder that “politics” ends up being an issue in the workplace?

It's still a wonder for me, I don't follow your reasoning at all. How does this force people into being antagonistic and fighting over politics in the workplace? If anything, this should put a pressure on workers to not stand out and keep their mouth shut, so that they wouldn't risk loosing coveted employer-provided insurance.

I don't get it. You argue that employment is more tenuous at US companies for various reasons... therefore employees want to stick their necks out by engaging in politics? Shouldn't we expect the opposite?

Breaking points in history are still breaking points.

Aside from that your comparison with Europe is quite flawed (there are plenty "at-will employment" type of constructions possible here, you don't get unemployment benefits if you quit yourself, etc.) these are all tech workers who have new employers lining up to hire them. They are not blue collar workers in an Amazon warehouse who have to relieve themselves in a bottle and get terminated by an algorithm for failing to meet quota's.

But besides all that I fail to see how any of what you just said are arguments to make the workplace a political Twitter-style fight pit?

You make at least three times as much as people in Europe, while the cost of living isn't three times higher. You can save this money in case something bad happens. If you're a minimum wage worker that's a different story. But we're talking about software engineers here. A standing desk and wrist exercises solve most of your possible work-related injuries.

Not everyone at tech company is a software engineer or makes that type of money.

I was going to post this, but couldn't have said it better.

The stakes of a job are quite a bit higher in the US, and it goes beyond healthcare.

The quality of a great many social foods in the US, from primary schooling to transit access and many others, are governed by your job. The social safety nets that exist kick in only at the extremes, of destitution (Medicaid) or age (Medicare).

Coinbase hits a unique intersection of outrage here since it provokes vitriol from both people who hate cryptocurrency, and those that are outspoken progressives, both of which are large demographics on HN.

Like when you think about it, how is this a big deal in any way? I think the fact that people are making a big deal out of it is a bigger deal than whatever Coinbase's internal practices are here.

I love cryptocurrency and don't care much for american progressivism.

It's still pretty obvious to me that Coinbase is run by scumbags, like Uber and Google are.

Can you name a company in, say, the top 50 largest companies by market cap that isn't run by scumbags? The intent of the question is to divine whether you think Coinbase in particular is a problem, or whether you have a problem with big companies in general.

From what I know as an outsider:

Tesla, TSMC, Netflix, Adobe, Toyota.

Berkshire Hathaway?

> 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.

> Any ethnicity, sex, gender, sexuality, religion and political conviction you can think of and we all get along just fine with zero tensions.

This really sounds like you are blaming the black employees at Coinbase for standing up for themselves, and that if they just sat back down and took whatever hand they were being dealt that there would be "zero tensions"... which I guess hinges awkwardly on what you mean by "tensions"?

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/27/technology/coinbase-crypt...

I encourage you to read this article--which, FWIW, I'm sure is one of the articles Brian Armstrong here is calling a "hit piece" in his Twitter thread--as this wasn't merely some abstract issue of "politics": black employees at Coinbase felt they were being actively discriminated against.

This is interesting, never saw this article.

I don't get why people struggle so much dealing with black people? Like just be empathetic and assume the best. I guess so many people are just racist. It's just crazy.

Sorry, I lack the privilege to read that article.

Here you go:

http://archive.today/EMPL2

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

I wasn't trolling, I really can't read it. Also not on that archive link.

Having worked in both (EU and US) I have seen both sides. I saw the trend (identity based politics) starting to appear in tech in Europe, for example "we shouldn't try to win business from company X due to their stance on issue Y" came up multiple times in company all hands (500 person company).

That’s disappointing but I suppose it is to be expected since the Internet allows cultural exports at light speed. I am reminded of the recent warning from the French education minister (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/world/europe/france-threa...):

> French politicians, high-profile intellectuals and journalists are warning that progressive American ideas — specifically on race, gender, post-colonialism — are undermining their society. “There’s a battle to wage against an intellectual matrix from American universities,’’ warned Mr. Macron’s education minister.

One thing that I've noticed is that Americans are hyper-focused on raising awareness. Most people should realize that Coinbase making a statement about BLM would lead to zero progress towards the advancement of Civil Rights. However, for some people, it's so important that they'd sacrifice their job for it.

I mean, that makes sense. Culturally, that society has, at crucial times, decided to “just follow orders” even when the orders were reprehensible. It is not particularly surprising that Europeans don’t rock the boat.

Nobody brings politics or activism to work and that has yielded certain outcomes over the last century.

I actually prefer the mission-focused thing but I wouldn’t be convinced by the Europeans who are notorious conformists.

Just know that there is a large majority of Americans that hold this view but don't speak up due to potential of being cancelled or fired.

I wouldn't expect anything else, and the article basically confirms the point.

It shows the massive divide between the Twitter world and the real world. Nobody wants real life Twitter.

> Just want to say how ridiculous this is from a European perspective.

What is ridiculous? What Brian said? the response? I'm not following.

Saying you're a mission focused company and this being somehow controversial is ridiculous. Every company should be mission focused.

As his post demonstrates, it turns out to not be controversial at all. A handful of people left and after a few weeks the Twitter mob stops. Then you're left with reasonable people to do the job, which is the point of any company.

> A handful of people left

They lost close to half of their engineering team, significant percentages of their operations teams, and many senior leaders.

What? Only 5% of the company took the buyout: https://www.coindesk.com/business/2020/10/08/5-of-coinbase-e...

Maybe you're mixing this up with Basecamp?

What is “globohomo wokeness”?

My band's name.

> 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.

I’m sure this statement is not true, (racism and sexism don’t exist in Europe now?) but even supposing it is, there are very few companies in the U.S. that are this diverse. And the state of our labor rights in comparison to the EU is atrocious. In the first place, at-will employment, a right wing policy, is to be blamed for how easy it is to fire people for political reasons.

It’s easy to strawman an anonymous group of “aggressive identity-based political activists”, much more difficult to reckon with the real differences in the political economy of the EU vs the U.S.

Sure there are. Have you walked into any FAANG office? There are a huge variety of West/East European nationalities and East/Southeast Asians. That's representative of over half the world's population right there. You can probably find an engineer from every single one of the ex-Soviet countries in an NYC Google office.

I suppose by diversity you mean the right kind of diversity then?

"Diversity" can be so confusing and misunderstood.

The example I gave, extreme diversity, is not the standard in my country, this tech hub is the exception. I've also worked in teams consisting of only white men.

The inconvenient reality is that I couldn't detect a meaningful difference in the quality or quantity of output in either team. As said, I did enjoy the increased diversity from a personal perspective, so there's that.

The reason for the roughly equal output is that the team of white men was also diverse. Pointing at a group of people with the same skin and concluding they're all the same is ignorant. It's factually untrue. Likewise, assuming a team is diverse/better due to them having a mix of ethnicities or other aspects, may also not be the case.

Don't get me wrong, there are cases where it matters, but also cases where it doesn't.

Just wondering, what country are you in? Do you think this is something unusual about your particular tech hub?

Netherlands. No, not unusual at all, just adult people cooperating and doing their job.

FAANG is not the tech industry. Are you saying every company has as large and international a recruitment pool as Google? But again, that’s what this convo is really about — the perceptions and prejudices that tech libertarians develop based on the perceived behaviors of less than 1% of employees at 5 tech firms. Hilarious.

In the past I worked at a telecom company which had representation from Russia, Japan, China, India, Britain, and America on my team alone.

And I'm guessing you want tech companies to hire more black and Latino workers because that's what every diversity pundit says. You know those demographics are overwhelmingly domestic and not international?

My skepticism of the starry eyed and incredibly convenient anecdotes of endless diverse and equitable workplaces from you and others has absolutely nothing to do with my own political beliefs. Your insistence that that is what I want despite the fact that I have not even mentioned specific race based diversity quotas says a lot about your beliefs and prejudices though. Keep tilting at the windmills — I’m sure the world in which nobody mentions politics that don’t align with your worldview or the worldview of their employer will be a better one. And of course, under such a regime, nobody will ever be fired for their political beliefs again, after all the only thing separating us from that are those pesky “diversity pundits.”