I dunno, it only asks for a thumbs up or thumbs down - unless I misread it - which is a lot less invasive or "ratty" than most employee review systems I know.

I prefer human feedback to be honest. And I've only ever given negative feedback on a direct co-worker once, who was a right smug prick.

> I dunno, it only asks for a thumbs up or thumbs down

Yeah, but why? Why would I even "rate" my coworkers? I would prefer not to. If someone is a prick, I talk to them first, and if it doesn't help and the case is serious, I go to the manager or file a formal complaint. What's the point of giving people thumbs up/down? Someone has a bad day, let's make it even worse by giving them a thumbs down, it's ridiculous.

>Someone has a bad day, let's make it even worse by giving them a thumbs down, it's ridiculous.

So giving them a thumbs-down is bad, but filing a formal complaint is fine? That seems like an extreme escalation.

Maybe I'm far less cynical than others here, but as has been mentioned in other comments, I don't believe that people are going to down-rank people out of spite. And if you ask a broad question like, "Is this person a good teammate, yes/no?" and the person gets many no's...perhaps it's something to look into?

> So giving them a thumbs-down is bad, but filing a formal complaint is fine? That seems like an extreme escalation.

No, on the opposite. If a coworker is just a bit unpleasant but I'm forced to rate them, I'm more likely to rate them negatively for reasons I have no idea about (maybe their dog died or are taking new medicine or whatever).

If I'm not asked to rate them, I won't do anything, until it's grave enough I should intervene. In this case, I will contact them directly trying to understand them and solve the problem in an amicable way, without involving any external party. This helps in a vast majority of cases. Only in extremely rare cases, once in a few years, the problem becomes so grave that another person needs to be involved. In any case, giving anyone a thumbs down doesn't solve anything.

I think "Black Mirror S03E01 - Nosedive" gives a good perspective on how such a system can go wrong, but on a country level. I think that the same would apply in a company though: it would exacerbate the misalignment of incentives instead of improving the situation.

I think the Dunbar Number plays a significant role in why those situations are different.

Right. I’m reminded of Travis Kalanick’s “super pumped” metric at Uber.

And of course that Black Mirror episode. Constantly evince a super positive energy or else.

There was no "superpumped" metric. It was one of their Amazon-style leadership principles.

episode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive_(Black_Mirror)

Did this as far back as 18 years ago - but in a team of four people. You can see the problem with that.

For what it's worth, this is progress. The previous default is a 24/7 inquisition trying to find and destroy any co-worker not on the cutting edge of woke - whether outside of work or at work.

A silly 10 question yes/no survey from HR is a step back towards sanity.

Where was this woke inquisition happening that you saw directly? I’ve seen people complain about this much more than I’ve actually seen it happening.

I lived it. It sucked. Only the dumb ones got cancelled. The smart ones kept their heads down or got new jobs. The team was defined by mediocrity. Mediocrity in hiring, in execution, in quality. But oh were they ever so woke.

What kind of company was this? I do contracting and have worked a lot of places, big and small, but have never seen anything remotely like this.

Perhaps it's a matter of perspective? Would you say e.g. James Damore was "cancelled", rather than being fired for discriminatory statements that an NLRB lawyer described as "so harmful, discriminatory, and disruptive as to be unprotected"?

This is a venture backed enterprise software company.

Cancelling was never so straightforward as being fired. It was social ostracism and the soft understanding that no promotions were going to come their way, because the whole HR team was against it and their managers were never going to spend the social capital to fight that fight.

Their offense was objecting to a specific point being made in “implicit bias training”.

I was high enough in the org chart that I was privy to these conversations.

Damore was cancelled and a woke NLRB lawyer making things up to ensure his cancellation stuck doesn't mean anything beyond the NLRB being just one more corrupted organization on top of so many others. Obviously, if you think Damore is actually a terrible person then you're a part of the problem, and not going to perceive anything as woke regardless of how many other people find it crazy.

Damore was canned by Google for exactly one reason: he had become a liability to the company. If he became a manager with a report who was a woman, or even worked on a team with women, any negative feedback would be suspect. He had literally written a treatise stating that women were not as predisposed to working in tech as men. Any woman could challenge him as biased. And Google would have to deal with the fallout of that, which would be a huge time sink and PR disaster for them.

Is this satire? The over usage of woke is funny.

You have just written three negative sentences. You have a somewhat negative nick (nowherebeen). Your previous three comments on HN were negative.

Perhaps coinbase doesn’t target employees like you. Maybe they like happy clappy medicinally-well-adjusted type employees?

That's fine by me. I have never applied to coinbase nor intend to. I do agree I am a somewhat negative nick as well since I tend to comment on stuff I disagree with on HN. Thanks for the heads up though. I shall see if I can improve upon it.

I think the comment you are responding to was sarcastic and in jest at Coinbase's dystopian system.

Yeah: my idea of funny is often not funny. I would fail the Dunning-Kruger test.

I would like to say I occasionally write low quality comments to empirically test my personal self-judgement about my own metrics of reality.