None of those are messages/documents contain racist action by anyone at Coinbase. They are (1) a reaction to a blog post, (2) a reaction to a letter, and (3) a conclusion in a report. They are not concrete evidence of racism.
I'm not sure what your standard is, you said 'corroborating evidence'. This is evidence that corroborates what the employees told the NYT. Now you're at 'concrete evidence'. What would that be? That someone yelled racial slurs at employees and then handed out signed receipts? The coinbase 'prebuttal' doesn't concretely dispute much either, it says you're going to see some stuff in the NYT that's 'hard to read'. If anything, it's striking how little both pieces disagree about the employees' allegations.
For example, the article talks extensively about Layllen Sawyerr's case. So I'd expect corroboration to look something like "we talked to suchandsuch other people who confirmed she was treated unfairly", "we read this email in which she was treated unfairly", or perhaps "we heard about this specific personnel decision which was unfair to her". A lack of corroboration doesn't mean her accusations are false, but a lack of attempt to corroborate is very troubling from a national newspaper, especially when the subject of the article is going on the record to say the accusations aren't true. Either Milosevich and Coinbase are lying about their investigation or Sawyerr's story is false - isn't the NYT curious to figure out which one?
The NYT didn't title their piece 'Coinbase is racist'. It's reporting on 'lots of Coinbase's black employees feel the company handles race and diversity issues poorly'. The reporting looks into that and, well, reports on why the employees think that.
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.
The article was written as if the hook/angle for the article was created after the No-Politics-Policy, then filled in by contacting former and current employees. I don't think a report with "Coinbase gets lots of unfair flak, but tries really hard to be inclusive" article would be published, or even could have been written with the selection of sources.
That's like scientists finding a negative result, and not getting it published. Skilled scientists don't let that happen often.
Not in response to the rule, but to the media cycle that followed publication of the rule.
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?".
I don't understand. If Black employees were deliberately encouraged to show up to be photographed, but otherwise ignored and passed over for advancement, it doesn't take much of an editorial slant to show a problem; that behavior is inherently problematic.
That behavior (passing over an employee due to their skin color) is not only problematic, it is against the law.
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?
The comment I replied to appears to have been substantially edited in the time since I've replied to it.
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.
No edit, I just replied to you in my previous comment.
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?
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.
These kinds of things happen all the time in companies. Company relocates team x, company decides not to allow remote but that one engineer doesn’t relocate it or works remotely. Usually because the employees has long tenure/unique skillset/otherwise valuable that losing them would be a big loss.
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.
You don't need to do anything. Newspapers are free to publish whatever they'd like. But if the NYT isn't interested in discovering the truth of the accusations, that lends credence to the idea that their primary motivation is not the accusations but Coinbase's lack of support for racial justice politics.
Again: the NYT is a newspaper, and isn't vested with subpoena powers. They operate within the limits all newspapers operate in, and there is more than enough meat in this story to understand why they ran with it. "Isn't interested in discovering the truth of the accusations" is hardly a fair criticism here.
A lack of subpoena powers doesn't mean they can't look into it!
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.
See upthread, with examples of how the article does exactly what you ask it to.
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.
I don't see it as a discussion of legitimacy. It's about the strength of evidence the article offers, and whether there's anything the article could have done to offer stronger evidence or to better defuse suspicions that the author had motives unrelated to the evidence. That seems more productive to me than a discussion about whether Coinbase's management actually is biased, which will inevitably degrade to a dispute about how biased we thought they were before reading the article.
(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.)
