On Coinbase and Employee activism
Coinbase is wasting its time with its new rules on being ‘apolitical’. This isn’t an ideological statement, it’s an expression of the fact that Coinbase is rowing against a tide that is bigger than it. For many people (and yes ‘employee’ is just a particular sub identity of a person), being completely apolitical is no longer a possibility. People are people before they come to work, in fact we draw strength from our lives that is expended at work for the benefit of the company. Company founders and CEOs err in thinking they are attracting ‘zealots’ whose identity is wrapped up in the company they work for. They cannot imagine any other way, because their relationship with their company is like that of a parent and its care and feeding is paramount. But this feeling attenuates dramatically the further away you are in time and influence from the founding team. Work need not be about litigating personal identity struggles, but how are we here where @brianarmstrong can imagine this is a good idea?
The United States has always been a bit worse than its PR. Setting up conundrums for those who believe in it, like I do. Double clicking quickly brings up problems from the countervailing desired narrative. From the outside we are the “land of the free”, “the place of opportunity”, “the modern cradle of democracy”. In reality you see low economic mobility, civil rights issues out the wazoo and even a reversal in the voting rights of the brown and the poor in favor of the rich. We can’t even get education right, favoring the education of the already wealthy and not of the poor, using bizarre school funding rules based on property taxes (no other modern nation and even poor nations, does this).
These kinds of problems have persisted throughout our history. The declaration of independence was magnificent, but happened when the nation still wallowed in indentured servitude and economically feasted on chattel slavery. The second world war was fought by black soldiers who saw more freedom in the hell holes of combat in Europe, than when they got home, where they were systematically denied their rights under the GI bill. And so on. Everywhere you look, there is the gap between the promise and the delivery.
These things are bad enough, but sadly, depending on who you are, they’re not relevant. Black Americans are as old on this continent in terms of history as white, but only 13.4% of the population. It has been convenient for many of their fellow citizens to NOT empathize with their struggles. However in recent decades, one particular force has affected every citizen in some way: income inequality. The gap between the rich and poor has been designed into being by successive governments and it’s now a throbbing force in American political life. This, in combination with other hidden deficits from the promises of the country, have sparked a new activist generation. This generation is striving for equity and equal treatment. They want civil rights as promised, but also a better economic playing field. Eventually people want one standard — the better one, not the one that constantly fails the test of the promise. There are negative ways to refer to this force — cancel culture, keyboard warriors, political correctness. And yes there are cultural excesses sometimes; but none as big as the original sin embedded in the current economic design of the United States; a two-tier system meant to serve one kind of group or other at the expense of the others. That the current president spent decades not paying taxes doesn’t help.
Two years ago, after watching the rising activism at Facebook, Google and Amazon, I predicted much more employee activism in all companies, not only tech companies. People are people first, before they come to work. Our lives transcend our work. It’s what gives us strength to work. In technology companies in particular, we look for people who “live the company”. We value this attitude and reward it. But it’s always been a flawed idea. Only the founders and those close to the founding story can have this DNA. The company is literally their baby. As people get further and further away from the founding singularity in terms of influence and time, they are just engaged workers. Most cannot legitimately ‘live the company’ in any extraordinary sense. It reverts to an exchange of resources for labor. Stock options and other rewards may keep the balance in the tech company’s favor far more than a traditional company, but this effect attenuates over time and influence.
As income and other inequalities increase, we will see much more activism in the United States. And this will absolutely spill over into work. I’ve dealt with this as an executive already but even that experience was minor. Employee activism will continue to be a force in tech companies where ‘values’ are constantly deployed as a way to encourage more productivity.
Everyone is an activist for what they care about. The only question is who gets to express it and about what. I myself have recently been energized by the BLM movement and the #endsars movement in Nigeria — connected to my African American and my Nigerian identity. I have spoken up and contributed because denying those aspects of my being would be a betrayal to who I am.