last comment: if you had an instinctively negative reaction to coinbase's "mission-first" thing and warnings about the ways in which mixing activism and corporate politics together can go wrong, i would advise you to look at this and reconsider https://twitter.com/Aelkus/status/1311492496560713729

the genesis of this looming clusterfuck was an otherwise staid discussion about coinbase

i don't think politics is a dirty word. but there's a difference between being "political" and having a sense of responsibility for "political outcomes"

doing the *latter* is very hard even for people that specialize in it (politicians, policy wonks, political scientists). doing the *former* is very easy and deceptively cheap. until it becomes very expensive.

in 2020, its not inconceivable that you will find that

* your employees are fighting with each other and leaking your company's dirty laundry to hostile external actors

* right-wing trolls are breathing down your neck and your internal slacks are headline news stories

* people are being doxxed, internal meetings are leaked and disrupted

* concessions you make to dueling factions that hate each other are never enough and just unite them in hating *you* too

* some damn fool congressman wants you to Zoom in to the Hill to get yelled at

* you hire a (expensive) consultant to help you with your diversity problem but the consultant is exposed as white person with a thick tan

* an employee liked a Taiwanese bubble tea shop's tweet and now the Chinese consulate is screaming bloody murder at you

* there is a large subreddit devoted to mapping all of the culture war conflicts inside your company with a level of detail that puts vintage LOST fandom theorizing to shame

* your CSO just posted "I like green eggs and ham" and there's a mob convinced its a dog whistle

These are just some of the many things that can happen in 2020 in the wild and wonderful world of politics!

They may happen to you *regardless of what you do* because its 2020 and it, like the smoke choking the California air, is just pervasive all around.

Is your organization prepared for all of these things (and potentially much, much, much more?) Have you thought out how to handle the all-too-common mixture of personal grievances, deep and far-reaching value conflicts, and social media toxicity before it goes supernova?

how much of your *normal* organizational function are you prepared to degrade to avoid this or unfuck it if and when it happens to you?

No one *thinks* this will happen to them when they talk about politics and activism, yet up until a few hours ago none of the people in this thread thought they'd be the cause of a giant twitter clusterfuck https://twitter.com/Aelkus/status/1311519907604058113

I'm agnostic about the actual coinbase thing because its the kind of thing you would need detailed knowledge about the org to have a useful opinion about.

But the actual problem itself is more complicated than the various reactions often suggest https://twitter.com/Aelkus/status/1311518717965225985