Cryptocurrency Startup Underpaid Women and Black Employees, Data Shows(nytimes.com)
nytimes.com
Cryptocurrency Startup Underpaid Women and Black Employees, Data Shows
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/29/technology/coinbase-pay-employees.html
21 comments
Doesn't seem much like a hit piece. Coinbase is widely known to pay terrible comp packages by exploiting peoples "passion" for cryptocurrency.
Can you accurately call something that’s well sourced and provides evidence a hit piece?
But can you say that newspapers don't have agendas?
Is that being argued? We’re talking about this article. The commenter I responded to calls it a hit-piece implying the reporting lacks objectivity and exists solely for the purpose of being damaging. If that’s the case then point it out.
Seems like it.
> The Coinbase analysis was conducted for The Times by Alexandra Marr, an economist who has provided statistical analysis for court cases involving pay bias. When she factored in stock options for Coinbase’s employees — often an important part of pay at start-ups — the compensation for women and men was roughly the same while the gap between white and Black employees grew to 11 percent.
So the pay gap disappeared when options were considered for male/female at least.
Surely they are looking at this?
>ased on an analysis by Alexandra Marr of Coinbase employee and salary data from 2018. Analysis included the 448 salaried employees who were paid in U.S. dollars and who were assigned to a level within the company. None of the manager groups overseeing engineers had more than two women in it so all manager categories are ones overseeing non-engineers.
Oh so the data is from 2018? well...
> In a statement, L.J. Brock, Coinbase’s chief people officer, said the company started to conduct a comprehensive review of compensation across the company in late 2018.
Hmmm....
>The data analysis from those cases suggests that Coinbase had bigger wage disparities between men and women than either Google or Oracle. At Oracle, the gap between men and women with similar backgrounds and roles was 3.9 percent according to analysis in the court case against the company — less than half as much as the gap at Coinbase.
Very bad sounding!
> The numbers in the Google and Oracle cases controlled for factors, such as experience and education, that were not possible in the Coinbase statistics because of the limits of the data shared with The Times.
> The Coinbase figures arrived at by Ms. Marr took account of the job level of all employees, as well as their status as an engineer and manager. It is possible that if the analysis took account of more factors, the pay disparity would shrink.
Yeah this is a hit piece. You are putting forth a strong agenda and then having to walk it back in case you get called out for it.
> The Coinbase analysis was conducted for The Times by Alexandra Marr, an economist who has provided statistical analysis for court cases involving pay bias. When she factored in stock options for Coinbase’s employees — often an important part of pay at start-ups — the compensation for women and men was roughly the same while the gap between white and Black employees grew to 11 percent.
So the pay gap disappeared when options were considered for male/female at least.
Surely they are looking at this?
>ased on an analysis by Alexandra Marr of Coinbase employee and salary data from 2018. Analysis included the 448 salaried employees who were paid in U.S. dollars and who were assigned to a level within the company. None of the manager groups overseeing engineers had more than two women in it so all manager categories are ones overseeing non-engineers.
Oh so the data is from 2018? well...
> In a statement, L.J. Brock, Coinbase’s chief people officer, said the company started to conduct a comprehensive review of compensation across the company in late 2018.
Hmmm....
>The data analysis from those cases suggests that Coinbase had bigger wage disparities between men and women than either Google or Oracle. At Oracle, the gap between men and women with similar backgrounds and roles was 3.9 percent according to analysis in the court case against the company — less than half as much as the gap at Coinbase.
Very bad sounding!
> The numbers in the Google and Oracle cases controlled for factors, such as experience and education, that were not possible in the Coinbase statistics because of the limits of the data shared with The Times.
> The Coinbase figures arrived at by Ms. Marr took account of the job level of all employees, as well as their status as an engineer and manager. It is possible that if the analysis took account of more factors, the pay disparity would shrink.
Yeah this is a hit piece. You are putting forth a strong agenda and then having to walk it back in case you get called out for it.
The company did not share the most recent data, the article acknowledges that in addition to the fact that the picture might change based on more information. Seems about as objective as it could be without just not writing anything then they’re accused of helping bury the story.
Well, the well-sourced and evidence-based social justice pieces usually conveniently leave out 2 interesting points:
1. The differences between ethnic groups starts early in childhood. It's about the role models kids have. It's about how much time their parents spend with them and how much they nag on them to study. It is totally fixable if we generally focus on promoting independent thinking, long-term planning and delayed gratification. Everyone can do this, it's hard but absolutely possible. But instead, our society is trying to erase these values by penalizing those who were raised with them.
2. Like it or not, there are behavioral differences between men and women. I'm not saying one is better than the other, but there are differences, especially when it comes to risk-taking and multitasking. A trivial example would be traffic accidents where denting the bumper on a parking lot would be a "typically female" thing, and totalling the car while doing 40mph over the speed limit would be a "typically male" thing. Again, nobody is trying to pinpoint specific risk-taking strategies that statistically give you better returns, and convince people to use them. Instead we are penalizing those who are likely to use these strategies.
And if you are looking for a motive, look how the economy used to be cyclical. Corporations would grow big and inefficient, so new lean risk-taking players would take their place, bringing innovation. This happened in 80s with Microsoft, this happened around Y2K with Google. Behind each of these companies was a well-educated risk-taking founder, and each of these companies brought innovation to the table. Except now they have reached the "inefficient behemoth" stage and are ready to be disrupted. Except, they learned from the history and are heavily investing in stigmatizing the qualities associated with previously known disruptors.
That said, you cannot stop the progress. The cutting edge of the innovation will move to China or whatever, and the U.S. will become the new Old World...
1. The differences between ethnic groups starts early in childhood. It's about the role models kids have. It's about how much time their parents spend with them and how much they nag on them to study. It is totally fixable if we generally focus on promoting independent thinking, long-term planning and delayed gratification. Everyone can do this, it's hard but absolutely possible. But instead, our society is trying to erase these values by penalizing those who were raised with them.
2. Like it or not, there are behavioral differences between men and women. I'm not saying one is better than the other, but there are differences, especially when it comes to risk-taking and multitasking. A trivial example would be traffic accidents where denting the bumper on a parking lot would be a "typically female" thing, and totalling the car while doing 40mph over the speed limit would be a "typically male" thing. Again, nobody is trying to pinpoint specific risk-taking strategies that statistically give you better returns, and convince people to use them. Instead we are penalizing those who are likely to use these strategies.
And if you are looking for a motive, look how the economy used to be cyclical. Corporations would grow big and inefficient, so new lean risk-taking players would take their place, bringing innovation. This happened in 80s with Microsoft, this happened around Y2K with Google. Behind each of these companies was a well-educated risk-taking founder, and each of these companies brought innovation to the table. Except now they have reached the "inefficient behemoth" stage and are ready to be disrupted. Except, they learned from the history and are heavily investing in stigmatizing the qualities associated with previously known disruptors.
That said, you cannot stop the progress. The cutting edge of the innovation will move to China or whatever, and the U.S. will become the new Old World...
>1. The differences between ethnic groups starts early in childhood. It's about the role models kids have. It's about how much time their parents spend with them and how much they nag on them to study. It is totally fixable if we generally focus on promoting independent thinking, long-term planning and delayed gratification.
So besides not answering the question asked of you, you assert without sources that Black parents don't give a shit about their kids' futures and that Black people can't hold in their urges enough to plan for the future and think independently. I'm curious, how do you think they got through life to even apply at Coinbase in the first place without possesing any of those attribues? Humor me, did you acually even look up the CVs of the Black Coinbase employees? That would at least raise the standard of discussion from the realm of racial platitude.
> Everyone can do this, it's hard but absolutely possible. But instead, our society is trying to erase these values by penalizing those who were raised with them.
Wait, so these Black employees didn't do "this" or possess the qualities you expouse? How did you find this out without resorting to common tropes about Black people?
>. Like it or not, there are behavioral differences between men and women. I'm not saying one is better than the other, but there are differences, especially when it comes to risk-taking and multitasking.
OK, so could you explain how this extrapolates to working at Coinbase given the pay gap occured in the lowest rungs of positions according to the article? My guess is we're not even talking positions that're responsible for putting out "web scale" fires, much like how frontend devs at Google aren't doing genius shit all day
So besides not answering the question asked of you, you assert without sources that Black parents don't give a shit about their kids' futures and that Black people can't hold in their urges enough to plan for the future and think independently. I'm curious, how do you think they got through life to even apply at Coinbase in the first place without possesing any of those attribues? Humor me, did you acually even look up the CVs of the Black Coinbase employees? That would at least raise the standard of discussion from the realm of racial platitude.
> Everyone can do this, it's hard but absolutely possible. But instead, our society is trying to erase these values by penalizing those who were raised with them.
Wait, so these Black employees didn't do "this" or possess the qualities you expouse? How did you find this out without resorting to common tropes about Black people?
>. Like it or not, there are behavioral differences between men and women. I'm not saying one is better than the other, but there are differences, especially when it comes to risk-taking and multitasking.
OK, so could you explain how this extrapolates to working at Coinbase given the pay gap occured in the lowest rungs of positions according to the article? My guess is we're not even talking positions that're responsible for putting out "web scale" fires, much like how frontend devs at Google aren't doing genius shit all day
Black tongue comments are really getting tiring to read on here.
I've never heard this term before: "black tongue comments." Wondering what's its origin?
,,As many tech leaders publicly voiced support for Black Lives Matter protests, Black employees at Coinbase said on the Slack messaging platform that they were hurt by the silence of Mr. Armstrong and other executives about the matter. ''
Underpaying for the same job based on race is a very serious allegation, just like racism. But if being silent is caregorized as bullying / hurting in the same article, it's hard to take the article seriously. It should stay strictly within the potential legal issues.
Underpaying for the same job based on race is a very serious allegation, just like racism. But if being silent is caregorized as bullying / hurting in the same article, it's hard to take the article seriously. It should stay strictly within the potential legal issues.
So many contradictions on Glassdoor: https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Coinbase-R...
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They sure are mad.
For the accusations that the NYT makes, are the women and black employees doing exactly the same job as the others, or are they in different/easier/less technical roles?
I don't have access to the article, and I'd need to know that before I can make any judgment call.
I don't have access to the article, and I'd need to know that before I can make any judgment call.
The data is from 2018 and doesn't cover all of the employees, only groups they selected.
> the company started to conduct a comprehensive review of compensation across the company in late 2018
Even assuming the data was accurate and unbiased, it was gathered before the company had this review.
> When [the data collector] factored in stock options for Coinbase’s employees ... the compensation for women and men was roughly the same
A piece of information that's too nuanced for the title, I guess.
> the company started to conduct a comprehensive review of compensation across the company in late 2018
Even assuming the data was accurate and unbiased, it was gathered before the company had this review.
> When [the data collector] factored in stock options for Coinbase’s employees ... the compensation for women and men was roughly the same
A piece of information that's too nuanced for the title, I guess.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/27/technology/coinbase-crypt...
[1] https://blog.coinbase.com/coinbase-is-a-mission-focused-comp...