r/Coinbase • u/Ok-Cranberry4628 • 22m ago
Coinbase Hired an Airbnb Trash Manager As Their Director Accused of Racial Discrimination
TLDR: Ashutosh Joshi and whoever referred him to Coinbase should all GET FIRED!!!
Ashutosh Joshi, a former engineering manager at Airbnb, has joined Coinbase as a Director. As someone who worked under his leadership at Airbnb, I believe Coinbase employees and leadership deserve to know about the serious concerns surrounding his management record.
This is not simply about a bad manager or a personal disagreement. It is about allegations of racial discrimination, questionable management practices, and the treatment of employees based on their backgrounds.
1. Four Chinese employees were negatively affected in the same performance review cycle. All four.
At Airbnb's HotelTonight engineering organization, there were 12 employees on our team. Four of them were Chinese.
During the same performance review cycle under Ashutosh Joshi's leadership, all four Chinese employees experienced what we believe was deliberate and unfair treatment in their performance evaluations.
Think about that: 12 employees, four Chinese employees, and all four were affected.
We raised these concerns with Airbnb leadership, including the CEO. Yet, from our perspective, there was no meaningful accountability or satisfactory resolution.
I believe this pattern raises extremely serious questions about racial discrimination. Coinbase should independently examine what happened rather than simply taking a former director's management record at face value.
2. His management style appeared to prioritize impressing senior leadership over actually managing people.
In my experience, Ashutosh demonstrated very little understanding of, or interest in, the actual engineering work his team was responsible for.
Instead, he appeared much more focused on managing upward and maintaining the appearance of being a busy, engaged leader.
Here is one particularly revealing example.
He would schedule 30-minute one-on-one meetings on his work calendar, giving the impression that he was spending substantial time engaging with his direct reports. Yet, in practice, many of those meetings lasted only around five minutes.
This is not difficult to verify. Coinbase leadership can ask the people who directly reported to him at Coinbase how much time he actually spent with them, how deeply he understood their work, and whether he provided meaningful technical or career guidance.
A director should be judged by how effectively he leads a team, not how impressive his calendar looks.
3. We observed preferential treatment toward Indian employees and the replacement of experienced US and European workers with an India-based team.
Another serious concern was the pattern of staffing decisions under his leadership.
In my experience, desirable assignments and opportunities appeared to favor Indian employees.
Meanwhile, Ashutosh expanded an engineering team in India and shifted responsibilities away from existing US and European employees.
European team members were required to transfer their knowledge to the India-based team, which then took over their responsibilities.
One particularly troubling example involved an engineer in Poland who had worked for Airbnb for approximately nine years. He possessed extensive institutional knowledge and deep familiarity with the systems he maintained.
Despite that experience, his responsibilities were transferred to the India-based team under Ashutosh's leadership.
To be absolutely clear, there is nothing wrong with hiring engineers in India. The concern is whether employees were treated fairly regardless of nationality or ethnicity, and whether staffing and promotion decisions were driven by legitimate business considerations or discriminatory preferences.
Combined with what happened to the four Chinese employees during the performance review cycle, these decisions raise questions that deserve independent investigation.
4. Coinbase employees deserve to know what kind of leadership they are getting.
Engineering leadership is not simply about attending meetings, managing upward, or presenting polished narratives to executives.
It is about technical judgment, integrity, fairness, accountability, and earning the trust of the people you lead.
My experience working under Ashutosh Joshi left me with serious concerns in all of these areas.
I am asking Coinbase leadership to take these allegations seriously, speak confidentially with former direct reports across different backgrounds, and review the management practices and personnel decisions described above.
In particular, I believe Coinbase should investigate if there's similar case like the treatment of the four Chinese employees during the same Airbnb performance review cycle, the allocation of opportunities among employees, and the decisions that transferred work from US and European teams to India.
If Coinbase is serious about maintaining a fair and merit-based engineering organization, these concerns deserve more than a superficial response.
To Coinbase engineers:
You deserve leaders who understand your work, respect your contributions, evaluate you fairly, and treat you as individuals rather than according to your nationality or ethnicity.
I genuinely hope your experience will be different from ours.
But you deserve to know what we experienced.
If you work for Ashutosh Joshi's team, please share this post to his manager!!
And Coinbase deserves the opportunity to investigate before the same concerns arise again.
