If staff are ‘triggered’ by new measures cracking down on workplace culture war disputes, the CEO of Kraken, one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, has offered them four months of severance money to leave.
In a message sent out on Wednesday, CEO Jesse Powell, 41, outlined the company’s new culture rules, urging staff not to refer to one another as “toxic” or “racist,” and emphasizing that “being offended doesn’t always make you right.”
Powell stated on Twitter that the new policies were motivated by a few employees who sparked “heated arguments” about problems including diversity, pronouns, and “being injured” by “aggressive” remarks.
‘Most people don’t give a damn and just want to work,’ Powell continued, ‘but they can’t be productive while triggered others drag them into fights and therapy sessions.’
Libertarians and conservatives say that certain progressives are attempting to impose an authoritarian assault on free speech by alleging that comments with which they disagree are offensive.
‘Being offended doesn’t necessarily make you “harmed,”‘ the firm argues in an online staff manual, under the headline ‘Someone Must be Offended, Some of the Time,’ and that ‘Neither words nor silence are ever “violence” (sic).
‘Being outraged doesn’t necessarily make you right,’ continues the same passage. We explain why we disagree and question beliefs with logic, reason, and superior ideas in a peaceful manner. We don’t label someone’s statements as “toxic,” “hateful,” “racist,” “x-phobic,” “unhelpful,” and so on.’
Powell has responded by offering a severance payment to any employee who disagrees with the new cultural statement, with a deadline of Monday to make a decision.
Powell told Fox News on Friday that about 30 employees had accepted the severance package so yet, accounting for about 1% of Kraken’s 3,000-person workforce.
‘We had a few people causing diversions for the entire firm, and we had a number of people sympathizing with these people, so we decided it would be best if these folks weren’t comfortable here and just moved on,’ he explained.
Powell has responded by offering a severance payment to any employee who disagrees with the new cultural statement, with a deadline of Monday to make a decision.
Powell told Fox News on Friday that about 30 employees had accepted the severance package so yet, accounting for about 1% of Kraken’s 3,000-person workforce.
‘We had a few people causing diversions for the entire firm, and we had a number of people sympathizing with these people, so we decided it would be best if these folks weren’t comfortable here and just moved on,’ he explained.
‘If no one is offended, we either don’t have enough diversity of view or don’t communicate transparently enough,’ the statement states.
The policy prohibits referring to someone’s comments as toxic, vile, racist, x-phobic, unhelpful, and so on, and states that “neither words nor silence are ever ‘violence.’”
The guidelines were announced on the same day that the New York Times published a comprehensive article about the Kraken office’s culture warfare.
According to the story, some employees accused Powell of “fostering a nasty workplace and hurting their mental health,” citing five Kraken employees and internal documents.
‘If you can identify as a sex, can you identify as a race or ethnicity?’ he allegedly asked one of his employees.
According to the New York Times, he also questioned their usage of preferred pronouns and led a discussion about “who can refer to another person as the N word.”
Powell is also said to have speculated that gender differences in intelligence and risk appetite were “not as solid as one might have previously imagined.”
Kraken announced on Wednesday that it was looking to hire 500 new employees, despite competitors laying off workers due to the crypto market’s recent collapse.
Bitcoin was trading about $20,400 on Friday evening, down 29% from a month ago and 57% from the start of the year.
Powell is a libertarian who has previously stated that Bitcoin is the “embodiment of libertarian ideas.”
He studied at California State University, Sacramento, and co-founded Kraken in 2011 with Thanh Luu, who is now on the board of directors.
According to PitchBook, the company, which allows customers to buy, sell, and exchange multiple cryptocurrencies, is worth $11 billion.