One of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges which is about to go on a hiring spree evidently has no intention of going broke by getting woke.
The San Francisco-headquartered Kraken, which was founded in 2011, intends to add 500-plus employees to its global workforce, despite what it deems is a “steep decline in crypto prices.”
In the context perhaps of increasing the headcount of its mostly remote staff, Kraken described its culture in a very detailed manner.
“Kraken moves fast and we collectively understand that there is no time to spend sugarcoating every interaction…The ideal Krakenite is both thick skinned, and well intentioned,” the culture code noted.
Moreover, in what could give a new meaning to release the Kraken, any employee who is not on board with the firm’s diversity-of-thought values can opt for the so-called Jet Ski program, four months severance, with a promise that the employee agrees to never work at the company again, according to the New York Times.
The deadline for the voluntary buyout is reportedly June 20.
As part of its lengthy manifesto, which is called “Kraken Culture Explained” (which you can review and draw your own conclusions,) and that provides a stark contrast to the standard Silicon Valley ethos, the company asserted the following:
“Diversity cannot exist if there is no 1) diversity of thought and 2) tolerance of diverse thoughts. We believe that expecting or encouraging Krakenites to strive to never ever offend their fellow teammates and/or to be compelled into conforming to the most vocal colleague’s societal or cultural norms, leads to a significant reduction in our ability to build and celebrate diversity and inclusiveness.
“We also believe the quality of overall Krakenite happiness, company culture, transparency, and productivity will suffer…What’s important is we strive to not offend one another, and we always try to be kind to one another… “
Later in the document, Kraken offered several clarifying bullet points, including the following:
- Everyone is responsible for their own feelings
- Being offended doesn’t necessarily make you right
- Being offended doesn’t necessarily make you “harmed”
- Words nor silence are ever “violence”
- We say why we disagree and calmly challenge ideas with logic, reason and better ideas
- We do not call someone’s words toxic, hateful, racist, x-phobic, unhelpful, etc.
In an 11-part Twitter thread, Kraken co-founder and CEO Jesse Powell, 41, claimed that only “about 20 people out of 3200 who are totally not on board…So, no biggie, except 20 unhappy people can sap the productivity out of another 400 with little effort.”
He also implied that the disconnect or incompatibility with the company’s philosophy may have been a byproduct of a rapid hiring process.
2/ 60% have been with the company for < 6 months. So, no biggie, except 20 unhappy people can sap the productivity out of another 400 with little effort.
It basically works like a SYN flood DoS. People want to be helpful but it's draining and resentment is often misplaced. pic.twitter.com/1v2utwn2b0
— Jesse Powell (@jespow) June 15, 2022
“Most people don’t care and just want to work, but they can’t be productive while triggered people keep dragging them in to debates and therapy sessions. The answer for us was to just lay out the culture doc and say: agree and commit, disagree and commit, or take the cash,” he added.
9/ Most people don’t care and just want to work, but they can’t be productive while triggered people keep dragging them in to debates and therapy sessions. The answer for us was to just lay out the culture doc and say: agree and commit, disagree and commit, or take the cash✌️
— Jesse Powell (@jespow) June 15, 2022
“Mr. Powell’s culture crusade, which has largely played out on Kraken’s Slack channels, may be part of a wider effort to push out workers who don’t believe in the same values as the crypto industry is retrenching, the employees said,” the Times asserted.
5/ What are they upset about?
* DEI (Silicon Valley's version)
* pronouns, whether someone can identify as a different race and be allowed to use the N-word
* whether differences in human sex exist at all
* being respected and unoffended
* being "harmed" by "violent" wordsFWP
— Jesse Powell (@jespow) June 15, 2022
Kraken reportedly is valued at $11 billion, and according to Powell, employs workers in 70-plus countries.
“I think we’ve developed some really thoughtful policies that might not appease woke activists but work for the other 99% of the world,” his Twitter thread concluded.
The crypto movement is rooted in ideas such as free speech and free markets, the document underscored.
It wasn’t all that long ago that conventional wisdom held that campus activists and other like-minded progressives would need to go through an attitude adjustment when they took jobs in the real world.
It has turned out, however, that just the opposite has occurred. The business community, especially top-echelon corporations, often quickly succumb to both internal and external far-left pressure, perhaps in disproportionately reacting to Twitter, in the context of hot-button and divisive political and social issues.
As an aside, gaslighting on the platform, moreover, might be in play, now that it appears that Twitter’s influence may be inflated by bots and fake accounts.
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Robert Jonathan is a staff writer for BizPac Review. He is a longtime writer/editor for news aggregation websites and has also developed content in the legal and financial publishing sectors as well as for online education. He earned a Juris Doctorate from the University of Connecticut School of Law, “a law school the basketball teams can be proud of.”
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