A recent Twitter thread posted by Kraken co-founder Jesse Powell reveals how the company has created a corporate culture that stops woke ideology from impeding on productivity.
Kraken is known as one of the top 5 crypto exchanges in terms of daily trading volume and a company that is grounded in principles laid out in the Constitution of the United States of America.
The public outline of their cultural policies is in response to a recent New York Times article where employees violated non-disclosure agreements with the company, criticizing their policies as a “culture crusade.”
“While government encroachment on these rights has become tolerated (or even demanded), we believe that we should covet the rights we have because they are never returned once taken,” their policy reads.
Kraken is not a company to revamp their corporate culture as a result of an offended employee. Instead, the company believes that if “nobody is ever offended, we either don’t have enough diversity of thought or we don’t have enough transparency in communication.”
1/ We recently attempted to summarize what the @krakenfx culture has been over the past 11 years, and what we hope it continues to be.
We had a few heated debates and it turns out we have about 20 people out of 3200 who are totally not on board. 🧵https://t.co/Ht6bagQ6T1
— Jesse Powell (@jespow) June 15, 2022
Apparently cultural issues had never come to light “when things were rosy,” adding that “when things started to look grim, sensitivities and the misalignment came through.”
These are a few of the complaints and arguments Powell has heard:
- Diversity, equity, and inclusion
- Pronouns
- Whether someone can identify as a different race
- Whether such a person can use the N-word
- Whether differences in human sex exist
- Being respected and unoffended
- Being “harmed” by “violent” words
And at first, the CEO made attempts to hear out his employees’ arguments, however once he recognized they couldn’t have an honest debate, he reverted back to running a “dictatorship.”
Powell asserted that activists actually are not as open-minded as they claim to be: “They don’t realize how discriminatory they are to others. You want to be ‘inclusive’ by asking an ESL English as a second language Saudi candidate his pronouns/gender in a job interview?”
According to the CEO, further discussion of these cultural issues only fosters a reduction in work productivity.
“Most people just want to work, but they can’t be productive while triggered people keep dragging them into debates and therapy sessions,” Powell said.
And that’s exactly why Kraken has given employees a decision to make: the company publicly released their corporate culture document and asked employees to either commit or leave the company with severance.
While employees do not necessarily need to agree with the company’s position, they are “expected to instill them in decision making at work.”
Additionally, Kraken stated that they “will advertise with and sponsor controversial television programs, podcasts, influencers and events” and “may incorporate firearm and self-defense training into corporate retreats.”
Employees have the ability to request “personal communication preferences” like preferred pronouns, however the employee the request is being made to is also has the equal ability to deny the request. Further, neither words nor silence will be interpreted as violence.
“There is no room for tribalism, in-fighting, or the pursuit of agendas that are not officially set by the company,” Kraken indicated.
