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Crypto giant Kraken offers 4 months' pay for employees who don't agree with its...

 1 year ago
source link: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/crypto-giant-kraken-offers-4-205018008.html
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Crypto giant Kraken offers 4 months' pay for employees who don't agree with its libertarian principles to leave

Katie Canales
Thu, June 16, 2022, 5:50 AM·3 min read
Jesse_Powell_Headshot
Jesse Powell is the founder and CEO of crypto exchange Kraken.Kraken
  • Kraken's CEO is offering four months' pay for employees who don't agree with his values to leave.

  • The program is dubbed "Jet Ski," and employees have until June 20 to take part, the New York Times reported.

  • "We want it to feel like you are hopping on a jet ski and heading happily to your next adventure!" read a memo about the project.

Kraken, one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, will pay employees four months' worth of wages to leave if they disagree with its values, according to The New York Times.

In a Wednesday report detailing internal cultural turmoil at the company, the publication cited interviews with Kraken employees who recounted "hurtful" comments around preferred pronouns and demeaning statements toward women, among other incendiary remarks, made by CEO Jesse Powell.

The employees also said Powell held a companywide meeting on June 1 in which he unveiled the program, called "Jet Ski," designed to incentivize employees to leave if they don't believe in Kraken's crypto-typical libertarian principles, the Times reported.

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A 31-page document, known as "Kraken Culture Explained," positioned the program as a "recommitment" to the company's core values. Employees have until June 20 to participate in the buyouts, the Times reported.

"If you want to leave Kraken, we want it to feel like you are hopping on a jet ski and heading happily to your next adventure!" read a memo about the buyouts, according to the Times.

Kraken did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.

On Monday, Kraken executive Christina Yee wrote in Slack to employees that the "C.E.O, company, and culture are not going to change in a meaningful way," urging workers to go "somewhere that doesn't disgust you," the Times reported.

In anticipation of the articles' publication, Powell said on Twitter Wednesday that "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."


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