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by JumpCrisscross 1360 days ago
"The conflict at Kraken began this spring after Mr. Powell questioned employees’ use of preferred pronouns and engaged in a lengthy discussion about whether women are inherently less intelligent than men.

Some employees voiced complaints, and Mr. Powell released a company culture document outlining what he described as Kraken’s libertarian values. He told employees that if they disagreed with the document, they should quit."

3 comments

Sounds pretty reasonable to me. If you don't like it that our company allows freely talking about anything, you can leave to find a coddling safe space you are seeking.
>Kraken laid out a vision of its corporate culture that includes prohibiting employees from calling speech “racist,”

There goes "freely talking about anything".

It seems that racists at Kraken needed a safe space... Kinda cute! Maybe if they don't like their speech being labelled "racist" they could work somewhere else?

https://fortune.com/2022/06/15/kraken-culture-crypto-exchang...

Not saying this with regard to this situation specifically, but personally I'd be fine with banning one word criticisms. They tend to be imprecisely used, which is a major problem when talking about hot button issues. Most arguments are a matter of degree as opposed to absolute, so precision is the point of the conversation.
That's wild.
You should hear the part where he said he could use the n-word on the company chat, because if people can just identify as other genders willy-nilly, he can identify as black
I got a pretty complacent or even celebratory vibe from folks around here when a very similar played out at Coinbase...
Didn't seem that similar to me. Coinbase said we're not going to discuss politics at work unless it's related to crypto. Kraken said let's debate politics and gender and identity with the CEO in the company Slack.
Huh. I must've misunderstood. Those do seem different, I'm sorry to have implied anything otherwise.
> Kraken’s libertarian values. He told employees that if they disagreed with the document, they should quit."

Isn't this an oxymoron. "I believe in an ideology based around self-determination, if you deviate from my directions by asserting your right to self-determination, like the literal definition of your own name, you should quit".

Sometimes the announcement of libertarian values just seems like a dog-whistle.