Coinbase Employees Start Taking Severance Packages: Report

Coinbase employees start taking severance packages which were offered by CEO Brian Armstrong for all those who disagree with new mission statements so let’s find out more in the latest Coinbase news.

According to the Coinbase employees, the plan to offer an exit for mission-dissenting workers was planned for more than six months. So far, three people from the company have taken the package. Over the past week, Armstrong published a blog post where he discourages politics from his office and offered severance packages for those who disagree with a new mission statement. According to the employees, the CEO and other managers at the company said that they were planning this for six months.

I want to unequivocally say that Black Lives Matter.

— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) June 4, 2020

Armstrong started planning for the new position in the company after a few engineers decided to stop working for the company after the CEO wouldn’t say “black lives matter” externally during social unrest over police killings. However, Brian Armstrong clarified recently that he would say that at company meetings but that he will not associate himself with the social movement for racial equity. One of the Coinbase employees start explaining that he could have avoided controversy if his communication was better:

 “I think that if he was trying primarily to communicate this to employees and had consulted and listened to really anyone who might be sensitive to the concept of selling this to his employees, this could have blown over and turned into something banal and corporate.”

Another employee said that the timing of the policy was bad as it came right at the end of the third quarter during rumors of the company going public after a grand jury failed to charge police officers for murder in the controversial killing of Breonna Taylor:

 “I don’t think it was targeted at Black Lives Matter in general,” the employee said of the blog post and new company mission. “We just have a lot of projects we need to get done.”

Other employees said that the company distanced itself from employees by simply moving the questions in meetings to messaging platforms, where also the CEO said that his company won’t go after employees that dissent, as one employee said:

 “Everyone reaffirmed in the AMA that they do support the blog post but were walking back some of the more extreme implications that might come with being an apolitical company and reaffirmed the commitment to diversity and employee support. What people might imagine – whether the company is going to be crushing all internal discourse or ejecting employees with strongly held political beliefs – isn’t going to happen.”