Last week, the CEO of the well-known crypto exchange Kraken, Jesse Powell, told Fox News that the company is prepared to pay some employees to leave the company.
Summary
Kraken: extremely politically correct employees impair corporate productivity
Powell has long held it against so-called “woke employees”, which are employees who strongly support the fight against social or racial injustice.
The term woke literally means “awake,” and is an adjective often used by conservatives and libertarians to denigrate “political correctness” and left-wing orthodoxy.
Powell does not hold it against those who fight against social or racial injustice per se, but specifically against those employees who do political activism along these lines in the company, creating problems for productivity:
“Productivity was certainly under attack. A lot of people were wasting their time arguing with these people, getting into therapy sessions with them”.
Powell is known for his strong, sometimes resounding, stances, and this latest stance of his regarding a very hot topic in the US right now, which is sure to get a lot of talk.
According to Kraken‘s CEO, these “woke” employees would do better to leave the company if they disagree with its policies, so much so that he is willing to pay them four months’ salary as long as they leave.
Thirty such offers have reportedly already been accepted.
Powell claims that the company is under attack from within because of the dissension caused among employees by so-called “woke” people, and he said that those who continue to give trouble in this way by refusing to leave the company will be dealt with in the harshest way.
Jesse Powell’s thoughts about the so-called “woke employees”
On the subject of the “woke” movement, he then also stated that those in the company completely ignore the fact that there is a business to be done and managed, thus being in fact useless to the company’s purposes, as well as detrimental to productivity.
Powell is also garnering support from other CEOs aligned on similar positions, while he is obviously garnering much criticism largely from the press.
There are those who accuse him, and other like-minded CEOs (such as Elon Musk), of using this position as an excuse to cut staff, with the main goal of reducing costs. Others, however, agree that internal disagreements among employees substantially reduce their productivity, and that the so-called “woke” generate too many of them.
One should not, however, forget that during this long crypto bear market many exchanges are reducing staff, so the assumption that this is an excuse to be able to reduce staff should be given due consideration. On the other hand, it is obvious that when cutting staff, efforts are made to get rid of the less productive people.
