5% of Coinbase Employees Take Severance Offer Over 'Apolitical' Stance

Oct 8, 2020 at 17:42 UTCUpdated Oct 8, 2020 at 18:04 UTC.Coinbase has lost 60 people from its 1,200-person staff after an updated mission statement from CEO Brian Armstrong sparked fierce debate over how companies should respond to today's charged politics.

In a companywide memo obtained by CoinDesk, Armstrong informed employees that 5% of the company's workforce had accepted the severance package offered last week.

The deadline for employees to signal their interest in the package was Wednesday, and Armstrong said he expects the number to be higher after a "Handful of other conversations" are completed.

One employee at the firm, who spoke with CoinDesk on the condition of anonymity, said the severance package was taken mostly by engineers - as opposed to less-mobile employees like customer support.

In his Thursday memo, Armstrong also clarified that the new mission would not mean employees don't have to "Pretend politics don't exist."

While it's clear that employees are not allowed to talk politics in general Slack channels and have to set up separate non-general channels to talk politics, it's not clear what counts as political and what counts as apolitical.

As CoinDesk reported Friday, employees were told a #spaghetti-monster-for-president Slack channel would be in keeping with the new policy.

"No one in leadership seems to be able to define it since they're in the same boat as the rest of the employees, trying to pull meaning from Brian's limited statements."

"Our goal is not to look for violations, but rather to support employees in adapting to these clarified expectations," he wrote.

Armstrong also said the cultural norms at Coinbase will be re-articulated and clarified in the future as the company scales.