CEO of Kraken, the Cryptocurrency Exchange, Steps Down | Hacker News Reader

CEO of Kraken, the Cryptocurrency Exchange, Steps Down

nytimes.com

31 pointsprions17 comments

Obviously Jesse Powell isn't right for the CEO position but I do have a tiny bit of sympathy because I refuse to put my preferred pronouns in my profile. I think it's an invasion of privacy to force me to announce to the whole world my gender identity. Friends and coworkers know on a need-to-know basis.

I don't think anyone is being forced to add their gender identity to any profile. Powell seems to have questioned the inclusion of the option to add them at all.

Some places do place pressure on you to do so if what I read on the internet is to be believed

That makes it sound like you have never experienced it firsthand. I haven't either, I'm inclined to believe it is a myth

First employee and chief architect for Kraken here (2011-2015). I'll be professional and state only that this news is "unsurprising".

https://archive.ph/qur2R

Gift link - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/21/technology/ceo-kraken-cry...

"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."

That's wild.

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.

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

> 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.

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.

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