Kraken CEO Jesse Powell found himself under fire last month after his provocative comments sparked a contentious workplace battle and shined a light on the cryptocurrency exchange’s unique corporate culture.

Jesse Powell says a cultural revolution in cryptocurrency exchanges is necessary.

Kraken CEO Jesse Powell found himself under fire last month after his provocative comments sparked a contentious workplace battle and shined a light on the cryptocurrency exchange’s unique corporate culture.

A report by " The New York Times ", based on leaked Slack messages and employee interviews, accused Powell of making insensitive comments about gender and race, sparking a heated conversation within Kraken. Powell responded forcefully, laying out new ground rules and principles in an attempt to establish how he wants the company to operate in ways that diverge significantly from standard practice in the tech industry.

Powell said in a tweet: "People are outraged by everything and cannot meet the basic rules of honest debate. Let's restore dictatorship."

Kraken invites employees who feel uncomfortable with the company culture to leave with four months' pay in a plan dubbed "jet skiing," a common refrain among many at a company named after the mythical sea monster One of the nautical allusions.

In an interview with the media, Powell defended his workplace crackdown against critics including DEI advocates, saying it was necessary for a huge global diverse company as it grapples with Cryptocurrency market decline. He also called on his staff to give him the "benefit of the doubt," a request framed in a way that those without privilege may find troublesome.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

How many Kraken employees have ridden on a "jet skis"?

is definitely less than 5% of the total, less than 1% accepted it due to stated cultural or mission differences. We already have plans to recruit for more than 500 roles in the second half of this year.

Why do you call it a "jet ski" plan?

We just tried to give everything a nautical theme. It seemed like a fun, exciting thing to do. It's not dark and depressing. It's like, "You can go on your next adventure on a jet ski."

Looking back, are there things you said or did during the controversy that you wish you hadn't said?

I am a very transparent person. I can crack a joke every now and then. I don't take myself too seriously. I think I can say things in a less serious, less funny, less interesting way.

When I speak to people I don't generally think of myself as a politician, I need to say the words in a way that appeals to everyone. There are some things you can make clear.

I just saw this joke on Twitter. Someone said, " Twitter is the only place where you can make a very clear statement about something and still have it misunderstood." I use the sentence "I like pancakes, that's all" as an example. And one person responded, "Why do you hate waffles? Why are you disparaging waffles like this?"

I'm not going to go back and change my attitude about it. I don’t want to be completely, completely censored. I want to be able to share my ideas with companies. And I want companies to give me the benefit of the doubt when I say something that I'm not trying to attack someone. If I say something about a group of people, it doesn't necessarily mean I'm singling them out.

I think there are probably things that could be said that are more political, but I don't think that's really who I am.

can you give me an example?

I once said something to the effect of: "I think pirates look really cool. I think the pirate aesthetic is really cool. Unfortunately, American women have been brainwashed into thinking that the pirate aesthetic is not cool, and to me Bad for someone who likes to look like a pirate. "

That was taken out of context. I was making a joke about how my own appearance was appreciated by American women.

Most of the people who were upset about this are no longer with the company. So hopefully over the past few weeks we've improved the average sense of humor within the company.

The message you are trying to convey is "hey, we need unity and focus". But equally striking is the phrase "return to dictatorship," which paints an image of an arrogant, intolerant company.

I guess some people interpret making rules as arrogance or tyranny. I don't know if these people would be suitable to work for any company. Some people simply don't like rules. I think they should probably ask what the rules are before joining the company. The

culture file has been a big part of making sure we are consistent with the people coming in. We have certain expectations of people, and if they want to work somewhere that doesn't have any kind of rules or policies they don't agree with, they should probably find somewhere else to work.

I don't know what to say to people who feel like they deserve some kind of workplace where they don't have to follow policies. If that's considered authoritarian or something, you know, I guess that's fine.

I think I could express it in a drier, less interesting, more boring way.

When I say "return to autocracy," I mean that I give people the opportunity to discuss a policy decision with me. A lot of people use this opportunity to just bring up their personal feelings about something, what they as an individual would do in a situation.

I decided that it was basically impossible to have an open conversation because the loudest voices basically drowned out everyone else. Beyond that, it's not about what I would do in my personal life when considering company policy. It's about me being able to impose on 3,000 other people, "Do this or you're going to get fired." It's just a very different question.

You can't please everyone. We are certainly not trying to please everyone. We want the right people to work at the company, and that may not be 100% of the time.

How does controversy like this affect your business, especially at a time when the cryptocurrency industry is in deep trough?

We have experienced many cryptocurrency bear markets in the past. This seems to be the 4th or 5th time. The company has a history of 11 years. We've been through this several times. It didn't really scare us. We're running a marathon here. We don’t live month by month or season by season. We're looking at the situation a few years from now.

Bears are great because you can take your mind off what is happening minute by minute. Normally in a bull market you stress test everything. You don't have enough customer support agents. You don't have enough servers in your data center or elsewhere. Things were just on fire everywhere.

So you can go from firefighting back to building things according to your roadmap, which hopefully will prepare you for the next bull market.

From our perspective, the bear market is great. You get people coming into the industry who are really passionate about the industry. They're not just chasing the next rocket ship or seeking to get into a company before it goes public. You get people who will be there through the next recession.

We saw how hot this space was last year. We have a lot of people coming from all over who are not necessarily passionate about cryptocurrencies. And when things went south and they saw the first bear market in cryptocurrencies, people were a little scared. Some of them have moved on, but that's fine.

A few years ago, your competitor Coinbase went through a similar situation. Brian Armstrong issued a memo saying the company had an "apolitical culture." Are there any lessons from the Coinbase experience that will help you weather this crisis?

What we learned from this is that not that many people actually ended up leaving Coinbase. Often, it turns out that a very small number of people are responsible for the most disruption in a company.

While we haven't taken that completely apolitical approach yet, that will be the next stop.

We're going to try to build a cohesive culture now, and hopefully the people who are still here will be resilient enough to tolerate debates about politics or other aspects without completely distracting from the work.

But yes, the next stop will be something more serious, like Coinbase did, outright banning a bunch of topics from discussion.

you are not there yet.

Now, we're not there yet. I hope we don't get there, because a lot of people -- especially in a fully remote company -- they're just in the company chat room 16 hours a day.

It's not just like you're clocking in. They might be there during work, and then they'll be there for another eight hours because their friends are all in the company chat room.

I think people get a lot of enjoyment out of being able to socialize with their colleagues and talk about current political issues and that sort of thing.

We have employees from over 70 nationalities. This is a great opportunity for people to learn from colleagues what is going on in their part of the world and how they think about things differently. It's good to get all these different perspectives.

We will lose a lot of value if we are not allowed to talk about our culture and cultural differences - things like that. From a marketing perspective, from a user research perspective, from a product development perspective, it's also helpful to understand how people are different around the world, especially as it relates to money.

I hope we don't have to go to such extremes entirely.

We are probably one of the largest fully remote companies in the world. And probably one of the most diverse companies in the world, with people from different countries, different races, different upbringings. I also travel a lot, which also greatly affects my perspective on this issue.

I think sometimes people forget that America's problems are not the world's problems. We need to consider what the cultural norms are around the world. If we want to be insular, we want to say that the way Americans do things, or the Silicon Valley way of doing things, is that everyone has to do it, and I think we're going to lose a lot of people who may have different standards or will behave differently. way to do things.

So we try to be more flexible. Any time you interfere with a system by introducing a law and just saying, "Okay, everyone has to do this now. No exceptions. That's the law," you run the risk of a lot of unintended consequences. One example of

appearing in the New York Times article was the debate over codenames. We have received a number of complaints about recruiters asking candidates for their code names.

This is not something the company requires. This doesn't come down from HR; it's not an official policy. It's just some people's idea that asking job seekers to provide their code names would be inclusive. They just did it without considering whether people from other cultural backgrounds or people with poor English proficiency would like it.

The policy I have in place is that when you're dealing with people outside the company, especially people who are in another country entirely, from a different cultural background, who may not have the same level of English, we don't ask them for these messages.

If they provide it to you, then fine, we can use it. But we won't ask them to do that because some people may not feel comfortable with that. Some people might be like, "Oh, is there a right or wrong answer to this? Do I have to ask you back your code name? If I get your code name wrong, am I not going to get the job?"

My choice of law is what I think is the fairest and maintainable thing in a global business spanning 3000 people and we interview thousands of people all the time. If you're talking to someone outside the company, don't ask and don't tell because you just don't know.

We want to provide people with a good user experience. Just like when you check into a hotel, you don't want the concierge or receptionist to ask you for your code name. You may feel this is an invasion of privacy. It's like, I just want to check into my hotel room.

But does this send a message to those for whom issues around gender identity matter that their concerns don't matter?

I think outside of work, there are various social issues that people should be concerned about. But within the workplace -- just to take an extreme example, imagine you work at Disneyland and your job is to play Mickey Mouse . You put on the costume, walk around the theme park, and interact with people.

Should you be allowed to take off Mickey Mouse's head and say, "Hi, I'm really Jesse. I want you to know who I am. I'm 41 years old. I'm a male. These are my sexual preferences." These are my code names". Then you put your hat on and you go about your business.

you have a job to do. Your job is to be Mickey Mouse, make everyone believe you are Mickey Mouse, and put your own identity in the back seat while you're at the theme park. And when you leave, you can be who you want to be.

Some people feel that they should be able to be whatever they want to be in the workplace. But there are limits. We all engage in certain behaviors in the workplace. We have our job roles. We are more professional. We're not as casual as we are with friends or family.

I think the more externally facing you are and the more you talk to customers, the more you have to hold yourself back. There's a brand behind this whole thing. We all strive to be the face of this brand.

When we talk to the outside world, we want them to feel, I understand what Kraken's brand is. I feel like no matter which customer service person I talk to, I always get a consistent experience. I feel like I won't be given unnecessary information. I won't be made to feel uncomfortable. I will not be asked to provide personal information about sexual preferences or anything like that.

In a meeting, just jumping around the table is not appropriate. Someone might say, "Well, I identify myself as a professional dancer. Sometimes I feel the need to dance, and I need to dance in this session right now."

Some people think they should be able to be whatever they want to be in the workplace. But there are limits.

I would say, "Well, this might not be your workplace. Let's find a way for you to be happy. Maybe you want to get a job at Broadway or somewhere else."

But if you feel like there's It is necessary to break out into dance in the middle of the meeting, which may not be appropriate. I don’t want to tell you who can’t be present at work, but in order to move things forward we have to have rules. People have a different range of expectations about what they should be allowed to do at work. This doesn't always match up.

Is there anyone you wanted to hire, like a star engineer, that you turned down because of your recent statements?

I don’t know of any new people who have said they quit at the last minute. But we've had some really good technical people leave recently for stated culture/mission reasons.

after the argument.

yes. Take a jet ski. it's a shame. This is a bummer. It's also happened in the past with

that you get these quotes geniuses [a--holes]. A typical example is some 10x engineers, they are amazing. He gets 10 times more done than any other software developer. But no one can work with him. He is a complete lunatic. He often insults others. It sucks to lose someone like that. But ultimately, you know, what's more important is the cohesion of the team.

We also don't want one person, if they get hit by a bus, to blow up the whole company.

is at the other end of the spectrum, perhaps a genius eggshell or a genius snowflake. This kind of person's ability to withstand stress is basically zero. Whenever the wind blows, they are completely distracted. They lost a week of productivity. They can't focus on their work because a conversation is happening in the far corner of the company chat room. They can't help themselves from participating in it.

I think it would be difficult for both types of people to work at Kraken.

Of course, you need very talented people.I don’t want to use the dating analogy, but it’s more than just the attraction score that matters, right? It's about how compatible you are with this person, with your religious beliefs or your work schedule or whether you want to have children. In addition to a person's basic ability to perform, there are many other things that are important.

aside, we won't tolerate someone being a jerk. At the other end of the spectrum, we have people from over 70 nationalities speaking over 50 languages. People are bound to share opinions, and if they say something wrong because they are not native English speakers, others may find it controversial, or people may be offended.

If you travel around the world frequently, you have to accept that when you enter a new country with a completely different culture, you have to be willing to accept it. I won't spit on the ground. I think that's rude. But, you know, in this country, everyone does it. This is generally accepted. Chewing gum is illegal in Singapore . There are different norms around the world. In the Arab world, showing someone the soles of your feet is an insult. But we do it all the time (you know, in America, when we cross our legs).

Given that the company is a huge melting pot of talent, there is no one culture that defines the company. I think people have to be a little bit thick-skinned and be able to admit, "I'm going to encounter things that I might be a little bit uncomfortable with," but that's actually one of the benefits of being exposed to all of these things. I get all these different perspectives from the world. I can learn things and you can appreciate the way you do things at home, or maybe you realize, "Oh, these people are doing it better than the way I always thought we were supposed to do it."

So, yeah, we definitely Lost some guys who would have been great if they had been more adaptable or if they had been better aligned with the culture. Very talented person. No hard feeling or anything. I'm sure they will find another better place to work, just a better fit.