on the crypto
Coinbase's Brian Armstrong threw a real bomb on industrial America and cultural debates when he firmly urged his employees to keep activism out of the workplace.
Brian Armstrong's tweet
In a post on Monday, Armstrong said that Coinbase employees should be scrupulously focused on the company's mission: to create an open financial system for the world.
The message is clear: Coinbase will not touch on topics unrelated to its business and expects employees to pursue social activism in their spare time. Armstrong had predicted that his post could spark some controversy. And he was right.
Twelve hours after publication, the post split the cryptocurrency industry in half. Some have spoken praising Armstrong's public position; others have criticized it as regressive and timeless.
Comments unleashed around the tweet
Some supporters who responded to Armstrong's tweet took up the question that business leaders should remove unnecessary distractions from the workplace. Building a business is difficult enough, said Messari's Ryan Selkis, "without feeling the need to build a perfect political platform."
Adam Draper of Boost VC said that focusing on a "unified mission" is the only way companies get results. But not everyone saw it that way. Likely anticipating the negative reaction to his post, Armstrong limited comments to his followers' Twitter accounts.
The only sticking point, on its thread, came from Reuben Bramanathan, a lawyer and former Coinbase product manager, who said the exchange shouldn't use its mission statement to ignore issues of inequality and injustice.
Others on a separate thread - where anyone could have their say - accused Coinbase of trying to bury its head in the sand. Some have pointed out that such narrow focus on the mission could harm Coinbase's business in the long run. Others said that this stance could inadvertently reduce the pool of talent willing to work at the exchange.
Lower productivity?
Tech companies have seen employees take strong positions in recent years to pressure their employers to do what they believe is right. Thousands of Google employees staged a strike in 2018 over the way the company handled sexual harassment allegations.
Amazon workers (NASDAQ: AMZN) are continually speaking out against the company making its facial recognition technology available to law enforcement. And Facebook employees are directly critical of CEO Mark Zuckerberg in public discussions.
Armstrong even cites Facebook and Google in his post, pointing to those companies' internal conflicts as an indicator of reduced productivity. The company he is perhaps really thinking about, however, is Spotify (Nasdaq shares NYSE: SPOT), whose employees are openly rebelling over the arrival of podcaster Joe Rogan on the platform, demanding that new safeguards be put in place on potentially questionable content.
