Coinbase Employees Have Begun to Take Severance Packages

In the past week, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong published a blog post discouraging politics in the office and offered a severance package for employees who disagreed with a new mission statement.

Employees are still allowed to have political conversations in non-general channels created by employees, this source added.

One employee said Armstrong could have avoided controversy if he had communicated the company's new direction only internally.

Still another employee said that the timing of the policy's release was bad. It came at the end of the third quarter, amid rumors of the firm going public, and after a Louisville grand jury failed to charge police officers for murder in the controversial killing of Breonna Taylor.

Multiple employees said the company has distanced itself from employees by moving questions in all-hands meetings to messaging platform Slido after the summer walkout.

In a companywide "Ask-me-anything" held Thursday, Armstrong and company leadership explained that the new direction doesn't mean that Coinbase is going after employees that dissent.

"Everyone reaffirmed in the AMA that they do support the blog post but were walking back some of the more extreme implications that might come with being an apolitical company and reaffirmed the commitment to diversity and employee support," one employee said.

"What people might imagine - whether the company is going to be crushing all internal discourse or ejecting employees with strongly held political beliefs - isn't going to happen."

It is unclear what punishments employees might face should they not abide by the new decision.

In response to employees asking if they could make a #spaghetti-monster-for-president Slack channel, leadership said that would be fine, these employees said.