This past week some employees of Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN)posted Operation Revive COIN, a petition to oust Coinbase COO Emilie Choi, Chief Product Officer Surojit Chatterjee, and Chief People Officer LJ Brock. The demands are apparently driven by their disappointment with Coinbase’s performance, even though the entire economy is struggling with a foundering market, fast-rising inflation, and a possible recession. Coinbase recently announced a hiring pause due to the plummeting economy.
The authors of the petition claim that the aforementioned executives, which does not include Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, as being responsible for poor results and a failure to execute on corporate goals.
The list of grievances is as follows:
- The failure of the Coinbase NFT platform
- The over-prioritization of certain products, which has led to a lack of focus on other important issues like infrastructure
- Initiatives like the Dot Collector and the Performance review system that has led to a toxic workplace culture
- Aggressively hiring for thousands of roles, despite the fact that it is an unsustainable plan and is contrary to the wisdom of the crypto industry
- Not being able to output any higher or better quality products and services despite aggressively hiring more employees
- Rescinding offers to new employees despite promising them that their offers would not be rescinded two weeks earlier, leading to a massive negative reception from the public and the industry at-large
- The failure to communicate important ideas and plans to the rest of the company, such as the possibility of lay-offs and the plan to fix many technical debts
- A generally apathetic and sometimes condescending attitude from the CPO, COO, and Chief People Officer
Coinbase founder and CEO Armstrong mounted a public defense of his team via Twitter telling disappointed employees perhaps they should look elsewhere for employment.
Armstrong said the petition was “really dumb” and if anyone is responsible for company performance it is him:
“Who do you think is running this company? I was a little offended not to be included 🙂 … if you have no confidence in the execs or CEO of a company then why are you working at that company? Quit and find a company to work at that you believe in!”
Armstrong called the public shaming by the aggrieved employees as “deeply unethical.”
6/ Be aware of our own psychology – in any down market, people want to start pointing fingers and find someone to blame. This is not just in companies btw – countries see increased polarization when things are down.
— Brian Armstrong 🛡️ (@brian_armstrong) June 10, 2022
Armstrong asked the naysayers to “stop distracting” Coinbase and they will get back to building “cool stuff.”
16/ If you're unhappy about something, work as part of the team to raise it along with proposed solutions (it's easy to be a critic, harder to be a part of the solution). If you can't do that and you're going to leak/rant externally then quit. Thanks!
— Brian Armstrong 🛡️ (@brian_armstrong) June 10, 2022
If you are interested, there is an ongoing discussion regarding the internal but now public disagreement about Coinbase operations on YCombinator.
Shares in Coinbase have tumbled like the rest of the market in recent months. Currently, COIN trades at around $58/share – far from its 52-week high of over $360 and near its 52-week low of just over $40.