By
Temitope Olatunji
April 18th, 2024
Coinbase, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, has announced that it will allow its employees to work remotely after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Brian Armstrong, co-founder and CEO at Coinbase, shared a memo that was sent out to all the employees regarding their remote work after the COVID-19 pandemic.
“After the restrictions of quarantine are over, Coinbase will embrace being ‘remote-first,’ meaning we will offer the option to work in an office or remotely for the vast majority of roles,” the memo read. “Whether in an office or remote, being ‘remote-first’ means we will all need to shift how we work. We know you have lots of questions. We don’t have all the answers yet, but we’re working on it,” it concluded.
Coinbase, which was founded in June of 2012, has grown as a digital currency wallet and platform where merchants and consumers can transact with almost all digital currencies. The company prides to have more than 30 million users and recorded a total of $150 billion in traded volume.
With the governments pushing for people to observe social distancing, the level of ingenuity in humans has made most of us appreciate remote working like any other day job. Large corporations like Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT), Facebook Inc (NASDAQ: FB) have increased their remote working capabilities for their employees.
Essentially, it is a silver lining for companies to continue operating despite the coronavirus disruption, but at the same time, they will save a lot of needed cash post-COVID-19.
Coinbase Remote Work Transition
“I believe that the future of work will look very different after the universal, forced the work-from-home experiment of COVID-19. Over the past two months, I have come to believe that not only is remote work here to stay but that it represents a huge opportunity and strategic advantage for us,” Armstrong noted.
Coinbase employees who prefer to work outside of an office can do so without any friction with the management. He, however, said that being remote-first requires a mindset and behavioral shift.
According to a medium blog post, Coinbase management used two major considerations to come into a unanimous decision. One, the practical side of it, whereby the company is not willing to spend large capital in a huge office just to fit in with the set rules of social distancing.
On the other hand, the management looked at the strategic point of view. In the past few years, Coinbase has been experimenting with being a remote-first company. “While the transition hasn’t been seamless, there has been less operational complexity than we expected, and we believe there will be substantial strategic advantages in a mix of remote and in-office work going forward,” Armstrong noted.
More coronavirus updates are here.