Courtesy: https://www.coinbase.com/

• Coinbase to shut down its San Francisco office in 2022.
• This is to eliminate the labeling of some offices as unofficial. 

Coinbase Global Inc, the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the US has disclosed it will close down its San Francisco office in 2022. This means employees will continue to work from home. 

According to the company, closing the SF office will bring equal importance to all the Coinbase working places to eliminate the labeling of some offices as unofficial. The company further stated that career outcomes are anchored on capabilities and output, not location. The company does not intend to discourage operations from any office at all, but to create smaller offices across the world and allow workers to work from there if they choose.

Coinbase is committed to being remote first. We announced we no longer have an HQ and as a next step, we’re closing our SF office (our former HQ) in 2022.

— Coinbase News (@CoinbaseNews) May 5, 2021

This announcement comes a year after the company’s CEO, Brian Armstrong publicly notified all stakeholders about their post-Covid-19 remote-first decision. “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,” he said. 

The workplace of the future

Armstrong revealed that the decision is both practical and strategic. As countries have emerged from quarantine, they intend to effect the Covid-19 measures by maintaining the six feet social distance between workers. However, the company will not have spaces available for all current SF employees – more so as it adds more workers – even if they occupy every floor in the building. This places the company on the path of innovation and makes them an extension of the values of cryptocurrency.

For the strategic reason, Armstrong stated that the company has in the past few years partially practiced remote work. According to him, there has been an experiment to fully establish its remote-first policy. Coinbase has a vision of pushing for a world of more economic freedom, and to discourage tying people to one location. 

Their previous experiment has established that remote work is an option that top talents across the globe will expect from employers. Also, there are no explicit or implicit advantages of operating from a particular location. 

Armstrong also stated that the company plans on having one floor of office space in ten cities rather than ten floors of office spaces in one city. The company recently went public to mark its success in the crypto space over the years. 

It is important to note that Binance has taken a similar approach by shutting down its Shanghai head office and asking employees to work remotely. In a statement, CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) explained that Offices and Headquarters are old concepts like SMS and MMS in this fast-moving world.