Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong mandated the internal use of AI coding tools and accelerated an adoption timeline for engineers. Engineers previously estimated it could take up to six months for 50% adoption, but Armstrong required familiarity with the tools by the end of a single workweek. Engineers who had not onboarded were required to meet with Armstrong on a Saturday to explain; those without acceptable reasons were terminated. The firings were part of a broader push to integrate AI and to move engineers onto tools such as Cursor and GitHub Copilot that generate, edit, and debug code. The exact number of employees fired was not disclosed.
He told software engineers to learn the AI tools by the end of the workweek. They didn't have to use the tools every day; just get familiar with them. Engineers who failed to onboard had to meet with Armstrong on a Saturday to explain why they hadn't. Those without a good reason were fired. "I jumped on this call on Saturday, and there were a couple of people who had not done it," Armstrong said on the podcast. "Some of them had a good reason, because they were just getting back from some trip or something, and some of them didn't, and they got fired."
"Like a lot of companies, we're leaning as hard as we can into AI," Armstrong said on the podcast. "We made a big push to get every engineer on Cursor and Copilot," he added, referring to two popular AI coding tools that generate code from prompts, edit code, and debug programs.
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