Brian Armstrong admits firing engineers who didn’t adopt AI

Coinbase Chief Executive Brian Armstrong said he gave engineers at the cryptocurrency exchange just one week to adopt AI coding assistants, warning that those who failed to do so would lose their jobs.

Speaking with Stripe co-founder John Collison on the Cheeky Point podcast in late August, Armstrong talked about how he personally insisted every engineer should begin using GitHub Copilot and Cursor within a week.

Brian Armstrong and John Collison speaking in the Cheeky Pint podcast. Source: YouTube.

When Collison asked if the directive came from him or from another executive, and if he required people to “have a call with him,” Armstrong replied, “I mandated it … Yeah, that’s true. I did do that.”

According to the Coinbase head, he acted after hearing proposals that engineers could slowly onboard over multiple quarters. “Originally they were coming back and saying, ‘All right, over the next quarter … or two quarters, we’re going to get to 50% adoption.’ I was like, ‘You’re telling me … why can’t every engineer just onboard by the end of the week?’”

Coinbase is leaning heavily on AI, says Armstrong

The 42-year-old American billionaire said he bypassed the usual management process and addressed engineers of the company directly.

“I went rogue and posted in the all-in Slack channel. AI’s important. We need you to all learn it and at least onboard. You don’t have to use it every day yet until we do some training, but at least onboard by the end of the week. If not, I’m hosting a meeting on Saturday with everybody who hasn’t done it, and I’d like to meet with you to understand why.”

The Coinbase CEO explained that a few employees missed the deadline due to being away. “I jumped on this call on Saturday, and there were a couple of people who had not done it. 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.”

Armstrong conceded that some people really didn’t like that heavy-handed approach. “But I think it sets some clarity that we need to lean into this and learn about it,” he surmised.

Collison described his actions as “a light dusting of founder mode,” referring to his direct intervention in day-to-day practices.

Coinbase’s AI usage today

Armstrong told Collison that about one-third of Coinbase’s code is now produced with AI assistance. “We’re doing, I think, about 33% of code written by AI now. We have a goal to get to 50% by the end of the quarter. Let’s see if we get there,” he mentioned.

The company hosts monthly sessions called “AI speed-runs,” where engineers show the higher-ups how they execute their methods. 

“Every month we host what we call an AI speed-run, where one of the engineers volunteers that month to run a training for how they’re using it, and we try to cherry-pick the teams that are doing it the best.”

Armstrong does believe AI has “unimaginable” capabilities, but he reiterated that some areas of development are still under strict human oversight. “You probably can go too far with it,” he continued, “You don’t want people vibe-coding systems moving money. We’ve encouraged people to code-review it and have the appropriate checks in place with humans in the loop.”

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