r/CryptoCurrency • u/Halvinz 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 • 1d ago
🟢 EXCHANGES Coinbase CEO explains why he fired engineers who didn’t try AI immediately | TechCrunch
https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/22/coinbase-ceo-explains-why-he-fired-engineers-who-didnt-try-ai-immediately/29
u/Halvinz 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 1d ago
Last week I started abusing AI on my client account to up my usage as it's being tracked. The client wasn't impressed.
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u/CryptoAd007 🟥 0 / 0 🦠 23h ago
Information Technology landscape is changing fast. Future belongs to AI commanders.
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u/Smoy 🟦 429 / 430 🦞 22h ago
It's so funny seeing the anti ai crowd in the crypto sub. Not seeing the hypocrisy of their own stances. Anti ai are the buttcoiners. They'll wait and cry as it skyrockets around them until they turn Amish or pretend they never held their beliefs in the first place
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u/HSuke 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 22h ago edited 21h ago
What no? Most people who use AI are partially against AI.
AI at its current stage is dumb, inaccurate, and hallucinates all the time.
I use it to help code, but it's so damn inaccurate I end up rewriting the code 9 out of 10 times. Using AI on crypto exchange and wallet code sounds downright dangerous and irresponsible.
Edit: The main reason AI is so inaccurate is due to Garbage-in, garbage-out. AI takes its info from public sources like forums, Google Product Forums, Microsoft Tech Community/Microsoft Support, Reddit, Quora, and so many of those responses are either wrong, outdated, or wrong AND outdated.
I call up Microsoft Enterprise support every week because some of their documentation is outdated and wrong. If I can't get the right answer after a day of research, AI sure as hell can't get the right answer because the correct answer simply does not exist on public forums. It's in internal documentation that it can't access.
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u/rennemannd 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 22h ago
Or it’s just people with actual experience? A lot of it is developers with experience not being anti AI, but being anti the way AI is currently seen by business people. It’s nowhere near as powerful or accurate as it’s touted to be by people in suits.
It’s a tool like any other, it’s a powerful tool sure that in an ideal situation can speed up development by 50x - but it also slows down development and can’t be used in some situations.
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u/Throwra504guy 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 19h ago
Did y'all read the article or no?
....
I posted a mandate in the company’s main engineering Slack channel. “I said, ‘AI is 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. And 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.’”
At the meeting, some people had reasonable explanations for not getting their AI assistant accounts set up during the week, like being on vacation, Armstrong said. “I jumped on this call on Saturday and there were a couple people that 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 [have a good reason]. And they got fired".
...
Software engineers have to be up to date on new technology. If your CEO buys you a license and asks you to check something out and you refuse, you can expect to be fired.
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u/brucekeller 🟦 3K / 3K 🐢 18h ago
People have forgotten that employers are not charities. Doesn't mean they can just work you into the ground, but if you're making better wages and working in better conditions than 99% of people in the world, you can be bothered to spend an hour checking something out that you were told to by the CEO.
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u/RectalSpawn 🟩 750 / 2K 🦑 13h ago
People have forgotten that employers are not charities.
Employers have forgotten that employees are not charaties.
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u/Invest_and_ballout 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 19h ago
I heard a podcast with this guy, absolute clown
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u/Minute_Knowledge_401 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 6h ago
yea he's a bit of a dumbass ngl. tbh, crypto was a lot better before coinbase came along.
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u/FidgetyRat 🟦 0 / 27K 🦠 1d ago edited 1d ago
Answer: because he’s an idiot.
Should have stuck with Smashing Pumpkins instead of crypto
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u/Myrkull 🟦 214 / 214 🦀 23h ago
If an employee refuses to use a tool when told to learn it, yeah I'm finding another employee
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u/trufin2038 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 19h ago
When you hire someone to do a job you don't know how to do, then fire them for not listening when you tell them how to do it (the wrong way), you are a modern ceo.
He's going to be stuck with vibe coders and get hacked down to the last sat.
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u/FidgetyRat 🟦 0 / 27K 🦠 22h ago
If I was a CEO I’d maybe listen to my expert engineers rather than assume that I as a businessman know better.
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u/Every_Hunt_160 🟩 10K / 98K 🐬 21h ago
Stonks man started believing in his hype a little too much after seeing $Coin Stonks price go up.
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17h ago
[deleted]
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u/x_lincoln_x 🟦 69 / 10K 🇳 🇮 🇨 🇪 11h ago
Good to know you don't listen to your employees. Which company is this that you are CEO of?
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u/northcasewhite 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 23h ago
It doesn't mean your decision to force the tool is right.
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u/ShoweredInDownvotes 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 22h ago
AI is a wonderful tool for a developer to use to speed up certain tasks as long as the developer understands the code and can provide oversight.
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u/northcasewhite 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 18h ago
I know. I am a developer. But I am speaking generally not about any specific example.
I am just saying that bosses are not always right.
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u/DBMIVotedForKodos 🟩 40 / 40 🦐 18h ago
Thats fine. If I think the tool will eventually ruin the company, you're doing me a favor by giving me a head start.
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u/brendamn 🟦 168 / 169 🦀 21h ago
Yeah I didn't get it. It's an opportunity to try something while getting paid. It's not like they are building something that could be used as a weapon. No moral conflict in just doing your job
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u/morganpriest 🟩 87 / 38 🦐 22h ago
he's a idiot but he founded coinbase, what have you done?
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u/FidgetyRat 🟦 0 / 27K 🦠 2h ago
It’s the Daedalus effect. Great CEO end up getting arrogant flying too close to the sun. Just look at how far Elon has fallen.
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u/GreedVault 🟦 3K / 10K 🐢 23h ago
AI will one day be so good that it could actually replace the CEO.
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u/Every_Hunt_160 🟩 10K / 98K 🐬 21h ago
The CEO thinks he’s better at engineering than his CEO, GREED !!
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u/trufin2038 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 19h ago
They can already do a good job as CEO, that's a low bar. Probably won't ever replace programmers though.
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u/Aggressive_Finish798 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 23h ago
Uncle Fester don't care about his employees much huh? Guy's got more money than he can spend, but some programmers are the problem. Asshole.
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u/Coz131 🟦 0 / 0 🦠 1d ago
I don't see a problem with this. It's like carpenters refusing to use power tools or office workers who won't use formulas in excel. Using AI to help with boilerplate and generating basic functions isn't unreasonable especially if the devs are being paid hundreds of thousands.
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u/jaeldi 🟦 179 / 499 🦀 23h ago edited 22h ago
"Yeeeeah, Did you get the memo on TPS reports?" /s lol
There's good and bad in execution of a tool or technique. Did this CEO make a distinction that makes sense like you did? Or is he a blind faith follower? Ive had idiot bosses who over-paid for a bad software tool then forced everyone to use it because he was too prideful about his mistake which he would NOT admit.
Is there enough information from the CEO as to what situation was really the case? Is there a push in the AI 'space' by investors to pridefully prove that it is profitable. Is this a pushback on all the articles coming out in finance trades that AI isn't profitable and consuming too much time and resources?
I don't know.
I would like to hear the other side of the story from those that were fired. In my limited experience, efficient coders have copy and paste 'dictionaries' full of their most often used repetitive code that they pull from along with quick keyboard short cuts to get it into working code quickly. It would be different if he had said "well the workers using AI were more productive and spending less time in debug."
I find it interesting the article mentions they "paid for a license for every engineer to use it."
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u/Django_McFly 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 23h ago
I agree. If you aren't willing to even try it then you're saying like my mind is closed to new things, I've already learned the last thing I ever need to learn. You're working in crypto. Tons of brand new stuff every year. Design paradigms radically change over what are short periods of time. If you're showing that you can't stay mobile, you won't try new tools, you've got "a way" and you're locked in that way forever no matter what, etc...
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u/revzjohnson 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 13h ago
Your analogies are nothing like the AI situation.
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u/Coz131 🟦 0 / 0 🦠 9h ago
Why is it not? Please explain.
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u/revzjohnson 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 7h ago
I shouldn’t have said anything, too tired to elaborate. But in short, power tools and calculators don’t replace human creativity, and are therefore not the slippery slope that AI is.
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u/Jeremiah__Jones 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 21h ago
Look up prompt injection attacks. Blindly using ai can be dangerous for devs.
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u/armageddon_20xx 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 23h ago
Yeah the CEO made the right decision here. I am a software engineer and AI has made me work 10x faster
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u/SmellsLikeBu11shit 🟩 8K / 8K 🦭 1d ago
Guy looks like a cue ball. Would be hilarious if one of the engineers’ AI deletes their entire codebase
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u/Every_Hunt_160 🟩 10K / 98K 🐬 20h ago
He thinks that he has a bigger brain than what his head looks like
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u/Hotness4L 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 6h ago
While it's not perfect, AI assisted code is such a massive time saving that any engineers who refuse to use it are basically marking themselves as obsolete.
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u/timbulance 🟩 9K / 9K 🦭 23h ago
I wonder if the engineers were afraid of using a tool that might replace them in the future.
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u/Aggressive_Finish798 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 23h ago
More like afraid to use a tool which constantly messes up and you have to correct. Even one mistake can create a point of weakness. Imagine the entire exchange being compromised and destroyed. Poof! GONE.
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u/chrliegsdn 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 21h ago
My company is aggressively shoving AI tools at us as well. Success is no longer measured on the quality of our output.
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u/nosimsol 🟩 0 / 566 🦠 1d ago edited 12h ago
I have a friend that won’t use ai to help code because he thinks it’s cheating. I asked him if he walks to work instead of driving because it’s cheating. It didn’t help, he still doesn’t use ai. I fired him as a friend. I call it, “friendly fire.”
Edit: He retaliated by sleeping with my wife. I’m trying out a new ai wife now.
Edit: I already have ai pets. Those are working out.
Edit: Guys, ai wife is not working out. Not sure what to do.
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u/Soggy_Ad6925 🟨 15 / 15 🦐 22h ago
lol. stupid laymans know nothing about coding gathering to downvote while a senior dev working in big tech who job to do code review commits. hallu is another story, try to work with things like Copilot with reliable model like Sonnet 4. Learn to do so properly before speaking. This sub is full of stupid men as far as I know. I was lucky both for catching XRP and ETH when this sub shitposting.
IT or dev in general is job best known for moving fast. Trash people who have stuck minds who protect old shits like Fortran, Cobol are pains in the ass when innovative need to collaboration or upgrading; keep those minds and you would be first in layoff next time.
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u/asuds 🟦 691 / 691 🦑 23h ago
I would be a bit scared of substantial AI code being deployed into production at a Crypto Exchange.