Coinbase fired engineers who refused to adopt AI coding assistants, CEO Brian Armstrong revealed on John Collison’s podcast.
The company bought licenses for GitHub Copilot and Cursor for all engineers. Some warned Armstrong adoption would be slow. He wasn’t having it.
Armstrong posted a mandate in the engineering Slack: onboard AI assistants by the end of the week or face a Saturday meeting. Those who skipped that meeting without good reason were fired. 
“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.’”
“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.”
Armstrong admitted it was “heavy-handed” and caused pushback. Still, the message was clear: AI usage is mandatory.
Since then, Coinbase has doubled down on AI training. Monthly sessions now highlight teams using AI creatively.
John Collison expressed doubts on the podcast about relying heavily on AI-generated code.
“It’s clear that it is very helpful to have AI helping you write code. It’s not clear how you run an AI-coded code base,” Collison said.
Armstrong agreed.
No official comment from Coinbase so far. The story highlights the pressure on engineers to adopt AI tools or lose their jobs.
