Recently, it is difficult to find programmers who have not used AI coding assistants with some level of ability, especially to write repetitive, mundane bits.
However, those who refused to try the tool when Coinbase purchased the Github Copilot and Cursor enterprise license were fired immediately, CEO Brian Armstrong said on John Collison's podcast, “Cheeky Pint.” (Collison is co-founder and president of Payments Company Stripe.)
After obtaining a license to cover all engineers, some cryptocurrency exchanges warned Armstrong would be slower to adopt, predicting it would take months to use AI to acquire even half of the engineers.
Armstrong was shocked by the idea. “I went cheating,” he said, posting a delegation to the company's main engineering slack channel. “I said, “AI is important. We need you to learn it, and at least onboard. You don't need to use it every day until you train yet, but at least you don't need to use it by the end of the week.”
Some people at the meeting had reasonable explanations that they would not set up an AI assistant account per week, like they were on vacation.
“I jumped on this call on Saturday, but there were some people who didn't do it. They just came back from a trip or something, so some of them had good reasons, and some of them weren't. [have a good reason]. And they were fired. ”
Armstrong admitted it was a “heavy-handed approach,” and there were people in the company “didn't like it.”
TechCrunch Events
San Francisco | October 27-29, 2025
It doesn't sound like so many people have been fired, but Armstrong said he sent a clear message that AI is not an option. Still, everything about that story is wild. That means there were engineers who didn't try to sign up for a few minutes a week and test their AI assistants.
Coinbase did not respond to requests for comment.
Since then, Armstrong has been leaning further into training. He said the company holds monthly meetings and the team that has learned how to use AI will share what they have learned.
Interestingly, Collison, who has been programming since childhood, questioned the amount of companies that rely on the code that AI is generated.
“It's clear that it's very helpful for AI to help write code. The way AI-coded codebase runs is not clear,” he commented. Armstrong replied, “I agree.”
In fact, as TechCrunch previously reported, the former Openai engineer described the company's central code repository as a “small garbage dump.” The engineers said management has begun dedication to engineering resources to improve the situation.
We are constantly aiming to evolve and you can help us by providing insights into TechCrunch and your perspective and feedback on our coverage and events! Fill in this research to let us know how we are doing and get the opportunity to win an award in return!