I could have understood it in a month - onboard, try something out and decide if it helps. But a week and then a meeting on a Saturday to explain why or get fired?
Management is hard so I’m generally a little more patient with managerial missteps. But this is a different level of unreasonable. Heck a lot of developers in the finance world adopt slowly because they’ve worked with compliance departments and it becomes a habit.
I tried AI for coding in my own time since the very early days of GPT 3.5 but I didn't try it in my day job until much later when Cursor came out. Now I use Claude Code frequently.
IMO this was the optimal approach, trying in my own time and not risking damaging the company codebase until it was safe... But I might have been fired, by the sounds of it.
> “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,” he commented. Armstrong replied, “I agree.”
Can’t say I’m surprised that a crypto CEO - an industry totally overflowing with contradictions - is completely unfazed when confronted with yet another contradiction
I know I shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but that picture of him looking like a cult leader from an episode of Star Trek is all the explanation I need.
I don't agree with firing the engineer, but if your company is paying for a tool that could help your productivity and you don't even try it, I would like to know the reason for that. It's a job, they are paying your time and they are paying for a tool that can help you. At least try it.
Brian is known for adopting whatever appears to be hot. Sometimes he reads the latest fad book and starts projecting it, other times there's a hiring or retention trend that he adopts to remain competitive for hiring. I don't get why he'd fire people over this though, seems like he's undifferentiated.
If I had money entrusted to Coinbase, I'd be concerned about:
1. The idea of them using AI coding tools in a forced way like this. (Meticulous code quality, and perfect understanding of every detail, are critical.)
2. The culture implications of insta-firing someone whose explanation you didn't like, for why they hadn't started using AI tools yet.
3. Scheduling the firing call for a Saturday. Are they in some kind of whip-cracking forced march, and staff going to be fatigued and stressed and sick and making mistakes?
So, Armstrong, how did your company get off the ground without "AI" in the first place?
Is he returning a favor for all the goodies that "crypto" is getting from this administration? Like Tether being legitimized in El Salvador by best friend forever Bukele and having its finances and (alleged) USTD backing handled by Lutnick's Cantor Fitzgerald?
As someone who hates AI but also wants to succeed in job interviews, what is the best way to lie about it when asked? What should I say that will pass without being too enthusiastic (and possibly being detected as lying that way)?
I've tried Claude Code out at work and found that our codebase is too big and too specialized for Claude to do anything particularly useful. Could go with that.
I'm an extremely pro-AI person and use it heavily at home (I actually just finished the most recent rewrite of my agent software that uses MCP. It's really amazing, a lot of people say the AI bubble is popping, I think it's only just starting, people have no idea how how far this stuff can go.)
I suspect I was just laid off for not using any of the AI tools at work. Here's why I didn't.
1) They were typically very low quality. Often just more hosted chatbots (and of course they pick the cheapest hosted models) with bad RAG on a good day.
2) It wasn't clear to me that my boss wasn't able to read corespondance with chatbots the way he could with my other coworkers which creates a kind of chilling effect. I don't reflexively ask it casual questions the way I do at home.
3) Most of my blockers were administrative, not technical. Not only could AI tools not help me with that but in typical corporate fashion trying to use the few sanctioned tools actually generated more administrative work for me.
Oh well. I'm kind of over corporate employment anyway and moving onto my own thing. Just another insane misfeature of that mode of socialization at that scale.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 42.3 ms ] thread> meeting on Saturday with everybody who hasn’t done it
Even more toxic
This is not a story about AI.
Seriously, why anyone listens to crypto ceos is beyond me. Modern day snake oil salesmen.
If i was working on a finance or finance adjacent company i'd be very hesitant to use anything that might send data outside the company.
Management is hard so I’m generally a little more patient with managerial missteps. But this is a different level of unreasonable. Heck a lot of developers in the finance world adopt slowly because they’ve worked with compliance departments and it becomes a habit.
IMO this was the optimal approach, trying in my own time and not risking damaging the company codebase until it was safe... But I might have been fired, by the sounds of it.
Can’t say I’m surprised that a crypto CEO - an industry totally overflowing with contradictions - is completely unfazed when confronted with yet another contradiction
1. The idea of them using AI coding tools in a forced way like this. (Meticulous code quality, and perfect understanding of every detail, are critical.)
2. The culture implications of insta-firing someone whose explanation you didn't like, for why they hadn't started using AI tools yet.
3. Scheduling the firing call for a Saturday. Are they in some kind of whip-cracking forced march, and staff going to be fatigued and stressed and sick and making mistakes?
Is he returning a favor for all the goodies that "crypto" is getting from this administration? Like Tether being legitimized in El Salvador by best friend forever Bukele and having its finances and (alleged) USTD backing handled by Lutnick's Cantor Fitzgerald?
I suspect I was just laid off for not using any of the AI tools at work. Here's why I didn't.
1) They were typically very low quality. Often just more hosted chatbots (and of course they pick the cheapest hosted models) with bad RAG on a good day.
2) It wasn't clear to me that my boss wasn't able to read corespondance with chatbots the way he could with my other coworkers which creates a kind of chilling effect. I don't reflexively ask it casual questions the way I do at home.
3) Most of my blockers were administrative, not technical. Not only could AI tools not help me with that but in typical corporate fashion trying to use the few sanctioned tools actually generated more administrative work for me.
Oh well. I'm kind of over corporate employment anyway and moving onto my own thing. Just another insane misfeature of that mode of socialization at that scale.