> Leaders will own much more, with as many as 15+ direct reports. [...] Every leader at Coinbase must also be a strong and active individual contributor. Managers should be like player-coaches, getting their hands dirty alongside their teams.

Oof. So not only are they giving their remaining managers more reports, but those managers will be expected to do lots of other, non-management work.

Sure, nothing can go wrong there... Even if they didn't have non-managerial work to do, 15+ direct reports is just too many. They're not going to get to spend enough time meeting each report's needs, not a chance.

I think as layoffs emails go, it's a pretty good one (as the current top comment points out[0]), but boy, I would not want to be working at a company like what Coinbase is turning into. Non-technical teams shipping code to prod? No thanks. "AI-native pods"? No thanks. I do like the idea of one-person teams; I was at my most productive when I was in that kind of role (though I'm not sure my experience generalizes). I get that companies are still struggling to figure out how to adapt to LLMs, but... damn.

Pretty solid severance package for the folks being laid off, though.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48021843

I'll probably get some flack for this, but this is about as good of a layoff email as he could have sent.

* explains the reasons (financials, AI enablement)

* talks about what folks who are leaving get in detail (first) and thanks them

* talks to the folks who are staying

Layoffs are hard, no doubt, and I am not sure he's making the right choice. I see plenty of doubt about some of the actions in other comments that echoes mine. I certainly wouldn't want to have 15 direct reports and also ship production code regularly. But as CEO, it's his job to make these kinds of choices.

The proof is in the pudding as they say. We'll see how Coinbase does with this new orientation in the next year or so and that will determine if this was a wise or foolish move. Is there a flood of talent leaving? Major breaches? Business as usual with better than expected profits?

Time will tell.

The company I work in, collapsed in similar manner. Started with huge AI reductions, now we're barely coping. Managers vibe code. All fix production.

However, I understand rationale, as the money was not in-flowing enough.

---- edit ----

When reading about AI-native talent who can manage fleets of agents, I shout out. Hire me. I will tell you why this won't work

> We’ll be concentrating around AI-native talent

Is this code for "we're firing all the old people"? As I understand it, I can say I'll only hire proficient English speakers (a "bona fide occupational requirement"), but I can't say I'll only hire native speakers, as that would discriminate against various protected groups. This seems like the same thing—proficiency may be a bona fide requirement, but expecting they learned this year's workflow first is age discrimination.

I don't expect ethical conduct from crypto companies and will not be sad if they are sued into oblivion.

> employees will receive a minimum of 16 weeks base pay (plus 2 weeks per year worked), their next equity vest, and 6 months of COBRA

As someone who lived through multiple rounds of layoffs at big tech companies this seemed quite generous.

> Over the past year, I’ve watched engineers use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks.

No, you didn't. You watched engineers use AI to ship in days something that looks like what used to take a team weeks. After enough rounds of feature evolution, you'll realise that what they actually shipped isn't at all the same. Anthropic's C compiler, which also seemed like a good start that would have taken people much longer to deliver, ended up being impossible to turn into something actually workable.

In a year or so, software developed by "AI-native talent who can manage fleets of agents to drive outsized impact" - which is another way of saying people who ship code they don't understand and therefore haven't fixed the architectural mistakes the agents make - will become impossible to evolve, and then things will get very interesting.

AI can help software developers in many ways, but not like that.

> Non-technical teams are now shipping production code and many of our workflows are being automated. T

Is Brian here? Can he speak more to this? What exactly are non technicals shipping to production code?

I've got no position in Coinbase but is that a wise thing to say as a public company? I'd be alarmed if I were a share holder

The reality is that Coinbase earns on trading volume, and since we are in a crypto bear market, revenue is down. So they have to cut to keep the company profitable (or in line with what the investors expect).

While AI is likely a productivity boost, the underlying reason is not AI.

> - No pure managers: Every leader at Coinbase must also be a strong and active individual contributor. Managers should be like player-coaches, getting their hands dirty alongside their teams.

This is going to end poorly for them. The only good managers I've had over around 20 years in the industry were 100% people managers and had no IC type of role expectations.

I've personally walked away from multiple manager role interview loops when I ask about the split only to find that they expected managers to also take on partial roles with IC engineering work. I know I can't be effective in either when having to juggle two entirely different hats, and in my anecdotal experience I've never seen anyone else do it well either.

> No pure managers: Every leader at Coinbase must also be a strong and active individual contributor. Managers should be like player-coaches, getting their hands dirty alongside their teams.

What's the theory on this? It seems to be common conclusion, but I don't understand why AI changes the situation here.

I understand that AI means you can do more with fewer people. Fewer people means less coordination overhead and fewer managers and fewer layers. What I don't get is why you want your managers to be doing IC work more so with AI than before. I don't see why anything changes about needing roughly 1 first line manager for every 6-8 people, or why it would be more beneficial now that the managers have production programming responsibilities.

Both before and after AI it's important that managers have real technical knowledge of the codebase. Having managers do actual production IC work in my experience has been a bad allocation of resources, though, and I don't see why AI changes that.

(a) Someone has to do the management tasks. Why do we think that isn't a full time job anymore?

(b) When managers do production IC work, in my experience it increases the load on ICs in review, because the manager one would _expect_ to not be _as_ expert as pure ICs on the codebase, and yet they are perceived as "senior". ICs then have overhead in having to manage that power imbalance in review. I have known a few extremely productive manager/ICs… but the effect on their teams was not super great. It made the manager into something of a micromanager and the actual ICs lacked autonomy.

Publicly traded companies get their stock price punished if they just announce layoffs, whereas if they say it is because of AI, they do not see the same treatment.

If you look at Coinbase in 2020 they had roughly 1,200 employees. By 2022 they had roughly 4,500 employees.

They over hired and now they are pairing back, this is all it is.

> - No pure managers: Every leader at Coinbase must also be a strong and active individual contributor. Managers should be like player-coaches, getting their hands dirty alongside their teams.

Geeks who didn't even stand near professional sports should really shut up about anything sport related, lol.

I would really like to see professional, established coach running around with young prodigies on a peak of their biology.

> - AI-native pods: We’ll be concentrating around AI-native talent who can manage fleets of agents to drive outsized impact. We’ll also be experimenting with reduced pod sizes, including “one person teams” with engineers, designers, and product managers all in one role.

And AI clowns will cheer and applaud this, not seeing that they're now doing the job of 5(!) people with the same salary. Why is nobody talking about this?

Also, I find it really bizarre that those neo feudal lords see their companies as just a life stock to count. They don't even count people, just see them as numbers to reduce/scale up. Modern tsardom, but instead of being tied via official decree you're now tied by your lifestyle and family.

"Some of you may die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make"

> We’ll also be experimenting with reduced pod sizes, including “one person teams” with engineers, designers, and product managers all in one role.

What happens when this person inevitably leaves and they have no one who knows even a little bit about the process or tools used?

> Leaders will own much more, with as many as 15+ direct reports.

As someone who did have 15 direct reports for a while, it’s a joke.

You basically are their manager in name only. Your time is so split you can’t give any one direct reports the attention they deserve. Quarterly and annual reviews are a farce because you genuinely don’t really know how people are doing except the signals you can receive when you’re not in a meeting with one of your 15 reports.

Just goes to show how far up their own asses some CEOs are. Meanwhile real people just want a boss who cares. Hope Brian feels happier with an extra billion dollars or whatever this year!

> We’ll also be experimenting with reduced pod sizes, including “one person teams” with engineers, designers, and product managers all in one role.

Experimenting or cost-cutting? Are these one-person "teams" you g to be paid more for having multi-domain roles regardless of how fast AI can churn out pseudo-MVPs?

We're going to see this become a trend beyond Coinbase, IMO. The idea that companies just want employees to be more productive is a farce. The C-suite would prefer to make no profit, have few to no employees, and get personally richer in the process.

AI is the next big hype.

Crypto was a big hype of last decade.

Every year that goes by there are fewer people interested in an old hype, and therefore a smaller and smaller market for coinbase.

Coinbase is on a path to death. It might take 20 years, but the decline has already begun.

Can't access x.com, getting "Invalid request rewrite". Has anyone else seen it?

"Non-technical teams are now shipping production code"

Boy that's scary for a company that's effectively fintech...

> Non-technical teams are now shipping production code

With the amount of tech leaders blabbering about this, I came to the conclusion that the profession of the future is going to be Security Engineer.

To put the 14% into some context, per Google, Coinbase headcount has had the following headcount each year

+ 2021 | 3,730 employees + 2022 | 4,706 employees + 2023 | 3,416 employees + 2024 | 3,772 employees + 2025 | 4,951 employees + 2026 | 4,250*

*Estimated following May 2026 layoffs.

So the reduction gets them closer, but still higher than where they were in 2024. Given the fact that the crypto business doesn't seem to be growing much over the last few years it can be argued that they over hired in 2025 and going back to 2024 numbers just makes sense. And as others have said in the comments, they haven't turned a profit so likely this makes business sense and the AI shine is trying to make the news less ugly for investors.

At least the compensation package sounds nice for those layed off.

What I'm really intrigued by is the non technical staff deploying code to production. Now that's a gamble I want to see in the crypto space.

when we will see "we do not need CEO anymore. AI can do it better. we are sorry to let go CEO, we do not need him".

> Rebuilding Coinbase as an intelligence, with humans around the edge aligning it.

Oof. That smacks of hubris and valley-buzzwordism.

> Leaders will own much more, with as many as 15+ direct reports.

> Every leader at Coinbase must also be a strong and active individual contributor.

So, a manager who's managing 15 people AND expected to ship -- that sounds awful for both sides.

huge red flag

> Non-technical teams are now shipping production code

if you vibe code financial systems this cannot mean anything good for your business

Why spend any time thinking about the people at your company, when you could just prompt “make a heartfelt tweet announcing firing a bunch of people, make sure you pitch it in a way that we are seen as an AI company”.

> Crypto is also on the verge of the next wave of adoption

Since roughly 2018 I reckon, at least.

I keep seeing $x4% figures for layoffs. Is that right below the legal threshold for layoffs (e.g., 15%), or am I imagining patterns that aren't there?

Brian once came to Hacker News to comment on a thread I posted (about being made an offer then ghosted by Stripe for a leadership position), so if he has the time for that I'd love to see him here talking about the non-technical teams thing. Could be an interesting discussion.

I usually feel bad for laid off engineers, but these guys profited off of pump and dump wealth-funneling to the rich. Sucks to suck. They all played a part in normalizing scams.

Changing much of their code to be AI written is not a good sign.

Not sure i would trust coinbase with any cyrpto from now on.

“ I'm sorry. I didn't think it would be this hard. But goodbyes are always hard, especially when I am the one saying goodbye. Today, effective immediately, I, Gavin Belson, founder and CEO of Hooli, am forced to officially say goodbye to the entire Nucleus division. (MURMURING) All Nucleus personnel will be given proper notice and terminated. But make no mistake. Though they're the ones leaving, it is I who must remain and bear the heavy burden of their failure. It is my fault. I trusted them to get the job done. But that is the price of leadership. Thank you.”

From some of the previous decisions taken by Brian, and the quality of his discourse on twitter, it feels like he has succumbed to something that afflicts a lot of rich people with frail egos: surrounding themselves with yes-men, they rarely engage with the reality as-is and instead with a make believe one. Elon Must also suffers from this as do the founders of AirBnB.

It wasn't that long ago that, in SV, the dominant values were humility, kindness and openness to all views (even if behind the scenes there was the ruthlessness demanded by capitalism). The last few years have seen this value system corrode, and it seems like its hurting everyone. From the tech workers constantly churning for no good reason, to the tech executives sequestered in their own thought bubbles until reality finally hits them (usually, too late to change).

Consider this and I think it needs to be acknowledged:

If you're a leader and you've said that your company is too big and have to downsize by 10+%. This is a you're the problem.

Firstly, the business needs to have active business and new initives. If you are not supporting that: You've failed.

If you're so inefficient that you need that extra 14%, you made that mistake.

If you "overhired" and didn't find a way to use that extra capacity to find the business.. you are the problem.

If you say that AI has changed your business, that 14% more people means 14%*the AI lift of more capacity to accomplish greater things.

It's not the talent, and it's not the talents' fault for your issues. A lot of people assume that layoffs means removal of bad performers. The reality is not there.

I'm still baffled how crypto is still around.

How long would it be that people realise that they are playing "passing the parcel" with a ticking explosive?

This problem has been talked about and answered as back as 500BCE. It's like the parable of the blind men and an elephant. Each blind man feels a different part of the animal's body, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then describe the animal based on their limited experience and their descriptions of the elephant are different from each other. In some versions, they come to suspect that the other person is dishonest and they come to blows. The moral of the parable is that humans have a tendency to claim absolute truth based on their limited, subjective experience as they ignore other people's limited, subjective experiences which may be equally true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant

It's fascinating to watch org managers decide that AI has made people management easy and cheap, instead of org management

Its either of two things, either this person is going by market forces, saying whatever makes sense to please the market or the individual has not idea of what it takes to build software by self

Companies try to project strength especially when they’re vulnerable. Effectively this is sentiment control with the market. AI has given vulnerable companies the perfect thing for projecting strength when taking actions forced by weakness.

Apart from "AI" making us productive talk.

Can anyone share how and when they see market is getting in a better shape?

Specifically I am curious, how we would be working with AIs even if market gets in a better shape

> including “one person teams” with engineers, designers, and product managers all in one role.

The reads like typical MBA-efficiency-idiocy taken to the extreme. Clearly this guy is so deeply isolated from the actual work that he cannot even begin to comprehend just how utterly stupid this idea is. It's one thing to push for 100x engineering "output" with "AI", but something completely different to expect a single person to be 3-4 persons in one. Pure schizophrenia - but at least companies like Coinbase which adopt the AI-first illusion will burn themselves faster and leave the room for something new and genuinely innovative.

I have an announcement to make, using Claude I have now in development an AI model that can replace the CEO, the Board Chair, the CFO and CTO of any company on Earth.

I was shocked at how easy it was to train and develop a model that can replace senior leadership in a company.

The CEO was the easiest. I simply loaded the model with as much corporate jargon, double talk and the ability to talk down to people. The model nearly wrote itself.

Then simply ingesting the Wall Street Journal, Barrons, Financial Times and SEC 10-K reports and annual reports, I was able to compile the perfect CFO. It was able to spit out regulatory reports, answer questions on investor calls.

Strangely, the component of the model I had write in house was the ability to give up part of their bonus to keep key people employed. Seems in all of those financial reports, there were no examples of anyome that the model could leverage.

Anyone else get a clouflare error 1035 when trying to visit the tweet?

Recession signal.

Ok I actually like the idea of flatter orgs and player-coaches a lot.

However, do we really need them to AI-wash the fact that as a lot of companies, this company over-hired during ZIRP? Do we really need them to AI-wash the fact that the crypto hype is gone, therefore their business is smaller? “Company as intelligence” and “AI productivity” are just buzzwords so their stock price doesn’t suffer.

Coinbase famously rescinded offers days before people joined when they did a previously huge layoff. That's absolutely diabolical and I sometimes fantasize about accepting a job there and just ghosting them.

3 years ago they were touting NFTs as the next big thing.

Today, not a single mention in that email.

I can't help but feel that there is a superficial chasing of trends at play here (adopting the same playbook that Block used earlier).

Question is, where will we all be in 3 years from now?

What I'm worried is the push fo AI here, for a software platform that handles money is troublesome, I use coin base because I can send money to my family in other countries with no fees

> Non-technical teams are now shipping production code and many of our workflows are being automated.

As a security engineer this statements fills me dread.

How does the “flattening” affect equity grants. With fewer employees, does each get larger equity stakes?

The behavior of companies when "adapting to AI" is like a famous phrase about communism - they heroically struggle overcoming problems created purely by themselves.

16weeks plus week or so per year of service is pretty good

Lol “Non-technical teams are now shipping production code” definitely what I want my financial institution doing.

>I’ve watched engineers use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks. Non-technical teams are now shipping production code

Good luck to those (human) teams when the briefness stuff hits the fan thanks to an AI hallucination... oh wait, the Active Individually-contributing leaders will be there to lend a hand, right?

"Non-technical teams are now shipping production code"

> Leaders will own much more

Heh. This is the kind of phrasing that just begs to be misunderstood.

Over the past year, I’ve watched engineers use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks.

And I suspect that over the coming year, we'll be watching the consequences of this unfold.

I would love to see what IC Brian is doing.

Print it all out and bring it to the meeting please.

I never much liked Coinbase. I like them much less now.

Bitcoin is down from its highs and the big boys are in. Tether collateral is handled by Lutnick's Cantor & Fitzgerald and moved to BFF Bukele's El Salvador. Previously the combo was Deltec Bank (CIA linked) in the Caribbean.

The Tether narrative has just been broken and Iranian assets have been frozen:

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/04/24/politics/us-freezes-crypt...

This of course means that the primary use case of Bitcoin, sanctions' evasion, is no longer secure.

It becomes clearer and cleared that Lutnick and Trump are actually the deep state and the big boys mean it. Further crackdowns on China and Russia are coming and it does not look good for Bitcoin.

But by all means, cite AI nonsense as a favor to fellow founders to pump up their valuations.

"But don't worry, I assure you I still intend to personally become wealthy. Thank you for your time and attention to this matter!"

If I were an employee that got laid off with this email, I'd be really angry and sad.

> Coinbase is well-capitalized, has diversified revenue streams, and is well-positioned to weather any storm. Crypto is also on the verge of the next wave of adoption

Crypto is always about to take off. If the company is sitting so well, and is facing imminent growth, then they don't need to do layoffs, they want to. Or the company is not sitting so rosy and they're not too sure about their future.

> Non-technical teams are now shipping production code

What could go wrong?

> Over the past year, I’ve watched engineers use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks. Non-technical teams are now shipping production code and many of our workflows are being automated.

There is nothing that can go wrong with having non-tech people vibecode slop and push it to production... and certainly not when money (or monetary equivalents) are at play.

"Difficult decision" says billionaire sacking people, many of whom have families, so he can make even more money.

> Second, AI is changing how we work. Over the past year, I’ve watched engineers use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks. Non-technical teams are now shipping production code and many of our workflows are being automated. The pace of what's possible with a small, focused team has changed dramatically, and it's accelerating every day.

As a reward, people driving the productivity have now received a reduction in their colleague pool.

Even his post is written by AI. Now that's efficiency!

What is going to be the event that triggers Wall Street to realize a lot of these companies have been lying about their financials?

Guys I'm from Texas and I want to share something with you all, my friends I've made here on the internet from my heart.

I think all of us are a bit sad now that AI has essentially removed what it means to be a coder.

There will never again be the time like we had, the golden age of being a nerd. We nerds had it all, and then we destroyed it by making something too smart!

As a Texan, it's kind of like cowboys. Coders were wrangling the computer, but now we have been replaced by industry and mechanics.

Having read the twitter post, it was raw and honest, and I want to share some ideas about life that I feel are relevant.

The first one is that when you work, you should always do something you believe in, because nobody can take that away from you.

If you worked for the money, or because someone told you you could be a part of a cool team, your whole world falls apart when you get let go.

But if you work because you truly believe your work is worthwhile, you will always be glad you did it.

I feel that people on here continually complain about capitalism and how bad corporations are. I challenge all you all to check yourself and ask what are you doing to be a part of the system. If you go accept employment at a 9-5, you are part of the system and making it stronger.

I have always refused to have a job. At age 32, I have only ever worked at one company as an employee, and that only for a short time, and the person was a genuine friend of mine.

I ask each person here to quit working at a company. I think all of us should choose to only ever work at a nonprofit.

Fundamentally Capitalism can't be defeated if we complain and then try to negotiate the biggest salary or benefits.

It's logically stupid for us to be saying they are evil, when we do the exact same thing with a salary.

Instead, each of us should work at a nonprofit, and we should NEVER accept a salary but instead ask them to give to us when they have something left over.

Ultimately, friends, I chose to tell my boss one day (the guy I ended up being an employee at his small company for for a bit), that I didn't want a salary, just donate if you want.

Ever since then, I have been happy.

I hated life when I worked for money. But now, I love it. I have gotten to code on many fun projects, but for the first time I felt alive.

It was terrifying with a wife, a kid and a mortgage to say that. But I am a true believer that the universe, or God has a plan for everyone, and that if you stop worrying and doing what you are told, and just go out and love people, it will all work out.

What I found is that the pay you get working for free is better than the pay you could ever get with money.

You can finally live with yourself when you just love everybody, every day.

If you pay me, and I did great work, you will never know if I love you. But if I did it for free, for all of eternity, you will know that you know that I care about you. And that, to me, is worth more than all the money in the world.

That's why I never accept a salary when I work. I just let people give as they feel fit.

Yes, it is hard, and it doesn't always feel fun. But it is 1000X worth it.

Thank you for reading, God bless you and have a great day!

Another dying business betting on AI to save them. Good riddance

Coinbase has achieved "AGI" internally.

ok sure good luck. more like conbase anyway

To me that sounds like financial issues dressed in PR slop.

Crypto in bear market, volume is down. Less money to skim. Layoff.

The AI bullshit is CEO feel-good talk.

Lots of layoffs this year. The economy is in bad shape.

Many comments are mocking the "Non-technical teams are now shipping production code" line as an obvious disaster waiting to happen.

I think this will be commonplace in the not too distant future.

Some disasters will happen, just like they did before AI. Skeptics will gleefully point out these failures while more and more non-technical teams ship code.