<![CDATA[So, Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, published a letter on X about his companies future and his planned layoffs.]]>So, Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, published a letter on X about his companies future and his planned layoffs.

You can find the full post here: https://x.com/brian_armstrong/status/2051616759145185723?s=20

So many folks, rightly so, have zeroed in on this sentence with serious angst:

"Non-technical teams are now shipping production code..."

I think this is the inevitable outcome of the past 30 years. First cloud, then SaaS, now vibe coding has moved IT ownership to the masses.

I don't think this is great for security, governance, or oversight, but it's AMAZING for CEOs and boards who just want to go fast and break things and "empower their people."

I'm not belittling "the masses." But they aren't technologists, by and large.

And what is being demanded of them by misguided leaders is to run some massively complex SaaS/Cloud/Coding tool that "Looks Easy Enough" but all of the devil is in the details that only hard core technologist would know or care about.

I believe this is why we have seen so many breaches based on misconfigurations and poor secret management and poor API/Token/Oauth management. The people making those design decisions aren't equipped with the skills to understand the consequences of their design choices.

They are marketing people, or sales people, or HR people, or whatever. They have other important skills, but we have forced IT onto them because leadership massively underestimates the complexity, risk, and specialized knowledge required to run it safely.

"I mean, how hard can a surgery robot be? You just push buttons right? Get the front desk guy to do it!"

This is inevitable, but stupid. Good luck to us all.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/topic/62bf11e5-851b-412d-8eab-aefd04c1aa48/so-brian-armstrong-ceo-of-coinbase-published-a-letter-on-x-about-his-companies-future-and-his-planned-layoffs.RSS for NodeFri, 15 May 2026 04:32:53 GMTTue, 05 May 2026 21:46:40 GMT60<![CDATA[Reply to So, Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, published a letter on X about his companies future and his planned layoffs. on Wed, 06 May 2026 01:52:14 GMT]]>@Viss @lerg I think that’s a good point. I leads me to another idea in a round about way: most companies probably won’t vibe code anything. Even if it’s easy. Which means there will still be a market for apps and SaaS, but it seems like we are going to run into a paradox of choice situation when everyone and their dog can create niche industry vertical apps with little investment.

I retract my comment about IT - we will always be needed to find the any key, to reimage hosed up computers, fix the WiFi, etc.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/jerry/statuses/116525127059373340https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/jerry/statuses/116525127059373340Wed, 06 May 2026 01:52:14 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to So, Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, published a letter on X about his companies future and his planned layoffs. on Wed, 06 May 2026 01:41:28 GMT]]>@jerry @lerg I think, in part, the answer to this heavily depends on how many cloud (or otherwise centralized service providers) decide to adopt a Broadcom-esque, value-extraction focused business model. The ultimate business goal of so many service providers is to either become a monopoly or part of a limited cabal that controls markets. The short-term incentives are lined up so that if they ever catch that proverbial car, it seems likely they'll pull on the thread ala Cory Doctrow's Enshittification model.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/nerdpr0f/statuses/116525084752769001https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/nerdpr0f/statuses/116525084752769001Wed, 06 May 2026 01:41:28 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to So, Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, published a letter on X about his companies future and his planned layoffs. on Wed, 06 May 2026 01:29:45 GMT]]>@jerry @lerg pretty sure the first big move into cloud was supposed to eliminate us all, but here we all are, fucking about with our embarassingly contrived homelabs that rival some companies levels of complexity 😄

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/Viss/statuses/116525038650932840https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/Viss/statuses/116525038650932840Wed, 06 May 2026 01:29:45 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to So, Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, published a letter on X about his companies future and his planned layoffs. on Wed, 06 May 2026 01:28:14 GMT]]>@lerg in all seriousness, I do wonder what this change will drive. Cloud led to consolidation of compute into datacenters and gave rise to SaaS. Blockchain gave rise to, well, bad example but whatever. There will be a time of peak horror show resulting from vibe coded apps, and then a reduction and it settles in and there will be a long tail of little horrors. Just like we still have with SaaS and cloud today.

But it makes me wonder: what becomes of IT when all the infrastructure is in the cloud and all the apps are bespoke stuff running in some sort of safety container in the cloud? I think there will be a coming resurgence of business analysts who figure out how to focus vibe coding into actually useful apps and not a bunch of distracting science experiments.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/jerry/statuses/116525032726554919https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/jerry/statuses/116525032726554919Wed, 06 May 2026 01:28:14 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to So, Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, published a letter on X about his companies future and his planned layoffs. on Wed, 06 May 2026 01:13:05 GMT]]>@lerg They don’t know what they don’t know.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://beige.party/users/Alison/statuses/116524973116421986https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://beige.party/users/Alison/statuses/116524973116421986Wed, 06 May 2026 01:13:05 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to So, Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, published a letter on X about his companies future and his planned layoffs. on Wed, 06 May 2026 01:11:19 GMT]]>@lerg if 35 years in IT has taught me anything, it’s that somehow Intel will profit off of this.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/jerry/statuses/116524966175545417https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/jerry/statuses/116524966175545417Wed, 06 May 2026 01:11:19 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to So, Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, published a letter on X about his companies future and his planned layoffs. on Wed, 06 May 2026 01:07:49 GMT]]>@lerg @crazypedia my issue is that I’m generally in favor of technology that enables more people to get their computers to do more things. More people writing code is good.

But code for you to use and share is very different from code that will act as a custodian for other people’s data, or such like. That should require professional care and expertise.

And also this move is “lay off people and assign their work to remaining staff”, which should be a union-forming event

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://masto.hackers.town/users/calcifer/statuses/116524952419008883https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://masto.hackers.town/users/calcifer/statuses/116524952419008883Wed, 06 May 2026 01:07:49 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to So, Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, published a letter on X about his companies future and his planned layoffs. on Wed, 06 May 2026 00:44:07 GMT]]>@lerg They will either be out of business from an earth shattering breach or they will be hiring all of their programmers back in a few months. Let's hope it's the former.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/T2R/statuses/116524859211497264https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/T2R/statuses/116524859211497264Wed, 06 May 2026 00:44:07 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to So, Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, published a letter on X about his companies future and his planned layoffs. on Wed, 06 May 2026 00:14:29 GMT]]>@lerg hahahaha hope their crypto all gets stolen by north korea.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://fedi.arkadi.one/users/tootbrute/statuses/01KQXA5NN91ZSHJEQBSMT15Y9Vhttps://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://fedi.arkadi.one/users/tootbrute/statuses/01KQXA5NN91ZSHJEQBSMT15Y9VWed, 06 May 2026 00:14:29 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to So, Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, published a letter on X about his companies future and his planned layoffs. on Wed, 06 May 2026 00:02:12 GMT]]>@lerg I agree which is also why I hate managing

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/aburka/statuses/116524694419613179https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/aburka/statuses/116524694419613179Wed, 06 May 2026 00:02:12 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to So, Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, published a letter on X about his companies future and his planned layoffs. on Tue, 05 May 2026 22:53:59 GMT]]>@aburka Nope. I think good managers are force multipliers who do their best work by ensuring their people have the tools, air cover, priorities and time to do their jobs.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/lerg/statuses/116524426197691804https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/lerg/statuses/116524426197691804Tue, 05 May 2026 22:53:59 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to So, Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, published a letter on X about his companies future and his planned layoffs. on Tue, 05 May 2026 22:49:03 GMT]]>@lerg while also slinging code though?

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/aburka/statuses/116524406745256201https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/aburka/statuses/116524406745256201Tue, 05 May 2026 22:49:03 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to So, Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, published a letter on X about his companies future and his planned layoffs. on Tue, 05 May 2026 22:44:11 GMT]]>@aburka I think 7 is a reasonable max for effective leadership who actually has time for their people.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/lerg/statuses/116524387648528046https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/lerg/statuses/116524387648528046Tue, 05 May 2026 22:44:11 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to So, Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, published a letter on X about his companies future and his planned layoffs. on Tue, 05 May 2026 22:37:20 GMT]]>@aburka @lerg @cwebber Yep, but there’s usually a dip when they lose a lot of money to a cyber attack. And that seems likely to happen.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/hal_pomeranz/statuses/116524360673730284https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/hal_pomeranz/statuses/116524360673730284Tue, 05 May 2026 22:37:20 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to So, Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, published a letter on X about his companies future and his planned layoffs. on Tue, 05 May 2026 22:35:50 GMT]]>@hal_pomeranz @lerg @cwebber share price usually jumps on news of layoffs, actually, it's gross

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/aburka/statuses/116524354810347990https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/aburka/statuses/116524354810347990Tue, 05 May 2026 22:35:50 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to So, Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, published a letter on X about his companies future and his planned layoffs. on Tue, 05 May 2026 22:35:20 GMT]]>@lerg I know they would just say "with AI you can, brah" so uh we'll see I guess

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/aburka/statuses/116524352829193184https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/aburka/statuses/116524352829193184Tue, 05 May 2026 22:35:20 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to So, Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, published a letter on X about his companies future and his planned layoffs. on Tue, 05 May 2026 22:34:18 GMT]]>@lerg the biggest incoherency that I noticed was saying "the future is small teams" and then in the next sentence saying each manager will have 15+ reports, and then in the sentence after that managers will also be ICs. 15+ isn't a small team! And there's absolutely no way you can be an individual contributor and also pay attention to 15 reports. I have three reports and I can barely balance it.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/aburka/statuses/116524348752128616https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/aburka/statuses/116524348752128616Tue, 05 May 2026 22:34:18 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to So, Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, published a letter on X about his companies future and his planned layoffs. on Tue, 05 May 2026 22:32:06 GMT]]>@lerg @cwebber Oh wow. If I were a financially motivated attacker, I would be looking very closely at Coinbase right now. Time to short that stock.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/hal_pomeranz/statuses/116524340129484561https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/hal_pomeranz/statuses/116524340129484561Tue, 05 May 2026 22:32:06 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to So, Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, published a letter on X about his companies future and his planned layoffs. on Tue, 05 May 2026 22:31:24 GMT]]>@lerg Having upper management take pager duty is an amazing idea.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/marshray/statuses/116524337361663460https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/marshray/statuses/116524337361663460Tue, 05 May 2026 22:31:24 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to So, Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, published a letter on X about his companies future and his planned layoffs. on Tue, 05 May 2026 22:31:00 GMT]]>@scottlink

And when they finally do and the mess is enormous we should add many zeros to the bill. Maybe then they'll learn...

@lerg

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mstdn.social/users/joeinwynnewood/statuses/116524335767873686https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mstdn.social/users/joeinwynnewood/statuses/116524335767873686Tue, 05 May 2026 22:31:00 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to So, Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, published a letter on X about his companies future and his planned layoffs. on Tue, 05 May 2026 21:51:59 GMT]]>@lerg I agree with your assessment. I'm optimistic, though. There will always be work. They just might be a bit slow in calling us in.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/scottlink/statuses/116524182401016467https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/scottlink/statuses/116524182401016467Tue, 05 May 2026 21:51:59 GMT