First, they rescinded offers.

Then, they announced a hiring freeze.

Coinbase, a San Francisco based cryptocurrency darling rescinded job offers earlier this month after announcing a company-wide hiring freeze. The company won’t say how many jobs it cut, but 319 have signed up on a website created by the company to help them find new jobs.

The job cuts reverse some of the most aggressive hiring in tech. Coinbase tripled its headcount in the 2021, tripled it over the past 18 months, and sought hire 6,000 total in 2022.

Now, they begin their layoffs

Coinbased today announced it was laying off 18% of its staff (over 1,000 employees total). In a message on the Coinbase blog, company CEO and cofounder Brian Armstrong laid the blame at the feet of a faltering economy, as well as over-hiring during 2021. The company attempted to chase a number of bets, and the cooling economy means they can no longer afford to cover all of them.

In his post, Armstrong says that affected employees will receive an email to their personal email within an hour of the blog post's publication. Th reason they were sent to personal vs corporate email is: "because we made the decision to cut access to Coinbase systems for affected employees. I realize that removal of access will feel sudden and unexpected, and this is not the experience I wanted for you. Given the number of employees who have access to sensitive customer information, it was unfortunately the only practical choice, to ensure not even a single person made a rash decision that harmed the business or themselves."

The CEO goes on to say that "Coinbase employees are among the most talented in the world", and - we assume this was edited for brevity - likely something about how he trusts all of them. Except one or two of them. Clearly.

"Quit and find a company you believe in"

Just two weeks ago, Armstrong went on a rant in a Twitter thread over employees leaking internal information about an HR tool the company was rolling out. The tool, Dot Collector, was created by created by hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates and reportedly a financial services variant of Captain Queeg. Based on its description, it sounds like Dot Collector was modeled on the system used in Black Mirror's episode "Nosedive".

Employees were less than excited, to put it mildly.

One is left to wonder if those laid off were also those with the lowest Dot Collector scores.

One company's loss is another company's gain

Nimble employers who are still hiring have been quick to take advantage of the opportunity to scoop up talent before their competitors can.