> [he told] engineers that they didn't have to use the tools on a daily basis yet but "at least onboard by the end of the week."
Would you be fired if you refused to set up a tool (not AI, any tool) that your CEO said you were going to use in the future? And that the company was investing in?
I don't know, but there'd surely be some repercussion.
To use a more unpleasant but realistic scenario, suppose my CEO said "we're moving to use Jira; everyone needs to set up your account by the end of the week. That's how we are going to track work going forward. You don't have to check Jira every day yet, but it's a company wide rollout and you'll be expected to do this soon".
Further, suppose I refused to set up my account because I didn't think it was important to my job or because I didn't want to. (I don't know the motivations of the Coinbase employees, to be clear.)
I think at that point, termination (or at least a warning) would be justified.
If an employee had moral or ethical concerns about using Jira, that's a different situation. But from the article, that doesn't seem to be the case.
Like GP, I read the article too! Different conclusion(s). The CEO wanted a 'good reason'? Control group in this performance experiment. Or, 'fuck off'; how's that? Founder Mode? Cult mode.
edit: Archive link for anyone into it: http://archive.today/LDcBH