on the thursday Before starting his new job at Coinbase, Sam Maher received an email with the subject line “Update your Coinbase listing.” The update was that there was no offer. In response to “current market conditions,” the startup had eliminated a number of inbound positions, leaving Maher suddenly out of work and feeling as if he had been contacted by email.
The same email reached hundreds of other potential Coinbase employees, who had start dates ranging from next week to late summer. Vijay Duraiswamy, a software development manager, had already started the onboarding process on a company-issued laptop. Others had signed leases, moved to other cities, or taken expensive vacations to celebrate the new job. Now Coinbase has offered a severance package and an apology.
By the end of the week, LinkedIn was inundated with messages from rejected Coinbase employees, who appeared angry and confused. Coinbase planned to hire 2,000 employees by 2022 and already had about 1,200 on board by May. If the company had to scale back, shouldn’t it have done so before it offered so many vacancies? “One of the reps I spoke to later told me it was a ‘cautious’ decision on their part regarding the current market situation,” a software engineer wrote on LinkedIn. “I am speechless at the irresponsibility Coinbase has shown in managing hires and helpless at my current situation.”
Ashutosh Ukey had accepted the offer to work at Coinbase in March. He had applied for PhD programs, but working for the cryptocurrency startup felt like “a unique opportunity”. Coinbase’s remote work policy also allowed him to move wherever he wanted, and he quickly signed a lease for an apartment in Dayton, Ohio, to be closer to his girlfriend.
When the startup withdrew its offer last week, Ukey panicked. He has lived in the United States since he was eight, but does not have a green card. Instead, he has a STEM OPT visa – a student visa extension for STEM students – that only saves him a few months of unemployment. He says recruiters have reached out, but he’s not sure he can stay in Dayton with a completely remote job. “I have no idea where I’ll be in a few months,” he says.
Duraiswamy, the software development manager, has an H-1B visa, which is common among foreign techies. The visa allows them only 60 days of unemployment. “I’m not overly concerned about my job prospects, but I’m cautious as I’m still waiting in a long line for my green card,” said Duraiswamy, who left a job at Amazon to join Coinbase. According to public posts on LinkedIn, at least three other withdrawn job postings have impacted those on immigrant visas.
Startups are, by definition, risky ventures. Most of them fail, leaving employees with little to no recourse; companies are not even required to pay severance payments in most states. Still, several people who accepted jobs at Coinbase said they did so because the startup appeared to have reached a maturity level. It debuted in the public market in 2021 and reached a staggering valuation of $86 billion. Coinbase was in hypergrowth mode and things seemed promising, especially when many people signed their job offers earlier this spring.
