On the Thursday earlier than he was supposed to start out his new job at Coinbase, Sam Maher received an e-mail with the topic line “Update to your Coinbase offer.” The replace was that there was no supply. In response to “current market conditions,” the startup had eradicated numerous incoming positions, leaving Maher all of a sudden unemployed and feeling like he’d been damaged up with by e-mail.
The identical e-mail reached a whole lot of different would-be Coinbase staff, who had begin dates starting from the next week to late summer season. Vijay Duraiswamy, a software program improvement supervisor, had already began the onboarding course of on a company-issued laptop computer. Others had signed leases, moved to totally different cities, or taken costly holidays to have a good time the brand new job. Now, Coinbase was providing some severance and an apology.
By the top of the week, LinkedIn was awash in posts from Coinbase’s rejected employees, who appeared indignant and confused. Coinbase had deliberate to rent 2,000 staff in 2022, and had already onboarded about 1,200 by May. If the corporate wanted to cut back, shouldn’t it have performed so earlier than making so many job affords? “One of the representatives I later talked to told me it was a ‘prudent’ decision by them regarding the current market situation,” one software program engineer wrote on LinkedIn. “I am left speechless of the irresponsibility Coinbase has shown in managing hires and helpless about my current situation.”
Ashutosh Ukey had accepted the supply to work at Coinbase again in March. He had utilized to PhD packages, however working for the cryptocurrency startup felt like “a one-of-a-kind opportunity.” Coinbase’s distant work coverage additionally afforded him the power to maneuver wherever he wished, and he shortly signed a lease for an condo in Dayton, Ohio, to be nearer to his girlfriend.
When the startup retracted its supply final week, Ukey began panicking. He has lived within the United States since he was 8 however doesn’t have a inexperienced card. Instead, he has a STEM OPT visa—an extension of a pupil visa for STEM college students—that solely affords him a couple of months of unemployment. He says recruiters have began reaching out, however he’s undecided he’ll be capable to keep in Dayton with a job that’s absolutely distant. “I have no idea where I’m going to be a couple of months from now,” he says.
Duraiswamy, the software program improvement supervisor, has an H-1B visa, which is widespread amongst overseas tech employees. The visa permits them simply 60 days of unemployment. “I am not too worried about my job prospects, but I am cautious, as I am still in a long line of waiting for my green card,” says Duraiswamy, who left a job at Amazon to hitch Coinbase. At least three different rescinded job affords have affected folks on immigrant visas, in accordance with public posts on LinkedIn.
Startups are, by definition, dangerous companies. Most of them fail, leaving staff with little to no recourse; firms aren’t even required to present severance pay in most states. Still, a number of of the individuals who accepted job affords at Coinbase mentioned they did so as a result of the startup appeared to have reached a degree of maturity. It debuted on the general public market in 2021 and reached a staggering valuation of $86 billion. Coinbase was in hyper-growth mode, and issues appeared promising, particularly when many individuals signed their job affords earlier this spring.
