Muhammad Abdullahi

A product engineer interested in AI generally, and Deep Learning specifically..

[Muhammad Abdullahi @muhaksim]

A note to myself and to you all:
This life is a test. Don't be deluded. Work for the hereafter every single moment. This life can end at any moment. Treat your parents and family the best way you can every single time. You never know when it is going to be the last time.

[Muhammad Abdullahi @muhaksim]

Isn’t this just moving the queue to the code review and approval stage, especially if you don’t want people to “vibe review and approve”?

How do you ensure AI-generated code still meets quality and security standards without creating technical debt?

[Brian Armstrong @brian_armstrong]

This is an email I sent earlier today to all employees at Coinbase:

Team,

Today I’ve made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%. I want to walk you through why we're doing this now, what it means for those affected, and how this positions us for the future.

Why now
Two forces are converging at the same time. We need to be front footed to respond to both.

First, the market. Coinbase is well-capitalized, has diversified revenue streams, and is well-positioned to weather any storm. Crypto is also on the verge of the next wave of adoption, with stablecoins, prediction markets, tokenization, and more taking off. However, our business is still volatile from quarter to quarter. While we've managed through that cyclicality many times before and come out stronger on the other side, we’re currently in a down market and need to adjust our cost structure now so that we emerge from this period leaner, faster, and more efficient for our next phase of growth.

Second, AI is changing how we work. Over the past year, I’ve watched engineers use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks. Non-technical teams are now shipping production code and many of our workflows are being automated. The pace of what's possible with a small, focused team has changed dramatically, and it's accelerating every day.

All of this has led us to an inflection point, not just for Coinbase, but for every company. The biggest risk now is not taking action. We are adjusting early and deliberately to rebuild Coinbase to be lean, fast, and AI-native. We need to return to the speed and focus of our startup founding, with AI at our core.

What this means
To get there, we are not just reducing headcount and cutting costs, we’re fundamentally changing how we operate: rebuilding Coinbase as an intelligence, with humans around the edge aligning it. What does this mean in practice?

- Fewer layers, faster decisions: We are flattening our org structure to 5 layers max below CEO/COO. Layers slow things down and create coordination tax. The future is small, high context teams that can move quickly. Leaders will own much more, with as many as 15+ direct reports. Fewer layers also means a leaner cost structure that is built to perform through all market cycles.

- No pure managers: Every leader at Coinbase must also be a strong and active individual contributor. Managers should be like player-coaches, getting their hands dirty alongside their teams.

- AI-native pods: We’ll be concentrating around AI-native talent who can manage fleets of agents to drive outsized impact. We’ll also be experimenting with reduced pod sizes, including “one person teams” with engineers, designers, and product managers all in one role.

In short: AI is bringing a profound shift in how companies operate, and we’re reshaping Coinbase to lead in this new era. This is a new way of working, and we need to leverage AI across every facet of our jobs.

To those who are affected
I know there are real people behind these decisions — talented colleagues who have poured themselves into this company and our mission. To those of you who will be leaving: thank you. You’ve helped build Coinbase into what it is today, and I am sincerely grateful for everything you've done.

All impacted team members will receive an email to their personal account in the next hour with more information, and an invitation to meet with an HRBP and a senior leader in your organization. Coinbase system access has been removed today. I know this feels sudden and harsh, but it is the only responsible choice given our duty to protect customer information.

To those affected, we will be providing a comprehensive package to support you through this transition. US employees will receive a minimum of 16 weeks base pay (plus 2 weeks per year worked), their next equity vest, and 6 months of COBRA. Employees on a work visa will get extra transition support. Those outside of the US will receive similar support, based on local factors and subject to any consultation requirements.

Coinbase prides itself on talent density. Our employees are among the most talented people in the world, and I have no doubt that your skills and experience will be highly sought after as you pursue your next chapters.

How we move forward
To the team that is staying, I know this is a difficult day. We’re saying goodbye to colleagues and friends you've been in the trenches with. But here’s what I want you to know as we move forward together:

Over the past 13 years, we have weathered four crypto winters, gone public, and built the most trusted platform in our industry. We’ve made it this far by making hard decisions and by always staying focused on our mission. This time will be no different – nothing has changed about the long term outlook of our company or industry. And most importantly, our mission has never been more important for the world. Increasing economic freedom requires a new financial system, and we’re building it.

The Coinbase that emerges from this will be more capable than ever to achieve our mission.

Brian

[Muhammad Abdullahi @muhaksim]

@vasuman It is interesting that you posted this last week and this happening today.

[Muhammad Abdullahi @muhaksim]

@vasuman >Most importantly, they avoid vendor lock in as much as humanly possible. If your entire AI initiative relies on Anthropic, you're stuck no matter what models get degrated, quantized, price-hiked, rate limited, etc.

- from your article

I think the above is still an advantage.

[Muhammad Abdullahi @muhaksim]

@danshipper One really cool thing that I haven't seen getting attention is the annotations.

If the AI agent builds a website for example, you can just add comments to different parts of the website and just send.

I think it is really useful.

[Muhammad Abdullahi @muhaksim]

Maybe the business of setting up AGI for businesses.

[GREG ISENBERG @gregisenberg]

What are the best businesses to be in a post-AGI world?

[Muhammad Abdullahi @muhaksim]

I joined Cursor as a user years ago as you can see from my "Year In Code 2025".

Is this really it?

[Muhammad Abdullahi @muhaksim]

Seriously, Cursor?

I joined Cursor as a user years ago.

I was literally using Opus 4.6 last month.

This screenshot is from someone I know, and I’m affected too.

So what changed?

cc: @leerob @ericzakariasson

[Muhammad Abdullahi @muhaksim]

Thanks, HuggingFace team for releasing this.

[Leandro von Werra @lvwerra]

Excited to release the ML intern!
(slightly ahead of OpenAIs timeline)

It's the result of months of careful design and tuning for a compute and hub centric agent harness:

> give the model access to all the right docs and papers with minimal fraction

> let it run experiments on fast CPU and GPU instances and easily investigate logs

> push and pull datasets and models from and to the hub

While general coding agents can do all this as well, making execution as seamless as possible gives the agent a significant advantage.

[Muhammad Abdullahi @muhaksim]

I think this is interesting.

[Muhammad Abdullahi @muhaksim]

Invest in a really good chair, especially if you sit and work long hours each day.

Don’t wait until your back starts hurting to learn it the hard way.

[Muhammad Abdullahi @muhaksim]

Julian Schrittwieser said these words in the screenshot yesterday.

I think @AndrewCurran_ was right when he said yesterday that the researchers at the big labs usually see about six months ahead.

[Muhammad Abdullahi @muhaksim]

I think this is impressive.

[Muhammad Abdullahi @muhaksim]

@dsp_ David, Claude is still not available in my country. We have access to OpenAI (Codex) but not Claude.

[Muhammad Abdullahi @muhaksim]

I think this sounds somewhat similar to context engineering in LLMs where filling the context window with just the right information for the next step is important.

I'd add that it's also important to do that at the right time.

I think both problems are interesting.

3/3

[Muhammad Abdullahi @muhaksim]

I think one problem many people face is choosing and actually working on what gives them the highest ROI meaning the thing that gives them the best results relative to the time and energy they invest.

1/3 ..

[Muhammad Abdullahi @muhaksim]

I think many of us get distracted or may have several options at certain moments, so it may become hard to choose the right option.

What if you could know the best thing to do that would give you the highest ROI at the right moment?

2/3 ..

[Muhammad Abdullahi @muhaksim]

@samuelcolvin @_philschmid @pyodide @pydantic @deno_land Thanks, Samuel.

[Muhammad Abdullahi @muhaksim]

@samuelcolvin @_philschmid @pyodide @pydantic @deno_land @samuelcolvin, is there a way to see the code generated by the model without using Pydantic Logfire?

For example can I save the generated Python code in a variable? I couldn't find a way to do that so far.

[Muhammad Abdullahi @muhaksim]

Happy Eid to all my Muslim brothers and sisters around the world. 🍀🍀🎈🎈🎈

May Allah (سبحانه وتعالى) accept our good deeds. Ameen.

[Muhammad Abdullahi @muhaksim]

Day 100/100...

Building good habits can be tough, but making the habit’s trigger something familiar can help.

For example, linking journaling to a routine like 'right after dinner' can make it easier to stay consistent.