It's a term of art that straightforwardly means people who embrace AI-assisted programming. As opposed to the very large number of engineers who actively don't like it, or have enough change aversion to have avoided it.
AI-native should mean those who were born/came-of-age/started learning programming in the era of mature AI. It shouldn't be many people (relatively speaking) at this stage.
The term that best suits "people who embrace AI-assisted programming" is AI-first programmers, which is what they literally mean by the looks of it. Clearly, they just use what they think sounds cooler.
If they wanted to discriminate on age, they wouldn't need a term for it. Big tech companies have been doing it with things like college interns or paying for student loans.
I can't reply to the other comment because it's been flagged, but I just wanted to point out that I do not think employees should be treated like cattle. I was being sarcastic. I was using the language of tech bros to satirize the situation.
I'm actually shocked that people could take my comment at face value and not realize it was obviously sarcastic. That is eye opening.
"There's nothing about being a non-native English speaker that prevents you from being proficient." This is the comment's point. We're talking about proxies and correlations here, not physical law.
Hold up, even before discussing the word "native", there's a weird logical-disconnect between the above two comments. I think paraphrasing is the simplest way to illustrate:
{1} scottlamb: "I suspect their lofty stated goal of X is a lie, to disguise their true goal of Y, which is something common which companies find much easier and more-desirable."
{2} CityOfThrowaway: "You are wrong, because it's obvious that X is achievable... if you define 'native' in a certain way."
{3} Terr_: "Uh, what? That doesn't make sense. The feasibility of X isn't part of Scottlamb's argument. Even if we assume X is possible, it isn't evidence they actually intend X over Y.
> a relatively young company not staffed with a bunch of old people
1. What statistics support this assumption? (Either for Coinbase specifically, or "tech companies" in general.)
2. Nobody has to be a literal greybeard in order to be in the crosshairs of downsizing. Just look at Amazon's "make them quit before vesting finishes" pattern.