- We'll see how much the AI aspect is true by whether they're thinning out teams equally, or just axing whole initiatives. My impression of Block was that it was mostly a one-trick pony (okay, two if you include CashApp) with a bunch of side initiatives that never seemed to pan out, so I'm expecting it to be more of the latter, with this being more of an admission that they're now in "maintenance mode".
Either way, I think this is how it's gonna be. Regardless of whether AI significantly increases productivity (40%? come on), layoffs will be preemptory. Executives will see the lack of productivity boost as being due to lack of pressure, and imagine engineers are just using the AI to make their own lives easier rather than to work more efficiently. You can't really double output velocity because your users will see it as too much churn, so the only choice is to lay off half the workforce and double the workload for those who stay. "Necessity is the mother of invention." They'll overlook the fact that the work AI tools provide only encompasses 10% of your job even if they're 100% efficient.
- Straight from the horses mouth:
>> yes we over-hired during covid because i incorrectly built 2 separate company structures (square & cash app) rather than 1, which we corrected mid 2024. but this misses all the complexity we took on through lending, banking, and BNPL. and that we’re now targeting $2M+ gross profit per person, 4x our pre-covid efficiency, which stayed flat at ~$500k from 2019 until 2024. we have and do run an efficient company... better than most.
https://xcancel.com/jack/status/2027290756793135253
I.E OVER-HIRED
- This is one of the best (if not the best) layoff letters I've seen online (no affiliation, don't know anyone working there, purely outsider perspective).
* Severance packages upfront because realistically that's what everyone worries about first.
* Reasoning second. I appreciate the one clean cut vs prolonged bleeding.
* Owning the decision and respecting the people that got you there. Opting for an awkward allhands vs breakup-via-text-message.
* Giving people a chance to say goodbye.
Not gonna go into strategic analysis of this, or Jack's leadership style in general.
But realistically, you can't pen a better (or, well, less bad) layoff announcement.
by t-writescode
21 subcomments
- Nice severance; but in this job market, holy shit.
Yeah, you get 5 months of severance and a bunch of devices and such; but, does this CEO really think these employees will find new work in that time? In this job market?
If the profits are still up and growing, why on earth would you evict 40% of the company, to send them into this job market? Why not … try new industries, play around, try to become the next Mitsubishi or Samsung or General Electric. If you’ve got the manpower and talent, why not play with it and see if anything makes money. In-house startups with stable capital, all that.
This seems … wrong.
- Square/Block stock peaked at $273 in Feb 2021 and is currently at $54. Taking away the Covid bubble the stock has been completely flat since 2018, almost 8 years, while the S&P 500 returned nearly 200% in that same period. So I'm not buying the whole "the company is doing great! The layoff is just because of AI."
- This reminds me of the meme of Margaret Thatcher: "And There is No Alternative" - a way to justify the policies she desired to implement and attempt to preempt any other view.
We're supposed to believe Jack is a victim of circumstance. He hired all those people, and now he has no choice but to fire them - he wasn't clairvoyant to the future when he hired all those people, or else he'd known he would have had to fire them. But now since he is clairvoyant to the future, he knows he must fire them.
We are all as childrens playthings right now.
- > i had two options: cut gradually over months or years as this shift plays out, or be honest about where we are and act on it now.
Sounds like a false dichotomy. The third option is that he could have kept them around. It would be financially feasible given that "our business is strong. gross profit continues to grow, we continue to serve more and more customers, and profitability is improving.".
- Anyone who has worked in the big tech industry knows that probably more than half of the workforce performs tasks that, in essence, are superfluous.
But these things happened: 1) Musk has shown that Twitter can operate with 5% (approximately?) of the workforce he inherited; 2) laying off a lot of people was seen as a sign that the company was in trouble, but not now because; 3) artificial intelligence makes point 2) not a semi-desperate move, but a forward-thinking adjustment to current and future technology development.
I've been out of work for almost a year now, after being laid off, and I think it's very unlikely that I'll ever return (not because of my choice but their choice) to work in the tech industry as a W2 employee. Oh well.
- i'm gonna write this terrible news in all lowercase cause it's super aesthetic. maintain a bit of professionalism for the 4,000 people whose lives i'm throwing into turmoil? i don't think so, i have my shift key taped over so i don't accidentally show respect to anybody
- >we're not making this decision because we're in trouble. our business is strong. gross profit continues to grow, we continue to serve more and more customers, and profitability is improving.
In my country, this action would be literally illegal.
Even in countries where it isn’t, it feels highly immoral. “I’m not in any kind of pressure to do this but I’m choosing to shed the people who created my wealth for greater personal gain”.
- >we're not making this decision because we're in trouble. our business is strong. gross profit continues to grow, we continue to serve more and more customers, and profitability is improving. but something has changed. we're already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company. and that's accelerating rapidly.
This is one way of making an all-in bet on AI.
>we're not going to just disappear people from slack and email and pretend they were never here. communication channels will stay open through thursday evening (pacific) so everyone can say goodbye properly, and share whatever you wish. i'll also be hosting a live video session to thank everyone at 3:35pm pacific. i know doing it this way might feel awkward. i'd rather it feel awkward and human than efficient and cold.
Well that's interesting, wonder if we'll actually get a proper accounting of which departments take which cuts.
- Jack Dorsey has a habit of explosively increasing headcount. Twitter was so overweight that 80% were eliminated when Musk took over. Block's headcount grew from 3,900 to 12,500 in three years during Covid. Block's stock price has also tumbled from ~$275 to ~$54 since 2022. I think that the severance package is incredibly generous, and the willingness to communicate with those affected is admirable. But I also think that Dorsey is spinning a story to cover up for ZIRP-era mismanagement. AI provides the justification, with the hope that dumping 2x the work on the survivors won't crush them because AI tools will help. The bet may pay off, I'm just skeptical of the justification.
by softwaredoug
6 subcomments
- Pre pandemic Block had ~4000 employees
They grew to 11000
Now they’re going to shrink to 6000
The whiplash from ZIRP days to whatever AI cost restructuring happening today is massive
- > i'd rather take a hard, clear action now and build from a position we believe in than manage a slow reduction of people toward the same outcome.
I hope this gets drilled into the heads of everyone who sells their labor. The company is profitable, and Jack could have kept 4000 people employed with no difference in outcome, instead, he chose this.
by rcakebread
4 subcomments
- Couldn't even be bothered to type like an adult when he fired them.
by GeoAtreides
2 subcomments
- I wrote this, currently at -2 points, a mere 24 hours ago, as a response to simonw unbounded and unwarranted optimism:
>>We're three years into the ChatGPT revolution now and so far the main observable impact on the craft that I care about is that I can build more ambitious things.
>I think you refuse to extrapolate the obvious consequences and have forgotten (if you ever knew) how it's like to be in trenches. You put on the horse blinders of 'easy to build' on the left and 'so much fun' on the right and happily trot on, while the wolves of white collar job automation are closing in for the middle class.
>You believe that we'll all become cyborg centaurs, while the managers believe we'll all become redundant. You think people will care about the sideslop everyone will build, not seeing that 'everyone will build' means 'no one will care'. Worse, means no one will buy (knowledge| skill|creation).
>Indeed we have not tipped over into the abyss, but we're teetering and the wind is picking up. It's not the end times, it's not AGI, it doesn't have to be AGI to wreck great damage on the economy, our craft and, ultimately, our way of life and our minds.
>And the wind is picking up, faster and faster.
[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47159008
- Temporal had a far greater impact on dev velocity than AI ever did. It's not even close. It saves not only coding, but design, planning, coordination, maintenance, etc that AI doesn't even touch. But that's not very buzzy, is it.
From what I hear, that's kind of true across the industry. I wonder how things would be different if all these press releases pointed to Temporal as the cause rather than AI. It's kind of weird to think about. (Not that I think Temporal is the reason behind the layoffs either, but just as a thought experiment).
by flumpcakes
1 subcomments
- Imagine receiving this message and the author couldn't even be bothered to capitalise letters properly. How insulting. It's like being fired by a five year old child.
- I don’t think we’ll ever return to the glory days (2007-2023). Software engineering in the next few years will become as cool as accounting or HR (as in not cool at all). Just a generic white collar profession like it was maybe in the 80s.
- > everyone will be notified today, whether you're being asked to leave, entering consultation, or asked to stay.
Honestly, If I was one of those being asked to stay, I'll be more worried and stressed because, as one commented on the tweet: to those staying...what I'm asking of you is to build with me and help me replace you too
- It's going to get really ugly, Jason Lemkin called this out as a possibility a few hours ago: https://youtu.be/mBE_9vGJBUM?si=WSyZXYgV48WfrNrv&t=2908
We're about to see a lot of public SAAS companies do the same and rebrand as "AI" first
- > i had two options: cut gradually over months or years as this shift plays out, or be honest about where we are and act on it now.
Why are companies seeing it purely in terms of "we can work with a smaller team so we must" and not "my existing team can do so much more"?
- A parallel but not too different situation is happening in the hospital space. Corps fire experienced nurses and hire newbies at half the price. Then they realize the newbies aren't performing so they downsize staff. Then a flu or other seasonal event drives up need for staff so they turn to temp agencies (per diem nurses or 'travelers'). These travelers get 150% to 200% of what staff nurses get. The remaining staff nurses start to leave and become per diem. hospital costs double, quality of care declines.
- Why make others misfortune a platform for ego expression? Why not doing things elegant, quiet, keep it in-house? Because misery of others drives stock prices up! It's a sacrifice he's willing to make.
by creativeSlumber
1 subcomments
- > Owning the decision
Owning a decision means you have something at stake if things go wrong. What would happen to Jack if this decision turns out to be wrong? Any consequences?
by btarmstrong
0 subcomment
- Having spent years in fintech partnerships (Kabbage-Amex, Lendio), the pattern Block is going through is familiar — the post-ZIRP reckoning where sprawling product bets get consolidated back to core revenue drivers. I'll also be interested to see whether their Bitcoin/decentralized payments thesis survives the cost-cutting or gets put on the "block" as well (bad Dad jokes). Tpypicall, from what I've seen, the companies that come out stronger from these cycles are the ones that cut to focus/customer value, not just cut to save.
- Took a quick look at their financials...
I reckon this move is related to bitcoin doing poorly. A LOT of their revenue is bitcoin related and I reckon they realized they're going to have an absolute stinker of a Q1 '26 result...
- 10,000 employees for what? I never thought of Block to be that big.
If Elon came in, he would probably fire 80% meaning 8000. Like he did with Twitter/X and Twitter ran fine this whole time.
It's nice that the laid off employees are treated better than many other places. Everywhere I worked, laid off employees were instantly cut off from all access. I would say my goodbyes to them later through LinkedIn.
by MeetingsBrowser
3 subcomments
- I don't understand anyone who says layoffs are due to improvements in AI tooling.
"Thanks to LLMs, each worker can do twice the work they could before. Naturally we are firing half the company because ... business is good and ... too much productivity is bad?"
by chilipepperhott
2 subcomments
- What are the odds this is actually due to overhiring during the pandemic? From what I know, that was the principle reason for the Amazon layoffs. Would love to be corrected if I'm misremembering.
- We’re reaching “Don’t Look Up” levels of denial about the impact of AI on this site.
- My recent experience with Cash App made it apparent that something is really going awry at Block: My decade-old account was suspended, despite no suspicious activity and being in my full legal name and address and connected to the same checking account I've always used. I appealed, but of course they upheld their opaque decision, which is now permanent. I'm not surprised they're struggling if this is how they treat users who have plenty of alternative options.
by intexpress
1 subcomments
- So... XYZ stock hits an all time low and they decide to layoff half the staff and see if that raises the share price (it did).
This has nothing to do with AI. It is just a desperate move from a badly run company.
- Sucks for the people to lose their jobs, but probably the most honest message you’ll ever see.
What I don’t understand is why. There’s a natural churn at each company. Of course it’s not 40%, but probably 4-5% per year, but I doubt the company freezes hiring and they are not pressured to do this.
by skeeter2020
0 subcomment
- How messed up is the world that when a leader basically comes clean and says this is being done for efficiency reasons (and by extension the market's reward for bottom line impact) it starts to come across as "honest and brave"?
- All this is is evidence that Jack Dorsey had no idea what half the employees at Block were doing before he decided to do layoffs. May he know no peace, wherever he goes.
by CqtGLRGcukpy
0 subcomment
- If you use any Block products (including Tidal), make sure to do as much as you can to cost the company more than you pay.
My goal for this year is to cost Tidal / Block at least 2x of what I pay for it (so if I pay $100, make them pay $200).
by albatross79
1 subcomments
- Investors and share holders want to hear that you're an "AI" company now. That implies some kind of transformation so a ritual needs to be performed. Transformations and rituals are right up "jack"'s alley, so in this case, and unfortunately for employees, it dovetails perfectly.
Notice growth is still purportedly the priority, but if it was just about growth and AI was a growth driver they wouldn't need to cut half the company, it would just be growing. It's the transformation ritual that matters. That's what gets investor's attention. You cut thousands of jobs and announce its because of AI, congratulations you're a hot new AI company. Now the hiring can start. Faang has the same number of employees as they did before the cuts started.
by just-the-wrk
1 subcomments
- I think the AI angle is a fig leaf for perpetual mismanagement. Managers at Block privately complained there were a lot of people doing almost no work. Recently, teams have lost people one at a time, sometimes laid off the day after each other.
If they can organize employees to make more money, they will. But they can't and admitted it.
by justonepost2
0 subcomment
- The year is 2030, tech companies provide the exact same value proposition to the consumer that they did in 2024, except it is buggier, full of sparkle buttons you can’t get rid of, and isn’t a source of high-paying employment. The front page of HN still has 5 posts from Blog Guys titled “Programming is Fun Again”.
The future rocks
- The $2M+ gross profit per person target is the number that actually explains this. That's 4x their pre-covid baseline. Every company that over-hired during ZIRP is running this same math correction. The AI framing helps the stock. The underlying correction was always coming.
by ppeetteerr
0 subcomment
- Wishing the best for all those affected and excited to see many of you start new companies and continue to innovate.
- Feel like I tried to get a job here before/did some online test, had to find hidden code in HTML (some broken message scattered across CSS classes) and yeah it took me a bit to do it, didn't hear anything or was denied ahh well. That wasn't the full test, that was the start of it.
- I strongly look forward to it being 5 years from now and having "what the software industry looks like with AI factored in" question settled. I'm tired of the uncertainty in our industry.
With the changes to the H1B in the US, it seems it's trending to offshoring and a smaller market in general, which is a bummer for US-based people, but even then I'd just like this all settled.
- This feels similar to March 2020 when COVID was in Seattle. “It’s in the US but maybe it’s just a one-off.” We’ll see, I guess.
- Does anyone know what teams are affected?
I wonder if this is the beginning of a new wave of layoffs across the industry like we had in 2022.
- Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47183660
by skeeter2020
0 subcomment
- for once the CNBC sound-bite does a great job of telling you all you need to know - and without reading past the top 2 bullet points:
* Block said Thursday it’s laying off more than 4,000 employees, or about half of its head count.
* Shares of the payment company skyrocketed as much as 24% in extended trading. It was last seen up nearly 18% in Friday’s premarket.
by yodsanklai
0 subcomment
- Everybody is on the edge, with the fear of a big layoff wave happening.
We see more and more people claiming they are so much more productive thanks to coding agents, big tech CEOs driving the use of AI like crazy, pundits anticipating rise of unemployment. Personally, I feel that productivity gains are overrated, but still, I'm pretty worried to lose my job in the near future. I'm saving aggressively.
- Jack couldn't be bothered to use capital letters in his last layoff email either.
- A few thoughts about Block as I've worked there before:
- the company thrives on long term projects that seem to fizzle out as engineers get frustrated and leave
- there are way too many MBAs and finance people now compared to the early years where building was prioritized.
- jack is only doing part time at Block, early days he was around to chat and work with varying levels of hands on
- they've overhired and over-committed to losing projects, worst of all they've de-prioritized projects that were pretty innovative because traction wasn't there quick enough for them to justify them, e.g. terminal, POS specifically for restaurants, localization for EU
- they operate on docs and in the time of AI, the workforce is inundated with slop
- also, I hate that jack can't be bothered to capitalize anything like it's cool. come on man, you're firing 4000 people, not tweeting memes
- AI increases productivityvastly, but it cuts down buyers also vastly, through removal of jobs etc. So deflation could result, exposeing the disparities even more.
- > i had two options: cut gradually over months or years as this shift plays out, or be honest about where we are and act on it now. i chose the latter. repeated rounds of cuts are destructive to morale, to focus
Being in a company that has done the gradual cuts, instead of one big cut, I unironically agree. I must have dodged like 15 staff reductions at this point. Company would be in a better state if the decision was taken to go for it big time. Still, it must be hard and shocking - but only once.
- Block really did not come down from it's COVID/ZIRP era high # of employees as much as many other companies, and it's COVID era headcount growth was extremely rapid by any standard.
In some ways this isn't daring, future looking leadership... it's much more lazy leadership that took a while to adjust to market demands.
- Yes 10k? Insane we have companies larger than counties. This all depends on how many they needed to hire in the first place. Also, I don't this reflects the AI transition at all.
- >repeated rounds of cuts are destructive to morale, to focus, and to the trust [...] i'd rather take a hard, clear action now [...] than manage a slow reduction of people toward the same outcome
I think this is pretty agreeable, spanning layoffs into a monthly/quarterly "Hunger Games" is very damaging to employee morale.
- > we've done a full review to determine the roles and people we require to reliably grow the business from here,
This part really fustrated me
- > today we're making one of the hardest decisions in the history of our company:
> i had two options: cut gradually over months or years as this shift plays out, or be honest about where we are and act on it now. i chose the latter.
> i’m sorry to put you through this.
POV: Dude who has effortlessly fired people before deflects blame for over-hiring in the first place.
I swear people should start blacklisting CEOs and refuse to work under them if they're part of the blacklist.
This is just a piss poor excuse for bad management and short-sighted vision and no accountability.
- I had never heard of Block before, but I visited their website and downloaded one of their open-source projects, Goose (an OpenCode alternative). I ran a very simple prompt on one of the projects I’m working on to implement a small feature. It ended up going into what seemed like an infinite loop and consumed three-quarters of my monthly Poe subscription on a single prompt. I uninstalled it immediately.
by crustyrusty
0 subcomment
- "l00k at all my AI!"
Or how about your revenue lines are in retail and peer-to-peer finances, primarily for small-to-medium sized businesses and low-to-mid income individuals, primarily in the US market, all of which are struggling from tariffs and economic slowdown in their brackets.
Nah...definitely the AI.
- > first off, if you're one of the people affected, you'll receive your salary for 20 weeks + 1 week per year of tenure, equity vested through the end of may, 6 months of health care, your corporate devices, and $5,000 to put toward whatever you need to help you in this transition (if you’re outside the U.S. you’ll receive similar support but exact details are going to vary based on local requirements). i want you to know that before anything else. everyone will be notified today, whether you're being asked to leave, entering consultation, or asked to stay.
Sounds like the perfect setup to start your own company!
by tech_jabroni
0 subcomment
- Block was incredibly bloated. This guy is correct: https://x.com/BamaBonds/status/2027142091596288314?s=20
- Block owns Square and Tidal. Let's show Jack how efficient we can be by canceling those sh...ervices. Claude can use them.
- I’ll take jobs moving to India for 1000, Alex.
- If AI really was the cause, why would a company eliminate people who could use it to multiply output and widen the gap between them and their competitors?
- This will bite back. People being out of jobs means less spending by the public which affects all businesses, which then offsets the productivity gains given by AI.
In some cases, you have vast ability to produce and serve, but the buyers are gone.
- This is akin to the is-ought fallacy. Just because a company had layoffs and cited AI, doesn't mean other companies should follow suit or that it will happen. As others have noted in the comments, BTC dropped heavily which Block was invested in, and a lot of their bets went south. Block managers complained at times about certain people not working privately. They also acquired a few companies at peak valuations post COVID.
- It is hard to tell what this company does, but it seems to be involved in bitcoin. Coincidentally we have had a huge drop in bitcoin in the last months.
I don't buy anything this weirdo says.
by interestpiqued
0 subcomment
- Their revenue is literally down over FY25. But it takes less than an hour for VC influencers to come out and and say we all need to work nights and weekends before getting displaced.
https://x.com/balajis/status/2027146933136150867?s=46
- If the cuts were not due to AI, what benefit does it provide to claim that it was?
To be clear I’m not saying it was AI. I just wonder, why come out and say it like that? What’s the incentive vs. other reasons?
- > i had two options: cut gradually over months or years as this shift plays out, or be honest about where we are and act on it now. i chose the latter.
Making it seem like there's only going to be one mass layoff round. There will be another one, you can be certain.
by testfoobar
0 subcomment
- 1. Is this a one off event due to Block's unique business environment?
2. Will other tech firms consider such large layoffs in the near future?
- Wtf is Block an why are they 10000 in the first place?
- I still don't get it.
If AI really improves efficiency and allows the company's employees to produce more, better products faster and thus increase the competitiveness of a company... then why does said company fire (half of!) its staff instead of, well, producing more, better products faster, thus increasing its competitiveness?
Am I naive or is AI a lie when marked as a cause?
Why is it that us employees are gaslighted with the FOMO of "if you don't adopt AI to produce more, then you'll be replaced by employees who do", and why do these executives don't feel "if you fire half of your employees for whatever reason, you'll be outcompeted by companies who... simply didn't?"
- Which functions? which projects? If you have 10,000 talented engineers and you're choosing to reduce headcount it's because you don't know how to attack the business and drive revenue in a significant way.
- The wording is all nice, and at surface level it reads well. It still makes me feel super icky. Kill 4k jobs because people are more productive with AI. Fuck the people, push the profits. Make investors happy.
No, fuck the investors. Fuck the entities causing these decisions to be more common. Extra-fuck the ever-more-obvious push for profit over literally anything else, including ethics, morals, and humanity. If you're an investor causing this shit to happen, fuck you.
Somehow this makes me feel that this org is already dead, and that this is just gonna accelerate it.
- To those who stayed behind... won't you feel like you're potentially going to be next? With such a massive cut, I'd start making plans.
by siliconc0w
1 subcomments
- you can tell he is a cracked out based tech ceo because he doesn't use capital letters
- How do they work out that intelligence tools can fill the gap made by 4,000 out of 10,000 and how long did it take to do that calculation? Or are we entering a phase of layoffs under the guise of ?
by christoff12
1 subcomments
- "we're reducing our organization by nearly half, from over 10,000 people to just under 6,000. that means over 4,000 of you are being asked to leave or entering into consultation."
holy moly
by giancarlostoro
0 subcomment
- Looking at Block's Twitter bio, I see half their companies seem worthwhile, the other half is crypto stuff, and they should either sell it off, or sunset it.
by harsha_photon
0 subcomment
- Is this because of goose (developed by block), the ai agent framework stripe forked and created minions ??
- There has to be a good word to describe people like Jack Dorsey.
World class software tinkerer, but no business running a public company.
- FFS. What is it with these weirdo "leader" types and the all lower case writing? Are they trying to come off as "cool" in the "hello fellow children" way or are they just implying they are so important, they don´t even have to observe the rules of writing and grammar?
- Just cancelled my CashApp account. This dude’s an idiot.
by aurareturn
0 subcomment
- https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=47057908&goto=item%3Fi...
Called it. This will be for every single software company. Maybe all companies.
by PeterStuer
0 subcomment
- Lord, here comes the flood. I'm sure there will still be lots of denial, and ofc it isn't just 'ai takin our jobs', but my gut and personal experience is saying this is just the first wave.
by JumpCrisscross
3 subcomments
- What does “entering into consultation” mean?
by dasistrobert
0 subcomment
- Our team at getclera.com is working through the weekend to connect every affected employee with top founders who are hiring right now. Warm intros, no waiting.
More information: getclera.com/block
It's 100% free for Talents.
If you refer a talent we place into a new job, you get 1000 USD.
by dasistrobert
0 subcomment
- We are an ai headhunting startup and ready to support all affected from the lay-off.
Our team at clera is working through the weekend to connect every affected employee we can with top founders who are hiring right now. Warm intros, no waiting.
More information: getclera.com/block
Its 100% free
- Vibe management at its finest
- Nearly half of their employees. And yet economists tell us, AI isn't going to affect jobs.
- Bets on how long it takes to get back to 10k employees?
Imo companies cannot fucking help themselves but continue to grow. Meta is already back above 2021 headcount, after cutting 20k employees in 2022. Managers want to Senior Managers want to be Directors want to be VPs. The best way to do that is to grow "scope" aka people under you. And since Jack wants to be Elon and Elon wants to be God, they will happily buy that story...
- Chopping block
by hokumguru
3 subcomments
- I'm still not sure I quite agree with this AI replacement premise.
Assuming the premise of profitability and a sound business
then this sounds like a failure of product if anything. It just doesn't follow for me that when you see more productive teams the immediate answer is that you need less people. Especially for silicon valley types this seems antithetical to scaling.
Thinking of it in two ways
- Yes you could (in theory but I still argue not 100%) cut workforce and have a smaller # of people do the work that everyone else was doing
Or
- You could keep your people, who are ostensibly more productive with AI, and get even more work done
Why would you ever choose the first?
by dfadsadsf
2 subcomments
- Right now is exactly the time when we need to pause issuing new or transferring existing H1B/L1/other work visas for least a year until we know full impact of AI on economy and employment.
- > but something has changed. we're already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using
For some reason he deliberately avoids using the word 'artificial' here.
by getnormality
0 subcomment
- I wonder what folks on 2009 Hacker News would have said if a company announced layoffs.
Would the top comments have been questioning it, telling the CEO what he should have done instead, worrying about how hard it would be for those people in today's economy?
- AI is a transformative technology that will reshape how companies are run. More layoffs may be coming unfortunately. But on the other end, more companies and more products will be created. More competition overall, including for Block.
The overarching risk, imo, is America turning against tech and its leaders / billionaires. I think this is slowly happening. And why not, if the People decide that tech is not bringing good things to our modern society anymore, that should be respected.
by rambojohnson
0 subcomment
- The subtext is peak tech-founder theology:
We built something amazing.
You built it, technically.
But now the real builders are smaller teams, intelligence tools, and whatever abstraction survives the next earnings call.
For the parade of mickey-mouse tech companies solving nothing and shipping products nobody asked for, the takeaway is simple: labor has become a narrative liability.
The whole thing reads like aestheticized detachment. A founder persuading himself, in pretentious all-lowercase, that mass layoffs are a principled design choice instead of the predictable invoice for years of vibe-driven growth theater. These seig-heiling, chest thumping technofascist founders are so cliche and nauseating, fucking Peter Thiel / Musk lord of the rings bunch of nerds.
Hard to imagine a better reminder of why walking away from tech back in 2023 for me felt like oxygen. I guess I consider it a luxury to read headlines like this and scoff at it from a safe distance. Dogshit industry.
by cyanydeez
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- Stock goes up in expectation of ... CEOs doing share buybacks to increase their bonus checks.
- >we're not making this decision because we're in trouble
Oh boy, I've heard that one before. They're in trouble.
- He cant write in proper case to lay off $4k people?
by aussieguy1234
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- This is how I see this and most other "AI layoffs".
The company is going through a hard time, and we need to let people go. So how do we explain it in a way that isn't gonna scare investors away?
Do we admit that we overhired, or that we're running out of money, or that we couldnt find the right markets? No, we don't. Instead, we explain the layoffs as AI.
This way, investors will think we are innovating, and may not think to look deeper to see the actual issues.
- > They'll overlook the fact that the work AI tools provide only encompasses 10% of your job even if they're 100% efficient.
Time will tell. As of today, there are strong indications this statement stands on weak knees. Copium is a term I recently heard in that context, and it fits.
- this is brutal. :(
my mentor was on the chopping block too.
block btw now makes most of its money on bitcoin transactions not software
by prsutherland
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- Seems like if AI is such an accelerator, leveraging 4,000 more people using AI will generate that much more shareholder value.
Any layoff that blames AI and doesn't address the fact that the company is saying it would prefer to make less, they are lying.
Rational actors should be pushing to grow when others are fearful. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
- Whoever is that "jack", he should go back to school to learn how to use capital letters, commas, periods and all other difficult stuff. Or, just ask Chat GPT to write this kind of letters to the people. Maybe, after comparing "jack" writing with AI's writing company stakeholders would figure out, that maybe it is "jack", who should be replaced by some Open AI et. al. tools...
- If only David Graeber were alive to see that Boards have finally started to appreciate his 2018 Book, Bullshit Jobs.
- Block owns Tidal? who knew
by raverbashing
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- So, what does Block actually do?
by AtNightWeCode
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- In this market it is probably smarter to fire a large block of people. Chances are good that you can rehire some where you went too aggressive. Sucks for the people that got laid off though.
- well, I'd like to join smaller flatter teams...
by badgersnake
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- I have decided you will work twice as hard because I’m not as rich as Elon.
- i had two options: cut gradually over months or years as this shift plays out, or be honest about where we are and act on it now. i chose the latter. repeated rounds of cuts are destructive to morale, to focus, and to the trust that customers and shareholders place in our ability to lead.
Come on now, it's not going to be the only round.
- Ah, no, come on, man: at least make it y2k. I need to be able to play UT99 and Q3A at (at least) 1024 x 768 and 24-bit colour with no frame drops.
But, otherwise, I'm onboard with the principle.
- This freed capital is going into AI agent budgets. Expect lower quotas and higher prices
by quantumsequoia
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- Test
- I like how it's posted to a twitter URL.
Lack of caps really grinds on you by the end.
Anyway not unexpected.
- What is it with tech execs and not using capital letters? It's bizarre. Especially in a letter about layoffs.
- If it's true that AI is creating productivity gains (and I think it is), then a company has two options. If every employee is X more productive, then you can either cut people and increase profitability, but sacrifice growth. Or you can be creative and see this as an opportunity to develop new features, new lines of business and new products. The choice depends on the creativity of the business leaders. Judging from Jack's post here, he chose option one. Which suggests to me he is deeply an un-creative business leader taking the easy path.
by noelsusman
2 subcomments
- Why is this statement in all lowercase? Is this a tech bro thing I'm unaware of?
by Bluescreenbuddy
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- Translation: we’re hemorrhaging money and need to cut costs. AI is just a smokescreen
- “Why is there no loyalty to the company anymore?!!”
- Is this it? Is he trying to pop the AI bubble?
- This guy really hates capital letters
by jiveturkey
0 subcomment
- why doesn't HN rewrite this to the canonical x.com hostname?
- he is worse than musk ever been. hiding behind ai
- Imagine being laid off by somebody who doesn't understand capital letters.
- Some choice Jack Dorsey quotes:
From New Yorker profile:
“His goal… is… by making information freer,
he hopes to make the world fairer, kinder, and nicer.”
Where he also writes, “I definitely feel the most fundamental issue is economic equality.”
But hey, the stock is up 25%!
- Imagine not being laid off in this situation.. I'd demand to be.
EDIT: I guess if it comes with 300% raise I'd pause for a bit to think about it, but otherwise absolutely not.
- Translation from a long diatribe: we see that devs using AI are way more productive so we can save some money here for shareholders, hence 40% of you are laid off.
Software developer in general are probably looking for some fucked up situation here.
by maxehmookau
0 subcomment
- Oh man, I'm so entirely sick of this.
Why are billionaires so allergic to using capital letters at the start of sentences? You're laying people off, it just shows how little you actually care about the detail.
"i'll own it" doesn't mean ANYTHING. You've kept your job, your money, your security. You haven't owned anything because your decision doesn't make you accountable to anyone.
Additionally, not a single person is being "asked to leave". Every single one of those people is being _told_ to leave, and given no choice about it.
Language matters, and this entire post shows how little they care.
by triceratops
2 subcomments
- The headline numbers:
They're cutting 40% (edit: the post actually says "nearly half") of the workforce (4k out of 10k). That's huge.
The severance is 20 weeks of pay + 1 week per year of tenure, stock vesting through May, 6 months of healthcare, their corporate devices, and $5k cash.
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- Will Randian tech bros start calling for socialism soon? Inshallah.
- Vibe CEOing.
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by throwback_dev
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- > we're not making this decision because we're in trouble. our business is strong. gross profit continues to grow, we continue to serve more and more customers, and profitability is improving. but something has changed. we're already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company. and that's accelerating rapidly.
Once again, this is "AGI" in it's most direct and absolute version with zero fluff.
I unfortunately predicted more layoffs will occur back in 2025 [0] and I see only but acceleration on this.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46307549