22 ms·

Layoffs at Block

• chilipepperhott 7mo ago
  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.
  • toomuchtodo 7mo ago
    People keep saying it’s pandemic over hiring, but it should be called ZIRP hiring. With the cost of money almost 4x what it used to be, companies have to deliver now, not just coast on promises of growth and success that may never materialize. Have to sing for that supper. https://paulgraham.com/startuplessons.html https://paulgraham.com/startuplessons.html
    • garbawarb 7mo ago
      I miss those days. It may have been economically silly but there was so much optimism, especially in the tech world.
      • AbstractH24 7mo ago
        Now we're just economically silly without optimism (except for one pocket of the tech world).
      • rvz 7mo ago
        That is called a bubble. Now some here are about to experience a repeat of the years 2000 and 2008 put together.
      • SilverElfin 7mo ago
        Optimism without the ZIRP bubble is the 1990s
      • nxm 7mo ago
        Pre-paid optimism that we've been paying for now with high inflation due to overstimulated economy through printed money.
  • busterarm 7mo ago
    Except the concensus around the Amazon layoffs is that it's a shift in free cashflow to capex spent towards ram/gpus.
    • Bombthecat 7mo ago
      Could be also both...
• garbawarb 7mo ago
  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.
• htrp 7mo ago
  >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.
  • chilipepperhott 7mo ago
    Their shareholder meeting is later today. Maybe we'll find out.
  • re-thc 7mo ago
    > but something has changed i.e. we finally decided to audit head count from post covid-era. > paired with smaller and flatter teams i.e. management was axed
    • gusmally 7mo ago
      you don't think LLM impacts on productivity were a factor at all?
      • MeetingsBrowser 7mo ago
        If LLMs really multiply productivity, why would you fire people and handicap the boost? I have 100 people that can now do the work of 200 people thanks to a new tool. How is the logical response to fire half of them and bring my productivity back to where it was before?
• itmitica 7mo ago
  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.
  • aforty 7mo ago
    Because it will go out today anyway on the investor call or later via leak so might as well get ahead of it.
  • lp4v4n 7mo ago
    >Block said Thursday it’s laying off more than 4,000 employees, or about half of its headcount. The stock skyrocketed more than 24% in extended trading. Society provides support to this kind of decision, it's obvious why it happens. And nobody really believes this whole "we got too efficient" so now we don't need 40% of our company anymore.
  • simianwords 7mo ago
    how do you layoff 40% quietly?
• deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
• rvz 7mo ago
  > 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46307549
  • deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  • JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
    > this is "AGI" in it's most direct and absolute version with zero fluff Given it’s an ambiguous term, sure. But I don’t think a better collaborative AI is what anyone imagined when we said AGI years ago.
    • palmotea 7mo ago
      >> * this is "AGI" in it's most direct and absolute version with zero fluff* > Given it’s an ambiguous term, sure. But I don’t think a better collaborative AI is what anyone imagined when we said AGI years ago. He scare-quoted AGI. I think what he means is we won't experience AGI as some kind of utopia of abundance (which is how it is hyped to us), we will experience as massive and brutal layoffs. Actual AGI will be worse. If Block had that, Dorsey wouldn't be laying off 40%, he'd probably lay off 80% or more.
  • wmf 7mo ago
    It's AGI if it works. Didn't Salesforce lay off support people to replace them with AI but then the AI didn't work?
• cyanydeez 7mo ago
  Stock goes up in expectation of ... CEOs doing share buybacks to increase their bonus checks.
  • AtlasBarfed 7mo ago
    [flagged]
    • tomhow 7mo ago
      > ThE sToCk Is UnDeRvAlUeD Please don't post sneering comments on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• rappatic 7mo ago
  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
  • shark1 7mo ago
    It is a stupid trend happening between kids in the Internet. Dumbing down themselves to look more... rebel? I dunno.
  • kevinfiol 7mo ago
    Ha glad to see I'm not the only one irked by that.
  • chrishare 7mo ago
    Does the lowercase convey authenticity or lack of care?
    • danpalmer 7mo ago
      Yes absolutely. Text casing is part of communication, by skipping it an author is saying: "I'm going to prioritise my preferences and making a statement above your understanding and clarity". The bigger the audience the more negative impact it has, and the more entitled the author appears. Along the same lines though, txt spk to friends is a) far lower impact with the smaller audience, and b) communicates other factors such as what device you're on or how close you are to someone, so this is not me just hating on bad grammar.
      • BLKNSLVR 7mo ago
        Bad grammar is usually lack of care or education or knowledge. 100% lower case is 100% a choice. Thanks jack dorsey, for letting us know you're that sort of person. At least he refers to himself that way too, although he should sign off with: jack off. Someone needs to have this conversation with him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K-L9uhsBLM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K-L9uhsBLM
• jcgrillo 7mo ago
  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.
• daxfohl 7mo ago
  Vibe CEOing.
  • operatingthetan 7mo ago
    Dorsey practically invented it.
• raverbashing 7mo ago
  So, what does Block actually do?
  • jcgrillo 7mo ago
    They hire people, and then they fire them!
  • wmf 7mo ago
    CashApp
    • mmcclure 7mo ago
      Square is still a much, much bigger portion of the business than CashApp. Square’s ecosystem is expected to contribute $1.77 billion, while Cash App is expected to provide $58.3 million to transaction revenues.
  • i_love_cookies 7mo ago
    [dead]
  • missedthecue 7mo ago
    Square point of sale payment processing for businesses, Afterpay BNPL, and then the consumer side CashApp business. And Tidal Music streaming for some reason.
• triceratops 7mo ago
  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.
  • peanuty1 7mo ago
    They're going from over 10k employees to just under 6k. So more than 40%.
    • triceratops 7mo ago
      Ah yeah, that's fair. The post itself says "nearly half".
  • peanuty1 7mo ago
    That significantly more generous than the 12-16 week severance packages being doled out by big tech during the great layoffs of 2022-2023 if I remember correctly.
    • happyopossum 7mo ago
      In 2023 Google gave 16 weeks plus 2 for every year of tenure, so not significantly less (and more if your tenure was >5 years), plus google also vested stock for entirety of the 16+ weeks.
• citbl 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  • beachtaxidriver 7mo ago
    Yeah I'm with you.
  • mlsu 7mo ago
    uwu i'm a smol bean also you're fired
  • JamesSwift 7mo ago
    Yeah, im a chronic uncapitilizer in our work slack and HN, but if I put out a 'communication' then I always shift to 'regular' grammar.
  • jcims 7mo ago
    I noticed that as well and it oddly made me sit for a minute to think about it. I ended up deciding that it landed a bit more 'real' and unfiltered. Could be interpreted many ways. Nobody knows the actual why but (possibly) Jack.
  • Legend2440 7mo ago
    There is no good way to announce layoffs. No matter what he wrote, it was going to be insulting.
  • ssnistfajen 7mo ago
    It was a 100% intentional act. These people simply don't care and they want that be known. It's in their ego.
  • jcdavis 7mo ago
    Its an extremely annoying trend among a subset of the tech industry who think it makes them cool
    • jaccola 7mo ago
      Honestly the whole Silicon Valley shtick is becoming old. The fake positivity, the quirky writing style, the "I think the most important quality is sticktuitiveness" linkedin-esque bullshit. Not to mention the cargo-cult that is so obvious in every GPT-wrapper startup. This was mostly born out of counter signalling the businesses that valued serious people over competent people in the 20th century. But, like with all things, the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction. I believe the next wave of tech countersignalling will be people who actually do take themselves seriously, maybe even dress in suits, etc..
• akshshha 7mo ago
  I’ll take jobs moving to India for 1000, Alex.
  • xtracto 7mo ago
    AI: Affordable Indian.
• t-writescode 7mo ago
  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.
  • gdilla 7mo ago
    because that doesn't increase shareholder value, at least in the short term, which is all anyone cares about now.
    • charcircuit 7mo ago
      Have you not noticed the massive datacenter build out consuming tons of capital right now?
      • gdilla 7mo ago
        sure? and helped paid for culling their workforce, hiring slow downs, and charging higher pricse.
  • Swizec 7mo ago
    > Nice severance; but in this job market, holy shit. I just talked to a bunch of recruiters (we're hiring) and their main piece of advice was: The market is crazy. Move fast. We're seeing people getting jobs within days of starting to look, bailing on offers after signing because they got a better offer somewhere else, etc. 24 hours is the longest you can leave a candidate waiting. You have been warned edit: I am in SFBA. Your reality may be different. People have spilled some 2 trillion dollars onto the area in the past 2 years. A lot of that is going to software engineers as everyone tries to shove AI down consumers' throats. Rents are up 60% in 12 months, which is not the sign of a cold employment market :)
• pmdr 7mo ago
  > 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.
• dfadsadsf 7mo ago
  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.
  • runtheway94 7mo ago
    I understand pausing completely ; can you explain how stopping the transfer of existing temporary workers will help?
    • dfadsadsf 7mo ago
      Lots of people laid off by Block are on H1B Visas. With transfer they have 60 days to find new role. If they could not find new job in 60 days, they "fake" transfer to "bodyshop" company while they are looking for real work so status does not lapse. With transfer you have 4k people looking and eligible for new role. With no H1B transfer, less people are looking for work and citizens and green card holders have higher chance to land roles in a few companies still hiring.
      • runtheway94 7mo ago
        Even if you consider 50% of them are H1Bs, and out of them even majority don’t find jobs in 60 days (it’s actually more since they are keeping them on payroll for 5 months) that’s still a low number. Couple with the fact that not all would like to join body shops. I understand your frustration but I don’t think stopping H1B transfers is the solution.
  • 650 7mo ago
    Won't companies just offshore?
    • dfadsadsf 7mo ago
      Not really. I expect with AI and increased productivity allure of outsourcing will diminish. You want super productive engineers to be close to product and customers. Besides if you are looking for work there is very little difference between foreigner on H1B taking the role and role being outsourced to India. Either way you do not have the job.
• varjag 7mo ago
  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.
  • just-the-wrk 7mo ago
    recently there has been a consistent drip of layoffs each day. they kind of chose all of the options
• krzaG 7mo ago
  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.
  • gusmally 7mo ago
    Square payment processing?
  • wffurr 7mo ago
    Block runs Square and Cash App among other payments tech.
  • arrowleaf 7mo ago
    Square payments, CashApp, Tidal (hi-fi music streaming), and some blockchain experiments
  • peanuty1 7mo ago
    They own Square, Cash App, Afterpay and Jay Z's music streaming service Tidal. They make a decent amount of money from people buying and selling Bitcoin on Cash App but most of their revenue is not related to Bitcoin.
    • IAmGraydon 7mo ago
      Try again. As another commenter noted: >in the last 12 months total revenue was ~24 billion of which ~8.5 billion was from the Bitcoin https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001512673/55ca61a0-ba6a-49d6-be9f-9c4377f06aa2.pdf https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001512673/55ca61a...
      • izacus 7mo ago
        Errr, do you not understand what "most" means?
• daxfohl 7mo ago
  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.
  • n2d4 7mo ago
    In what sense did CashApp not pan out? $16b revenue. Too early to say whether Afterpay will work out but looking good so far
    • ceejayoz 7mo ago
      > $16b revenue I can make a lot of revenue selling $100 bills for $10. I'm not sure it'd "pan out".
    • daxfohl 7mo ago
      Updated to two tricks. And you could argue three if you call banking its own trick. Afterpay was an acquisition (and much smaller) so IDK if that counts. Still, all the bitcoin stuff, music, other side ventures, most of the international expansion, attempts to appeal to bigger businesses, the recent "focus local" vision, all hardly made a dent in the respective markets and I wouldn't be surprised if they lost money or are still losing money on most of those things.
      • rswail 7mo ago
• softwaredoug 7mo ago
  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
  • TSiege 7mo ago
    This makes it make way more sense. That is a huge amount of growth really fast. I've worked in those companies, it's really hard on the work culture and organization when things grow that quickly. I think the potential for productivity is there with AI, but this size of a cut based on speculation made no sense. This is actually reasonable in this light and is probably for the best. I'll be curious to see if any employees, former or otherwise talk about it
  • b8 7mo ago
    They're back to 6,000 not 5,000.
    • softwaredoug 7mo ago
      Thank you. fixed.
  • baq 7mo ago
    > our business is strong. gross profit continues to grow, we continue to serve more and more customers and the best part is that when others follow, ZIRP will be back. this is going to be a proper mess.
  • arctic-true 7mo ago
    I am much more interested in how headcounts compare to 2019 than to 2025 (let alone 2022). Certainly, this is not a comfort to anyone who is losing their job. But I don’t remember anyone panicking about an unemployment crisis pre-pandemic. A lot of people are getting their lottery ticket taken away, which is less than ideal, but we’ve got a long way to go before breadlines.
  • bjohnson225 7mo ago
    > whatever AI cost restructuring happening today Is it actually AI-related cost restructuring, or did they simply hire too many people? They will obviously prefer to tell a story about AI rather than bad management.
• skwirl 7mo ago
  We’re reaching “Don’t Look Up” levels of denial about the impact of AI on this site.
  • gusmally 7mo ago
    For real. Very worried about when other CEOs follow suit and there is a flood of people into unemployment.
  • MattGaiser 7mo ago
    Even if they are right about quality, people on here vastly overstate the value of quality. From socks to dishwashers to airfares, slop is a valid product as long as it is cheap. Security from a business perspective has been proven not quite optional, but it is hardly catastrophic if it fails.
    • _zagj 7mo ago
      > Even if they are right about quality, people on here vastly overstate the value of quality I always found the quality argument strange; what software are these people using that makes them think quality is a high priority?
      • SpicyLemonZest 7mo ago
        I recognize that my experience may not be typical, but I spend the vast majority of my development time improving the quality of the systems I work on, in response to specific customer demands for it. The last time I had multiple consecutive weeks of greenfield development was in 2021.
      • MattGaiser 7mo ago
        Eh, it can get a lot worse. The horrendous quality of government IT in much of Asia for example.
  • LostMyLogin 7mo ago
    As someone that is only five years into their career at this point, I feel so helpless.
• hokumguru 7mo ago
  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?
  • rxyz 7mo ago
    Dorsey is in AI psychosis. He required every employee to send him an email weekly which then he had summarized by AI because of course he aint reading it himself.
    • MeetingsBrowser 7mo ago
      Even in "AI psychosis" I don't see how firing people is a logical response to advances in AI. If AI tools really are a significant multiplier to productivity, companies should be hiring more people to take advantage of that multiplier. If you suddenly have the ability to get more output per dollar spent, a healthy business should respond by spending more dollars, not spending less to keep output the same.
      • simianwords 7mo ago
        at every productivity point there's an optimal number of employees needed. at the previous productivity it was 10,000 employees. not 10,001 nor 9,999. at the current productivity it is 6,000. why are you so sure that the 6,001th employee can increase profits but not the 10,001th employee before AI?
      • 33MHz-i486 7mo ago
        because demand is weak and the product markets are saturated. there are dimishing returns to increasing investment. so these companies switch to managing their earnings ratio. if you cant grow revenue, then cut costs.
• duncangh 7mo ago
  Chopping block
• testfoobar 7mo ago
  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?
• JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
  What does “entering into consultation” mean?
  • moregrist 7mo ago
    My guess: they keep you around on contract for 1-6 months because laying you off immediately would be very disruptive. One company I worked for did this. It felt weird to everyone. But they did give a slightly better severance to those that stuck out their contracts so it worked out slightly better for them.
  • bananamogul 7mo ago
    I think "entering into consultation" means HR calls you into a small conference room.
  • wmf 7mo ago
    That's a UK legal thing: https://www.gov.uk/redundancy-your-rights/consultation https://www.gov.uk/redundancy-your-rights/consultation
• deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
• ppeetteerr 7mo ago
  Wishing the best for all those affected and excited to see many of you start new companies and continue to innovate.
• mcast 7mo ago
  >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.
• paxys 7mo ago
  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."
  • hirako2000 7mo ago
    AI is the logical, counter proof reason, I feel it serves as a scapegoat so perfectly they pretend it replaces people.
  • QGQBGdeZREunxLe 7mo ago
    We know they're not... > In its fiscal fourth quarter, Block reported revenue of almost $6.3bn, in line with Wall Street expectations. Its earnings tumbled to 19 cents a share, owing to a $234mn hit — or 38 cents a share — on its bitcoin holdings.
    • dmboyd 7mo ago
      Yea, look over there!!! AI. (Don’t mention the bitcoin investment that’s in the shitter)
      • blitzar 7mo ago
        The bitcoin investment had 2/3/4x'd at that point - so the negative 75% means the business is the shitter.
  • Sparkle-san 7mo ago
    Feb 2021 was peak covid tech bubble stemming from ZIRP. There are a number of companies that hit highs during that period that they'll likely never see again (or for quite some time) despite being profitable.
    • SpicyLemonZest 7mo ago
      There are, but there are also a number of companies (including not-particularly-AI ones like Netflix and Oracle) that are above their ZIRP peak. I think it's hard to definitively say that this story is inconsistent with one explanation or the other.
• MeetingsBrowser 7mo ago
  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?"
  • Refreeze5224 7mo ago
    It's simple: it's just a lie. We are seeing the goal of AI in action here, which is reducing payroll costs.
    • djeekle 7mo ago
      Since the rush for AGI isn’t panning out, I can see tech firms engaging in tacit collusion that aims to reduce the salaries of software engineers. There’s proof of tech firms engaging in explicit collusion back in the 00’s.
    • MeetingsBrowser 7mo ago
      I also don't understand that take. Imagine you run a mowing service with 4 employees. Suddenly 2 more people volunteer to mow yard for your company for free! Is your reaction to fire two of the paid employees and keep mowing the same number of yards (with reduced payroll costs), or to expand the business to mow more yards? Which of those responses feels more in line with a "strong and growing" business that is "continuing to support more customers" and has "improving profitability"?
      • xeckr 7mo ago
        Now imagine you run a mowing service with 4 employees. Suddenly an unbounded number of people appear on the job market who are ready to work for your company at a 5% the cost of your previous employees. Best of all, they become more competent and less expensive over time. You can't yet fire your entire original roster all at once since they need to teach the new hires the specifics of the job, but after that's done, what do you need them for?
• ivanech 7mo ago
  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.
  • stock_toaster 7mo ago
    Agreed. Now that one more company has announced a big (40%!) headcount cut, other CEOs will feel like it is ok to do so now too (someone else stuck their neck out first, safe to pile on, "every one else is doing it", etc). I expect to start hearing about more big riffs soon. :/
• deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
• m_ke 7mo ago
  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 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
• throwback_dev 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  • simianwords 7mo ago
    AI comment
    • torben-friis 7mo ago
      Obviously so, yeah. Astroturfing? Or is there any other reason why this is becoming so common in HN?
      • gnatman 7mo ago
        Karma farming to frontpage more AI news and startups?
      • verdverm 7mo ago
        Claw and people who haven't realized ns;nt
      • aoyama1chome 7mo ago
        Massaging sentiment
      • galkk 7mo ago
        I'm not a native speaker. Besides dash, what is the sign that it's AI?
        • torben-friis 7mo ago
          I can’t point the exact signs because the message got removed, but a common sign is labeled paragraphs: “My take: so and so.” “The key idea: so and so.” There are also some common sentence structures, like the format “it’s not A, it’s B”. For example, “this is not important; it is essential”. Some words also tend to appear very frequently, like the verb pretend: “this is John no longer pretending he’s dumb”. Any of those examples could appear in legitimate human text, but when you see many of those signs in a short text it’s very obvious.
• tlhunter 7mo ago
  Jack couldn't be bothered to use capital letters in his last layoff email either.
  • kypro 7mo ago
    I've defended the style of writing previously, but I agree. This felt a little disrespectful. I wonder if he writes his legal letters and letters to clients/investors like this, or does he have more respect for them?
• overfeed 7mo ago
  > 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.
  • r-w 7mo ago
    How magnanimous of him to let us all know of his magnanimity!
    • hirako2000 7mo ago
      He could have been even more radical and get rid of himself, his lieutenants could ask gpt about the strategy.
      • signatoremo 7mo ago
        He did get rid of himself as Twitter’s CEO. He founded Block and Bluesky which employ thousands of people, instead of enjoying the fortune of an ex-CEO. Maybe you should be open minded a little bit?
        • hirako2000 7mo ago
          That's called quiting for better opportunities. I doubt the thousands who contributed to block's success will all land on their feet. I'm open ended I'm not a CEO forced to make those contradictory decisions.
  • hirako2000 7mo ago
    Backers probably told him to. I can't open LinkedIn any day without trending posts that engineers can hands off to LLMs. That must tilt some ideas to investors who see winners as ways to balance their losses.
  • simianwords 7mo ago
• torben-friis 7mo ago
  >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”.
  • iddan 7mo ago
    This is America. Like it or not.
  • nailer 7mo ago
    What government makes it illegal for management to manage their company?
    • torben-friis 7mo ago
      Many European countries, including mine (spain) only accept mass firings when the company proves it’s a necessity. Usually this means showing losses or the effect of force majeure events like natural disasters. You can manage your company just fine, by not overshooting your hiring by 2x if workers were anctually unneeded for example.
      • acchow 7mo ago
        But in your country (Spain), Telefónica de España laid off 3649 workers in Dec 2023 (about 40% of that unit) despite growing net income by 17% that year.
        • torben-friis 7mo ago
          Nice googling, but that’s just an example that proves my point. They had to go through a process extensively justifying losses (mostly that certain jobs were no longer relevant as they were pre-digital workforce), negotiate with unions and offer voluntary leaving conditions. The resulting offer was good enough that more workers applied to be fired than were necesssary. For context, the deal was basically to pay them 70% of their current salary from the dismissal moment until their retirement at 63.
• crustyrusty 7mo ago
  "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.
• flumpcakes 7mo ago
  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.
  • wmf 7mo ago
    Jack Dorsey looks like a homeless person and he spends his time meditating and talking about Bitcoin. People knew what they were getting into.
    • mistrial9 7mo ago
      > looks like a homeless person I have heard this once in a while.. really it refers to a hair grooming aesthetic that is disallowed somehow, perhaps. > he spends his time meditating said like it is a bad thing. Of course yes, this is a bad thing to many people, I agree.. but among very smart people in California, if he really does that well, it is a plus actually.. > talking about Bitcoin very polarizing, with grandstanding on both sides of the aisle, agree. However, isn't Bitcoin legal now? as in, a large scale political change in most places where readers of this page might be reading? overall, the combination of things to point out to launch big criticisms, is more interesting than the fact of criticisms at all, at the moment
      • kypro 7mo ago
        The homeless person thing was a bit of a mean way to put it, but I don't think the parent commenter meant it critically or as an insult tbh, more an observation. Dorsey is a certain type of character. For good or bad, it's worth understanding those who you associate with or who you allow to hold authority over you so you're not surprised when they act in entirely predictable ways.
      • bigyabai 7mo ago
        Admittedly, Dorsey is nowhere near Ellison or Musk levels of evil. Maybe he's too stupid, maybe he's not ambitious enough. Who knows. But he is an unprincipled chud with a track record that makes his contemporaries look like Einstein by comparison. The guy's a grifter, Block spent $68 million on a single party and we're all supposed to believe that the executive leadership is blameless? I wasn't born yesterday.
• justonepost2 7mo ago
  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
• rcakebread 7mo ago
  Couldn't even be bothered to type like an adult when he fired them.
  • IshKebab 7mo ago
    Yeah I was thinking the same. Pretty generous severance but I'd be pissed if I was fired by someone who can't even be bothered to press shift. Probably thinks it makes him cool and edgy.
  • uoflcards22 7mo ago
    The refusal to simply capitalize the first letter of a sentence is so obnoxious.
    • monomyth 7mo ago
      Clearly the AI is not as widely used within the company as he proclaimed :)
    • khazhoux 7mo ago
      high impact executives like myself are too busy to use up our precious time with minutia like capitalization. every second counts when youre a high impact ceo and thats just one reason why our compensation is 1000X your own.
      • Revanche1367 7mo ago
        This was clearly a joke.
    • brap 7mo ago
      It feels incredibly performative. Same with sama.
      • uoflcards22 7mo ago
        Of course it's performative. They're all presumably on Apple devices. They literally went to their settings to disable auto-capitalization to make some kind of ridiculous point, i.e. "I'm too important too think about capital letters".
• Havoc 7mo ago
  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...
  • slantedview 7mo ago
    The CEO's last visionary move was to go all in on crypto, even renaming the company. Now he's a visionary again, but firing half the company instead of himself.
  • sealeck 7mo ago
    > 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... I had to look this up - in the last 12 months total revenue was ~24 billion of which ~8.5 billion was from the Bitcoin "ecosystem"! Truly bizzare to stake your company on this... https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001512673/55ca61a0-ba6a-49d6-be9f-9c4377f06aa2.pdf https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001512673/55ca61a...
    • andriy_koval 7mo ago
      nothing bizzare to invest into the area if some people pay 8.5b
    • Havoc 7mo ago
      Yes though there is a corresponding cost line as well so that’s not 8.5 in profit. Sounds like they’re buying and selling coins effectively
• borroka 7mo ago
  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.
  • sealeck 7mo ago
    > Musk has shown that Twitter can operate with 5% (approximately?) of the workforce he inherited Is X profitable? I don't think the argument was that Twitter couldn't _operate_ with 5% of the workforce (i.e. skeleton sysadmin crew), the issue was whether Twitter could make money and remain a viable business. It seems that Twitter is no longer a viable business (i.e. less advertising spend, decline in users - especially high-value advertiser targets who now spend more time on LinkedIn, etc). > laying off a lot of people was seen as a sign that the company was in trouble, but not now I agree that saying you are laying people off because of AI is a lovely narrative for failing companies!
    • borroka 7mo ago
      One needs to tease apart the effects of Musk and Musk's "policies" on advertising investments, number of users, the boom and slow decline of social media platforms (see Facebook, Instagram coming down from their peak, TikTok gaining ground, but people seem to be already tired of it and waiting for something new) and the technical/technological part of the enterprise. I don't like layoffs, in particular when I am the one getting laid off (not at X), but the X experience, for a casual user like me, did not get worse, if it did, because there are way fewer people working at X. One may say, I don't like the algos, but that's not coming from a lack of engineers, it is a policy.
• suralind 7mo ago
  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.
  • sealeck 7mo ago
    > probably the most honest message you’ll ever see Interesting that this is your takeaway; it seems that this is effectively an investor-friendly way to admit that Block hired too many people over the course of the pandemic and doesn't necessarily have obvious expansion/growth (that would require people to write more software) on the roadmap. "Oh the business isn't going too well so we need to lay people off" - said no CEO ever, but "AI go brrrr" makes investors happy!
• retinaros 7mo ago
  he is worse than musk ever been. hiding behind ai
• just-the-wrk 7mo ago
  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.
  • nailer 7mo ago
    Quite a few people on X mentioned Block went on a top-of-market acquisition spree (Weebly, Afterpay, Tidal) and tripled headcount during Covid.
• gombosg 7mo ago
  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?"
  • sealeck 7mo ago
    > instead of, well, producing more, better products faster, thus increasing its competitiveness? Probably because this is not Block's business strategy. If they could do this, then they would...
  • joshhart 7mo ago
    If you have good ideas that have a nice return on investment and leverage existing skills, sure. If you don’t have good opportunity laying around, best for the business to switch to maintenance mode, which means cutting staff. Or maybe cut staff, then use equity to buy growth via acquisition. It really depends on the business. Block’s growth has slowed so perhaps this would have happened anyway and AI is just what’s getting the blame.
  • GeoAtreides 7mo ago
    Let's say AI increases productivity per capita by 50% That means 50% of current headcount now has the same productivity as 100% Now we calculate: A = OPEX costs cuts by firing 50% of personal B = Profit increase by the AI 50% productivity increase while not firing anyone if A>B, reduce headcount if B>A, reduce headcount and then increase workload on remaining employees until profits increase
  • oytis 7mo ago
    It may be just bullshit, it probably is. But it also can be that the market demand for software is not as infinite as we thought it is in SaaS era.
• tech_jabroni 7mo ago
  Block was incredibly bloated. This guy is correct: https://x.com/BamaBonds/status/2027142091596288314?s=20 https://x.com/BamaBonds/status/2027142091596288314?s=20
• jscheel 7mo ago
  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.
  • interestpiqued 7mo ago
    To be fair X has significantly declined as an experience since Elon laid of 80%. I assume many of those he laid off were soft skill people that helped curate the experience.
    • jdross 7mo ago
      As you know, this is a subjective take. (I enjoy my experience there more now, for example, with less social politics in my feed.) And their head of product claimed that X only has around 30 FT employees apparently working on it, so it's much more than 80% since then. https://www.ndtv.com/feature/x-head-of-product-claims-company-operates-with-skeleton-crew-of-30-elon-musk-clarifies-10997411#:~:text=Nikita%20Bier%2C%20the%20head%20of,a%20user%20raised%20the%20issue. https://www.ndtv.com/feature/x-head-of-product-claims-compan...
      • veryemartguy 7mo ago
        [flagged]
      • mixdup 7mo ago
        Just because you agree with the social politics the algorithm is throwing out now vs. before doesn't mean it's not political
      • VirusNewbie 7mo ago
• numbers 7mo ago
  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
• christoff12 7mo ago
  "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
  • christoff12 7mo ago
    I wanted to come back to this to add that it's highly disrespectful to make a post/write a letter laying off 40% of your company and not bother to capitalize words properly. Might be a small thing (no pun intended), but it irks me.
    • NKosmatos 7mo ago
      I totally agree. In this strange era we're all in, it seems that not using proper capitalization is a sign of "importance". Other high ranking people/CEOs/technologists don't use the correct rules, especially for important announcements like laying off 4000 people. O tempora, o mores!
• jmacd 7mo ago
  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.
• skeeter2020 7mo ago
  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"?
• trashface 7mo ago
  Nearly half of their employees. And yet economists tell us, AI isn't going to affect jobs.
• yodsanklai 7mo ago
  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.
• deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
• getnormality 7mo ago
  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?
• senko 7mo ago
  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.
  • slantedview 7mo ago
    "owning" the decision doesn't mean anything. It's just words.
    • rustystump 7mo ago
      It is but those words could be long flowery corpo speak or short. “Yall gonna get money and most yall fired. My bad woops”
    • teyopi 7mo ago
      Agree materially no consequences but still better than many deflection strategies we have seen from others during layoffs.
    • jtokoph 7mo ago
      One day there will be a CEO who actually pays the severances out of their own compensation.
      • t-writescode 7mo ago
        So, like Nintendo and other Japanese and Chinese companies where the CEO of a company treats the company like their child and takes the hit when they make errors? Or maybe like the US employer that gave everyone at the company a flat wage?
• GeoAtreides 7mo ago
  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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47159008
  • nusl 7mo ago
    The odd thing I find with folks championing AI, and those who have effectively laid themselves off from their own job and now are basically just glorified prompt engineers, is that you're just making yourself obsolete. AI will get better so much faster than you can adapt. One day you're happily vibe coding your 50th app, having other agents do your work for you. The next, you're worse than AI and you're redundant, and the clock is now ticking on your own head. This whole thing has shown that orgs don't care how the work gets done. If it's done by a human, cool. If it's done faster by an AI at a satisfactory level, even better. Soon, though, the human won't be needed in that loop. How do you make yourself useful here? What defense do software engineers even have? We can run alongside AI, try to outrun it, but it's just about futile. I work with junior devs at work and Claude is easier to instruct than them, and produces better code. In some ways it's more pleasant to work with, too. This isn't really me shitting on the juniors so much as trying to raise how fucked we actually are. Sorta just feels like we're in this phase of pretending it's all happy as a coping mechanism for the future pain.
• stelliosk 7mo ago
  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 ?
• cm2012 7mo ago
  He cant write in proper case to lay off $4k people?
• mempko 7mo ago
  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.
• gip 7mo ago
  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.
• dzonga 7mo ago
  this is brutal. :( my mentor was on the chopping block too. block btw now makes most of its money on bitcoin transactions not software
• maerF0x0 7mo ago
  > 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!
  • bayarearefugee 7mo ago
    > Sounds like the perfect setup to start your own company! Coming soon - 4000 new vibe coded agentic AI harnesses.
• Trasmatta 7mo ago
  What is it with tech execs and not using capital letters? It's bizarre. Especially in a letter about layoffs.
• jwilber 7mo ago
  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%!
• interestpiqued 7mo ago
  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 https://x.com/balajis/status/2027146933136150867?s=46
• kledru 7mo ago
  well, I'd like to join smaller flatter teams...
• rgovostes 7mo ago
  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.
• jcmontx 7mo ago
  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.
  • mixdup 7mo ago
    it's already there in a large part of the country. being a swe in SF or NY is way different than being a swe in Birmingham, Alabama or Tampa, Florida or even a truly large city like Houston where you're writing internal software for a bank, or an oil company, or a hospital system. Most software jobs are not sexy startups or working for Netflix
    • svnt 7mo ago
      Yeah but why is working for Netflix even sexy? At the end of the day it is almost a telecom.
      • DarkTree 7mo ago
        $$$
      • triceratops 7mo ago
        It's also almost a movie studio.
      • mixdup 7mo ago
        I mean, maybe it's not, honestly it was the first FAANG that popped in my head as I typed the comment. But for most software engineers working at a place like that even as boring or not sexy as it may have become in SF, they won't ever even get close
    • coffeebeqn 7mo ago
      There hasn’t been anything sexy about working in big tech in over a decade
  • 7mo ago
• jlarocco 7mo ago
  Imagine being laid off by somebody who doesn't understand capital letters.
• siliconc0w 7mo ago
  you can tell he is a cracked out based tech ceo because he doesn't use capital letters
  • 2001zhaozhao 7mo ago
    i agree
• tonymet 7mo ago
  If only David Graeber were alive to see that Boards have finally started to appreciate his 2018 Book, Bullshit Jobs.
• 650 7mo ago
  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.
• jiveturkey 7mo ago
  why doesn't HN rewrite this to the canonical x.com hostname?
• enmyj 7mo ago
  Block owns Tidal? who knew
• giancarlostoro 7mo ago
  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.
• redwood 7mo ago
  I like how it's posted to a twitter URL. Lack of caps really grinds on you by the end. Anyway not unexpected.
• nusl 7mo ago
  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.
• zombiwoof 7mo ago
  [dead]
• objektif 7mo ago
  Will Randian tech bros start calling for socialism soon? Inshallah.
• abeppu 7mo ago
  > 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"?
  • mkozlows 7mo ago
    Depends on the company, but I think it's fair to say that not every company has a roadmap to infinite growth.
    • abeppu 7mo ago
      ... but you have a staff that can come up with ideas, and now you can say yes to more of them. "Infinite growth" framing is asking a lot, but for most of my career, I've seen teams, departments or companies solicit ideas of what to do next quarter/year/whatever, and really aggressively winnow it down -- in large part b/c there weren't enough people to do it (and we could only afford so many people). And we were _bad_ at prioritizing; we'd often have like a list of multiple things declared P0 and a longer list of things called P1, and a stack of stuff that didn't make the cut to maybe revisit in the future. But if the same number of people can build and ship and iterate faster, then why not do more?
      • Skunkleton 7mo ago
        My experience is that "asking staff for ideas" does not lead to successful products. Sometimes, sure, but in general it does not.
        • abeppu 7mo ago
          I've never seen a roadmap planning process that didn't involve some component of asking departments and teams what needs to be done. To the extent you have successful products, it's because you have product managers and engineers and data scientists and depending on the product, integration/forward deployed staff. These should be the people with a view to how the product needs to meet the needs of future customers, the challenges faced by existing customers, and the technical components needed to get there. I'm not saying you encourage them to just spitball ideas from ignorance, I'm saying you solicit their expertise on the limits and needs of your products, systems, tools, processes, messaging etc.
• neya 7mo ago
  > 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.
  • y1n0 7mo ago
    How dare someone accept your application for employment and pay you money for services rendered. It's absurd!
    • no_wizard 7mo ago
      That’s not even a good argument for whatever it is you’re trying to say. While you may not like the energy behind OPs statements he’s pretty clear: CEOs and executives in general face almost zero consequences for their decisions that affect hundreds or thousands of people I’m with OP, thy should face real consequences for stupid decisions
      • snihalani 7mo ago
        >I’m with OP, thy should face real consequences for stupid decisions I don't think the investor cares. The investor wants 1 in X shot at beating the majority and is agnostic to failure.
        • no_wizard 7mo ago
          I know investors largely don’t care but that’s the point, they do t care because they don’t have to face any real consequences of bad decisions in aggregate
      • csallen 7mo ago
        If you make bad enough decisions, your customers leave, your company dies, and/or you are fired by the board. CEOs get fired all the time, and companies die all the time. It's part of life, and so are layoffs. There's no need for some sort of additional punitive actions to be taken. If you control a company, you have the right to do layoffs, and if you're an employee, you take that risk of being laid off because you prefer it to going out and trying to grow your own company from scratch.
• irenetusuq 7mo ago
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• kbos87 7mo ago
  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.
• cboyardee 7mo ago
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• prsutherland 7mo ago
  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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
  • ewgdfv 7mo ago
    Do you think (great) ideas for projects fall out of thin air? All this paradox stuff is irrelevant if the constraint on human's ability to progress is imagination. LLMs wont help with that - the human still needs to have foresight and vision. Which frankly most lack.
• deleted 7mo ago
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• eviks 7mo ago
  Vibe management at its finest
• Bluescreenbuddy 7mo ago
  Translation: we’re hemorrhaging money and need to cut costs. AI is just a smokescreen
• swingboy 7mo ago
  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?
  • IAmGraydon 7mo ago
    Beyond that, why would you just eliminate half of your staff overnight? That causes massive disruption. You would phase the employees out over some number of months to ensure a smooth transition.
• punee94 7mo ago
  There has to be a good word to describe people like Jack Dorsey. World class software tinkerer, but no business running a public company.
• taurath 7mo ago
  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.
  • lr4444lr 7mo ago
    I dislike Jack going back several years, but I think in this instance he's admitting that he's taking responsibility between weighing the risk of doing this vs. not doing this. Maybe morale will tank anyway and the company will hold on, but be out-innovated by competitors that invested in growth. There are future outcomes that could prove he made the wrong call, and I any time layoffs are announced, there is a tacit mea culpa about past over-hiring.
    • Lammy 7mo ago
      It reads as hypocritical because he frames it as himself making a sacrifice when what he's really taking responsibility for is choosing the outcome that makes himself the most money. He owns 1 million Class A shares and 79.7%(!!!) of Block's Class B shares: https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001512673/0cb664ca-b2dc-4645-ad7f-1c65e62c3667.pdf#page=63 https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001512673/0cb664c...
    • taurath 7mo ago
      > admitting that he's taking responsibility Its funny how for him, he is enriched by this option as the stock price rises, and its couched in words like responsibility. I was taught when I failed at something that responsibility meant making amends to the people wronged. His reputation taking a hit doesn't come even close to the loss of 4000 people's livelihoods - he will not lose one of his presumably many houses. > tacit mea culpa This is the opposite of a mea culpa, this is saying there is no choice and the decision is inevitable, and he is only allowed (by the very framework he constructed) to do it fast or slow.
• freshtake 7mo ago
  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.
• tqi 7mo ago
  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...
• dasistrobert 7mo ago
  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
• dasistrobert 7mo ago
  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.
• noelsusman 7mo ago
  Why is this statement in all lowercase? Is this a tech bro thing I'm unaware of?
  • cardy31 7mo ago
    Just a Jack Dorsey thing. He writes all of his communications like that.
  • albatross79 7mo ago
    Because he's a humble guy just like you and me. Big letters mean big man and he's just a little everyman guy, relatable and cool.
• manbash 7mo ago
  > 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.
• agnishom 7mo ago
  > 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.".
  • PunchTornado 7mo ago
    On shareholder money? No thank you. If 1 person can do the job, why keep 2?
    • itake 7mo ago
      If there are growth opportunities for the company, selectively choosing the top 90% YoY, minimizing backfills (in theory...) will result in a company full of high achievers that can execute on that growth vision. If the company is shifting into maintenance mode, cutting 40% of the staff is the right move, but definitely hurts shareholders b/c they valued the company as growth, not maintenance.
    • agnishom 7mo ago
      I am just saying that the decision was not some kind of inevitable result of forces beyond their control. They just made a business decision to line their pockets better.
    • pixelatedindex 7mo ago
      Sometimes I feel like “shareholder first” mentality has gone a bit too far. Most of the majority shareholders are a handful of people who have too much money, they don’t really put in any work, but are more than happy to put people out of work if it meant they’d get a bit more money.
    • RealityVoid 7mo ago
      If you're a healthy company that is growing, you could do 2x as much stuff!
    • 7mo ago
• harsha_photon 7mo ago
  Is this because of goose (developed by block), the ai agent framework stripe forked and created minions ??
• bartread 7mo ago
  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.
• wiseowise 7mo ago
  “Why is there no loyalty to the company anymore?!!”
• temp8830 7mo ago
  Block owns Square and Tidal. Let's show Jack how efficient we can be by canceling those sh...ervices. Claude can use them.
• creativeSlumber 7mo ago
  > 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?
  • tomovo 7mo ago
    Owning stock?
• itmitica 7mo ago
  Is this it? Is he trying to pop the AI bubble?
• tabemonooo 7mo ago
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• sgt 7mo ago
  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.
• cft 7mo ago
  This freed capital is going into AI agent budgets. Expect lower quotas and higher prices
• tabemonooo 7mo ago
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• EZ-E 7mo ago
  > 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.
  • wraptile 7mo ago
    I agree. I experienced both setups and the drag was awful for people's morale and internal politics and made the company do really shady things like letting people go before bonus milestones are reached eventhough they were key contributors.
• aurareturn 7mo ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=47057908&goto=item%3Fid%3D47055979%2347057908 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=47057908&goto=item%3Fi... Called it. This will be for every single software company. Maybe all companies.
• AtNightWeCode 7mo ago
  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.
• hathym 7mo ago
  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.
  • azangru 7mo ago
    Never heard of them either. But the link in the title is to Jack Dorsey's tweet. Now him I have heard of. Didn't know he was involved in that company too.
• geraneum 7mo ago
  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?
  • littlexsparkee 7mo ago
    herd effect (doesn't stand out, everyone's using it), 'forward-thinking' i.e. preventing ostensible future problem rather than admitting fault of overhiring or bad mgmt/initiatives, juices stocks, keeps wages down and employees in line, if no ability or opportunity to expand (market saturated or bad biz outlook ahead) it gives cover to scale down labor force
• aussieguy1234 7mo ago
  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.
• badgersnake 7mo ago
  I have decided you will work twice as hard because I’m not as rich as Elon.
• marcus_lam 7mo ago
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• jaapz 7mo ago
  This guy really hates capital letters
• PeterStuer 7mo ago
  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.
• redbell 7mo ago
  > 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
• zkmon 7mo ago
  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.
• zkmon 7mo ago
  AI increases productivityvastly, but it cuts down buyers also vastly, through removal of jobs etc. So deflation could result, exposeing the disparities even more.
• thiht 7mo ago
  Wtf is Block an why are they 10000 in the first place?
• FpUser 7mo ago
  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.
• beernet 7mo ago
  > 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.
• intexpress 7mo ago
  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.
  • pavlov 7mo ago
    They really changed the stock ticker to XYZ during the web3 hype years, just because lot of the scammy crypto startups used the .xyz TLD? Sheesh... That's like Atlassian changing its ticker to "VIBE" in desperation. Look kids, we're so in tune with you! Please come vibe on Jira!
• ta9000 7mo ago
  Just cancelled my CashApp account. This dude’s an idiot.
• bawana 7mo ago
  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.
• hansmayer 7mo ago
  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?
• piokoch 7mo ago
  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...
• albatross79 7mo ago
  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.
  • otabdeveloper4 7mo ago
    Isn't "Block" the company with a bunch of half-baked crypto investments? Methinks "AI" is only a figleaf here.
• maxehmookau 7mo ago
  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.
• dzonga 7mo ago
  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 https://xcancel.com/jack/status/2027290756793135253 I.E OVER-HIRED
  • mancerayder 7mo ago
    It doesn't matter if the main reason is they over-hired. Financial services is going to eat it up, there are eyes going wide all over the place in the C-suites, I am certain. Companies/Funds that own other companies see an opportunity to reduce input costs (human costs). Even if over-hiring and AI are both explained reasons, the second one is going to win out as it's a narrative that lines up with what their goal is, to reduce costs. Now the question is will that sustain? Are 50% of us doomed? Is it temporary, and a reversal will take place? Will it start and sputter?
    • izacus 7mo ago
      "over-hired" seems like mostly copium of engineers being very afraid that their company will discard them like this and are trying to rationalize why they won't follow.
      • mjr00 7mo ago
        I don't think it's copium because it doesn't really matter if it's due to AI or COVID-era ZIRP-infused overhiring. If your company hasn't done multiple rounds of layoffs since 2022, they're going to come.
        • generic92034 7mo ago
          It depends. Maybe constant escalations at customers with unmaintainable products comes first.
• skeeter2020 7mo ago
  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.
• QuiEgo 7mo ago
  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.
  • dayvid 7mo ago
    For a lot of high value per employee businesses it usually makes more sense to hire local. Offshoring is usually for jobs that don’t directly generate profits and more of a necessity. If you’re a programmer you shouldn’t work for a company where coding isn’t a profit center
• btarmstrong 7mo ago
  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.
• quantumsequoia 7mo ago
  Test
• megamix 7mo ago
  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.
• encom 7mo ago
  >we're not making this decision because we're in trouble Oh boy, I've heard that one before. They're in trouble.
• ge96 7mo ago
  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.
• saos 7mo ago
  > 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
• daxfohl 7mo ago
  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).
  • bigyabai 7mo ago
    This is the first time I've ever heard of Temporal.
    • FromTheFirstIn 7mo ago
      If you’re doing any heavy asynchronous work you should look into it. It’s truly game changing.
• inder1 7mo ago
  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.
• chabes 7mo ago
  Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47183660 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47183660
• CqtGLRGcukpy 7mo ago
  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).
• tony2016 7mo ago
  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.
• rambojohnson 7mo ago
  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.
• Rummelj 7mo ago
  the part that gets me is "our business is strong, gross profit continues to grow." they didnt fire 4000 people because things were bad. they fired them because things were good enough that AI could handle the rest. thats a fundamentally different kind of layoff and i dont think we have the language for it yet. theres a novel i read recently (the silicon ceiling, jude sterling) where a swiss farmer gets a report telling him to cull his oldest cow because the algorithm says its inefficient. he knows the cow is fine but the spreadsheet says otherwise. thats basically what happened at block except the cows are software engineers. and the spreadsheet was right about the margins.
• flashbaby 7mo ago
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• irenetusuq 7mo ago
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