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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 e
by t-writescode 8mo 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 8mo agobecause that doesn't increase shareholder value, at least in the short term, which is all anyone cares about now.
- charcircuit 8mo agoHave you not noticed the massive datacenter build out consuming tons of capital right now?
- gdilla 7mo agosure? and helped paid for culling their workforce, hiring slow downs, and charging higher pricse.
- Swizec 8mo 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 :)
- operatingthetan 8mo agoIt seems like the tech job market is exactly the opposite of this right now? Could you be more specific?
- ej88 8mo agotrimodal swe compensation (elite, big tech, everyone else) extends to the job markets too
- operatingthetan 8mo agoThey generalized "the market." I know a lot of out of work SWEs right now.
- ej88 8mo agois there any data about the overall job market on whether it's been good or bad? genuinely curious the most recent data point shows a rebound https://www.citadelsecurities.com/news-and-insights/2026-global-intelligence-crisis/ https://www.citadelsecurities.com/news-and-insights/2026-glo... and fwiw i dont know any swes struggling to find work personally swe is so broad and in bubbles its hard to get an objective analysis
- yesb 8mo agoTheir graph shows a rebound to early-mid 2024 levels which is promising but still a relatively bad job market
- ej88 8mo agoi guess it depends on what you define as bad and what that threshold is https://trueup.io/job-trend https://trueup.io/job-trend this tracker shows continuous improvement since 2023
- 8mo ago
- pmdr 8mo agoMore profits, line mustn't just go up, line must go higher. Giving away the devices is like saying "we're replacing both you and your device with AI and it's not like that device will help you get another job in this market anyway, good luck lol."
- reactordev 8mo agoNo, the job market is dead outside of implementing workflows for AI.
- akshshha 8mo agoMost C levels adhere to the “cattle, not pets” idea too.
- unreal6 8mo ago> 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 We are no longer in a zero-interest rate environment, so I think those experiments are more costly than they were a few years go
- jcims 8mo ago>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? To avoid laying them off in next year's job market. Dripping a 10% cut every year for the next four years when you *know* that you're going to do it is cowardice.
- camdenreslink 8mo agoNobody can know they will need to lay off 10% multiple years from now. So many things can change between now and then. For all Block knows, AI for coding kind of plateaus where it is now and there is a huge boom in software engineer hiring taking advantage of the new tech to produce even more/better features.
- coffeebeqn 8mo agoPart of the trouble for software companies is that AI hype is sucking 99% of investments in the space. You might have a solid but non-sexy software business and struggle to find the investment you need
- jwilber 8mo agoOr empathetic, especially when they throw money away à la $70M parties: “General and administrative expenses increased by $68.1m ... The increase was primarily driven by … an in-person company event held in Q3 2025”
- toast0 8mo agoMaybe I'm a big capitalist, but 5 months of severance seems very generous; a job hasn't been a commitment that the company will take care of you forever in several generations. Covering you until the middle of this year should go a long way, and yeah the job market is messed up, but at least it's not mid-November where holidays mean hiring falls off the rails.
- Ancalagon 8mo agoJust wondering, have you been unemployed for 6+ mos before?
- toast0 8mo agoNot really, no. I was underemployed for 6+ months at the start of my career, but it's easier to take whatever is available at that point. I did some data entry and then first tier ops desk restart the server when the light turns red stuff, before I got a "real job". Doing that mid career and keeping a good attitude would be difficult. But I would think 5 months paid time before you have to go on state unemployment is significantly better than the WARN act minimum of 60 days of notice or pay or the alternative of a campaign to raise attrition. Looks like recent google/meta layoffs are 4 months, so it's 25% better than that. I always thought I wanted to get a package, but I recognize that I would probably not have been happy if it happened.
- akoboldfrying 8mo agoBeing let go from a job sucks. So does being dumped from a relationship. You might not be able to find another relationship in 6+ months. But I don't think people would seriously propose that people should therefore not be able to leave a relationship.
- veryemartguy 8mo ago[flagged]
- akoboldfrying 8mo ago
- ej88 8mo agoobviously he's going to posture his company as growing and doing well, but clearly not enough for the board and shareholders given their headcount growth from zirp some companies are in the position to go for moonshots and block hasn't panned out
- singpolyma3 8mo agoWrong? A company doesn't owe anyone a job. Either they need the employee or they don't.
- KittenInABox 8mo agoI feel like the idea that X doesn't owe you Y is fundamentally at odds with the fact that humans are a cooperative species and survive the best when they are cooperating. A choir can hold a note together because individuals can stop singing to breathe, safely covered by peers who will take their turn to breathe later. What is the point of organizing socially if not for the benefit of all society members? I know we have to balance inefficiency and optimal allocation of resources... but I agree it doesn't seem optimal for social wellbeing to remove people from their access to health and risking their ability to house and feed themselves without a financial need to do so (like Block going bankrupt).
- simianwords 8mo agofundamentally you see jobs as more important than the end product. this is a tension i keep finding in many minds.
- KittenInABox 8mo agoI see fundamentally human wellbeing as more important. Jobs are just the structure society has built as a gateway for this.
- simianwords 8mo agoexactly - end consumers like you and me will end up having to pay for their jobs indirectly. i personally want products i purchase to be cheaper and i don't want to be paying for products that are costly simply because they are hiring people for "human wellbeing". i would rather people work in productive places than just exist in a company for some reason.
- ssnistfajen 8mo agoYou are trying to see employees as more than just statistics which is not what CEOs are doing. They are not empathising with 4k employees because they are not seeing 4k human beings through multiple layers of abstraction. To survive at their job they have to choose abstraction. The human brain doesn't have the capacity to simultaneously comprehend the complex needs and emotions of 4000 other human beings without burning out. Yes this sucks, but this mode of operation for our society was repeatedly chosen through centuries of experimentation. We all asked for this, literally.
- semitones 8mo ago> We all asked for this, literally. Well - if "we" refers to the original selfish gene (à la Dawkins), then yes - modern capitalism has manifested as an emergent property of the core evolutionary principle. I suppose you could say that about virtually anything however...
- wiseowise 8mo ago> To survive at their job they have to choose abstraction. Or just be a psychopath.
- brap 8mo agoBecause they’re not running a charity
- missedthecue 8mo ago"Why not … try new industries, play around, try to become the next Mitsubishi or Samsung or General Electric." Betting the company on becoming a conglomerate is just not a great strategy. It is almost always smarter to focus on what you do best, "core competencies" in MBA-speak. Positive EV bets are hard to come buy. There aren't an unlimited number of them.
- groundzeros2015 8mo agoIf you think 5 months is bad, try none. Job loss is a reality. Don’t become emotionally invested in it never happening to you.
- onlyrealcuzzo 8mo agoIs this actual five months severance? Or five months base pay with no vesting? Most people are making >50% of their income in RSUs.
- School-Cotton 8mo agoThe answer to this is in the post.
- lotsofpulp 8mo ago> If the profits are still up and growing Block has never really made a real profit. These layoffs are basically saying the company is no longer in moonshot mode and it’s now in the extraction phase of whatever it has, which means increase prices for whatever it sells and decrease expenses, i.e. payroll. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/XYZ/block/net-income https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/XYZ/block/net-inco...
- gwbas1c 8mo agoThe people let go can form their own companies. I don't believe anyone has a guarantee to have a high paying white collar job until they choose to retire. Five months severance is quite generous; during that time "their job is to get a job."
- TheJoeMan 8mo agoEven better, start a new company with the previous coworkers who are all versed in the same industry as you just left! Block is profitable, so there’s a lunch to eat.
- hn_throwaway_99 8mo ago> Why not … try new industries, play around, try to become the next Mitsubishi or Samsung or General Electric. They literally did that. The irony is that the top comment is pointing out (correctly, IMO) how Block had all these people working on speculative projects for years and none of them really panned out.
- wiseowise 8mo ago> 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? Bold of you to assume he gives a single shit about it.
- stronglikedan 8mo ago> does this CEO really think these employees will find new work in that time? In this job market? Yes, because there's always work somewhere. People that can't find jobs are often just unwilling to move to where the jobs are, or unwilling to take jobs that they think are beneath them.
- mbesto 8mo agoI really don't understand the notion that a company owes you a job for work that doesn't produce a financial result for them.
- quacker 8mo agoThey don’t because of at-will employment. It’s just sort of the more moral, empathetic, right thing to do instead of leaving them with no income, no insurance, etc.