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Jack Dorsey says Block employees now bring prototypes, not slides, to meetings
- delphic-frog 7mo agoI feel like he's just doing it for attention.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- MidnightRider39 7mo agoSeems like it’s working
- pwarner 7mo agoI work at a less innovative place, and I see out product managers coming with prototypes, at least solid mock ups rather than just a jira. They socialize it with potential users, they iterate, they find missing requirements, it's pretty powerful. The net result is we're building better features faster.
- game_the0ry 7mo ago[flagged]
- FromTheFirstIn 7mo agoHow can you be less innovative than Block? Their products are 100% ripoffs of better products
- mrits 7mo agoI prefer prototyping to slides. The reason is it helps me understand the problem and edge cases better. Getting AI to build means you could potentially understand it even less than if you put the slides together. Hiring talent that is passionate about delivering a quality product is more important than ever considering there are so many ways to take shortcuts now that might not be obvious until later.
- alephnerd 7mo agoCan confirm this in my portco's and a couple other peers (one of whom previously founded a major threat intel platform). If you have product-minded Engineers and engineering-minded PMs, you can merge the two into a single function and remove much of the friction surrounding requirements, prototyping, and launching MVPs. A couple of these products are already being deployed by F100 security teams as we speak. I also know of one F10 that's building it's own entire security platform from scratch with a team of security engineers working directly with one of the foundation model vendors. Too many people on HN are divorced or too OOTL from some of these initiatives and then get blindsided during layoffs. What matters now is DOMAIN EXPERIENCE. Do you understand good development principles and the problem your ICP is trying to solve and how pricing, packaging, and procurement is structured? I don't need a code monkey, process sloths, and queens of the calendar. I need domain experts who can actually execute.
- wenc 7mo agoWe need to match the tool to the uncertainty we're facing. The "just prototype it" thinking addresses "feasibility uncertainty". It surfaces blind spots and helps people tangibly reason about what the product looks like. It's a great exploratory tool for incremental ideas. But it doesn't address the the larger uncertainty that startups are faced with: "market uncertainty" (or pmf). It doesn't answer "should we be building in this the first place?" That's where writing as a tool of thought is most powerful -- it helps you crystallize what problem we're actually solving. The "just prototype it" culture (which is being promoted these days because Claude Code makes it easy) risks answering the wrong question, or at least the right question but in the wrong order. You end up with organizations that are incredibly fast at building things that no one should have built. Ironically sometimes you need to start from a lower resolution (i.e. writing a doc). Prototyping too early is premature optimization.
- pjjpo 6mo agoI really agree with a lot of this but also think it may be hitting a bit too hard. It may be most applicable to engineer founders. My anecdote is that, after a few stings with non-technical founders, a doc etc will not improve the chances to reach PMF and prototypes that they can understand can improve the chance. Outside of the startup context, I have also seen prototypes (hand written way back when that was a thing) resonate with FAANG directors much more than brainstorming. I am very much for not just vibe it, and the biggest risk of prototypes is they lend to just directly launching broken systems to production. But I think this is a different topic than reaching PMF.
- hapless 7mo agoAfter his stunt with the mass firings "because of AI," employees now bring prototypes, not slides, to meetings with Jack Dorsey. These clowns live in a dreamworld created by their PAs and cronies
- alephnerd 7mo agoMost early stage companies are now doing the same thing as well. It's basically a re-invention of the "build fast and test" model that was the norm amongst startups in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Yes it led to some degree of tech debt, but it also made it easier to experiment, validate, and identify good and bad workflows. At least in my network, we don't think AI will replace all workers and we strongly believe AI will lead to a significant amount of tech debt, but we do also recognize a lot of work in tech today is busywork and will be automated away in the hands of actual engineers with domain expertise.
- irjne 7mo agoThe build fast and test model was nonsense to begin with. Ultimately it’s a way of saying “I have no vision so I just want to quickly throw a bunch of shit on the wall and see what sticks”.
- alephnerd 7mo agoHow is it nonsense? Vision doesn't matter - customer feedback matters. You start off with a hypothesis (X will solve Y's problem by doing ...), you build a prototype, and then you start testing with multiple Ys. Based on that feedback, you then tweak your initial hypothesis or you scrap it and pivot. The whole point of engineering is to build tools that solve a specific class of problems for the buyer.
- irjne 7mo ago[dead]
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- 0xy 7mo agoIf Block were experiencing rapid productivity improvements from AI why is their flagship Square product still worse than Toast? Toast is eating their lunch day after day.
- FromTheFirstIn 7mo agoAnd why is Tidal’s library so much smaller than Spotify’s? And why would I use Cash App if they’re going to try to make it “an interface for AI”?
- altmanaltman 7mo ago> "I hate the way people use slide presentations instead of thinking," Jobs once said, according to a book published last month by David Pogue. I wonder what he'll think about these vibecoded prototypes and if it's more thinking or less thinking
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- buildbot 7mo agoBlock signed a friend of mine, they quit their other job, then block was like whoops layoffs including people like this person who hadn’t even started. Super unethical.
- ed_elliott_asc 7mo agoI’ve been in IT for 25 years, it has happened to me once, unfortunately it isn’t that uncommon.
- buildbot 7mo agoIn the USA at least sure. This was in a country with lightly better employment protections so it’s quite uncommon.
- MidnightRider39 7mo agoIn Germany we have pretty good employment protections (I think at least!), but this would be legal too. You have a 3 month grace period where the employer can terminate the contract without giving much reason - you gotta survive this period then the protections kick in and they can’t just terminate the contract without a justification and notice period. It sucks but I think in this case even the best protections won’t help much.
- throw-the-towel 7mo agoOnly 3 months? I had 7 months in France.
- bowsamic 7mo agoIt's usually 6 months probation in Germany, not 3 months
- Aurornis 7mo agoCounterintuitively, systems with heavier employment protections can make it more common to cut recent hires. Employment protections usually come with a probationary period before they kick in, so employers can remove bad hires early. This creates an incentive to remove new hires before their probationary period is up if they're showing any signs they might not be the best candidate for the job. Even when new hires are good and the company wants to keep them, heavy employment protections favor longer term employees. If the business environment changes and they need to reduce headcount their hands may be tied in ways that require cutting the new hires before the tenured employees. This happens a lot in labor unions, too, where tenured employees have greater standing than new hires when push comes to shove and someone needs to go, regardless of performance.
- The_Goonies1985 7mo ago[dead]
- techblueberry 7mo ago"Just two months ago every meeting that we would have, you see a presentation or a Google Doc and we go through it," Dorsey said. 2 months ago they were still using PowerPoints? Jesus no wonder they had to lay so many people off. What the fuck is going on over there?
- The_Goonies1985 7mo ago>2 months ago they were still using PowerPoints? Three months ago they were still using Wordstar on IBM XTs. Block is a retro-computing powerhouse.
- tdeck 7mo agoWhen I worked at Square 10 years ago it was either Google Slides or occasionally a Keynote presentation. I doubt they've switched to PowerPoint.
- risyachka 7mo agoI bet, considering the massive skill needed for it: "hey claude, turn this presentation into a prototype".
- kangraemin 7mo ago[flagged]
- lokar 7mo agoOr new infrastructure. You bring a demo of a new distributed transaction manager?
- malfist 7mo ago> theater That's exactly what you have to do for the CEO class
- cassianoleal 7mo agoI went to a meeting with a prototype once. It was a single happy path with stubbed data, coded in the most naïve way possible. It was, after all, a prototype just to give a feel for what the interactions would be like. It put enormous pressure on delivery, since leadership had "already seen it working, how hard could it be to make it to production?" Never again.
- eptcyka 7mo agoI wouldn’t say “Never again”, unless you put in the caveat that you shouldn’t do this again for the same leaders.
- grepfru_it 7mo agoYou still need the slides to communicate risk, cost, delivery estimates etc. a great way to get your own team and move up in the org
- wil421 7mo agoDid the same thing early in my career. Built a quick bootstrap website with like 5 pages and all the data was static. The backend was a year off. It was great for end users but the non-IT managers were dumb. Same issue about seeing something working and expecting the world.
- 7mo ago
- just_once 7mo agoI'm not sure what the flex is here. Is the idea that prototypes give the Permission Granter more fidelity into a proposal and therefore can make better decisions? Whereas before, with Slide Decks, the Permission Granter couldn't experience certain things and therefore couldn't make as good decisions to grant permissions? So in effect this remains a billionaire figure speaking from their own perspective and we're supposed to care?
- skeeter2020 7mo agoit's easier for the 6-layers-removed CEO to convince themselves that "it's pretty much done" when seeing a shaky prototype vs. a powerpoint.
- convexly 7mo agoAt face value this seemed cool, but the more I think about it slides or prototypes are the same thing, just a different kind of theater.
- puttycat 7mo ago"CEO said a thing" journalism, discussed on HN very recently: https://karlbode.com/ceo-said-a-thing-journalism/ https://karlbode.com/ceo-said-a-thing-journalism/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47577735 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47577735
- MeetingsBrowser 7mo agoIn this case, a CEO is reaffirming their decision to layoff thousands because of AI was the correct decision.
- nozzlegear 7mo ago"CEO retroactively justified a thing they did by saying a thing" journalism?
- zx8080 7mo agoJust "shit". No need to overthink it.
- y0eswddl 6mo agolol, what a gem (positive) that essay is turning into
- halJordan 6mo agoLiterally Ars Technica reviewing anything
- senko 6mo agoOMG yes. The most egregious in movie/tvshow trailer reviews. Who tf cares about a random quote included in the trailer? Here's a subtitle for a He-Man movie trailer from the other day: "Skeletor took my family and he destroyed our world." I mean, anything would have been better than that, and "Another attempt at live action movie based on 80s action figure" or even "in theatres on X.Y." would be Pulitzer material in comparison.
- dwedge 7mo agoMusk taking over Twitter took a lot of the spotlight off of Dorsey, as though it wasn't already a toxic plaxe. He got a second chance in the public eye to be the visionary that's "one of us" and he's doing his best to blow it
- Ozzie_osman 7mo agoI listened to his podcast episode on the Sequoia podcast a few days ago. Interestingly, his argument was "we don't need middle managers" and he plans to have all 6000 employees eventually report to him. In other words, companies don't need managers anymore. Except for one manager. Him.
- Esophagus4 7mo agoI think Google tried this a while ago (flattening the org). It didn’t work, so they went back to having managers.
- Ozzie_osman 7mo agoThey did, I actually worked there at the time, my manager had 140 directs. It obviously didn't work. But this time it will work. Because, AI, of course.
- Esophagus4 7mo agoWow, holy smokes… 140 directs. Kind of curious: what did the differences look like on a day to day in that sort of org structure?
- Ozzie_osman 7mo agoI met my manager when I joined once, then every 6 or 12 months for performance review (which was aggregated feedback from my peers that he took 2 minutes to talk through: "looks like you're doing fine, if you need anything, my EA can schedule more time"). PMs and Engineers made the prioritization decisions. If someone was severely underperforming, it'd probably take at least 6 months to notice. Projects would get shut down with very little notice (though I guess that's been a Google constant). Within two years they had added 3-4 more layers though, after realizing the managers were, after all, needed.
- skeeter2020 7mo ago
- samtheprogram 7mo agoSounds like Apple under Steve Jobs.
- lvl155 7mo agoPrototypes of what? What new products came out of Block in the past six years since pandemic? This makes it sound like Block is a place of innovations when it’s just a rent seeking enterprise.
- skeeter2020 7mo ago"CEO pushes incremental gain as huge disruption that proves prior controversial decision correct" - I need AI to tighten my headline. IME people good PMs already did this WITH slide decks, then tools like Balsamiq, and now AI tools, so it's made the process easier? quicker? people spend as much time but go further down actual implementation? Unfortunately I assume the last, which is too bad, but there doesn't seem to be a much story here.
- fredgrott 7mo agoI have to speak up.... Maybe if he had one freaking friend he would realize how effing stupid he has become... BTW, the easiest way to get fired right now...is to over-use AI in an attempt to fool a domain expert.....or in short do not use it to perform in senior position interviews! Yes, there is even a compliance post(podcast) about Delve talking about that context aspect of it...
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- al_borland 7mo agoIf I showed upper management a functional prototype in a first meeting about a future product, they would assume it was already done and ask when it could ship, while not accepting any dates further out than a month in the future. No way I’d set myself up for failure like that.
- alephnerd 7mo agoDepends on the organization. The organizations I've worked in and funded would recognize it's a prototype and then staff accordingly unless it a vibecoded portion of a cost center part of the product - those are fine to be one-and-done.
- loteck 7mo agoSince the crux of this seems to be about replacing middle managers, what do people think prevents AI from successfully managing 140 direct reports on day to day operations on behalf of a lone CEO? I'm reading "it doesn't work," but that sounds like more of a potential opportunity to me than a truism.
- skeeter2020 7mo agoMy take: a HUGE part of the day-to-day job is human aspects and social interaction; if you could get AI to cover this off (and IMO you can't and don't want to) why even have employees? There are way more efficient and cost-effective ways to get technical work executed.
- tonetheman 7mo ago[dead]
- iainctduncan 7mo agoAnd this is better how exactly? If you're running a business, do you not want to catch employees mistakes as early as possible? Most ideas are crap. I'd way rather they get elimated after someone spent an hour making slides than a day vibecoding a prototype. And then there is the problem that vibecoding is addictive so the more one has done of it on the prototype, the worse one's judgement of whether it's actually something worth building...
- duxup 7mo agoGenerally I feel like that I always could do this ... it just wasn't always requested / time budgeted / folks didn't expect or care.
- musicale 6mo ago> "I hate the way people use slide presentations instead of thinking," Jobs once said, according to a book published last month by David Pogue. "People who know what they're talking about don't need PowerPoint. "Keynote began as a computer program for Apple CEO Steve Jobs to use in creating the presentations for Macworld Conference and Expo and other Apple keynote events." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynote_(presentation_software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynote_(presentation_software...