alt Hacker NewsLayoffs at Block
Comments
> 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!
Block owns Square and Tidal. Let's show Jack how efficient we can be by canceling those sh...ervices. Claude can use them.
https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=47057908&goto=item%3Fi...
Called it. This will be for every single software company. Maybe all companies.
> 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.
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"?
Block was incredibly bloated. This guy is correct: https://x.com/BamaBonds/status/2027142091596288314?s=20
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.
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.
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
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
Is this because of goose (developed by block), the ai agent framework stripe forked and created minions ??
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.
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.
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?
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?"
you can tell he is a cracked out based tech ceo because he doesn't use capital letters
There has to be a good word to describe people like Jack Dorsey.
World class software tinkerer, but no business running a public company.
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 ?
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.
"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
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.
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
I have decided you will work twice as hard because I’m not as rich as Elon.
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.
Nearly half of their employees. And yet economists tell us, AI isn't going to affect jobs.
"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.
Chopping block
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?
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.
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.
This freed capital is going into AI agent budgets. Expect lower quotas and higher prices
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.
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?
Stock goes up in expectation of ... CEOs doing share buybacks to increase their bonus checks.
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.
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...
He cant write in proper case to lay off $4k people?
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.
Vibe management at its finest
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
this is brutal. :(
my mentor was on the chopping block too.
block btw now makes most of its money on bitcoin transactions not software
This guy really hates capital letters
If only David Graeber were alive to see that Boards have finally started to appreciate his 2018 Book, Bullshit Jobs.
Block owns Tidal? who knew
> 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.
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.