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Layoffs at Block

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Re: Layoffs at Block

#51

Post by lp4v4n »

itmitica wrote: post #8

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.

>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.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#52

Post by iaaan »

mattbillenstein wrote: post #30
htrp wrote: post #5

>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 an…

Even if the AI piece isn't really true - smaller flatter teams will move faster anyway. I always wonder having worked in a lot of startups with 10-50ppl, what on earth a business does with 10000.

Seconded. My experience has been that -- even while still complying with lots of overhead (e.g. government regulations and compliance) -- smaller teams of 1-3 devs move waaaaay faster than teams of 4-10. Could definitely speak to the overall codebase quality or some other factor, but yeah.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#54

Post by peanuty1 »

triceratops wrote: post #24

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.

They're going from over 10k employees to just under 6k. So more than 40%.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#55

Post by peanuty1 »

triceratops wrote: post #24

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.

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.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#56

Post by softwaredoug »

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

Re: Layoffs at Block

#60

Post by jcims »

t-writescode wrote: post #28

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 Mitsubis…

>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.

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