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Layoffs at Block

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Re: Layoffs at Block

#461

Post by khazhoux »

neya wrote: post #421

> 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 an…

> 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 love that he casts it as:

a) a drawn-out downsizing that might stretch for years, which is clearly "bad" because no one likes uncertainty.

b) ripping the band-aid decisively, with the nobility of being an "honest" decision. and who doesn't appreciate honesty?

...because of course employees who get laid off, prefer to lose their jobs as soon as possible and know they served an honest ceo.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#462

Post by csallen »

no_wizard wrote: post #439
y1n0 wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How dare someone accept your application for employment and pay you money for services rendered. It's absurd!

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

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.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#463

Post by hibikir »

johnny_canuck wrote: post #442
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is pretty spot on. It's already been mentioned a ton before how many of these "we're having layoffs to better utilize AI" stories are really just cover for axing lots of unprofitable projects that were birthed during the ZIRP/early pandemic era. I think the additional wrinkle with AI is that it's having an impact, just not really in the way these execs are saying. Before ChatGPT, there was lots of specul…

> I think the scary thing going forward is that, over the past 25-30 years or so, tech provided a huge amount of the average wage growth, at least in the US. This is the thing that keeps me up at night. Tech has allowed a very solid middle class lifestyle for a lot of people. I can't think of another good paying job where someone is self-taught, or went to a 12-month certificate program at their local community colle…

Just one correction though: Your definition of middle class has to be super wide to call many tech jobs "solid middle class". It's not as if everyone ends up in the billionaire column, most definitions of middle class end with household income at $165k. Many in tech go over with one job. Once a family has two jobs and one is in tech, basically everyone counts as upper middle or above. With two tech jobs in a household, claiming middle class is often denying one's actual status.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#464

Post by ytoawwhra92 »

csallen wrote: post #462
no_wizard wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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…

> If you make bad enough decisions, your customers leave, your company dies, and/or you are fired by the board.

Not true. Buffet's written a lot of great stuff on this subject.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#465

Post by DoesntMatter22 »

Raidion wrote: post #331
hirsin wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Twitter layoffs being used as proof of _anything_ is misguided no matter what you're trying to say. If success is losing half their revenue, reverting to revenue numbers from a decade ago, I gotta know what failure looks like. You might argue that the revenue losses aren't correlated to their headcount changes and probably make a good argument, but I mean... It's not a great one

Really? Revenue loss was pretty directly tied to Elon replying and supporting some "jews vs whites" type posts in Nov 2023. That caused Apple, Coke, and many other large clients to stop advertising.

Mo biggie on revenue loss. They axed most of their staff and went from 2k devs to 30. Trade off seems fine

Re: Layoffs at Block

#466

Post by ahepp »

KittenInABox wrote: post #112
singpolyma3 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong? A company doesn't owe anyone a job. Either they need the employee or they don't.

I 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 ha…

I don't think it makes a lot of sense to put those responsibilities on individual firms. In the USA, achieving maximum employment has been a mandate for the Federal Reserve to achieve through monetary policy. There are many advantages to allowing individual firms to optimize for productivity. There are also a lot of harms caused by forcing firms to adopt unproductive methods. Even Keynes' joking solution for unemployment was that the treasury might bury bottles of money for private industry to dig up.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#467

Post by nusl »

geraneum wrote: post #456
nusl wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly have no idea. We're stuck either way. I don't know what to do. What do you do if all you know is code and you're helping yourself out of a job whether you like it or not? If you don't use AI you'll fall behind. If you do, you're accelerating your own redundancy. I wouldn't consider myself a champion for AI. If you read my comment history you'll see that. I don't preach its wonders or pretend that we're all…

I can sympathize. If you feel you’re in limbo, emotionally, and feel helpless, it’s natural. I’m in the same profession and what you’re experiencing is not unthinkable but sometimes depending on one’s life conditions, everything might seem more daunting than it should. I believe talking to a professional about this may help. I’d do the same. One thing I can say is that if we, as a collective of white collar workers g…

I wouldn’t call it limbo, and I don’t think I need therapy for this. It’s more like, the future is so uncertain but all signals are pointing in one direction.

Sure, you can say that you won’t fret much but if you’re in a place without much social security, you’re not going to have a safety net. The revolution might not be in your benefit either, if there is one, which would only come when more people have their AI bubble popped.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#468

Post by tempest_ »

princevegeta89 wrote: post #450
operatingthetan wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's for the people who still work there.

It surely still does look stupid for the same people though..

Do they make sure new employees all remove the shift key from their company laptop or is that limited by band?

Re: Layoffs at Block

#469

Post by kbos87 »

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.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#470

Post by marcus_holmes »

Marsymars wrote: post #458
heathrow83829 wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest limiting factor is user acquisition. Just because you can build a competitor in a weekend doesn't mean you can easily acquire a user base. it's dam hard to get users even if your product is twice as good and your giving it away for free!

The implied risk isn't more SaaS competitors, it's that B2B SaaS consumers will just code up their own product instead of going with a SaaS vendor.

Started seeing even B2C folks just get the LLM to do it, or code up a quick solution that does most of it.
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