Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Layoffs at Block

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

501–510 of 1001 posts

Re: Layoffs at Block

#501

Post by pembrook »

akutlay wrote: post #492
pembrook wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole thing reads to me like he's not deflecting blame at all, he's explicitly saying he's putting the employees through this. > just a piss poor excuse for bad management and short-sighted vision I mean, the guy has built multiple publicly traded companies and scaled them to thousands of employees from the ground up (an exceedingly rare feat), and is admitting he didn't see the AI thing coming. Almost nobody did…

> and is admitting he didn't see the AI thing coming You miss the point that this is not about AI in the first place

If we're being generous we could say mayyybe 20% of the layoffs are accountable to overhiring during ZIRP.

Block was doing $4B in revenue with 4K employees in 2019 before the pandemic.

They're now doing $24B in revenue with 10K employees and are going to cut near to those previous employee levels. That's a 5X jump in revenue per employee from the pre-covid, pre-AI levels.

If you don't think code becoming 1,000X cheaper to produce doesn't radically change the number of employees needed inside a technology org, then it's time to put down the copium pipe.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#502

Post by neya »

y1n0 wrote: post #427
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…

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

When you accept my application, there is an implicit understanding that I will have a job for a foreseeable future. I am making life decisions based on YOU, the CEO - I have to think about commute, renting, school for kids and a lot more. All you need to think about is my pay-check.

And once you fuck up, you still get your nice fat cheque and bonus, but I'm very realistically looking at relocating and/or unemployment for a very long time and possibly homelessness. You will be hailed as a hero by the board for saving them money, I will be painted a villain by everyone in my family...just for believing in you and your empty words. I'm not even mentioning the side effects of health I get as a result (possible anxiety, depression, blood pressure, etc.)

Services rendered is an acceptable excuse for a contractor relationship, not employees. If that's how you view employees, then good luck with your business.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#503

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Layoffs at Block

#504

Post by adithyassekhar »

borroka wrote: post #430
dimgl wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you do now?

Being rejected every day, thus subjecting myself to the humiliating ritual of modern times, by companies that I believe could make the most of my talent (my last title was Director of AI, before I was a Staff ML Scientist at a FAANG and an award-winning scientist). They all seem rather disappointed, at least in the automated rejection emails (mailboxes not monitored, of course) they send me, that they have found othe…

Could it be that these other candidates work for cheaper? They might be scared of your credentials. It's disheartening that this field has come to a race to the bottom, accelerated by AI. It's not the juniors that are at risk, it's the seniors.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#505

Post by anitil »

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…

To be honest I prefer this type of communication over the I-can't-believe-it's-not-layoffs that my previous employer was doing. At least it's honest that it is a decision they've made.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#506

Post by neya »

pembrook wrote: post #480
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…

The whole thing reads to me like he's not deflecting blame at all, he's explicitly saying he's putting the employees through this. > just a piss poor excuse for bad management and short-sighted vision I mean, the guy has built multiple publicly traded companies and scaled them to thousands of employees from the ground up (an exceedingly rare feat), and is admitting he didn't see the AI thing coming. Almost nobody did…

> he didn't see the AI thing coming. Almost nobody did.

That's what he wants you to believe. That is just an easy way out for CEOs to blame it all on AI and not take accountability for their over-hiring in the first place.

Literally on their homepage:

"Block builds technology for economic empowerment"

How can you claim to build technology for "economic empowerment" if you couldn't see through the AI coming? The trend started like 4-5 years ago.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#507

Post by com2kid »

hirsin wrote: post #321
alephnerd wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm convinced that these "AI Layoffs" are these companies trying to save face from the absurd overhiring that they did in 2022 and 2023 because apparently they thought that these no-interest loans/free money would just last forever. Partially. The first nail in the coffin was the change in assumptions around output. Before 2023, there was an assumption that more bodies means more output. After the massive X/Twitter…

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

Everyone predicted twitter would crash and burn within months of the layoffs.

It didn't.

Anyone who has worked at a large company knows that 1/2 the staff there is stuck keeping the lights on because it is easier to hire a warm body than fix tech debt.

I've worked at companies that are literally 10x more effective than other competitors in the market purely due to good engineering practices.

Even within large companies, you can have orgs that are dramatically more effective than others, often due to having to work under just the right set of resource constraints. Too little and no investments in the future, too much and it becomes easiest to build fast and hire people to duct tape the mess that is left behind.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#508

Post by darth_avocado »

deadbabe wrote: post #500
keeda wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I swear people should start blacklisting CEOs and refuse to work under them if they're part of the blacklist. Look at the job market. They know they can get away with it and so they don't care. My current theory is that this is partly why executives are desperate to get AI to work, and why investors are ploughing billions into AI. They know they've burnt too many bridges, and they need AI to work so they never have…

Your theory is wrong. Someone will inevitably have to prompt AIs, CEOs and other executives are NOT going to be doing it themselves. The people driving those AI will have greater leverage as less and less people choose a career in tech. Also, when an AI fucks up in a way only a human can fix, the human must be available. What I see more likely is a future where software engineers do even less work but frustratingly y…

> Also, when an AI fucks up in a way only a human can fix, the human must be available

Actually its more “when an AI fucks up in a way AI that you need a human to take the blame, the human must be available”

Re: Layoffs at Block

#509

Post by dr_kretyn »

pembrook wrote: post #480
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…

The whole thing reads to me like he's not deflecting blame at all, he's explicitly saying he's putting the employees through this. > just a piss poor excuse for bad management and short-sighted vision I mean, the guy has built multiple publicly traded companies and scaled them to thousands of employees from the ground up (an exceedingly rare feat), and is admitting he didn't see the AI thing coming. Almost nobody did…

I'm generally anti-corpo and capitalism but I agree with you. The guy could've done better but so far he's on a good trajectory and much much better than most. Doesn't mean that he isn't going to make mistakes nor that this might turn out badly but that's the point of leading - making bets.

It sucks to be fired but if I'm a year time everyone lost a job it'd suck even more.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#510

Post by jackblemming »

pembrook wrote: post #480
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…

The whole thing reads to me like he's not deflecting blame at all, he's explicitly saying he's putting the employees through this. > just a piss poor excuse for bad management and short-sighted vision I mean, the guy has built multiple publicly traded companies and scaled them to thousands of employees from the ground up (an exceedingly rare feat), and is admitting he didn't see the AI thing coming. Almost nobody did…

> What's the last 10,000+ employee org you founded and scaled?

A lot of smart and talented people could do this if given the opportunity. Jack was at the right place at the right time and had enough talent. Same with Elon and others. That’s kind of what happens when you have a population of hundreds of millions, a few get lucky and have enough talent to not screw it up.

It’s best to avoid being delusional and acting like billionaires are 5000 IQ geniuses. They’re regular people too, albeit, yes they are smarter than the average person you pull out of Walmart.

There are also plenty of smart people who simply do not care to run or start businesses.

Post reply on HN