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Layoffs at Block

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Re: Layoffs at Block

#561

Post by lr4444lr »

taurath wrote: post #545

This reminds me of the meme of Margaret Thatcher: "And There is No Alternative" - a way to justify the policies she desired to implement and attempt to preempt any other view. We're supposed to believe Jack is a victim of circumstance. He hired all those people, and now he has no choice but to fire them - he wasn't clairvoyant to the future when he hired all those people, or else he'd known he would have had to fire…

I dislike Jack going back several years, but I think in this instance he's admitting that he's taking responsibility between weighing the risk of doing this vs. not doing this. Maybe morale will tank anyway and the company will hold on, but be out-innovated by competitors that invested in growth. There are future outcomes that could prove he made the wrong call, and I any time layoffs are announced, there is a tacit mea culpa about past over-hiring.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#562

Post by mandevil »

viraptor wrote: post #322
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…

> After the massive X/Twitter layoffs (60-70% headcount culled) with X/Twitter still standing, this assumption was clearly proven false. Twitter at the same time removed features to have fewer things to support. And didn't implement anything new (or really fix much) for ages. It's not the same service that was standing afterwards. And the "still standing" ignores the part where they started serving empty timelines, r…

The thing is, as an outsider to Twitter but with 20 years of experience doing software dev including some time at internet scale web and mobile, I don't think that the basic "fetch a timeline" backend plus two front end apps and a web interface is that hard, a small team (Most of the effort in the original Twitter- engineering and everything else- was about getting advertising revenue. That meant 1) Having good data mining to identify user interests to match ads against 2) Having a strong user experience like Meta Ads or AdSense for the ad buyers 3) Keeping the conversations such that advertisers wanted to be associated with it, both automated and manual censorship 4) Having good relationships with advertisers, both large clients and agencies

That was where the majority of Twitter's (dev and non-engineering both) effort was going, to bringing in the revenue from advertisers. When Elon Musk purchased Twitter advertising fell dramatically immediately, at basically the same time he gutted all of the people doing the advertising. That was why he tried "buying a blue-check" and so many premium features, because he got rid of all the infrastructure necessary to have a serious ads platform. And premium doesn't work, of course, as anyone with experience in the Internet world could have told him. Which is why the value of the company- and its revenues- have declined so dramatically since the acquisition.

Bluesky is basically doing the same thing as X right down to also not running ads, which is how they also manage to run on a small team. Last I checked they'd raised less than 20m, and have basically no revenue, so they are able to operate very lean. It's for the same reason that Twitter is a lot smaller now: ads are a huge engineering and non-tech effort. As Alphabet and Meta remind us, it can be insanely profitable, but you need a lot of people to get it right.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#563

Post by tqi »

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...

Re: Layoffs at Block

#564

Post by nradov »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #485
nradov wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's still enormous potential for technology solutions in the healthcare space. The population in every developed country is getting older and sicker. AI can help a little bit with building those solutions but there are no magic bullets: we still need lots of people grinding away on hard problems.

Perhaps this is too US-centric, but as someone who used to work in health fintech, I strongly disagree. The US healthcare system is well and truly f'd, but I think 98% of these issue are government and society policy issues. If anything, I see so many companies trying to take advantage of the complete dysfunction in the US healthcare system to be yet another middlemen siphoning money from systemwide inefficiencies.

There's a lot more to healthcare than just fintech. I've been the field for decades and I've never seen such rapid progress before in areas like clinical and administrative interoperability, digital health, software as a medical device, telehealth, clinical decision support, cost transparency, etc. Despite the structural problems with incentives that create that make the financial side so dysfunctional, there has never been a better time to build.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#565

Post by Xeronate »

daxfohl wrote: post #48

We'll see how much the AI aspect is true by whether they're thinning out teams equally, or just axing whole initiatives. My impression of Block was that it was mostly a one-trick pony (okay, two if you include CashApp) with a bunch of side initiatives that never seemed to pan out, so I'm expecting it to be more of the latter, with this being more of an admission that they're now in "maintenance mode". Either way, I t…

I think your final sentence is more accurate than your churn argument. AI doesn't double output, but actually writing the code is only a small part of the job.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#566

Post by SecretDreams »

morelandjs wrote: post #433
daxfohl wrote: post #48

We'll see how much the AI aspect is true by whether they're thinning out teams equally, or just axing whole initiatives. My impression of Block was that it was mostly a one-trick pony (okay, two if you include CashApp) with a bunch of side initiatives that never seemed to pan out, so I'm expecting it to be more of the latter, with this being more of an admission that they're now in "maintenance mode". Either way, I t…

You took the words out of my mouth. In a megacorp, AI multiplies into about 10% of my work and 10x’s it making me roughly 10% more efficient. When I use AI for side projects and don’t have to work with a bunch of stakeholders, dependency owners, and opinionated management, that 10x multiplies into my full effort and the project moves 10x faster.

Yep. I find it helps best when I'm off script/going rogue doing something that I think will help, rather than working with 10 other people all with different opinions and knowledge that just absolutely bogs something down.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#567

Post by AdieuToLogic »

alephnerd wrote: post #306
tombert wrote: post #270

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. No one really "knows" how to grow businesses so the easiest way to spend a lot of money quickly is hiring lots of people, whether or not they are "necessary". Then this free money dries u…

> 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…

This is the recommendation I have heard peers, both technical and managerial, echo for years in one form or another:

  4. Upskill professionally. We're not hiring code monkeys 
  for $200K-400K TC. We want Engineers who can communicate 
  business problems into technical requirements. This means 
  also understanding the industry your company is in, how to 
  manage up to leadership, and what are the revenue drivers 
  and cost centers of your employer. Learn how to make a 
  business case for technical issues. If you cannot 
  communicate why refactoring your codebase from Python to 
  Golang would positively impact topline metrics, no one will 
  prioritize it.
The above involves one thing people can possess which GenAI cannot; understanding stakeholder problems which need to be solved and then doing so.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#568

Post by ezfe »

vessenes wrote: post #487
danpalmer wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I appreciate the one clean cut vs prolonged bleeding. That's a false dichotomy, you could reduce headcount via attrition which is better in some ways. There's also no reasoning on product impact. Is the strategy to cut products that aren't making money? Is the strategy to cut 40% across everyone because everyone can go faster? > Owning the decision Does it? It came across to me as an inevitability of AI, not "we ov…

You cannot attrite 40% of the company in 5 months, without creating an incredibly toxic environment. Dorsey knows this; ultimately he lost Twitter over his inability to right size it. I would bet dollars to donuts he promised himself he wouldn't do it again - under no circumstances is 40% cut over six months preferable to a clean fast cut.

Voluntary severance/ERO is possible without a bad culture. I’ve seen it done, people love it.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#569

Post by Lammy »

lr4444lr wrote: post #561
taurath wrote: post #545

This reminds me of the meme of Margaret Thatcher: "And There is No Alternative" - a way to justify the policies she desired to implement and attempt to preempt any other view. We're supposed to believe Jack is a victim of circumstance. He hired all those people, and now he has no choice but to fire them - he wasn't clairvoyant to the future when he hired all those people, or else he'd known he would have had to fire…

I dislike Jack going back several years, but I think in this instance he's admitting that he's taking responsibility between weighing the risk of doing this vs. not doing this. Maybe morale will tank anyway and the company will hold on, but be out-innovated by competitors that invested in growth. There are future outcomes that could prove he made the wrong call, and I any time layoffs are announced, there is a tacit…

It reads as hypocritical because he frames it as himself making a sacrifice when what he's really taking responsibility for is choosing the outcome that makes himself the most money.

He owns 1 million Class A shares and 79.7%(!!!) of Block's Class B shares: https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001512673/0cb664c...

Re: Layoffs at Block

#570

Post by [deleted] »

singpolyma3 wrote: post #425
KittenInABox wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So you think companies should hire and pay employees they don't have any use for out of charity?

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