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Layoffs at Block

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Re: Layoffs at Block

#161

Post by loktarogar »

MattGaiser wrote: post #124
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…

> with the fact that humans are a cooperative species and survive the best when they are cooperating. I dispute that this is a fact. Maybe within a small group, but startups shouldn't be possible if masses of more cooperating people led to better outcomes. A large company should always win there and that does not happen. > What is the point of organizing socially if not for the benefit of all society members? We don'…

Startups generally _don't_ end up with better outcomes. Large companies stay stable, startups are volatile and often end in failure.

Stability means removal of volatility, which means to stay stable they end up becoming more generalised, rather than the laser focus a small team like a startup can have. That laser focus can work out when applied to the right problem at the right time, but is very much not a guarantee.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#163

Post by simianwords »

MeetingsBrowser wrote: post #102

I don't understand anyone who says layoffs are due to improvements in AI tooling. "Thanks to LLMs, each worker can do twice the work they could before. Naturally we are firing half the company because ... business is good and ... too much productivity is bad?"

> Thanks to LLMs, each worker can do twice the work they could before. Naturally we are firing half the company because ... business is good and ... too much productivity is bad

this is an incorrect take. The company needs a certain amount of productivity at each point.

If not, how would you explain that they had only 10,000 employees and not 20,000? They could still remain profitable.

LLM's increased productivity and each person could do approximately 20% more work so it follows that they need fewer people. If not, they should have had 12,000 to begin with.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#164

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

bananamogul wrote: post #131
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…

"humans are a cooperative species" Humans are violent, self-centered tribalists. What species are you referring to? Not homo sapiens.

I think we Humans can be both cooperative species and violent,self-centered tribalists species and definitely all the grey area between the two at the same time as well.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#167

Post by michaelt »

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.

> I always wonder having worked in a lot of startups with 10-50ppl, what on earth a business does with 10000.

If a small business needs to send a replacement widget to a customer in a foreign country, they label it "$0 value" (as it's a free replacement part) and mail it with a swipe of a corporate credit card.

If a large business needs to do the same thing, the sender asks the mail room, giving them a budget code and delivery address; the mail room contacts the widget designer for a HTS code, size and weight; then contacts their shipping broker for a quote; then contacts the finance department to raise a purchase order; the finance department contacts the budget code owner for spend approval; then raises a purchase order; then forwards it to the sender who forwards it to the post room who forwards it to the shipping broker who arrange a collection. Later the shipping broker will send the post room an invoice against the purchase order, which they'll send on to finance, who'll query the sender who'll approve paying the invoice.

> Even if the AI piece isn't really true - smaller flatter teams will move faster anyway.

Quite possibly - but you have to remember to remove the bureaucracy, not just remove the people who operate the bureaucracy. If you try to do the large business process with the small business team, it'll be even slower.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#168

Post by khazhoux »

uoflcards22 wrote: post #144
rcakebread wrote: post #136

Couldn't even be bothered to type like an adult when he fired them.

The refusal to simply capitalize the first letter of a sentence is so obnoxious.

high impact executives like myself are too busy to use up our precious time with minutia like capitalization. every second counts when youre a high impact ceo and thats just one reason why our compensation is 1000X your own.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#169

Post by mathattack »

vineyardmike wrote: post #152
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…

> layoffs will be preemptory. Executives will see the lack of productivity boost as being due to lack of pressure, Look I don’t like layoffs and I don’t want to come off as an apologist. I’ve been laid off from a wildly profitable company and I get that pain. But I think at some point we do need to be honest that businesses want to give up on failed projects, and the lazy ones will do that through layoffs because tec…

40% actually seems reasonable for a flip into maintenance mode. That’s what PE firms do when then buy cash cow businesses. Dramatically cut engineering on new functionality, cut back on sales and marketing, remove all redundancy in operations.

Anyone who has counted on a vendor that went private or was bought by a rollup firm has felt this pain.

Better to do it all at once than repeated declines.

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