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Layoffs at Block

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Re: Layoffs at Block

#361

Post by abirch »

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.

My understanding is that Twitters revenue was

  5   billion in 2021
  4.4 billion in 2022 (When Elon made bid and took over company)
  3.4 billion in 2023
  2.6 billion in 2024
  2.9 billion in 2025

Re: Layoffs at Block

#362

Post by borroka »

mixdup wrote: post #338
borroka wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One needs to tease apart the effects of Musk and Musk's "policies" on advertising investments, number of users, the boom and slow decline of social media platforms (see Facebook, Instagram coming down from their peak, TikTok gaining ground, but people seem to be already tired of it and waiting for something new) and the technical/technological part of the enterprise. I don't like layoffs, in particular when I am the…

a lot of the people laid off from X were working on content on things like moderation, and yes, the algorithm Is the site functional? Sure, I guess. I think the amount of traffic shrinking also has something to do with the viability with fewer engineers

I don’t think it is true at all.

The recommendation algorithm they implement is a choice they make, it is not that if they had more engineers they would deploy a “better” one.

Every recommendation algorithm is, in the end, “bad” in some way.

The TikTok algorithm was considered the non plus ultra among recommendation algos; now you cannot watch a video of a cat on TikTok for more than 5 seconds that the next 50 videos they serve you are of cats.

The Netflix recommendation algorithm has not shown something to me that I considered hidden but interesting in years. They just show you whatever they want to push, mostly (I worked there).

You buy a pan to cook steaks on Amazon and, for some reason, the algorithm recommends to buy it along with stroboscopic lights.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#363

Post by danpalmer »

chrishare wrote: post #307
rappatic wrote: post #13

i'm gonna write this terrible news in all lowercase cause it's super aesthetic. maintain a bit of professionalism for the 4,000 people whose lives i'm throwing into turmoil? i don't think so, i have my shift key taped over so i don't accidentally show respect to anybody

Does the lowercase convey authenticity or lack of care?

Yes absolutely. Text casing is part of communication, by skipping it an author is saying: "I'm going to prioritise my preferences and making a statement above your understanding and clarity". The bigger the audience the more negative impact it has, and the more entitled the author appears.

Along the same lines though, txt spk to friends is a) far lower impact with the smaller audience, and b) communicates other factors such as what device you're on or how close you are to someone, so this is not me just hating on bad grammar.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#364

Post by nusl »

The wording is all nice, and at surface level it reads well. It still makes me feel super icky. Kill 4k jobs because people are more productive with AI. Fuck the people, push the profits. Make investors happy.

No, fuck the investors. Fuck the entities causing these decisions to be more common. Extra-fuck the ever-more-obvious push for profit over literally anything else, including ethics, morals, and humanity. If you're an investor causing this shit to happen, fuck you.

Somehow this makes me feel that this org is already dead, and that this is just gonna accelerate it.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#365

Post by borroka »

VirusNewbie wrote: post #355
borroka wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One needs to tease apart the effects of Musk and Musk's "policies" on advertising investments, number of users, the boom and slow decline of social media platforms (see Facebook, Instagram coming down from their peak, TikTok gaining ground, but people seem to be already tired of it and waiting for something new) and the technical/technological part of the enterprise. I don't like layoffs, in particular when I am the…

Are you not paying attention? X has gotten waaaay worse. It regularly doesn't load, notifications break, and more.

As a casual user, I don’t think it works any worse than Facebook or Instagram or TikTok.

I remember that for years people complained about DMs in Twitter being “broken” and without any search function.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#366

Post by torben-friis »

groundzeros2015 wrote: post #342
torben-friis wrote: post #120

>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. In my country, this action would be literally illegal. Even in countries where it isn’t, it feels highly immoral. “I’m not in any kind of pressure to do this but I’m choosing to shed the people who created my wealth for greater…

Your country also pays less and has fewer jobs. Increasing the cost to fire, increases the cost to hire.

And yet we live longer and with higher quality of life, by most standards (chronic and mental illnesses, life expectancy, etc).

No need to turn it into a dick measuring context, we have plenty of flaws of our own.

Just pointing out that legal or not, under most morals systems, loudly proclaiming that you’re willing to screw your people for no clear necessity will get you socially ostracized.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#367

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Layoffs at Block

#368

Post by MeetingsBrowser »

jibe wrote: post #206
MeetingsBrowser wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If LLMs really multiply productivity, why would you fire people and handicap the boost? I have 100 people that can now do the work of 200 people thanks to a new tool. How is the logical response to fire half of them and bring my productivity back to where it was before?

He explains the rationale, smaller teams work faster. 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 and run a company. and that's accelerating rapidly.

This is just rephrasing the same concept.

Claiming than a small group with AI can accomplish more than a large group with AI doesn’t make sense.

More likely the company doesn’t have enough work for the large group.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#369

Post by eBombzor »

VirusNewbie wrote: post #355
borroka wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One needs to tease apart the effects of Musk and Musk's "policies" on advertising investments, number of users, the boom and slow decline of social media platforms (see Facebook, Instagram coming down from their peak, TikTok gaining ground, but people seem to be already tired of it and waiting for something new) and the technical/technological part of the enterprise. I don't like layoffs, in particular when I am the…

Are you not paying attention? X has gotten waaaay worse. It regularly doesn't load, notifications break, and more.

Social media has just gotten way worse across the board. X is just a reflection of trend.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#370

Post by notatoad »

tombert wrote: post #270
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'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…

it's all just saying stuff the shareholders want to hear. when the shareholders want to hear "we're staffing up aggressively" the companies hire. when the shareholders want to hear "we're moving workloads to AI" the companies fire.

it's not using AI as a scapegoat. they're doing this because they're quite literally being rewarded for it. they could care less what the employees who are getting fired think, as long as the investors are happy.

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