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Layoffs at Block

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Re: Layoffs at Block

#671

Post by input_sh »

acchow wrote: post #233
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…

Can you point to the laws in your country that would make this illegal? I’m skeptical

I can, easily. Speaking for my country and assuming you are not on a fixed-term contract, you can only get fired for one of the three reasons:

1. Company's in financial trouble and forced to downsize.

2. The position becomes obsolete and there's no option to transition you into some other role. In this case, the company can't hire anyone with a similar-enough skillset to yours for at least a year (or maybe even longer, I'm not sure).

3. Gross incompetence, in which case you need to be given an opportunity to course correct via a few documented warnings before being fired. Every warning requires your signature so that the company can't just make them up and backdate them.

That said, you don't become a permanent employee on day one, a company can issue up to three fixed-term contract before being forced to give you a permanent one. If you're on a fixed-term contract, they can just not extend it without having to satisfy any of the criteria above. But after a maximum of 3 years at the same company (as the maximum length for a fixed-term contract is one year), the criteria for firing you increases drastically.

So, the only way this could happen in my country is if the company stops renewing fixed-term contracts for recent employees, but then it wouldn't all be at the same time and you'd get the hint before the time comes to plan accordingly.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#672

Post by yellow_lead »

senko wrote: post #254

This is one of the best (if not the best) layoff letters I've seen online (no affiliation, don't know anyone working there, purely outsider perspective). * Severance packages upfront because realistically that's what everyone worries about first. * Reasoning second. I appreciate the one clean cut vs prolonged bleeding. * Owning the decision and respecting the people that got you there. Opting for an awkward allhands…

Its getting a bit repetitive to see this type of comment on every tech layoff letter

Re: Layoffs at Block

#674

Post by Scoundreller »

simonw wrote: post #303
rco8786 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, I worked at Block for ~6.5 years up until 2024. This is mostly correct. They were the first to market for portable CC readers, and segued that into "high tech" POS systems which, to be fair, were significantly better than the available alternatives at the t…

Did any of the blockchain initiatives ever go anywhere? I understood that's why they renamed the company to Block, but did that end up a similar rebrand to Facebook -> Meta?

The bought $170m of bitcoin at $50k a pop when their stock was $250, now it’s $67k and their stock is $67 (in after hours trading), so I guess it went pretty far in that respect.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#675

Post by neya »

mil22 wrote: post #455
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…

Yep, he hasn't changed. F*ck that guy.

I mean, sky is blue, water is wet, etc.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#677

Post by Flatterer3544 »

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…

Seeing the >20% stock increase by just mentioning the "Replacing workers for AI", makes me wonder if there isn't a huge pressure from the shareholders to get on the trend no matter what. Short-term baby, rules the world.

But will be interesting how the company is in 2 years, if quality falls and innovation stalls, or if it is as you say that they hit their ceiling and is already in "maintenance mode".

Re: Layoffs at Block

#678

Post by sakagami0 »

pants2 wrote: post #400
borroka wrote: post #156

Anyone who has worked in the big tech industry knows that probably more than half of the workforce performs tasks that, in essence, are superfluous. But these things happened: 1) Musk has shown that Twitter can operate with 5% (approximately?) of the workforce he inherited; 2) laying off a lot of people was seen as a sign that the company was in trouble, but not now because; 3) artificial intelligence makes point 2)…

1) This is by any source I can find, incorrect. Twitter had ~8,000 employees when Musk bought it. After layoffs that was trimmed to a low of around 1,500 employees (19%), and today it has around 2,800 employees. Also worth mentioning that a lot of Twitter's products are built on X.ai which has 1,200 core employees on Grok with 3,000+ on the Datacenter build-out side.

This is not true. Its about 200ish devs now on x side. Rest are other functions, and its not close to 2800

Re: Layoffs at Block

#679

Post by Ancalagon »

rezonant wrote: post #497
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…

It seems AI code is producing technical debt at an alarming speed. What many people think of as "AIs don't need code to be pretty" is misunderstanding the purpose of refactoring, code reuse, and architectural patterns that AIs appear to skip or misunderstand with regularity. A reckoning will come when the tech debt needs to be paid and the AIs are going to be unable to pay it, the same way it happens when humans prod…

I agree with this take. The AI is producing tons of debt still, we will see if that pattern holds or if people automate that part into the agents as well.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#680

Post by iriisatremotely »

georgeecollins wrote: post #412
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…

Regardless of the reasoning I think it is worth keeping in mind that the times when companies are letting talented experienced people go is also a great time to start the next new big thing. Talent that might have been unobtanium during a hiring frenzy could now be the building blocks of a new venture. A lot of these companies were started or really built themselves up during a tech slow down.

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