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

681–690 of 1001 posts

Re: Layoffs at Block

#681

Post by TeMPOraL »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #667
TeMPOraL wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the stupid way to manage every year has to be x% exponential increase over the previous year, always forgetting that it is physically impossible when everyone goes for the same goal. That's why we have this corporate ritual, which we carry out each year, or even each quarter - a solemn ceremony, where we divide everyone into two groups: the cost centers and the profit centers . Everyone works in harmony for the sam…

As if some people are born as cost centers, like it’s the genetic programming for pupillary distance. If you want to be a profit center, be one. When the body is in danger of dying should it stop healing the fingernails or the brain?

> As if some people are born as cost centers, like it’s the genetic programming for pupillary distance.

I literally said the opposite of it. The classification is descriptive, and frequently reevaluated. It'd not a property of a person, but a function of where they currently are in the org chart.

> If you want to be a profit center, be one.

Sure.

> When the body is in danger of dying should it stop healing the fingernails or the brain?

Nothing is dying, though. The body that is the org needs both kinds of centers to function. Like any other system that resists entropy, it has parts that are sacrificed so other parts are preserved.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#684

Post by runtheway94 »

dfadsadsf wrote: post #628
runtheway94 wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand pausing completely ; can you explain how stopping the transfer of existing temporary workers will help?

Lots of people laid off by Block are on H1B Visas. With transfer they have 60 days to find new role. If they could not find new job in 60 days, they "fake" transfer to "bodyshop" company while they are looking for real work so status does not lapse. With transfer you have 4k people looking and eligible for new role. With no H1B transfer, less people are looking for work and citizens and green card holders have higher…

Even if you consider 50% of them are H1Bs, and out of them even majority don’t find jobs in 60 days (it’s actually more since they are keeping them on payroll for 5 months) that’s still a low number. Couple with the fact that not all would like to join body shops. I understand your frustration but I don’t think stopping H1B transfers is the solution.

Re: Layoffs at Block

#686

Post by KaiserPro »

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…

If its run anything like twitter then there are loads of teams running around trying random shit, along lots of duplication.

Its the same for meta, literally you could remove 2/3 of the head count and not have a problem with productivity (assuming you could not impact morale)

Re: Layoffs at Block

#689

Post by kranke155 »

smileysteve wrote: post #551
com2kid wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 compani…

You and the poster above disagree about the state of Twitter. Twitter had been a growth company, it was early/missed the market with Vine, but was showing ad growth. Now, as a private company, backed by the world's richest man, sovreign wealth funds, and banks that have written down their stakes, it has different economics than a tech / growth company. It's ad revenue is now, not in the ballpark of the fortune 500 or…

The purpose of Twitter is IMO no longer to be profitable.

For a man with a trillion dollar fortune it’s just his personal equivalent of Fox News, a way to shape the nations conversation.

Plus a way to get data for xAI.

In that regard it’s a huge sucess. I use grok to find out about stuff on X and it’s very effective. Grok is also nowhere as bad as it should be (it’s still not great).

Re: Layoffs at Block

#690

Post by EZ-E »

> 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. repeated rounds of cuts are destructive to morale, to focus

Being in a company that has done the gradual cuts, instead of one big cut, I unironically agree. I must have dodged like 15 staff reductions at this point. Company would be in a better state if the decision was taken to go for it big time. Still, it must be hard and shocking - but only once.

Post reply on HN