Layoffs at Block
941–950 of 1001 posts
Re: Layoffs at Block
#942Re: Layoffs at Block
#943Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm in NYC which I think has similar demographics to SF in this regard; I found my job in August of last year, after about five months of searching, and I found it because a friend of mine referred me. It's a good job, and I like it, I'm grateful for that friend. Regardless, it's not like that was the only job I applied to. I had a policy of applying to at least ten jobs a day, so I applied to about ~1500 jobs, and l…
I think it's starting to turn around. My sense is there's still a ton of devs on the market but there's a lot of jobs opening recently. Here's the data from the st luis fed: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE
From now on I'll never not think of St. Louis as San Luis.
Re: Layoffs at Block
#944Pre pandemic Block had ~4000 employees They grew to 11000 Now they’re going to shrink to 6000 The whiplash from ZIRP days to whatever AI cost restructuring happening today is massive
They also did all that expansion with a focus on cryptocurrencies, and the hype has died on those so it makes sense to reel in investments there.
Re: Layoffs at Block
#945Earlier 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…
Also the logged out experience is broken and has been broken for years since it was acquired by Musk.
Just look at the logged out version of Musk's own profile.. at the top it's showing Tweets from 2022 & 2024 (these are not pinned Tweets)
Re: Layoffs at Block
#946If you use any Block products (including Tidal), make sure to do as much as you can to cost the company more than you pay.
My goal for this year is to cost Tidal / Block at least 2x of what I pay for it (so if I pay $100, make them pay $200).
Re: Layoffs at Block
#94710,000 employees for what? I never thought of Block to be that big.
If Elon came in, he would probably fire 80% meaning 8000. Like he did with Twitter/X and Twitter ran fine this whole time.
It's nice that the laid off employees are treated better than many other places. Everywhere I worked, laid off employees were instantly cut off from all access. I would say my goodbyes to them later through LinkedIn.
Re: Layoffs at Block
#948Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or it just really is AI. Maybe Dario Amodei saying this tsunami is coming and people are arguing it is not a tsunami and just a trick of the light are wrong. We have had a giant bubble in white collar bullshit jobs the last 15 years and AI is going to pop that bubble incredible fast. That doesn't mean the brilliant programmer is going to be replaced by Claude Code. The brilliant programmer type + AI what is going to…
> We have had a giant bubble in white collar bullshit jobs the last 15 years and AI is going to pop that bubble incredible fast. Even if they are "bullshit jobs," they are what keeps food on the table for many people. So the question is, what's bullshit about them? Are they bullshit because the capitalists could keep more money to themselves? Or are they bullshit because there are more socially beneficial jobs those…
The despising drug addicts and welfare moms being supported by 'productive people' has now spread to despising working people making six figures. The thought seems to be there are elites/productive types that deserve it all, and the rest are just parasites and fuck 'em.
Re: Layoffs at Block
#949Temporal had a far greater impact on dev velocity than AI ever did. It's not even close. It saves not only coding, but design, planning, coordination, maintenance, etc that AI doesn't even touch. But that's not very buzzy, is it. From what I hear, that's kind of true across the industry. I wonder how things would be different if all these press releases pointed to Temporal as the cause rather than AI. It's kind of we…
This is the first time I've ever heard of Temporal.
If you’re doing any heavy asynchronous work you should look into it. It’s truly game changing.
Re: Layoffs at Block
#950The subtext is peak tech-founder theology:
We built something amazing. You built it, technically. But now the real builders are smaller teams, intelligence tools, and whatever abstraction survives the next earnings call.
For the parade of mickey-mouse tech companies solving nothing and shipping products nobody asked for, the takeaway is simple: labor has become a narrative liability.
The whole thing reads like aestheticized detachment. A founder persuading himself, in pretentious all-lowercase, that mass layoffs are a principled design choice instead of the predictable invoice for years of vibe-driven growth theater. These seig-heiling, chest thumping technofascist founders are so cliche and nauseating, fucking Peter Thiel / Musk lord of the rings bunch of nerds.
Hard to imagine a better reminder of why walking away from tech back in 2023 for me felt like oxygen. I guess I consider it a luxury to read headlines like this and scoff at it from a safe distance. Dogshit industry.