Jack Dorsey just gave us our first glimpse at how doomsday layoffs could work in the AI era — and it’s bleak
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CEO Jack Dorsey He announced that Block would cut nearly half of its workforce.
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Many tech companies have laid off fewer workers in recent years.
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This move raises questions about whether other companies will follow suit as artificial intelligence transforms the workplace.
Attention white collar workers!
CEO Jack Dorsey is leaving from the classic tech layoff playbook — and it may be a sign of what’s to come.
In a post published Thursday on He said he did this even though business was strong and profits were rising.
technology sector hardcore era, many companies have separated teams repeated layoffs. Dorsey’s massive hit stands alone.
Repeated layoffs are “devastating to morale, focus, and the trust of customers and shareholders,” the co-founder and CEO said in his memo. He said he would prefer to make the cuts all at once.
“Instead of managing to gradually diminish people toward the same outcome, I would rather take tough, clear action now and start from a position of belief,” Dorsey wrote in his post.
The company seems to execute over and over again cutting rounds in recent months, Wired reported.
Brooks Holtom, a management professor at Georgetown University, told Business Insider that it’s better to make single cuts rather than piecemeal ones, as repeated cuts create declines in morale and productivity as well as “layoff fatigue and chronic anxiety.”
But he said the size of the cut was striking.
“This is a pretty extreme example in terms of the number of people released at the same time, but the packages are relatively generous,” Holtom said.
Dorsey wrote that laid-off employees will receive 20 weeks of base pay plus an additional week for each year of duty. Their equity will continue to be vested until the end of May and they will have six months of health insurance. The company will also allow them to protect their corporate devices and provide a payment of $5,000.
The layoff of more than 40% of the company’s workforce marks a departure from the typical pattern followed by other Big Tech companies. This also raises the question of whether other companies will follow a similar trend, and some industry leaders have already commented on the move.
“It seems inevitable that this is about to spread to all public companies. As headcount falls off a cliff, we need to find a way to make everyone some owner,” said Jessica Verrilli, managing director and co-founder of Adverb Ventures. in question In a post on X.
