[pembrook]

The whole thing reads to me like he's not deflecting blame at all, he's explicitly saying he's putting the employees through this.

> just a piss poor excuse for bad management and short-sighted vision

I mean, the guy has built multiple publicly traded companies and scaled them to thousands of employees from the ground up (an exceedingly rare feat), and is admitting he didn't see the AI thing coming. Almost nobody did.

I'm sure you would have done a much better job, though. As an HN commenter, you definitely wouldn't have overhired, because you're endlessly pessimistic and deathly afraid of risk. But you also would have never gotten the company off the ground in the first place because this. What's the last 10,000+ employee org you founded and scaled?

[neya]

> he didn't see the AI thing coming. Almost nobody did.

That's what he wants you to believe. That is just an easy way out for CEOs to blame it all on AI and not take accountability for their over-hiring in the first place.

Literally on their homepage:

"Block builds technology for economic empowerment"

How can you claim to build technology for "economic empowerment" if you couldn't see through the AI coming? The trend started like 4-5 years ago.

[pembrook]

First, I posted the numbers below, it's not ZIRP overhiring in this case.

But even if it was...I'm struggling to understand how "overhiring" is a bad thing for the actual workers who were overhired.

So too many people got paid massive big tech salaries for the last 5 years. How horrible for them? They were robbed of...the opportunity to be paid half as much money working in a non-tech job?

It's bad for inflation in the economy broadly since it's money not being efficiently allocated, but for these 'overhired' people it was literally a life changing amount of money they're better off having had even if it ends now (with an extremely cushy 6 month severance I should add).

[dr_kretyn]

I'm generally anti-corpo and capitalism but I agree with you. The guy could've done better but so far he's on a good trajectory and much much better than most. Doesn't mean that he isn't going to make mistakes nor that this might turn out badly but that's the point of leading - making bets.

It sucks to be fired but if I'm a year time everyone lost a job it'd suck even more.

[akutlay]

> and is admitting he didn't see the AI thing coming

You miss the point that this is not about AI in the first place

[pembrook]

If we're being generous we could say mayyybe 20% of the layoffs are accountable to overhiring during ZIRP.

Block was doing $4B in revenue with 4K employees in 2019 before the pandemic.

They're now doing $24B in revenue with 10K employees and are going to cut near to those previous employee levels. That's a 5X jump in revenue per employee from the pre-covid, pre-AI levels.

If you don't think code becoming 1,000X cheaper to produce doesn't radically change the number of employees needed inside a technology org, then it's time to put down the copium pipe.

[jackblemming]

> What's the last 10,000+ employee org you founded and scaled?

A lot of smart and talented people could do this if given the opportunity. Jack was at the right place at the right time and had enough talent. Same with Elon and others. That’s kind of what happens when you have a population of hundreds of millions, a few get lucky and have enough talent to not screw it up.

It’s best to avoid being delusional and acting like billionaires are 5000 IQ geniuses. They’re regular people too, albeit, yes they are smarter than the average person you pull out of Walmart.

There are also plenty of smart people who simply do not care to run or start businesses.