Block spent $68M on a company offsite in September 2025

[mikeevans]

Describing it as a “party” feels misleading. It was a company-wide offsite for an essentially fully remote organization.

Was it necessary? Probably not. But I found the in-person time valuable, especially with teammates I’d never met face to face.

Source: I was there

[darth_avocado]

And was the in person time more valuable than not having those people you met in your team moving forward?

[upmind]

How did they manage to spend 68M on it? Genuinely asking or is the number not accurate as it is clumped together with other stuff?

[dang]

Ok, we've taken the party out of the title above. Thanks for the first-hand information.

[croes]

What does the wording matter?

The crucial point is, was it an unnecessary expense?

[ta9000]

Were you laid off?

[happyopossum]

You can call it a 'party' if you want, but a company-wide in-person event is a) valuable, and b) expensive.

Calling an all-hands a party without any supporting evidence feels willfully negligent.

[baq]

$68M/10000 employees = $6800/1 employee

A lot? Not a lot? Don’t know anymore.

[darth_avocado]

Maybe it’s just me, but I think being able to retain more employees is more valuable than flying the entire company for an in person event.

[dang]

Yes - more at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47185110

[Hamuko]

Can it be that valuable when 40% of the participants aren't?

[Aurornis]

The $68M number comes from a statement that says their General and Administrative expenses were up year over year and the growth was primarily driven by an in-person company event.

The Tweet extrapolates to assume that the entire difference was due to the event and calls it a "party"

Even if we assume 100% of the increase was due to the event, that's about $6800 per employee, or about a week or two of pay for developers.

This includes flights, lodging, and food for remote employees. That adds up fast.

This is just Twitter ragebait.

[Hamuko]

>"General and administrative expenses were up 14% year over year on a GAAP basis, driven in part by an in-person company event. Excluding this expense, general and administrative expenses remained roughly flat year over year in the third quarter."

[npilk]

Just because G&A was up $68m doesn't mean it was all spent on that one party...

Edit: never mind, the report clarifies that without the party expense G&A would have been flat YoY.

[rwmj]

https://xcancel.com/BullTheoryio/status/2027250361816486085

[throw03172019]

There is a big difference between a single party and a company wide offsite. Those can get quite expensive (airfare, hotels, food, etc)

Side note: I have no idea what Block does and why they need 10,000 employees anyway.

[aitforalll]

laying of 50% of your workforce is the obvious solution. next year the party will only be $34 million. repeat that 4 more times and you get down to just over $4 million.

[johnnyanmac]

Kinda how it worked for my last full time job. Full on all-hands which flew all the remote workers in, and my lead made 2 guesses: "Either we've been acquired or the IP has been cancelled". I guess the sad part is that an acquisition wouldn't guarantee I wouldn't be laid off anyway.

[andersmurphy]

I'm curious how much they lost in the bitcoin crash.

[rwmj]

Lost $234 million on that according to https://archive.ph/09kZr (link goes to FT.com)

[ralferoo]

I sincerely hope the event branding played on calling it a "Block Party".

But anyway, as others have said, the tweet seems outrageous at first, but at $6800 per employee for a multi-day offsite, with hotels, travel, etc included, it doesn't seem excessive. I'm sure their salary for that month was significantly higher.

[danans]

I think this is missing the forest for the trees. With 4000 fewer employees, they could have a $136M meetup party and still be ahead by hundreds of millions, assuming they can sustain or increase revenue.

That's the big bet software companies are making right now.

[ricardobeat]

Block had more than 4000 employees? Rarely hear of it.

[hmokiguess]

Maybe that was the selection process, those that were less fun and didn’t engage into the AI water coolers are now packing their belongings

[ta9000]

In the scope of Jack’s mismanagement, this seems minor. See: $29 billion for a BNPL company.

[pavel_lishin]

Food $200

Data $150

Rent $800

Party $68,000,000

Utility $150

someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. my company is dying

[anon7000]

Well, the layoff post explicitly said that the company’s financial health was good.

[johnnyanmac]

you don't need to get that fancy dijon mustard. Definitely can cut down on the food bill.

[wood_spirit]

Often embezzlement cases include crazy expenses.

Just put in my mind by the grift and corruption posts that are currently trending on HN front page right now.

[atonse]

haha my brain went like...

"ok.. but was it a party for all 9,000 people?"

"maybe they had great caterers"

... then I did the math. It's $7.5k per employee.

Clearly I'm just not creative enough to know how to waste money like an SV company.

[BonoboIO]

Travel and Entertainment

[etc-hosts]

last Block/Square party I went to had MC Hammer as a DJ.

[an0malous]

that's where the innovation happens

[yieldcrv]

Wait till you find out the “party budget per employee” at the company you work for

[rsynnott]

... That's $7,000 per employee. I want to hear more about this party :D

[fhd2]

I got curious as well, because the craziest party poor me can imagine would clock in at maybe half that, including travel. All I could find:

> The three-day festival in downtown Oakland featured performances by Jay-Z, Anderson .Paak, T-Pain, and Soulja Boy, and brought 8,000 employees from around the globe.

So that'd make it 8.5k per person. Building stages, paying permits, hiring acts like these, I bet that's where it mostly went.

[Aurornis]

It was an in-person event, so flights, lodging, and food could have easily consumed a lot of that.

Running events is expensive when you have to fly your remote employees in and house them for multiple days.

[CyberDildonics]

A gift basket that includes fancy mixed nuts, some luxury soaps, a 96 core Epyc CPU, and a coupon book to local restaurants.

[mattmaroon]

He said very specifically that the layoffs weren’t for financial reasons, and they are publicly traded company so you can just look at the reports. Anyone who thinks this wasn’t because of AI has a level of optimism I’ll never achieve.

[SpicyLemonZest]

One key piece of financial information in those reports is that that their revenue growth fell off a cliff when ZIRP ended (months before ChatGPT came out) and never recovered to even pre-Covid levels. There's no indication that their core business is unhealthy, and I'm not claiming to rule out that AI is related, but it makes sense that a company transitioning to "maintenance mode" might find itself wanting to be a lot smaller.

[jollyllama]

Cynicism can be optimism when the prevailing narrative is doom and gloom.

How is the competing narrative of cutting teams that were working on non-core or experimental projects falsified by any of this? Why wouldn't they put a brave face on that and chalk it up to AI? You can see how the stock market has rewarded it.