Block cuts more than 4000 jobs
Jack Dorsey cites intelligence tools and flatter teams, severance offered as company says business is strong
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Block, the payments company co-founded by Jack Dorsey, is cutting more than 4,000 jobs—nearly half its workforce—shrinking from over 10,000 roles to just under 6,000, according to a memo Dorsey posted on X and published by Business Insider. The company says it is not in financial distress: gross profit is still growing and profitability is improving. The stated reason is that “intelligence tools” and “smaller and flatter teams” are changing how the firm builds products and runs operations.
Dorsey frames the decision as a choice between a long series of incremental cuts and a single decisive reduction that matches a new operating model. The memo promises severance and benefits—20 weeks of pay plus one week per year of tenure, equity vesting through the end of May, six months of health care, devices, and a $5,000 transition payment, with local variations outside the US. He also emphasizes a managed offboarding process, keeping internal channels open briefly for farewells.
The bet is that software can replace not only some production work but also layers of coordination and oversight that grew up around larger organizations. In practice, that tends to mean fewer people making decisions and more systems measuring performance: dashboards, automated reviews, and internal tools that convert day-to-day work into data. Once work is instrumented, it becomes easier to standardize, compare, and reassign—especially in businesses like payments and customer support where outcomes can be tracked in near real time.
For employees, the shift often changes what “accountability” looks like. A manager can absorb ambiguity and negotiate exceptions; a tool can only enforce what has been encoded. That pushes discretion downward—onto frontline staff who must hit targets—and upward—onto executives who set the metrics. For customers, it can mean faster iteration and lower costs, but also more brittle systems when edge cases appear.
Block’s announcement also lands as more consumer-facing employers experiment with AI-driven monitoring in the workplace, where the same logic—turning human interaction into measurable signals—can be applied to service roles. The immediate savings show up on payroll; the longer-term costs are harder to price until the system fails in public.
Block says it is building from “a position we believe in.” The company will be about 4,000 people smaller by the end of the week.