Overview
- Dorsey said internal AI and “intelligent” tools allow smaller teams to do more, reducing headcount from roughly 10,000 to just under 6,000.
- Departing employees are offered about 20 weeks of pay, six months of health coverage, a $5,000 payment, and permission to keep company laptops, with Slack left open briefly for farewells.
- The company reported code shipped per engineer up about 40% since September and cited agent-based coding tools that compress weeks of work into a fraction of the time.
- Despite the cuts, Dorsey said Block expects to hire additional experienced AI engineers to strengthen technical and product capabilities.
- Tech and VC leaders split on whether this marks the first major AI-driven layoff wave or a company-specific reset, and Dorsey predicted similar restructurings across firms within a year.