Firing employees for AI really is the company equivalent of a darwin award huh.
Block is not doing so hot, they were evidently in a downward spiral already.
So AI is a good cover.
Basically “Square” worked out great, but everything after has gone badly.
You know that thing where “business majors” entering a company will sell off assets and sabotage operations so they can cash out and fuck off wealthier while leaving a path of destruction in their wake?
I think they just found their newest toy.
They will purge all the productive personnel from a company, enabling them to pocket all the money they used to be wages while operations shamble onward for a few more steps before collapsing under their own weight.
Vaguely reminds me of some gruesome concept like replacing someone’s blood with some synthetic oxygen delivery substance and keep them only barely alive enough to also harvest their organs and sell off absolutely every organ and tissue structure in their body worth anything to the black market.
Such companies are already dead. They just don’t know it yet.
Just found it? Companies like Amazon have been doing layoffs under the guise of AI for a couple years now.
So, given that software development is so easy nowadays, time to cut reliance on the “tech giants”. We should be able to develop / complete open source or small startups alternatives to Office, mobile operating systems, cloud services, Block, etc.
Everyone can “code” today, but it takes a good developer to write good code still. And you need an analytical mind to formulate, check and reformulate the features you want. Basically, the stuff you learn later in your career. If companies get rid of the developers they don’t need anymore, I’m not sure where the ones they do need will come from in the future. Not from junior developers gaining experience and leveling their game.
In my personal experience, it’s not junior devs becoming senior with time. It’s much cheaper business analysts who are being expected to do our own coding now because AI makes it “so easy”. Thanks, I hate it. I’m a pretty great analyst but a pretty mediocre developer…and my salary continues to reflect that truth (which is exactly why companies are doing it). Someday I’ll probably be an ok developer if the trend continues, all for a BA salary.
They are trying to replace the wrong jobs in my opinion. But we’ll probably not see a manager replacing himself because he realized he’s worthless after all.
It seems some companies are still keeping their pipelines going.
I wonder what they know that all the vibe-coding C-suite types in other companies don’t know?
My guess would be: a lot
“…most companies will do the same”
And the minority that won’t will survive the shitshow of idiot CEOs falling for a promise of AI -which AI cannot fullfil- just because they hate those icky employees so much.
Time to find an alternative to Square….
Lol, everything gonna be vibe coded here shortly. Good luck.
Just hook your company’s infrastructure up to OpenClaw…what’s the worst that could happen?
Oh, I’m not saying it’s going to be a good idea. I’m just saying it’s happening.
Yeah the last thing I need is my business’ sales system vibe coded by unsupervised glorified clankers
It’s fun to bash the Stupid CEO Founder because (s)he thinks AI will cut down work and bla bla. Fact is, I was shocked when I read in the article that Block employed 10,000 people. I don’t know how many of them are developers, but considering the job cuts were blamed on too many engineers, I assume a lot.
Even at 6,000 people, the company is still chunky for its offering. They seem to have just hired everyone with a pulse after COVID, held on to them because they didn’t want to be the only ones that reduced headcount, and are now hitting the brakes.
Sadly, Dorsey is right: the Big Ugly Bill’s tax provisions incentivize companies to lay off as many people as possible, since they can keep the profits mostly tax free. They also know the Midterms situation is shaky for them, and while the Democrats won’t have the numbers to change tax law against a certain presidential veto, they also won’t pass more tax cuts for the super-wealthy.
Yeah, I was surprised they employed so many people.
So… how does it work, when the world has a 50% unemployment rate?
In theory: automation makes the few working people massively more productive, so countries as a whole can easily sustain proper social systems even with those numbers.
Reality: Turbo-capitalism says fuck you!
Reality 2: AI is bullshit and not actually able to replace most people. But it will of course not prevent employee-hating CEOs to do in anyway.
I remember telling people, starting probably in conversations I had in the early 00s, that we should really start having conversations about universal basic income and other considerations about what to do with the rise of radical automation.
I was looked at like a complete loon. I think it’s hard to have those conversations even now. It seems some people would rather starve than admit that something that sounds like “Communism” could work and unfettered capitalism does not.
And not only was there no progress regarding universal income, but basically all productivity increases of the last decades went directly and mostly untaxed to the top. All while wages (and social and health contributions, lots of taxes and sometimes even pensions linked to them) are stagnating.
So we are not only doing nothing to account for that issue, we are in fact already moving in the wrong direction for quite some time. And we are already reaching the point were a lot of Western countries are now loudly telling the fairy tale of how demographics are the problem that makes existing system unsustainable, when in reality the blatant transfer of economic output to the upper 0.X% is the issue.
