Block's Layoff Limbo: AI-Pivots, Paperwork Fails, and the Rehire Royale

Block, the corporate umbrella for Square, Cash App, and Afterpay, has stealthily brought back a few of the 4,000 souls it sent to the corporate shadow realm in February, all while executing a classic "pivot to AI" maneuver. It’s the corporate equivalent of selling your couch on Craigslist only to buy it back a week later because you realized you still needed a place to sit.

Design engineer Andrew Harvard took to the internet on March 3 to announce his triumphant return, revealing his layoff was essentially a paperwork snafu—proving that even billion-dollar fintech giants can have the administrative competence of a meme coin project's Discord mod. The company graciously offered him his old chair back, presumably before someone else claimed it.

On March 8, technical lead Richard Hesse declared he was the last man standing on his team post-bloodbath. After two days of what we can only imagine was intense, PowerPoint-filled lobbying, the suits agreed to resurrect some of his fallen engineer comrades so his squad could prevent the "infrastructure highly critical to our customers" from turning into a digital ghost town. A true degen play for keeping the lights on.

Creative strategy lead Chane Rennie chimed in on March 12, noting he got a "you up?" text from Block about a week after being shown the door, though he didn't bother explaining the corporate logic—a wise move, as corporate logic is often an oxymoron in this space.

CEO Jack Dorsey had previously copped to the layoffs being potentially bungled, framing the whole drama as an AI-induced reshuffle of Block’s 6,000-person roster. He claimed AI now "fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company," a line that sounds profound until you remember people say the same thing about every new tech trend, from the cloud to the metaverse to that time someone put a blockchain on it.

The Guardian pointed out that several ex-employees called cap on Dorsey's AI-replacement thesis. Some onlookers reckon the cuts were less about machine learning and more about appeasing the investor gods, as Block's stock has been doing a convincing impression of a shitcoin chart, down double-digits since January.

A quick peek at Block’s careers page now shows 27 open roles, all for manager or account-executive positions, with zero explicit demands for AI skills. It seems the "AI-first" future still requires a lot of human managers to manage the other humans who are managing the AI. The circle of corporate life continues.

In related "crypto winter is coming" news, the Algorand Foundation announced a 25 % staff slash, blaming the usual suspects of crypto downturn and macro fears. Meanwhile, analytics shop Messari also did some trimming as it rebrands itself into an AI-first company, because apparently if you're not an AI company in 2024, you might as well be a fax machine repair service.