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    Block Cuts 40% of Its Work Force Because of Its Embrace of A.I. - About 4,000 workers will lose their jobs as the payments company does more work with new artificial intelligence tools, its top executive said.
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    Block Cuts 40% of Its Work Force Because of Its Embrace of A.I. – About 4,000 workers will lose their jobs as the payments company does more work with new artificial intelligence tools, its top executive said.


    Block Cuts 40% of Its Work Force Because of Its Embrace of A.I. – About 4,000 workers will lose their jobs as the payments company does more work with new artificial intelligence tools, its top executive said.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/26/technology/block-square-job-cuts-ai.html

    View 17 Comments

    17 Comments

    1. Gari_305 on

      From the article 

      Block, the financial technology company that owns Square, Cash App and Tidal, said on Thursday that it was cutting 40 percent of its work force as it embraced new artificial intelligence tools.

      About 4,000 employees are expected to lose their jobs, Jack Dorsey, the company’s top executive, said in a social media post.

      The cuts, made as Block reported strong financial results for its most recent quarter, are perhaps the most striking example so far of a technology company’s making plans to eliminate employees because of A.I.

    2. Fabulous_Soup_521 on

      The efficiencies frequently turn out to be human employees working harder to make up for AI doing sloppy work. I’m sure there are some real efficiency gains out there but not many.

    3. Same-Letter6378 on

      It’s bizarre when companies do this. Why not slowly roll out AI? If you lay off 40% of your work force and AI can’t maintain the same level of quality, then what?

    4. sciolisticism on

      Zoom out on Block’s stock history to see why they’re doing a 40% layoff.

      Ironically in this case he’s not even claiming that they’ve achieved the AI based gains. He’s claiming that this will _let_ them make those gains.

    6. SpeshellED on

      And we all just sit and watch this bullshit happen. If we allow the big corps to push AI at will, the world will be fucked. Dependent on Tech for everything and everything will be worse.

      Is there somewhere I can go to opt out ?

    7. jetf on

      I use to work at Block. Jack is a bad operational CEO but he is a visionary and founded 3 successful businesses (twitter, square, cash app). He gets easily distracted and his focus drifts which is why block bloated so much over the years. I think fixing that bloating is 50% of the calculus here but i genuinely think he believes that we are at an inflection point. People will be expected to produce more using AI tools and roles will consolidate . I wouldnt be surprised if other companies followed suit like Meta which has 70k employees

    8. Bright-Ad6769 on

      I guess some of these companies have to start putting their money where their mouth is and show how they use their own products. In the end, isn’t that the goal? AI agents that will do human jobs? They gotta start from within. I see the reliance on AI grow, but swapping people out will accelerate the enshittification of the product.

      I’m also seeing a layoff trend in which companies are using AI as a scapegoat to scale back old bets they made.

    9. SoySauceandMothra on

      This was NEVER about AI. This was about correcting for the over-hiring during COVID, but Dempsey is such a walking shitstain of a human being, he’s hiding behind AI so he can add another ski chalet to his real estate portfolio.

    10. TraditionalBackspace on

      Just came to express how much I loathe the word “embrace” being used in a corporate context.

    11. myironlung6 on

      General and administrative expenses increased by $68.1 million… primarily driven by an in-person company event held in Q3 2025.”

    12. datNovazGG on

      I’m happy I live in Denmark where this cycle of overhiring into layoffs isnt viable because it’s actually expensive to layoff people.

    13. Harry_Iconic_Jr on

      as more companies do this, to some degree or another, who will be left to buy their products?

    14. FinalHangman77 on

      Employees are now working 2x faster thanks to AI.

      Quick! Let’s get rid of half of them! Don’t wanna be too productive!

    15. DynamicUno on

      NY Times stop printing up corporate press releases as though they are news challenge level impossible

      It is 2026, we have all just lived through NFTs, the Metaverse, “Blockchain”, “full self driving”, and half a dozen other tech bro scams, can we please stop taking them at their word lol

    16. baldieforprez on

      Its a lie theu got rid of 40% of theor staff because they dont have a functioning business model

    17. filmguy36 on

      They are probably losing money and convinced their investors that going no employee will save lots of money and the good times can continue…until it doesn’t

      Study after study has shown when a company does this type of layoff in favor of AI, they find out that AI isn’t as good as it was sold. Financial books get screwed up, major hallucinations start happening and the product, what ever it is, grossly under performs. They then have to hire back people to fix the AI screw ups.

      And now that one imagined gravy to the party that never ends, turns out to be nothing but a BS story. A BS story by the CEO that was losing money originally and now is left holding the bag he or she doesn’t want to hold. Now with a company in collapse, he or she won’t blame the sacrosanct AI, they will blame the now rehired employees by saying they didn’t warn them