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Comment by softwaredoug

6 hours ago

Pre pandemic Block had ~4000 employees

They grew to 11000

Now they’re going to shrink to 6000

The whiplash from ZIRP days to whatever AI cost restructuring happening today is massive

This makes it make way more sense. That is a huge amount of growth really fast. I've worked in those companies, it's really hard on the work culture and organization when things grow that quickly.

I think the potential for productivity is there with AI, but this size of a cut based on speculation made no sense. This is actually reasonable in this light and is probably for the best. I'll be curious to see if any employees, former or otherwise talk about it

I am much more interested in how headcounts compare to 2019 than to 2025 (let alone 2022). Certainly, this is not a comfort to anyone who is losing their job. But I don’t remember anyone panicking about an unemployment crisis pre-pandemic. A lot of people are getting their lottery ticket taken away, which is less than ideal, but we’ve got a long way to go before breadlines.

> our business is strong. gross profit continues to grow, we continue to serve more and more customers

and the best part is that when others follow, ZIRP will be back.

this is going to be a proper mess.