Comment by pembrook
15 hours ago
If we're being generous we could say mayyybe 20% of the layoffs are accountable to overhiring during ZIRP.
Block was doing $4B in revenue with 4K employees in 2019 before the pandemic.
They're now doing $24B in revenue with 10K employees and are going to cut near to those previous employee levels. That's a 5X jump in revenue per employee from the pre-covid, pre-AI levels.
If you don't think code becoming 1,000X cheaper to produce doesn't radically change the number of employees needed inside a technology org, then it's time to put down the copium pipe.
The problem is that there is no hard evidence anywhere to actually prove this.
I’m going to avoid whether or not AI productivity gains are real, but all the “data” I have seen affirming this is black box observations or vibes.
Even your evidence is just conjecture. You’re proposing that they’re going to be successful cutting their workforce like this because AI is such a boon.
The Financial Times ran an article [1] the other week with a title saying that AI is a productivity boost and then the article basically spends a bunch of words talking about how the signs are looking good that AI is useful! Then mentions that all of this is inherently optimistic and is not necessarily indicative of an actual trend yet.
> While the trends are suggestive, a degree of caution is warranted. Productivity metrics are famously volatile, and it will take several more periods of sustained growth to confirm a new long-term trend.
IMHO, at the moment it is not possible to separate trends from AI being an actual game changer vs. AI being used as a smoke screen to launder layoffs for other reasons. We are in a bubble for sure and the problem is that it’s great until it’s not. Bar Kokhba was considered the messiah…until everyone was slaughtered and the Romans depopulated Judaea. Oops.
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/4b51d0b4-bbfe-4f05-b50a-1d485d419...
I just posted the hard evidence (the actual numbers). The company is going to produce 5-6X the revenue with a similar number of employees as they had 6-7 years ago before the overhiring boom.
But I guess we'll just have to defer to the AI experts at...the Financial Times...and their emotional vibes of the situation instead.
The future is not evidence? I don’t understand what you’re saying.
> The company is going to produce 5-6X the revenue with a similar number of employees as they had 6-7 years ago before the overhiring boom.
That’s not evidence. That’s a belief. I’m not disagreeing they overhired, but this statement contains no evidence that reducing the size of the company like this is going to yield the same or greater profits.