Dorsey’s Digital Guillotine: 4,000 Heads Roll in AI’s Name

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In a move as abrupt as a chess grandmaster’s sacrifice, Jack Dorsey, the high priest of digital minimalism, has decreed that Block shall shed its flesh-4,000 souls, to be precise-in the name of progress, or perhaps, the whims of artificial intelligence. From a bloated 10,000, the company’s headcount shall shrink to a svelte 6,000, a transformation as dramatic as a caterpillar’s emergence as a butterfly, albeit one that leaves a trail of severed livelihoods.

In a missive dispatched via the platform once known as Twitter, Dorsey, with the gravitas of a man announcing the weather, described this culling as “one of the hardest decisions in the history” of his corporate fiefdom. The irony, of course, is that such hardness was felt not by him, but by the 4,000 who were handed their digital pink slips with the efficiency of a well-oiled algorithm. All were to be informed on the same day-a swift execution, if ever there was one.

The Great Block Purge

The condemned, however, were not left entirely to the wolves. Dorsey, in a gesture of magnanimity, offered them 20 weeks of salary, plus an additional week for each year of servitude, equity vested through May, six months of health care, their corporate gadgets, and a modest $5,000 to cushion their fall into the void. A golden parachute, perhaps, but one that barely muffles the sound of their collective landing.

“But something has changed,” Dorsey intoned, as if channeling the spirit of a Silicon Valley oracle. “The intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company. And that’s accelerating rapidly.” One wonders if this new way of working involves fewer humans and more machines, a dystopian symphony conducted by the invisible hand of AI.

“We could have dragged this out, a slow bleed over months or years,” Dorsey admitted, “but where’s the sport in that? Better to rip off the Band-Aid, to watch the stock price soar by 24% in post-market hours, and to let the world marvel at our ruthlessness.”

Social media, that great theater of public opinion, erupted in a cacophony of reactions. Some hailed the severance terms as generous, while others lamented the specter of AI replacing human toil. Will Slaughter, a voice in the digital wilderness, tweeted that the cuts were less about AI and more about managerial hubris, a point driven home by Block’s headcount tripling from 3,900 in December 2019 to 12,500 by December 2022. “An insane COVID overhiring binge,” he called it, a phrase that Dorsey, to his credit, did not deny.

The Pandemic’s Overhire Hangover

Others took aim at the optics of Dorsey’s announcement-a layoff note written in lowercase, as if to soften the blow with typographical humility. “AI is the new black,” one user quipped, “the perfect scapegoat for managerial incompetence.” Yet, as the company’s stock price climbed, one could not help but wonder if this was less a tragedy and more a calculated act of corporate theater, a spectacle designed to dazzle investors and terrify employees alike.

And so, the curtain falls on 4,000 careers, a testament to the mercurial nature of the tech industry, where innovation and indifference walk hand in hand. Dorsey, ever the visionary, has shown us the future-a future where algorithms reign supreme, and humans are but pawns in a game they barely understand. Bravo, Mr. Dorsey. Bravo.

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2026-02-28 02:54