They’re cutting over 4000 jobs from a total of 10000, leaving them with under 6000.
Dorsey mentioned they’re seeing better profits and are not facing any issues, but he decided to make these cuts because of the AI tools they’re developing. So yeah, they’re trimming down staff because of AI.
But seriously, why would a company doing well financially decide to lay off people when things are going great?
On the bright side, he’s doing the workers a favor. You can check out more on X.
First time hearing something called block and after taking sometime reading their website, I still have no idea what is this about.
If they are profitable yet cutting on their manpower for the sake of AI, isn't that just pure greed discarding employees like that after reaching profitability?
It's such a pathetic situation to leave an organization you have put so much work into. Some of these workers have plans that surround their work in this organization. However, it is a reminder that no job is secured, hence there is a need to have alternatives.
Business owners don't care about the emotions or future of workers. All they are focused on is maximizing profit. So, regardless of how much they are making, they are ready to sack all employees if they discover a tool that can make the cost of operations cheaper. Although the affected workers are going home with a severance package, many lives will be impacted negatively.
This is an example of the effect of Artificial Intelligence in the workplace. This is why workers should have more than one skill because no job is safe.
4000 workers at once is a lot tbh, but more of similar things will happen over time because of AI development, but I don't believe it will be as bad as people predict it to be. It will only be a transition period that will happen gradually. It's similar to how the transition happened with the Internet, and it ended up creating more jobs. AI would not be too different. For now, it will look like it will make people jobless, but with time, it will create more jobs for people and make people's jobs easier.
No, it's not greed, it's just business. You don't expect them to keep people they don't need simply because they don't want to appear greedy. Obviously, the employees being laid off won't see it this way, but they would do the same if they were in that position. If they have systems and intelligence that will do the jobs of 4000 people, there is no point keeping the 4000 people there.
This is quite easy from the owner's perspective. If you can have 24/7 workers, compared to people who work in shifts and have emotions. I would choose the cheaper option. Of course, this wouldn't be ideal or fair to the workers, but from a business perspective, it would be an optimization.
In essence, there would be a race to integrate AI into your business, and that would be a game-changer. If you are late, you risk falling behind.
This is the reality of the situation that was expected long ago where workers in companies have been warned that their jobs are at stake if they occupy unimportant roles that can simply be taken over by artificial intelligence and if they fail to develop their skill to a level where they become indispensable by the company even though they now have artificial intelligence working in assistance with them.
To others who work in companies where they have a lot of staffs, you should be expecting same work cut especially when the role occupied is an easy role AI can replace. Reducing workforce will always increase company profit where they are replaced by machines that do not take monthly stipends, but just require occasional maintenance to function properly.
See what AI said about it:
There is more about it. Make use of AI to get more information about it.
I also do not like the idea, but as AI is reducing jobs, it is also creating job elsewhere. I will not call it greed because there are many jobs that AI has reduced today but as it is also creating jobs just like I have said before on this post.
Companies have a duty to maximize profit for their owners and it is actually prudent to downsize if there is the ability to do so without affecting profits. In the long run different parts of the company might become less profitable or even create losses, so being responsible is staying ahead of that curve. It might seem cruel on a personal level but it is the correct way to manage a business, otherwise more people could be dragged down in future after greater losses. People are not owed a job, even if they've been with a company a while.
A profitable business will always find ways to reduce costs and increase profit. I am guessing they are also thinking that aside from money, the time spent of AI completing a task will be fewer than if humans did the job which increases the efficiency of the company.
Well, here's another example of how AI deprives people of work. Could you have expected anything else? An entrepreneur should only think about profit, not charity. Isn't this a fundamental principle of capitalism? So there are even more job cuts ahead. Actually, the same thing has already happened in history, when the mechanization of production began to replace workers. Everything repeats itself. Only on a different level. Now it's not the workers who are being replaced, but the brains of specialists.
Because companies succeed to the extent that they are profitable. Not taking advantage of that window of profitability today could mean going bankrupt in the future.
That's right, companies try to increase productivity as much as they can, and this has an impact that goes far beyond companies: the world we live in has achieved standards of living that were unimaginable just a couple of centuries ago, and this is due to the exponential increase in productivity.
Nope, it's not greed, it's called transitioning to the use of AI to replace some human workforce. Every company is at liberty to testing to better working frameworks and discipline. They're not the first and definitely wouldn't be the last.
AI is taking people's jobs and more people would lose their jobs in the future. It's very important that people upgrade themselves to utilize these AI tools to do their work more efficiently. Such persons wouldn't be easily replaced by AI. Their knowledge and experience with the tools would maintain their relevance.
It's a profit-driven company; its loyalty is to the board of directors and investors, and its reason is straightforward
With AI, they have found a way to maximize profits by reducing their human workforce and replacing it with AI, which is cost-effective.
This is one of the intentions of AI creators reduce the human workforce using AI. It's bad if you're part of the workforce, and good if you are an investor. Blocks is not the only company doing it, and many more will follow suit. It's cruel, but it's the reality.
Slicing your work force of 10000 people almost by half is damn too much. Why do I feel like the company never needed that much in the first place. Same with what musk did after buying Twitter, and I watched a video of him on X, stating the exact reasons why he did that, which was totally understandable. For a company that offers financial related services, AI and humans needs to be well integrated. Like he(jack) said, he had two options to try this out, but he went for the direct sacking. Understaffing in a company that offers such service might not be the best idea. But since he owns his companies, whatever decision that he makes should be for his best interest i guess.
And as for those who are still part of the company, well I guess this should serve as a wake up call that they can lose their job at any time to AI.
Well, I think there are different reasons that are personal to these companies. One that I can think of is that a lot of these companies never needed those number of people. Here is a video of musk stating his own reasons...
https://x.com/i/status/1865112624825864641
The "innovation will keep us unemployed" is a old tactic that capitalists use, do not be worried about it. Because if there is a new tool, that causes it to be cheaper to build a company instead of hiring more, then there will be others who will build companies.
It means, instead of 3 companies that have 30k employees, there will be 12 companies that have 30k employees, we will all be employed all the same, maybe some will be paid less and some will be paid more, but market will regulate itself. Real trouble is salaries not going as high as inflation.
I had the block share crashing. Not touching it again.
Weak hands got shaken out. Wondering if it's any good today.
You can buy it as stocks if you love it that much.
Many more... how many? perhaps too many, since most companies are "profit-driven". And when that happens, who will consume the products and services delivered by them? people need jobs to earn money to spend in them. Cycles can be more or less elastic, but as in nature, where if you remove a key factor from the life cycle it is fatal, in economics, if you remove labor the cycle no longer closes, and it's no longer a cycle...
The reasoning behind the obvious decision to cut costs would be understood even by a child, but the large-scale consequences of stretching this possibility too far are not so easy to assess.
This case may be about AI, but it's the same with every business. When a businessman discovers that the job he has been paying 10 men to do, 7 persons can do it perfectly well. He won't keep paying the 10 persons out of sympathy that the other 3 may be out of work. His priority will be to minimize cost and to maximize profit, and that's exactly what JD is doing. It does not matter if the company was already profitable. A good businessman would always want to make more money.
Unfortunately, this is what will happen routinely; artificial intelligence is increasingly taking on more functions, from video creation and programming to music composition. Amazon has already laid off a large number of employees, not because they are unprofitable, but because an AI can do the work of 5 or more employees, 24 hours a day, at a lower cost.
I read this news and i think it is what it is. One does not have to get too emotional about it, though i can understand if the workers losing their jobs do, but it is definitely not personal and just business.
I think this is the direction the world is moving to, not that AI is going to make everyone jobless, like some people say, no, that wouldn't happen. But institutions would tailor their activities towards the use of these intelligence tools, which would lead to the laying off of redundant workers and also create jobs by hiring workers that can function using AI systems and tools.