| ▲ | neya 2 hours ago |
| > today we're making one of the hardest decisions in the history of our company: > i had two options: cut gradually over months or years as this shift plays out, or be honest about where we are and act on it now. i chose the latter. > i’m sorry to put you through this. POV: Dude who has effortlessly fired people before deflects blame for over-hiring in the first place. I swear people should start blacklisting CEOs and refuse to work under them if they're part of the blacklist. This is just a piss poor excuse for bad management and short-sighted vision and no accountability. |
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| ▲ | keeda an hour ago | parent | next [-] |
| > I swear people should start blacklisting CEOs and refuse to work under them if they're part of the blacklist. Look at the job market. They know they can get away with it and so they don't care. My current theory is that this is partly why executives are desperate to get AI to work, and why investors are ploughing billions into AI. They know they've burnt too many bridges, and they need AI to work so they never have to turn to us again. Otherwise the pendulum will swing even farther in the opposite direction, putting even more bargaining power in the hands of employees than the post-COVID job market. Unfortunately, AI does seem to be working very well, and I don't see great outcomes for us on the current trajectory. I expect turmoil before a new social contract is established. |
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| ▲ | gopher_space 32 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > Unfortunately, AI does seem to be working very well, and I don't see great outcomes for us on the current trajectory. The people decreasing headcount are already behind the curve. They're thinking about how many people they need to run things instead of how many people they need to reinvent an industry. | |
| ▲ | rezonant 44 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It seems AI code is producing technical debt at an alarming speed. What many people think of as "AIs don't need code to be pretty" is misunderstanding the purpose of refactoring, code reuse, and architectural patterns that AIs appear to skip or misunderstand with regularity. A reckoning will come when the tech debt needs to be paid and the AIs are going to be unable to pay it, the same way it happens when humans produce technical debt at a high rate and do not address it in a timely manner. | |
| ▲ | an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | deadbabe 42 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Your theory is wrong. Someone will inevitably have to prompt AIs, CEOs and other executives are NOT going to be doing it themselves. The people driving those AI will have greater leverage as less and less people choose a career in tech. Also, when an AI fucks up in a way only a human can fix, the human must be available. What I see more likely is a future where software engineers do even less work but frustratingly you still need them around to fix problems whenever they come up. Kind of like firefighters. | | |
| ▲ | keeda 7 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Agreed, and the AI wranglers will be the equivalent of architects and staff+ engineers today, and they will be paid handsomely. BUT! They are a pretty small fraction of the current developer workforce. The remaining junior-to-mid level engineers will have to uplevel themselves while having no opportunity for hands-on experience as they get laid off. And note, this pattern is going to repeat across the entire white collar workforce, because the same pyramid scheme holds everywhere in knowledge work. A new equilibrium will be found, but that will be years, maybe a decade+ away? That's the period of turmoil I am concerned about. | |
| ▲ | darth_avocado 36 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Also, when an AI fucks up in a way only a human can fix, the human must be available Actually its more “when an AI fucks up in a way AI that you need a human to take the blame, the human must be available” |
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| ▲ | princevegeta89 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| >>I had two options: cut gradually over months or years as this shift plays out, or be honest about where we are and act on it now. I chose the latter. Jesus.. why do CEOs and other executive members end up writing such useless language in their posts....! Essentially, both these points are the same if you look at the employees. However, the writing has to be bloated in such a way that there is something else involved here, which there is not. This is just drama. Also, these decisions are not hard, regardless of whatever the hell has been claimed. They are actually easy decisions and choosing not to do layoffs is actually the hard decision. There is no need to sugarcoat so much. |
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| ▲ | SanjayMehta an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | > such useless language in their posts "Your call is very important to us." "We take security very seriously." PR speak + copy/paste and now LLMs. | |
| ▲ | operatingthetan an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | It's for the people who still work there. | | |
| ▲ | princevegeta89 an hour ago | parent [-] | | It surely still does look stupid for the same people though.. | | |
| ▲ | tempest_ an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Do they make sure new employees all remove the shift key from their company laptop or is that limited by band? | | | |
| ▲ | vkou an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | A lot of employees are really stupid, and will believe (or close their eyes to) all sorts of bullshit. |
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| ▲ | anitil 37 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| To be honest I prefer this type of communication over the I-can't-believe-it's-not-layoffs that my previous employer was doing. At least it's honest that it is a decision they've made. |
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| ▲ | _heimdall an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > I swear people should start blacklisting CEOs Do most people not already do this? I know there's a list of CEOs I would never go near. |
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| ▲ | behnamoh 40 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > I swear people should start blacklisting CEOs and refuse to work under them if they're part of the blacklist. he's on the "block"list tho... |
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| ▲ | Skidaddle an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I remember when Zuck said cut once, cut deep |
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| ▲ | ojbyrne an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | It’s not clear to me whether you’re characterizing that as trenchant business advice or cynical bullshit. Meta has had several rounds of layoffs now so it surely can’t be the former. Also Guy Kawasaki probably isn’t the first to say this, but I’d guess he predates Zuckerberg: https://guykawasaki.com/the_art_of_the_/ | |
| ▲ | tsunamifury an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | … then keep cutting. |
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| ▲ | mil22 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Yep, he hasn't changed. F*ck that guy. |
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| ▲ | khazhoux an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > i had two options: cut gradually over months or years as this shift plays out, or be honest about where we are and act on it now. i chose the latter. i love that he casts it as: a) a drawn-out downsizing that might stretch for years, which is clearly "bad" because no one likes uncertainty. b) ripping the band-aid decisively, with the nobility of being an "honest" decision. and who doesn't appreciate honesty? ...because of course employees who get laid off, prefer to lose their jobs as soon as possible and know they served an honest ceo. |
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| ▲ | pembrook an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The whole thing reads to me like he's not deflecting blame at all, he's explicitly saying he's putting the employees through this. > just a piss poor excuse for bad management and short-sighted vision I mean, the guy has built multiple publicly traded companies and scaled them to thousands of employees from the ground up (an exceedingly rare feat), and is admitting he didn't see the AI thing coming. Almost nobody did. I'm sure you would have done a much better job, though. As an HN commenter, you definitely wouldn't have overhired, because you're endlessly pessimistic and deathly afraid of risk. But you also would have never gotten the company off the ground in the first place because this. What's the last 10,000+ employee org you founded and scaled? |
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| ▲ | neya 37 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > he didn't see the AI thing coming. Almost nobody did. That's what he wants you to believe. That is just an easy way out for CEOs to blame it all on AI and not take accountability for their over-hiring in the first place. Literally on their homepage: "Block builds technology for economic empowerment" How can you claim to build technology for "economic empowerment" if you couldn't see through the AI coming? The trend started like 4-5 years ago. | | |
| ▲ | pembrook 28 minutes ago | parent [-] | | First, I posted the numbers below, it's not ZIRP overhiring in this case. But even if it was...I'm struggling to understand how "overhiring" is a bad thing for the actual workers who were overhired. So too many people got paid massive big tech salaries for the last 5 years. How horrible for them? They were robbed of...the opportunity to be paid half as much money working in a non-tech job? It's bad for inflation in the economy broadly since it's money not being efficiently allocated, but for these 'overhired' people it was literally a life changing amount of money they're better off having had even if it ends now (with an extremely cushy 6 month severance I should add). |
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| ▲ | dr_kretyn 35 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I'm generally anti-corpo and capitalism but I agree with you. The guy could've done better but so far he's on a good trajectory and much much better than most. Doesn't mean that he isn't going to make mistakes nor that this might turn out badly but that's the point of leading - making bets. It sucks to be fired but if I'm a year time everyone lost a job it'd suck even more. | |
| ▲ | akutlay an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > and is admitting he didn't see the AI thing coming You miss the point that this is not about AI in the first place | | |
| ▲ | pembrook 41 minutes ago | parent [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | Kina 29 minutes ago | parent [-] | | 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... | | |
| ▲ | pembrook 21 minutes ago | parent [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | Kina 16 minutes ago | parent [-] | | 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. |
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| ▲ | jackblemming 35 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | > What's the last 10,000+ employee org you founded and scaled? A lot of smart and talented people could do this if given the opportunity. Jack was at the right place at the right time and had enough talent. Same with Elon and others. That’s kind of what happens when you have a population of hundreds of millions, a few get lucky and have enough talent to not screw it up. It’s best to avoid being delusional and acting like billionaires are 5000 IQ geniuses. They’re regular people too, albeit, yes they are smarter than the average person you pull out of Walmart. There are also plenty of smart people who simply do not care to run or start businesses. |
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| ▲ | y1n0 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| How dare someone accept your application for employment and pay you money for services rendered. It's absurd! |
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| ▲ | no_wizard an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | That’s not even a good argument for whatever it is you’re trying to say. While you may not like the energy behind OPs statements he’s pretty clear: CEOs and executives in general face almost zero consequences for their decisions that affect hundreds or thousands of people I’m with OP, thy should face real consequences for stupid decisions | | |
| ▲ | csallen an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | If you make bad enough decisions, your customers leave, your company dies, and/or you are fired by the board. CEOs get fired all the time, and companies die all the time. It's part of life, and so are layoffs. There's no need for some sort of additional punitive actions to be taken. If you control a company, you have the right to do layoffs, and if you're an employee, you take that risk of being laid off because you prefer it to going out and trying to grow your own company from scratch. | | |
| ▲ | no_wizard 29 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | It’s fine if someone doesn’t believe that executives should not be held to additional high consequence standard, but you’re boiling down this argument without addressing the central element at play which is viability and wealth gap. Now, you can absolutely hold a different position here, that’s okay, I’m fine with that, but at least address it head on. Consider the fact that those getting laid off have disproportionate negative affects compared to what executives face for making terrible decisions in the first place. Jack still keeps his aspen home and whatever wealth he’s extracted out of the company. So he faces no real downside here. He could run block into the ground and still have more money than he would know what to do with. You’re arguing about shares of paper entitling people to do things to other people’s lives without facing much actual consequence in their personal lives. Not to mention professional, I’ve watched executives jump from company to company doing terrible things and they still keep getting hired. Where as the average person is often advised to reduce or obfuscate the fact they were laid off less there be discrimination. Now you can argue that executives shouldn’t face higher consequences in exchange for wielding such immense power over the lives of those which they employ, I ask that you say it plain, don’t hide behind feigned guise of people who live in a world where they don’t have a choice but to work for corporations or not have a roof over their head and basic needs met. It’s fine if you want to defend that, but don’t act like people are just making a deliberate choice. This is a choice society has made for them and the wealthiest perpetuate | |
| ▲ | darth_avocado 34 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > If you make bad enough decisions, your customers leave, your company dies, and/or you are fired by the board. I don’t know, Jack Dorsey seems to be doing just fine, and this isn’t his first rodeo of being terrible as being a CEO making bad decisions. | |
| ▲ | ytoawwhra92 an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | > If you make bad enough decisions, your customers leave, your company dies, and/or you are fired by the board. Not true. Buffet's written a lot of great stuff on this subject. |
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| ▲ | snihalani an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | >I’m with OP, thy should face real consequences for stupid decisions I don't think the investor cares. The investor wants 1 in X shot at beating the majority and is agnostic to failure. | | |
| ▲ | no_wizard 28 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I know investors largely don’t care but that’s the point, they do t care because they don’t have to face any real consequences of bad decisions in aggregate |
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| ▲ | neya 40 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | When you accept my application, there is an implicit understanding that I will have a job for a foreseeable future. I am making life decisions based on YOU, the CEO - I have to think about commute, renting, school for kids and a lot more. All you need to think about is my pay-check. And once you fuck up, you still get your nice fat cheque and bonus, but I'm very realistically looking at relocating and/or unemployment for a very long time and possibly homelessness. You will be hailed as a hero by the board for saving them money, I will be painted a villain by everyone in my family...just for believing in you and your empty words. I'm not even mentioning the side effects of health I get as a result (possible anxiety, depression, blood pressure, etc.) Services rendered is an acceptable excuse for a contractor relationship, not employees. If that's how you view employees, then good luck with your business. |
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