Workers describe a deteriorating culture at Block, the company behind Square and Cash App, where layoffs continue and employees are expected to use AI tools daily.
After hundreds of workers were laid off in early February from Jack Dorsey’s Block, some of the people remaining at the company say the internal culture has devolved to a point where performance anxiety is running rampant, using generative AI is required, and overall morale is rapidly deteriorating. Block is the parent company behind the merchant payment processor Square and the payment app Cash App. Dorsey cofounded the company in 2009 after previously cofounding Twitter.
“Morale is probably the worst I’ve felt in four years,” reads an employee complaint submitted to Dorsey in a recent all-hands meeting, a transcript of which was seen by WIRED. “The overarching culture at Block is crumbling.” WIRED spoke with seven current and former Block employees, who requested anonymity to speak freely about internal operations at the company. A Block spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.
The layoffs at Block started this month and could eventually impact up to 10 percent of the company's workforce, according to reporting by Bloomberg. Before the headcount reductions began, Block had around 11,000 people on staff. Rather than a one-off event, management has slowly enacted the firings over the course of weeks and told employees that the process will continue through the end of this month, sources tell WIRED.
...read more at archive.is
pull down to refresh
related posts
Sad to read this
I hope they'll be ok, i really like square
Imagine you were an OG and had stacked a few coins when they were cheap as shit...maybe Jack Dorsey himself...
You had spend decades opposing what you saw as the undermining of your civilisation by bankers and corporate lobbyists who had advanced an ideology that proposed there is no community, only the individual, and that as such government has no place or validity- that markets alone should determine all things in human society.
These amoral neoliberal hypocrits ignored the historical reality that business only succeeds when supported by a strong legal system and a government that can enforce the law within its jurisdiction and project power externally to support import and export trading in goods and commodities.
But these neoliberal parasites did not give a fuck about history or culture.
If they needed cheap labour they imported it, or exported their factories to countries where labour was cheap.
They bought and owned most of the politicians with money created out of debt which debased the savings of all citizens.
They built an empire of debt and slavery to increase their wealth at the expense of most citizens.
Pivotal to their empire was fiat money.
Just as their greed and treachery reached epic heights a spanner was thrown in the works- Bitcoin was created.
It was possible now for anyone to hold capital and transfer value directly P2P without any need for the bankers.
So, humanity was offered a chance to regain its integrity and reclaim all commerce and exchange of value from the parasites who had seized a monopoly over all trade and commerce.
But this was a narrow hope- one that assumed enough people would make the effort to free themselves.
Bitcoin was not and is not a free ride to liberty- it is only a road, a narrow and difficult path to salvation.
And so some did see the need and Bitcoin grew.
It was attacked and mocked and jeered, but its proposal was sound and enough people of conscience did support it so it grew.
The opposition was and is strong and determined- it was made 'difficult' to use as a MoE payments protocol in most 'liberal democracies' and was outright banned in most autocracies.
It was allowed much more as a speculative commodity which enabled large corporate players and bankers to gain an ever increasing share of issuance either directly or by proxy.
And it was tracked and traced- KYC became increasingly universal.
The hope of freeing money from the state and its bankers was never guaranteed and looked increasingly slim.
There was a need to have places where the P2P payments protocol could be used by anyone and show its potential...but few merchants dared accept it and face complex tax implications and FUD smear.
And then you come across an experiment- a social media platform using sats as a V4V means of both moderation and economic viability.
Stacker News!
This platform could operate and show how sats can be used everyday.
The many transactions required would support the growth of the LN and demonstrate it in use in a positive and useful way.
The state of course threatened to prosecute on the premise of money transmission- so the platform was forced to require users to attach wallets.
This was not easy and created an entry barrier and the compromise of allowing new users and those not capable of attaching a wallet to use a substitute inhouse token called a Cowboy Credit...nominally of equal value to one sat but only valid within the platform.
Most users attached wallets but some refused to and yet they were often some of the most vocal about Bitcoin adoption- claiming to be 'living on The Bitcoin Standard'.
In reality they were deliberately and knowing degrading the sats denominated nature of the entire platform.
What is their motivation?
It seems unfathomable.
It seems like blatant hypocrisy.
They appears just as corrupt and full of shit as the bankers.
And so what do you do?
Maybe with your stack you decide to mete some wrath upon these hypocrit parasites.
Life is short and freedom is rare.
But you can always try.