🏘 Ain't I in the 'Ville? Ain't I on the Hill?
Block Inc ., the payments company formerly known as Square , is cutting nearly 40% of its workforce— roughly 4,000 of its 10,000 employees —to eliminate middle-management layers and shift internal coordination to machine-learning models. Jack Dorsey and Roelof Botha argue that traditional chains of command slow the flow of intelligence through the company; in their view, Block uses AI not as a fancy writing assistant or productivity tool but as the structural backbone of how the business operates. The market, always eager to cheer a spectacle , pushed the stock up 24% on the news. But that enthusiasm comes with caveats: analysts see much of the cuts as atonement for bloat accumulated during the boom years, and leadership warns that this transformation will fracture over entire quarters before it stabilizes. Compliance, meanwhile , is a bruise that won't heal. In early 2025 Block paid out more than $120 million to state and federal regulators —a $40 million multi-...
