Fintech Block dismissed 931 people, approximately 8% of the company’s staff, on Tuesday, according to a leaked message from the company seen by britcommerce.
The newspaper was announced in an email of the co -founder and CEO of Block, Jack DORSEY. Dorsy told the staff that on Tuesday, Block will be “making some changes in organizations, including the elimination of roles and the beginning of the consultation process in the countries that are necessary.”
These are the latest changes to reach the block, the Dorsy Financial Services giant that Cash App and Square owns. The company provides mobile payment services for consumers, as well as hardware and point of sale for companies.
In email, Dorsey explained that Block is reducing roles into three wide cubes. The first one lists is that 391 people are cut for reasons of “strategy.”
The second and largest bucket, 460 people, is for reasons of “performance”, with DORSEY explaining that Block is saying goodbye to employees who obtain a “below” rating in the company’s internal performance monitoring metrics, or were in a tendency towards it.
The third cube are the managers, 80 of which are being cut to flatten the block of block to “Innercore+4”, which refers to the direct reports of DORSEY and then four levels of direct reports beyond that, according to a family source. DORSEY also said that 193 managers move to individual taxpayers roles.
DORSEY’s email denies the layoffs for financial reasons or to replace workers with AI. Rather, he said that Block is cutting the roles due to changing strategic needs while “elevates the bar and acts faster in performance.”
Dorsy also pointed out that Block is closing 748 open roles in the company, with the exception of those who have progressed to an offer stage, roles of critical operations and key leadership roles, among others.
The last block underwent large layoffs in January 2024, when it reduced around 1,000 roles. As of December 2024, the team had around 11,300 staff members worldwide, according to the The last 10K presentation of the company.
Block did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
Below is all the email that Dorsy sent to block employees on Tuesday. The grammar and format of this text have been slightly modified to protect the sources that shared it with britcommerce. The email continues:
hello everyone.
Today we will make some changes in organizations, including the elimination of roles and the beginning of the consultation process in the countries that are necessary. I want to give you all straight facts.
As I said in the last block, there are three areas that we would like to address:
- Strategy: Reduction of teams that are outside the strategy and fix our discipline proportions.
- Performance: separate from people with a “underneath” or trend down “.
- Hierarchy: driving to flatten our organization to a maximum depth of the interior+4
To which this translates into the real number of people:
- Hierarchy: 80 managers (with 193 individual taxpayers roles)
We are also closing the 748 roles we had open with the exception of:
- The roles progressed to offer stage.
- Critical operational roles
None of the previous points are trying to achieve a specific financial objective, replace people with AI or change our personnel limit. They are specific to our needs around the strategy, raising the bar and acting faster in performance, and flattening our organization so that we can move faster and less abstraction.
Why do all this at once instead of time? We are late in our actions, and that is not fair for the people who work here or the company. When we know, we must move, and there has not been enough movement. We need to move to help us gather and stay at the forefront of the moment of transformation in which our industry is.
This is the most difficult part of my work, and I fight hard against any of these considerations. We must have a very high correction bar to take any action, which requires iteration and time to hit. This always balanced this with the fact that everyone here, and those who are starting, have capital in our company. It is my job to increase that value. We believe that this will help us focus and run better to do exactly that.
We are working to clarify everyone so fast, with the greatest context and support, as possible. You will soon receive an email about what this means for you. If there are areas where you think we could do better, please send me a note. Direct feedback makes us better, and I always act when it makes sense.
Thanks to all who leave us. I am grateful and grateful for you and your work, which has built us to this point. We will continue to honor that by increasing our value to our clients and, therefore, to all our shareholders, including you.
thank you,
Jacobo
This story was updated at 4:28 pm on Tuesday to include the full email that announces the layoffs.