When fintech company Block laid off 40% off its workforce last week, CEO Jack Dorsey explained the decision in a memo to employees that he also shared on social media. He was eliminating more than 4,000 jobs in the name of AI efficiency, he said, even though the company’s profitability was increasing.
Though much of his letter was addressed to those who were losing their jobs, he ended with a note to those who’d be staying on. “What I’m asking of you is to build with me,” Dorsey wrote. “We’re going to build this company with intelligence at the core of everything we do. How we work, how we create, how we serve our customers.”
But apparently, at least one Block employee who survived the layoffs, Naoko Takeda, chose to leave the company anyway. She matched Dorsey’s post with a viral letter of her own, sharing that she left her position as a data scientist for Cash App, one of Block’s subsidiaries, just a day after the layoffs occurred.
“I figured that a company able to Thanos-snap away half of their employees doesn’t need two-week’s notice from me, just another IC that could easily have been in that 40%,” Takeda wrote on LinkedIn (where her profile’s headline now reads, “i’m just a girl”).
Takeda says she found out within a 10-minute time frame that 70% of her immediate and sister teams would be getting the chop. “On my immediate team, the only people left were me and a new hire who had started 3 days ago,” she said. “I felt immense dread and survivor’s guilt.”
That guilt wasn’t helped by Block’s retention offer to remaining employees, which Takeda claimed in her case included a pay increase of around 75% plus a hefty onetime bonus that would bring the total up to a 90% increase. “Basically, I saw my company discard half of my peers and double my pay. That’s not an honor. It feels shameful and dehumanizing. I’d rather see my peers keep their jobs than personally profit from their trauma,” she said.
Fast Company has reached out to Block for comment on the details mentioned in Takeda’s post.
After hearing the news, Takeda says she even asked if she could be included in the layoff. “Of course, everyone answered ‘no,’” she said. “Because really, why should you get to choose to leave with dignity when you see your entire team—the people you worked hard to build a positive relationship with over the past year and a half—disappear? But here, take the fat paycheck that’s well above market rate, because we actually value *you*!”
In his memo, Dorsey claimed that implementing artificial intelligence at Block was “enabling a new way of working,” but Takeda painted a different picture of what AI usage looked like behind the scenes. “In the last year, AI was shoved down everyone’s throats. Everything was about AI. We were told to use AI as much as possible,” she wrote. “It’s nothing short of dystopian to be forced to employ the very tools that accelerate the disappearance of the jobs on which our livelihoods depend.”
After the layoffs, Block employs an estimated 5,900 full-time workers. Per data from the Securities and Exchange Commission, that’s almost the same workforce the company had in 2020, before a mid-pandemic hiring boom skyrocketed its head count to 12,985 by 2023. Without Dorsey’s AI-based explanation, a return to pre-COVID numbers might look like a natural correction by a company that had overhired—though after his memo, the actual logic behind Block’s layoffs is less certain.
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“Personally, I saw very limited gains in productivity from AI, nothing nearly profound enough to justify tossing out half of the company’s workforce along with their institutional knowledge and expertise,” Takeda continued. “So 40% of employees had no choice but to take the severance and leave. The remaining 60% of us were offered fat paychecks to stick around and clean up the mess our ‘leadership’ created, all so we can continue contributing to a future where AI leaves us all unemployed. No thanks, I’m out!”
The comments on Takeda’s post are filled with LinkedIn users praising her honesty, solidarity, and bravery in standing up to her former employer. “Thank you for speaking where so many of us cannot, for making hard choices, for leading with humanity and empathy,” one commenter wrote.
“Thank you so much for sharing this,” commented another. “It’s so gratifying and validating to see people push back against Block’s claim that AI is making the company productive enough to cut 40% of its staff.”