The Merholz Agenda
Peter Merholz's semi-weekly newsletter on organization design, design leadership, and bringing humanism into the places we work.
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[TMA] Skepticism, not cynicism, in this liminal moment
By Peter Merholz · · View online →
Last week, Jack Dorsey announced that his company Block will be laying off 40% of its workforce, from 10,000 to 6,000, with the rationale:
...something has changed. we're already seeing that... intelligence tools... paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company. and that's accelerating rapidly.
Anything so drastic incurs response, and what I've seen has varied quite wildly. Pavel's latest newsletter claims AI is a smokescreen, with many links that show Dorsey is motivated simply by cost reduction and profit maximizing.
Judd Antin relates that he's heard how Dorsey is a dumpster fire as a leader,"Propping up a business stuck in neutral by firing 40% and blaming AI is a trick."
These takes have merit. But explaining away the AI claim strikes me as premature. As Hang shares,
From what I’ve heard, Block has built some of the best AI design ops tooling and processes in the market. These are the folks who I’d actually consider to be