There's a moment in Up in the Air where George Clooney's character explains with surgical coldness why firing people is, actually, an opportunity. The guy flies across the entire country doing the dirty work that CEOs don't have the stomach to do themselves.
Well then. Jack Dorsey didn't need a middleman.
On Thursday, the co-founder and CEO of Block (formerly Square) sat down at his keyboard and wrote a letter to shareholders that, translated from corporate-speak into plain English, basically says: "We're cutting half the company. Over 4,000 people. See ya, wouldn't wanna be ya."
And the market? The market responded with a 24% orgasm in after-hours trading.
What actually happened
Block — the company that started as Square, became the owner of Cash App, and is now a payments conglomerate — announced alongside its fourth-quarter results that it would be slashing its workforce from over 10,000 employees to just under 6,000.
Read that again: nearly half the workforce.
This isn't a "fine-tuning." This isn't "structural optimization." It's a guillotine drop. And Dorsey made damn sure to be explicit about the reason: artificial intelligence.
CFO Amrita Ahuja said point-blank that the company wants to "move faster with smaller, highly talented teams using AI to automate more work." Translation: the machine does what you did, and it does it cheaper, without asking for lunch stipends.
The numbers don't lie
The quarterly results came in clean. Adjusted earnings of 65 cents per share on revenue of $6.25 billion — practically right on top of analyst estimates. But what made Wall Street drool was the full-year guidance: $3.66 in earnings per share, versus the $3.22 the market was expecting.
In other words, Block isn't firing people because it's struggling. It's firing people because it can do a hell of a lot better without all those people. And the market got the message instantly.
The price tag on this little maneuver? Between $450 million and $500 million in restructuring charges — severance, benefits, stock vesting. Almost all of it front-loaded into Q1. One rip of the band-aid.
The part nobody wants to hear
Dorsey was surgical with one sentence that should keep every office worker up at night:
"Within the next year, I believe most companies will come to the same conclusion and make similar structural changes."
Damn. Read that again.
The guy isn't being humble. He's saying Block is just the first domino to fall. And that he'd rather act now, on his own terms, than be forced into "repeated rounds of cuts" that, according to him, "destroy morale, focus, and the trust of customers and shareholders."
It's Taleb's logic mainlined straight into the veins: better to swallow the poison all at once than to die slowly from homeopathic doses. Corporate antifragility, if you want a fancy name for it.
What this means for investors
Pay attention to the pattern forming here. Meta did something similar in 2023 — Zuckerberg's "year of efficiency" — and the stock tripled. Block is copying the playbook with an even more aggressive twist: it's not 10%, it's not 20%. It's nearly 50% of headcount.
If the next few quarters confirm that the company runs just as well — or better — with half the people, the domino effect Dorsey predicts will happen. And then, my friend, it's not just Block's stock that goes up. It's every company brave enough to do the same.
Block shares were already up nearly 25% in after-hours. Anyone with a position surfed that wave beautifully. Anyone who didn't now has to decide: ride the momentum or wait for a pullback?
The question that lingers
While Wall Street pops champagne to celebrate AI efficiency, 4,000 people are clearing out their desks.
This isn't a moral judgment — it's the raw, naked reality of capitalism in mutation. The same technology that's going to fatten Block's earnings per share is the one making thousands of jobs obsolete. Today at Block. Tomorrow in your industry.
The uncomfortable question isn't whether AI will replace jobs. That's already happening. The question is: are you on the side of the table that makes the decision, or on the side that gets the termination email?
Because the market has already picked its side. And it feels no remorse.
