Jack Dorsey wants AI in Block’s bones.
In February, Block laid off over 4,000 employees, roughly 40% of its workforce. Dorsey cited AI advances as one of the reasons for the cut. On the company’s earnings call, he said that a “smaller team using the tools we’re building can do more and do it better.”
In a blog post published on Tuesday, Dorsey and Sequoia partner Roelof Botha outlined Block’s AI future. While most companies give employees AI as “a copilot,” Block is aiming to become an intelligence, or a “mini-AGI.”
“For the first time, a system can maintain a continuously updated model of an entire business and use it to coordinate work in ways that previously required humans relaying information through layers of management,” Dorsey and Botha wrote.
Restructuring the company will also upend Block’s org chart and put every employee into one of three roles, they wrote.
First, there’s the individual contributor. These employees are “deep specialists” who receive context from the model, not a manager, allowing them to make decisions “without waiting to be told what to do.”
Next, there’s the directly responsible individual. These employees own “specific cross-cutting problems” and have full permission to pull resources from the model.
Finally, there are the player-coaches. These employees replace managers and are responsible for “craft and people.” Block’s player-coaches both contribute individually and develop talent.
“There is no need for a permanent middle management layer,” Dorsey and Botha wrote. “Everything else the old hierarchy did, the system coordinates.”
Former Block employees were referencing player-coaches before today’s announcement. Business Insider viewed messages sent by current and former Block employees in a Slack group during the company’s first all-hands after the February layoffs.
One former employee wrote, “There is no such thing as a manager anymore, now they’re a ‘coach.'” Another responded: “Is it still ‘player-coaches’ like they called it a few weeks ago or are we down to just coaches.”
One Block employee quoted someone on the call saying, “Block is intelligence.”
It will take time to transition Block’s corporate hierarchy. Dorsey and Botha wrote that the company is “in the early stages of this transition.” The change will be difficult, they wrote, and “parts of it will likely break before they work.”
The goal, Dorsey and Botha wrote, is to make AI more than a “cost-optimization story” where leaders only cut head count and improve margins.
“AI doesn’t augment your company,” they wrote. “It reveals what your company actually is.”
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