“The greatest innovation in corporate communications isn’t creating new technology, but finding new ways to describe firing people without mentioning the robots that will replace them.” – Anonymous tech executive overheard at a closed-door fintech conference.
In what industry observers are calling “the most semantically innovative workforce reduction of 2025,” Block CEO Jack Dorsey announced Tuesday that the financial services company has laid off 931 employees – while emphatically denying that artificial intelligence had anything to do with it, despite the company’s significant investments in automation technologies.
The Great Fintech Euphemism Machine
Block’s layoffs – the company’s second major workforce reduction in 15 months – were communicated to employees in an email that meticulously categorized the human casualties into three distinct “optimization buckets”: 391 people cut for “strategy reasons,” 460 for “performance reasons,” and 80 managers eliminated to “flatten” the company’s hierarchy.1
“None of the above points are trying to hit a specific financial target, replacing folks with AI, or changing our headcount cap,” Dorsey’s email stated with the conviction of someone explaining that water isn’t wet. “They are specific to our needs around strategy, raising the bar and acting faster on performance, and flattening our org so we can move faster and with less abstraction.”
Dr. Eleanor Wordsmith, director of the Institute for Corporate Linguistic Gymnastics, explains the brilliance of this approach: “Notice how the statement creates a rhetorical triple negative. By proactively denying that AI replacement is happening, while simultaneously using abstract corporate terminology like ‘strategy,’ ‘performance,’ and ‘flattening,’ Dorsey has created what we call a ‘meaning vacuum’ where almost anything could be true.”
This masterclass in corporate communication comes as Block also announced the closure of 748 open positions, essentially implementing a hiring freeze while laying off nearly a thousand people. When combining these figures, the company is effectively reducing its potential workforce by over 1,600 positions – a staggering figure that industry analysts have dubbed “aggressively strategic performance optimization.”
The Fintech Fashion Cycle: From Hype to ‘Right-Sizing’
Block’s layoffs highlight a broader trend in the fintech industry, which has shifted from the exuberant growth of 2021 – when global fintech investment peaked at $240 billion – to a more sober approach focused on what industry insiders call “profitability, operational efficiency, and strategic consolidation”.2
“The fintech industry is just following the natural fashion cycle of Silicon Valley,” explains venture capitalist Thomas Trendchaser. “First, we overfund a sector based on excessive tech media hype. Then we hire too many people. Then we fire them all while claiming it’s because of ‘strategy’ rather than ‘we made a mistake.’ Then we find a new shiny object like AI, and repeat the process. It’s the circle of life in tech.”
Indeed, while fintech companies are laying off workers, investment in AI applications for financial services is expected to rise by $31 billion worldwide by 2025.3 This curious juxtaposition has led to the emergence of what industry insiders call “The Great Vocabulary Shift,” where companies carefully avoid any suggestion that they’re replacing humans with AI while simultaneously touting AI’s capabilities to investors.
The Department of Human Resource Optimization
According to sources familiar with Block’s operations, the company has established a secretive internal department called the “Human Resource Optimization Algorithm Team,” tasked with identifying which employees could be eliminated without explicitly acknowledging that automation might replace their functions.
“It’s brilliant, really,” explains former Block executive Victoria Euphemism. “The algorithm analyzes employee performance data, organizational structure, and future automation potential – but its output only mentions ‘strategy’ and ‘performance’ factors. We’re able to prepare for automation without ever having to say we’re preparing for automation.”
The department reportedly developed a proprietary “Strategic Performance Index” that assigns each employee a score based on how easily their job function could eventually be automated. However, the documentation carefully describes this as measuring “strategic alignment” and “performance sustainability.”
“We found that 94% of employees whose jobs could be fully automated within 18 months scored in the bottom quartile of our Strategic Performance Index,” Euphemism explains. “It’s an amazing statistical coincidence.”
The Fintech Layoff Euphemism Generator
As layoffs sweep across the fintech sector, companies are increasingly turning to creative euphemisms to describe workforce reductions. The startup EuphemismAI has reportedly developed an automated system that generates layoff announcements without ever mentioning financial difficulties, market challenges, or automation.
“Our most popular template is ‘Strategic Realignment for Future Growth,'” explains EuphemismAI founder Marcus Obfuscation. “It allows companies to cut 30% of their workforce while making it sound like they’re doing everyone a favor. Our system generated 87% of all tech layoff announcements in Q1 2025.”
The company’s proprietary algorithm can transform a simple statement like “We’re firing 931 people because we hired too many during the fintech boom and now we’re preparing to automate many functions” into a 1,200-word email about “strategic repositioning,” “performance enhancement,” and “organizational flattening” without ever mentioning the actual reasons.
The Automation Paradox
Perhaps the most striking aspect of Block’s layoffs is the company’s simultaneous investment in technology that could potentially automate many of the functions previously performed by its now-departed employees. According to industry reports, Block, like many fintech companies, is heavily investing in AI applications that can streamline operations, enhance customer experiences, and reduce the need for human intervention.4
“By 2025, AI is expected to move beyond text to become truly multimodal, incorporating pictures, videos, sounds, and even physical interactions through robotics,” explains Joseph Lo, head of enterprise platforms at Broadridge.5 “AI will begin to take action on behalf of users, making decisions and simplifying complex tasks, fundamentally changing how we interact with computers.”
Meanwhile, the fictional Global Institute for Employment Future has released a study showing that 48 job categories in financial services have a high probability of being automated by AI within the next two years.6 Curiously, many of these job categories overlap with the positions eliminated in Block’s recent layoffs.
“It’s pure coincidence,” insisted Block spokesperson Jennifer Deflection. “The fact that we’re investing millions in AI systems that can perform the exact same functions as the employees we just let go is completely unrelated to our strategic performance optimization initiative.”
The Hierarchy Flattening Paradox
One particularly intriguing aspect of Block’s layoffs is the elimination of 80 managers to “flatten” the organization. This approach aligns with a growing trend in tech companies to reduce middle management while simultaneously investing in AI systems that can perform many management functions.
“Companies are realizing that the traditional management hierarchy is inefficient,” explains management consultant Dr. Harold Hierarchy. “Why have five layers of human managers when an AI system can monitor performance metrics, assign tasks, and provide feedback more efficiently? Of course, we don’t call it ‘replacing managers with AI’ – we call it ‘organizational flattening for enhanced operational velocity.'”
The International Institute for Organizational Psychology has found that companies typically eliminate human managers approximately 6-12 months before implementing AI systems that perform similar oversight functions. The institute’s research indicates that 78% of companies that announced “hierarchy flattening” initiatives in 2024 implemented AI management tools within a year.
The Strategic Vision of Definitely Not Using AI
While Dorsey explicitly denies that Block’s layoffs are related to AI replacement, the fintech industry as a whole is rapidly moving toward increased automation. The Fintech Automation Index indicates that the average fintech company has automated 37% of previously human-performed functions over the past two years, with that figure expected to reach 63% by 2027.
“The industry is caught in a weird communication paradox,” explains tech ethicist Eleanor Contradiction. “Companies need to appear cutting-edge to investors by touting their AI capabilities, while simultaneously assuring employees that AI won’t replace their jobs. This creates bizarre situations where a CEO will deny using AI to replace workers in a company-wide email, then highlight their automation achievements in the next investor call.”
Indeed, in Block’s most recent investor presentation, which we totally didn’t just make up, the company proudly announced that its new AI systems had “enhanced operational efficiency by reducing dependence on manual processes” – corporate-speak for “we need fewer humans now.”
The Unexpected Twist: The AI Layoff Detector
In a remarkable development that nobody saw coming, a group of recently laid-off tech workers has developed an AI system called “CorpSpeak Translator” that can analyze company layoff announcements and determine the actual reasons behind workforce reductions.
When the system analyzed Dorsey’s email to Block employees, it concluded with 97.8% confidence that “automation readiness” was a significant factor in determining which employees were let go, despite the explicit denial in the text.
“Our algorithm examines patterns across thousands of layoff announcements and identifies which employees are most likely to have their functions automated within 18 months,” explains CorpSpeak Translator creator Samantha Terminated. “We’ve found that 83% of employees laid off for ‘strategic’ or ‘performance’ reasons held positions that are prime candidates for automation.”
The system has analyzed layoff announcements from 200 fintech companies over the past year and found that while only 4% explicitly mentioned automation or AI replacement, approximately 72% of the eliminated positions were in job categories with high automation potential.
Ironically, the CorpSpeak Translator system has become so effective at decoding corporate communications that several companies have reportedly begun using it to help craft layoff announcements that won’t be flagged as automation-related.
The Mor(AI)l of the Story
As Block moves forward with its “strategic repositioning” and the fintech industry continues its evolution toward increased automation, perhaps the most valuable skill for both executives and employees isn’t coding or financial expertise, but the ability to decode what companies actually mean when they talk about “strategy,” “performance,” and “organizational flattening.”
In the great game of corporate communication chess, Jack Dorsey has demonstrated that the winning move isn’t to admit you’re replacing humans with machines, but to create a narrative so wrapped in abstraction that nobody can definitely prove that’s what you’re doing – even if all signs point in that direction.
As one anonymous laid-off Block employee put it: “I was told I was being let go for ‘strategic misalignment,’ and then saw my exact job function listed in a company blog post about their new AI capabilities a week later. But I’m sure that’s just another amazing coincidence in the wonderful world of fintech innovation.”
In related news, Block has announced the creation of a new “Employee Communication Optimization System” powered by advanced language models, which will help ensure all future company announcements are “strategically aligned with corporate narrative objectives.” Human PR representatives were unavailable for comment, as their positions have been eliminated for “performance reasons.”
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References
- https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/25/read-the-email-jack-dorsey-sent-when-he-cut-931-of-blocks-staff/ ↩︎
- https://www.paymentgenes.com/blog/the-state-of-fintech-m-a-in-2025-whats-next ↩︎
- https://www.linklaters.com/en/insights/blogs/fintechlinks/2024/december/fintech-payments-legal-outlook-2025 ↩︎
- https://provoke.fm/fintech-innovation-the-biggest-challenges-and-opportunities-in-2025/ ↩︎
- https://www.fintechfutures.com/2025/01/fintech-in-2025-the-industrys-predictions-for-the-year-ahead/ ↩︎
- https://www.winssolutions.org/jobs-ai-will-replace-challenge-opportunities/ ↩︎
