I listened to his podcast episode on the Sequoia podcast a few days ago. Interestingly, his argument was "we don't need middle managers" and he plants to have all 6000 employees eventually report to him.
In other words, companies don't need managers anymore. Except for one manager. Him.
Block signed a friend of mine, they quit their other job, then block was like whoops layoffs including people like this person who hadn’t even started. Super unethical.
In Germany we have pretty good employment protections (I think at least!), but this would be legal too. You have a 3 month grace period where the employer can terminate the contract without giving much reason - you gotta survive this period then the protections kick in and they can’t just terminate the contract without a justification and notice period.
It sucks but I think in this case even the best protections won’t help much.
I work at a less innovative place, and I see out product managers coming with prototypes, at least solid mock ups rather than just a jira.
They socialize it with potential users, they iterate, they find missing requirements, it's pretty powerful.
The net result is we're building better features faster.
I prefer prototyping to slides. The reason is it helps me understand the problem and edge cases better. Getting AI to build means you could potentially understand it even less than if you put the slides together.
Hiring talent that is passionate about delivering a quality product is more important than ever considering there are so many ways to take shortcuts now that might not be obvious until later.
The "prototypes not slides" rule works great for product decisions where the devil is in the interaction details. You can't really argue about a flow in a slide deck — once someone clicks through a prototype, the discussion shifts from opinion to observation.
But I wonder how they handle discussions that are inherently abstract — pricing changes, infrastructure migration plans, org restructuring. Forcing a prototype there would just produce theater. The real insight is probably not "prototypes good, slides bad" but "stop presenting things that should be experienced.
I went to a meeting with a prototype once. It was a single happy path with stubbed data, coded in the most naïve way possible. It was, after all, a prototype just to give a feel for what the interactions would be like.
It put enormous pressure on delivery, since leadership had "already seen it working, how hard could it be to make it to production?"
Musk taking over Twitter took a lot of the spotlight off of Dorsey, as though it wasn't already a toxic plaxe. He got a second chance in the public eye to be the visionary that's "one of us" and he's doing his best to blow it
Is the idea that prototypes give the Permission Granter more fidelity into a proposal and therefore can make better decisions? Whereas before, with Slide Decks, the Permission Granter couldn't experience certain things and therefore couldn't make as good decisions to grant permissions?
So in effect this remains a billionaire figure speaking from their own perspective and we're supposed to care?
If Block were experiencing rapid productivity improvements from AI why is their flagship Square product still worse than Toast? Toast is eating their lunch day after day.
I listened to his podcast episode on the Sequoia podcast a few days ago. Interestingly, his argument was "we don't need middle managers" and he plants to have all 6000 employees eventually report to him.
In other words, companies don't need managers anymore. Except for one manager. Him.
After his stunt with the mass firings "because of AI," employees now bring prototypes, not slides, to meetings with Jack Dorsey.
These clowns live in a dreamworld created by their PAs and cronies
"CEO said a thing" journalism, discussed on HN very recently:
https://karlbode.com/ceo-said-a-thing-journalism/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47577735
Block signed a friend of mine, they quit their other job, then block was like whoops layoffs including people like this person who hadn’t even started. Super unethical.
I’ve been in IT for 25 years, it has happened to me once, unfortunately it isn’t that uncommon.
In the USA at least sure. This was in a country with lightly better employment protections so it’s quite uncommon.
In Germany we have pretty good employment protections (I think at least!), but this would be legal too. You have a 3 month grace period where the employer can terminate the contract without giving much reason - you gotta survive this period then the protections kick in and they can’t just terminate the contract without a justification and notice period. It sucks but I think in this case even the best protections won’t help much.
That's so messed up. I hope they're doing ok.
I work at a less innovative place, and I see out product managers coming with prototypes, at least solid mock ups rather than just a jira. They socialize it with potential users, they iterate, they find missing requirements, it's pretty powerful. The net result is we're building better features faster.
How can you be less innovative than Block? Their products are 100% ripoffs of better products
I prefer prototyping to slides. The reason is it helps me understand the problem and edge cases better. Getting AI to build means you could potentially understand it even less than if you put the slides together.
Hiring talent that is passionate about delivering a quality product is more important than ever considering there are so many ways to take shortcuts now that might not be obvious until later.
The "prototypes not slides" rule works great for product decisions where the devil is in the interaction details. You can't really argue about a flow in a slide deck — once someone clicks through a prototype, the discussion shifts from opinion to observation.
But I wonder how they handle discussions that are inherently abstract — pricing changes, infrastructure migration plans, org restructuring. Forcing a prototype there would just produce theater. The real insight is probably not "prototypes good, slides bad" but "stop presenting things that should be experienced.
I went to a meeting with a prototype once. It was a single happy path with stubbed data, coded in the most naïve way possible. It was, after all, a prototype just to give a feel for what the interactions would be like.
It put enormous pressure on delivery, since leadership had "already seen it working, how hard could it be to make it to production?"
Never again.
> theater
That's exactly what you have to do for the CEO class
Or new infrastructure. You bring a demo of a new distributed transaction manager?
At face value this seemed cool, but the more I think about it slides or prototypes are the same thing, just a different kind of theater.
I feel like he's just doing it for attention.
Seems like it’s working
Musk taking over Twitter took a lot of the spotlight off of Dorsey, as though it wasn't already a toxic plaxe. He got a second chance in the public eye to be the visionary that's "one of us" and he's doing his best to blow it
I'm not sure what the flex is here.
Is the idea that prototypes give the Permission Granter more fidelity into a proposal and therefore can make better decisions? Whereas before, with Slide Decks, the Permission Granter couldn't experience certain things and therefore couldn't make as good decisions to grant permissions?
So in effect this remains a billionaire figure speaking from their own perspective and we're supposed to care?
If Block were experiencing rapid productivity improvements from AI why is their flagship Square product still worse than Toast? Toast is eating their lunch day after day.
And why is Tidal’s library so much smaller than Spotify’s? And why would I use Cash App if they’re going to try to make it “an interface for AI”?
I bet, considering the massive skill needed for it: "hey claude, turn this presentation into a prototype".
> "I hate the way people use slide presentations instead of thinking," Jobs once said, according to a book published last month by David Pogue.
I wonder what he'll think about these vibecoded prototypes and if it's more thinking or less thinking
"Just two months ago every meeting that we would have, you see a presentation or a Google Doc and we go through it," Dorsey said.
2 months ago they were still using PowerPoints? Jesus no wonder they had to lay so many people off. What the fuck is going on over there?
When I worked at Square 10 years ago it was either Google Slides or occasionally a Keynote presentation. I doubt they've switched to PowerPoint.