Block job listings were all over for a couple years. I thought it was odd that they were hiring so much given what we know about their business lines. I assumed there were some internal projects or new business lines.

I feel sorry for anyone who joined recently and then got laid off because they company wasn't planning properly.

> that we’re now targeting $2M+ gross profit per person

That seems really high. Do they have such moat that nobody can move into their space?

Payment processing is one of the most tightly regulated, and some might say corrupt, industries. Replicating the tech wouldn't be difficult. The social and regulatory part is effectively impossible for anyone who's not already in the inner circle.

Is it hard to break into? Theres tons of tech companies that are playing in that space. Stripe, Braintree, Toast, Adyen, etc.

Ironically Square isn’t good at anything in particular. Square fails to have a good point of sale (Toast wins) and fails for online store fronts (Shopify wins). Square is in a position where they spread themselves thin and aren’t at the top of anything in particular.

With light CRM, Staffing, and Banking tools, it seems like Square's strategy is to be best-of-suite for small businesses rather than best-of-breed.

I've never seen Toast outside of bars/restaurants (although they are ubiquitous in that segment). Every other service or retail shop has been Square, especially farmers markets and craft fairs.

Basically… no vision.

Yeah they’re going nowhere in the long term.

> no vision

Jack's trademark it seems.

Yeah the whole bitcoin stuff is cringe.

Just wait till they start vibe coding more features!

i think they dont have a great moat in their individual offerings, but across square, cash app, and afterpay they offer a pretty good suite of products for the entire transaction stack.

It doesn't matter if the main reason is they over-hired. Financial services is going to eat it up, there are eyes going wide all over the place in the C-suites, I am certain. Companies/Funds that own other companies see an opportunity to reduce input costs (human costs). Even if over-hiring and AI are both explained reasons, the second one is going to win out as it's a narrative that lines up with what their goal is, to reduce costs.

Now the question is will that sustain? Are 50% of us doomed? Is it temporary, and a reversal will take place? Will it start and sputter?

"over-hired" seems like mostly copium of engineers being very afraid that their company will discard them like this and are trying to rationalize why they won't follow.

There was obvious over-hiring in the couple years after COVID while interest rates were low. A lot of companies corrected and laid off staff when that stopped.

This was before LLMs writing code was a daily discussion topic. Blaming every layoff on AI is mostly people connecting trending headlines together.

I don't think it's copium because it doesn't really matter if it's due to AI or COVID-era ZIRP-infused overhiring. If your company hasn't done multiple rounds of layoffs since 2022, they're going to come.

It depends. Maybe constant escalations at customers with unmaintainable products comes first.