Block employee says AI automation cost him his job after email from CEO
Ivan Ureña-Valdes, a data analyst who worked at block for nearly four years, says he was laid off after an email from Jack Dorsey that explained the move as driven by AI — a shift he had been watching in his own work for months.
What happened in an instant
Ureña-Valdes says the layoff arrived in the middle of an interview he was conducting for a role at the company. He got an email from Jack Dorsey while the interview was underway. A coworker then messaged him, "Hey, are you okay?" — a message he recognized as a likely signal that he had been cut.
He told the interviewee, "I was actually just let go from the company. I probably won't be able to submit your feedback in time. Please reach out to your recruiter. " He noted this felt particularly strange because, in past rounds, people had their access cut almost immediately.
Block cuts followed earlier rounds
Ureña-Valdes said he had survived three rounds of layoffs before — some companywide and some limited to the engineering organization. He emphasized that he did not believe the move was performance-related: at the time he was working on two large projects, likely the biggest he'd tackled since joining the firm.
He also said many performance-related cuts had already finished, and that he had no idea this particular cut was coming.
How AI factored into the decision
Ureña-Valdes described having a hunch the company would eventually cut people because of AI, though he did not expect it to happen at that moment. He said he appreciated Jack Dorsey for being direct — that the reason given was "because of AI and the vision he sees. "
He described a long-running awareness inside the company of AI's impact: "Jack loves AI and was constantly pushing us to use it. I got to use these tools as much as possible every single day. " He singled out a specific milestone in the AI field he watched closely: Anthropic launched Opus 4. 5 late last year.
What the role looked like — and how it was automated
Ureña-Valdes laid out concrete steps of a data analyst's work that he says became faster and easier because of AI: finding the right dataset, writing queries or scripts to pull that dataset, and generating the output. He said every one of those steps was already being automated and that realizing how powerful those tools had become was a "whoa" moment for him.
He said the automation showed up directly in his daily work and that combinations of tools had materially sped tasks he used to do manually.
Personal fallout and company scale
Ureña-Valdes said he is the sole provider for his family and that losing the job was difficult. He described the company's severance and benefits as generous and said those payments and coverages made the situation easier to manage.
He also pointed to the scale of the cut: "For 4, 000-plus people to be cut without anybody knowing, that tells me decisions were made very high up. "
Note on format and source
Every time Lee Chong Ming publishes a story, you’ll get an alert straight to your inbox! By clicking "Sign up", you agree to receive emails and accept the site's terms of service and privacy policy. This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Ivan Ureña-Valdes, who has worked at Block for nearly four years as a data analyst. It has been edited for length and clarity.
It is unclear in the provided context what the company's next scheduled actions or public milestones are.
