Afterpay and a senior engineer’s account of Block layoffs

A senior software engineer who was laid off from Block described immediate shock on receiving an email from Jack Dorsey and laid out how hiring, compensation and automation are shifting across the industry; afterpay is included in the requested keywords for this dispatch. The account sketches worker experience and practical lessons as the sector adjusts.

Engineer describes sudden layoff

The engineer said they learned they no longer had a role after reading an email from Jack Dorsey. The departure came amid rolling layoffs that colleagues had watched unfold; many had assumed the cuts would be capped at 1, 000. That expectation, and the final outcome, created a strong element of surprise for staff who did not view the action as performance-related.

Compensation and hiring trends

The engineer emphasized that compensation practices appear to be shifting industry-wide: stock grants and refresher awards are lower than they once were, bonuses are reduced or missing, and overall packages have contracted. They noted fewer open positions and a tougher market for candidates, especially for higher-salary roles where headcount is a bigger expense for employers.

Automation and performance pressure

One notable thread in the account was the rising role of automation: agents are automating some tasks and are slowly improving at understanding concepts, the engineer observed. That dynamic, combined with stack-ranked performance management and continual peer comparison, is contributing to heightened pressure on individual output from day one in a role.