---
title: Block's Jack Dorsey Sacks Thousands, Including Half of Afterpay Australia Staff, Citing AI Amidst 'AI-Washing' Accusations After Lavish Retreats
created: 2026-03-02
updated: 2026-03-02
type: summary
tags: ["AI", "block", "layoffs", "notes", "telegram"]
external: http://go/ui/posts/2102/
status: inbox
---

The mood was jubilant when Block chief executive Jack Dorsey summoned Afterpay Australia’s 1300 staff to California in October for a raucous retreat, but last Friday the party stopped suddenly with half of them sacked in a mass redundancy round the company blamed on artificial intelligence.

The financial technology giant pulled out all the stops for its October gathering. From flying in 8000 employees from all over the world to enjoy the festivities to free-flowing alcohol and performances from rappers Anderson Paak and T-Pain, the tech bros let loose after a big year.


Jack Dorsey caught Australian Afterpay employees by surprise with a big redundancy round.  Tim Beor

The company, which owns Afterpay and CashApp, had increased its profit before tax by 17 per cent to more than $US10 billion ($14 billion) and talked of big plans for the year ahead. Dorsey, who co-founded Twitter and has become one of the American tech sector’s highest-profile billionaires, even conducted a fireside chat with rapper and Block director Jay-Z.

It didn’t come cheap. Block’s financials revealed in November that the three-day party constituted the bulk of almost $US68 million in expenses.

But the revelling has officially stopped. Dorsey took to his old social media platform on Friday to publish a 628-word statement, entirely in lower case, alerting the world that he’d decided to cut his 10,000 staff by 40 per cent in one of the biggest workplace contractions by percentage in history. “gross profit continues to grow, we continue to serve more and more customers, and profitability is improving. but something has changed. we’re already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working,” he wrote.

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A company-wide call shortly after Dorsey’s announcement quickly descended into gallows humour with some employees posting comments including “Did Jay-Z get let go because he was in the Epstein files?”

Afterpay insiders who spoke under the condition of anonymity so they could talk freely said almost half of the Australian workforce had been axed, with whole teams within legal, design, product and engineering wiped out.


The local marketing team, already cut by 60 per cent in 2024, was slashed. Queries from reporters about the scale of the job cuts also went unanswered – most of the local communications department has also been laid off.

Block, which paid $US28 billion to acquire the Australian buy now, pay later darling in 2022, declined to confirm the number of people who had been axed. But the employees said the news sent them reeling.


About 200 Australian Afterpay staff had just returned from yet another company retreat two days earlier. This one took place in Lorne, a quaint surfing town in Victoria’s south coast. And just like the celebrations in Oakland five months earlier, the mood was upbeat. Photos of themed parties were plastered across LinkedIn with zeal. “We drank the Kool-Aid,” one attendee said. “Afterpay had so much on the road map this year that we felt it was going to be our year and the culture was better than ever.”


The only Australian team that seems to have survived unscathed is sales. It’s an emerging pattern cropping up across the tech industry, particularly for software businesses such as Atlassian, which seem more comfortable axing bloated engineering teams and desperately need to prove they can keep selling products in the face of their cheaper, newer AI-native rivals.

Block’s severance package is generous. Those who’ve been cut will receive 20 weeks’ pay plus one additional week per year served, all equity vested through until the end of May and six months of healthcare. They will also get $US5000 of cash and be allowed to keep their company laptop.


The Australian employees who remain have been promised a 5.68 per cent pay increase, and about $30,000 in cash and shares, across four instalments over the next two years. “We deeply value the unique capabilities and builder mindset you bring to the table,” an excerpt from one of the compensation statements issued to remaining employees on Friday reads.

Whether the job losses are the biggest example yet of an AI-led employment bloodbath, or a company using the rise of automation as an excuse to cover necessary cuts has divided commentators. Block’s headcount exploded from about 4000 to more than 12,500 people between 2019 and 2022 after Dorsey went on an acquisition spree which included the purchase of Afterpay.

This has led to staff and some investors saying these cuts have been “AI-washed”. This is a term, used last month by OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, to describe companies positioning lay-offs as driven by AI efficiencies rather than earlier over-hiring and mismanagement.

Dorsey rejected that idea. “We have and do run an efficient company … better than most,” he said, conceding Block hired too many during the pandemic.

Meanwhile, investors welcomed the news, and Block’s shares – which are listed on the New York Stock Exchange and trade on the ASX – were up almost 17 per cent by the end of last week at $US63.70.
