future-of-work
3 articles
Block Just Cut 4,000 Jobs — Jack Dorsey Says AI Means Companies Don't Need This Many People Anymore
Block (formerly Square) CEO Jack Dorsey posted a public letter announcing that nearly half the company—over 4,000 people—would be laid off. The bombshell: this isn't because the company is struggling. Business is strong. The reason? 'AI tools paired with smaller, flatter teams are enabling a fundamentally new way of working.' He chose one massive cut over gradual attrition, calling repeated layoffs 'destructive to morale, focus, and trust.' This letter is the most direct CEO statement yet about AI reshaping org structure—and every tech lead should read it.
Andrew Ng: I've Stopped Reading AI-Generated Code — When Python Becomes the New Assembly and 'X Engineers' Take Over
In The Batch Issue 341, Andrew Ng casually dropped that he's not only stopped writing code — he's 'long stopped reading generated code.' He now operates at a higher abstraction level, directing coding agents instead of looking at syntax. He's also spotted a new job category emerging: 'X Engineers' — Recruiting Engineers, Marketing Engineers — people embedded in business functions who build software using AI. This is the most radical statement about the future of programming from AI's most influential educator.
The Atlantic Declares: The Post-Chatbot Era Is Here — Americans Still Think AI = ChatGPT While Silicon Valley Has Agents Running Five Tasks at Once
The Atlantic published a sweeping essay arguing Americans are living in 'parallel AI universes' — the general public still thinks AI means ChatGPT, while the tech world has been radicalized by agentic tools like Claude Code and Codex. The piece cites Microsoft's CEO predicting 95% of code will be AI-written by decade's end, Anthropic reporting 90% AI-generated code internally, and a viral warning that what happened to tech workers is about to happen to everyone.