{"id":116498,"date":"2026-03-09T07:31:46","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T10:31:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tech.einnews.com\/article\/898260862"},"modified":"2026-03-09T07:31:46","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T10:31:46","slug":"jack-dorseys-mass-job-cuts-expose-techs-bogus-narrative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/2026\/03\/09\/jack-dorseys-mass-job-cuts-expose-techs-bogus-narrative\/","title":{"rendered":"Jack Dorsey’s mass job cuts expose tech’s bogus narrative"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Block Inc. Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey said the financial technology firm would cut 4,000 employees, or almost half its staff, he ignited a debate stretching far beyond the tech sector: Are the mass layoffs<\/a> a visionary move that foretells the power of artificial intelligence or just AI washing \u2014 spin designed to mask bad management decisions?<\/p>\n

The substance of the debate might be new, but the deeper framework is not. Ever since there\u2019s been a Silicon Valley, its leaders have worked hard to burnish their images as disruptors and trailblazers by flipping the narrative when they make mistakes or decide that rules are inconvenient. Overlooking privacy concerns and misinformation becomes \u201cmove fast and break things.\u201d A weak board and governance structure is protecting the founder\u2019s vision. A toxic work culture gets reframed as a meritocracy. Demanding employees work 100 hours a week is not exploitation but changing the world from inside a mission-driven company.<\/p>\n

\u201cTelling stories is one of the core activities of Silicon Valley,\u201d Stanford University professor Fred Turner told me. \u201cIt\u2019s as important as making devices.\u201d Turner, a leading expert on the intersection of Silicon Valley culture<\/a> and technology, has long chronicled how mythmaking is essential to the sector\u2019s success. Establishing the industry\u2019s divine mission in creating a utopian future lets it skirt the normal laws of gravity \u2014 whether that\u2019s regulation or unionization. \u201cThe profits spin back as evidence not just of monetary success but of moral success,\u201d Turner says.
The Valley has practiced this art for decades. Steve Jobs helped invent tech\u2019s myth structure, marketing Apple Inc. as a countercultural rebel that would free its users from conformity. Its famous 1984 Super Bowl ad cast the arrival of its Macintosh computer as a tool for smashing an authoritarian, dystopian future. Google cemented its \u201cdon\u2019t be evil\u201d mantra in its 2004 IPO filing. WeWork Inc. told investors it wasn\u2019t a real estate company leasing office space to tenants but rather a platform for \u201celevating the world\u2019s consciousness.\u201d Over at Tesla Inc., shareholders have endured extreme volatility in service of its planet-saving mission.<\/p>\n

Dorsey\u2019s announcement fits squarely within that tradition. Veteran tech journalist and investor Om Malik called it \u201cclassic narrative substitution, a tool where you replace one story with another to reframe the situation.\u201d Dorsey turned a press release about layoffs into a declaration about the future of technology. The cuts, in his telling, reflect not questionable business decisions but instead a prescient structural change that other forward-thinking companies will soon adopt. It\u2019s a message the market likes to hear; the stock, which had been down some 40% since the start of 2025, has jumped about 22%.<\/p>\n


The AI transformation narrative ignores what got the company to this point \u2014 much of which the Wall Street Journal has detailed. Dorsey started Block (formerly known as Square Inc.) in 2009 after he was pushed out of Twitter, reportedly for poor management. But just as he was taking the fintech company public in 2015, he rejoined Twitter<\/a> as CEO. Dorsey had developed a reputation as an \u201cabsentee executive\u201d and the dual CEO titles did not help convince investors that either company had enough of his attention. (Neither did the 10-day trip to Myanmar for a silent meditation retreat or plans to relocate to Africa for a few months, which were foiled by the pandemic.)
To manage both roles, Dorsey delegated more responsibilities to his lieutenants at Square, who sometimes clashed. Making matters worse, Dorsey showed little interest in intervening. That led to staff turnover at the top and contributed to the company building duplicate business functions for its Cash App and Square operations. (The company did away with this model during a reorganization in 2024.)Dorsey had limited involvement in the acquisition of Afterpay, the company\u2019s biggest deal, but homed in on buying an 86% stake in music-streaming service Tidal after hanging out with Jay-Z in the Hamptons. When a pension-fund shareholder sued for breach of fiduciary duty over the deal, a judge dismissed the case but called the acquisition \u201ca terrible business decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the tech sector\u2019s pandemic-era boom, when headcount became one of the industry\u2019s reigning barometers of success, Block joined the herd and tripled its employee base. Dorsey acknowledged on X last week that the company over-hired. This wasn\u2019t the first time Dorsey mistakenly swelled the ranks. In 2022, after Elon Musk acquired Twitter and slashed its staff by 80%, Dorsey apologized for having grown the company\u2019s size too quickly.<\/p>\n

Dorsey also has struggled with the optics of the announcement around Block\u2019s job cuts. Press reports have pointed to a three-day party celebrating the company\u2019s 16th anniversary that cost more than $60 million just six months earlier. On a video call with employees the day of the news, Dorsey wore a hat that said \u201cLOVE,\u201d with the New York Times reporting that one employee asked if that was the right fashion decision while gutting the company. His message to employees, in all lowercase, stood in contrast to the formal letter to investors, leading John Gruber to write on his \u201cDaring Fireball\u201d blog that it\u2019s \u201ca telling sign about who he respects.\u201d<\/p>\n

So did AI have something to do with Block\u2019s cuts? Sure. But that can\u2019t erase the company\u2019s missteps. Where Dorsey has proved most adept is in knowing the right story to tell and sustaining the myth. Because in Silicon Valley, the best way to move past a mistake is to just call it the future.
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… ignited a debate stretching far beyond the tech<\/span> sector: Are the mass layoffs a … into a declaration about the future of technology<\/span>. The cuts, in his telling, reflect … acquisition \u00e2\u0080\u009ca terrible business decision.\u00e2\u0080\u009d During the tech<\/span> sector\u00e2\u0080\u0099s pandemic-era boom …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116498\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}