Block co-founder Jack Dorsey has outlined a vision for workplaces where artificial intelligence performs many middle-management functions, weeks after the company cut roughly 4,000 employees citing AI-driven restructuring. In a blog post, Dorsey and Block’s lead independent director, Roelof Botha, said AI can track projects, surface issues, assign work and share critical information faster than humans, and that Block is in the “early stages” of shifting toward a model where the technology handles those tasks.
They questioned the assumption that organizations must be hierarchical with humans as the coordination mechanism. “Instead, we intend to replace what the hierarchy does. Most companies using AI today are giving everyone a copilot, which makes the existing structure work slightly better without changing it. We’re after something different: a company built as an intelligence, or mini-AGI,” they wrote.
Block cut about 40% of its staff in February, a move Dorsey linked to the rapid acceleration of AI at the company and competitive pressures. Some employees who were let go were quietly rehired in March. Dorsey and Botha said people will still make key business and ethical decisions even as AI takes on coordination roles.
Under the proposed model, employees would be reorganized into three roles: individual contributors who build and maintain systems; “directly responsible individuals” tasked with solving specific problems and empowered to use any needed resources; and “player-coaches,” who mentor and support others while continuing hands-on work like coding.
Dorsey and Botha argued that traditional hierarchies — where information flows up to managers and then back down — have worked historically but limit speed. In a remote-first, machine-readable work environment, AI can continuously build and maintain a real-time picture of what’s being built, what’s blocked, where resources are allocated and what’s working. “Companies move fast or slow based on information flow. Hierarchy and middle management impede information flow,” they said. “The question was never whether you needed layers. The question was whether humans were the only option for what those layers do. They aren’t anymore.”
