Block co-founder Jack Dorsey and lead independent director Roelof Botha outlined a plan to use artificial intelligence for many coordination tasks traditionally handled by middle managers. In a blog post they said AI can monitor projects, surface issues, assign work and distribute critical information faster and more continuously than humans, and that Block is beginning to shift toward a model in which those responsibilities are performed by software.
They challenged the assumption that organizations must be organized as human-led hierarchies. Rather than simply giving every employee an AI “copilot” to make the existing structure slightly more efficient, Dorsey and Botha said Block aims to reorganize the company itself into an intelligence — a kind of mini-AGI — where the system handles coordination and real-time awareness.
The announcement followed a significant workforce reduction in February, when Block cut about 40% of its staff — roughly 4,000 employees, according to earlier reports — a move Dorsey linked to rapid AI adoption and competitive pressures. Some employees who were laid off were quietly rehired in March. The company says that even as AI takes on coordination roles, people will continue to make key business and ethical decisions.
Under the proposed structure, employees would move into three core roles: individual contributors who build and maintain systems; “directly responsible individuals” empowered to solve specific problems and marshal whatever resources are needed; and “player-coaches” who mentor and support others while remaining hands-on with work like coding.
Dorsey and Botha argued that traditional managerial layers — where information travels up to a manager and back down — have historically worked but slow decision-making. In a remote-first, machine-readable work environment, they said, AI can maintain a continuous, real-time picture of what’s being built, what’s blocked, how resources are allocated and what’s succeeding, enabling faster action.
Their central claim: companies’ speed is limited by information flow, and human-only hierarchies are no longer the only option for delivering that flow. Block is betting that treating coordination as an automated intelligence will accelerate decisions and change how organizations are designed.