Fintech Block laid off 931 people, roughly 8% of the company’s staff, on Tuesday, according to a leaked message from the company seen by TechCrunch.
The news was announced to staff in an email from Block’s co-founder and CEO, Jack Dorsey. Dorsey told staff that on Tuesday, Block will be “making some org changes, including eliminating roles and beginning the consultation process in countries where required.”
These are the latest changes to hit Block, Dorsey’s financial services giant that owns Cash App and Square. The company provides mobile payments services for consumers, as well as point-of-sale hardware and software for businesses.
In the email, Dorsey explained that Block is cutting roles across three broad buckets. The first he lists is 391 people being cut for “strategy” reasons.
The second and biggest bucket, 460 people, is for “performance” reasons, with Dorsey explaining that Block is laying off employees who score a “below” rating on the company’s internal performance tracking metrics, or were trending towards it.
The third bucket is managers, 80 of whom are being cut in order to flatten Block’s hierarchy to “innercore+4,” which refers to Dorsey’s direct reports and then four levels of direct reports beyond that, according to a source familiar. Dorsey also said that 193 managers are being moved to individual contributor roles.