This Block employee survived the ‘Thanos snap’—then refused a 90% pay bump and quit immediately. Why her explanation is going viral

The data scientist says the company ‘shoved AI down everyone’s throats,’ yet she saw ‘very limited gains in productivity.’

When fintech company Block laid off 40% off its workforce last week, CEO Jack Dorsey explained the decision in a memo to employees that he also shared on social media. He was eliminating more than 4,000 jobs in the name of AI efficiency, he said, even though the company’s profitability was increasing.

Though much of his letter was addressed to those who were losing their jobs, he ended with a note to those who’d be staying on. “What I’m asking of you is to build with me,” Dorsey wrote. “We’re going to build this company with intelligence at the core of everything we do. How we work, how we create, how we serve our customers.”

But apparently, at least one Block employee who survived the layoffs, Naoko Takeda, chose to leave the company anyway. She matched Dorsey’s post with a viral letter of her own, sharing that she left her position as a data scientist for Cash App, one of Block’s subsidiaries, just a day after the layoffs occurred.

“I figured that a company able to Thanos-snap away half of their employees doesn’t need two-week’s notice from me, just another IC that could easily have been in that 40%,” Takeda wrote on LinkedIn (where her profile’s headline now reads, “i’m just a girl”).

Takeda says she found out within a 10-minute timeframe that 70% of her immediate and sister teams would be getting the chop. “On my immediate team, the only people left were me and a new hire who had started 3 days ago,” she said. “I felt immense dread and survivor’s guilt.”

That guilt wasn’t helped by Block’s retention offer to remaining employees, which Takeda claimed in her case included a pay increase of around 75% plus a hefty one-time bonus that would bring the total up to a 90% increase. “Basically, I saw my company discard half of my peers and double my pay. That’s not an honor. It feels shameful and dehumanizing. I’d rather see my peers keep their jobs than personally profit from their trauma,” she said.

Fast Company has reached out to Block for comment on the details mentioned in Takeda’s post.

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