An experiment in replacing middle management with agents

It lays out the case of fintech company Block, which let go of about 40% of all employees, citing not worsening results but organizational redesign. Even though 2025 gross profit rose 17% year over year and the personal money-transfer business 33%, the company announced a goal of raising gross profit per employee from $500,000 to $2 million, together with a plan to cut management layers, up to five deep, to two or three within 2026. The design is presented in four layers (foundational capabilities, a world model, an intelligence layer and interfaces), with the idea that agents take over receiving reports, calling meetings and coordinating priorities, while people's roles narrow to individual contributors, temporary owners and player-coaches. However, the company world model it presupposes is still being built, and there is also the counterargument that replacing even a single call-center job adds $15,000 to $20,000 a year in new operating costs. What clearly remains is that this is at the blueprint stage, not a success story.

This is a note: my own write-up after reading several sources. It has no source link; events checked against a source are kept as records.