Nvidia Earnings, Paramount Emerges Victorious, Block Layoffs | Diet TBPN

12:24John Coogan:70 % below asking? Just you're selling a million-dollar property? It's like, can you do 300K?

12:30Jordi Hays:Yeah. Let's bring in John Palmer. Let's bring in John Palmer, our surprise.

12:35John Coogan:He's live in the TVP and Ultradone. You know him, you love him. Nice hat. You probably know John Palmer as the...

12:45Jordi Hays:As being one inch shorter than you.

12:47John Coogan:Well, he's the face of leg lengthening surgery right now.

12:50Jordi Hays:Right? No, they were saying I'm the Goldilocks technology brother. Some people were saying you're a little too tall. Oh, okay. And Jordy's tall in his own right, but maybe not quite tall enough. But short at this table. Yeah, right. So they wanted someone right in between, so I was contacted by your team.

13:04John Coogan:I love it. I love it. Well, actually introduce yourself, for those who've been living under your data center.

13:09Jordi Hays:Yeah, sure. My name is John Palmer. I was a co-founder and CEO of a company called PartyDAO. I recently announced that we're going to be joining Stripe soon, so that was an awesome five-year journey. And I also work on a company called Area Technology, which does logo and graphic design for brands like yourself. Shout out to the new logo and graphics package. And yeah, that's nice for me. We are honored. Well, we wanted to hang and do some timeline with you as that is a sign of great respect.

13:39John Coogan:Donald Trump spins the wheel of tariffs and replaces a 5 % tariff on Belarusian wheat with a 22.4 % tariff on Pakistani jet engines. All stocks lose$2.6. Substack newsletter publishes a story about DoorDash going badly. DoorDash down 862 % global financial system teeters on the brink. And three, NVIDIA announces earnings of$100 trillion, beating expectations by 1 ,000x. Jensen Wang named new king of earth while his stockholders to form the new permanent ruling class NVIDIA down 3 % on the news. Are you a day trader guy? No, no. Are you an investor? I am an investor. Okay. How do you think about the markets?

14:16John Coogan:Are you a businessman? What's your strategy?

14:18Jordi Hays:I'm an investor. I'm a businessman. I don't know. I think my approach is like pretty smooth brain value investing. Like good fundamentals, I'll buy the stock and hold it for a long time. I'm definitely not doing a lot of, even intra-month trade. It's really like long-term. You're not like a one-man Jane Street. I'm not a one-man Jane Street.

14:34John Coogan:What about crypto? I feel like if you're working in crypto, even adjacent to crypto, there's just so much alpha from seeing essentially like angel investment style opportunities from someone who's building something that you just know it's going to be hyped and the token's going to moon.

14:51Jordi Hays:The issue is that it's like wildly distracting because as soon as you have enough money, Is that, I think, I think I don't like doing a lot of like individual stock trading. Yeah. Because as soon as then, then my attention is gravitating towards this thing that's not actually productive. Yeah. And so. What do you think about it? I think that's true. And I think, I mean, obviously if you're trading like perps in crypto, like you better stay on top of it because like there's a moment to exit. Or if you just hold it long term, you'll probably get liquidated at some point. Sure. So I just don't touch any of that.

15:23Jordi Hays:You're right, though, that there are weird things in crypto where someone you know or someone's doing a project and they airdrop a token or something like this and you wake up a week later and it's worth whatever, a month's worth of your salary. So I think that's happened to everybody. Let's talk about Jane Street because I've seen maybe 10 ,000 posts kind of blaming them entirely for crypto price action over the last couple months. Have you been able to find anything that is definitive? Obviously, the lawsuit came out and they were like we were going back and forth on it because they pulled funds out of this liquidity pool.

15:58Jordi Hays:Yeah. Right after. Actually, I don't even think they I don't think they pulled funds. I actually think they sold into the pool, which is, I guess, the same thing. I don't know. But they did it five minutes after we were saying maybe yesterday or the day before that. OK, it's a public block chain theory. It's not actually a smoking gun necessarily. I'm only as informed as you are in terms of the tweets. I haven't verified anything. But yeah, my understanding is that Tara Luna had had a lot of money in this pool, and they had planned to pull 180 something million out of it. I guess the allegation is that Jane Street heard that this was coming before everyone else.

16:39Jordi Hays:That's like the material nonpublic information. And so then also pulled their money or sold it just minutes after Tara did it. You're right that it's public. So I I guess, like, again, not a source of truth here. I'm like relaying secondhand with confidence information that I read on the timeline. This guy's built for podcasting. But yeah, I guess you could say, hey, it was anyone could see that and they just reacted quickest. I guess what that would come down to is what are the internal ops on moving those funds like that? I would imagine that a fund like Jane Street with$85 million in this pool isn't just sitting in someone's like hot wallet met a mask, right?

17:11Jordi Hays:Yeah. So they probably would have had to. They could have like some type of protocol or actually software.

17:16John Coogan:A lot of that stuff feels like conspiracy theories. It feels very similar to the Robin Hood GameStop fiasco where there was a lot of conspiracy theories about Citadel purposely tanking markets and the bailing out hedge funds at various points. And I always thought that was just people looking for scapegoats and a whole bunch of market actors just playing hardball because that's the default structure. I don't know.

17:46Jordi Hays:Yeah, I mean, I'm not that comfortable speculating on this either because I'm just like, all right, I saw a post in the timeline. Burger King is launching an AI chatbot that will assess workers' friendliness and will be trained to recognize certain words and phrases like, welcome to Burger King, please, and thank you. It's huge. The AI will be programmed into workers' headsets, according to The Verge. I think Chick-fil-A got access to that technology like a decade early. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because there's a my pleasure. There's a thank you, there's a my pleasure every time. They've been doing that, yeah.

18:15Jordi Hays:Yeah. Yeah. Apparently, when McDonald's opened in Russia, there's a quote, after several days of training about customer service at McDonald's, a young Soviet teenager asked the McDonald's trainer a very serious question. Why do we have to be so nice to the customers? After all, we have the hamburgers, and they don't.

18:32John Coogan:They need to be nice to us if they want these hamburgers.

18:34Jordi Hays:Noah Smith is sharing the job postings for software engineers have picked up since Vibe Coding became a thing. They had been declining until the early part of last year, actually. Again, this is why, I mean, we've talked about this over and over and over. I feel like there's this like two different narratives being spread on Instagram. It's just like this like labor displacement narrative going super, super, super hard. And then over here, it's just an entirely different world.

19:05John Coogan:Yeah, I mean. Tyler, how do you interpret the software engineering number? Have we talked about this yet?

19:09Jordi Hays:Yeah, I mean, so I think I broadly agree. like so when Dario wanted Dorkesh you had this take where it's like you go from AI doing 90 % of coding to 100 % and then it goes from 90 % of like all suite tasks 100 % and so when you're kind of in the interim period engineers get super super productive but then there's a point where it's like actually it's like instead of being super high-level because they're the AI is doing 99 % now the AI is doing 100 % and it's actually like it just kind of instantly goes to zero you should see a lot of like hiring because everyone wants like a vibe coder at your company yeah but then at some point by coding comes so easy that but you don't need any special talent to be able to do it.

19:44Jordi Hays:And then you just have the random person.

19:45John Coogan:I mean, even in this scenario.

19:46Jordi Hays:Yeah, so basically if one day you're not sitting at your desk, you're kind of the vibe coder in the coal mine canary.

19:55John Coogan:Oh, OK, OK, yeah, yeah, sure. There is a world where software engineering postings and jobs are substitutive for other roles. You can have someone whose job is a business analyst, and every day they open Excel and crunch some numbers, and then you could hire a software engineer to automate that task 10 years ago, 20 years ago, and a lot of companies did. And if Vibe Coding sort of eats into other things, you could see the rest of white, it's like the white collar work could go away because the software engineers are doing it. And then the bigger question is like, you're sort of jumping ahead to like a full unemployment scenario where no one has a job, but in the world where there are like a few jobs, I keep thinking about this thing that Pavel Asperuhov said, where if the software engineering jobs go away, get ready to compete with software engineers in every category because they're going to learn financial analysis.

20:48John Coogan:They're going to learn to trade. They're going to learn to sell. They're going to learn all these things. Those people will still be employed. They'll just be in a different part of the economy.

20:55Jordi Hays:Avi Schiffman dropped user interview number three. We're not going to play the video because it's kind of sad, but Gary Tan said, this is not the happy demo path. Apple or Google would never make this one of their launch videos. It's not what you will hear about in a TED talk, but it's real. AI doesn't get tired, doesn't ghost. A lot to think about with this one. You know, Avi continues to find new ways to break through the noise. But in some ways, like even though this video has been feels somewhat dystopian, you know, this is someone who's struggling with mental health, like actually gets in an accident in the video.

21:30Jordi Hays:it does feel like the most kind of real raw experience of AI companionship in this form factor.

21:39John Coogan:Reflection on like, uh, do you remember his interaction with, uh, Paul Graham? He was like, I'm building like a hardware device for AI. He put out like some very vague post about his plans and everyone was like, this is impossible. Like Apple will crush you. They have the supply chain, they have the distribution, they have brand, like you will never win in this category. And Paul Graham told him like, in order to win, you have to do things that Apple would never do and be counter positioned. Yeah, this this type of messaging is certainly in line with like the anti Apple. And the breaking news is that Warner Brothers says Paramount's new offer is superior.

22:18John Coogan:Netflix now has four days to respond. The culture market is continuing to diverge. When we started tracking this, Netflix was up at 50%, Paramount at 40%. Now Paramount is starting to run away with it. They're at 62%, and Netflix is down at 33%. Will they sweeten their offer? We don't know, but Netflix has four days to respond.

22:41Jordi Hays:More breaking news. More breaking news. What else? Square is cutting from 10 ,000 to 6 ,000 employees, a 40 % reduction. Let's head over to Jack. He says, we're making blocks smaller today. Here's my note to the company. So he says, today we're making one of the hardest decisions in the history of our company. We're reducing our organization by nearly half from over 10 ,000 people to just under 6 ,000. That means 4 ,000 of you are being asked to leave or entering into consultation. I'll be straight about what's happening. First off, if you're one of the people affected, you'll receive your salary for 20 weeks plus one week per year of tenure.

23:14Jordi Hays:Equity vested through the end of May, six months of health care, corporate devices, and 5 ,000 to put toward whatever you need to help in this transition. We're not making this decision because we're in trouble. Our business is strong. Gross profit continues to grow. We continue to serve more customers and profitability is improving, but something has changed. We're already seeing that intelligence tools we're creating and using paired with smaller and flatter teams are enabling a new way of working, which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company, and that's accelerating rapidly.

23:38Jordi Hays:I had two options cut gradually over months or years as this shift plays out or be honest about where we are and act on it now. I choose the latter. Repeated rounds of cuts are destructive to morale, to focus, and to trust that customers and shareholders place in our ability to lead. This feels a little bit more real. Citrini.

23:55John Coogan:Like what Citrini was sort of predicting a little bit. Yeah.

23:58Jordi Hays:Yeah. And it feels more real than some of these other cuts where they do like a 8 % rift and then say, oh, we're getting, but going down by nearly half.

24:08John Coogan:Also, I mean, Block has been mostly spared the SaaSpocalypse. I mean, over the last one month, the stock's down 17%. Over the last six months, it's down 30%. It's not, you know, down 50, 60.

24:20Jordi Hays:Yeah, but still it's trading at like somewhere around.

24:24John Coogan:It's way off peak. The peak stock price was$263. Now it's at 54. And so there's certainly a question about how they build back.

24:32Jordi Hays:I mean, it's 4 ,000 people, which is a huge number. I ran a deep research report to try to find, because it's certainly not the largest layoff ever, but it is the largest layoff as a percentage of the overall workforce in S &P 500 history.

24:48John Coogan:Wait, how is that possible?

24:50Jordi Hays:So the second largest layoff in S &P 500 history was Konico Phillips at 22.5%, Chevron at 17.5%, Intel did 15 % in 2024, GM did 15 % in 2018, Meta 13.

25:07John Coogan:So I guess the Twitter restructuring doesn't count because it was delisted before that happened.

25:12Jordi Hays:Yeah.

25:12John Coogan:So Twitter went from 7 ,500 to 1 ,500. I think you're right. It might not have been in the S &P 500 at the time. Yeah, it wasn't. Well, there's some reactions. Will Slaughter, Bama Bond says, in three years from December 2019 to December 2022, Block more than tripled its headcount from 3 ,900 to 12 ,500, unwinding less than half an insane COVID overhiring binge has much more to do with Jack Dorsey's managerial incompetence than whether AI is going to take your job. And so people are immediately jumping to, is this AI? Is this not? The stock's up 25 % on the news. So the investors certainly think it's the right move to make, the right hard thing to do.

25:54John Coogan:The other interesting thing is that Block, if I'm correct, did a fairly large merger with Afterpay. And I don't know how much overlap in the employee base there was, but it's not uncommon when a merger of those two sizes, $10 billion. I think Afterpay merger was in the tens of billions. It was$13.9 billion. It was an all-stock deal. It was originally announced at$29 billion. Afterpay had around 1 ,000, 1 ,500 employees. And so there's a few different things this go. Dan Primack says it's stunning in its candor. And if you're one of those spared, how could you not be wondering how long until AI comes for your job too.

26:37John Coogan:If CEOs get comfortable that this is okay, let alone if they believe shareholders will be rewarded for it, could set off a stunning layoff wave.

26:47Jordi Hays:The obvious pushback Tully over at Solana is making it. He said, didn't Jack have 10 ,000 people running this website when only 75 were needed even before AI? So again, it doesn't really matter whether or not a company is actually getting tremendous efficiency from AI. Every CEO is going to do this. And we've said over and over and over, I'm surprised more CEOs haven't done the Elon thing. Salesforce has 76 ,000 people at the company, right? It's basically a city. Yeah, it's really, really sad. Jared Sleeper, who has a fantastic episode on Odd Lots about the SaaSpocalypse. He says, first of many sad days, as painful as it is, Jax did focus service by being decisive.

27:36Jordi Hays:Of course, really sad day. These employees will be able to quickly go and hit the job market, which probably gives them somewhat of an advantage over future layoffs like this.

27:48John Coogan:If you're not a software engineer, there should be a wake-up call to what has happened in the past few months with AI engineering tools. Everything has changed. Now we get to watch as companies learn how to either use these tools in earnest or slowly fall behind, says Dustin Curtis. I'm very interested to learn the shape of the layoffs. Do they lean more software-focused or less software-focused? This is certainly just one company, one example. But interesting to see how this matches with the Citadel rebuttal of the Citrini piece. A lot of people are seeing this as vindication of the Citrini piece.

28:21Jordi Hays:Hey, Kim says, every media person, please read this before writing your narratives tomorrow. Jack Dorsey is Jack Dorsey. Do not extrapolate. Do not pass go. Responding to Will Slaughter's post. Yeah, Square, for context, did around$24 billion in total revenue in 2025. They've been trading at around$30, even though the business is profitable and growing. and so had certainly been beat up, but a very sad day. Gavin Baker had a post that Kyle Harrison highlighted. He said, the fact that Twitter is running well with headcount down significantly really matters whether they admit it or not. Everyone in SV admires Elon.

29:04Jordi Hays:A lot of venture-funded CEOs are sending emails like this, inspired by Elon and taking drastic actions. Margins are going up. Bology says, this is the first AI cut, and it will send shockwaves. Remember, Jack is one of the greatest founders of all time. He created this platform that we're all on. It has been early to many technological shifts, and Block is doing very well as a business. So for him to cut 40 % headcount in this way is a signal to everyone in tech, get good now, become indispensable, work nights and weekends, learn the AI tools and raise your game, or you might not make the cut as an employee or as a company.

29:37Jordi Hays:I know that sucks, but capitalism is natural selection. The market is unforgiving because you are the market. After all, it's not like you're buying some random gallon of milk from the store. You're always buying the best product at the best price. So too for apps, your customers are always installing the best piece of code they can get. And because AI is going to create new winners, if you aren't the best in your market, someone may become better with AI. To be clear, block severance is generous by any measure, 20 weeks of pay, six months of health insurance, and invested equity. All of that goes far beyond any typical package.

30:05Jordi Hays:Jack did his level best to cushion the disruption. The laid off are a temporary unfortunate class as opposed to a permanent underclass. But had he not leaned into the AI transition, he might have had to lay off more people slowly and over time as faster competitors went after his market share. How would they do that? Sure, AI is not a panacea by any means, but the closer you are to software engineering, the more aggressively you need to embrace agentic workflows. The AI companies are already doing that in places like Stripe, Shopify, Coinbase, and now Block are pushing hard on this area. There will be overcorrection, but the fundamental technical innovation is real, and you need to either disrupt yourself or get disrupted.

30:41Jordi Hays:I think that's generally good advice. A16Z says every tech company can fire at least half their people, but most can probably do 80%. Blackmail, thanks. Yeah. How much do you think Citrini paid Square to do this life?

31:01John Coogan:Yes. How deep does it go? To validate. How deep does it go? Yeah, A-Lab's taking a victory lap.

31:06Jordi Hays:After being mocked for the last four days. FedSpeak says, on one hand, Jack is a notoriously bad business operator, and on the other hand, it's over. Yeah, the pushback on Bology saying Jack is one of the greatest founders ever is simply that, yes, he is one of the greatest founders ever. And I don't think anyone would say that he is the best operator. Sure. And that's okay, right? But sometimes being the best founder means making the super hard decision and having the foresight to get ahead.

31:34John Coogan:It would be a very weird situation if only Jack Dorsey founded companies. Take him.

31:39Jordi Hays:Same dude bought Jay-Z's title. Not the greatest operator.

31:43John Coogan:Yeah. Take him as white-pilling. He's always white-pilling. I enjoy him. We have some affairs to attend to, and we will not be live tomorrow. But we will return on Monday. And I can't wait. Mark your calendars, 11 a.m. Pacific on Monday. We love you. Goodbye. Goodbye.