4,000 Jobs Cut Due to AI Advances at Square Parent Block
In 2026, the business world witnessed major events that seemed separate but were deeply connected. The well-known consulting firm Deloitte made a shocking decision to completely abolish traditional job titles like assistant, manager, and director. Instead, they replaced them with “skill tags” and number codes (such as L45, L55). At the same time, the tech giant Block carried out massive layoffs.
These events are not a coincidence, nor are they just a name-changing game played by the Human Resources department to meet their performance goals. This is a true reflection of how a massive company with 180,000 employees, serving countless Fortune 500 businesses, is completely rewriting the rules for the AI era. Together, they point to an unstoppable trend: the traditional “pyramid-shaped organization” is losing its efficiency advantage. When Artificial Intelligence (AI) can easily handle 60% of entry-level work, the base of this pyramid is no longer stable.
What will the future workplace look like? What kind of qualities should an excellent employee have tomorrow? The answer is simple: future organizations will be a hybrid model of “teams of about 15 people plus AI Agents.” In this new world, the true winners will be “generalists” with “high agency.”
The Collapse of the Pyramid and the Rise of the Diamond Organization
For the past hundred years, our workplace has maintained the shape of a pyramid: at the bottom, there is a massive number of entry-level employees handling basic tasks; in the middle, managers coordinate and supervise; and at the top, a few leaders make the decisions. This structure was highly efficient during the industrial age. However, as AI becomes the new normal in the workplace, everything has changed.
AI does not complain, does not need rest, and processes information, writes basic text, and analyzes data much faster than humans. When these entry-level “digital manual labor” jobs are replaced by AI, the largest base of the pyramid is heavily compressed.
Deloitte has offered a brand new solution to this: the “Diamond Organization.” In this new structure:
The Small Top: This is still a small number of visionary leaders who decide the company’s direction.
The Thick Middle: This is where talent will be needed the most in the future. These are experts who understand the business, have professional skills, and most importantly, can “command AI.”
The Narrow Bottom: The drastically reduced entry-level workforce, as many tasks are handed over to “digital workers (AI).”
Under this brand new structure, the standards for promotion in the workplace have completely changed. “Promotion” no longer necessarily means “becoming a manager who oversees other people.” Deep professional skills and the ability to command AI have become parallel paths of value. Bosses today won’t ask, “What is your title?” What they really care about is: “Can you command digital workers to multiply your output?”
The Specialist's Crisis: Why Just Doing Your Job is No Longer Enough
If you do not want to be replaced by AI, you must develop the most important survival skill for the next ten years: High Agency.
What is high agency? It is not mechanical obedience, nor is it waiting for your boss to tell you what to do before taking action. High agency is a powerful mindset. It means you can actively set your own direction and solve problems without needing someone else’s permission.
People with low agency are like machines with preset programs. They wait for others to give them goals. When they hit a wall, they stop and complain, or they say, “This is not my job.” In the AI era, these people are the easiest to replace with AI software, which also has low agency but is much more efficient.
On the contrary, people with high agency treat themselves as entrepreneurs of their own lives. Even if they work for a company, they have an entrepreneurial spirit. When they see a problem, they actively look for answers. When they find a flaw in a process, they figure out how to improve it themselves. When they face something they don’t know, they understand that with the internet and AI, there is no skill they cannot learn.
In the hybrid teams of the future, the person with high agency is the “commander.” AI is a powerful executor, but it has no intentions of its own; it needs a person with ideas and the drive to act to give it direction.
The Generalist's Comeback: Connecting Different Fields is a Superpower
Besides high agency, “generalists” will also have their brightest moments in the AI era.
Many people mistakenly believe that a generalist is someone who “knows a little about everything, but is not an expert at anything.” In the past, this might have made you look unprofessional. But today, having diverse interests and broad knowledge is your greatest superpower.
Humans are naturally generalists. We are not like lions that can only survive in the grasslands, or polar bears that can only live in the ice. Humans invent clothes to keep warm and air conditioning to stay cool. We adapt to any environment by creating tools. AI is simply the most powerful tool we have ever invented.
AI is a super specialist. It can help you write code, design images, and analyze reports. But AI lacks the “big picture.” A successful project requires more than just error-free code; it requires considering market needs, psychology, user experience, and business strategy. This is where the generalist’s advantage shines.
Generalists can combine knowledge from different fields. They can use AI to do every individual task perfectly, and then act as the “chief engineer” themselves, putting these pieces together into a valuable final product. Because you know a lot, you know how to ask AI the right questions (prompts), and you know how to judge whether the results AI gives are good or bad (this is called “taste”).
As Employees, How Should We Coexist with AI and Stand Out?
Since the rules of the future workplace have been rewritten, we can no longer plan our careers using old methods. Here are a few concrete action steps to help you become an essential core talent in the AI era:
- Treat yourself as the CEO of a “One-Person Team” Stop thinking of yourself as an employee fighting alone. Now, you are a commander with unlimited resources. No matter what task you face, your first thought shouldn’t be “How do I finish this by myself,” but rather, “How can I use AI tools to finish 80% of the work, and then I perfect the remaining 20%?” Treat AI as your free, tireless assistant.
- Shift from “Executor” to “Thinker and Reviewer” Since AI can handle 60% of entry-level execution work, your value is no longer in providing low-level manual labor. Your value lies in your “taste” and “decision-making.” You need to develop a sharp eye for good work and ensure that the results produced by AI meet the company’s business goals. Learning to ask good questions is more important than giving standard answers.
- Be brave enough to cross boundaries and expand your skill tree Do not limit yourself to labels like “I am an accountant,” “I am an engineer,” or “I am a marketer.” Go learn psychology, understand design aesthetics, and touch upon basic programming logic. When you have knowledge in multiple areas, you can complete projects with the help of AI that used to require three or four people. This ability to blend different fields is something AI absolutely cannot replace.
- Develop the courage to solve unknown problems The future will bring many problems we have never seen before. People with high agency will not back down just because there is no past example to follow. When a company brings in a new AI system, be the one who actively studies it, tries it out, makes mistakes, and finds the best way to use it. Don’t wait for the company to arrange training; become the person who writes the user manual.
Conclusion: Reject the Ordinary, Take Control of Your Life
Deloitte’s move to abolish traditional job titles is just the beginning of a new era. The collapse of the bottom of the pyramid sounds cruel, but for those willing to change, this is a golden age like never before.
In the past, your value was decided by your manager, and your income was limited by the company’s ranking chart. But now, power is shifting to the individual. As long as you have high agency and are willing to learn broadly to become a generalist, you can use AI as a powerful lever to create hundreds of times more value than before.
The workplace of the future no longer needs obedient robots, because we already have real ones. The future needs real humans with vision, taste, and the drive to act. Stop complaining that AI will steal your job. Starting today, learn to command your “digital workers” and become the winner who rides the wave of this new era.
REFERENCES
- American fintech ‘Block’ fires half of its employees as AI tools reshape operations, says Founder Jack Dorsey, March 1, 2026
- Block (XYZ) Surges 25% After Slashing Workforce by Over 40% and Raising Profit Outlook, March 1, 2026
- The most important skill to learn in the next 10 years, Jan 9, 2026, Dan Koe
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