External signal·Sequoia Capital·Mar 31, 2026·Jack Dorsey, Roelof Botha·10 min read
From Hierarchy to Intelligence
“the intelligence lives in the system”
Summary
Block CEO Jack Dorsey and Sequoia partner Roelof Botha argue that corporate hierarchy is a roughly two-thousand-year-old information-routing system — from the Roman army to the modern org chart — that exists to coordinate humans, and that AI can now perform that coordination continuously. In their model the company is rebuilt as an "intelligence": an AI world model holds the coordination function at the centre while humans work at the edge in three roles — individual contributors, directly responsible individuals, and player-coaches — with no permanent middle-management layer. They frame Block's cut of roughly 4,000 staff (about 40% of headcount) not as cost-cutting but as the start of a permanent restructuring, and present org design itself as a compounding speed advantage.
Predictions for the future of work
Predicts that AI makes middle management largely obsolete and that competitive companies will rebuild around a continuously-updated AI coordination layer rather than nested human hierarchy. The forecast is structural: the firms that redesign org shape — not just bolt on copilots — capture speed as a durable advantage, while traditional managerial layers are absorbed by the system.
Originally published by Sequoia Capital · Mar 31, 2026
Read the original at Sequoia Capital