Infusion Therapy Center near Severance, CO

Even by Big Tech's hardcore standards, the layoffs at Jack Dorsey's Block are sweeping, but the financial service company has earned some praise for its severance package.

Dorsey said Block would provide laid-off employees with 20 weeks of salary, plus one additional week per year of tenure. They would also get six months of healthcare, a $5,000 stipend, and the option to keep their work device. Equity would vest through until the end of May, Dorsey said.

Brooks Holtom, a professor of management at Georgetown University, told Business Insider that the packages are "relatively generous."

Others have praised Dorsey's leadership for owning up to his decision.

From X's massive layoff to Amazon's repeated trims, here's how Block's layoff severance package compares to those offered by other tech companies.

Amazon said in January that it would cut 16,000 corporate jobs, its second big layoff since October.

The tech giant said affected employees would receive full pay and benefits for 90 days plus an additional severance package, according to an internal FAQ viewed by Business Insider.

Employees were instructed to return company laptops in a shipping box provided.

People familiar with the matter told Business Insider that in 2025, during a layoff at Meta, the company's severance package included 16 weeks of pay and an additional two weeks for every year of service, plus six months of health insurance coverage.

The package also included RSU vesting support and consultation for visa holders.

According to emails sent by Meta's human resources at the time, laid-off employees would lose access to company systems within an hour of being informed.

Airbnb laid off around 25% of its workforce in 2020, equivalent to nearly 1,900 people.

Its severance package provided 14 weeks of base pay plus an additional week for each year they've been with the company.

The company also covered a year of health insurance for US employees through , which is a form of coverage provided by companies to former employees, as well as four months of mental health support. Employees not located in the US received shorter healthcare coverage timespan.

In CEO Brian Chesky's email at the time, he cited a "global health crisis" and wanted to "limit the burden of healthcare costs."

When Google laid off 12,000 workers in 2023, employees received a 16-week base severance package with an additional two weeks for every year of employment at Google.

According to the company's layoff memo, departing employees were also given accelerated vesting of at least 16 weeks and received six months of healthcare coverage.

Based on a Google earnings call in early 2024, the company "recorded employee severance and related charges of $2.1 billion" in 2023.

During Microsoft's 2023 layoff, Business Insider learned that affected employees would be given "above-market" severance pay, but Microsoft did not specify what that meant.

The package included six months of health care and stock vesting, and 60 days ' notice. At the time, Microsoft said it would take a $1.2 billion charge in the second quarter for severance packages and other restructuring-related costs.

After Elon Musk purchased what was then Twitter, he culled nearly half of its global workforce in November 2022 with an unsigned memo. Little was mentioned publicly about the benefits laid-off employees received, except for about three months' salary.

At the time, some employees told Business Insider that they lost access to their laptops before receiving notice of their termination, and several employees sued Twitter, saying they weren't given enough notice before being terminated.

Researchers at Severance Hospital have published a clinical manual for a music-based social skills training program for children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder, a project co-authored by child psychiatrist Cheon Keun-ah and Suga of the K-pop supergroup BTS.

The book, The MIND Program, was published by Hakjisa Publisher and will be available for preorder through online bookstores starting Tuesday. The research team said there are no plans at this time to publish an English-language edition.

The program grew out of a collaboration between Professor Cheon and Suga that began in the fall of 2024, when the two found common ground in the need for longer-term therapeutic support for children with autism spectrum disorder.

That collaboration later led to the opening of the Min Yoongi Center at Severance Hospital in September 2025, backed by Suga’s personal donation and talent contribution. Cheon became the center’s inaugural director.

According to the researchers, Suga contributed ideas from the planning stage and participated in the pilot program as a volunteer music instructor, working directly with children in the program.

In the foreword, Cheon wrote that Suga’s involvement reflected “the sensibility of an artist who understands the power of music better than anyone” as well as a sincere commitment to vulnerable groups. She wrote that his contribution was critical in bringing the program into being.

The MIND program, short for Music-Interaction-Network-Diversity, was developed to address the limits of conventional social skills training, which often assumes a level of verbal comprehension and cognitive ability that can make it less accessible to children with lower developmental functioning.

Through activities such as choosing instruments and performing in ensembles, children are encouraged to build social skills by listening, waiting and coordinating with others. The research team said some children who had difficulty expressing emotions or thoughts verbally became more engaged through instrument-based interaction.

The program consists of 12 sessions that progress from basic interaction to emotional recognition, information exchange and collaborative music projects. It also includes intervention methods for problematic situations based on applied behavior analysis, or ABA, for use in clinical settings.

In pre- and post-program assessments of seven children and adolescents who participated in the pilot, the researchers found meaningful improvements in social adaptation skills, recognition of nonverbal cues and motivation for social participation.

Cheon said she hoped the manual would help clinicians and specialists in Korea and abroad understand the program’s philosophy and procedures and apply them in practice.

She added that previous studies had shown group musical experiences could support relationship-building and emotional development, and said the MIND program was among the first efforts to translate those findings into a concrete clinical model.

Workday, the Bay Area tech giant known for its HR and payroll tools, has revealed that it’s shedding hundreds of employees and swapping out its CEO.

The company announced a 2% layoff round in a Feb. 4 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, mainly cutting “non-revenue generating roles” on customer-facing teams. SFGATE received Workday’s WARN filing — required in the event of mass layoffs — on Tuesday; it lists 154 cuts at the company’s Pleasanton headquarters.

Workday listed its head count as over 20,400 in January 2025 but laid off more than 1,700 workers that February. If the workforce size stayed relatively flat since then, the fresh 2% cut should hit roughly 375 employees. Workday wrote in the Feb. 4 announcement that it will continue to hire.

The WARN filing gives a clearer image of the cuts. At its headquarters by the Stoneridge Shopping Center, Workday is laying off two vice presidents, seven senior directors and a slew of lower-level workers. Thirty-four quality assurance engineers and eight of their managers will lose their jobs, plus a slate of business analysts, program managers, salespeople and others.

Workday declined to answer SFGATE’s questions about severance packages and the reasoning behind the cuts. But it wrote in the Feb. 4 SEC filing that it expects to spend about $40 million in payments related to severance and benefits, and for the cuts to be completed in its current fiscal quarter. Workday’s filing described the changes to teams as “reorganizations designed to better align their people and resources to their highest priorities in fiscal 2027.”

The company will also be spending a pretty penny bidding adieu to its CEO of three-plus years, Carl Eschenbach. Before he became the sole CEO in February 2024, Eschenbach ran the company as co-CEO with Aneel Bhusri, who will now reclaim the top post, Workday announced on Feb. 9.

Workday and Eschenbach’s separation agreement said he’ll get accelerated vesting for tens of thousands of restricted stock units — given that the company’s stock is worth around $153 a share, that’ll mean millions of dollars. He’s also getting an approximately $2.6 million cash severance payment, plus around $941,000 more as “additional bonus severance.”

The stock could’ve been worth even more. Investors have beaten down Workday’s valuation this year, including with a 26% drop over the last month — a valuation collapse of about $15 billion. (As of Feb. 4, when layoffs were announced, it was only down $10 billion.) The company and some of its peers in software-as-a-service have struggled to boost investor confidence amid the rise of artificial intelligence tools.

Work at a Bay Area tech company and want to talk? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at [email protected] or on Signal at 628-204-5452.