“A significantly smaller team, using the tools we’re building, can do more and do it better.” – Jack Dorsey, announcing 4,000 layoffs at Block, February 2026
Everyone agrees: AI is coming for the developers. The $200,000-a-year engineers writing CRUD apps and maintaining CI pipelines. The line workers of the knowledge economy. Trim them. Automate them. Celebrate the efficiency gains. Watch the stock pop.
Nobody asks the obvious question.
Why is nobody coming for the CEO?
Meet the A-suite. AI replaces the CEO. The AI Executive Officer (AEO) is the human who operates alongside it. The rest of the C-suite becomes the A-suite (AxOs).
The Math
Median S&P 500 CEO total compensation in 2024 was $17.1 million. That is 85 senior software engineers. One person. One salary. Eighty-five engineers worth of payroll.
But salary is the small number. The real cost of a CEO is what happens when they are wrong.
Jack Dorsey tripled Block’s headcount from roughly 3,900 to over 12,000 between 2019 and 2022. The stock peaked above $275 in 2021 and has since dropped over 75%. He built two separate company structures for Square and Cash App instead of one, a decision he now calls incorrect. He spent $68.1 million on a single company event in September 2025. Five months later, he cut 4,000 people and blamed AI.
None of that is an AI story. All of it is a management story.
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