71–80 of 204 posts
Maybe someone can clarify this for me, because I'm not sure I understand how this is possible: when the loans were announced, it was said that ~half of employees took the loan. But here, when 200 people were laid off, only a "single digit" number of employees that were let go had these loans. Even if that number is 9, that's like 4.5% of the laid off employees. How is that possible, except by Bolt explicitly not layi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> where you take out loans get your salary - and you only actually make money if your company grows 10x in one year - and even in that case your benefit is slim - while the VCs and founders walk off with 85% of the gains Better: the VCs own stock with liquidation preference over the common stock they loaned you money to buy. If there's venture debt, they are also part of the estate that will be paid by those loans if…
Can the SEC pursue Bolt for this?
> A Bolt spokesperson says that only a "single digit" number of laid-off employees took out the loans, despite more than 200 people losing their jobs, and that the aggregate amount was below $200,000. Moreover, she says the company plans to "work with" those individuals. If the amount was less than $200k, which is about the salary for a single employee these days, Bolt should just have annulled them entirely. The PR…
> Bolt should just have annulled them entirely These loans were made cashlessly as part of an early option exercise. That is steeped deeply in the internal revenue code. The forgiven principal would be at the very least income. Then the tax benefits from the early exercise would retroactively apply with penalties and interest. All of this assuming the IRS doesn't view the move as a heads I win (if the company does we…
Maybe someone can clarify this for me, because I'm not sure I understand how this is possible: when the loans were announced, it was said that ~half of employees took the loan. But here, when 200 people were laid off, only a "single digit" number of employees that were let go had these loans. Even if that number is 9, that's like 4.5% of the laid off employees. How is that possible, except by Bolt explicitly not layi…
* You don't need to take out a loan to exercise your options until you vest some options, which would typically take a least a year
* Bolt grew really quickly and so had a high % of employees with low tenure
* The layoffs disproportionally affected newer employees, which is extremely common and reasonable
(All that said -- these loans are an absolutely terrible idea and I think offering them is irresponsible.)
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Doesn’t all this smell ENRON’ish?
In what sense? Searching Enron's Wikipedia article I couldn't find any references to employees getting loans to buy stock. The only way they're similar is "dubious company crashes and burns, employee's equity turn worthless", but even then the similarity is limited because Enron was a case of fraud and bolt isn't (at least to my knowledge).
Never hold company stock. If you work there you’re already incredibly long. Diversify.
Maybe someone can clarify this for me, because I'm not sure I understand how this is possible: when the loans were announced, it was said that ~half of employees took the loan. But here, when 200 people were laid off, only a "single digit" number of employees that were let go had these loans. Even if that number is 9, that's like 4.5% of the laid off employees. How is that possible, except by Bolt explicitly not layi…
It's not on the list of protected classes in CA, and CA has at-will employment, so it's probably not illegal, but IANAL.
Also, as others have said, we're missing important information, but offering the loans was obviously sketchy and sets up a bad incentive structure.
Imagine if getting fired and immediately owing a vast sum of money to your employer became a common practice at most companies. Might lead the way to higher levels of employee retention and may be seen as some kind of solution to people not doing their jobs or doing the bare minimum just for a paycheck, especially in undesirable but necessary jobs.
Is it time to spin up http://fuckedcompany.com/ again?
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Same problem with the student loan forgiveness being pushed in the US currently. My cynical take is that they’d just do the forgiveness and refuse to talk about the people in the situation you described.
Most of the attitude I’ve seen to that situation is “tough luck, life isn’t fair”… seemingly oblivious to their original argument for forgiveness being it’s unfair they’re saddled with that debt.
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Sure, but this isn't realistic. Like you said, most people can't afford to exercise early. Even at a small company, most people don't have an extra $10k to gamble on a startup that may go nowhere. This is what Bolt was trying to solve. They did it the wrong way and hurt a lot of people, but they were trying to give people the opportunity to exercise early. The correct answer is a 10-year extended window. It's not per…
Define “most people”. $10k maybe a lot for a new grad but isn’t if you’ve worked even just a few years, especially in a high paying role in tech elsewhere.
Also, $10k is a lot of money. Even if you have it in savings (and I'd agree a lot of tech people technically do), it's a huge gamble on an unknown startup. You're already gambling your time; now you're supposed to also gamble your money?