Bolt announces layoffs • Hacker News Board

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#151

Post by respondo2134 » Wed, May 25, 2022, 10:19 PM UTC

throwaabolt wrote: post #81

I am one of those let go today. It's especially bad, because they seem to have messed up the invite templates. I received one to the Town Hall meeting, even before Majus letter was published, only to get the invitation cancelled and receive and invitation to "Bolt Restructuring". What an emotional rollercoaster. Extremely anxious about the future, as this is my first time being laid off, especially in the current mar…

I work at Bold Commerce and we have some open positions for software devs; take a day or two to process and then take a look. I never realy figured out how so any companies were all going to "own federated checkout" and we are definitely in a different space, though a comparable size to Bolt.

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#152

Post by vira28 » Wed, May 25, 2022, 10:20 PM UTC

hintymad wrote: post #138

nrmitchi wrote: post #33

First of all, there is no mention of what percentage of their workforce is being directly effected by this. I suspect it is not small. That aside, I fail to see this as anything other than this "company" taking advantage of the current environment to execute layoffs in a way that lets them blame "the market" rather than their own short-comings. We saw this in March 2020 as well. They overhired for the hype, and now a…

For a small company, "over hiring" is always a sign of incompetency of the management. Think about the good companies in the early days. They can do so much with so few people, like one person evolving zookeeper into a beast to handle FB's scale, or two people having implemented LevelDB in a matter of months, or one person figuring out a way to increase the density of co-lo rack by 10 times.

> or one person figured out a way to increase the density of co-lo rack by 10 times. Curious, whom are you referring? Sorry for my ignorance.

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#153

Post by PragmaticPulp » Wed, May 25, 2022, 10:21 PM UTC

seizethecheese wrote: post #71

For those who’ve seen layoffs first hand: do lower performers generally get laid off first, or is it more random?

It's definitely not random, but it's not perfectly ordered according to merit/performance either.

Some times entire departments are laid off if their projects are part of the cuts. You can be the best performer and still get laid off if you're in the wrong department. Some times companies will identify key employees and ask them to "re-apply" for other positions at the company in other departments.

More often, cuts are made throughout the organization. If the company is laying off 5-10% of employees then it's usually not that difficult to identify underperforming employees if management goes in with a scalpel. However, once the layoffs grow to 20-30% or if the layoffs are imposed at a team level (many teams are 100% good performers) then you have no choice but to lay off good performers as part of the plan.

Actual strategies vary depending on circumstances, but generally you retain people who have the most experience on critical items whereas newer hires and people working on random, nice-to-have type projects are at high risk. Anyone with an unusually high compensation relative to their performance is also a likely target for cuts. If everyone on the team is performing similarly but some people are making 50% more than others (seniority, better negotiating, etc.) then you'd rather lay off two of those employees than three people at more traditional pay. It's about budgets, not headcount.

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#154

Post by bko » Wed, May 25, 2022, 10:22 PM UTC

hintymad wrote: post #138

nrmitchi wrote: post #33

First of all, there is no mention of what percentage of their workforce is being directly effected by this. I suspect it is not small. That aside, I fail to see this as anything other than this "company" taking advantage of the current environment to execute layoffs in a way that lets them blame "the market" rather than their own short-comings. We saw this in March 2020 as well. They overhired for the hype, and now a…

For a small company, "over hiring" is always a sign of incompetency of the management. Think about the good companies in the early days. They can do so much with so few people, like one person evolving zookeeper into a beast to handle FB's scale, or two people having implemented LevelDB in a matter of months, or one person figuring out a way to increase the density of co-lo rack by 10 times.

Reminded me of this:

> Coinbase ended Q1 with 4,948 full-time employees, up 33% versus the fourth quarter of 2021. Over the past twelve months, Coinbase also said in its first-quarter report that the company added over 3,200 net new employees.

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/05/19/coinbase-outlin...

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#155

Post by stanleydrew » Wed, May 25, 2022, 10:24 PM UTC

bko wrote: post #150

nrmitchi wrote: post #33

First of all, there is no mention of what percentage of their workforce is being directly effected by this. I suspect it is not small. That aside, I fail to see this as anything other than this "company" taking advantage of the current environment to execute layoffs in a way that lets them blame "the market" rather than their own short-comings. We saw this in March 2020 as well. They overhired for the hype, and now a…

Why do you need an excuse to perform layoffs? Sometimes companies over-hire or hire the wrong people. Other times they scale back certain efforts and are left with people that don't fit into the organization anymore. I feel sorry for the people, but layoffs are part of a normal process and with economic downturn we're facing, that will almost certainly impact their lines of credit and fundraising. So the prudent acti…

You don't need an excuse, but if you have one then management can save face. The theory would be it's a lot harder to hire people in the future if everyone thinks you're bad at management, and much easier if everyone just thinks you got unlucky with market timing.

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#156

Post by matwood » Wed, May 25, 2022, 10:24 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #57

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how people value companies based on revenue and not profit Profit is a closer abstraction to cash flows ( i.e. to the investor) than revenue, but it's still an abstraction. Investors looking at revenues and unit economics can sometimes--often--predict future profits and discount backwards, in the same way that a value investor can look at a company's profits and sometimes--less often, frankly--predict future cash f…

Profit isn’t an “abstraction”. If you bring in more money than you spend, it means that you don’t have to worry about a “runway”, nor do you have to worry about outside funding. How can you have a successful business that spends more money than you make?

> How can you have a successful business that spends more money than you make?

Today or tomorrow?

If a company has to spend more than they make today in order to build something they can sell for profit tomorrow, that's investing in the future.

Just looking at revenue or profit is too simplistic. It's also too simplistic to only look at a single point in time.

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#157

Post by aabhay » Wed, May 25, 2022, 10:24 PM UTC

I called it ages ago -- this company is an utter train wreck. I am honestly ashamed of the entire industry for birthing and fostering this basically fraudulent company. Its mistakes and lies are compounding on themselves, creating awful outcomes for its employees:

- Company almost certainly juiced its usage numbers, potentially by buying users to inflate its customers revenues, so it could use those numbers to convince new customers

- Used a single deal with a large company (Forever 21) to sell VCs on the vision, while under the hood that deal was clearly failing

- ex CEO picked twitter fights constantly, to the point of calling into question whether he was even capable of focusing on execution

- Biggest competitor (Fast) exploded even before the market crash.

- Offered employees a four day work week while claiming rapid exponential growth

- Offered employees PERSONALLY guaranteed loans to help them exercise the options

- Raised at $11B valuation with 100x forward revenue multiples.

- Cash raised is currently 6-8x revenue multiple, meaning valuation over next 12m makes employee options worthless

- I've never seen the technology used on any website, and I am a frequent online shopper.

Real talk, is this fin-tech's latest Theranos?

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#158

Post by IMTDb » Wed, May 25, 2022, 10:26 PM UTC

nrmitchi wrote: post #33

First of all, there is no mention of what percentage of their workforce is being directly effected by this. I suspect it is not small. That aside, I fail to see this as anything other than this "company" taking advantage of the current environment to execute layoffs in a way that lets them blame "the market" rather than their own short-comings. We saw this in March 2020 as well. They overhired for the hype, and now a…

Both "we overhired" and "it's because of the market" can be true at the same time.

You get a $335 million in Feb with a common understanding with current investors that you are going to raise $ XXX in roughly 24 month, depending on results compared to an agreed upon business plan. You thus plan for a roughly 24 month runway. 4 month later (now) you get a call from your investors that your planned next series is going to be significantly lower/harder. You now need to stretch your 24 month runway to at least 36 month. SO you have to adjust plans.

They didn't overhire compared to the initial plan, but overhired compared to the current situation, where basically all rounds are 50% lower and many are just not happening at all.

The ycombinator downturn letter (https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/19/yc-advises-founders-to-pla...) just says something like this:

> The safe move is to plan for the worst. If the current situation is as bad as the last two economic downturns, the best way to prepare is to cut costs and extend your runway within the next 30 days. Your goal should be to get to Default Alive.

That sounds exactly like what Bolt is doing.

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#159

Post by scarface74 » Wed, May 25, 2022, 10:26 PM UTC

cecilpl2 wrote: post #120

scarface74 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Profit isn’t an “abstraction”. If you bring in more money than you spend, it means that you don’t have to worry about a “runway”, nor do you have to worry about outside funding. How can you have a successful business that spends more money than you make?

Amazon famously turned no profit for nearly 15 years. When you run a large business you can do things like reinvest what would have been profit into new projects. This is the whole point of a growth company. Recognize that, simplistically, Profit = Revenue - Expenses, and that expenses is a dial which can be turned somewhat arbitrarily.

Amazon basically always had positive marginal revenue - unlike most of the startups.

People like to cite the one case where it worked and seem to be forgetting that most of Amazon’s profit comes from AWS. What are the chances that any of these startups are going to pivot to a competent different vertical to shore up their main business? That’s just like saying all you have to do is rehire the former CEO after a 10 year absence and become a trillion dollar company after almost going bankrupt.

And no Amazon did not use “excess capacity to jump start AWS”.

https://www.networkworld.com/article/2891297/the-myth-about-...

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#160

Post by scarface74 » Wed, May 25, 2022, 10:28 PM UTC

pbreit wrote: post #94

scarface74 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never cease to be amazed at how people value companies based on revenue and not profit. Revenue without profit numbers tell you nothing about how well the company is doing.

It's easy to envision profit so towards the beginning revenue is much more important.

Unless you are in the midst of a best market where VCs don’t see a clear exit strategy where they can have a successful exit while the company still isn’t profitable. If you were a startup founder, would you really want to have to depend on continued rounds of funding in this environment?