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Bolt announces layoffs

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Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#171

Post by kodah »

stanleydrew wrote: post #155
bko wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Came here to say this, it's one of the first things I investigate about a company. If the company does habitual layoffs or has done rather large ones in the past five years, I'll move on 90% of the time.

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#172

Post by bombcar »

dontreact wrote: post #132

So is this the competitor to Fast, which also had a big round of layoffs recently? (edit: ah yes I remember now it was a complete shutdown) My current understanding is that both of these businesses were premised on the end of Amazon’s one-click checkout patent. Is this proving that to be a faulty premise?

I have yet to understand how anything one click can beat something like Apple Pay for sites you don’t have an account on.

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#173

Post by bobbygoodlatte »

nrmitchi wrote: post #124
hm8 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this scale/valuation of the company, it's probably a bad idea but hard to know at the time. My understanding of US tax laws and options is that this sort of behavior is what you want for early stage startups. You allow early exercise, restricted vesting with the upside of paying no income tax now, only LTCG on vesting (+liquidity event), and potentially QSBS tax exemption if you joined early enough and the startup…

Well sure, but the QSBS exemption cutoff is literally 220x less than the valuation Bolt was trying to see this on.

QSBS cutoff is $50M in gross assets owned by the company, not $50M valuation. There are many cases where a valuation can be far above $50M yet still qualify. That said, I have no idea if Bolt would qualify here. FWIW financial services companies don't qualify for QSBS at all, so Bolt may fall under that

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#174

Post by thewarrior »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #153
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 a…

Are managers and senior middle management more protected from being laid off ?

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#175

Post by nrmitchi »

IMTDb wrote: post #158
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…

> They didn't overhire compared to the initial plan...

Frankly I don't care what their plan was if they "planned" to spend ~350M in 2 years while making 10-40M in annual revenue while getting sued by their largest customer. That is an absolutely insane level of spending. Just because you had a plan to do some unsustainable and irresponsible crap doesn't absolve you of responsibility when it turns out to be unsustainable and irresponsible.

> The ycombinator downturn letter ...

You really think that Bolt, and Bolt's ex-CEO, saw a letter from YC, and thought "Oh ya, let's definitely doing what YC said. YC definitely knows what they're talking about. I personally trust all of their decisions and statements."?

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#176

Post by bombcar »

fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #60
staunch wrote: post #47

Generous severance is the ethical test of a CEO during a layoff. It softens the blow of a layoff immeasurably to provide 4-6 months of severance. If a CEO won't do it, the remaining employees should question the CEOs ethics, and ask themselves how they will be treated in the future. And if the business literally can't afford to do it (which is rare), then everyone should question the CEO's competence. As customers, w…

This company is probably going to go under. Huge severance is going to eat into their already short runway. Sometimes its just not there. And most of their engineers are highly capable, they will be fine. Its part of working for a high tech startup.

And since they’re trying to sell to companies, said companies will be less likely to make deals with them if they think they’ll go under soon.

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#177

Post by treyfitty »

Why do CEOs feel compelled to say “this is the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make.” Hoping a CEO can chime in here… is the decision really that hard? It seems like they are just trying to not seem like a dick, when we all know they’re just looking out for their own best interests (not saying this is wrong, but not saying this is right either). Just genuinely curious how much “fluff” that statement contains.

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#178

Post by nrmitchi »

aabhay wrote: post #157

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 convin…

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

I went down this rabbit hole last month. While not directly related to the current topic, it might help explain why you've "never seen it": https://twitter.com/nrmitchi/status/1519174682863226880

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#179

Post by [deleted] »

aabhay wrote: post #157

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 convin…

[deleted]

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#180

Post by ushakov »

bko wrote: post #154
hintymad wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

that’s a crazy amount for a crypto wallet

are these new hires lobbyists?

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