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Bolt announces layoffs

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Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#251

Post by stu2b50 »

bartread wrote: post #248

> This is one of the hardest messages I’ve ever had to send. Layoffs are something of a fact of life but, seriously, executives need to stop saying things like this when they announce them. Nobody gives a damn how company leaders feel in these situations, least of all the people receiving the message - nor should they.

I'd say that depends on the audience. If you were still working at Bolt, for instance, and the CEO did not indeed feel anything, you'd probably be a little spooked that they seem like a sociopath.

At the same time, it is such a copy-paste statement that it's unlikely to elicit much confidence in its veracity, but still, the absence of it would not be taken well I'd imagine.

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#252

Post by threeseed »

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…

> Sometimes companies over-hire or hire the wrong people.

I think in this case it's a significant volume number of people.

And so it's not normal even with a downturn. It's indicative of poor management.

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#253

Post by ivanstojic »

tehlike wrote: post #166
phphphphp wrote: post #136

Can you share more about the stock option loan program? If it is what it sounds like, that program is unconscionable insanity and whoever is encouraging employees to engage with it is setting employees up for a world of hurt.

This has details https://twitter.com/theryanking/status/1493390167461224451

> There IS risk to the employee; they now have a real loan outstanding and 100% personal recourse, so if the common stock becomes less than exercise price, their personal assets are on the hook

https://twitter.com/theryanking/status/1493390184897032201?s...

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#254

Post by sokoloff »

threeseed wrote: post #252
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…

> Sometimes companies over-hire or hire the wrong people. I think in this case it's a significant volume number of people. And so it's not normal even with a downturn. It's indicative of poor management.

Regardless of whether or not that’s true, the right thing for the company (and all its stakeholders) is to take the medicine (do the layoff).

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#255

Post by sokoloff »

vkou wrote: post #204
bko wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. I think it's healthy and more humane than firing people for cause. Hiring is hard and you mess up, or people grow out of their role. Everyone knows people at work that are incompetent. It's tough to get rid of them because they may not be grossly incompetent or malicious, but just not up to standard. The layoffs I've seen usually let people go that are not effective and frankly not very happy. They get a…

You can't fire someone for cause just because your money losing business ran out of money. Firing for cause is when the employee screwed up, not when the CEO did.

This is true. “For cause” is “employee fucked up real bad [theft, harassment, etc]”, but many people think it means the plain English reading of “was individually underperforming” which would be a performance-related termination but not a “for cause” termination.

IMO, it’s dumb HR/Legal lingo.

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#256

Post by kasey_junk »

urthor wrote: post #181
nrmitchi wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) "Multiple rounds" is basically the worst possible way to do layoffs. 2) Based on their recent fundraise (and assuming that they had 0 dollars at that point), that's basically a burn rate of 25-30M/m. I'm not sure I can event comprehend what that company could be spending that much money on.

Agreed. The way to do layoffs is simple. You get managers to stack rank the lot, then you get every single person with 30 or more reports under them in a room. Then you do the whole layoff in one 5 hour meeting. Swing the axe and get it done in 2 days.

I used to work “doing layoffs” and I don’t think I ever saw stack ranking as the layoff strategy.

Most often I saw “divisions” or “capabilities” cut, either entirely or to skeleton crews that kept the lights on.

Next was just randomly applied. And frankly managers with 30 or more reports were frequently layoff targets as they are expensive and don’t add a ton of obvious value to the bottom line (unless they had a sales function).

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#257

Post by bogomipz »

pfarrell wrote: post #68
upupandup wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There IS risk to the employee; they now have a real loan outstanding and 100% personal recourse, so if the common stock becomes less than exercise price, their personal assets are on the hook https://twitter.com/theryanking/status/1493390184897032201 HOLY CRAP. How is this even legal???

"Don't spend real money on fake money." Good advice I got from colleagues at a 2000 era company who took out loans to buy their options and cover the taxes when the stock was at $50/share and then watched it drop to <$1/share while they were in a lockout window. I worked with people who had 6 figure loans they owed on for worthless stock. Took years for the stock to recover.

Why would they have taken out a loan to buy their options? If the options are vested you can just sell them and pocket the difference between your strike price and the buy offer. If the options weren't vested you can't buy them anyway and you would still have the same strike price when they did vest.

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#258

Post by lookACamel »

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.

It also lets the people being let go save face.

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#259

Post by adrr »

fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #49

Rumors going around on blind (posted by bolt employees) that over the course of a few rounds of layoffs it will be 30-50% of the total workforce. A lot of the initial layoff are software engineers. Apparently they only have 12-18 months of runway, and need to effectively double that. Current revenue is 40M. I guess this is the beginning of the tech washout. clings to large tech company job EDIT: 33% layoff today

I heard they had 900 employees. It's just a checkout page that plugs into your payment processor. I don't get why they need so many people. Most complicated thing they are probably doing is tokenizing the credit card themselves so the card info is portable across merchants with different processor.

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#260

Post by tschellenbach »

The problem is that even if they run break even, all the shareholders and employees other than the last round of funding is still below water. They need to 10x to be somewhat fundable again, not at all easy to do.
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