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Bolt announces layoffs

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Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#291

Post by version_five »

abraxas wrote: post #273
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

40M in revenue for the year?! Jesus, my startup is making about half that with a good sales pipeline for this year and we are 55 employees total. We might hire additional handful this year but that's it. How do you even onboard when you double your workforce every few months?

I've seen companies with less revenue and a bigger workforce growing at that rate. They call it blitz-scaling, and I don't know if it's actually ever worked, where I saw it first hand it was basically just setting a pile of money on fire.

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#292

Post by sebdufbeau »

tootie wrote: post #277
adrr wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I say the same about how Uber has thousands of engineers working on an app with 6 screens.

This link get's thrown around a lot, but here's a former Uber EM explaining why "an app with 6 screens" is misjudged statement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25376346

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#293

Post by drdaeman »

cheeze wrote: post #23

> I know this will be difficult for us all, so I want to provide clarity on what will happen next. For those directly impacted in the US and Canada, our goal is to inform you within the next 30 minutes when you will receive a calendar invite for an individual or small sub-team “Bolt Restructuring” meeting. For those of you who are staying on the Bolt team, later this morning you will receive an invite to a Town Hall…

Ha, I'm surprised they still say "layoff" at all, and not mask it behind some softer euphemism.

Reminds me of this George Carlin's performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuEQixrBKCc

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#296

Post by thwarted »

version_five wrote: post #291
abraxas wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

40M in revenue for the year?! Jesus, my startup is making about half that with a good sales pipeline for this year and we are 55 employees total. We might hire additional handful this year but that's it. How do you even onboard when you double your workforce every few months?

I've seen companies with less revenue and a bigger workforce growing at that rate. They call it blitz-scaling, and I don't know if it's actually ever worked, where I saw it first hand it was basically just setting a pile of money on fire.

Yep, this is what happens when your "growth" metric is employee headcount, under the naïve assumption that more people is a proxy for more work getting done is a proxy for revenue. This may make more sense for a sales-focused organization, less so for marketing or technology driven organization.

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#297

Post by nivenhuh »

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.

You have to make sure that well-understood criteria is followed for layoffs, or else the action might be understood as a firing. [1]

This is important, because a company can be held liable for wrongful termination. [2]

[1] https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/making-layoff-decisi...

[2] https://www.employmentlawfirms.com/resources/employment/wron...

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#298

Post by scarface74 »

unicornmama wrote: post #69
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

Large technology companies won’t hesitate to layoff employees to protect their stock price.

Large profitable tech companies don’t lay off staff when they see opportunities to grow. I know that three of the Big 5 tech companies (FAANG - Netflix + Microsoft) are throwing money and headcount at cloud just from the aggressive recruitment I’m seeing - I work for one of the big 3 in the consulting department and I’m constantly getting solicitations from the other two. Apple also is still hiring where it sees growth

Facebook? Who knows? I don’t follow adTech

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#299

Post by version_five »

phphphphp wrote: post #130
ushakov wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they raised $355M this year and like $600M last year https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/bolt-5/company_finan... how can a company burn money that quickly so they end up with only 12-18 months of runway?

very broad strokes: money is raised to be spent. each round gets you to the next, or you reach some measure of sustainability before the money runs out — layoffs like this should be expected, regardless of the amount raised, if there’s a shift in conditions that indicate raising again in 18 months isn’t going to be easy. You can burn any amount of money if you want to.

Yes, regardless of Bolt's specific circumstances, this is on point. Nobody is giving startups money to sit on it. Especially for the really big raises, a big part of the motivation is that the company has made a case for how the large amount of money is going to be deployed very quickly (with the goal of generating returns). You don't take $900M of VC funding and stretch it out over 10 years, that's not what they gave it to you for.

Whether it's actually possible to usefully deploy all that money is another matter. Generally it's very hard. I only have an up-close perspective on one such large raise (that ultimately failed) but imo the reason they got the money was that they made themselves a credible way to spend so much so quickly.

Re: Bolt announces layoffs

#300

Post by scarface74 »

tuckerpo wrote: post #187
aleksiy123 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm genuinely curious. Is there any other options? By this point it's too late, right? And even if they played it safe there is always some risk.

> Is there any other options? Have a compelling product that generates revenue. Unless your workforce is 100% saturated and you don't really _need_ that many engineers, lay-offs are one step above cutting free snacks on the usefulness scale when it comes to trying to stop bleeding.

Have a compelling product that generates profit. Any product is compelling when subsidized heavily enough by VCs.
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