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Bolt announces layoffs
- fredgrott 4y agoIs it really due to market? A the same time in the same market we have several Transportation players investing in creating Hydrogen generation infrastructure for hydrogen based fuel cell EV cars and trucks. Even Indiana gets a hydrogen gen plant for Trucking.
- Lapz 4y agoThe founder also encouraged employees to take on what was effectively personal debt at an ~11B valuation when they only did $5.2M in Q1…
- Solvitieg 4y agoAnd "over half" of their employees apparently took on the debt. Source: https://twitter.com/theryanking/status/1493609864534315014 https://twitter.com/theryanking/status/1493609864534315014
- bombcar 4y ago"It was different in the 90s" will turn out to be "it's exactly the same today".
- lelandfe 4y agoI'm awful at understanding company stock stuff. > if the common stock becomes less than exercise price, their personal assets are on the hook Can someone explain what that may mean for the >50% of employees at Bolt that bought into this program, now? I'm really struggling to grok what my quoted sentence entails... edit: thanks much for the quick explanations
- johnzim 4y agoBy taking part in this program, you are essentially taking a personal loan, partially secured by your stock options which will vest later. If you don't happen to understand Stock options: At a later date you will have the OPTION to buy company stock at a set price (often referred to as a Strike price) So some entity is lending you money because they know you have Stock options and presumably will be good for the money when they vest/mature. Of course, if the value of the Stock at the point of your options maturing is LOWER than your strike price, you essentially have earned yourself the option to buy $4 apples at the price of $50 an apple. Eg: your options are worthless (beyond their ability to purchase shares which might not be buyable on a public market) So since you took out a _personal loan_ you now have to pay it back. EDIT: I missed one thing - you actually get to exercise _now_ if you take out this loan... This has slightly more upside because it means that you could have in theory, sold those shares for immediate upside on the secondary market and thereby have de-risked yourself. If you didn't, then you got hosed. You could also have a capital gains advantage by spreading the gains I suppose
- bogomipz 4y agoI was struggling to understand why someone would take a loan against options rather than just sell them on the secondary market like you mentioned and I think the key difference is that you can't sell an unvested option on the secondary market but with this Bolt program you could take a loan against an unvested option which is unique and kind of bizarre. Who would underwrite such a loan and how is the accounting for it done at the company level? Also wouldn't they be taxed as income?
- e9 4y agoa lot of popular and semi-popular startups are hard for some VCs to invest in. So some of them like ESO fund (https://www.esofund.com https://www.esofund.com) will give you money to exercise and pay taxes but on condition that they'll take a decent amount of profits when you sell the stock
- Karrot_Kream 4y agoThese employees chose to take out a loan in order to exercise the options. These employees now own the shares that they exercised their option for _and_ a loan to pay back the amount of money spent to exercise. If the price of these shares becomes _less_ than the price spent to exercise the option to receive the share, then the value of the employees' shares is now _less_ than the price paid to exercise. This means that if an employee wants to pay off the loan, they first sell their shares, and then they're still on the hook for the remaining difference between the sale of the share price and the principal for the loan. For the Bolt employees who took this deal, I feel bad...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dburn1169 4y ago> when they only did $5.2M in Q1… This is insane to me. I work at a startup with a similar valuation and we bring in almost double that amount of revenue a week... and I think we're overvalued.
- scarface74 4y agoI 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.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> 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 flows from dividends or M&A and then discount backwards.
- scarface74 4y agoProfit 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?
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> Profit isn’t an “abstraction” The term profit covers a number of metrics. All of them are abstractions. The number of assumptions that go into a GAAP profit figure is uncountable. Profit on a cash basis is less wiggly, but it's still--for valuation purposes--useful only inasmuch as it is an estimate of actual cash returns on the investment. > 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 Lots of ways for cash-flow positive businesses to be running themselves into the ground. Garden variety is off balance sheet liabilities, though people certainly > How can you have a successful business that spends more money than you make? Nobody argued this, not for the long term. But there are loads of situations in which losing money in the short term is the long-term savvy move. (This literally describes all investing. You send cash out when you invest.) Valuation involves estimating the value of those future earnings today.
- upupandup 4y ago> 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 https://twitter.com/theryanking/status/1493390184897032201 HOLY CRAP. How is this even legal???
- nemothekid 4y agoI can't see why it should be illegal. People take on debt to buy assets all the time. But this is just so irresponsible and immoral; I really doubt the leadership is actually running a sustainable business; and I'm also starting to seriously doubt there was any credibility to the whole YC/Stripe boys club thing. 1. Ryan (was) the CEO, and can pressure employees to buy stock (or let them go because they aren't "committed" enough). 2. Ryan loses nothing if the company fails (his personal loss has probably already been covered since the first VC round), but each employee is left with a mountain of debt. 3. It's just bad advice. I know plenty of people who took out loans for stock; and I would never recommend it; it's incredibly risky especially if it can destroy you if it fails. If leadership plays so fast and loose with other people's money, you have to question how well they are doing their job.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> can't see why it should be illegal Borrowing against one's shares shouldn't be illegal. Companies lining up recourse financing for their employees should. How were the terms of the loans chosen? Who knew who was and wasn't participating? How was it ensured this wouldn't factor into personnel decisions? How were/are the people setting the strike prices of options segregated from the people setting the terms of the loans? There is too much already loaded onto the employer-employee relationship, we don't need to add lender-borrower to the damn mix. (Side note: the $300 stipend for financial advice is laughable. You couldn't even get a lawyer to review a fraction of such an instrument for that amount, and yes, I'd put recourse loans against private shares in the risky as hell bucket which should absolutely be legally reviewed.)
- 4y ago
- librish 4y agoThe founder pushing employees to take such a reckless financial decision while presumably their only insight into many key business metrics is the leaderships rosy portrayal of them is unethically irresponsible.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- pbreit 4y agoBy "pushing" you mean "not pushing"?
- hm8 4y agoAt 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 does well.
- nrmitchi 4y agoWell sure, but the QSBS exemption cutoff is literally 220x less than the valuation Bolt was trying to see this on.
- bobbygoodlatte 4y agoQSBS 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
- nrmitchi 4y agoIf a company has raised more than $50M though, does that immediately cross “$50M in gross assets” anyways? Obviosuly that’s different than a valuation, but that would immediately disqualify Bolt.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> founder also encouraged employees to take on what was effectively personal debt Do we have evidence to this encouragement?
- nrmitchi 4y agoThe literal entire twitter thread where he was bragging about it and how great it was for "his employees". There is basically no way to read that thread where it doesn't sound like an encouragement.
- Lapz 4y agoThis thread https://twitter.com/theryanking/status/1493390167461224451?s=21&t=gHnJ9DFOejEzkEQKgEx4Dg https://twitter.com/theryanking/status/1493390167461224451?s... and https://twitter.com/theryanking/status/1493609864534315014 https://twitter.com/theryanking/status/1493609864534315014
- stu2b50 4y agohttps://twitter.com/theryanking/status/1493390184897032201 https://twitter.com/theryanking/status/1493390184897032201 I presume the Twitter braggery counts as encouragement.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nklende 4y agoI had a smaller YC company pitch me something like this as an option for my stock comp - an RSA (restricted stock agreement, or "founder's stock"), where I put up all the cash up front, paid a big income tax bill in the first year, but then upside was all capital gains. I would technically own the stock but I had to sell it back for nothing if I left before it vested. Turned out I left very early because the company wasn't doing great, in the current climate I think they're probably default-dead. All that cash is just gone.
- break_the_bank 4y agoWow. How'd they make you pay upfront and still make you wait & vest? This makes no sense.
- chowchowchow 4y agoThis is actually a great deal when the exercise price is low enough. You pay a nominal-ish amount up front to exercise early and all gains are LTCG. It is not a good deal in any situation where you’re not getting in close to the ground floor though, if the exercise cost itself is substantial.
- gkoberger 4y agoFor what it's worth, this is how it works for founders too. The amount you pay is stupidly small (usually well under $100), since the strike price is essentially $0. There's no legal designation for founder when it comes to stock, so this person just got the same deal the founders did.
- nthngtshr 4y agoSee, generally speaking I don't think this is a bad deal. I mean, I don't know the exact numbers / company profile. But I was in a similar situation 8 years ago. I could early exercise and I did. Estimating taxes was a pain (but a fun challenge too, lol). A couple of years ago they finally had a liquidity event and doing all these exercise shenanigans saved me a ton of money, so I'm glad I did that. The business was doing well and I knew exactly what the risks were and I knew I could afford to lose that money. I joined early so it wasn't that much money to begin with. I guess my point is that I wouldn't be too dismissive of early exercise / RSAs / etc — for the right kind of person / company it could be a great tool.
- fdgsdfogijq 4y agoTalk about turning your employees into bagholders.
- hahaxdxd123 4y agowhere did you get $5.1m?
- Lapz 4y agoI got it from this article: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/bolt-a-checkout-startup-worth-11-billion-has-been-losing-customers-as-revenue-stalls?utm_source=ti_app https://www.theinformation.com/articles/bolt-a-checkout-star....
- vincentmarle 4y agoIt gets worse: Ryan Breslow also seems to be behind the company who was offering the equity loans to Bolt employees: https://twitter.com/anothercohen/status/1529607909398589440 https://twitter.com/anothercohen/status/1529607909398589440
- hn_throwaway_99 4y agoOMG, I didn't know a whole lot about this company previously, but holy shit they are toast. From Ryan Breslow's tweets: > At Bolt, we did it as a Series D company > If your company has a strong growth trajectory, the benefits to your team from this program can be extraordinary. https://mobile.twitter.com/theryanking/status/1493390191951851520 https://mobile.twitter.com/theryanking/status/14933901919518... This reminds me during the dot com crash, when employees exercised their options when the stock was sky high, so they had gigantic paper gains and big AMT bills. Then the stock crashed (like 99% and then some crash), so employees were not only left with near worthless stock, but they had huge tax bills with no money to pay them - and they were sometimes locked out of selling due to insider trading rules as the stock was crashing.
- thelittleone 4y agoI always found corporate credit cards to be similarly dodgy. Firms I worked at offered a "corporate" amex. The employee as card holder was personally liable for the debt, the employer had no liability. At the time these cards did not accrue any points either. And the corporate policy was typically "no personal expenses". 1) you must use corporate card for company expenses 2) you must not use corporate card for personal expenses 3) you cannot accrue points for use of corporate card 4) you are personally liable for corporate expenses on this card I'm pretty sure amex was giving big perks to CFOs. If you assume a limit of $10k per card and company (like the one I was at) had over 10k employees (though not all had cards) the amount is pretty astonishing and zero liability. I once had an issue with Amex because I'd been travelling a lot and the boss was away and then slow to approve.
- leaflets2 4y agoAbout how much debt might that be about? Ballpark? Maybe between $4k - $40k if I were to guess?
- kadomony 4y agoWaiting for Ryan’s tweet storm eagerly to see how blame is shifted to VC and Stripe.
- upupandup 4y agoThanks to him, lot of people in the industry are now a bit wiser and more careful while others simp for the establishment because they seek to benefit, are benefiting (maybe in the minds of some, they think they are reading this board and looking at profiles of users who simp or attack them?) When he outed YC, Sequoia Capital and New York Times, I felt uneasy because I knew there would be blowbacks.
- 1270018080 4y agoThanks to him, I think he's a little bit unstable. His rants are a out there for sure.
- ushakov 4y agohe’s just petty YC didn’t give him money
- tuckerman 4y agoJust in case others aren't familiar, dang shared an extremely detailed and respectful refutation of some of Ryan's accusations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30070287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30070287 Edit: added "some of"
- Permit 4y agoThe only thing he "outed" was his inability to read timestamps: https://twitter.com/theryanking/status/1485784882173255680 https://twitter.com/theryanking/status/1485784882173255680 He claimed Stripe copied his blog post, but when you click the links you'll see that Stripe's post was submitted earlier than his! This was his big "WHO WANTS PROOF?" reveal. He does not walk away from this looking good.
- kodah 4y ago
- aghilmort 4y ago
- upupandup 4y agoSpamming is NOT how you build trust/brand/customers
- dang 4y agoCould you please stop using HN for promotion? You've been posting these links way too much, it's crossed into spamming, and we're getting complaints. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- jdoliner 4y agoWhy would the YC mob do this to Bolt? (/s)
- flerchin 4y agoEric Andre on HN!
- druther 4y agoMore interesting details at https://nypost.com/2022/05/25/bolt-lays-off-staff-as-payments-startup-fights-lawsuit-from-biggest-customer/ https://nypost.com/2022/05/25/bolt-lays-off-staff-as-payment...
- 88840-8855 4y ago[flagged]
- blitz_skull 4y agoWhy do you find obscene?
- torbTurret 4y agoThe only arrogance in this thread is you calling others “kids” and demanding comments.
- gedy 4y agoHigh salaries mean little if people have to self fund 20-30 years of retirement and pay crazy prices to live near work.
- nso95 4y agoGod forbid people be well paid
- puranjay 4y agoEh man I’ll take obscene salaries if it means some wealthy VC and his wealthy LPs are footing the bill Everyone should get obscene salaries
- MrMan 4y agothey are all here downvoting you instead of working so
- nilsbunger 4y agoThis kind of message feels more authentic to me if you put the big news in the first sentence, then cover logistics, then add any context you want. Seems better than making people wade through a lot of stuff about securing financial position, market conditions, etc etc to learn if they are losing their job.
- zucked 4y agoI said the same thing earlier this week about Klarna's announcement. For those not in the know, it's called BLUF - https://hbr.org/2016/11/how-to-write-email-with-military-precision https://hbr.org/2016/11/how-to-write-email-with-military-pre... Don't waste people's time by burying the most important information. You can receive a longform explanation, but not at the expense of comprehension or speed of delivery.
- nilsbunger 4y agoBLUF - bottom line up front. Love it!
- aldebran 4y agoEdit: I'm going to leave the below message but wanted to acknowledge that OP meant that the message could be more authentic. I misread. How is this authentic? I was reading through and thinking how it's mincing words and making it sound like everyone is going to feel the same pain. "This is one of the hardest messages I’ve ever had to send." Bad start. Why do CEOs make this about them? "Unfortunately, this includes reducing the size of our workforce and parting ways " "I know this will be difficult for us all" At least acknowledge that it's going to be more difficult for people who will lose their jobs. "But today, my focus is on our people. " You're literally laying people off. First paragraph literally puts employees as the last priority. "my top priority has been to do what’s best for Bolt’s business, customers, and employees" Stuff like this is business reality- just be really authentic. Say it sucks but we've had to do this. Don't talk about how hard it is for you or others who aren't directly impacted. It may be hard but it's way harder for the ones losing their jobs and cut the BS about focus being on people. It's clearly not.
- eunos 4y agoWait this is not Bolt the ride-sharing company?
- pastor_bob 4y agoThey still hiring though? Lots of positions listed. 4 day work week sounds tempting...
- datalopers 4y agoEven better, word is once you've been there a while they'll move you to the 0-day work week.
- puranjay 4y agoDamn, I’ve been out of the startup loop. I remember when startup used to be extra work. Are four day work weeks becoming common now?
- danrocks 4y agoOnly in fantasyland, where Amazon and Chinese companies don’t exist.
- cheeze 4y ago> 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 at 1pm PST. If you work outside of the US and Canada, we will provide further clarity based on the local laws and regulations over the next few weeks. I hate the use of things like "directly impacted" - feels like such corporate speak to try to lessen the blow. Just be straight about things. "Those who are being laid off" - don't hide behind words.
- drdaeman 4y agoHa, 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuEQixrBKCc
- kleinsch 4y agoI was in the middle of an interview loop with Bolt mid-Apr, they canceled my onsite so they could (supposedly) prioritize onboarding people they'd already hired. Dodged a bullet there. Also did calls with Coinbase, Uber, and Twitter, who all now have hiring freezes. Boggles my mind how companies flip on a dime between "hire as fast as possible" and "the sky is falling, we're laying people off." In the case of Bolt and Twitter, there were material changes (lawsuit from major customer, Elon Musk) but the others are just scared about the economy.
- dvtrn 4y agoConversely: "Slow to hire, fast to fire" is something I've heard a few times in my career, and usually within organizations that turned out to be truly toxic and absolutely burnout inducing places to work. Operating on either extreme probably makes for captivating blog posts and "leadership reading material" but in praxis seems like it should be self-evidently a bad idea.
- wordnerd2022 4y agoUber does not have a hiring freeze
- pbreit 4y ago"Uber freezes most hiring" https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-freezes-most-hiring-ceo-dara-khosrowshahi-plans-no-layoffs-2022-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-freezes-most-hiring-ceo...
- wordnerd2022 4y agoHeadlines are sometimes wrong :)
- dehrmann 4y agoIn theory, Elon Musk maybe buying Twitter shouldn't change any of its management decisions yet.
- nrmitchi 4y agoFirst 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 are taking advantage of any excuse that isn't "ya we hired way to many people so that we could say we are bigger than Fast". Bolt apparently raised $355 million 4 months ago. If they are having cash problems, or are concerned about not having enough runway, I don't believe for a second that any magnitude of layoffs will help them.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 88913527 4y agoThe more businesses do this, the more the hiring market becomes lemons for unicorn-type businesses. Prospective employees will wonder if they're an overhire and if question their expectations of job security.
- autokad 4y agoyeah. lots of companies already froze hiring (firing through attrition). Bolt doesn't make a trend but it gets my attention. edit: I saw on blind indicating its 15% of workforce
- tschellenbach 4y agoAlways ask about valuation and revenue. If the multiple is very high run the other way. A high multiple makes it less likely that your stock will be worth something, it also makes it more likely that the company will have to do layoffs in the future.
- RexM 4y agoWhat’s considered high?
- c7DJTLrn 4y agoThe wording of these always makes my skin crawl. Just say what's happening and what led to this decision. Numbers, not handwaivey rhetoric like "we need to focus".
- TomBombadildoze 4y agoI tried to order a Solo Stove last fall. I placed the order, they accepted it, everything seemed like a normal e-commerce experience. Two days later, I received an email saying my order had been canceled for suspected fraud. I've never had that happen before, and it hasn't happened since. My experience is obviously anecdotal but their fraud detection routine clearly had major flaws. With news of layoffs at Bolt, I wonder how many partners lost sales like mine.
- staunch 4y agoGenerous 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, we should all do our best to avoid and boycott companies that do layoffs without providing generous severance. Because who wants to do business with an unethical or incompetent company. If anyone knows what severance Bolt is paying, let us know.
- fdgsdfogijq 4y agoThis 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.
- bombcar 4y agoAnd 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.
- break_the_bank 4y agoGiven the CEO suggested people buy the equity while taking personal loans in the last raise in February, I doubt the goodness of the severance.
- fdgsdfogijq 4y agoRumors 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
- nrmitchi 4y ago1) "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.
- halfdan 4y agoHaving 5000 employees will do that quickly.
- nrmitchi 4y agoFrom what I'm seeing they had ~550 employees as of the beginning of this year (~4 months ago). This was up from ~270 in Sept 2021 (~4 months prior). I would find it very hard to believe they have increased their headcount by 900% (~4500 people) in 4 months.
- datalopers 4y agohttps://www.linkedin.com/company/bolt-com/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/bolt-com/ While not everyone has a linkedin, 900 employees seems like a reasonably safe pre-layyoffs estimate?
- polote 4y agoAmong the 900 a lot of them are drivers at the Bolt delivery company (So not the same one)
- mdoms 4y ago
- silax 4y agoThe best thing they could do at this point is give employees and investors their remaining cash. They won't, but I bet they'll wish they did.
- ProAm 4y agoWhy? Business will continue, they are just trimming fat (excessively) based on what the market is doing. Next 2 years might be rough, especially for ecommerce.
- silax 4y agoIn general, I agree. But for Bolt in particular- they have a 2500x ARR multiple, and their top customer is suing them for "utterly failing to deliver on its promises" due to incompetence in software and lying about the details of their relationship, and the general sentiment of the company and founder is that of fraud, and the direct competitor just went out of business for very similar reasons, and the TAM of the market is less than they've raised in VC- I'd say the employees and investors can do greater things with the remaining capital.
- mchusma 4y agoRevenue looked on track for $20M ARR with no growth. About 500x at an $11B val. But I think they raised about $1.3B, so if they recap at about that amount plus an employee pool, they can bring that multiple to 50x. This would wipe out the founders and early employees, leaving current employees some incentive to move forward. Then, if the team can grow the business 2x, you are in normal-ish SAAS multiples. So it's not crazy. It could still work. A lot of pain.
- ProAm 4y agoEmployees can move on at their choosing no? And the investors made a gamble, it's their own fault if they invested poorly. Now they have to wait (or at least play to the contract).
- cosmiccatnap 4y agoI'm really tired of this "this is one of the hardest messages" cold open. You have thrown innocent people under the bus because you don't know how to balance a budget and mitigate risk. One thing none of these messages have ever done as far as I'm aware is take responsibility for their actions.
- seizethecheese 4y agoFor those who’ve seen layoffs first hand: do lower performers generally get laid off first, or is it more random?
- kasey_junk 4y agoIt really depends on the layoff strategy and there are lots of those. But for the most part you should treat it as random. For instance I was in the room when a company decided to shut down a whole location, even though it was very high performing. The reason? It had the lease ending soonest so they could cut even more costs there.
- PragmaticPulp 4y agoIt'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.
- thewarrior 4y agoAre managers and senior middle management more protected from being laid off ?
- Apocryphon 4y agoBetween them and Treehouse, hope no one tries to spin this to attack companies experimenting with the four-day workweek.
- zetsurin 4y agoI talked to them, IMO they weren't really 4 day work week
- throwaabolt 4y agoI 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 market. EDIT: I am doubly screwed because I signed up for the employee stock option loan program... and I'm not sure what the bank will want from me now that the stock price has tanked.
- DevToRecruiter 4y agoI'm sorry you're going through this. I don't know what your position is but I may be able to help you with the "finding a new job" part of your anxiety. Please feel free to reach out to me on twitter @devetorecruiter. Good luck with everything!
- throwaabolt 4y agothank you. can my wife's boyfriend contact you too? he is part of the layoff as well.
- 1-more 4y agoDid you cosign his loans for early exercise too? Brutal. In all seriousness good luck going forward.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mizzao 4y agoHow does this "wife's boyfriend" thing work?
- t3rabytes 4y agolol the throwaway is 100% a troll, and had it not been for the "i'm a troll" description that was removed from their profile, this is what proves it
- tkiolp4 4y agoI just accepted an offer (contract is signed) 1 month ago. I guess I need to start again looking for a job.
- dehrmann 4y agoIt depends. You don't know what their layoff strategy was. It's possible to do a 30% layoff and still be hiring. You should still continue looking since you don't know what you'll be getting into. If they do rescind the offer, since they'd be screwing you pretty hard, I'd ask for pay and health insurance until you find your next job, but also ask them to connect you with other companies their VCs have invested in. Feel free to ask even if they don't offer. If they offer severance, feel free to ask for more. IANAL, but I doubt you'd have much legal recourse. California is a right-to-work state. Public shaming is always an option, but that can be personally and professionally expensive.
- dominotw 4y agoyea i would bolt even if you still have the offer.
- moneywoes 4y agonice pun haha
- avl999 4y agoTheir careers page weirdly shows them still 'hiring' for lots of tech and non-tech roles https://www.bolt.com/careers https://www.bolt.com/careers
- bigtones 4y agoBolt laid off around a third of their workforce accord to The New York Times, from just over 900 employees to around 660 as counted by active Slack users internally. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/25/business/bolt-layoffs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/25/business/bolt-layoffs.htm...
- throwaway7104 4y agoAfter reading last week's leaked YC letter to founders, I was suspecting that this would be a shockwave staggering the startup scene. I'm not working at Bolt, but this week our (not large) company has announced a 20% layoff and essentially made it clear that we shouldn't count on any investment funds in the foreseeable future. Hard times with all these investment sources drying up, but so far this crisis is localized to the tech world, unlike the dotcom bubble was. I sincerely hope that it will stay this way.
- honkycat 4y agoUgh. I have a bunch of money saved up but I am terrified this is going to be the great depression 2.
- dehrmann 4y agoThis tech pullback is tricky. One one hand, there are real businesses with revenue behind a lot of the tech companies (unlike 2000), and these companies have actually changed consumer habits. There are also a lot of crypto businesses that are mostly still private and have invented a electronic trading cards that are losing value. Tech is also a lot bigger than it was in 2000 and 2008, a lot more people got into the industry, and it's not clear how overgrown it is. Bolt seems like it managed cash flow poorly, and it's in a tough space, effectively competing with your browser, your phone's wallet, Paypal, Amazon, and (eventually?) Shopify. The question is how bad are second-order effects, and how much does a pullback hurt well-run players. > great depression 2 You must be a Ray Dalio fan.
- dontreact 4y agoSo 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?
- lupire 4y agoThe most important fact is buried on the middle of the third paragraph, because the CEO is a coward.
- phphphphp 4y agoCan 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.
- fdgsdfogijq 4y agoHalf of the employees participated
- tehlike 4y agoThis has details https://twitter.com/theryanking/status/1493390167461224451 https://twitter.com/theryanking/status/1493390167461224451
- wavesounds 4y agoWhy didn't they just give them RSUs instead of doing this super complicated risky thing?
- stu2b50 4y agoMore upside presumably, since if you do wait the time, and the stock isn't underwater, then you can sell and be taxed as long term capital gains. I really don't think that's a good gamble for an employee to take, but oh well.
- bogomipz 4y agoWow. After reading this I clicked on CEO Ryan Breslow's Twitter profile pic which is of him barefoot, wearing a psychedelic hoodie and sitting in a yoga position with his palms upturned. Between this loan idea, the self-reference to the 4 day work week and the yogi pose, it's like something straight out of HBO's "Silicon Valley."
- fdgsdfogijq 4y agohahah yeah I had this same reaction a few hours ago. He even has those obnoxious turquoise earings on.
- thinkindie 4y agojust to understand: is this company product similar to Fast.com? Is it also the case of an inflated valuation for a very low turnaround?
- aabhay 4y agoI 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?
- kumarm 4y agowouldn't Fast be the Theranos even by your description? Bolt definitely has some explaining todo with employee stock options but calling it Theranos seems little extreme.
- ergocoder 4y agoNot by a long shot. Fast didn't inflate their revenue. Bolt encouraged employees to take the loan to exercise stock. And Bolt's founder founded that loan company. Fast definitely didn't do that Calling it theranos seems fair...
- __derek__ 4y agoThat seems right. Bolt : WeWork :: Fast : Theranos
- nrmitchi 4y ago> 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 https://twitter.com/nrmitchi/status/1519174682863226880
- vira28 4y agoOne of the things that I would consider before joining any startups is just how good sane (or humane or whatever appropriate word) the founders are. Don't go behind all the PRs. Just try to find whether the people who founded are actually good people. What are their ethics. All these are subjective qualities so it's difficult to weigh but that's where the money is. edited (I understand I might not have described what I mean clearly).
- mrtpat 4y agoHow do you go about doing this exactly?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- treyfitty 4y agoWhy 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.
- chrisstanchak 4y agoIt sucks. It means you failed everyone. Feels like total shit if you’re a good human.
- Gigachad 4y agoIt's not just their own interests. If they run over budget they have to shut down and everyone loses their job. So impacting only x% is a better alternative. Doing it all in one go and getting it right the first time is very important because you want to end up in a sustainable position where you can assure everyone remaining that they have made it and don't need to worry.
- urthor 4y agoFor most CEOs or business owners it's definitely the hardest episode they'll face. Mostly because of the loss of face. Layoffs means the CEO/board has screwed things up big time. Firing people is easy. They fire screw-ups all the time, no platitudes no regret. But this time the CEO screwed up, there are no two ways about it. Taking responsibility is painful.
- nso95 4y agoMost people are not _complete_ sociopaths
- tschellenbach 4y agoChiming in. I tend to work day and night to ensure a good outcome for our team, investors, customers etc. At the end of the day the buck stops with the CEO. Definitely the last thing you want for your team members.
- 015a 4y agoThe funny thing about recessions, and macroeconomics as a whole; much of the time, we eat the food we cook. If there is an upcoming recession, the most likely root cause is that a bunch of people believed there will be an upcoming recession.
- Jensson 4y agoRecession happens when all the people who thought they were working on the next big thing realises that they wont be the next big thing, that all the work they put in was just a waste. You can't avoid that by just thinking positive thoughts, reality isn't an optimist and will hit you sooner or later no matter how hard you try to ignore it. Trying to delay a recession just means all that waste work gets even deeper entangled into your economy, making the recession hit harder and wider.
- neffy 4y agoThat's the convenient mythology. De facto - bear in mind the system that we´re talking about moves rather slowly - recessions always have real financial or economic system causes, and quite often are seen coming in advance by some people. People who are at the right points in the financial system, who for example can see bad debt starting to build up (takes months, but there's always a clear pattern of people starting to skip payments etc), companies starting to run out of runway with no revenue coming in, again their banks will typically be able to spot this fairly quickly. Changes in fuel costs are very significant, especially in the US, too many people drive too far to work, petrol goes up, this multiplies quickly - this one hasn't even really hit the system yet, wait for winter.
- _dark_matter_ 4y agoThose same smart people are so prescient they predict 10 out of the next 2 recessions.
- 015a 4y agoSure; but 8 times out of 10, these things happen and there's no recession. People were SCREAMING recession recession recession in 2020 Q1-Q2. It never materialized. You've got the "well we kicked the can down the road" group, who are just as bad as the "predict 10 recessions and you'll get one right" group because there's always going to be a recession; saying "it'll happen in the future" is at least more accurate than saying "it'll happen last month, no this month, no next month, ok JULY" because at least you're not wrong, but the future is indefinite. Its not useful. If the markets & macroeconomies were rational, then you could draw a line and say: root systemic issue causes recession. Clean, simple. The problem is, economies aren't rational (by any definition of rationality understandable to the human brain, which is the only useful definition). They're extremely complex, billions of signals, and predicting what's going to happen is extremely difficult. Its honestly surprising to me that, generally, people on HN fully understand: you can't predict when the stock market is going to go up. It is literally no different than predicting when its going to go down. You can't do either; not with any foolproof reasoning. If you spend every month saying "its going to be a down month", eventually you'll be right, but it doesn't mean your process is good and it doesn't mean you'll be right next month. "companies starting to run out of runway with no revenue coming in" Like Bolt? The company that raised $300M this year, and to compensate for their "declining runway" decides to fire... 250 people. This is not an example of a company reacting to systemic market conditions. Its a company reacting to systemic market sentiment. Sentiment precedes conditions. Startups operate for years with 12 months of runway and no revenue. What's changed? Availability of capital? Eh, not really. What's changed is the expectation of availability of capital in 12 months. That expectation is based on real or semi-real things: rising interest rates, inflation, supply chain woes, but it is not in-and-of-itself Real; its a prediction of the future. Of course, maybe availability of capital is drying up, today. Why? VCs being more stingy. Why? Well, maybe you say rising interest rates, maybe inflation, war in ukraine, but go talk with a VC and they'll say: expectation of market downturn in the coming year. Through that expectation they (hopefully temporarily) destroyed the economic activity of 250 people. A hold has been placed on all those peoples' ability to: buy iPhones, buy clothes, eat at a nice restaurant, buy a house... and that is what causes recessions. Sentiment precedes conditions. Sentiment is already priced in.
- vcryan 4y agoIdk, getting laid off from a douche-fest like Bolt seems like a gift. We should be celebrating, not criticizing.
- alasdair_ 4y agoI’ve had regular recruitment emails from Bolt, the most recent of which was only a few days ago.
- _HMCB_ 4y agoIsn’t this announcement weeks and weeks old?
- LilBytes 4y agoNo you might be getting mistaken with Fasts layoffs. Layoffs are still layoffs when they let go of 100% of their staff and fold the company over right?
- wly_cdgr 4y agoAnother case of deliberate overhiring to deprive competition of talent and generate buzz, then shedding the excess when world/market events give you some cover. Combined with a healthy dash of actual failure, of course
- boopmaster 4y agoThere are stories across the industry like this. "My first day at facebook I was laid off." etc. Perhaps the feds inducing a hiring freeze is _working as designed_ : https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-the-fed-wants-corporate-america-to-have-a-hiring-freeze-morning-brief-100055174.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-the-fed-wants-corporate-a...
- bartread 4y ago> 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.
- anm89 4y agoMeh. If they did it the otherway then people would roast them for being cold or whatever.
- stu2b50 4y agoI'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.
- marcinzm 4y agoIt depends imho on the severance terms. If the company has decent ones then the message is "this hurts me and I did everything to cushion the blow for you" If the company has bad ones then the message is "let's make a hundred people losing their livelihoods about how a multimillionaire feels but isn't willing to give up any of those millions."
- DantesKite 4y agoI remember reading a blog post about how to do lay offs once. I can’t find it anymore but it was essentially don’t make it about yourself. It leaves a bitter taste in their mouth. Wish I could find it.
- Yhippa 4y agoWhen I've had to separate with employees, I never brought feelings into it. I kept it fact-based as possible for a multitude of reasons. Most of all, respect for the employee.
- tschellenbach 4y agoThe 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.
- Animats 4y agoIs this the one-click-checkout-as-a-service startup previous discussed on HN?
- jollybean 4y ago"Our mission is simple: Level the playing field and democratize the commerce experience." I wish I could short all startups that use the term 'democratize' for any reason.
- kikowi 4y agoAnyone knows how is 1o doing (another competitor of fast and bolt)? https://www.1o.io/ https://www.1o.io/
- sparrc 4y agoI'm a bit naive on this space so forgive if this is an ignorant question; Can anyone explain how any of these companies (Bolt, Fast, 1o) are doing anything different than "checkout with paypal"? What exactly is wrong with paypal that would make a merchant want to use Bolt instead?
- GenerocUsername 4y agoIs Pepsi not just Coke?
- Aeolun 4y agoCustomers do not like paypal? At least I don’t like Paypal.
- boardwaalk 4y agoI don't either. On the other hand, it's more of a known quantity than one of these startups.
- Semaphor 4y agoCurious, why? I could understand it as merchant, but as customer, PP has great customer protection (including partial chargebacks, free return shipping, etc.)
- lazide 4y agoThey’re notorious for freezing peoples accounts for no reason or recourse and generally being terrible to deal with.
- Semaphor 4y agoI wouldn’t call it notorious. I have almost never heard of non-merchants being fucked over by them. And for customers, they are the opposite, super easy to deal with because, like Amazon, they decide in favor of the customer when in doubt.
- 4y ago
- DeathArrow 4y agoIf they will fire 50%, will they expect that the remaining 50% will do the work of 100%? Can employees go on strike to prevent the layoffs?
- isbvhodnvemrwvn 4y agoYou assume that this many people actually did something useful instead of looking nice on paper for VC. They have 40m in revenue, a lot of it had to be useless.
- miked85 4y ago...and their site says "We're Hiring"
- DeathArrow 4y agoIs there a connection between Bolt, the transport app and Bolt, the payment solution?
- madduci 4y agoI love this justification: > To laser focus on our core business and products, we will be prioritizing our roadmap and making several structural changes. Unfortunately, this includes reducing the size of our workforce and parting ways with some incredibly talented people on our team as of today.
- ryanSrich 4y agoWith YC, Craft, and Sequoia all urging their portfolio companies to operate at a < 2x burn multiple, it would make sense to see these growth stage companies start to panic. When you’re small, and have revenue, it might only take a handful of layoffs to get to “default alive” as a startup. But once you go beyond a series A and start dumping gasoline on every part of your business to scale faster, the risk starts to grow exponentially. These companies with hundreds of employees are insanely inefficient, but that’s the game. You run hot until you get above everyone else and then you start to figure out how to actually make money. During a recession that type of growth probably doesn’t work. We might still see a few companies blitz scale, but if the capital is risk off there’s unlikely to an abundance of these types of companies. In a way it’ll be an end of an era. Probably for the better, but the run was great while it lasted (depending on how you view great). I think any startup caught in the middle right now needs to effectively assume they’re dead unless they get to operational break even with their current runway.
- xiphias2 4y ago> it’ll be an end of an era I don’t think it will, but even a 1-2 year recession is enough to destroy these companies. The leverage in / structure of the current financial system makes it extremely hard to not decrease interest rates again.
- hef19898 4y agoCouldn't agree more! Being at now-puplic start-up that needs somewhere north of, IMHO, 500 million to become somewhat profitable (industry specific, some hardware products simply cost a shit ton of money to develop) that is something I think a lot about lately. Especially the, up until now, habbit of inefficiently thtowing money and people at a problem hoping something sticks. In hardware, so nothing that can be growth-hacked.
- ETHisso2017 4y agoRivian?
- 4y ago
- RektBoy 4y agoCE0 bonuses not gonna pay themselves, right?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- throwaway378037 4y ago“I know this will be difficult for us all,” says startup CEO with safe, high-paying job who joined role 3 months ago.
- SantiagoElf 4y agoOh, Snap! No more Web 3.0, NFT, DeFi posts for a few years. Top Kek, lel.
- rospaya 4y agoBolt Financial, the finops company, not Bolt the car sharing service which seems to be doing fine: > In January 2022, Bolt raised €628 million from investors led by Sequoia Capital and Fidelity Management and Research Co, taking the company's valuation to €7.4 billion
- leto_ii 4y agoThis comment should be upvoted. I suspect many people in the thread, like myself, read the whole thing thinking it's about the ride-sharing company. That would be bolt.eu, not .com.
- jthrowsitaway 4y agoI wasn't familiar with either and thought of the Chevy Bolt.
- Etheryte 4y agoSmall note on the Bolt that's doing fine, I suspect a big part of why they're doing fine is that they're doing a lot more than just car sharing. Last I checked, they offer car sharing (car rentals), taxi service (think Uber), food delivery, scooter rental, and I'm sure there's other things in their basket. In many markets their taxi drivers do food delivery during slow hours, cars are moved into the rental part of the business when the taxi business doesn't need as many of them etc. It's a surprisingly well run business for a startup, honestly.
- yangity 4y ago“…as we continue on our journey to decentralize and democratize commerce. ” There’s some special irony in this statement as they attempt to achieve the holy grail network effect of being “the sole” 1-click checkout option!