Posted on 05/28/2022 1:00:07 PM PDT by Persevero
The San Francisco tech startup that helped popularize a push for a four-day workweek in Silicon Valley, is now laying workers off.
As first reported by the New York Times, Bolt, the payment services startup with offices near San Francisco’s Union Square, laid off around 250 of its around 900 employees Wednesday in a move to “secure our financial position, extend our runway, and reach profitability with the money we have already raised” amid industrywide financial challenges, according to a letter to staff.
A Bolt spokesperson confirmed to SFGATE Thursday that "approximately a third of the company" was laid off.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Now there's a new piece of corpspeak babblecrap.
27 y/o CEO in over his head and full of startup lingo like “runway” and “superpowers.” The poster who said start-ups get off the ground with 90-hour workweeks is right. Can’t do it on straight time. I guess they found that out.
“extend our runway”. Yeah, whatever.
Suffice to say, these Bolt people advocating a 4 day work week were off in la-la land. Startups don't work that way.
But can the remaining employees still work 4 day weeks?
At the startup where I ran the development/test lab, I literally worked 80 hours Monday through Friday one week. I then walked out and my wife picked me up to drive from San Diego back home to Idaho. I slept in the passenger seat until we reached Mesquite, AZ, then picked up the driving chores the balance of the trip to Pocatello. I put in that level of effort because I was turning over the lab for just test execution to an employee of one of the two sponsoring companies. All the development work was complete. That employee called me with a "heads up" that he suspected an "all stop" was coming. Spot on. The final slap in the face was a layoff notice via FedEx the day after the shutdown. My average 240 hours of labor was supporting a room full of idle people an my employer. The loss of the money stream meant I would get dumped too.
Postscript: facing a layoff and being a senior employee, it was up to me to find work. I did. I landed a $1 million contract. My former manager (the one who layed me off) said he "wanted a piece of it". I diplomatically said "F**k Off". You didn't watch me back.
"But Mr. Galt - these software Engineers are graduates of one of the
most prestigious universities in China! Why all of the problems?"
"That may be true - but the problem is that most of them don't do s&*t!
They sit around all day doing nothing but talking (in Chinese) and laughing.
Frankly - I think they are telling jokes about you, me, the investors,
and America in general."
To be fair - two of the Chinese guys were quite talented and hardworking.
It's the other 9 guys & 1 gal who were not that were the problem.
I did as much of the work myself as I could - but -
I am not superman.
The story goes on - and I could also relate the NEXT story -
in which I had more authority and control.
We were attracting a bit of interest - then 911 happened.
The economy ground to the temporary halt, the investors
cut us off cold - and, you can imagine.
Tech startups are not for the faint of heart.
Nor the underfunded.
But I am sure you know all these things.
At the same time I was in the lab, my son was a few miles south in bootcamp at MCRD. His decision to join the Marines went hot about 3 weeks shy of graduation. He finished his MOS school at Ft Leonard Wood, SOI at Camp Pendleton then his unit was directed to Kuwait. He landed on April 18, 2002 at the Kuwait airport. His 19th birthday. Many war stories followed. The good one is he came home and resumed life.
As I was driving I saw quite a strange site - a small group of Hispanic
children walking down the sidewalk waving little American flags.
I thought: 'It's not the 4th of July or Memorial day, so what gives?'
When I got into the office I learned what had happened.
I got no work done that day. Spent the day scouring the
internet to see what was actually going on.
When I got back to my apartment that night, my next door
neighbor (who was a drinker) was screaming in a rage at the
top of his lungs: 'Kill Every Effing Muslim On the Planet!!!'
A woman I knew - who thought that there might be a nuclear war
and the end of the world - knocked on my door and propositioned
me right there. Crazy times, they were.
It was a few months later that the economic fallout of it all
caused our investors to bolt.
We continued on for about eight months more - but the situation
really got no better - and technology changed that would have
required us to make a major changes to take our product
and take it in a radically different direction that
would have taken an inordinate amount of time.
So we packed it in.
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