My friends and I have been working on building our website — https://bigbeans.ai
It's leetcode for ML/AI space.
We believe that a lot of software engineers are interested in learning about GenAI and like us learn by solving problems. :)
Hey, good work. One small feedback, after logging in (from mobile) it took me to the profile section rather than listing problems. I was expecting it to redirect to the problems section. From there, it was tough to find the section. That displays problems.
I wonder how many innovations/systems are lost to history due to people changing incentives OR not understanding the depth of how incentives are structured.
Without this open letter, it'd be hard to hear the other side. Most likely the changes would have been adopted...
Reading this encouraged me to think critically about things I work on.
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 does well.
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
Their storefront feels dated and retro — probably why it feels something for older tastes. But their lollipops are amazing. I go there just for them. Just today, I bought a box of chocolate-caramel.
I hope that, in addition to, improving their recruiting funnel and brand value; this effort serves to improve diversity in tech.
We have talked about tech companies throwing their hands in the air to encourage college admissions rate from under-represented classes. Hopefully, this move to go down the funnel leads to that improvement!
It's interesting to see one of the basis of defense is promises made during offer stage.
Anecdotally speaking, and I am not remotely close to Hall's position or responsibilities (an engineer) and in the past, the hiring team has always led me to believe that the non-competes are a standard clause and are not likely to be enforced.
On a separate note, anybody knows if Google would help with legal defense of Hall or ignore this as a private matter?
> the hiring team has always led me to believe that the non-competes are a standard clause and are not likely to be enforced.
My policy is: "Hey, if you don't plan on enforcing it, let's remove it from the contract... oh, you're not allowed to remove it? I guess we're done talking then." Fortunately I live in CA where they're not legally enforceable anyway.
> On a separate note, anybody knows if Google would help with legal defense of Hall or ignore this as a private matter?
It's certainly in Google's best interest that the suit goes well for Hall, so I imagine Google's legal counsel would represent him. The only way I'd figure they wouldn't get involved is if doing so would make it more likely that there'd be a bad outcome for some reason.
> My policy is: "Hey, if you don't plan on enforcing it, let's remove it from the contract... oh, you're not allowed to remove it? I guess we're done talking then."
As a former lawyer, this is a very good policy to have.
Alarm bells should be going off if someone tries to browbeat you into accepting "standard terms" on the basis that "they're not enforced".
> Google likely considered legal defense as part of the hiring cost when taking someone that high profile
Stuff like this is always so fascinating to me: the idea that someone's ability to do their job is worth fighting over in court -- nevermind the cultural costs of bringing someone new into a executive position at a company.
It's not just him that you're getting. It's the goodwill and confidence you're giving to every single other potential future hire. If you refuse to defend the person and leave the person unemployed in the ditch, future candidates will be much less likely to want to join your company.
I can only imagine how much it sucks to be laid off and what a difficult decision it must be for Airbnb executives.
To me, the severance and exit benefits do seem to strike an employee friendly tone. Kudos to the leadership to striking a good balance on keeping the business alive and doing right by their people.
These are abnormal circumstances. I wonder if it is possible to delay the layoffs by cutting salaries - maybe instead of firing 5 out of 10 equally paid people, they can cut the salaries of all 10 people by half (or something like that).
Cutting salaries in half guarantees they lose all the top performers, and probably more than half, instead of the 5 they pick. I don't believe that is the goal.
Yes, during normal times. But these are not normal times - like, who is hiring now? If I were a top performer, I'd take a salary cut if it means saving my colleague's job.
I get what you are saying though. They are a business and I guess they're doing what is best for their business. The severance package is generous (relatively speaking), so there's at least that.
Edit : I guess I didn't word this properly. I was saying they'd lose top performers if their salaries are cut, during normal times.
> But these are not normal times - like, who is hiring now?
Facebook and Amazon, just to mention a couple of giants that would probably love if every company doing layoffs right now would instead halve their top performers' compensation.
This is not as relevant in the Airbnb case since the expected value of RSUs went down so much that this is effectively the case even with no salary cuts.
Never a good time, but especially in this environment!
I recall that airbnb workforce has become very marketing lopsided (vs. tech). Whereas tech folks generally have an easier time landing, I imagine the environment for the next 9-12mos being very bad for marketing/MBA folks.
It might sound like bad fuel efficiency but the engine efficiencies they have managed to achieve are insane.
The latest Mercedes and Ferrari engines are able to gain 47% efficiency [1]. Compare that to the road cars which are able to do 25-30% thermal efficiency and Prius which can manage 40%.
In my opinion, the fuel efficiency suffers because it's a sport at the end of the day and burning more fuel at a higher rate (limited to 100 kg/hour) gives you more power.
