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Earlier this year, fintech company Bolt laid off 30% of its workforce. In an internal Slack message<\/a>, CEO Ryan Breslow told employees: \u201cGoing forward, Bolt will be operating as a much leaner organization and leveraging AI at our core.\u201d <\/p>\n On May 19 during Fortune<\/em>\u2019s Workforce Innovation Summit<\/a>, Breslow shared the reason behind the layoffs\u2014and why he decided to cut Bolt\u2019s HR team entirely.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had an HR team, and that HR team was creating problems that didn\u2019t exist,\u201d Breslow said. \u201cThose problems disappeared when I let them go.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2022, Breslow stepped down as CEO of Bolt after the company he founded from his Stanford University dorm room started to see a decline in its riches. From 2022 to 2024, the company\u2019s valuation dipped from $11 billion to $300 million.\u00a0<\/p>\n When Breslow returned to lead the company in 2025, he explained why employees \u201chad to be let go.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a sense of entitlement that had festered across the company, and people who felt empowered, felt entitled\u2014but weren\u2019t actually working hard. And this is the number-one thing that I had to battle,\u201d Breslow said. \u201cUltimately, most of those people just had to be let go.\u201d<\/p>\n As a result, Breslow removed almost the entire leadership team. <\/p>\n \u201cThey had gotten used to working at a company where they didn\u2019t have to get their hands dirty, and could spend a lot of money, and we just didn\u2019t have that money to spend anymore, and we didn\u2019t have that luxury,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n