Finally, someone has seen the light:
Bolt CEO fires his entire HR team because they “created problems that didn’t exist”, and “those problems disappeared when I let them go”.
Welcome to the party, pal.
Ryan Breslow, the co-founder and chief executive of US fintech firm Bolt, said the department was scrapped as part of sweeping layoffs aimed at returning the struggling business to “start-up mode”.
The 32-year-old added that HR professionals were more suited to “peacetime” conditions at larger companies rather than a start-up environment focused on rapid growth and efficiency.
In his seminal work, Up The Organization, the late Robert Townsend had a small chapter as part of his plan to make companies more successful: “Fire the entire HR department.” (I should point out that his incendiary book — which was and still is one of the best management books ever written — was published back in 1971. One can only wonder what he’d think of today’s HR.) Also, for those who don’t remember, Townsend was responsible for taking #2 car rental firm Avis to #1, so he knew what he was talking about.
I used to publish this little comment as a joke, except that it isn’t, really:
What I like is that the BOLT CEO has replaced HR with a small team tasked with “training and employee support” — i.e. the original function of the “Personnel Department” before they adopted the soulless “Human Resources” nomenclature.
Incidentally, Townsend sneered at HR being part of the hiring process, saying that this function should be left to the department managers, who should have a better idea than some third party of the kind of person they’d need.
I bet that Breslow would agree with that, now.