San francisco

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. “It’s no secret that the market conditions across our industry and the tech sector are changing, and against the macro challenges, we’ve been taking measures to adapt our business,” recently appointed CEO Maju Kuruvilla said in the letter, which was made public Wednesday. One laid-off employee, posting on the anonymous forum Blind, said that they received … [Read more...] about Bolt, the San Francisco startup with permanent 4-day workweek, lays off nearly a third of its employees

A bus driver somberly stepped down from his perch to place an operator’s manual among the roses while a dancer swayed in front of smiling photos and hand-scrawled notes. A fellow union member in a “Si se puede” T-shirt carefully arranged her offering of paper flowers and pinwheels — one bouquet for each fallen colleague. The grief was still raw on Friday afternoon at a growing San Jose City Hall memorial for the nine people slain two days earlier at a rail yard just across downtown. What haunted 22-year VTA bus driver Diana Angeles, who like the alleged shooter is a member of the Amalgamated Transit Union, was thinking about what might have happened if a massacre came to her bus yard instead. “Everybody’s just traumatized,” said Angeles, who heard the news on Wednesday, her day off. “You never think it’s gonna happen to you. Next thing you know, your family’s getting that phone call.” San Jose Mass Shooting Live updates: Latest on the shooting that left nine people … [Read more...] about Raw grief on display at San Jose shooting victims’ memorial

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 2 More than 12 years before he shot and killed nine of his coworkers at the Valley Transportation Authority , Samuel James Cassidy was an emotionally volatile person with a penchant for abusive behavior, according to an ex-girlfriend who filed a restraining order against him in March 2009. In an interview, the woman, who The Chronicle is not naming because she is an alleged victim of sexual assault, said she and Cassidy met on Match.com in early 2008 and dated seriously for about six months. Two months into their relationship, she said, Cassidy proposed. She declined. That’s when she said Cassidy’s behavior turned both verbally and physically abusive. She recalled one specific incident where he raped her while he was drunk, but acknowledged that her memory of the relationship had faded over the years. “He was mentally unstable, up and down,” she said. “Sometimes he was a nice gentleman, … [Read more...] about San Jose mass shooter’s ex-girlfriend details sexual abuse

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 8 Just after daybreak Wednesday, Samuel James Cassidy stepped out of his front door in the Evergreen neighborhood of east San Jose. He was headed across town to the place he’d worked for two decades, Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority’s Guadalupe light rail yard. Dressed in his dark uniform with reflective stripes, Cassidy, a maintenance worker for the agency known as VTA, walked to the white Ford F-150 pickup parked in his driveway. Then, as seen in a silent, choppy video captured by a neighbor’s security camera, he hefted a large bag into the passenger side of the truck, got in and drove away. It was 5:39 a.m. Less than an hour later, neighbors were calling 911. Heavy smoke and fire were pouring from the roof of Cassidy’s home. By that time, Cassidy had made his way to the Guadalupe yard on West Young Avenue 9 miles away. It was just after … [Read more...] about A killer’s path: Tracking the San Jose shooter’s movements toward massacre

Twitter shareholders have filed a lawsuit accusing Elon Musk of engaged in “unlawful conduct” aimed at sowing doubt about his bid to buy the social media company. The lawsuit filed late Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California claims the billionaire Tesla CEO has sought to drive down Twitter’s stock price because he wants to walk away from the deal or negotiate a substantially lower purchase price. San Francisco-based Twitter is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit, which seeks class action status as well as compensation for damages. A representative for Musk did not immediately respond to a message for comment on Thursday. Twitter declined to comment. Musk last month offered to buy Twitter for $44 billion, but later said the deal can’t go forward until the company provides information about how many accounts on the platform are spam or bots. The lawsuit notes, however, that Musk waived due diligence for his “take it or leave it” … [Read more...] about Twitter shareholders sue Musk, say he ‘deflated’ stock price

A year after the worst mass shooting in Bay Area history, the family of one of nine men killed at a Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority rail yard is suing the VTA, its security service and the county sheriff, saying they should have known much earlier that the gunman was angry and dangerous. The Transportation Authority failed to investigate Samuel Cassidy or take any disciplinary action despite ample evidence of his “repeated pattern of insubordination,” including “verbal altercations” with coworkers on at least four occasions,” the widow and three children of Lars Kepler Lane said in a lawsuit filed Thursday in Santa Clara County Superior Court. In January 2020, the suit said, a coworker voiced fears that if anyone in the workforce were to “go postal” — become violent in the workplace — it would be Cassidy. The suit also blamed Universal Protection Service and the Santa Clara County sheriff’s office, which had signed a contract in 2014 to jointly provide security to … [Read more...] about Family of VTA mass shooting victim files lawsuit saying authorities failed to protect workers