A CEO fired all of HR. The EEOC is suing the NYT. Both defended it onstage

One quick way to enrage a room of people leaders? Tell them you let go of your entire HR team.

That’s what Bolt CEO Ryan Breslow said at the Fortune Workplace Innovation Summit last week, and his comments quickly went viral. “We had an HR team, and that HR team was creating problems that didn’t exist,” Breslow told me. “Those problems disappeared when I let them go.”

He boldly made the remarks just one month after laying off roughly 30% of employees and amid reports that Bolt offered some employees equity in lieu of salary while some contractors went unpaid. Breslow denied these claims. He declined to elaborate after our conversation, though his team pointed me to a LinkedIn post stating the fintech startup is hiring HR leaders in Estonia and Hungary. 

Breslow’s HR views weren’t the only hot-button topics at our summit. We also heard from Andrea Lucas, chair of the Equal Employment........

© Fortune