Navigating your employer’s bankruptcy is one of the strangest times you can go through, especially if you are trying to build a career. The uncertainty in every aspect is palpable, making it very stressful. I learned a lot of business and personal lessons from this experience, and I share them in this article.
The article is divided into two parts.
- Monthly recount
- Lessons learned
Monthly Recount #
In this section, I explore numerous events during the months leading up to the bankruptcy. It highlights the uncertainty that prevailed even among the executives, leaving everyone anxious about their own future. For me, it all started in October 2024 …
October 2024 #
The reverse stock split (1-for-30) carried out in June 2025 was, to put it mildly, very unsuccessful. The stock had declined to its pre-split value in a matter of 3-4 months, making shareholders anxious about their investment. Nikola knew it’s cash situation was bleak in the prior months, but as the earnings call got closer in October, it wanted to look attractive to investors. Therefore, the company decided to conserve cash and reduce their quarterly burn-rate (the money they spent each quarter). Nikola, among other things, decided to layoff ~130 employees.
The layoffs hit close to home because one of my team member, who was directly reporting to me, was let go. Interestingly, I did not know about this up until that day, i.e. 3-4 hours before the “layoff meeting” (a layoff meeting is where you gather the employees to communicate the bad news). To add to my qualms, I was in India bereaving the loss of my father-in-law with my spouse’s family, and was not in a mindset to process this. I had promised to work from India because we were short on resources, and the work of this affected employee now fell on my already overflowing plate. There was an additional thought in my mind as well: what if I was laid off while I am outside the country? Due to immigration intricacies, it would be very hard for me to return. My anxiety was at its peak, a mental situation I do not wish on anyone.
In all of this, we were scheduled for a visa interview at the US Consulate to obtain authorization for returning to the US. My spouse had twisted her ankle in the second week we were there, and she was in pain (we later found out, after returning to the US, that it was a fracture of the metatarsal bone). Talk about October heat!
November 2024 #
When I returned from India, the head of our organization asked me and my boss to visit a conference to look at new HIL (hardware-in-the-loop) equipment. He wanted us to replace our existing, fully-functional equipment with new ones, that were exponentially expensive ($150,000-$300,000 per machine, and we needed four). Additionally, learning how to use this new equipment and its applications would take time away from real work. Its exactly as bad as it sounds: spending resources on something unnecessary. Thankfully, we did not go through with the purchase and commissioning of new equipment.
Later that month, Nikola announced that it would stop development and production of its flagship fuel cell electric truck (FCEV) to focus solely on the battery electric truck (BEV), a move that would save a lot of money. However, this raised numerous concerns because in June 2023 we had done the opposite pivot, i.e. focus on the FCEV not BEV. Two pivots in under 2 years for products that require thousands of parts/components and key strategic partnerships with suppliers. Employees working on the FCEV were very nervous bracing themselves for another round of layoffs.
During October and November, Nikola was searching for strategic partners (investors willing to acquire the business in whole or in parts) so it can continue operations. There were multiple visits from large companies to our office and manufacturing facilities to do their due-diligence of the business. Companies such as Big-T, Big-H, Another Big-H, were all interested. Even though they liked our engineering, they turned us down due to outstanding debts and unfavorable contracts.
My family’s anxiety had not tapered off since October. Immigration being the undercurrent of this anxiety, we decided to do something about it. In November, I started drafting my EB-1a application. More about that in another article.
December 2024 #
In December, right before the holidays, Another Big-H (ABH) sent a team of 8-10 people from their oversees headquarters to perform due-diligence at Nikola. They also hired a consultancy company to assist in these efforts. Each team had prepared detailed presentations about their function, their unique skills and their cumulative experience. ABH spent an entire week listening to our presentations, one team at a time. This gave us hope that ABH was very interested in our business, otherwise why would they spend time and money visiting us. Moreover, our head painted a falsely optimistic picture about how great Nikola’s controls organization was, and how any company would scoop us up.
At around this time, I ran into the executive assistant to the CEO, whom I had a good professional relationship with. I asked her about ABH personnels’ body language in meetings and whether they showed “real” interest. She gave a mixed answer highlighting that she had no hopes considering previous companies had declined to invest in us. She also mentioned that Nikola had a financial runway until March 2025, and that I should start thinking of joining another company by the end of January 2025. But with me drafting the EB-1A application, I did not want to divert my attention with job applications. My thought was that if I get my EB-1A approved, my spouse and I become permanent residents in about 6-7 months, which would remove ALL hurdles of me landing a good job while allowing my spouse to continue her business. In hindsight, I am very glad that we continued to draft the immigration petition.
January 2025 #
The key question that everyone asked in this month was whether ABH was willing to invest. Meetings, coffee machine discussions, and hallway conversations revolved around ABH’s impending decision. After Martin Luther King day, however, ABH had declined to invest in or purchase Nikola citing “financial/accounting” reasons. Wide disappointment spread across the company. Our head, however, was still falsely optimistic highlighting that there will be other companies. In hindsight, he was wrong.
Anyway, things got interesting from there on. Employees reduced working on the products, devoting 50% of their time in finding new opportunities. There began an “internal competition” in our group about who gets the most interviews and job offers. There was one person in our group who started this, lets call him Mr. Braggart. With only 5 years of industry experience he thought of himself as a résumé czar, boasting about how he had received interview from 5-6 different companies. In one of our team meetings, in order to teach us how to draft résumés, he showed us his. The document was funny. For example, title casing in the middle of a bullet point so as to “highlight” the most relevant piece of information from that bullet point, defeating the purpose of a bullet point. His suggestion was to limit the document to 1-page, even if you are a 30-year industry veteran. Anyway, as with incompetent people (Dunning-Kruger effect), he missed the bigger picture. He was getting so many interviews because he was applying to Senior Engineer positions (downgrading from a Lead Engineer), did not require visa sponsorship and was okay with less money than what he was making at Nikola.
This internal competition raised anxiety in our team, especially with the macro socio-political-economical atmosphere of that time. This was further exacerbated by lunch meetings that were held to “discuss notes” about everyone’s application process. Mr. Braggart gleamed sighting his use of ChatGPT to apply to 5-10 positions per day, an “in-and-out” approach to applications.
February 2025 #
Nikola filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after President’s day. We knew this was the only recourse after ABH had declined. All employees were issued a WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) notice stipulating that our last day would be April 21, 2025, i.e. giving us a 60 day notice to find new jobs. Theoretically, the bankruptcy filing made us more attractive to potential investors (where debts and contract obligations may no longer be serviced without legal backlash). Multiple meetings were held to discuss potential ramifications of this filing, and the company’s desire to keep finding strategic partners.
This was an emotional day for everyone, but most importantly, for our CEO who was sad and irritated that the company has to spend more money to get everything valued. The term he used was “it’s a racket”.
Bankruptcy filing sets some deadlines for the company. The first one is a “stalking horse” deadline (March 10, 2025). A “stalking horse” is an institution that is waiting for the struggling company to file to bankruptcy protection paperwork and has an internal deal to acquire it. The courts provide preferential treatment for “stalking horse” acquisitions. The next deadline was for other companies or a potential stalking horse to provide bids to acquire some or all of the company’s assets (March 28, 2025). After this deadline, the struggling company takes a week to weigh all bids (April 7, 2023). The court hearing date is then set to ratify the deal (April 11, 2023).
March 2025 #
More parties were now circling Nikola and visiting our facilities: Big I, G and Fx from China. Everyone was certain of at least one stalking horse bid. March 10 rolled over without a stalking horse bid. I am not sure why no one was interested in Nikola even after the bankruptcy. Additional parties visited us after March 10. All the while employees were asked to be in office to portray a good impression. This was the time when all employees got serious about finding new opportunities elsewhere.
Nikola HR started holding résumé reviews for employees, personal branding workshops, and also arranged for our internal photographer to take professional headshots of employees who signed up.
April 2025 #
Nikola received various bids to purchase portions of the business. I do not know all the bidders or bids we received, and for which pieces of the business. Lucid was part of it, however. Lucid decided to purchase the Coolidge manufacturing facility and the headquarter building. However, they did not acquire our intellectual property (IP), which meant that Nikola’s operations would stop. Nikola asked to include a clause retaining not less than 300 employees.
This news came out seven days before our last day of April 21. What followed was nothing short of a scramble at both Lucid and Nikola. I found out later from a person at Lucid that Directors of various business units received an Excel sheet for some Nikola employees. The file included our names, current position at Nikola and LinkedIn profile link. Lucid employees were expected to open these individual links over the weekend and decide whom to interview. Many people got scheduled for the interview for the coming week, some also had offers as early as the following Friday (April 18). I had my coding interview on April 18, 2025 with just a 2-hour notice to me and the hiring manager. A panel was set up for April 21, 2025.
At a meet-and-greet that Lucid had held at the Nikola HQ for people transitioning into Lucid, I came to understand the convoluted spaghetti situation. There was a lot of confusion among talent acquisition (or recruiters) due to the sheer number of people they wanted to schedule for interviews. They were now in the throes of hiring at least 300 people in a matter of days. A few people got job offers without a panel interview, many got rejected after the panel immediately, while a vast majority were waiting for initial contact from Lucid. The latter were the most worried. I was hearing conflicting information about the process Lucid was using for their hiring, from “they are matching people with open positions” to “it was a randomized list”. I am still unsure of the truth.
I still had to hear back about the position I had interviewed for at Lucid. Call it coincidence or my luck, but the hiring manager for the position I interviewed for was part of the audience when I was presenting at the Mathworks Automotive Conference on April 29. He greeted me after my talk and we went for dinner after the conference where we had a good two-hour chat in our regional language. I believe, that tipped the scales in my favor. A couple of weeks had passed since my panel interview, but I had not heard anything from Lucid yet; my worries were starting to mount.
May 2025 #
As I am was going into the office anymore, the insanity of the situation especially the outcomes of our internal competition, ceased to bother me. I was focussed on my health and personal projects. I did receive an offer from Lucid and I should start by June.
Lessons Learned #
Over the course of my entire tenure at Nikola and going through what I covered above, I have learned the following lessons. Some of them were pointed to me by my wife as I brought my corporate pressures home.
Limit pivoting #
For a product as large and convoluted as a class-8 truck, pivoting to “match” market trends or shareholder sentiment is a sure way of burning immense amounts of cash. As James Collins puts it in Good to Great, a premature pivot does not input enough potential energy into the “company’s flywheel” for it to make progress. Consistent effort yields long lasting results, and we did not do that at Nikola. We were too focussed on the share price and performed financial gymnastics (like the 1-to-30 reverse split) and jumping from one product development to the other for attracting investors.
This is true for life as well. If you want to excel at something, you have to put consistent effort, without distractions, to achieve success. Getting good at something is really, really slow and sometimes hard.
Prioritize you and your family #
Work is part of life but its not your entire life. Unless its your own company you are building from the ground up, prioritize you and your family. This may include starting a side-hustle of your own, learning a new skill, or just being there for your family. In my case, it was helping my wife with her business wherever I can, mostly with automating reports, building dashboards etc.
This lesson is nuanced; I am not suggesting you work only 9am to 5pm and not a minute more in either direction. I am suggesting you figure that out for yourself: listen to your colleagues at work and offer to pitch in if they are struggling even if it means staying long hours once in a while. This not only builds character, but also builds a long lasting connection with your colleagues who might later recommend you for your work ethic.
Listen #
Listen to your colleagues in meetings, lunch outings, or during hallway conversations. Strike up a conversation with someone you work with intermittently (not from your immediate group) and get to know how she is doing. Interestingly many of these conversations, that I might have regarded as time-wasters only a few years ago, not only helped me make friends but also gave me innumerable insights about the health of the company. Remember my conversation with the Executive Assistant to the CEO in December 2024? So insightful. These conversations have also build long-lasting connections who were happy to recommend me after things deteriorated at Nikola.
It also has an added benefit of knowing the other teams challenges, which you may have a way to alleviate. A lot of my work at Nikola stemmed from these conversations where I was able to design solutions to make our collective lives easier.
Have a (money-making) side project #
You have limited control on your employer’s finances and business decisions as an employee. Needless to say, companies can falter and you may find yourself without a job. Having something on the side that you absolutely enjoy, even if it just pays your electric bill, can be worthwhile. If you find yourself without a job, you can use the extra time to grow that and eke out a living out of it. Even if it doesn’t pay, you still have something to keep you busy. Remember, an idle mind is a devil’s workshop. I saw my colleagues slip into weird behavior patterns because they lacked something to keep them busy. I had multiple projects related to my wife’s business which I knew would earn the household money.
Have a rainy day fund #
I am not Dave Ramsey, but having a 6-month (8-month if we became extra frugal) rainy day fund reduced my anxiety. My fund pays for the mortgage, food, miscellaneous expenses (insurance, HOA, gas, books, etc.) and a car payment. Loss of a job is not fun, and if you are cash strapped you may jump to an unappealing opportunity just to pay the bills. That may potentially stomp your career prospects. A cash reserve helps you relax and gives you enough time to find work that you may enjoy. Let me be clear, this is not your entire savings; those should be separate from this fund.
Avoid the dark spiral #
This is very hard to do, hence its place as the last lesson. I succumbed to this on a regular basis, especially when I was going to the office and folks were talking about the same negativity all the time. Unfortunately, I don’t have a catch all solution for this: do what works for you. For me it meant working on my personal projects in conference rooms rather than at my desk where chit-chat consumed my colleagues’ time. I felt those conversations were pushing me into finding a job, just any job, which was detrimental to my mental well-being. Applying to 100s of jobs does not add value to the world. My side projects were.
This one is, again, so nuanced and personal. The point is to be aware of these feelings and curb their impact before they fester. My wife pointed this out to me one day, and after a 2-second denial I realized the truth. I had began doubting my skills as an engineer and had become a negative-nancy. Listen to your family in this regard. I hear kids are very perceptible to these changes and matter-of-fact when telling you about it.
I hope you found this article helpful. It was an event that might be insignificant in the long run, but as a fellow human I have a tendency to focus on the short term even though conventional wisdom suggests otherwise.