Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call

https://maggrand.com/new-york-ceo-fires-900-employees-on-zoom-call-video/

by jimgordon • 5 years ago

420 445 5 years ago

maggrand.com

outside1234• 5 years ago

Feeling gratitude for not having one of the many many shitty jobs out there.

kevinmchugh2• 5 years ago

There's up to 900 people who might want to have their shitty job back

hemant19• 5 years ago

Shitty job for temporary. Nobody wants to stay forever. Rest of the employees know now what to do

AlwaysRock2• 5 years ago

Gross. At the end of the day you don't have a job but its at least nice to have a little dignity left over.

vmception4• 5 years ago

How would you prefer it was done?

sky_rw• 5 years ago

Most people don't have suggestions, they just have complaints. If you've never been in the position as a business leader where you are forced to lay off employees then it can seem capricious.

ebiester• 5 years ago

There's a template. You invite the company into an all-hands. You tell the entire company. During that, account lockouts are happening. Then, you have individual appointments between the individual manager and HR (sometimes, HR+). The meeting itself is short and gives the details of the separation.

Yes, it will have to be a zoom call, but the CEO does not make it about themselves, and sticks to a script that's been rehearsed and checked with multiple humans to show empathy and humanity.

You can tell the survivors that some of the people who were cut were poor fits for the company and any details you want, but sometimes it's the details that show low emotional intelligence rather than the fact of the call itself.

naomeux• 5 years ago

I wonder how the people on the zoom call have reacted to the situation.

fullshark• 5 years ago

You can hear the woman who filmed it's reaction on the video, it is not a pleasant one.

bronco210162• 5 years ago

I know it’s just an anecdote but as a customer I kind of believe this.

I just completed a transaction with them that had to be extended beyond the rate lock window. For about 10 days there was a daily back and forth where they asked me to provide some documentation. I would provide the requested documentation and about 12 hours later I would receive a task of uploading the same required documentation.

The document was a 50ish page legal document that required someone to look at it. It’s clear nobody was actually spending any effort on it. Even calling my loan officer wasn’t getting me anywhere. It wasn’t until the deadline approached that they called me and wanted to get it all sorted out and they extended my rate lock.

The way management handled this looks horrible but if there’s any truth to these employees essentially stealing wages from their employer then they’re lucky they’re just being fired and not being prosecuted.

Kye2• 5 years ago

Assuming it's true...

900 employees:

1: stealing wages

2: being able to do so

3: doing that rather than their jobs

Is a systemic issue. It had to start long before almost a thousand people decided to commit a crime. Assuming it's true. I tend to not trust framing that comes from the top end of a power imbalance.

edit: This isn't Twitter. Don't stop at 1 and decide you read enough to go off on someone. Read the entire comment.

bronco210162• 5 years ago

That’s a fair point and the article does mention only 250 of the employees were doing 1:4 hours of work to payable hours.

From my experience it’s clear things are broken there. Where the blame lies etc is anyones best guess.

beckman4664• 5 years ago

1: stealing wages

why is Better.com using that language? all that workers can do is sell their labor time, while the property-owners they work for do not (since they earn rents from ownership). in this case, the workers create and develop some intellectual property (software), yet do not own the fruits of their own labor and are instead paid a wage. in other words: workers work on things that are not democratically held in common ownership (even actively made artificially scarce as an intellectual property).

my point is: we could argue the workers are rightfully taking back more than what they are paid under our current economic system, since the property-owners take too much to begin with; they steal — to use your word — by not sharing the (intellectual) property, the source of wealth.

edit: i've edited to clarify that I am responding to the definition of the word stealing used by Better.com. as Kye/OP pointed out below, this is not Kye's personal definition for the word stealing and it was terminology they copied verbatim from this current context (used by one of the parties involved).

bennyp1012• 5 years ago

Not really stealing though, is it?

If the work wasn't there, or they found a way to 'game' the system, then that is on management. I'm sure all of us goof off at some point during the day/week - it just seems that these people were able to do it a LOT.

But yea, if you aren't doing the work assigned to you, then you can't expect to keep being paid - but stealing it is not.

GoToRO• 5 years ago

Just fyi, in Romania the wage is a worker’s right, so they can’t ask their money back no matter what.

toomuchtodo3• 5 years ago

Back office (paperwork reviews and processing) was/is done in India, hence the time zone latency. They tried to make up for it with the web app, but mortgage banking relies on too many people processes (title, survey, appraisal, underwriting [even with automated underwriting and “Day One Certainty”] etc) to wring enough efficiencies to scale in a SaaSy sort of way.

I was in the middle of a refi with them during this and took my business elsewhere. Maybe their SPAC go public plans are running out of runway in a rising interest rate environment.

pixelgeek6• 5 years ago

It is also heavily automated. I used to work for a company that sold a document management package that was integrated with a variety of high speed scanners with OCR and for a time almost all of the new business was with US banks wanting to speed up the processing of mortgage documents.

After talking with one of the customers we were all very sure that the US mortgage business was in trouble. Not 'crashing and destroying the economy' bad but on unstable ground.

werds• 5 years ago

where did you go instead? i was halfway through uploading all my stuff to Better

trasz3• 5 years ago

So essentially the management was so incompetent they failed to notice their employees were underperforming. For how long? And did the responsible - management, and probably also the CEO - get fired?

SkittyDog3• 5 years ago

I concerned that you're jumping to prosecuting employees for the systemic failure of a company to operate well.

Without being privvy to the company's internal state, how could you possibly differentiate between management problems and deliberate staff malfeasance?

I you have ONE incompetent or crooked employee, then sure, the employee is the problem... But if you have 900 incompetent/crooked employees, I think it's much more likely that you have a management problem.

If all those employees were truly so awful, why did Garg wait til the mortgage market started cooling off to fire them? Or could it be that the company has been poorly managed for quite a while, but it's more emotionally convenient to the CEO's ego to blame the workers rather than address his own shortcomings?

AyyWS• 5 years ago

why did Garg wait til the mortgage market started cooling off to fire them

When the tide goes out, you find out who is swimming naked

cprayingmantis• 5 years ago

I just experienced the same thing! It was so frustrating to see that no one was looking over the documents. Finally I took a day off and sat on the phone with them all day to figure it out. It was a worse process that dealing with an actual mortgage broker.

itisit• 5 years ago

The way management handled this looks horrible but if there’s any truth to these employees essentially stealing wages from their employer then they’re lucky they’re just being fired and not being prosecuted.

Not excusing laziness/fraud, but it’s an open secret that billable hours from consultancies of all ilks are wildly overstated.

jonathankoren2• 5 years ago

Garg is documented in this article as abusive. This is a fact. Now given that he has a track record of abusive behavior, I wouldn’t believe anything negative he’d say about the layed off employees.

The CEO is in charge. He mishandled scaling the company, and so the blame for the failures of the company fall to him. Even if there was massive fraud inside the company, that’s still the CEO’s fault for letting it get so bad. Abusive failures always blame everyone else.

If I want to charitable, maybe he thinks by trashing a bunch of people that lost their jobs, will stem the loss of morale by the remaining employees.

Either way, it’s gross.

sailingparrot• 5 years ago

but if there’s any truth to these employees essentially stealing wages from their employer then they’re lucky they’re just being fired and not being prosecuted.

Do you think the company just happened to be extremely unlucky and only hired dishonest employees?

If your company is at a stage where your support employees are only working 2 hours a day, and where a customer cannot get support for what they need in less that 10 days, it's an issue with the management and the organisation, unable to provide motivation to their employees, or the condition they need to work effectively, it's not bad luck with hiring.

And thinking that just firing those people is going to solve the issue is burying their head in the sand. Maybe the ones that didn't get fired will work a bit harder in the short term, driven by fear, but on the long term it can only get ever more demoralizing.

jmull• 5 years ago

...only hired dishonest employees?

Apparently this is 9% or 15% of the employees (there's some discrepancy). So not "only".

I agree that it's on management if employees are only working 2 hours a day and getting paid 8... but one of the things management can do about it is lay off the excess employees. Either they aren't needed or they need some different people.

jwong_• 5 years ago

I had some similar issues with purchasing a new house through them. It was obvious no one was actually reading the documentation, or even actually listening when I asked/mentioned things ahead of time that I thought might be issues. The things I pointed out early on did turn out to be more complicated.

There was even an issue where I went for a higher rate to get credits, and suddenly that number changed - and no one mentioned (or even seemed to notice). Only when I noticed it, was there anything done about it.

It really seems like the US-based loan officers/team does not look at your file at all unless directly pinged by you.

Zambyte• 5 years ago

What is there to believe? There is a video of it happening in the article

castlecrasher2• 5 years ago

Yeah, we went through better.com for our refinance because the rate and fees (no loan origination fee!) were the absolute best but I saw a bunch of reviews saying their contact with Better simply ceased and they couldn't get their loan finished. Luckily, we didn't have that issue and our reps were great.

miiiiiike• 5 years ago

Better killed our deal this Summer.

TL;DR: ALWAYS USE A LOCAL LENDER.

For some reason they cancelled our inspection without telling us or the sellers. Worse, they told the inspector that the inspection was cancelled because we were changing lenders.

The listing agent eventually called the inspectors to find out what was up and the sellers were furious when they heard we were changing lenders. We were accused of all sorts of bad faith tricks to keep the home under contract.

Better’s lie set the tone for the rest of the transaction. We missed all of our deadlines, the sellers walked away, and we were stuck. It got so bad that our agent refused to try to resurrect the deal with a new offer.

I eventually convinced a local lender to guarantee that she could put a loan together in less than 26 days and made our agent bring a new offer to the listing agent. If he hadn’t, I would have done it myself.

The sellers were suspicious so they set a new closing date that was months later than the original. We’d already packed so we had to live in a completely NYC apartment with boxes stacked floor to ceiling for months (I had to pack my desk just to make room for our boxes. Instead of a week or two, I had to work on the floor all summer. My back and neck still hurt), AND my gf missed her first Summer in the Midwest (where Winter is the best 8 months of the year.)

Better was awful. This is just one story, there are a few others from the months we had to deal with them. If a mistake is made Better is not structured to recover from it. They just blame their byzantine process and babble about how x, y, and x departments are on it, but, no, you cannot contact anyone in those departments.

Always use a local lender.

I’m so glad that we’re not going to be sending money to Better for the next 30 years.

0des6• 5 years ago

Comment's gone now, but a video was posted:

game_the0ry 5 minutes ago | prev | next [–]

Video -- https://youtu.be/M8RV8E01HO8

EDIT: After watching the video, somehow the vest makes it even more offensive. I don't know why, maybe someone smarter than me knows.

dionidium2• 5 years ago

I've always thought that the worst thing about a plane crash would be the 30 seconds before you hit the ground when you know what's coming, but it hasn't happened yet. In other words: if you ever have to do this, get on with it. He wastes like 9 weasily hedge sentences before dropping the news everyone on the call could already have guessed was coming. Just get on with it. None of that preamble was necessary.

sokoloff2• 5 years ago

I don’t want to micro-diagnose his intro, but I think about half of his intro was needed. I don’t need to hear about how this is the second time or how hard it was last time, but I do think a few sentences of context serves as a “hey, pay attention!” intro to the news.

It needs to never be about the manager (CEO in this case) doing the termination, but a few sentences of intro is standard and appropriate I think.

notpeter• 5 years ago

Getting fired is bad enough, but if it's being done by someone bad at firing people it's the worst. Moneyball had some solid advice:

"Be straight with them, no fluff, just facts. 'Pete I gotta let you go. Jack's office will handle the details.'" That's it.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTjhHrcyiQI

trulyme• 5 years ago

I didn't watch the video myself, but as a general advice this is a very bad idea. People you give the bad news to shouldn't be caught unaware by it, they should at least suspect it and have some time to get used to the idea. There is nothing worse than expecting a good news (raise?) and then learning the possibly devastating one instead. My experience at least.

sergiotapia2• 5 years ago

What was he supposed to do? Have 900 people come in to the office in-person? Send individual emails?

newfonewhodis2• 5 years ago

With the number of bullshit meetings companies have, it wouldn't be too hard for each direct manager (+ HR rep) to inform employees individually instead of in a mass-firing video.

1_player2• 5 years ago

It's an extraordinary sacrifice to be asked of 900 people. Yes, he was supposed to do more than just tell a bullshit sob story how "last time he had to do that he cried." Fuck him.

If you have hired 900 people that have become "useless", it is your duty as CEO to treat each firing with respect and understand that it might cause a ton of stress for some. What the fuck are you even paid for if you can't even do that job, after overestimating the amount of people required by that ungodly amount in the first place?

I am astounded by how many people in this thread lack any basic semblance of empathy.

DnDGrognard4• 5 years ago

Abide by the WARN act for one

aero-glide2• 5 years ago

I don't really get the outrage here. It's absolutely terrible for the employees, as all layoffs are. Maybe they could've just sent an email.

Even SpaceX did a mass layoff couple of years ago.

newfonewhodis2• 5 years ago

Wow this guy comes off as a jerk that I would not want to work for.

"Last time I did this I cried. This time I hope to be stronger".

This is not about you - the CEO who has taken no direct responsibility except for empty words.

The first half of this video seems like "I know you are losing your job and that's a sacrifice I have to make."

analyte123• 5 years ago

I don't think it's the vest as much as the fact as you can see his legs and how he's slightly slouching. This is simultaneously too casual (like you're sitting next to someone at a table instead of across a desk) and too assertive (he's like in your face slightly spreading his legs). Also:

- making it about himself ("I cried last time") as others have mentioned

- the last couple sentences are pretty bad. You get to say "lucky" one time and that's it. You're the one making the decision: did you just spin a wheel? "More lucky, more successful in your next endeavors", which is publicly dunking on people by saying they are being let go for performance and not economic reasons.

beerandt6• 5 years ago

>Garg told Fortune that a month earlier, the company began to review employee productivity data, including missed telephone call rates, number of inbound and outbound calls, employees showing up late to meetings with a customer, and other metrics.
>“You guys know that at least 250 of the people terminated were working an average of 2 hours a day while clocking 8 hours+ a day in the payroll system? They were stealing from you and stealing from our customers who pay the bills that pay our bills. Get educated,” Garg told Fortune.

SkittyDog3• 5 years ago

Wait, they only started reviewong employee data ONE MONTH ago?? Thats some serious management incompetence.

What's with this weaselly language, too... "At least 250 employees" also means "No more than 250 employees". If it was more, they would have just said the bigger number to prove their point.

Which means the other 650 employees they fired did not have productivity problems, and they're just trying to blame their workers to avoid admitting to management problems.

the-pigeon• 5 years ago

Obviously this is "hey HR we need to layoff 900 people, what can we do to make it their fault?"

Maybe it's a reasonable cover your ass move but comes off very slimy.

beerandt6• 5 years ago

It's in the context of having just gone on a massive hiring spree in the last year+, and the market starting to cool off.

I had the same initial thought, but it sounds more like this was about measurement of the recent hirings, not overall.

Still not great.

s1artibartfast2• 5 years ago

250 were 2 hours per day. This leaves a lot of room for workers <8 hours.

beerandt6• 5 years ago

Which means the other 650 employees they fired did not have productivity problems

No- it just suggests/implies the remainder had an average productivity of greater than (2hrs-value/8hrs-pay).

That doesn't mean they were or weren't still performing below expectations. The fact that they were selected for layoffs over the retained employees suggests they were the lowest performing segment, regardless of whether that relatively low performance was satisfactory in an absolute sense or not.

What's with this weaselly language, too... "At least 250 employees" also means "No more than 250 employees". If it was more, they would have just said the bigger number to prove their point.

And using this logic, if those 650 employees were collectively productive enough to generate a net-positive value, they wouldn't have been fired.

H8crilA• 5 years ago

So relatable, I myself slacked off at least a few weeks total since the pandemic started. And some of the people I work with have very ... odd response times, even when I ask about things they're very engaged in.

WORMS_EAT_WORMS• 5 years ago

"the market has changed, as you know"

For someone who is out of the loop, what does this mean?

ralph84• 5 years ago

Rising interest rates + rising house prices = fewer mortgage applications

1_player2• 5 years ago

What an absolute load of bollocks from a company that just raised $750M.

MichaelMoser123• 5 years ago

wait, didn't we have that subprime crisis, because rising interest rates caused people to default on their mortgages? Will we have a rerun of this?

rodiger• 5 years ago

"We aren't making as much money"

Better.com makes money by selling housing loans to investors in the secondary market. Mortgage rates are quite low in recent days, so there are fewer potential customers.[0] Interest rates are also quite low. [1] This means that, while Better used to save customers a decent amount of money, that gap has compressed which makes new customer acquisition tough.

(this is based on some quick research, so please correct me if I'm wrong about any of this)

[0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=NUh

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS

beerandt6• 5 years ago

The buying boom caused by covid is cooling off.

vasco• 5 years ago

The video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpjqbvLkPUw

DangerousPie2• 5 years ago

I know this sounds horrible but in the days of covid and working from home, what are companies supposed to do if they have to lay off large amounts of people?

Make them all risk their health to come to an in-person event, only to be fired? Drive to every employee's house to fire them in person?

It obviously sucks but I don't see how, in 2021, this is any different from the kind of thing that would happen all the time in mass layoffs.

edmcnulty1012• 5 years ago

This is a good point. At least they got a face to face. I had members of a team just get a slip in the past.

azinman2• 5 years ago

I think one of the bigger issues was that the CEO made it all about him on the call.

duxup• 5 years ago

Yeah if they brought them in and someone (depending on how many it could be inevitable) had COVID... just to fire them.

I'm not sure I see that as being better.

bko3• 5 years ago

It should probably be handled one by one via Zoom with the persons immediate manager and a representative from HR.

mmastrac• 5 years ago

But think of all the money saved by the company! /s

rvnx• 5 years ago

No, because once you let the first person know on their 1:1 meeting there will be miscommunication / rumours, and everybody is going to be somewhat aware. However some people are going to have 1st party information, and others have heard of the rumours, and those people will feel offended to not have been made aware like everyone else.

bryanlarsen• 5 years ago

Which would take days while rumour flies and chaos reigns.

mrweasel2• 5 years ago

Ideally yes, but 900 people? Before you’ve reached the end of that list you’ll have created a lot of fear among the remaining people.

I worked for a company that did individual firing with a manager and HR, it was no where near 900 people, and it still took the better part of a day. It was absolutely terrible for everyone, not just those who where to be fired.

dilap• 5 years ago

I was wondering that too. I think ideally you would have a 1-1 video chat with someone. But at such a big, 900 employee, layoff, maybe that wasn't easy to do.

I think the CEOs affect on the call made it worse. It was very strange to hear him say stuff like "last time I had to do this, I cried. I hope to be stronger this time." It felt like his focus when laying off 900 people was too much on how it made him personally feel uncomfortable.

contravariant2• 5 years ago

Off topic but this might be the first time I've seen someone use the noun affect correctly.

castis• 5 years ago

I imagine 900 1-on-1s could not be done quickly and word would spread very fast that firings were ramping up around the company. This would cause a whole lot of stress for those not being fired, just waiting for a call.

Given the alternatives, the 900-wide bandaid-ripping-off method seems best.

beckingz• 5 years ago

Last time I got laid off the CEO said that he knew it was hard for me, but also wasn't easy for him.

Which is true: firing people is one of the hardest managerial tasks, but it's tone deaf and disrespectful to make it about the manager's feelings. Shows a lack of maturity.

jdavis703• 5 years ago

I’ve been in mass layoffs. Having bosses arbitrarily come up to desks and then having that person return fifteen minutes later and repeating that for the entire morning is much worse. It’s anxiety inducing, even if you didn’t get the ax. I’d rather have an all-hands and get it over with quickly.

yummybear• 5 years ago

If you can hire 900 people with personal interviews, you can lay them off with one too.

PascLeRasc2• 5 years ago

Same with calling people "the unlucky group", that felt really disrespectful.

mytailorisrich• 5 years ago

In addition to that, I find it respectable that the CEO made the announcement himself directly to those concerned, although the way he communicated it might not have been that great.

He could have delegated to the direct managers of those concerned and HR.

omnicognate2• 5 years ago

Call them individually. It's not the fact it was done by zoom that's surprising/unusual, it's the fact it was done en masse.

egeozcan• 5 years ago

And they had to hear the CEO say he cried the first time he did this, without knowing what it is about. Why is he talking about his feelings? Perhaps his assistants were fired too so there weren't anyone to check his speech? Crazy.

judge2020• 5 years ago

IMO the issue is that this is right after a funding round.

https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/30/better-com-gets-750m-cash-...

chrisstanchak• 5 years ago

Probably a condition of the deal

dmos62• 5 years ago

Right, sounds like an attempt to do a PR stunt.

DangerousPie2• 5 years ago

That seems like an odd argument to make. They probably only got that funding because they agreed to slim down their workforce.

0_____0• 5 years ago

I was subject to a mass layoff in spring 2020. They did individual vid calls with all affected individuals. It was only a 10m call, with two people from a couple levels higher in the org than me, and an HR rep, but I appreciate that they took that time.

post-it• 5 years ago

The Zoom call part isn't really the issue, although individual Zoom meetings would have been better.

In another email obtained by Forbes last year, Garg wrote:
> ‘You are TOO DAMN SLOW. You are a bunch of DUMB DOLPHINS and…DUMB DOLPHINS get caught in nets and eaten by sharks. SO STOP IT. STOP IT. STOP IT RIGHT NOW. YOU ARE EMBARRASSING ME.”

jcroll• 5 years ago

Is there a link to this?

rackjack2• 5 years ago

That is very surreal to read, for some reason.

tyingq4• 5 years ago

This is what seems right to me. It's not the virtual nature, it's the lazy mass group layoff that's objectionable and disrespectful.

If you're being laid off, you probably have a lot of questions. A 1:1 meeting would allow for that.

achow• 5 years ago

Better.com CEO Threatened to Burn His Business Partner Alive. Now He’s a Billionaire.

Last fall, employees at one of America’s fastest-growing startups began making anxious phone calls. They believed that CEO Vishal Garg—a volatile entrepreneur with a history of disgruntled business partners—had been giving huge amounts of equity... https://www.thedailybeast.com/bettercom-ceo-vishal-garg-thre...

YetAnotherNick2• 5 years ago

I know this looks bad but I generally appreciate manage giving clear warnings like this before firing. I have seen firings in companies where employee had no clue that the manager was not happy with him. I know this type of warning is the thing that would get published in the press by disgruntled employee and so managers couldn't give negative feedback and in the firing speech managers just tell that someone is not a good fit for the company or some other HR shit.

nradov• 5 years ago

The funny thing is that sharks are more likely to be eaten by dolphins (especially orcas) than vice versa. And sharks also get caught in nets.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/killer-wh...

I guess Garg is just as weak on marine biology as he is on leadership and business ethics.

mrits• 5 years ago

You can't really fire 900 people on individual Zoom calls. After the first 10 minutes everyone will know what their meeting is about and it makes the problem worse. People will be texting their managers begging for information and the manager will have to lie for a day or two until they are authorized to say in the meeting.

fourseventy• 5 years ago

assuming they did a 20 minute meeting for each employee thats 233 hours or 29 business days to fire all 700 of them...

belter• 5 years ago

Got his metaphors wrong:

"The Dark Secrets That Dolphins Don’t Want You to Know"

https://slate.com/human-interest/2009/05/the-dark-secrets-th...

DoneWithAllThat• 5 years ago

Now this is just moving the goalposts. Can someone please help me understand what I’m supposed to be outraged about? It seems to be a confetti of grievances meant to evoke an emotional reaction.

honkycat• 5 years ago

This dude is embodiment of why we created agile. What a childish way to look at engineering.

Product: "What are you working on?"

Engineering: "That is up to you. What is important? The answer can't be everything."

Product: "Why is it taking so long?"

Engineering: Here is what the developers expect it to take. It will almost certainly take longer. When are we supposed to get X project done with our current workload? What falls off? If we crunch we will lose our best talent who will leave to go do the same work for more pay somewhere else.

fatbird2• 5 years ago

Do it the way AirBnB (or most other companies) did it: announce that large scale layoffs will be happening due to X and Y reasons, and that the individuals losing their jobs will be contacted over the next week. Then someone phones/zooms them individually and answers questions and lets them know right away what'll happen.

This isn't about Covid, this is about the CEO making this easier on himself. I'm guessing he expected that if the video leaked, he would look sympathetic because he did it personally and talked about how hard it was for him.

basisword2• 5 years ago

How is waiting days for a potential meeting to be scheduled in better?

kevinmchugh2• 5 years ago

That would be the most unpleasant week of my career, regardless of the outcome. I'd get nothing done and probably be interviewing by the end of it.

jawns• 5 years ago

Agreed. You give employees a heads up that the layoffs will be occurring, which both sets expectations with those who are affected AND also allows those who aren't affected to understand what's going on.

Then you take one of two approaches: If the CEO feels strongly that the news should come from them personally, you do the Zoom call, and then affected workers immediately meet with their managers for individual communication. Or you skip the Zoom calls and have the managers deliver the news.

Obviously, you want the time between the "heads up" meeting and the meeting with the affected individuals to be short, maybe a day or less, so workers aren't spending too much time in dread mode. But it reduces the feeling of having been blindsided.

newaccount74• 5 years ago

Spend a week waiting if you get a call or not? I'd prefer the mass zoom call to that shit.

The nice way to do it would be to send an email to everyone immediately telling them whether they are layed off or not, and schedule a personal one-on-one call with a manager or an HR person to answer any questions.

kristjansson2• 5 years ago

Probably the least worst way of doing it, but still creates an enormous amount of stress for everyone, regardless of their ultimate status...

wedowhatwedo• 5 years ago

Each person being laid off deserves a private meeting with their manager where they are told this. The fact that they hired 900 people they now no longer need is a failing of the CEO by itself. If they work remotely, it can be a zoom meeting.

Being told in a meeting with 900 people by someone you don't know is rude and tells me that anyone in leadership in this company are people I would not like to work for. The fact that he was more concerned about his feelings than the feelings of the 900 is even more evidence that this person has absolutely no empathy and managing people is the wrong job for them.

throwaway6734• 5 years ago

The fact that they hired 900 people they now no longer need is a failing of the CEO by itself

How so? Business circumstances are constantly changing

agrippanux• 5 years ago

If you’re letting go of 900 people, for the average person their manager is also being let go. In a good amount of cases, probably their manager’s manager.

I think it was a good call for the CEO to do it instead of outsourcing to HR or a COO. He didn’t try to hide behind another exec. Anyone being let go - especially at the holidays - is going to be pretty pissed about it, and it was the right thing for the CEO to take the slings and arrows for it instead of an underling.

sdfghderwg2• 5 years ago

Lets think it through.

Even if each person is given 5 minutes of personal time with the person doing the firing, at 8 hours per day assuming no breaks, that's 5 * 900 / 60 / 8 = 9 days. Almost two business weeks. That means that 900 people will have a zoom meeting scheduled two weeks ahead of time, and while they wait they see that everyone who goes into that meeting is fired.

Does this sounds like a better way of doing it, to you?

golemotron4• 5 years ago

Isn't that 'employee privilege'? People who are in business for themselves often lose clients without notice. Employees easily forget how much they are shielded from the market.

renewiltord3• 5 years ago

No. At mass layoffs it's better to do it instantly and en masse because otherwise you cause massive anxiety in everyone, including those who will stay. It's also why multiple rounds of layoffs are a bad idea. Just do everything at once and move on.

DnDGrognard4• 5 years ago

The CEO doesn't really pass the "fit and proper person" test does He

swalsh• 5 years ago

Not to mention the CEO spent more time talking about how this is impacting HIM. When you're laying people off, this isn't about you. Noone cares about you, this is about the people getting laid off. You need to be concerned about their feelings, what you're going to do to help THEM.

twox2• 5 years ago

I've worked for multiple companies that have had major reductions in force at times. When folks get laid off in a group, it has never been done 1:1. Usually the group getting let go is told all at once separately from the rest of the company. It's done per team or per department, so if you're a software engineer getting cut, you're told at the same time with the other software engineers getting cut, but yes usually the guy that runs the department will be present.

setgree• 5 years ago

I think the virality of it comes from this guy's general tone, e.g. a prior email in which he wrote:

You are a bunch of DUMB DOLPHINS...SO STOP IT. STOP IT. STOP IT RIGHT NOW. YOU ARE EMBARRASSING ME.

but I agree that there's nothing obviously good about being fired in person. I prefer my difficult conversations to be as impersonal and private as possible. I remember being flabbergasted when a firm once scheduled a call with me to tell me about the outcome of my interviews -- the outcome was that I did not get the job! -- and wondering why it couldn't have just been an email. Ditto with a part-time job for which, on my final day, I was called into the office for a morning meeting in which I was let go; this which happened to take on 03/02/2020 in midtown Manhattan.

stayfrosty420• 5 years ago

What a weird turn of phrase. Comparatively a dumb dolphin is pretty smart still.

matt--f• 5 years ago

The company I used to work for, made us all drive into the office and then fired us all last November. It was just after a lockdown here in the UK

jonnycomputer2• 5 years ago

DnDGrognard4• 5 years ago

A few years ago a German telco company did that to their uk subsidiary:

1 First made the uk subsidiary bankrupt and went into administration

2 Called every one to a mass meeting said your redundant

3 oh there's no £ - pick up the RB2 form to claim statutory redundancy from the UK tax payer.

pixelgeek6• 5 years ago

I think it is just that the upper management doesn't value the time or feelings of their employees. They could have done the meetings virtually on an individual basis or in smaller groups. They just didn't want to spend the time to do it

andromeda-brain• 5 years ago

To me this story is more about the CEO's poor leadership and lack of empathy. Laying people off is something companies will have to do, and in this time of WFH companies will fumble around trying to consolidate on the best way to do it. But the CEO consoling himself in front of everyone whose lives he's upending is completely tone deaf.

It's rumored that he followed up this call with an all-hands to instill fear in the remaining employees. And he also admitted to going on a Blind tirade to shift blame for the outrage onto all of the individuals who were let go.

I would never want to work for this dude.

kibwen• 5 years ago

in the days of covid and working from home

I don't see how covid plays into this, unless this is suggesting that, pre-pandemic, it was common practice for CEOs to call 900 people into a single auditorium just to tell them that they're all fired. That sounds like a great way to end up hanged from the rafters on your own necktie.

kristjansson2• 5 years ago

Not uncommon in these circumstances? Everyone gets an all-hands invite, some people get room A, some get room B. Then the only uncertainty prior is which side is which.

pkrotich• 5 years ago

I was thinking same but apparently the CEO is a complete arse [0] - perhaps the reaction is because of the messenger not the act itself.

[0]https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjeans/2020/11/20/mortgages...

thraway_bparrot• 5 years ago

There is no right way to layoff 900 people simultaneously, in the same way there is no right way to break up with someone who doesn't want to break up with you. There are just bad ways and worse ways.

If you try to give everyone a 1:1 zoom call with their manager, the inevitable outcome is that the rumor mill starts turning and everyone spends the day terrified for their job, because the layoffs happen in a drip feed rather than all at once.

I say this as someone who was laid off remotely during covid, as part of a large layoff of hundreds of people. I was told I was laid off by slack message, with a follow up zoom call later in the day with my manager and their manager. My manager had four or five such calls to make that day, each lasting at least 30 minutes.

I was an unpleasant process, but I understand why they made the decisions they made.

This Better.com layoff in particular sounds awful not because it happened over a Zoom call, but because the CEO is being incredibly unprofessional and badmouthing 900 former employees. That decision is not only in awful taste, but also has a likely strong negative effect on the ability of those 900 people to find new jobs easily.

jiriknesl• 5 years ago

Yes but what if the CEO is right and people were really tracking 8 hours of work a day and working 2? Isn't this a reason to be upset?

karmasimida• 5 years ago

This CEO has the audacity to de-anonymized himself from a toxic comment on Blind, imagine that.

He is made to be controversial

whoknew1122• 5 years ago

I mean, I get firing employees on a Zoom call. It may be one of those unfortunate necessities. But the way this person did it is terrible.

“This is the second time in my career I’m doing this and I do not want to do this. The last time I did it, I cried; this time I hope to be stronger,” Garg says early in the video, before noting that he is laying off "about" 15 percent of the company’s workforce just before the holidays. More than a minute into the call, Garg says, “If you’re on this call, you are part of the unlucky group that is being laid off. Your employment here is terminated effective immediately.”

https://www.vice.com/en/article/88ggy3/ceo-feels-terrible-ab...

He's prioritizing his feelings about firing people when talking to people who just lost their job. As a billionaire, he's hoping he doesn't cry while talking to people who hope that they can find a new job before their savings dry up and they can't pay their bills or eat.

What an out-of-touch asshat this CEO is.

zitterbewegung• 5 years ago

No , use email and don’t use corporate speak.

Going off at a tangent better.com issues mortgages and just got a $750MM cash infusion and they are still looking for jobs to fill. Make what conclusions that you can possibly have.

hintymad• 5 years ago

Isn't biggest issue in this debacle is that Better tracks its employee's activities? To quote the CEO: “You guys know that at least 250 of the people terminated were working an average of 2 hours a day while clocking 8 hours+ a day in the payroll system? They were stealing from you and stealing from our customers who pay the bills that pay our bills. Get educated,” "

IncRnd• 5 years ago

It is likely there were HR reps or even managers of the fired individuals. Those managers could have spoken with the people. There doesn't need to be a zoom meeting of almost a thousand people getting fired.

chollida1• 5 years ago

I agree that you outline why its hard to layoff so many people.

Let's asume you were just laid off, you and everyone else now have 5-10 questions that are specific to you that you want answered right away.

How do you do that in a 500 person zoom call?

With one on one meetings, this is trivial.

Now you've setup a situation where you still need 500 individual meetings. I"m not sure a global zoom call did them any favours or helped them at all here.

gruez2• 5 years ago

I"m not sure a global zoom call did them any favours or helped them at all here.

the benefit is that everyone knows upfront whether they were fired or not, rather than having rumors swirl around the office for a week.

yibg• 5 years ago

If the comments in this thread is any indication, you can't please everyone. Do it in mass and some people will be pissed off. Do it 1:1 and others will be pissed off.

oxfordmale• 5 years ago

This CEO violates all the rules of communicating bad news. It needs to be short and to the point, and should definitely not include self pity ("last time I was crying").

JackFr• 5 years ago

I have been part of a mass layoff via Zoom. You’d be surprised how easy it is to do with empathy and respect.

When it’s handled with empathy and respect - much less likely to make HN front page though.

spookthesunset• 5 years ago

Make them all risk their health to come to an in-person event, only to be fired?

“Risk their health”?

Grocery store workers have been coming into their office the entire time and I don’t see them dropping like flies. Same with Home Depot employees, and any other “essential” business.

It requires a hell of a lot of privilege for tech workers to think they are entitled to stay home “to protect their health” while all these other people go in. It’s treating people like they are expendable…

hulitu• 5 years ago

TBH this looks like a toxic place to work at. If i had such a CEO i would look for another job. I hope that they all find a new and better jib and the toxic CEO gets what he deserves.

zild3d• 5 years ago

doing it over zoom isn't the problem. see airbnb https://news.airbnb.com/a-message-from-co-founder-and-ceo-br...

overall just more thoughtful, 1:1 with their senior leader, made an employee job board to help get hired, severance, equity, etc.

```

Here is what will happen next

I want to provide clarity to all of you as soon as possible. We have employees in 24 countries, and the time it will take to provide clarity will vary based on local laws and practices. Some countries require notifications about employment to be received in a very specific way. While our process may differ by country, we have tried to be thoughtful in planning for every employee.

In the US and Canada, I can provide immediate clarity. Within the next few hours, those of you leaving Airbnb will receive a calendar invite to a departure meeting with a senior leader in your department. It was important to us that wherever we legally could, people were informed in a personal, 1:1 conversation. The final working day for departing employees based in the US and Canada will be Monday, May 11. We felt Monday would give people time to begin taking next steps and say goodbye — we understand and respect how important this is.

```

vanusa2• 5 years ago

Drive to every employee's house to fire them in person?

No, but like the sibling commenter said -- you can at least aim for a bare minimum, of, you know, class.

Like an individual phone call. 10 minutes should do it.

Really, it's not that hard, or expensive.

sporkland• 5 years ago

In my mind it wasn't as much the large group vs individual. It's how he did it. He made it about himself, which is rule #1 no no about firing or laying people off. No one cares about how you feel and if you cried last time. You're not the one losing your job. Put on your manager pants and be there for the employees.

coffee• 5 years ago

I know this sounds horrible but in the days of covid and working from home, what are companies supposed to do if they have to lay off large amounts of people?

This isn't about a Zoom call.

This is about companies taking massive, quick capital to rapidly expand head count at such a rate to which this inevitably occurs.

It lacks responsibility, care, empathy, or even the slightest bit of concern for those that have invested their opportunity cost of being a part of your company.

stjohnswarts2• 5 years ago

He could have just sent an email. I would rather that than a zoom call. Or have your immediate manger let you know. I watched the video, it seemed more like he was looking for sympathy at how hard his job firing people was. No one cares, they care that they just lost their job.

dmode• 5 years ago

Airbnb laid off 25% of the workforce, that has widely been regarded as a model for layoffs 1. Every employee had a zoom 1:1 2. Employees were given several months of pay, benefits, and allowed to keep their laptops 3. Employees were allowed to vest their stocks for the next window 4. Airbnb created an alumni, portal, slack channel, and a resume book to help them find next jobs 5. Founders hosted several zoom calls for impacted and non impacted employees. The last one was a 10 min standing ovation to departed employees 6. Airbnb also created a policy with a right to first job to former employees

This was the right way to do layoffs

bartread2• 5 years ago

As others have pointed out, the Zoom part isn't the big problem here. The delivery is.

Just for starters, within under a minute he's made the whole thing about him. Comments like, "Last time I cried," and, "I hope I'll be stronger this time," are grossly inappropriate. Nobody gives a shit how he feels, nor should they. This isn't hard for him, it's hard for the people he's firing. He shows a complete lack of respect for his now former employees by making it all about him. He should have made it about them. He should have showed them some compassion and respect.

Then there's the framing, the room, and his body language. He's miles away, barely looking at the camera, and constantly referring to notes printed out on paper. Not to mention he looks casual to the point of shabbiness, both in his dress and his demeanour, and there's distracting clutter around him. This is not hard to get right: sit directly in front of your laptop, and close enough to show head and shoulders only; look directly into the camera; have your notes on the screen and aligned with the camera so you don't have to keep looking away to refer to them; above all, STOP TALKING ABOUT YOURSELF.

I could go on but the short version is that the way he handled the situation - a situation which for many of those losing their jobs would probably put them in dire financial straits - was extremely unprofessional and disrespectful.

brandall102• 5 years ago

This guy is a narcissistic asshat of the lowest calibre when you look at his online presence. This is entirely in character for him.

ceva• 5 years ago

wow that is big lay off, but how they decided what 900 employees to lay off wtf? could they give them some opportunity to grow within the company for some different role? I mean on the other side this is really shit news, but giving that 3 months of benefits and paycheck is kind of Ok i guess in this situation so people can start looking for another job.

baud147258• 5 years ago

From the article:

>Garg told Fortune that a month earlier, the company began to review employee productivity data, including missed telephone call rates, number of inbound and outbound calls, employees showing up late to meetings with a customer, and other metrics.
>“You guys know that at least 250 of the people terminated were working an average of 2 hours a day while clocking 8 hours+ a day in the payroll system? They were stealing from you and stealing from our customers who pay the bills that pay our bills. Get educated,” Garg told Fortune.
> “As we started to slow down our pace of hiring, we saw some alarming statistics and a number of our customers were not getting the service that they deserved from our teammates,” he said.

So the people at better.com said they looked at the data they had on employee performance.

tmp_anon_222• 5 years ago

So the people at better.com said they looked at the data they had on employee performance.

Well worded. They looked at the data they had, whatever the heck that was. It sounds like a large part of this was in the sales and success org, given the reference to customer interactions and inbound/outbound monitoring.

The charged language "stealing" seems really defensive to me. Even if they were stealing do you really want to publish how bad your managers were dealing with it proactively?

From an economics perspective you can justify mass lay offs and you can say that there is no perfect way to do it, but there are a LOT of red flags for a CEO who already has a history of red flags. Maybe they shouldn't be in charge?

diego• 5 years ago

If you are a CEO, you have to rehearse the delivery for something like this. Even more now that these videos are certain to become public. To me, this video says that he's a mediocre leader. If I were on the board I would seek to replace him.

unicornfinder• 5 years ago

Indeed. I don't think the company should be slammed for this but his delivery was really poor here.

metamet• 5 years ago

If you are a CEO, you have to rehearse the delivery for something like this.

Yup. This video has a "Oh hey, didn't see you come in. Welcome to my personal cafeteria. Since I have you here, just wanted to let you know you're fired" vibe.

fhd2• 5 years ago

I thought the same. So say you are in a situation where you can't offer people 1:1s to understand what happened - which sounds to me like the people laid off were more or less chosen at random - but let's say you literally have to do it like this.

At least don't do it so disrespectful. He talks about his feelings but he seems mildly awkward and a bit bored at best, seems like all the preparation he put into this is to remember a few talking points. Makes me think laying off 900 people took him a grand total of 90 minutes (from decision to announcement).

I don't know anything about the company, but looks like one going down to me. Very few companies can get away with treating people like that at a large scale.

toyg• 5 years ago

"Dumb dolphins"? Hey, dolphins are some of the smarter animals out there... That's an ignorant remark.

dahak27• 5 years ago

Dolphins are notoriously imprudent mortgage lenders though

jonathankoren2• 5 years ago

They also have a habit of blowing all their money on instant lottery tickets.

BoxOfRain• 5 years ago

man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.

According to the immortal Douglas Adams they just have more pressing concerns.

kgwgk• 5 years ago

Dumb dolphins are not as smart as average dolphins though. They are dumb.

Waterluvian• 5 years ago

Wasn’t there another company that recently did the same thing or is this that?

tinyhouse• 5 years ago

"Last time I did it I cried"... yeah sure. Not that it's easy to fire anybody, but having a Zoom meeting with someone that fake is not helping by any means.

lelandfe• 5 years ago

2 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29441244

decebalus1• 5 years ago

It gets worse. He went on Blind afterwards to really make his voice heard: https://fortune.com/2021/12/03/better-com-ceo-attacks-laid-o...

trasz3• 5 years ago

So, we have a dumb CEO who couldn’t manage his employees to the extent they were idle most of the time. How is his salary not “stealing from customers”?

seanlinehan• 5 years ago

To anybody affected by this layoff, my company Placement.com created a Better.com Alumni Job Board [0] to help smooth the transition. We've seen over and over how much easier it is to get a job at a company where:

1. You have a connection (or can build one easily)

2. The company recognizes the companies you previously worked for

Targeting companies that ex-colleagues work at is a powerful strategy! So we made this board for everybody affected. Also, if you are interested in talking to a career coach, I'm happy to give a free intro session to everybody affected here. Just email me sean@.

The lack of empathy shown in this situation is intense and I hope y'all know that there are amazing companies that will value you more waiting with open arms!

[0] https://www.placement.com/boards/bettercom-alumni-companies

0des6• 5 years ago

Never let a tragedy go to waste

The lack of empathy shown in this situation is intense

You're right! ;)

BrandonM2• 5 years ago

One of you is trying to help these people find their next job.

Bedon292• 5 years ago

There seems to be a bit of a bug, or confusing element. It appears that Change Everything, Inc. and Facebook are linked together somehow. It says the company is Facebook, but the size and description appear to be for Change Everything, Inc.

seanlinehan22• 5 years ago

All fixed thank you! This was a data collection error – looks like one of our data vendors sent us very incorrect data.

(Sent from a new acc because my account is on noprocast)

ajb• 5 years ago

Just checked out your website: Seems like a nice idea. One thing that looks shady though: it is hard to understand the costs. So, there is $19 for an intro session, $99 (with bulk discount) for reviews, and also 'credits (used for what?) and this information is scattered around different FAQ entries. When companies make me work to understand what I will need to pay, or worse (appear to?) not tell me until I have made an initial expenditure, then I become very wary.

Don't be ashamed of being upfront about costs. If you're worth it, then you're worth it. If you're not worth it for someone, then you will only get a bad rep by tricking them.

seanlinehan22• 5 years ago

Very good feedback – thank you. We are working on a new homepage that spells it out as clear as day!

(Sent from a new acc because my account is on noprocast)

GBond• 5 years ago

If you feel bad, make it free

sadfev• 5 years ago

I like this management style, quick and dirty! No meddling or prodding. The people know where they stand and not waste time in limbo.

rednerrus• 5 years ago

Glad I got a great rate before they're going under.

dntrkv• 5 years ago

Don't really understand the outrage over this video. Sure, he could have been more eloquent and talked a bit less about how it affected him. Though, nothing he said or did in the video is worthy of this attention in my opinion.

Do people expect them to bring everyone in and fire them in-person? Even if it wasn't a pandemic, why would I want my time wasted like that? Just tell me I'm fired and email me any info about severance, insurance, etc.

It's also funny that this person finds it surprising given the company and the org within that company they were working. Refi loans are not a stable market.

pixelgeek6• 5 years ago

So did the managers for those people get fired first?

xyzzy21• 5 years ago

Keep it classy!

zoe4883• 5 years ago

》organization would provide four weeks of severance and one month of full benefits, as well as other coverage as part of a package.

I find this sort of honest and refreshing. My goverment fired people without any severance or unemployment benefits, with way more BS!

treyfitty• 5 years ago

4 weeks severance is a pittance, even by US standards.

phonon• 5 years ago

Err, by law they need to give 60 days notice of a mass layoff (or pay the equivalent.)

Not sure how they are getting away with 4 weeks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraini...

ragnot2• 5 years ago

Everyone keeps bringing up the $750MM that the company raised and juxtaposing that news with the layoffs. But I don't think people get that the money probably came with many strings including reducing costs (read people) as well as the CEO getting a new boss in the form of an additional board seat.

Regarding telling 900 employees they were fired over a zoom call...well you can't buy class I guess.

gumby• 5 years ago

The insult at the end was the most telling. It was all from his point of view: “YOU ARE EMBARRASSING ME.” That’s not building a team, so no wonder people were not motivated to get their jobs done.

323• 5 years ago

There is a pretty good movie about a consultant whose is hired by companies to fire people. Including a scene where an employee is fired over a Zoom like thing, but the consultant is actually in the adjacent room (they are testing this system).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_in_the_Air_(2009_film)

Remote fire scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIexe6aa14w

thinkingkong• 5 years ago

This is a management failure through and through. Whoever is running customer success and support is at least more responsible for that kind of a situation if the accusations about productivity are true.

Its simply not possible for people to hide with that level of systematic underperformance if they have the tools to measure it and the goals are clear and transparent. If you take span of control into account, this means at least 3-4 layers of management werent monitoring performance. At all.

pixelgeek6• 5 years ago

I would also like to point out that there is no actual proof that there was the type of employee shenanigans he talks about.

He also says

"The 43-year-old CEO said that the “market has changed” and that the company had to lose weight in order to remain agile enough to adapt to the evolving housing market, which appears to be cooling after a pandemic-boosted boom."

So maybe the 'people stealing time' comment is just an excuse so he doesn't feel bad about cutting so many people?

ripper11382• 5 years ago

How do you know there’s no proof? Not like they’re gonna write a blog about it.

selestify• 5 years ago

According to an article posted by this other comment[1], the CEO is quite the psychopathic liar, so I definitely wouldn't put it past him.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29461957

pixelgeek6• 5 years ago

I am basing it on the article. If the company had proof of the claims I would assume that they would publish them or detail them to the people writing the article.

In the absence of anything to back it up then one has to treat it as an untested claim.

acdha5• 5 years ago

Extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof. If they had such a large number of people who were actively lying about doing work and, presumably, faking the records that’s the kind of thing where they’d be firing lots of managers and maybe even referring them to the police since it was an organized activity, not giving them weeks of severance.

I doubt they paid the Indian employees well but multiplied by hundreds of people that’s still a large enough number to get an auditor’s attention, especially if you’re in a regulated industry like mortgage banking.

Managers who allowed this clearly aren’t doing due diligence in key areas and that would make it pretty likely that there is fraud or negligence happening elsewhere, too. If you legitimately had this massive a problem, you’d want to be out in front of the questions from regulators and banking partners. Treating it as a simple layoff and only mentioning that later does not sound like a prudent finance company CEO.

kjonnakadla• 5 years ago

Feels like there is a culture issue here isnt it? If so many employees are not performing or missing duties, something is wrong.

jonnycomputer2• 5 years ago

‘You are TOO DAMN SLOW. You are a bunch of DUMB DOLPHINS and…DUMB DOLPHINS get caught in nets and eaten by sharks. SO STOP IT. STOP IT. STOP IT RIGHT NOW. YOU ARE EMBARRASSING ME.”

Sounds like there's a problem at the top too.

fuzzfactor• 5 years ago

There's no way employees could be more embarassing than this kind of non-leader being in a leadership position.

For a CEO something's got to be wrong, he doesn't seem like the kind of operator who has any business trying to be responsible for any employees whatsoever, and should be kept far from any decision-making activity.

Actual businessmen have known better for centuries.

jijji• 5 years ago

It could have been a mass SMS message, so I guess this is a little bit better, at least the managers get to see the look on their faces and the sobbing part of it to make it more emotional and real.

irrational• 5 years ago

Could be worse. There were mass layoffs in one part of my company many years ago. About half the people were fired and the other half retained. HR mixed up the packets for each group. The not fired got the packets destined for the people being fired and vice versa. It was a disaster.

rossdavidh3• 5 years ago

Wow, that is pretty incredible. I'm 54 years old and I do believe that might be the worst layoff story I've heard.

Ensorceled• 5 years ago

One company I had just left laid off half the staff. HR said there was an offsite meeting and divided everybody into two buses. One bus went to a offsite location to get laid off, the other went to a different offsite location where the layoffs were socialized. The buses went in different directions.

I got a bunch of messages from my former team during the bus ride; half were on one bus and the rest on the other bus. They were texting each other (and me) and quickly figured out what was going on, and which bus was the layoff bus.

Then they all had another half hour on the buses ...

joshstrange• 5 years ago

That's rough. My last company put a meeting on everyone's schedule for 5 minutes in the future. As we walked to where the meeting was we realized our invites had different rooms. I'm not sure if anyone accidentally followed the crowd without noting they were assigned to a different room but I'm sure that would have been awkward. I was one of the people laid off (I just hit my 3 months there) but interestingly enough was hired back the following Monday (layoffs on Friday) because another engineer who wasn't laid off was actually just about to put in his 2 weeks notice and he recommend me to fill his position. Needless to say, I'm like a cat on a hot tin roof anytime I get a last minute meeting invite.

justinzollars• 5 years ago

Someone recorded the firing on tiktok, it was poorly delivered.

crate_barre• 5 years ago

How does a mortgage company in an era of low rates and insane demand need to layoff anybody?

tmp_anon_222• 5 years ago

People in this thread are acting like it has to be a 900 person meeting or 1:1 meetings.

Middle managers should be able to lay off their own reports in small group settings.

Even if this is impractical upper-middle managers should be able to lay off like-grouped employees in groups of ~10-15.

A mass lay-off is not an opportunity for the CEO to play the victim and talk about his feelings and how hard it was for him, when he did not take a paycut to keep a single of those employees on.

I'm 26 and I know this. Jesus.

redleggedfrog• 5 years ago

If that was my CEO, I'd have been working 2 of my 8+ hours and trying to get away with it, too. Probably have another job at the same time.

That it took him so long to realize that it was happening shows he's incompetent, not just an asshole.

ineedasername• 5 years ago

You are a bunch of dumb dolphins

That has meme written all over it.

merubin752• 5 years ago

Everyone is focusing on HOW the news was delivered. To me, this is not relevant. What people should be focusing on is WHY.

The company is set to go public via SPAC at a $6.9 billion valuation. It just got a $1.5 billion infusion of cash last week.

Tell me again why the CEO and the executive team isn’t among the 900 people getting laid off?

https://techcrunch.com/2021/12/01/better-com-lays-off-9-of-i...

“On Nov. 30, TechCrunch reported that the company was getting a cash infusion from its backers sooner than expected. Blank-check company Aurora Acquisition Corp. and SoftBank decided to amend the terms of their financing agreement to provide Better with half of the $1.5 billion they committed immediately instead of waiting until the deal closes.”

obstacle14• 5 years ago

To me, this is not relevant. What people should be focusing on is WHY.

Totally fair that to you it is not relevant. But that doesn't imply that people should be focusing on what you think is relevant instead of what they think is relevant.

The delivery of the message is super toxic from a labor relations POV and I think a lot of people care about that, as a lot of people sell labor to employers in order to survive.

AtNightWeCode• 5 years ago

When you go to management classes you learn to not lay off people this way. That one should talk to each employee individually. At the same time. I have been at workplaces where a message been sent out like that a company must lay off 20% of the staff. I have seen the amount of stress it causes among the staff and especially if it happens several times. Me personally would prefer the axe.

twiddling3• 5 years ago

Yeah, it sucks to get that mandate and execute a lifeboat drill ( Who are we saving ). Problem is that a lot of the high performers you end up saving are out the door in six months anyway

jayzalowitz• 5 years ago

Having been a part of executing a layoff like this in the past, I have to say the cybersecurity and corporate concerns of not doing it all basically all at once is gargantuan.

That being said, this guy botched the delivery.

Finnucane• 5 years ago

Man, if I ever need a mortgage again, I'm sticking with my credit union.

Panther345432• 5 years ago

Many folks here are talking about the CEO and how the termination process was carried out, but I'd like to know if this is any sort of indicator for where the housing market is going.

Zillow was just in the news for suddenly laying off about %25 of its employees and taking a ~$500m loss.

Do any of you believe these companies have insight into the near feature that indicates a notable downturn in the market?

ragnot2• 5 years ago

They probably just see that the Fed going to raise rates and realize that there are going to be less mortgages handed out which means less customers.

Panther345432• 5 years ago

It's seems clear the Fed is going to raise rates at some point, but the question is "by how much".

I doubt the market will be affected too much if rates are increased yet stay below 4%. Many houses in my local market are selling in under a day; a small increase in mortgage rates won't tamper that demand to any great degree.

rossdavidh3• 5 years ago

The answer to your question is "yes".

stjohnswarts2• 5 years ago

Zillow did some really stupid stuff that caused them to need to trim the waist a bit.

merubin752• 5 years ago

In my opinion, everyone is focused on the wrong thing. HOW these layoffs occurred is not as important as WHY.

According to various sources, the company is about to go public at a $6.9 billion valuation. On top of that, it just got a $1.5 billion cash infusion.

Can someone tell me why the CEO and the executive team aren’t getting laid off, too?

https://techcrunch.com/2021/12/01/better-com-lays-off-9-of-i...

bigbillheck• 5 years ago

A union probably couldn't have stopped the layoffs but it could have made landings softer.

65102• 5 years ago

In the future we can deep fake this. "Hello $employee_name, you have been working for us since $hired_at, regrettably we chose to terminate your contract $immediately. We will pay you $this_much_money and $these_benefits."

UnpossibleJim• 5 years ago

So, not to give away too much information about myself (sorry), but this seems somewhat reminiscent of what happened to me in 2019. The problem is, they didn't set up their Zoom server very well and I had the worst time logging in, as it was having trouble handling the load, so I logged in, in the middle of the call only to be laid off, lol =)

https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2020/09/02/big-fish...

thedougd• 5 years ago

I believe Better.com also offers 'unlimited' vacation.

commandlinefan• 5 years ago

Oh I can top that. I worked for a startup that was acquired by a mega-conglomerate a few years back. They told us that there was an important meeting Monday at 8 AM and to make sure to be there on time. So we all showed up, dialed into the remote meeting (phone call, not even zoom) and it was a recorded message informing us that we were all terminated effective immediately and we would receive details of severance via personal email. Oh yeah and it was the week before Thanksgiving.

cebert• 5 years ago

Well, I will never consider career opportunities at Better.com.

softwaredoug• 5 years ago

For those out of the loop, this is really a story about the insensitive communication track record of Better’s CEO and less about the zoom firing per se.

andrew_• 5 years ago

Ahead of public market debut, Better.com lays off 900 in 3 Minutes

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29416101

myroon5• 5 years ago

https://www.tiktok.com/@benmarshallstyle/video/6926261120005...

manuelabeledo5• 5 years ago

I find disgraceful that this guy is putting the blame on his employees.

It is clear that:

1. There is no way competent managers would let 15% of the workforce slip so hard, that they are fired for "performance reasons", and

2. If these performance measurements were valid, most of the now fired employees would have been fired long time ago.

Any normal company has quarterly performance reviews, and management has to follow on those. If he only just found out that 15% of his employees were "lazy" or were "stealing wages" (not a thing), but waited until the end of the year, he and his team were being negligent.

sneak• 5 years ago

There is no way competent managers would let 15% of the workforce slip so hard

Possible, even likely, that 900 layoffs probably encompasses some less than competent managerial staff?

manuelabeledo5• 5 years ago

And that is fine. Where are their managers, though.

lxe• 5 years ago

Better.com has been a great experience, visually, and process-wise. However none of that matters if the final rates are much worse than you can get elsewhere.

st3ve445678• 5 years ago

I don't really see the problem with this. Yes, it was somewhat cringey but other than that... what was he supposed to do, call them all individually?

Laremere• 5 years ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29437642

Copying my comment from there:

C suites tend to want to personalize messages by adding context to how they feel, but in cases of such severely negative news it's always going to come off badly. "Firing people hurts my feelings" is a moot point unless you've slashed your and the rest of leadership's paychecks.

I'm mixed on the method of putting a bunch of people in a meeting and the CEO telling them directly they're being laid off. In some ways, I think it's much better than slowly pulling employees in and letting them know 1:1. In those cases, word about the layoffs travel much quicker than the layoffs, and people will spend all day with dread about whether they are laid off or not.

vanusa2• 5 years ago

In those cases, word about the layoffs travel much quicker than the layoffs, and people will spend all day with dread about whether they are laid off or not.

Yes, it's a trade-off.

But the upshot of the depersonalized mass firing rituals is that they feel like an extra slap in the face to those affected (in addition to the very existential issues they're suddenly forced to deal with). And plus, to the outside world, it just looks bad.

So the balance of considerations would seem to favor 1:1 or small group settings, if at all possible.

tut-urut-utut• 5 years ago

How is it even legal to fire someone on a Zoom call? Don't know about the US, but every European legislation I know of requires firing notice to be in written form. In Germany even E-Mail or text message is not enough, it has to be written in a piece of paper.

rossdavidh3• 5 years ago

In related news, the company changes its name to worse.com...

johndubchak4• 5 years ago

A touch off-topic, possibly, but does the pandemic signal a divide between "old-world" and "new-work" or "Point A" and "Point B" when work life (leadership, work, ethics - personal/business etc) were vastly different landscapes?

Maybe this has been asked and answered and I just haven't come across it, but it seems there are wildly different approaches before the pandemic and after.

Just a thought.

DeathArrow2• 5 years ago

Dolphins are much smarter than sharks. It's Garg who is being dumb.

parasense• 5 years ago

Garg told Fortune that a month earlier, the company began to review employee productivity data, including missed telephone call rates, number of inbound and outbound calls, employees showing up late to meetings with a customer, and other metrics.

I mean, data driven decision making is actually pretty great!

I'm curious how many people here would disagree?

That being said, who here thinks the CEO had a complete picture of the performance metrics? Or perhaps he was operating from an intentionally incomplete data-set to self-fulfill a prophecy, or some other ulterior motive?

smaryjerry• 5 years ago

I know people are worried about peoples feelings over all else and that is important, but after the shift to everyone working from home I bet every single person here knows that one out of every 10 of their coworkers is not performing. Hell I question question if they ever work at all or just collect their check, let alone perform well.

tediousdemise• 5 years ago

What a piece of shit.

DeathArrow2• 5 years ago

I hope each of the fired employees sue him and he gets himself 900 lawsuits to handle.

twiddling3• 5 years ago

ever fully read your employment agreement and the notice of binding arbitration?

dredmorbius2• 5 years ago

Given arbitration costs, 900 arbitration suits might also prove a challenge.

lkrubner• 5 years ago

“You are TOO DAMN SLOW. You are a bunch of DUMB DOLPHINS and…DUMB DOLPHINS get caught in nets and eaten by sharks. SO STOP IT. STOP IT. STOP IT RIGHT NOW. YOU ARE EMBARRASSING ME.”

That last part, “you are embarrassing me,” suggests an element of narcissism. It personalizes the feedback, something every leader should avoid doing.

Also, all caps suggests shouting, which suggests a lack of emotional control, something leaders sometimes pretend to do strategically, but a good leader never does this accidentally. (I give an example here: https://demodexio.substack.com/p/the-hearts-of-men-american-... )

Good feedback is specific and individual. What Gary said, in this example, is almost scientific in how precisely bad it is. He is emotional and non-specific. If a worker has made a good-faith effort and failed, this kind of ranting doesn’t help the worker, and if the worker is operating in bad-faith, then you’ve encouraged them to continue because you are shouting at the room rather than singling them out, a fact which convinces them you don’t know which workers are operating in bad-faith.

throwaway7653• 5 years ago

I'm an engineer at Better.

This past week has been surreal. We went from verge of IPO to trainwreck. Instead of celebrating with my coworkers, I'm trying to help them find new jobs. Some folks on here are saying "it's covid, it has to be done over Zoom". While true, there are so many things that were unnecessarily horrible about it. He didn't have to do it ill prepared in a messy room. He didn't have to offer severance that ends in the middle of the holidays (rumor has it he wanted to offer no severance at all). He didn't have to insinuate that the people who got fired were a bunch of cheats.

Our CEO's mouth and arrogance finally caught up to him. This has been inevitable, ever since the articles last year about his past.

He's a classic brilliant asshole. I personally think the company is really good. At least most of it is. He deserves credit for that.

But he has no idea how to run a tech company or a traditional company of this size. He has failed to build a full executive team. We're a "tech company" without executive product or marketing leadership. The only execs who stick around are the ones who can handle his abusive and erratic behavior. Some of them are really good, but we also have leaders in positions way too big for their capabilities, who owe their position to being favorites.

The strategic mistakes that led to this layoff and the horrible way it was conducted are 100% his fault. What's public is like 5% of the story. If you could see our Blind forum, you'd see how much worse it is. And I'm sure there's plenty that isn't on Blind.

Speaking of which, we found out through the press on Friday that he's been commenting on Blind for months, without fully identifying himself (https://www.google.com/amp/s/fortune.com/2021/12/03/better-c...).

If the company wants to get back to winning, he's gotta go.

frogpelt• 5 years ago

There's no good way to fire 900 people effective immediately.

atribecalledqst• 5 years ago

This is only somewhat related, but a couple years ago somebody at my company who many people had worked with and liked (he'd been around for a long time) died unexpectedly over a holiday weekend. Our management decided the best way to disseminate this news was to hold an all-hands where they announced he'd been found dead. (OK, they used the term "deceased" so it was slightly more formal)

I probably won't ever forgive them for that. That kind of news is extremely personal and they shouldn't have called us into a room to tell us in front of literally everyone else at the company. I don't need or want my coworkers to see how I react to death -- what if I'd burst into tears? I certainly had felt like doing that.

Honestly even though he was really well-known, the best way to handle it would have been to send an email out (like they did for everyone else who passed) and then have an optional get-together where people could reminisce if they wanted to. Preferably in an informal environment like a bar or restaurant for happy hour.

Curious what other people's experiences have been.

qwertyuiop_• 5 years ago

He (Vishal Garg) also threatened to burn his business partner alive.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28708745

brailsafe• 5 years ago

I can see where you might argue that telling 900 ppl simultaneously that they're fired, over zoom, does make sense, but there is an element of true cowardliness about how this fellow went about it. He's not vulnerable to any real human backlash in this context, whereas a manager or CEO saying the same kind of shit in a one on one meeting would.

aruanavekar• 5 years ago

https://nextmortgagenews.com/news/better-attracts-up-to-1-5-...

Looks like a new B2B / SaaS pivot

“This is exactly the time for us to lean in and accelerate our customer-focused product innovation, and grow our B2B business, which we believe provides us with greater defensibility in a tougher mortgage market,” said Better CEO, Vishal Garg

Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call

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