Better CEO is 'taking time off' after firing 900 staff on Zoom Better CEO Vishal Garg, best-known for firing 900 employees over one giant Zoom call, is taking time off work while the company hires a third-party to perform a “leadership and cultural assessment.” After video footage of the meeting was leaked, the Softbank-backed digital mortgage biz was suddenly thrust into the limelight. …
"Perhaps the time has come to make it possible to be in a senior company position *without* being an utter dick?"
Unfortunately, because the bottom line is grasping all you can, only the utterly ruthless with the hides of rhinos rise to such positions, but there are lots of them so all the positions get filled. It's commonly said that power corrupts, but realistically they need the power before they can show how corrupt they've always been.
The merger / sale is probably what prompted the "firings" as when you have two companies merge in some way there ends up being some cases of two people for the same position. Where you have that doubling up you have to let one of those people go. Been on the end of this myself once and as d*ckish as the company I worked for was in some ways, they weren't anywhere as much as Garg has been.
At least I think that is what may be happening here. If true then they wouldn't reverse getting rid of people.
I was laid off when the drooling idiots who ran the company messed up the integration of a company they had bought.
One of said idiots made the mistake of turning up to one of the branches to make the announcement in person, and he was so rude that several hot-heads decided they would beat the living snot out of him in retribution. Cooler heads restrained them, so no blood was spilt unfortunately.
That put the wind up the company so badly that they fired the rest of us by email.
I paid a lawyer $400 to write a threatening letter and wound up getting nearly $10,000 worth of training for free in return for promising not to drag them through the employment courts.
The moral of the story? Don't live in America.
Sorry folks, if you don't know what it takes at the beginning to not be an arse, you don't have the right stuff to lead a decent company.
You can't just buy it in from a consultancy, and it looks even worse doing that after a public self-created implosion : it's too late.
I don't feel any pity for Mr Dumb Dolphins. He could have chosen not to be arrogant and obnoxious. But he let his ego swell up so much he ruined it all.
Look, this will probably go over like a lorry-full of manure dumped on your front door, but, well, Mr. Garg is an Indian national. If you go on to YouTube and watch Joshua Fluke's channel, you will find Indian bosses are completely used to treating their workers like slave laborers
https://youtu.be/azkgIOA3y88
https://youtu.be/Qba57EgF5GA
https://youtu.be/Bbc4RzTTLec
https://youtu.be/8FenVVKjOrQ
https://youtu.be/1aUdQm5ZGto
Lol, we can keep going with that meme :D
Indians have posted replies that since there are so many applicants in the huge population, versus job openings, bosses learn that they have the upper hand and can make workers slaves to get ANY type of job.
They then bring that attitude over to wherever they go.
You are here to make THEM money. You? You don't matter, only I, the boss and my business, matters.
Firing a large portion of your workforce in such a crass manner is bound to get out as someone would have 1) possibly recorded the whole incident, 2) leaked the details to various places hoping it goes viral; really nasty if there is a video to back it up. The only hope for him is it does not go viral but the numbers work against this; too many who could confirm the story. Also, once the people sniff out the story the Streisand Effect will take over.
As others have noted, His Crassness apparently had done similar crass actions in the past and basically got away with it. If it sinks the SPAC, I will not shed a tear for His Crassness.
In the event that a (your) company has to make staff redundant, they should consider how they want the soon to be ex staff to react and think of the company in the future. How would you prefer your company to be regarded?
A former employee who says "It was sad, but due to circumstances beyond anyone's control, they just had to let some of us go and I got the short straw. They are actually really good people, and I recommend them."
compared to
"What an utter bunch of heartless f£$%^&(*ts! I hate the lot of them. Not only did they make us all redundant without having the decency to speak to each of us in person, they broadcast it on Zoom, and the CEO had the gall to say that the last time he did this he cried but HE hoped to be stronger this time. And just two weeks before Christmas."
I worked for a company like this. Everyone on the floor was hired either on a weekly contract, or on a 6-month rolling contract. Despite some people working there for nearly 5 years, they refused to commit to permanent contracts.
They laid an entire team off just before Christmas. Due to the nature of the team's contracts, the company were only required to give them a week's notice. That notice was given on a Thursday, exactly eight days before the company's Christmas party. To a team of highly competent people who'd given years of their life to the company.
They were not allowed in to the party.
> How would you prefer your company to be regarded?
Well it depends. A lot of Wall Street types and Boards of Directors PREFER heartless SOB CEO's. In the Al (Chainsaw) Dunlap school of management (we worshiped him when we were in business school), being a sadistic ass is a sure way to greater profitability. Reputation means NOTHING. However, I wonder how long it will be before said employees make it their life mission to punish these sadistic people.?
May be he was only following Uber.
Back in May 2020...
This week, Uber announced that it will layoff 3,500 employees, representing 14% of its workforce. In a sign of the times, with employees working from home, Uber informed the job-loss casualties via an online Zoom call.
and Better culls 15% of the workforce.
Mission accomplished!
Giving this guy some paid time off and paying a PR company to mop up the mess is still cheaper than treating employees humanely in the first place.
His services will be in future demand wherever the C-levels decide that heads must roll to increase shareholder value. I.e., all across the US.
Well the only reaction any of those employees left should have is to get their cvs out in the market place. The net result of the behaviour of the company will to lose its best staff (they will be the first to secure new jobs), hopefully this will cause the company to implode and collapse as it justly deserves. Frankly any company that does that to their staff deserves to sink. Any CEO that kills a company through such behaviour will almost certainly secure a job from his mates but he doesnt deserve to.
so, there was this phone call with an offer of a one-off damage limitation package, completely free of charge. Or else. Hence the “leadership and cultural assessment.”
p.s. my eyes get moist for the eagle-eyed Softbank... But, regardless of their real motives (are there any motives past 'profit'?), I do hope, in the spirit of Christmas schadenfreunde, that the man gets to join those 900.
I heard about a company that, when time for redundancies, created a fire drill to get everybody out of the building and into the parking lot. Then the employees were separated into the sheep and the goats, and the goats were escorted back in one at a time to clear out their desks. I imagine those staying didn't have warm feelings of confidence in management after that.
What the hell is Better? What do they do? Online mortgage broker? Pffft. They're apparently useless for that:
https://www.bbb.org/us/ny/new-york/profile/mortgage-broker/bettercom-0121-165686/complaints
Though it's ironic that people are complaining to them to the BBB... another useless organization.
They should change their name to Worse... to match reality.
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