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Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call

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Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call

#131

Post by jawns »

fatbird wrote: post #63
DangerousPie wrote: post #20

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…

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 exp…

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.

Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call

#132

Post by [deleted] »

beckman466 wrote: post #36
Kye wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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…

[deleted]

Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call

#133

Post by 1_player »

sergiotapia wrote: post #37
0des wrote: post #12

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.

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

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.

Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call

#134

Post by rodiger »

WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote: post #18

> "the market has changed, as you know" For someone who is out of the loop, what does this mean?

"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

Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call

#135

Post by jonnycomputer »

matt--f wrote: post #89
DangerousPie wrote: post #20

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…

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

):

Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call

#136

Post by thealfreds »

bennyp101 wrote: post #102
sokoloff wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If an employee is selling their time to answer customer inquiries and is not, in fact, answering available customer inquiries, what else would you call it?

Incompetence? Slacking off? Lazy?

Fraud would be another term.

But as others have stated this should have been taken care of earlier. To fire them and then give the excuse afterwards meant they allowed the actions to happen.

Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call

#137

Post by [deleted] »

agrippanux wrote: post #94
wedowhatwedo wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fac…

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 ta…

[deleted]

Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call

#138

Post by thraway_bparrot »

DangerousPie wrote: post #20

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…

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.

Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call

#139

Post by sdfghderwg »

wedowhatwedo wrote: post #65
DangerousPie wrote: post #20

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…

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 fac…

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?

Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call

#140

Post by willcipriano »

sokoloff wrote: post #80
beckman466 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

If an employee is selling their time to answer customer inquiries and is not, in fact, answering available customer inquiries, what else would you call it?

If it happens as frequently as claimed? I'd call it total managerial incompetence. Call metrics are well defined and it is easy to see if someone is doing no work. If the line managers are slacking off like that, what does that say for their management (and so on and so on)?
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