Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call

maggrand.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 480 posts

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

#171

Post by mimon »

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?

Breach of contract, or at a stretch maybe fraud if they were actively misleading someone. But definitely not theft.

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

#172

Post by ebiester »

vmception wrote: post #17
AlwaysRock wrote: post #3

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.

How would you prefer it was done?

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.

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

#174

Post by whimsicalism »

sdfghderwg wrote: post #139
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…

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 do…

No, that doesn't sound like a better way, but it does sound like you aren't particularly grasping what they are proposing.

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

#175

Post by beerandt »

SkittyDog wrote: post #76
beerandt wrote: post #16

>>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 stealin…

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…

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.

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

#176

Post by PLenz »

sdfghderwg wrote: post #139
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…

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 do…

Your algo can easily be parallelized by increasing the number of people firing.

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

#177

Post by DangerousPie »

judge2020 wrote: post #50
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…

IMO the issue is that this is right after a funding round. https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/30/better-com-gets-750m-cash-...

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

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

#178

Post by 0des »

seanlinehan wrote: post #35

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 bo…

Never let a tragedy go to waste

> The lack of empathy shown in this situation is intense

You're right! ;)

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

#179

Post by [deleted] »

nradov wrote: post #148
post-it wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.”

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.

[deleted]

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

#180

Post by sergiotapia »

1_player wrote: post #133
sergiotapia wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 jo…

>Yes, he was supposed to do more than just tell a bullshit sob story

That's what I'm asking. Specifically, what do you personally think would have been a better approach to let go 900 people?

Post reply on HN