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.
Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call
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Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call
#202Man, if I ever need a mortgage again, I'm sticking with my credit union.
Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 personall…
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.
I think it's unlikely that people didn't already know something was coming.
Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you can warn people about their performance without using abuse.
Abuse? Really? Is a single email where someone vents frustration for 2 lines actually abuse ?
Say a couple has a good relationship. One day, Partner A has a bad day at work. A comes home and screams at Partner B: "you're dumb! you're slow! why isn't dinner ready? you're a dolphin!"
Partner A was just venting frustration after having a terrible day. Is that abuse? YES! Unequivocally, yes.
There is no excuse for insulting, yelling, or otherwise treating other human beings as lesser than. It's abuse, always, even one time. And frankly if it happens once, it's very unlikely it isn't a repeated pattern of behavior.
Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Perhaps he's got some breakdown on how dolphin intelligence impacts those stats given his emphasis on them being dumb dolphins
I imagine it as a callback to some company wide training or team-building exercise or corporate culture story where the keynote/"message from our fearless leader" was some sort of dolphin parable.
But maybe I'm giving him too much credit.
Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call
#206Many 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?
Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call
#207I 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…
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Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call
#208Earlier 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.”
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…
In what way is that message "clear"? It reads like a temper tantrum from a pre-teen, not a manager providing negative feedback to an employee.
Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call
#209Earlier 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…
If they have to fire 900 people, you think they only have the bandwidth for 1 person to fire them? 10 People its down to a work day, 20 is half that again..
Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call
#210Earlier 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…
I'm sorry, if you feel like you're not being paid enough, the solution is not to commit wage fraud against your employer.
There are plenty of employee-owned companies out there that would fit your ideals, people can work for them if they want that ownership. Or start their own. Otherwise, no, they don't get to own the output of their work. That's the way it is.