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.
Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call
271–280 of 480 posts
Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call
#272"Dumb dolphins"? Hey, dolphins are some of the smarter animals out there... That's an ignorant remark.
Dolphins are notoriously imprudent mortgage lenders though
>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.
Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call
#273I 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?
Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
Never let a tragedy go to waste > The lack of empathy shown in this situation is intense You're right! ;)
One of you is trying to help these people find their next job.
I have a few qualms with this comment:
1. For a person who just lost their job, you can already search for such an opportunity yourself quite trivially by getting a resume, editing it locally with notepad, and then using email to send it. From Windows or Mac, this resume could be accessed through built-in software.
2. It doesn't actually replace a new job prospect. Most people I know choose to promote their startups themselves or promote them somewhere online to be able to gather users, but they still carry pre-formatted advertisement in case there are opportunities. This does not solve the employment issue.
3. It does not seem very "viral" or income-generating. I know this is premature at this point, but without charging users for the service, is it reasonable to expect to make money off of this?
Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disagree. Why make the HR team go through 900 individual calls? At the same time this will leak and other employees will learn that they might get fired before they get their own call. Recipe for disaster. Just rip off the band aid.
I think it boils down to leadership is really about managing relationships. This method is just too impersonal for most people, just like breaking off a romantic relationship via text is generally considered weak and frowned upon.
Wait, you're not supposed to break up over text? Since when?!?!?!
Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call
#276I 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…
The CEO doesn't really pass the "fit and proper person" test does He
Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call
#277Earlier 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.”
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.
> After the first 10 minutes everyone will know what their meeting is about and it makes the problem worse.
Huh? It’s not a surprise birthday party. I’m not sure why a key goal would be that each fired person is taken completely by surprise.
Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call
#278Earlier 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…
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.
Usually people still need to do something in the period before they are actually laid off. With these kind of calls it's scorched earth from there onward and I would question everything everyone does which is counterproductive.
Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> ...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.
9 percent of your workforce isn't going to work 2 hours a day, man. Almost nobody can handle being that much of a lazy, sleazy piece of crap. What probably happened is that the idiot CEO decided to check productivity via some BS metric, then discard all the time his employees had to spend on anything else
I've been on the receiving end of that before, it's infuriating.
Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call
#280I 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 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.
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.