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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

#371

Post by vanusa »

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…

Drive to every employee's house to fire them in person?

No, but like the sibling commenter said -- you can at least aim for a bare minimum, of, you know, class.

Like an individual phone call. 10 minutes should do it.

Really, it's not that hard, or expensive.

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

#372

Post by acdha »

golergka wrote: post #308
VRay wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Almost nobody can handle being that much of a lazy, sleazy piece of crap. What are you talking about? Entire countries have been doing it for decades before ending up bankrupt.

Do you have examples? This sounds rather a lot like a racist stereotype unless you’re using “entire countries” to mean something more like corrupt elites misdirecting people who don’t have alternatives.

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

#373

Post by obstacle1 »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #340
djrogers wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abuse? Really? Is a single email where someone vents frustration for 2 lines actually abuse ?

I knew you would get downvoted. HN is a weird mixture of professionalism and childishness. Getting angry at two lines without context/relationship with manager is all I could expect from here.

In what context would it be OK for a CEO to send ENTHUSIASTICALLY YELLING e-mails to employees telling them they are SLOW DUMB DOLPHINS and to STOP EMBARRASSING ME STOP IT STOP IT RIGHT NOW...?

Also how would our knowing more about the CEO/employee relationship here improve our perception? The most "positive" thing I can think of is, the employees are so used to it they would tell us something like "oh, that's just CEO, he communicates really passionately". That's not actually positive, though. It's Stockholm Syndrome. [1]

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome

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

#374

Post by acdha »

bennyp101 wrote: post #79
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…

Not really stealing though, is it? If the work wasn't there, or they found a way to 'game' the system, then that is on management. I'm sure all of us goof off at some point during the day/week - it just seems that these people were able to do it a LOT. But yea, if you aren't doing the work assigned to you, then you can't expect to keep being paid - but stealing it is not.

It’s theft if they sign a time sheet saying they did work they didn’t.

It’s not theft if, say, their management didn’t have enough to work on or created processes with lots of bottlenecks.

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

#375

Post by phonon »

zoe4883 wrote: post #71

》organization would provide four weeks of severance and one month of full benefits, as well as other coverage as part of a package. I find this sort of honest and refreshing. My goverment fired people without any severance or unemployment benefits, with way more BS!

Err, by law they need to give 60 days notice of a mass layoff (or pay the equivalent.)

Not sure how they are getting away with 4 weeks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraini...

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

#376

Post by munificent »

tshaddox wrote: post #366
jerf wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reasons why may not be obvious if you're not a manager or haven't run a large organization before, but the simple truth is, "employees" are not a magically ethical bunch of people simply by virtue of being the underdog and poor and downtrodden and being all fired and stuff. You do not want a significant number of employees running around who are either uncertain they are going to be fired for a significant period…

It’s literally extremely common for companies to inform people that they will be laid off weeks in the future. Companies often have entire facilities that get shut down with months of advance notice. Not to mention that temporary jobs are also extremely common, so this explanation that the only thing ever preventing employees from sabotaging their employer is the hope that they will be employed there indefinitely is…

My understanding is that in those cases, the employees are generally offerred a significant severance package that is conditional on them not causing any problems until the day they are laid off. This way, the employee still has something to lose.

Most people wouldn't cause any problems, but a small fraction will cause trouble if they're put in a position where they feel harmed and can retaliate with no consequences to themselves.

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

#377

Post by castlecrasher2 »

bronco21016 wrote: post #7

I know it’s just an anecdote but as a customer I kind of believe this. I just completed a transaction with them that had to be extended beyond the rate lock window. For about 10 days there was a daily back and forth where they asked me to provide some documentation. I would provide the requested documentation and about 12 hours later I would receive a task of uploading the same required documentation. The document wa…

Yeah, we went through better.com for our refinance because the rate and fees (no loan origination fee!) were the absolute best but I saw a bunch of reviews saying their contact with Better simply ceased and they couldn't get their loan finished. Luckily, we didn't have that issue and our reps were great.

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

#379

Post by twiddling »

jdavis703 wrote: post #106
dilap wrote: post #44

Earlier 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’ve been in mass layoffs. Having bosses arbitrarily come up to desks and then having that person return fifteen minutes later and repeating that for the entire morning is much worse. It’s anxiety inducing, even if you didn’t get the ax. I’d rather have an all-hands and get it over with quickly.

The worst I have heard was a VP coming down to the bullpen and had workers stand up , count off in ones and twos. Twos were instructed to grab a box and clear their desk in 15 minutes, while security guards loomed.

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

#380

Post by 0des »

froggertoaster wrote: post #354
0des wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you the person in the video?

You probably wouldn't believe this since you're asking - but no, I'm not. I'm not at all involved in Better in any way.

The comment could be parsed two different ways, so I wanted to know how I should understand it. Thanks for the reply, this makes sense.
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