He (Vishal Garg) also threatened to burn his business partner alive.
Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call
421–430 of 480 posts
Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call
#422Earlier quoted context omitted.
250 were 2 hours per day. This leaves a lot of room for workers <8 hours.
Of course, there's a huge gulf of possibility, and he definitely creates the impression that those 900 people were fired for being bad employee... But I'm awfully concerned that you're so willing to take this guy at face value, uncritically. You know what else he doesn't say? The median, mean, & mode of his workforce's productivity (hours/day)? Also, how have those productivity numbers changed, over time? What if the…
>But I'm awfully concerned that you're so willing to take this guy at face value, uncritically.
Thank you for the concern. I'm not taking anything at face value, just pointing out the logical inconsistency that if 250 are = 8 hours, which is how your comment read (to me at least).
Who knows what the real story is and we certainly don't have the information required to make an informed opinion.
Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call
#423Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't that 'employee privilege'? People who are in business for themselves often lose clients without notice. Employees easily forget how much they are shielded from the market.
Well… yes? Employees trade lower revenue for greater stability
But, the query wasn't about stability. It was about emotional support.
Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call
#424I can see where you might argue that telling 900 ppl simultaneously that they're fired, over zoom, does make sense, but there is an element of true cowardliness about how this fellow went about it. He's not vulnerable to any real human backlash in this context, whereas a manager or CEO saying the same kind of shit in a one on one meeting would.
Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call
#425Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a good point. At least they got a face to face. I had members of a team just get a slip in the past.
I think one of the bigger issues was that the CEO made it all about him on the call.
I find it strange that the CEO gave no one any warnings or any second chances. if that many people were doing what he claimed there was obviously a culture created to allow that.
I personally think he's trying to lay off expensive workers and outsource them and this is a lame excuse attempting to gas light and blame the employee.
Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call
#426Earlier 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.”
Better.com CEO Threatened to Burn His Business Partner Alive. Now He’s a Billionaire. Last fall, employees at one of America’s fastest-growing startups began making anxious phone calls. They believed that CEO Vishal Garg—a volatile entrepreneur with a history of disgruntled business partners—had been giving huge amounts of equity... https://www.thedailybeast.com/bettercom-ceo-vishal-garg-thre...
Nice, when we started playing with some financial engineering we also noticed that vesting could be any unit of time.
So we did grants with super low cost basis (it was very early there was nobody else to placate), and the recipients did 83(b) elections to recognize the income at the low cost basis, so when they exercised at fair market value soon after it wouldnt be income at that point in time, only capital gains when they sale (which is offsettable much more easily than income, or gets a lower tax rate if you hold it ling enough anyway). This just nullifies a big income tax bill.
Fun game, if you know what you’re doing. Expensive annoying game if you dont.
Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call
#427Earlier quoted context omitted.
Messing around isn't illegal. Calling it "theft" is a way to try to tie it to something widely considered illegal, which is unfortunate.
I'm not talking about messing around. Humans aren't machines. Fudging timesheets and practices called "buddy punching" are what I'm talking about.
> Fudging timesheets and practices called "buddy punching" are what I'm talking about.
as someone else already responded to you: "I think people tend to do this kind of thing when their employer is hostile or exploitative. People typically respond well and work hard when they're treated fairly."
Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call
#428Earlier quoted context omitted.
Messing around isn't illegal. Calling it "theft" is a way to try to tie it to something widely considered illegal, which is unfortunate.
I'm not talking about messing around. Humans aren't machines. Fudging timesheets and practices called "buddy punching" are what I'm talking about.
> It's usually called time theft when employees are on the clock but doing things they shouldn't be doing.
This is what you originally said.
Clocking for another employee, that is time card fraud, not "time theft". "Time theft" is not even a legal term.
There is a recent push to coin the term "time theft", in order to group anything that may not be considered working during work hours as a "crime".
An employee may commit fraud by not working and still collecting wages, which is a crime, but this tends to be used as an excuse for employers to make it look that any work time used for non working matters, is illegal. Break a bit longer than usual? Time theft. Taking a personal call? Time theft. Pooping at work? Believe it or not, time theft.
There are plenty of examples out there where managers try to curb and reduce employee breaks, even with ludicrous signs advertising "how to avoid committing time clock fraud" [1], and also plenty where those employees get canned accused of "time theft", but if you live in the US, in an "at will employment" state, it is enough that the reason is not illegal for an employer to do so.
But again, there is not such a thing as "time theft". "Time theft" is a made up term to scare people into total submission while at work.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/mf41ia/i_work_for...
Re: Better.com CEO fires 900 employees on Zoom call
#429Earlier 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…
This is one of those things that seems to be an institutional part of Americans quitting or being fired from jobs, but it's far from universal. In Germany (and I believe most of Europe) several months notice is usual (three months minimum), and typically people keep working until the end of that time (aside from taking unused vacation). Sure, motivation suffers in that time, but don't think the cases of employees tak…
This is how it should be in the US