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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

#111

Post by beaconstudios »

beckman466 wrote: post #36
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…

> 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…

related fun fact: wage theft by employers is the largest category of theft in the US by a large measure [1].

[1] https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-bigger-problem-fo...

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

#112

Post by basisword »

fatbird wrote: post #63
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…

Do it the way AirBnB (or most other companies) did it: announce that large scale layoffs will be happening due to X and Y reasons, and that the individuals losing their jobs will be contacted over the next week. Then someone phones/zooms them individually and answers questions and lets them know right away what'll happen. This isn't about Covid, this is about the CEO making this easier on himself. I'm guessing he exp…

How is waiting days for a potential meeting to be scheduled in better?

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

#114

Post by mrweasel »

bko wrote: post #38
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…

It should probably be handled one by one via Zoom with the persons immediate manager and a representative from HR.

Ideally yes, but 900 people? Before you’ve reached the end of that list you’ll have created a lot of fear among the remaining people.

I worked for a company that did individual firing with a manager and HR, it was no where near 900 people, and it still took the better part of a day. It was absolutely terrible for everyone, not just those who where to be fired.

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

#116

Post by 1_player »

ralph84 wrote: post #33
WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote: post #18

> "the market has changed, as you know" For someone who is out of the loop, what does this mean?

Rising interest rates + rising house prices = fewer mortgage applications

What an absolute load of bollocks from a company that just raised $750M.

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

#117

Post by baud147258 »

ceva wrote: post #21

wow that is big lay off, but how they decided what 900 employees to lay off wtf? could they give them some opportunity to grow within the company for some different role? I mean on the other side this is really shit news, but giving that 3 months of benefits and paycheck is kind of Ok i guess in this situation so people can start looking for another job.

From the article:

>>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 stealing from you and stealing from our customers who pay the bills that pay our bills. Get educated,” Garg told Fortune.

>> “As we started to slow down our pace of hiring, we saw some alarming statistics and a number of our customers were not getting the service that they deserved from our teammates,” he said.

So the people at better.com said they looked at the data they had on employee performance.

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

#118

Post by kittiepryde »

contravariant wrote: post #64
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…

Off topic but this might be the first time I've seen someone use the noun affect correctly.

emotion or desire, especially as influencing behavior or action.

I had to look it up, I wasn't even aware affect had a noun definition - I had believed it was only a verb. TIL

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

#119

Post by pkrotich »

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…

I was thinking same but apparently the CEO is a complete arse [0] - perhaps the reaction is because of the messenger not the act itself.

[0]https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjeans/2020/11/20/mortgages...

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