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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

#361

Post by gambiting »

literallyWTF wrote: post #283
gambiting wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that 900 people is a lot of people. Imagine all managers scheduling meetings with their reports to tell them, then the managers themselves are probably being let go, in the meantime it would create A LOT of stress not knowing whether you will be called in for a meeting or not, just sitting there seeing people being let go around you 1 by 1. The whole process would take a week just to have a proper meet…

Leave it to HN to argue that having a shitty mass layoff through Zoom is better than having a 1 to 1

It's absolutely not better than having a 1-1, and I never said it was. But I will argue that it's better than waiting a week to have your scheduled "mystery call" with your manager while you see everyone around you being laid off left and right. It would have been stressful as hell, and in that sense yes, finding out in a single call with the CEO is "better". I'd still like to have a 1-1 with my manager to discuss either way.

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

#362

Post by time_to_smile »

mrits wrote: post #160
post-it wrote: post #54

Earlier 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.

Have you never been at a company that has had layoffs?

I was at a company that did ~400 people layoff during pandemic. The place didn't even have a great culture but everyone, even people remaining (> half the company) got a one-on-one chat with their manager.

There was, of course, a company all hands later.

Sure people know what's up, but it's dramatically more human to have your manager call you and tell you a.) you are going to be okay or b.) we're very sorry this has happened, it's been a pleasure working with you, please use me as a reference anytime you need. We even personally called each candidate we were supposed to hire.

Company wide zoom as notice of layoffs is grotesque.

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

#363

Post by bko »

mrweasel wrote: post #114
bko wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Goldman Sachs regularly lays off 5% of their 40k workforce every year. It all happens in a short period of time. They somehow manage to do it.

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

#364

Post by throwaway7653 »

I'm an engineer at Better.

This past week has been surreal. We went from verge of IPO to trainwreck. Instead of celebrating with my coworkers, I'm trying to help them find new jobs. Some folks on here are saying "it's covid, it has to be done over Zoom". While true, there are so many things that were unnecessarily horrible about it. He didn't have to do it ill prepared in a messy room. He didn't have to offer severance that ends in the middle of the holidays (rumor has it he wanted to offer no severance at all). He didn't have to insinuate that the people who got fired were a bunch of cheats.

Our CEO's mouth and arrogance finally caught up to him. This has been inevitable, ever since the articles last year about his past.

He's a classic brilliant asshole. I personally think the company is really good. At least most of it is. He deserves credit for that.

But he has no idea how to run a tech company or a traditional company of this size. He has failed to build a full executive team. We're a "tech company" without executive product or marketing leadership. The only execs who stick around are the ones who can handle his abusive and erratic behavior. Some of them are really good, but we also have leaders in positions way too big for their capabilities, who owe their position to being favorites.

The strategic mistakes that led to this layoff and the horrible way it was conducted are 100% his fault. What's public is like 5% of the story. If you could see our Blind forum, you'd see how much worse it is. And I'm sure there's plenty that isn't on Blind.

Speaking of which, we found out through the press on Friday that he's been commenting on Blind for months, without fully identifying himself (https://www.google.com/amp/s/fortune.com/2021/12/03/better-c...).

If the company wants to get back to winning, he's gotta go.

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

#365

Post by seanlinehan2 »

Bedon292 wrote: post #235
seanlinehan wrote: post #35

To anybody affected by this layoff, my company Placement.com created a Better.com Alumni Job Board [0] to help smooth the transition. We've seen over and over how much easier it is to get a job at a company where: 1. You have a connection (or can build one easily) 2. The company recognizes the companies you previously worked for Targeting companies that ex-colleagues work at is a powerful strategy! So we made this bo…

There seems to be a bit of a bug, or confusing element. It appears that Change Everything, Inc. and Facebook are linked together somehow. It says the company is Facebook, but the size and description appear to be for Change Everything, Inc.

All fixed thank you! This was a data collection error – looks like one of our data vendors sent us very incorrect data.

(Sent from a new acc because my account is on noprocast)

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

#366

Post by tshaddox »

jerf wrote: post #329
tshaddox wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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 pretty clearly insufficient.

You can’t explain this as “managers/executives have no choice.” They have the choice, and they sometimes choose the option that they determine is easier for them. Not surprising, of course, but also not worth defending.

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

#367

Post by time_to_smile »

baby wrote: post #144
tyingq wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what seems right to me. It's not the virtual nature, it's the lazy mass group layoff that's objectionable and disrespectful. If you're being laid off, you probably have a lot of questions. A 1:1 meeting would allow for that.

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.

> Why make the HR team go through 900 individual calls?

The entire reason companies have hierarchical power structures (in theory) at least, is so that information can be passed along with the log of the company size.

Having every manager have 10 min call with each direct report, or in the worse case a team meeting, would be much more human and could accomplish the task of notification in roughly the same time window as an all hands firing.

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

#368

Post by acdha »

VRay wrote: post #279
jmull wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...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.

And if the 10-15% range was true, that’s a major management screwup. A couple of bad hires, sure, it happens but when you’re talking hundreds of people there’s something systemic at fault, which is solely in the realm of management’s responsibility to hire and monitor.

Based on the excuse he gave to Forbes I’d bet you’re right. I’d especially believe some kind of internal inefficiency – e.g. having everyone need to have sign-offs by someone in an understaffed role – or simply having inefficient internal processes meaning that what he thinks is a 2 hour task actually taking much longer.

Another possibility would be something like having over-hired either due to misjudgment or to look like a bigger business to investors and then blaming the workers for not having enough work to do. I remember seeing that from the dotcom era, along with people who were very proud of 7 figure Oracle clusters handling hundreds of transactions per day. Senior management was so focused on IPO riches that they allowed if not actually encouraged it.

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

#369

Post by seanlinehan2 »

ajb wrote: post #349
seanlinehan wrote: post #35

To anybody affected by this layoff, my company Placement.com created a Better.com Alumni Job Board [0] to help smooth the transition. We've seen over and over how much easier it is to get a job at a company where: 1. You have a connection (or can build one easily) 2. The company recognizes the companies you previously worked for Targeting companies that ex-colleagues work at is a powerful strategy! So we made this bo…

Just checked out your website: Seems like a nice idea. One thing that looks shady though: it is hard to understand the costs. So, there is $19 for an intro session, $99 (with bulk discount) for reviews, and also 'credits (used for what?) and this information is scattered around different FAQ entries. When companies make me work to understand what I will need to pay, or worse (appear to?) not tell me until I have made…

Very good feedback – thank you. We are working on a new homepage that spells it out as clear as day!

(Sent from a new acc because my account is on noprocast)

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