About 900 employees of the American mortgage company Better were surprised last Wednesday (1) by the announcement that they were being laid off, during a video call. The news was given by the company’s chief executive, Vishal Garg, at a short meeting via Zoom, according to CNN.
“If you’re on that call, you’re part of an unlucky group that’s being fired. Your contract here will immediately terminate,” said Garg. The video of the meeting was obtained by CNN Business.
Those fired were part of teams such as Recruitment, Diversity and Inclusion and represented 9% of the company’s workforce.
Also according to CNN, Garg would have said in the video call that the layoffs were motivated by the performance and productivity of employees and the search for market efficiency. “I don’t want to do this. The last time I did this I cried,” he would have said.
According to Fortune magazine, the executive would have posted a series of messages on a professional social network, days after the mass layoff, in which he claimed that the fired employees would have low productivity and would be stealing from their colleagues and clients when they worked only two hours a day. .
The company’s chief financial officer, Kevin Ryan, lamented the layoffs taking place around the holiday season. “However, a low-debt balance sheet and a small, focused workforce together have allowed us to hit the home market, which is radically evolving,” Ryan told CNN Business.
The company president has been at the center of several other controversies in recent months. In an email sent to employees and released by Forbes magazine in November, Garg reportedly called the professionals “nerds” and said they were “dumb dolphins” who “were embarrassing him”.
“You guys are VERY SLOW. You guys are a bunch of DUMB DOLPHINS… STOP. STOP. STOP NOW. YOU’RE SHAMEING ME,” Garg wrote.
In August, the Daily Beast website also reported that an employee fired for committing bullying had received several perks from Garg, such as shares on the stock exchange with benefits greater than those offered to other employees.
Better was founded in 2016 and went public in May this year. The company received $750 million from investors Softback and Aurora Acquisiton Corp last week and its balance sheet is expected to reach $1 billion, according to CNN.
.
I have over 8 years of experience in the news industry. I have worked for various news websites and have also written for a few news agencies. I mostly cover healthcare news, but I am also interested in other topics such as politics, business, and entertainment. In my free time, I enjoy writing fiction and spending time with my family and friends.
