Employees at Better.com, a US-based mortgage startup, are quitting in “droves” after Vishal Garg returned as CEO over a month after laying off 900 employees in a single Zoom session, according to TechCrunch. Garg’s return was revealed by the company’s board of directors in an e-mail to staff earlier this month.
Indian-origin After a video of him firing 900 individuals via Zoom call went popular on social media in December 2021, Vishal Garg, the founder of Better.com, apologised for his approach of handling layoffs at the company. Vice said, citing the email, that Chief Financial Officer Kevin Ryan was in charge of the company’s day-to-day decisions and reporting to the board.
The CEO, who was heavily chastised for the ‘Zoomgate’ scandal, cited market performance and productivity as grounds for laying off employees in the US and India. During the Zoom video call, Garg told the staff, “If you’re on this call, you’re part of the unfortunate group that’s being laid off.” “Your job with us has been terminated with immediate effect.” This is Garg’s second wave of layoffs, according to him.
Better.com announced in May 2021 that it would go public by merging with Aurora Acquisition Corp, a blank-check firm, in a $7.7 billion deal.
Garg is also a founding partner of One Zero Capital, a venture capital firm. At the age of 21, the New York University graduate walked out of Morgan Stanley’s investment banking analyst program and founded MyRichUncle, a private student lender. It went public in 2005 and was later bought out by Merrill Lynch, which was then bought out by Bank of America.
That’s not all, though. Now that Garg has returned, he appears to be anxious about information being leaked to the public, and he and the other executives “have put everything on lockdown,” according to one employee.
Engineering managers, for example, were alleged to have held an AMA (Ask Me Anything) with Garg, with only in-person employees allowed to attend. Employees were had to sign NDAs and deposit their phones in paper bags, and metal detectors were used to ensure that no recording devices were there. Additionally, the company has apparently stopped internal Google document sharing and blocked access to all companywide dashboards — most likely due to a significant drop in sales. “There’s no transparency into anything,” the employee said.
While firing employees over Zoom sessions isn’t unheard of now that the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed more remote labor, Garg’s delivery was perceived as cruel and uncaring. As we previously reported, he had previously sent emails to his team in which he chastised them and insulted them, which didn’t help matters. Forbes published the contents of an email from Garg to his employees last year: “HELLO, BETTER TEAM. WAKE UP.” You’re WAY TOO SLOW. You’re a swarm of DUMB DOLPHINS, and… Sharks consume DUMB DOLPHINS that get entangled in nets. STOP IT NOW. STOP RIGHT NOW. IMMEDIATELY STOP IT. YOU ARE HUMILIATING ME.”
