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> Garg acknowledges he’s “hard-nosed” and the famous Zoom layoffs severely damaged the company’s reputation — a mistake he knows will continue to haunt him.
I really hope Garg is here reading this. It’s not just a mistake that will continue to haunt him, it’s all he’s ever going to be. It’s how he was introduced in this headline. It’s how he’ll be referred to when he starts his next venture. If newspapers publish his obituary someday, it’ll be in the first few sentences explaining why anyone knows his name.
This is the closest thing to hope we have sometimes. Well said.
Wondering why he's taking the heat out of literally everyone else, it's not like layoffs were rare to begin with and that this is the last poor bastard we will ever know to be responsible.
He's not. This is one article.
Former employee (though not part of that famous round of layoff)
The noise around Zoom firing was ridiculous. We were a largely remote company with most people having never been to the office (I don't think I had, at that moment) so how exactly do you lay off people except remotely? VG didn't do a great job there but the idea of doing it remotely being evil or whatever was ridiculous - should the people be flown in to NY just to get fired?
Overall I find VG a flawed but reasonable dude. He definitely put his ass on the line for the business, was generous with equity - and was a pretty engaged leader. I don't think much about my time at Better but it was fine.
There's a huge range of options between a terse Zoom call with 900 people on it and flying everyone to NY. And if you're someone who previously said "You are TOO DAMN SLOW. You are a bunch of DUMB DOLPHINS… SO STOP IT. STOP IT. STOP IT RIGHT NOW. YOU ARE EMBARRASSING ME" to your employees, you may want to lean towards the more humane options if you don't want to get dragged.
There is nothing inhumane about announcing layoffs over Zoom though. Hell I'd prefer to be laid off in the least personal way possible because I'm a grown-ass adult who doesn't need my company to treat my like a child. Tell me and get it over with.
Just like a mass wedding is fucking stupid, so is a mass layoff.
You can have the fucking common decency to do a 1:1 Zoom call with each person. Or at least each fucking team.
Firing 900 people simultaneously is not only stupid and callous, but lazy. There’s absolutely no excuse for that level of inhumanity.
I am an adult but I am also a human
I would expect a layoff with the same level of care as onboarding. If that’s done 900 people at a time over Zoom, cool. We all know we’re part of a herd.
It just sucks and is completely unnecessary to treat people like garbage on their way out if you have a company culture that otherwise treats people well.
Oh wow! He actually said that dumb dolphins line in email https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59554585
>put his ass on the line
Please don't do this. There are many people who put their ass on the line. He is not one of them. He risked almost nothing from a human perspective.
Clearly his ass was on the line based on the fact that he was fired and is now likely unemployable.
That is, unless there's a contingent out there considering hurting him for this. Probably not justified in this case, but maybe we'd get better leadership if it were a tad more common.
I find it off-putting that you and another poster think you are in position to evaluate someone else's sacrifice. I pressume that if you had put years and lots of money towards something - you would consider that significant "on a human level".
> so how exactly do you lay off people except remotely?
You have their managers do it. Privately. 500 people at once is just lazy and hateful.
How long does that take (900 people) - how does your entire 10k people company feel for hours and days knowing the layoffs are happening but not their fate? And how many of those said 10k mortgage originators and engineers do something stupid to customer financial data they have access to while under duress of this uncertainty?
> He definitely put his ass on the line for the business
Oh did he risk being homeless? Let's not be hyperbolic here—all he risked was minor embarrassment
"Minor embarrassment" is what politicians who 'take full responsibility' while not facing any consequences 'suffer'.[1] Getting canned for it is a bit more than that.
There was some dynamic with Softbank which required VG to put a lot of personal money on the line to keep going. I forget the dynamic exactly.
> VG didn't do a great job there but the idea of doing it remotely being evil or whatever was ridiculous
I don't think the issue was the communications medium (Zoom.)
> I don't think much about my time at Better but it was fine.
That's the biggest tell about leadership at any company.
I’ve been laid off via remote meeting. The folks doing it were unhelpful (couldn’t answer typical questions) / they were some third party company hired to fire people. I didn’t like it… but not much would have made it “better”.
The CEO actually doing it himself is surprising. Lots of executives wouldn’t put themselves out there like that.
Oh, will some one think of the poor CEOs for a change! He puts his ass on the line!
Pathetic
> It bounced back by training AI models to quickly process mortgages…
Between the years of 2018-2025, I led very many professional discussions and educational presentations regarding the theory and application of AI/ML in the org I worked (a ~120 person org lacking in any substantive expertise or awareness of the field).
One of the most important topics within those conversations was demystification. Several times I was asked (in earnest, by adults, in public fora) about “terminator/skynet scenarios”, sometimes intended metaphorically (related to the profession) and sometimes literally.
My response every single time:
I don’t fear “skynet”. My biggest fears surrounding the continued proliferation of AI are the mundane, boring, and nascent uses that completely bastardize the world as we know it. Uses like mortgage/loan approval, healthcare coverage approval, hiring, legal adjudications etc., etc.
Uses where the decision outcomes have a direct, major, intimate impact on people’s lives.
I am generally pro-AI/ML (when applied thoughtfully), but my greatest fears are and have ALWAYS been in knowing just how much easier it enables these kinds of decisions to inevitably be outsourced or made in an otherwise (more) thoughtless, dehumanizing way.
While it’s easy (and at times cathartic) to criticize big corp leaders, the CEO and company described in the article gives me a visceral reaction deeply within the uncanny valley that is actually difficult to describe.
> Garg acknowledges he’s “hard-nosed” and the famous Zoom layoffs severely damaged the company’s reputation — a mistake he knows will continue to haunt him. But as criticized as Garg has been for placing near-impossible demands on the company and its employees, he said Lewis convinced the board he didn’t push hard enough.
> So when shareholders said, ‘You need to take a back seat,’ I complied.”
Man shocked to learn the evolution of shareholder value did not, in fact value him.
Leopard who eats faces surprised to find out other leopard ate his face.
> “He hoodwinked me,” the just-ousted Better Home & Finance CEO said about Daniel Lewis, the man who replaced him last week. “He said he liked the company’s strategy. He praised us on X and used that to get on our board and win our confidences.”
I love SpaceX's strategy for getting us to AGI, the moon, and beyond!
> just as he brought the company to the precipice of success.
I love how success has a precipice.
This plus the zoom firing anecdote is basically confirming that Garg operates at a Cousin Greg level.
You read this from the outside and ask yourself, "how does this guy sleep at night?". He sleeps fine, of course, justifying his own actions/behaviors without thinking of others.
Luigi Mangione spent months trying to contact someone at United Healthcare to no avail. Only when he pretended to be an investor managing a large number of assets did he hear a response.
Luigi was never a UHC customer per the news story today on his guilty plea.
> how does this guy sleep at night?
On a big pile of money, surrounded by beautiful women.
So people really underestimate (because of, the implication) the power of money to rewire the brand to excuse larger and larger immoral and unethical behaviors and to permanently not understand how the rest of the reality is being bent to the money bubble illusion.
> Luigi Mangione spent months trying to contact someone at United Healthcare to no avail. Only when he pretended to be an investor managing a large number of assets did he hear a response.
Luigi Mangione was not a United Healthcare customer.
This seems like an incredibly important detail that keeps being left out of this tidbit as it circulates social media. You’re trying to imply that he had some grievance with his insurance with the company, but he was not insured by them. He was trying to get in contact with anyone so he could murder someone high profile. He called the investor relations line as a way to social engineer that.
Why is it incredibly important? You said that, but didn't continue.
Must grievances be only with employers/patrons to be valid?
Well, that is one thing Vishal has going for him, he’s not a murderer. I hope he sleeps a lot better at night than Mangione does.
Great irony: the names under which the company which Vishal Garg was CEO of (Better Home & Finance Holding Company) does business are Better and Better.com [1]. :-)
> “There was never a $BETR without @vishal_better. That demands respect.”
and
> “(Lewis’) thoughts about cost savings were good. His ideas about innovation were not,” Garg argued. “It’s so much easier when we’re this close for someone to come in and say that they could have done better.”
The user of better for Better, had me chuckling in these parts.
Overall, I think, we can safely say that Better has definitely seen some better times.
In my humble opinion, he is representative of an evil that is creeping into corporate America. Don't get me wrong: It was always "evil" by some definition, but not like this. It's becoming a cartoon version of "American business". It's like the people in leadership positions increasingly think that running a business consists of yelling at your direct reports until things are done, and sucking up to your superiors, and that's the whole job description.
> says he was fired on August 3 just as he brought the company to the precipice of success.
> Today, with an imploded refi business and rates closing in on 7%, the AI mortgage company’s market value stands at just $300 million.
Forgive the snipping here, but is the company actually turning around or on the brink of success now? Is there any sign the firings helped them 8 months later?
The 900 person layoffs were in 2021.
The entire refinancing industry collapsed, its a miracle they didn't file for bankruptcy - they are not totally out of the woods but they do have a great product and great growth.
Why is a layoff on zoom considered worse or more controversial than layoff by 4-6AM emails (which is what other companies like Meta, Oracle, Atlassian, etc did)?
it is only allowed to post the most controversial case?
you can't comment in 2 threads simultaneously but that doesn't make this case the only one that got people upset.
The Schrodinger's ragebait.
It's not about the post, but the fact that he's referred to as "ceo who fired 900 people on zoom". Nobody calls Mike Cannon-Brookes (Atlassian ceo) as "ceo who fired 1600 people by 6am email", for example.
wow I forgot about about this company and this fiasco
time to forget about it again
It doesn't work like that bud.
People (you) fired don't get their jobs back because they say "they were doing a great job".
Pushes mass layoffs to appease board or investors. Then cries to news outlets when the same is done to him.
He is nothing but a tool for the billionaires. Nothing else. What did he risk? Nothing. Public embarrassment at best. He gets a golden parachute like every other C-level asshole and lives the rest of his life without having to worry about anything.
Tough luck buddy. Every CEO job published in linked in have a 1000 applicants in 2 hours. /s
he should get his job back around black friday with enough time for another firing round at Christmas time