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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?

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 in mass layoffs.

edmcnulty101 5y ago
This is a good point. At least they got a face to face. I had members of a team just get a slip in the past.
- azinman2 5y ago
  I think one of the bigger issues was that the CEO made it all about him on the call.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    Should’ve taken notes from Carta’s CEO when they did a RIF. Took ownership, and expressed both remorse and gratitude for the folks let go, instead of making it about themselves like a narcissist.
  - edmcnulty101 5y ago
    I find it strange that the CEO gave no one any warnings or any second chances. if that many people were doing what he claimed there was obviously a culture created to allow that. I personally think he's trying to lay off expensive workers and outsource them and this is a lame excuse attempting to gas light and blame the employee.
duxup 5y ago
Yeah if they brought them in and someone (depending on how many it could be inevitable) had COVID... just to fire them. I'm not sure I see that as being better.
bko 5y ago
It should probably be handled one by one via Zoom with the persons immediate manager and a representative from HR.
- bryanlarsen 5y ago
  Which would take days while rumour flies and chaos reigns.
- mmastrac 5y ago
  But think of all the money saved by the company! /s
- rvnx 5y ago
  No, because once you let the first person know on their 1:1 meeting there will be miscommunication / rumours, and everybody is going to be somewhat aware. However some people are going to have 1st party information, and others have heard of the rumours, and those people will feel offended to not have been made aware like everyone else.
  - fatbird 5y ago
    When this happened to me, we knew ahead of time in general, and waited for individual meetings, and it all worked out. As it is, there's still miscommunication and rumours while all the now-locked-out people meet with HR and return computers and such.
  - bko 5y ago
    This is how it happens normally in non-covid world. There is no reason you should fire everyone publicly by the CEO, likely someone the employee never interacts with. The person also needs to know the next steps, for instance if they'll get paid of for vacation days, how to sign up for Cobra (if in the US), etc. You can cut off access prior to notice. Ideally they would all be done within a short period. I've been around when a firm did a mass layoff. It's unpleasant and of course there are rumors and of course people are offended, but this is the correct way to handle it.
dilap 5y ago
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 personally feel uncomfortable.
- PascLeRasc 5y ago
  Same with calling people "the unlucky group", that felt really disrespectful.
- contravariant 5y ago
  Off topic but this might be the first time I've seen someone use the noun affect correctly.
  - kittiepryde 5y ago
    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
    - knicholes 5y ago
      I heard it a lot in psychology classes in college. People can have a "flat affect."
- castis 5y ago
  I imagine 900 1-on-1s could not be done quickly and word would spread very fast that firings were ramping up around the company. This would cause a whole lot of stress for those not being fired, just waiting for a call. Given the alternatives, the 900-wide bandaid-ripping-off method seems best.
  - darkandbrooding 5y ago
mytailorisrich 5y ago
In addition to that, I find it respectable that the CEO made the announcement himself directly to those concerned, although the way he communicated it might not have been that great. He could have delegated to the direct managers of those concerned and HR.
omnicognate 5y ago
Call them individually. It's not the fact it was done by zoom that's surprising/unusual, it's the fact it was done en masse.
- egeozcan 5y ago
  And they had to hear the CEO say he cried the first time he did this, without knowing what it is about. Why is he talking about his feelings? Perhaps his assistants were fired too so there weren't anyone to check his speech? Crazy.
judge2020 5y ago
IMO the issue is that this is right after a funding round. https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/30/better-com-gets-750m-cash-infusion-in-new-agreement-with-its-spac-backers/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/30/better-com-gets-750m-cash-...
- chrisstanchak 5y ago
  Probably a condition of the deal
  - pixelgeek 5y ago
    That would probably be the case. Its not unknown for companies to get funding on those sorts of conditions.
- dmos62 5y ago
  Right, sounds like an attempt to do a PR stunt.
- DangerousPie 5y ago
  That seems like an odd argument to make. They probably only got that funding because they agreed to slim down their workforce.
0_____0 5y ago
I was subject to a mass layoff in spring 2020. They did individual vid calls with all affected individuals. It was only a 10m call, with two people from a couple levels higher in the org than me, and an HR rep, but I appreciate that they took that time.
post-it 5y ago
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.”
- jcroll 5y ago
  Is there a link to this?
  - rackjack 5y ago
    It's in the posted article.
  - mach1ne 5y ago
    At the end of the article
  - renewiltord 5y ago
    Sadly, no. There is a quote from a section of it in the linked Forbes article, though. We'll have to wait for it to show up on https://twitter.com/TechEmails https://twitter.com/TechEmails
- rackjack 5y ago
  That is very surreal to read, for some reason.
- tyingq 5y ago
  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.
  - prionassembly 5y ago
    Hell, 10:1 would be okay and 1/10th of the price.
fatbird 5y ago
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 expected that if the video leaked, he would look sympathetic because he did it personally and talked about how hard it was for him.
- basisword 5y ago
  How is waiting days for a potential meeting to be scheduled in better?
- kevinmchugh 5y ago
  That would be the most unpleasant week of my career, regardless of the outcome. I'd get nothing done and probably be interviewing by the end of it.
- jawns 5y ago
  Agreed. You give employees a heads up that the layoffs will be occurring, which both sets expectations with those who are affected AND also allows those who aren't affected to understand what's going on. Then you take one of two approaches: If the CEO feels strongly that the news should come from them personally, you do the Zoom call, and then affected workers immediately meet with their managers for individual communication. Or you skip the Zoom calls and have the managers deliver the news. Obviously, you want the time between the "heads up" meeting and the meeting with the affected individuals to be short, maybe a day or less, so workers aren't spending too much time in dread mode. But it reduces the feeling of having been blindsided.
- newaccount74 5y ago
  Spend a week waiting if you get a call or not? I'd prefer the mass zoom call to that shit. The nice way to do it would be to send an email to everyone immediately telling them whether they are layed off or not, and schedule a personal one-on-one call with a manager or an HR person to answer any questions.
wedowhatwedo 5y ago
Each person being laid off deserves a private meeting with their manager where they are told this. The fact that they hired 900 people they now no longer need is a failing of the CEO by itself. If they work remotely, it can be a zoom meeting. Being told in a meeting with 900 people by someone you don't know is rude and tells me that anyone in leadership in this company are people I would not like to work for. The fact that he was more concerned about his feelings than the feelings of the 900 is even more evidence that this person has absolutely no empathy and managing people is the wrong job for them.
- swalsh 5y ago
  Not to mention the CEO spent more time talking about how this is impacting HIM. When you're laying people off, this isn't about you. Noone cares about you, this is about the people getting laid off. You need to be concerned about their feelings, what you're going to do to help THEM.
- throwaway6734 5y ago
  >The fact that they hired 900 people they now no longer need is a failing of the CEO by itself How so? Business circumstances are constantly changing
  - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
    You don't hire 900 people over one Zoom call. At some point, you have to figure out if you are hiring too many people, so you don't end up in a situation like this.
- agrippanux 5y ago
  If you’re letting go of 900 people, for the average person their manager is also being let go. In a good amount of cases, probably their manager’s manager. I think it was a good call for the CEO to do it instead of outsourcing to HR or a COO. He didn’t try to hide behind another exec. Anyone being let go - especially at the holidays - is going to be pretty pissed about it, and it was the right thing for the CEO to take the slings and arrows for it instead of an underling.
setgree 5y ago
I think the virality of it comes from this guy's general tone, e.g. a prior email in which he wrote: > You are a bunch of DUMB DOLPHINS...SO STOP IT. STOP IT. STOP IT RIGHT NOW. YOU ARE EMBARRASSING ME. but I agree that there's nothing obviously good about being fired in person. I prefer my difficult conversations to be as impersonal and private as possible. I remember being flabbergasted when a firm once scheduled a call with me to tell me about the outcome of my interviews -- the outcome was that I did not get the job! -- and wondering why it couldn't have just been an email. Ditto with a part-time job for which, on my final day, I was called into the office for a morning meeting in which I was let go; this which happened to take on 03/02/2020 in midtown Manhattan.
- stayfrosty420 5y ago
  What a weird turn of phrase. Comparatively a dumb dolphin is pretty smart still.
deleted 5y ago
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matt--f 5y ago
The company I used to work for, made us all drive into the office and then fired us all last November. It was just after a lockdown here in the UK
- jonnycomputer 5y ago
  ):
- DnDGrognard 5y ago
  A few years ago a German telco company did that to their uk subsidiary: 1 First made the uk subsidiary bankrupt and went into administration 2 Called every one to a mass meeting said your redundant 3 oh there's no £ - pick up the RB2 form to claim statutory redundancy from the UK tax payer.
pixelgeek 5y ago
I think it is just that the upper management doesn't value the time or feelings of their employees. They could have done the meetings virtually on an individual basis or in smaller groups. They just didn't want to spend the time to do it
andromeda-brain 5y ago
To me this story is more about the CEO's poor leadership and lack of empathy. Laying people off is something companies will have to do, and in this time of WFH companies will fumble around trying to consolidate on the best way to do it. But the CEO consoling himself in front of everyone whose lives he's upending is completely tone deaf. It's rumored that he followed up this call with an all-hands to instill fear in the remaining employees. And he also admitted to going on a Blind tirade to shift blame for the outrage onto all of the individuals who were let go. I would never want to work for this dude.
kibwen 5y ago
> in the days of covid and working from home I don't see how covid plays into this, unless this is suggesting that, pre-pandemic, it was common practice for CEOs to call 900 people into a single auditorium just to tell them that they're all fired. That sounds like a great way to end up hanged from the rafters on your own necktie.
- kristjansson 5y ago
  Not uncommon in these circumstances? Everyone gets an all-hands invite, some people get room A, some get room B. Then the only uncertainty prior is which side is which.
pkrotich 5y ago
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-fraud-claims-and-dumb-dolphins-a-tangled-past-haunts-bettercom-ceo-vishal-garg/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjeans/2020/11/20/mortgages...
thraway_bparrot 5y ago
There is no right way to layoff 900 people simultaneously, in the same way there is no right way to break up with someone who doesn't want to break up with you. There are just bad ways and worse ways. If you try to give everyone a 1:1 zoom call with their manager, the inevitable outcome is that the rumor mill starts turning and everyone spends the day terrified for their job, because the layoffs happen in a drip feed rather than all at once. I say this as someone who was laid off remotely during covid, as part of a large layoff of hundreds of people. I was told I was laid off by slack message, with a follow up zoom call later in the day with my manager and their manager. My manager had four or five such calls to make that day, each lasting at least 30 minutes. I was an unpleasant process, but I understand why they made the decisions they made. This Better.com layoff in particular sounds awful not because it happened over a Zoom call, but because the CEO is being incredibly unprofessional and badmouthing 900 former employees. That decision is not only in awful taste, but also has a likely strong negative effect on the ability of those 900 people to find new jobs easily.
- jiriknesl 5y ago
  Yes but what if the CEO is right and people were really tracking 8 hours of work a day and working 2? Isn't this a reason to be upset?
  - siva7 5y ago
    Not really because this isn’t your biggest problem then. Leadership must be exceptionally poor at this company if you hired almost thousand employees who don’t care.
deleted 5y ago
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karmasimida 5y ago
This CEO has the audacity to de-anonymized himself from a toxic comment on Blind, imagine that. He is made to be controversial
whoknew1122 5y ago
I mean, I get firing employees on a Zoom call. It may be one of those unfortunate necessities. But the way this person did it is terrible. > “This is the second time in my career I’m doing this and I do not want to do this. The last time I did it, I cried; this time I hope to be stronger,” Garg says early in the video, before noting that he is laying off "about" 15 percent of the company’s workforce just before the holidays. More than a minute into the call, Garg says, “If you’re on this call, you are part of the unlucky group that is being laid off. Your employment here is terminated effective immediately.” https://www.vice.com/en/article/88ggy3/ceo-feels-terrible-about-laying-off-900-employees-over-video-chat-does-it-anyway https://www.vice.com/en/article/88ggy3/ceo-feels-terrible-ab... He's prioritizing his feelings about firing people when talking to people who just lost their job. As a billionaire, he's hoping he doesn't cry while talking to people who hope that they can find a new job before their savings dry up and they can't pay their bills or eat. What an out-of-touch asshat this CEO is.
zitterbewegung 5y ago
No , use email and don’t use corporate speak. Going off at a tangent better.com issues mortgages and just got a $750MM cash infusion and they are still looking for jobs to fill. Make what conclusions that you can possibly have.
hintymad 5y ago
Isn't biggest issue in this debacle is that Better tracks its employee's activities? To quote the CEO: “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,” "
IncRnd 5y ago
It is likely there were HR reps or even managers of the fired individuals. Those managers could have spoken with the people. There doesn't need to be a zoom meeting of almost a thousand people getting fired.
chollida1 5y ago
I agree that you outline why its hard to layoff so many people. Let's asume you were just laid off, you and everyone else now have 5-10 questions that are specific to you that you want answered right away. How do you do that in a 500 person zoom call? With one on one meetings, this is trivial. Now you've setup a situation where you still need 500 individual meetings. I"m not sure a global zoom call did them any favours or helped them at all here.
- gruez 5y ago
  > I"m not sure a global zoom call did them any favours or helped them at all here. the benefit is that everyone knows upfront whether they were fired or not, rather than having rumors swirl around the office for a week.
yibg 5y ago
If the comments in this thread is any indication, you can't please everyone. Do it in mass and some people will be pissed off. Do it 1:1 and others will be pissed off.
oxfordmale 5y ago
This CEO violates all the rules of communicating bad news. It needs to be short and to the point, and should definitely not include self pity ("last time I was crying").
JackFr 5y ago
I have been part of a mass layoff via Zoom. You’d be surprised how easy it is to do with empathy and respect. When it’s handled with empathy and respect - much less likely to make HN front page though.
spookthesunset 5y ago
> Make them all risk their health to come to an in-person event, only to be fired? “Risk their health”? Grocery store workers have been coming into their office the entire time and I don’t see them dropping like flies. Same with Home Depot employees, and any other “essential” business. It requires a hell of a lot of privilege for tech workers to think they are entitled to stay home “to protect their health” while all these other people go in. It’s treating people like they are expendable…
hulitu 5y ago
TBH this looks like a toxic place to work at. If i had such a CEO i would look for another job. I hope that they all find a new and better jib and the toxic CEO gets what he deserves.
zild3d 5y ago
doing it over zoom isn't the problem. see airbnb https://news.airbnb.com/a-message-from-co-founder-and-ceo-brian-chesky/ https://news.airbnb.com/a-message-from-co-founder-and-ceo-br... overall just more thoughtful, 1:1 with their senior leader, made an employee job board to help get hired, severance, equity, etc. ``` Here is what will happen next I want to provide clarity to all of you as soon as possible. We have employees in 24 countries, and the time it will take to provide clarity will vary based on local laws and practices. Some countries require notifications about employment to be received in a very specific way. While our process may differ by country, we have tried to be thoughtful in planning for every employee. In the US and Canada, I can provide immediate clarity. Within the next few hours, those of you leaving Airbnb will receive a calendar invite to a departure meeting with a senior leader in your department. It was important to us that wherever we legally could, people were informed in a personal, 1:1 conversation. The final working day for departing employees based in the US and Canada will be Monday, May 11. We felt Monday would give people time to begin taking next steps and say goodbye — we understand and respect how important this is. ```
vanusa 5y ago
Drive to every employee's house to fire them in person? No, but like the sibling commenter said -- you can at least aim for a bare minimum, of, you know, class. Like an individual phone call. 10 minutes should do it. Really, it's not that hard, or expensive.
sporkland 5y ago
In my mind it wasn't as much the large group vs individual. It's how he did it. He made it about himself, which is rule #1 no no about firing or laying people off. No one cares about how you feel and if you cried last time. You're not the one losing your job. Put on your manager pants and be there for the employees.
coffee 5y ago
> 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? This isn't about a Zoom call. This is about companies taking massive, quick capital to rapidly expand head count at such a rate to which this inevitably occurs. It lacks responsibility, care, empathy, or even the slightest bit of concern for those that have invested their opportunity cost of being a part of your company.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
He could have just sent an email. I would rather that than a zoom call. Or have your immediate manger let you know. I watched the video, it seemed more like he was looking for sympathy at how hard his job firing people was. No one cares, they care that they just lost their job.
dmode 5y ago
Airbnb laid off 25% of the workforce, that has widely been regarded as a model for layoffs 1. Every employee had a zoom 1:1 2. Employees were given several months of pay, benefits, and allowed to keep their laptops 3. Employees were allowed to vest their stocks for the next window 4. Airbnb created an alumni, portal, slack channel, and a resume book to help them find next jobs 5. Founders hosted several zoom calls for impacted and non impacted employees. The last one was a 10 min standing ovation to departed employees 6. Airbnb also created a policy with a right to first job to former employees This was the right way to do layoffs
bartread 5y ago
As others have pointed out, the Zoom part isn't the big problem here. The delivery is. Just for starters, within under a minute he's made the whole thing about him. Comments like, "Last time I cried," and, "I hope I'll be stronger this time," are grossly inappropriate. Nobody gives a shit how he feels, nor should they. This isn't hard for him, it's hard for the people he's firing. He shows a complete lack of respect for his now former employees by making it all about him. He should have made it about them. He should have showed them some compassion and respect. Then there's the framing, the room, and his body language. He's miles away, barely looking at the camera, and constantly referring to notes printed out on paper. Not to mention he looks casual to the point of shabbiness, both in his dress and his demeanour, and there's distracting clutter around him. This is not hard to get right: sit directly in front of your laptop, and close enough to show head and shoulders only; look directly into the camera; have your notes on the screen and aligned with the camera so you don't have to keep looking away to refer to them; above all, STOP TALKING ABOUT YOURSELF. I could go on but the short version is that the way he handled the situation - a situation which for many of those losing their jobs would probably put them in dire financial straits - was extremely unprofessional and disrespectful.
- brandall10 5y ago
  This guy is a narcissistic asshat of the lowest calibre when you look at his online presence. This is entirely in character for him.
  - bartread 5y ago
    Yeah, funny you mention that. I did a bit of digging after I'd written that comment and, well, he's certainly said and done some quite unsavoury things.

edmcnulty101 5y ago

This is a good point. At least they got a face to face. I had members of a team just get a slip in the past.

azinman2 5y ago
I think one of the bigger issues was that the CEO made it all about him on the call.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  Should’ve taken notes from Carta’s CEO when they did a RIF. Took ownership, and expressed both remorse and gratitude for the folks let go, instead of making it about themselves like a narcissist.
- edmcnulty101 5y ago
  I find it strange that the CEO gave no one any warnings or any second chances. if that many people were doing what he claimed there was obviously a culture created to allow that. I personally think he's trying to lay off expensive workers and outsource them and this is a lame excuse attempting to gas light and blame the employee.

duxup 5y ago

Yeah if they brought them in and someone (depending on how many it could be inevitable) had COVID... just to fire them. I'm not sure I see that as being better.

bko 5y ago

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

bryanlarsen 5y ago
Which would take days while rumour flies and chaos reigns.
mmastrac 5y ago
But think of all the money saved by the company! /s
rvnx 5y ago
No, because once you let the first person know on their 1:1 meeting there will be miscommunication / rumours, and everybody is going to be somewhat aware. However some people are going to have 1st party information, and others have heard of the rumours, and those people will feel offended to not have been made aware like everyone else.
- fatbird 5y ago
  When this happened to me, we knew ahead of time in general, and waited for individual meetings, and it all worked out. As it is, there's still miscommunication and rumours while all the now-locked-out people meet with HR and return computers and such.
- bko 5y ago
  This is how it happens normally in non-covid world. There is no reason you should fire everyone publicly by the CEO, likely someone the employee never interacts with. The person also needs to know the next steps, for instance if they'll get paid of for vacation days, how to sign up for Cobra (if in the US), etc. You can cut off access prior to notice. Ideally they would all be done within a short period. I've been around when a firm did a mass layoff. It's unpleasant and of course there are rumors and of course people are offended, but this is the correct way to handle it.

dilap 5y ago

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 personally feel uncomfortable.

PascLeRasc 5y ago
Same with calling people "the unlucky group", that felt really disrespectful.
contravariant 5y ago
Off topic but this might be the first time I've seen someone use the noun affect correctly.
- kittiepryde 5y ago
  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
  - knicholes 5y ago
    I heard it a lot in psychology classes in college. People can have a "flat affect."
castis 5y ago
I imagine 900 1-on-1s could not be done quickly and word would spread very fast that firings were ramping up around the company. This would cause a whole lot of stress for those not being fired, just waiting for a call. Given the alternatives, the 900-wide bandaid-ripping-off method seems best.
- darkandbrooding 5y ago

mytailorisrich 5y ago

In addition to that, I find it respectable that the CEO made the announcement himself directly to those concerned, although the way he communicated it might not have been that great. He could have delegated to the direct managers of those concerned and HR.

omnicognate 5y ago

Call them individually. It's not the fact it was done by zoom that's surprising/unusual, it's the fact it was done en masse.

egeozcan 5y ago
And they had to hear the CEO say he cried the first time he did this, without knowing what it is about. Why is he talking about his feelings? Perhaps his assistants were fired too so there weren't anyone to check his speech? Crazy.

judge2020 5y ago

IMO the issue is that this is right after a funding round. https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/30/better-com-gets-750m-cash-infusion-in-new-agreement-with-its-spac-backers/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/30/better-com-gets-750m-cash-...

chrisstanchak 5y ago
Probably a condition of the deal
- pixelgeek 5y ago
  That would probably be the case. Its not unknown for companies to get funding on those sorts of conditions.
dmos62 5y ago
Right, sounds like an attempt to do a PR stunt.
DangerousPie 5y ago
That seems like an odd argument to make. They probably only got that funding because they agreed to slim down their workforce.

0_____0 5y ago

I was subject to a mass layoff in spring 2020. They did individual vid calls with all affected individuals. It was only a 10m call, with two people from a couple levels higher in the org than me, and an HR rep, but I appreciate that they took that time.

post-it 5y ago

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.”

jcroll 5y ago
Is there a link to this?
- rackjack 5y ago
  It's in the posted article.
- mach1ne 5y ago
  At the end of the article
- renewiltord 5y ago
  Sadly, no. There is a quote from a section of it in the linked Forbes article, though. We'll have to wait for it to show up on https://twitter.com/TechEmails https://twitter.com/TechEmails
rackjack 5y ago
That is very surreal to read, for some reason.
tyingq 5y ago
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.
- prionassembly 5y ago
  Hell, 10:1 would be okay and 1/10th of the price.

fatbird 5y ago

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 expected that if the video leaked, he would look sympathetic because he did it personally and talked about how hard it was for him.

basisword 5y ago
How is waiting days for a potential meeting to be scheduled in better?
kevinmchugh 5y ago
That would be the most unpleasant week of my career, regardless of the outcome. I'd get nothing done and probably be interviewing by the end of it.
jawns 5y ago
Agreed. You give employees a heads up that the layoffs will be occurring, which both sets expectations with those who are affected AND also allows those who aren't affected to understand what's going on. Then you take one of two approaches: If the CEO feels strongly that the news should come from them personally, you do the Zoom call, and then affected workers immediately meet with their managers for individual communication. Or you skip the Zoom calls and have the managers deliver the news. Obviously, you want the time between the "heads up" meeting and the meeting with the affected individuals to be short, maybe a day or less, so workers aren't spending too much time in dread mode. But it reduces the feeling of having been blindsided.
newaccount74 5y ago
Spend a week waiting if you get a call or not? I'd prefer the mass zoom call to that shit. The nice way to do it would be to send an email to everyone immediately telling them whether they are layed off or not, and schedule a personal one-on-one call with a manager or an HR person to answer any questions.

wedowhatwedo 5y ago

Each person being laid off deserves a private meeting with their manager where they are told this. The fact that they hired 900 people they now no longer need is a failing of the CEO by itself. If they work remotely, it can be a zoom meeting. Being told in a meeting with 900 people by someone you don't know is rude and tells me that anyone in leadership in this company are people I would not like to work for. The fact that he was more concerned about his feelings than the feelings of the 900 is even more evidence that this person has absolutely no empathy and managing people is the wrong job for them.

swalsh 5y ago
Not to mention the CEO spent more time talking about how this is impacting HIM. When you're laying people off, this isn't about you. Noone cares about you, this is about the people getting laid off. You need to be concerned about their feelings, what you're going to do to help THEM.
throwaway6734 5y ago
>The fact that they hired 900 people they now no longer need is a failing of the CEO by itself How so? Business circumstances are constantly changing
- disgruntledphd2 5y ago
  You don't hire 900 people over one Zoom call. At some point, you have to figure out if you are hiring too many people, so you don't end up in a situation like this.
agrippanux 5y ago
If you’re letting go of 900 people, for the average person their manager is also being let go. In a good amount of cases, probably their manager’s manager. I think it was a good call for the CEO to do it instead of outsourcing to HR or a COO. He didn’t try to hide behind another exec. Anyone being let go - especially at the holidays - is going to be pretty pissed about it, and it was the right thing for the CEO to take the slings and arrows for it instead of an underling.

setgree 5y ago

I think the virality of it comes from this guy's general tone, e.g. a prior email in which he wrote: > You are a bunch of DUMB DOLPHINS...SO STOP IT. STOP IT. STOP IT RIGHT NOW. YOU ARE EMBARRASSING ME. but I agree that there's nothing obviously good about being fired in person. I prefer my difficult conversations to be as impersonal and private as possible. I remember being flabbergasted when a firm once scheduled a call with me to tell me about the outcome of my interviews -- the outcome was that I did not get the job! -- and wondering why it couldn't have just been an email. Ditto with a part-time job for which, on my final day, I was called into the office for a morning meeting in which I was let go; this which happened to take on 03/02/2020 in midtown Manhattan.

stayfrosty420 5y ago
What a weird turn of phrase. Comparatively a dumb dolphin is pretty smart still.

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matt--f 5y ago

The company I used to work for, made us all drive into the office and then fired us all last November. It was just after a lockdown here in the UK

jonnycomputer 5y ago
):
DnDGrognard 5y ago
A few years ago a German telco company did that to their uk subsidiary: 1 First made the uk subsidiary bankrupt and went into administration 2 Called every one to a mass meeting said your redundant 3 oh there's no £ - pick up the RB2 form to claim statutory redundancy from the UK tax payer.

pixelgeek 5y ago

I think it is just that the upper management doesn't value the time or feelings of their employees. They could have done the meetings virtually on an individual basis or in smaller groups. They just didn't want to spend the time to do it

andromeda-brain 5y ago

To me this story is more about the CEO's poor leadership and lack of empathy. Laying people off is something companies will have to do, and in this time of WFH companies will fumble around trying to consolidate on the best way to do it. But the CEO consoling himself in front of everyone whose lives he's upending is completely tone deaf. It's rumored that he followed up this call with an all-hands to instill fear in the remaining employees. And he also admitted to going on a Blind tirade to shift blame for the outrage onto all of the individuals who were let go. I would never want to work for this dude.

kibwen 5y ago

> in the days of covid and working from home I don't see how covid plays into this, unless this is suggesting that, pre-pandemic, it was common practice for CEOs to call 900 people into a single auditorium just to tell them that they're all fired. That sounds like a great way to end up hanged from the rafters on your own necktie.

kristjansson 5y ago
Not uncommon in these circumstances? Everyone gets an all-hands invite, some people get room A, some get room B. Then the only uncertainty prior is which side is which.

pkrotich 5y ago

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-fraud-claims-and-dumb-dolphins-a-tangled-past-haunts-bettercom-ceo-vishal-garg/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjeans/2020/11/20/mortgages...

thraway_bparrot 5y ago

There is no right way to layoff 900 people simultaneously, in the same way there is no right way to break up with someone who doesn't want to break up with you. There are just bad ways and worse ways. If you try to give everyone a 1:1 zoom call with their manager, the inevitable outcome is that the rumor mill starts turning and everyone spends the day terrified for their job, because the layoffs happen in a drip feed rather than all at once. I say this as someone who was laid off remotely during covid, as part of a large layoff of hundreds of people. I was told I was laid off by slack message, with a follow up zoom call later in the day with my manager and their manager. My manager had four or five such calls to make that day, each lasting at least 30 minutes. I was an unpleasant process, but I understand why they made the decisions they made. This Better.com layoff in particular sounds awful not because it happened over a Zoom call, but because the CEO is being incredibly unprofessional and badmouthing 900 former employees. That decision is not only in awful taste, but also has a likely strong negative effect on the ability of those 900 people to find new jobs easily.

jiriknesl 5y ago
Yes but what if the CEO is right and people were really tracking 8 hours of work a day and working 2? Isn't this a reason to be upset?
- siva7 5y ago
  Not really because this isn’t your biggest problem then. Leadership must be exceptionally poor at this company if you hired almost thousand employees who don’t care.

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karmasimida 5y ago

This CEO has the audacity to de-anonymized himself from a toxic comment on Blind, imagine that. He is made to be controversial

whoknew1122 5y ago

I mean, I get firing employees on a Zoom call. It may be one of those unfortunate necessities. But the way this person did it is terrible. > “This is the second time in my career I’m doing this and I do not want to do this. The last time I did it, I cried; this time I hope to be stronger,” Garg says early in the video, before noting that he is laying off "about" 15 percent of the company’s workforce just before the holidays. More than a minute into the call, Garg says, “If you’re on this call, you are part of the unlucky group that is being laid off. Your employment here is terminated effective immediately.” https://www.vice.com/en/article/88ggy3/ceo-feels-terrible-about-laying-off-900-employees-over-video-chat-does-it-anyway https://www.vice.com/en/article/88ggy3/ceo-feels-terrible-ab... He's prioritizing his feelings about firing people when talking to people who just lost their job. As a billionaire, he's hoping he doesn't cry while talking to people who hope that they can find a new job before their savings dry up and they can't pay their bills or eat. What an out-of-touch asshat this CEO is.

zitterbewegung 5y ago

No , use email and don’t use corporate speak. Going off at a tangent better.com issues mortgages and just got a $750MM cash infusion and they are still looking for jobs to fill. Make what conclusions that you can possibly have.

hintymad 5y ago

Isn't biggest issue in this debacle is that Better tracks its employee's activities? To quote the CEO: “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,” "

IncRnd 5y ago

It is likely there were HR reps or even managers of the fired individuals. Those managers could have spoken with the people. There doesn't need to be a zoom meeting of almost a thousand people getting fired.

chollida1 5y ago

I agree that you outline why its hard to layoff so many people. Let's asume you were just laid off, you and everyone else now have 5-10 questions that are specific to you that you want answered right away. How do you do that in a 500 person zoom call? With one on one meetings, this is trivial. Now you've setup a situation where you still need 500 individual meetings. I"m not sure a global zoom call did them any favours or helped them at all here.

gruez 5y ago
> I"m not sure a global zoom call did them any favours or helped them at all here. the benefit is that everyone knows upfront whether they were fired or not, rather than having rumors swirl around the office for a week.

yibg 5y ago

If the comments in this thread is any indication, you can't please everyone. Do it in mass and some people will be pissed off. Do it 1:1 and others will be pissed off.

oxfordmale 5y ago

This CEO violates all the rules of communicating bad news. It needs to be short and to the point, and should definitely not include self pity ("last time I was crying").

JackFr 5y ago

I have been part of a mass layoff via Zoom. You’d be surprised how easy it is to do with empathy and respect. When it’s handled with empathy and respect - much less likely to make HN front page though.

spookthesunset 5y ago

> Make them all risk their health to come to an in-person event, only to be fired? “Risk their health”? Grocery store workers have been coming into their office the entire time and I don’t see them dropping like flies. Same with Home Depot employees, and any other “essential” business. It requires a hell of a lot of privilege for tech workers to think they are entitled to stay home “to protect their health” while all these other people go in. It’s treating people like they are expendable…

hulitu 5y ago

TBH this looks like a toxic place to work at. If i had such a CEO i would look for another job. I hope that they all find a new and better jib and the toxic CEO gets what he deserves.

zild3d 5y ago

doing it over zoom isn't the problem. see airbnb https://news.airbnb.com/a-message-from-co-founder-and-ceo-brian-chesky/ https://news.airbnb.com/a-message-from-co-founder-and-ceo-br... overall just more thoughtful, 1:1 with their senior leader, made an employee job board to help get hired, severance, equity, etc. ``` Here is what will happen next I want to provide clarity to all of you as soon as possible. We have employees in 24 countries, and the time it will take to provide clarity will vary based on local laws and practices. Some countries require notifications about employment to be received in a very specific way. While our process may differ by country, we have tried to be thoughtful in planning for every employee. In the US and Canada, I can provide immediate clarity. Within the next few hours, those of you leaving Airbnb will receive a calendar invite to a departure meeting with a senior leader in your department. It was important to us that wherever we legally could, people were informed in a personal, 1:1 conversation. The final working day for departing employees based in the US and Canada will be Monday, May 11. We felt Monday would give people time to begin taking next steps and say goodbye — we understand and respect how important this is. ```

vanusa 5y ago

Drive to every employee's house to fire them in person? No, but like the sibling commenter said -- you can at least aim for a bare minimum, of, you know, class. Like an individual phone call. 10 minutes should do it. Really, it's not that hard, or expensive.

sporkland 5y ago

In my mind it wasn't as much the large group vs individual. It's how he did it. He made it about himself, which is rule #1 no no about firing or laying people off. No one cares about how you feel and if you cried last time. You're not the one losing your job. Put on your manager pants and be there for the employees.

coffee 5y ago

> 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? This isn't about a Zoom call. This is about companies taking massive, quick capital to rapidly expand head count at such a rate to which this inevitably occurs. It lacks responsibility, care, empathy, or even the slightest bit of concern for those that have invested their opportunity cost of being a part of your company.

stjohnswarts 5y ago

He could have just sent an email. I would rather that than a zoom call. Or have your immediate manger let you know. I watched the video, it seemed more like he was looking for sympathy at how hard his job firing people was. No one cares, they care that they just lost their job.

dmode 5y ago

Airbnb laid off 25% of the workforce, that has widely been regarded as a model for layoffs 1. Every employee had a zoom 1:1 2. Employees were given several months of pay, benefits, and allowed to keep their laptops 3. Employees were allowed to vest their stocks for the next window 4. Airbnb created an alumni, portal, slack channel, and a resume book to help them find next jobs 5. Founders hosted several zoom calls for impacted and non impacted employees. The last one was a 10 min standing ovation to departed employees 6. Airbnb also created a policy with a right to first job to former employees This was the right way to do layoffs

bartread 5y ago

As others have pointed out, the Zoom part isn't the big problem here. The delivery is. Just for starters, within under a minute he's made the whole thing about him. Comments like, "Last time I cried," and, "I hope I'll be stronger this time," are grossly inappropriate. Nobody gives a shit how he feels, nor should they. This isn't hard for him, it's hard for the people he's firing. He shows a complete lack of respect for his now former employees by making it all about him. He should have made it about them. He should have showed them some compassion and respect. Then there's the framing, the room, and his body language. He's miles away, barely looking at the camera, and constantly referring to notes printed out on paper. Not to mention he looks casual to the point of shabbiness, both in his dress and his demeanour, and there's distracting clutter around him. This is not hard to get right: sit directly in front of your laptop, and close enough to show head and shoulders only; look directly into the camera; have your notes on the screen and aligned with the camera so you don't have to keep looking away to refer to them; above all, STOP TALKING ABOUT YOURSELF. I could go on but the short version is that the way he handled the situation - a situation which for many of those losing their jobs would probably put them in dire financial straits - was extremely unprofessional and disrespectful.

brandall10 5y ago
This guy is a narcissistic asshat of the lowest calibre when you look at his online presence. This is entirely in character for him.
- bartread 5y ago
  Yeah, funny you mention that. I did a bit of digging after I'd written that comment and, well, he's certainly said and done some quite unsavoury things.