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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 wrot
by 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 agoIs there a link to this?
- rackjack 5y agoIt's in the posted article.
- mach1ne 5y agoAt the end of the article
- renewiltord 5y agoSadly, 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 agoThat is very surreal to read, for some reason.
- tyingq 5y agoThis 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 agoHell, 10:1 would be okay and 1/10th of the price.
- baby 5y agoDisagree. 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.
- bumby 5y agoI think it boils down to leadership is really about managing relationships. This method is just too impersonal for most people, just like breaking off a romantic relationship via text is generally considered weak and frowned upon.
- johndubchak 5y agoWait, you're not supposed to break up over text? Since when?!?!?!
- recursive 5y agoI'm almost certain this is a joke. Right?
- johndubchak 5y agoYes. My apologies, I thought it seemed obvious.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- throwanem 5y agoI suspect it is rare, though I suppose not impossible, that anyone needs to break off 900 romantic relationships at once.
- achow 5y agoBetter.com CEO Threatened to Burn His Business Partner Alive. Now He’s a Billionaire. Last fall, employees at one of America’s fastest-growing startups began making anxious phone calls. They believed that CEO Vishal Garg—a volatile entrepreneur with a history of disgruntled business partners—had been giving huge amounts of equity... https://www.thedailybeast.com/bettercom-ceo-vishal-garg-threatened-to-burn-his-business-partner-alive-now-hes-a-billionaire https://www.thedailybeast.com/bettercom-ceo-vishal-garg-thre...
- vmception 5y agoNice, when we started playing with some financial engineering we also noticed that vesting could be any unit of time. So we did grants with super low cost basis (it was very early there was nobody else to placate), and the recipients did 83(b) elections to recognize the income at the low cost basis, so when they exercised at fair market value soon after it wouldnt be income at that point in time, only capital gains when they sale (which is offsettable much more easily than income, or gets a lower tax rate if you hold it ling enough anyway). This just nullifies a big income tax bill. Fun game, if you know what you’re doing. Expensive annoying game if you dont.
- netizen-936824 5y agoI don't think that was the point of the linked article Pretty sure it was the threatening someone to burn them alive
- vmception 5y agooh, right, that. it also presented the shareholdings and the compliant ways of transferring consolidated ownership in a negative light
- YetAnotherNick 5y agoI know this looks bad but I generally appreciate manage giving clear warnings like this before firing. I have seen firings in companies where employee had no clue that the manager was not happy with him. I know this type of warning is the thing that would get published in the press by disgruntled employee and so managers couldn't give negative feedback and in the firing speech managers just tell that someone is not a good fit for the company or some other HR shit.
- chrisseaton 5y agoI think you can warn people about their performance without using abuse.
- djrogers 5y agoAbuse? Really? Is a single email where someone vents frustration for 2 lines actually abuse?
- chrisseaton 5y agoYes name calling - 'dumb'.
- obstacle1 5y agoSay a couple has a good relationship. One day, Partner A has a bad day at work. A comes home and screams at Partner B: "you're dumb! you're slow! why isn't dinner ready? you're a dolphin!" Partner A was just venting frustration after having a terrible day. Is that abuse? YES! Unequivocally, yes. There is no excuse for insulting, yelling, or otherwise treating other human beings as lesser than. It's abuse, always, even one time. And frankly if it happens once, it's very unlikely it isn't a repeated pattern of behavior.
- stormcode 5y agoYes, in my opinion it is. Think about abuse in other contexts to put it in perspective. If a teacher in the middle of giving a homework assignment had said the same thing, would that be okay? What about a police officer who pulled someone over during a traffic stop? What about a customer at a drive thru saying this into the speaker? This is not a random person on the street corner shouting at other random passers by. This guy is in a position of power over the people he is communicating with.
- nradov 5y agoThe funny thing is that sharks are more likely to be eaten by dolphins (especially orcas) than vice versa. And sharks also get caught in nets. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/killer-whales-orcas-eat-great-white-sharks https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/killer-wh... I guess Garg is just as weak on marine biology as he is on leadership and business ethics.
- AutumnCurtain 5y agoPerhaps he's got some breakdown on how dolphin intelligence impacts those stats given his emphasis on them being dumb dolphins
- beerandt 5y agoI imagine it as a callback to some company wide training or team-building exercise or corporate culture story where the keynote/"message from our fearless leader" was some sort of dolphin parable. But maybe I'm giving him too much credit.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoGiven that he threatened to staple his business partner to the wall and burn him alive, you are probably giving him too much credit. https://www.thedailybeast.com/bettercom-ceo-vishal-garg-threatened-to-burn-his-business-partner-alive-now-hes-a-billionaire?source=articles&via=rss https://www.thedailybeast.com/bettercom-ceo-vishal-garg-thre...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- micah94 5y agoto be fair, he was talking about DUMB dolphins.
- johndubchak 5y agoYou are more kind than I would be.
- mrits 5y agoYou 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.
- omnicognate 5y agoThose logistics are no worse than the equivalent in person.
- gbear605 5y agoThis was done at my previous company near the beginning of the pandemic, where half of the company (about 1200 people) were laid off, entirely with one-on-one calls. It worked well and I appreciated it personally.
- Tempest1981 5y agoBut the anxiety of waiting all day, as you watch your coworkers slowly drop, and send their farewell emails... wondering if you'll be next... I'd rather find out all at once.
- black_13 5y agoMy fun times at AMD
- tshaddox 5y ago> 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.
- thatguy0900 5y agoObviously to spare the poor manager the hassle of being asked if they will have a job in two days or not
- fourseventy 5y agoassuming they did a 20 minute meeting for each employee thats 233 hours or 29 business days to fire all 700 of them...
- nulbyte 5y agoJust over 233 person-hours of work isn't 233 hours of work. Assuming team sizes average 20, that work can be spread across 35 managers, requiring less than a business day to complete. Even assuming 900 people as mentioned in the headline, that's still less than a day's work. Larger-than-average teams may require more time, but this could still be easily accomplished over two business days.
- 6510 5y agohe would have to fire 1000 people to cover the cost
- GrinningFool 5y agoThis reads like a solution to a twisted elementary school math problem, but: Assuming 1 manager for 10 employees, that's 90 managers each doing a 3h20 minute block of 20 minute meetings, allowing all to be fired in one morning.
- Sohcahtoa82 5y agoWhat if the manager is also getting fired?
- VRay 5y agoThat's the cost of doing business, you keep the profits and in exchange you don't treat your employees like fucking garbage. He didn't even need to lay them off, according to the article. He just wanted "a fortress balance sheet going into the holidays"
- missedthecue 5y agoFrom the employees' perspective, who wants to sit around in angst for a month while your friends and colleagues are dropping like flies, wondering if you're next? One and done is the way to do it in my opinion. Dragging out bad news seldom works out well.
- belter 5y agoGot his metaphors wrong: "The Dark Secrets That Dolphins Don’t Want You to Know" https://slate.com/human-interest/2009/05/the-dark-secrets-that-dolphins-don-t-want-you-to-know.html https://slate.com/human-interest/2009/05/the-dark-secrets-th...
- DoneWithAllThat 5y agoNow this is just moving the goalposts. Can someone please help me understand what I’m supposed to be outraged about? It seems to be a confetti of grievances meant to evoke an emotional reaction.
- literallyWTF 5y agoI guess your ok with the CEO of the company you work for calling you a dumb dolphin? Lol
- honkycat 5y agoThis dude is embodiment of why we created agile. What a childish way to look at engineering. Product: "What are you working on?" Engineering: "That is up to you. What is important? The answer can't be everything." Product: "Why is it taking so long?" Engineering: Here is what the developers expect it to take. It will almost certainly take longer. When are we supposed to get X project done with our current workload? What falls off? If we crunch we will lose our best talent who will leave to go do the same work for more pay somewhere else.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]