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Better.com CEO Vishal Garg steps back as employees detail how he ‘led by fear’

187 points by myth_drannon 5y ago

baby 5y ago
This story is only getting better and better.com
andrew_ 5y ago
Every story that's come out since this mess started vidates the bad vibes I got from their recruiter on the first call, and my decision to walk away.
vanusa 5y ago
He already had a reputation for using abusive language in emails to employees, but the treatment toward his investors was yet another shock. Abusing employees is more or less expected, out in techland. Ruffle investors' feathers, however, and there may be consequences.
- SEJeff 5y ago
  Why? When engineer salaries are quite good, many engineers are able to easily move laterally between top firms. It should not be normalized to be awful to your employees.
- sharken 5y ago
  Maybe expected but certainly not accepted. In tech the only way to gain respect is to know what you are doing, shouting and using abusive language makes you lose that respect. Keep it up, and you have to start looking for a new employee.
  - vanusa 5y ago
    In tech the only way to gain respect is to know what you are doing, shouting and using abusive language makes you lose that respect. That's the platonic ideal, at least. The reality on the ground is often far different.
  - weare138 5y ago
    If your career is in tech sure but Garg's of the world are seldom one of us. In business world the end justifies the means. This type of behavior is not only tolerated but often encouraged. This is only becoming an issue now because the story went viral and is generating bad press which is bad for profits.
- polote 5y ago
  > Ruffle investors' feathers, however, and there may be consequences. Because that's their main power https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29320078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29320078 Your Board of Directors is Probably Going to Fire You 718 points
- eikenberry 5y ago
  > Abusing employees is more or less expected, out in techland. Which techland do you live in? In my techland there are tons of jobs at places without abusive leadership where you can get a job in a few weeks. No one I know in my land expects this sort of treatment as everyone knows it won't stand.
  - bsuvc 5y ago
    I guess it depends on what they meant by "techland". I think companies who are tech companies or where tech is central to the product tend to attract good tech leaders who treat their teams well. But at companies where tech is seen as a secondary to the product tech employees are sometimes treated poorly, with things like overwork/abuse of agile processes to extract more work out of developers, unsustainable on-call rotations, unreasonable support response expectations, understaffed teams, restricted budgets, inadequate equipment like super cheap budget laptops, etc. Sure they might add a foosball table and buy a pizza once in a while, but by and large many companies don't treated tech especially well. I'm not sure if it is a lack of respect (some companies see developers as a pluggable commodity) or resentment for having to pay them more than they think they should have to. I guess it depends on where you live, but some cities just don't have a lot of pure tech companies, so you are stuck with places like these.
    - eikenberry 5y ago
      I agree that there are places like that, I worked at one briefly.. the key there being the word 'briefly'. As soon as it got annoying I started looking and had a new job pretty quick. Lack of mobility used to be an issue as well, but with all the current remote work possibilities this is no longer the case. The bad employers will end up with the bottom of the barrel, just like in cities with lots of good options, as all their talent will be able to find work elsewhere.
      - bsuvc 5y ago
        Great points. I work in consulting, so thankfully I don't get stuck somewhere bad for long, but I have seen it first hand on many occasions. Enough to be jaded I guess. You're right that remote work helps this a lot. I do think that landing a remote job is probably more difficult for someone who is only an average / mediocre developer. You're competing against a larger pool of talented developers.
- smsm42 5y ago
  Worked in tech for decades, had some very heated disagreements many times, never had abusive language used towards me by bosses or used it myself towards colleagues or subordinates. I don't think it's expected. It happens, but it's not a normal thing.
jedberg 5y ago
I refinanced with the at the beginning of this year. If they had a toxic internal culture they did a great job hiding it from their customers, because I had an amazing experience with incredible customer service. I'm not saying the culture isn't toxic, I'm saying it's surprising how well they hid it.
- tomnipotent 5y ago
  I've had amazing experiences at any number of restaurants that I later discovered treat staff horribly (Urasawa, Mario Batoli come to mind). Abusers work very hard to make sure other people don't realize what's going on behind the scenes (whether that's the office, or at home).
- deckar01 5y ago
  I financed my first mortgage and refi through Better. They did ping me about once a week even when there was nothing for either of us to do while waiting for an appraisal. I got the feeling they were hitting arbitrary engagement quotas. Compared to my experience with Rocket it was great. I sat on a phone with Rocket for hours having them put me on hold and go to a manager to negotiate rates only for them to have shuffled the numbers around so that the interest rate looked lower, but the total cost of the loan broke even due to extra points and fees rolled into the loan. The salesperson was manic and desperate. They pretended to have a nice async process on the front end, but they end up dumping me into a phone call at the end where I had to tell them everything I just typed in. Several other online companies had similar tactics. The worst was one that just harvested my info and sold it to every shady lender who proceeded to call me non-stop for weeks.
  - jdhn 5y ago
    Rocket is known in the Detroit area for having a boiler room culture and a cult like mindset. Not surprised to hear that the person on the other end of the line was manic, probably was under intense pressure.
rmason 5y ago
I remember talking with an investor about a founder CEO and said I was friends with a lot of his employees who say he's a bully. The investor shrugged and then said with a smile but he's a bully who gets results.
- vanusa 5y ago
  Until the day arrives when they were shocked to find themselves on ... the receiving end of that very same treatment.
downWidOutaFite 5y ago
Hated that company when I was shopping for a refinance. They had the slickest website (which is probably why they call themeselves fintech) but were extremely opaque about their quotes even after they forced me to answer 100s of detailed personal finance questions. And very spammy
- bombcar 5y ago
  And their rates/pricing wasn't even any better than other places, just obfuscated so it was harder to compare.
  - treis 5y ago
    Both of these are the opposite of my experience with them. You could fiddle with down payment, price, and points to your heart's content and it'd spit out a quote for you. Also a few thousand cheaper than other places.
    - bombcar 5y ago
      I fiddled with the numbers for hours, but everything came up either basically the same or more expensive than the direct quote from another lender.
  - kn0where 5y ago
    But they have Better in their name, so it must be better right?
    - kreeben 5y ago
      I Can't Believe They're Not Better!
  - beembeem 5y ago
    they are literally the only service I've been able to find that quotes you for free without needing an SSN/email on file.
pkaye 5y ago
Looks like he didn't maximize shareholder value!
kingcharles 5y ago
I still have a tab open in my browser from week's ago. LinkedIn: 50 Top Startups in the U.S. #1 Better [Financial Services]
- rossdavidh 5y ago
  Payola?
  - wly_cdgr 5y ago
    You Better.com believe it, baby
gigglesupstairs 5y ago
> Garg “leads by fear,” she said, preferring not to be named. “Nothing is ever good enough. He would threaten employees to work harder, faster and not be lazy, but there was never clarity on what the consequences might be.” Standard toxic leadership.
mfrye0 5y ago
I bought a place with Better.com last year. While really cheap, I don't think I would use them again. It seems like the model is to have a slick UI and hire contractors from India with second rate English skills handle the grunt work. There were multiple instances where there was miscommunication, no reply, or we couldn't get ahold of someone to get the current status. Overall it was really frustrating.
- cwkoss 5y ago
  We used them ~three years ago, and seemed like our account manager was US-based. I wonder if their recent 'success' with outsourcing is the primary impetus for the layoffs.
- david38 5y ago
  Same. Very frustrating, but the money savings was substantial.
- suresk 5y ago
  I refinanced with them last year and it was a "meh" experience. Their rates/fees were good, and the UI made it pretty easy to work with, but they were incredibly slow. I would have understood - it was a really busy time for refis - but the work flow would go something like this: They'd ask for a document that they hadn't asked for previously and make a big deal that I needed to provide it to them in the next few hours or else we'd lose our rate, then when I did provide it I wouldn't hear from them for 2 weeks. Overall, even with an appraisal waiver, it took like 3 months for it to go through and I never waited more than a day to respond to requests for info/documents.
  - mfrye0 5y ago
    My experience exactly, though they also asked for the same document multiple times.
    - suresk 5y ago
      Yes! That too! A lot of this started after the rate lock was set to expire and they had to keep extending it (costing them a bit of money each time), so part of me thought the whole "You have until tomorrow morning to send us this document you've already sent us 3 times, or else your lock will expire" was a way for them to get out of it, but more likely it was just incompetence/overwork.
schnevets 5y ago
I did a search here just to figure out what Better.com did without visiting their web page, and the results are quite a saga: > Simple, Online Mortgage – Better Mortgage (3 years ago) > Better.com CEO Vishal Garg Threatened to Burn His Business Partner Alive (2 months ago) > Better.com CEO Vishal Garg lays off 15% of employees [video] (7 days ago) > Better.com CEO blasts laid-off employees, accusing them of ‘stealing’ (4 days ago) > The Better.com CEO says he’s ‘deeply sorry’ for firing workers over Zoom (2 days ago) > Better.com's's CEO is 'taking time off effective immediately' (2 hours ago)
- princevegeta89 5y ago
  Thanks for doing this!
- ergocoder 5y ago
  At first I was defending this CEO as there is no good way to lay off employees. "Better.com CEO Vishal Garg Threatened to Burn His Business Partner Alive" Huh what the fuck?
- z2 5y ago
  > Mortgages, Fraud Claims And 'Dumb Dolphins': A Tangled Past Haunts Better.com CEO Vishal Garg (1 year ago)
- mfrye0 5y ago
  I was tempted to do the same to my business partner. After he bailed on me the day before we were going to close a funding round, among other things. I think about that quote from Elon sometimes, that starting a company is like eating glass and staring into the abyss.
  - Kina 5y ago
    I think your situation is different. > His former business partner and college friend, Raza Khan, claims that Garg improperly moved $3 million from a software company the two men started to his personal bank accounts, and then used stolen technology to help build Better. Garg denies those claims and is countersuing, in a dispute so bitter that during a deposition Garg threatened to burn his former friend alive. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjeans/2020/11/20/mortgages-fraud-claims-and-dumb-dolphins-a-tangled-past-haunts-bettercom-ceo-vishal-garg/?sh=160dba2a10f4 https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjeans/2020/11/20/mortgages...
didip 5y ago
This guy is fascinating (in a bad way). In what universe can you call your employees: DUMB DOLPHINS (with all caps)?
josh_carterPDX 5y ago
I find it interesting that the only reason the investors took any action was because of the attention this is getting in the press. As many have already read, Garg had a reputation for bad behavior yet SoftBank and his other investors let it play out leading up to their SPAC. I feel like we watched this movie before. **cough**WeWork**cough**
keewee7 5y ago
Two takeaways from this is: 1. Be a nice boss. 2. Fire people as discretely as legally possible. Don't do it over a Zoom call that will leak and make you the face of the #EvilCEO archetype the Internet hates so much.
lkrubner 5y ago
I've known some leaders who feel that yelling at employees can get better performance out of them. Most of the time, I think this is the wrong way to proceed, but I admit, I've seen cases where the strategic use of anger did seem to get some kind of result. I wrote of one situation here, between a CTO and the best devops guy I ever knew: https://demodexio.substack.com/p/the-hearts-of-men-american-dreams-c15 https://demodexio.substack.com/p/the-hearts-of-men-american-... But keep in mind, in that situation, I am fairly sure the CTO was only pretending to be angry, which is to say, his anger was under control, and was deployed for a specific purpose. As a general rule, self-control is essential to pragmatic leadership. By contrast, Vishal Garg's behavior does not seem strategic, and he does not seem to be under self-control. I wrote some thoughts about how destructive this kind of leadership can be here: http://www.smashcompany.com/business/self-control-is-essential-to-pragmatic-leadership http://www.smashcompany.com/business/self-control-is-essenti...
- nynx 5y ago
  Wow, that CTO sounds psychopathic. Nothing in that conversation required him to shout or (pretend to) get angry. I have no respect for people that use violence, even verbal, to get their way.
  - lkrubner 5y ago
    The use of the anger was very manipulative. I find it interesting that it was then the beginning of a long partnership. They worked together at several startups for the next few years. I'm not clear that anger was the only way to establish whether the devops guy was getting the work done correctly, but I've certainly met a few managers who seem to think the strategic use of anger is useful. At the same time, what I've seen more commonly is the unstrategic use of anger, where people rage, rage, rage, for no purpose and no gain. It's amazing to me how often I've seen unhinged behavior in people who are in top leadership positions. I wrote of one extreme case in How To Destroy A Tech Startup: https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Three-Steps-ebook/dp/B0772FJQ1T/ref=sr_1_1?crid=19QJ794QNI23O&keywords=how+to+destroy+a+tech+startup+in+three+easy+steps&qid=1639178056&sprefix=how+to+destroy+a+tech+s%2Caps%2C140&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Three-Steps-eboo...
JCM9 5y ago
The culture sounds really toxic and that usually comes from the top. Sounds like the board took necessary action to address things.
999900000999 5y ago
Just comes off as a very immature CEO. I worked for a nice version of this, spot raises, flying around trying to aquire other companies. Drinks on the company card. Every Friday we'd go out drinking ! The it happens, we're all brought into a room. Given 2 weeks serverance. Apparently we forgot to make money. The CEO apologized to each one of us personally, I said thank you. If your going to be immature at least be kind. I hope if I'm ever CEO I'm just stupid and not mean
ciguy 5y ago
Tried to use them for a purchase a few months ago. My situation was slightly non-standard but nothing major. After filling out their questions I was pre-approved almost immediately. When their broker emailed me for details though, I explained my situation and rather than looking into it at all he just told me it probably wouldn't work. I was able to make the purchase through another mortgage broker a few weeks later so I don't think my situation was actually all that complicated, it seemed like their broker just couldn't be bothered. As a bonus they sold my info to a real estate broker who continued to harass me for weeks even after I told them to stop contacting me.
jgalt212 5y ago
> “at least 250 of the people terminated were working an average of 2 hours a day while clocking in 8 hours+ a day in the payroll system How much of that was employee theft, and how much of that was Better.com simply being overstaffed? Hence the layoffs that were (most probably) agreed to in the most recent raise.
andrewstuart 5y ago
Why do people behave like this?
- mistrial9 5y ago
  it is widely acknowledged in some psychological literature that certain professions are collecting abusive or even psycopathic personalities. The behavior is reinforced with reward and prestige in some cases. search term might be "is your boss a psycopath" or similar
anonu 5y ago
I tried to refinance with better.com a few months back. The quality of service was just not there. Mortgages are still very paper intensive processes with lots of middlemen and lots of procedures. You can build a slick interface but it's going to a hamster wheel behind the scenes. And if you can't have a good customer service people are just going to steer towards someone who does and can hand hold you along the way.
prepend 5y ago
I refinanced through better.com about this time last year. I just found them randomly through better.com. They were great. Everything was automated through a decent web site. Everything signed electronically except closing where they sent an attorney to my house. They also never called me unless I wanted, everything was through their web site. This is in contrast to previous mortgages that were paper based and full of people who didn’t seem very tech savvy and wanted faxes, multiple phone calls just to review stuff. And their estimates were all exact with closing. And closing was early. I was always amazed how shitty the processes were for mortgage so it was nice that somebody finally set up some simple RPA. If I refinance again, I’ll probably use them.
wly_cdgr 5y ago
You gotta give it to China, for all their faults, at least they would have executed this guy
- givemeethekeys 5y ago
  No they wouldn't have. If you think working for a Chinese company in China is better, I suggest a little more research. For starters, you'll work longer hours and there's less questioning authority.
  - wly_cdgr 5y ago
    Yeah you're prob right, who am I kidding
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
wly_cdgr 5y ago
I do like how he blasted the shit firehose at that investor guy, hehe. But yelling down at your employees is another matter entirely...you just don't do that

187 points by myth_drannon 5y ago

baby 5y ago

This story is only getting better and better.com

Every story that's come out since this mess started vidates the bad vibes I got from their recruiter on the first call, and my decision to walk away.

vanusa 5y ago

He already had a reputation for using abusive language in emails to employees, but the treatment toward his investors was yet another shock. Abusing employees is more or less expected, out in techland. Ruffle investors' feathers, however, and there may be consequences.

SEJeff 5y ago
Why? When engineer salaries are quite good, many engineers are able to easily move laterally between top firms. It should not be normalized to be awful to your employees.
sharken 5y ago
Maybe expected but certainly not accepted. In tech the only way to gain respect is to know what you are doing, shouting and using abusive language makes you lose that respect. Keep it up, and you have to start looking for a new employee.
- vanusa 5y ago
  In tech the only way to gain respect is to know what you are doing, shouting and using abusive language makes you lose that respect. That's the platonic ideal, at least. The reality on the ground is often far different.
- weare138 5y ago
  If your career is in tech sure but Garg's of the world are seldom one of us. In business world the end justifies the means. This type of behavior is not only tolerated but often encouraged. This is only becoming an issue now because the story went viral and is generating bad press which is bad for profits.
polote 5y ago
> Ruffle investors' feathers, however, and there may be consequences. Because that's their main power https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29320078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29320078 Your Board of Directors is Probably Going to Fire You 718 points
eikenberry 5y ago
> Abusing employees is more or less expected, out in techland. Which techland do you live in? In my techland there are tons of jobs at places without abusive leadership where you can get a job in a few weeks. No one I know in my land expects this sort of treatment as everyone knows it won't stand.
- bsuvc 5y ago
  I guess it depends on what they meant by "techland". I think companies who are tech companies or where tech is central to the product tend to attract good tech leaders who treat their teams well. But at companies where tech is seen as a secondary to the product tech employees are sometimes treated poorly, with things like overwork/abuse of agile processes to extract more work out of developers, unsustainable on-call rotations, unreasonable support response expectations, understaffed teams, restricted budgets, inadequate equipment like super cheap budget laptops, etc. Sure they might add a foosball table and buy a pizza once in a while, but by and large many companies don't treated tech especially well. I'm not sure if it is a lack of respect (some companies see developers as a pluggable commodity) or resentment for having to pay them more than they think they should have to. I guess it depends on where you live, but some cities just don't have a lot of pure tech companies, so you are stuck with places like these.
  - eikenberry 5y ago
    I agree that there are places like that, I worked at one briefly.. the key there being the word 'briefly'. As soon as it got annoying I started looking and had a new job pretty quick. Lack of mobility used to be an issue as well, but with all the current remote work possibilities this is no longer the case. The bad employers will end up with the bottom of the barrel, just like in cities with lots of good options, as all their talent will be able to find work elsewhere.
    - bsuvc 5y ago
      Great points. I work in consulting, so thankfully I don't get stuck somewhere bad for long, but I have seen it first hand on many occasions. Enough to be jaded I guess. You're right that remote work helps this a lot. I do think that landing a remote job is probably more difficult for someone who is only an average / mediocre developer. You're competing against a larger pool of talented developers.
smsm42 5y ago
Worked in tech for decades, had some very heated disagreements many times, never had abusive language used towards me by bosses or used it myself towards colleagues or subordinates. I don't think it's expected. It happens, but it's not a normal thing.

jedberg 5y ago

I refinanced with the at the beginning of this year. If they had a toxic internal culture they did a great job hiding it from their customers, because I had an amazing experience with incredible customer service. I'm not saying the culture isn't toxic, I'm saying it's surprising how well they hid it.

tomnipotent 5y ago
I've had amazing experiences at any number of restaurants that I later discovered treat staff horribly (Urasawa, Mario Batoli come to mind). Abusers work very hard to make sure other people don't realize what's going on behind the scenes (whether that's the office, or at home).
deckar01 5y ago
I financed my first mortgage and refi through Better. They did ping me about once a week even when there was nothing for either of us to do while waiting for an appraisal. I got the feeling they were hitting arbitrary engagement quotas. Compared to my experience with Rocket it was great. I sat on a phone with Rocket for hours having them put me on hold and go to a manager to negotiate rates only for them to have shuffled the numbers around so that the interest rate looked lower, but the total cost of the loan broke even due to extra points and fees rolled into the loan. The salesperson was manic and desperate. They pretended to have a nice async process on the front end, but they end up dumping me into a phone call at the end where I had to tell them everything I just typed in. Several other online companies had similar tactics. The worst was one that just harvested my info and sold it to every shady lender who proceeded to call me non-stop for weeks.
- jdhn 5y ago
  Rocket is known in the Detroit area for having a boiler room culture and a cult like mindset. Not surprised to hear that the person on the other end of the line was manic, probably was under intense pressure.

rmason 5y ago

I remember talking with an investor about a founder CEO and said I was friends with a lot of his employees who say he's a bully. The investor shrugged and then said with a smile but he's a bully who gets results.

vanusa 5y ago
Until the day arrives when they were shocked to find themselves on ... the receiving end of that very same treatment.

downWidOutaFite 5y ago

Hated that company when I was shopping for a refinance. They had the slickest website (which is probably why they call themeselves fintech) but were extremely opaque about their quotes even after they forced me to answer 100s of detailed personal finance questions. And very spammy

bombcar 5y ago
And their rates/pricing wasn't even any better than other places, just obfuscated so it was harder to compare.
- treis 5y ago
  Both of these are the opposite of my experience with them. You could fiddle with down payment, price, and points to your heart's content and it'd spit out a quote for you. Also a few thousand cheaper than other places.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    I fiddled with the numbers for hours, but everything came up either basically the same or more expensive than the direct quote from another lender.
- kn0where 5y ago
  But they have Better in their name, so it must be better right?
  - kreeben 5y ago
    I Can't Believe They're Not Better!
- beembeem 5y ago
  they are literally the only service I've been able to find that quotes you for free without needing an SSN/email on file.

pkaye 5y ago

Looks like he didn't maximize shareholder value!

kingcharles 5y ago

I still have a tab open in my browser from week's ago. LinkedIn: 50 Top Startups in the U.S. #1 Better [Financial Services]

rossdavidh 5y ago
Payola?
- wly_cdgr 5y ago
  You Better.com believe it, baby

gigglesupstairs 5y ago

> Garg “leads by fear,” she said, preferring not to be named. “Nothing is ever good enough. He would threaten employees to work harder, faster and not be lazy, but there was never clarity on what the consequences might be.” Standard toxic leadership.

mfrye0 5y ago

I bought a place with Better.com last year. While really cheap, I don't think I would use them again. It seems like the model is to have a slick UI and hire contractors from India with second rate English skills handle the grunt work. There were multiple instances where there was miscommunication, no reply, or we couldn't get ahold of someone to get the current status. Overall it was really frustrating.

cwkoss 5y ago
We used them ~three years ago, and seemed like our account manager was US-based. I wonder if their recent 'success' with outsourcing is the primary impetus for the layoffs.
david38 5y ago
Same. Very frustrating, but the money savings was substantial.
suresk 5y ago
I refinanced with them last year and it was a "meh" experience. Their rates/fees were good, and the UI made it pretty easy to work with, but they were incredibly slow. I would have understood - it was a really busy time for refis - but the work flow would go something like this: They'd ask for a document that they hadn't asked for previously and make a big deal that I needed to provide it to them in the next few hours or else we'd lose our rate, then when I did provide it I wouldn't hear from them for 2 weeks. Overall, even with an appraisal waiver, it took like 3 months for it to go through and I never waited more than a day to respond to requests for info/documents.
- mfrye0 5y ago
  My experience exactly, though they also asked for the same document multiple times.
  - suresk 5y ago
    Yes! That too! A lot of this started after the rate lock was set to expire and they had to keep extending it (costing them a bit of money each time), so part of me thought the whole "You have until tomorrow morning to send us this document you've already sent us 3 times, or else your lock will expire" was a way for them to get out of it, but more likely it was just incompetence/overwork.

schnevets 5y ago

I did a search here just to figure out what Better.com did without visiting their web page, and the results are quite a saga: > Simple, Online Mortgage – Better Mortgage (3 years ago) > Better.com CEO Vishal Garg Threatened to Burn His Business Partner Alive (2 months ago) > Better.com CEO Vishal Garg lays off 15% of employees [video] (7 days ago) > Better.com CEO blasts laid-off employees, accusing them of ‘stealing’ (4 days ago) > The Better.com CEO says he’s ‘deeply sorry’ for firing workers over Zoom (2 days ago) > Better.com's's CEO is 'taking time off effective immediately' (2 hours ago)

princevegeta89 5y ago
Thanks for doing this!
ergocoder 5y ago
At first I was defending this CEO as there is no good way to lay off employees. "Better.com CEO Vishal Garg Threatened to Burn His Business Partner Alive" Huh what the fuck?
z2 5y ago
> Mortgages, Fraud Claims And 'Dumb Dolphins': A Tangled Past Haunts Better.com CEO Vishal Garg (1 year ago)
mfrye0 5y ago
I was tempted to do the same to my business partner. After he bailed on me the day before we were going to close a funding round, among other things. I think about that quote from Elon sometimes, that starting a company is like eating glass and staring into the abyss.
- Kina 5y ago
  I think your situation is different. > His former business partner and college friend, Raza Khan, claims that Garg improperly moved $3 million from a software company the two men started to his personal bank accounts, and then used stolen technology to help build Better. Garg denies those claims and is countersuing, in a dispute so bitter that during a deposition Garg threatened to burn his former friend alive. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjeans/2020/11/20/mortgages-fraud-claims-and-dumb-dolphins-a-tangled-past-haunts-bettercom-ceo-vishal-garg/?sh=160dba2a10f4 https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjeans/2020/11/20/mortgages...

didip 5y ago

This guy is fascinating (in a bad way). In what universe can you call your employees: DUMB DOLPHINS (with all caps)?

josh_carterPDX 5y ago

I find it interesting that the only reason the investors took any action was because of the attention this is getting in the press. As many have already read, Garg had a reputation for bad behavior yet SoftBank and his other investors let it play out leading up to their SPAC. I feel like we watched this movie before. **cough**WeWork**cough**

keewee7 5y ago

Two takeaways from this is: 1. Be a nice boss. 2. Fire people as discretely as legally possible. Don't do it over a Zoom call that will leak and make you the face of the #EvilCEO archetype the Internet hates so much.

lkrubner 5y ago

I've known some leaders who feel that yelling at employees can get better performance out of them. Most of the time, I think this is the wrong way to proceed, but I admit, I've seen cases where the strategic use of anger did seem to get some kind of result. I wrote of one situation here, between a CTO and the best devops guy I ever knew: https://demodexio.substack.com/p/the-hearts-of-men-american-dreams-c15 https://demodexio.substack.com/p/the-hearts-of-men-american-... But keep in mind, in that situation, I am fairly sure the CTO was only pretending to be angry, which is to say, his anger was under control, and was deployed for a specific purpose. As a general rule, self-control is essential to pragmatic leadership. By contrast, Vishal Garg's behavior does not seem strategic, and he does not seem to be under self-control. I wrote some thoughts about how destructive this kind of leadership can be here: http://www.smashcompany.com/business/self-control-is-essential-to-pragmatic-leadership http://www.smashcompany.com/business/self-control-is-essenti...

nynx 5y ago
Wow, that CTO sounds psychopathic. Nothing in that conversation required him to shout or (pretend to) get angry. I have no respect for people that use violence, even verbal, to get their way.
- lkrubner 5y ago
  The use of the anger was very manipulative. I find it interesting that it was then the beginning of a long partnership. They worked together at several startups for the next few years. I'm not clear that anger was the only way to establish whether the devops guy was getting the work done correctly, but I've certainly met a few managers who seem to think the strategic use of anger is useful. At the same time, what I've seen more commonly is the unstrategic use of anger, where people rage, rage, rage, for no purpose and no gain. It's amazing to me how often I've seen unhinged behavior in people who are in top leadership positions. I wrote of one extreme case in How To Destroy A Tech Startup: https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Three-Steps-ebook/dp/B0772FJQ1T/ref=sr_1_1?crid=19QJ794QNI23O&keywords=how+to+destroy+a+tech+startup+in+three+easy+steps&qid=1639178056&sprefix=how+to+destroy+a+tech+s%2Caps%2C140&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Three-Steps-eboo...

JCM9 5y ago

The culture sounds really toxic and that usually comes from the top. Sounds like the board took necessary action to address things.

999900000999 5y ago

Just comes off as a very immature CEO. I worked for a nice version of this, spot raises, flying around trying to aquire other companies. Drinks on the company card. Every Friday we'd go out drinking ! The it happens, we're all brought into a room. Given 2 weeks serverance. Apparently we forgot to make money. The CEO apologized to each one of us personally, I said thank you. If your going to be immature at least be kind. I hope if I'm ever CEO I'm just stupid and not mean

ciguy 5y ago

Tried to use them for a purchase a few months ago. My situation was slightly non-standard but nothing major. After filling out their questions I was pre-approved almost immediately. When their broker emailed me for details though, I explained my situation and rather than looking into it at all he just told me it probably wouldn't work. I was able to make the purchase through another mortgage broker a few weeks later so I don't think my situation was actually all that complicated, it seemed like their broker just couldn't be bothered. As a bonus they sold my info to a real estate broker who continued to harass me for weeks even after I told them to stop contacting me.

jgalt212 5y ago

> “at least 250 of the people terminated were working an average of 2 hours a day while clocking in 8 hours+ a day in the payroll system How much of that was employee theft, and how much of that was Better.com simply being overstaffed? Hence the layoffs that were (most probably) agreed to in the most recent raise.

andrewstuart 5y ago

Why do people behave like this?

mistrial9 5y ago
it is widely acknowledged in some psychological literature that certain professions are collecting abusive or even psycopathic personalities. The behavior is reinforced with reward and prestige in some cases. search term might be "is your boss a psycopath" or similar

anonu 5y ago

I tried to refinance with better.com a few months back. The quality of service was just not there. Mortgages are still very paper intensive processes with lots of middlemen and lots of procedures. You can build a slick interface but it's going to a hamster wheel behind the scenes. And if you can't have a good customer service people are just going to steer towards someone who does and can hand hold you along the way.

prepend 5y ago

I refinanced through better.com about this time last year. I just found them randomly through better.com. They were great. Everything was automated through a decent web site. Everything signed electronically except closing where they sent an attorney to my house. They also never called me unless I wanted, everything was through their web site. This is in contrast to previous mortgages that were paper based and full of people who didn’t seem very tech savvy and wanted faxes, multiple phone calls just to review stuff. And their estimates were all exact with closing. And closing was early. I was always amazed how shitty the processes were for mortgage so it was nice that somebody finally set up some simple RPA. If I refinance again, I’ll probably use them.

wly_cdgr 5y ago

You gotta give it to China, for all their faults, at least they would have executed this guy

givemeethekeys 5y ago
No they wouldn't have. If you think working for a Chinese company in China is better, I suggest a little more research. For starters, you'll work longer hours and there's less questioning authority.
- wly_cdgr 5y ago
  Yeah you're prob right, who am I kidding

deleted 5y ago

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wly_cdgr 5y ago

I do like how he blasted the shit firehose at that investor guy, hehe. But yelling down at your employees is another matter entirely...you just don't do that