Better.com CEO Vishal Garg is now facing the consequences of embarrassingly firing 900 staff on a Zoom call with three top executives having so far resigned from the company and more are expected to follow suit in the following days. Leaked footage of the brutal call went massively viral on social media last week which prompted an intense backlash against CEO Vishal Garg.
Vishal Garg has since apologized for the manner in which he handled the layoffs – but that has not prevented the company’s head of marketing, head of public relations, and vice president of communications from handing in their resignation, reports The Daily Beast.
Today, a letter to current employees was leaked on Blind by a verified Better employee. In the letter, Garg apologized for the way he (mis)handled the layoff news last week, writing: “I failed to show the appropriate amount of respect and appreciation for the individuals who were affected and for their contributions to Better. I own the decision to do the layoffs, but in communicating it I blundered the execution. In doing so, I embarrassed you.”
Some might argue that he also embarrassed himself. Among the affected employees was the company’s diversity & inclusion team, according to multiple sources.
“This is the first wave of resignations, and the company expects more,” a person familiar with the matter told The Daily Beast.
The three senior employees were not asked to step down, Insider reported. The outgoing head of public relations Tanya Gillogley, head of marketing Melanie Hahn, and VP of communications Patrick Lenihan all declined to comment on the matter.
Vishal Garg, who has come under intense criticism after the SoftBank-backed company laid off about 9 percent of its workforce through the video call, said he had “blundered the execution” of communicating the layoffs. “I realize that the way I communicated this news made a difficult situation worse,” Mr. Garg said in a letter dated Tuesday.
The CEO had cited the market, performance, and productivity as reasons behind the decision to lay off employees in the United States and India.
“This isn’t news that you’re going to want to hear…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,” he told 900 employees during the Zoom call.
Founded in 2016 and headquartered in New York, Better.com offers mortgage and insurance products to homeowners through its online platform.
Better.com is not the only SoftBank-backed proptech that has seen top executives leave in advance of its public debut. In 2019, Insider also reported more than a dozen of WeWork’s top officials had left the company amid reports of internal complaints and uncertainty surrounding its IPO plans.
The question on all of our minds at this point is will investors and board members tolerate this sort of behavior from Garg, or will he be forced out, Adam Neumann-style?
Garg’s reputation as a not very nice person goes back to last year, when Forbes revealed the contents of an email to employees from Garg: “HELLO — WAKE UP BETTER TEAM. 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.”
That same Forbes article revealed that Garg was the subject of a number of lawsuits from the likes of PIMCO and Goldman Sachs for things like “improper and even fraudulent activity at two prior business ventures, and of misappropriating “tens of millions of dollars.”
The recent dip in refinancings is believed to be a factor in Better.com’s decision to lay off some of its employees.
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