Vishal Garg, CEO of mortgage firm Better.com, is being criticized for laying off around 900 employees via a Zoom call.
Garg cited staff performance and productivity, as well as market changes, as the reason the company had to fire 15% of its workforce.
Despite the company going on a hiring spree during the pandemic, Garg said that “we overhired and hired the wrong people.”
However, he failed to mention that Better.com received a $750 million cash infusion from SoftBank just last week.
“Bad managers will fire people badly whether virtually or in person,” said Anne Francke, CEO of the UK’s Chartered Management Institute on BBC Today. “But the callous manner in which this was conducted was just magnified by the fact that it was done in this sort of virtual and quite callous style.”
Francke added that the company’s future could be in trouble due to the way in which Garg laid off staff members.
This is not the first time Garg’s managerial practices have been under scrutiny.
Last year, Forbes obtained an email he sent to staff that read: “You are TOO DAMN SLOW. You are a bunch of DUMB DOLPHINS… SO STOP IT. STOP IT. STOP IT RIGHT NOW. YOU ARE EMBARRASSING ME.”
