/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/larazon/U4IABS3I75AZXCATAEZLLTNQSA.JPG "Better.com CEO fires 900 employees for Zoom: “If you’re on this video call, you’re fired”")
Vishal Garg broke the news to those laid off a week after the company completed a $ 750 million investment round.
It happened last Wednesday and since then the video with the moment has gone viral. Vishal Garg, CEO of US fintech Better.com summoned nine hundred of his employees to a video call on Zoom. The reason? Announce that you had decided to fire them and that the dismissal was effective immediately.
“This is the second time in my career that I have to do this and I don’t want to do it. The last time I did it I cried, I hope I am stronger this time. We are laying off 15% of the company for several reasons: the market, efficiency, performance and productivity. If you are on this call, you are part of the unfortunate group that is being fired. Your work here is done, ”Garg told his former employees. Following the CEO’s announcement, the company reduced the percentage of laid-off employees to 9%.
It should be noted that Better.com is a financial technology focused on the mortgage market. A week before the massive layoff via Zoom, the company closed a round of financing of 750 million dollars and expected to go public with a valuation of $ 7.7 billion after obtaining the support of Softbank, according to Daily Mail.
The CEO of Better.com is a controversial executive who has been accused on several occasions of behavioral “erratic”, As reported by Forbes and Fortune media. He has also been in a legal battle since 2013 with his former partner Raza Khan who accuses him of having appropriated three million dollars from the company that he transferred to his private accounts.
Following last week’s controversy, Garg has not been silent about his decision. He published an anonymous message on the professional network Blind, whose authorship was recognized by Fortune, in which he argued that “Do you know that at least 250 of the people fired worked an average of 2 hours a day while logging more than 8 hours a day in the payroll system? They were robbing you and robbing our customers who pay the bills that pay our bills. Find out.”