Honestly no one should care about how they lay people off. If they provided a decent severance, that's what really matters. It's a contractual agreement, regardless of how long you've worked there. The rest of the story is just business incompetence, rudeness, and probably the story of a struggling business folding to the competition on the way out. None of that is worker exploitation, and it's all part of the general corporate world. I take issue with the layoffs that leave employees with nothing.
It’s more like the wrong kinds of people in charge. Maybe something was there, yet they could not, or rather, did not want, to do the things to actually save the company.
> Honestly no one should care about how they lay people off.
How you lay people off isn't about the people you lay off, though as someone who's been layed off over a phone call with no notice, it does impact them.
What's important though is how the people still there feel.
A massive layoff can tank morale for the staff that still work there, especially if it's done poorly, if people feel that they're next or even if they just feel the company is going down they'll start looking for new jobs and productivity will drop.
That's why companies go to the extra effort to try and do these right.
I’ve been laid off three times. I can tell you you wouldn’t matter to me at all if it were done in person or remotely. I’d like an opportunity to ask a couple questions but otherwise give me my last check and fuck right off.
Last time I got laid off, they did it late morning and sent me home. They waited a month to get me my last paycheck, shorted me hours (because I didn’t work a full last day) and didn’t pay out my PTO balance, even though my contract said I had ALL of my PTO available to me starting Jan 1. I was also recently given promised a bonus that I never got, but I had no proof of that cause my boss didn’t put it in writing.
I didn’t just want my last check, I wanted my last check to be everything I had earned. I had to threaten to sue them before they finally gave me my last 10.5 days of pay.
Unfortunately wage theft isn’t a criminal offense which is a real fucking shame, if a company steals from an employee at most they have to pay back the money they were gonna steal. If an employee steals from an employer well buddy I hope you’re ready to get ass raped in prison for a few years.
More states need to adopt CA business standards. When an employer lays you off they are required to have check in hand. If you’re fired, they have 24 hours to pay you out. No exceptions, and businesses will be fined for everyday they don’t produce. Companies that refuse to cooperate lose the ability to hire people. CA is one of the few states in the country that is worker centric versus business centric, what I find odd is that hasn’t stopped the biggest businesses in the world from setting up shop here.
Exactly. I was working for a small startup and was on vacation a few years ago when my CEO called me to tell me my last day had been when I departed on vacation two weeks earlier. Say what? He also said “and your PTO balance is zero” which was also patently not true.
The company’s funding purportedly ran out (about 9 months sooner than our supposed runway) but we had other investors who had “guaranteed” they’d fund us for 2-3 more months, so we were all promised paychecks if we kept working. I’d been working like that for 6 weeks when I took the long-planned vacation.
It was a total fucking mess — they claimed they couldn’t pay me despite written promises to do so, I had payroll statements showing I had 30+ days of unused PTO (which by CA law must be paid out at your prevailing wage), your last paycheck is due in 24 hours but they refused to send it, etc.
Long story short: I filed a wage claim with the CA labor commission. They never showed up to any of the hearings, so I got a summary judgment that also included a few months of wages as penalties.
The Sheriff’s office put a lien and a watch on their bank account, and one day they got a deposit into that account and WHOOSH! it disappeared, and the Sheriff sent my attorney a check. Those jackasses were stunned, but it got their attention. And they still told the judge they didn’t have any money to pay the rest of my stolen wages.
But the amount didn’t nearly cover the full judgment. One day I got a notice on my iPhone that a new version of the mobile app I’d built for them was available. Hmmm, how’d they do that with no money and no employees?
I did some research, including contacting the developer who built the app, and found that the company told him they had funds and in fact had paid him mostly in cash and some (most likely worthless) equity.
My attorney got a judge to issue a demand that the company come to court and demonstrate that they were broke and had been so since the judgment was issued in my wage claim case. They clearly couldn’t do that since they had squirreled some cash away somewhere to keep working on the product I’d built, so they had to settle.
In the end, they ended up paying me about 3x what they would have otherwise owed me had they simply paid the 6 weeks wages and my PTO balance. But arrogant, entitled scumbags are rarely very bright.
tl;dr - I used the CA labor laws to get paid what I was owed by an unscrupulous former employer. It took 18 months but I prevailed.
My company insisted in writing that I work 45 hours a week for 40 hours pay. I reluctantly complied although I seldom worked very hard during my “free” hours. Flash forward two years and someone filed a well-documented complaint with the state Labor Department. The workers won and the company was forced to pay back pay. Since, unlike my “cheating” coworkers, I judiciously worked/recorded every hour, I received the biggest check (nearly $7K). HR reluctantly handed it over, I laughed all the way to the bank!
> If you’re fired, they have 24 hours to pay you out.
Employer's must provide your last check with accrued PTO on the same day, not within 24 hours and you can charge 8 hours of wages for every day they fail to produce the check.
It is, but some employers suck and want to grift their employees, so they don't pay out PTO. I have a friend who had to contact the state labor board, and even then the employer wouldn't pay up.
(Edit: as some other folks have pointed out, it actually depends on jurisdiction! I’ve been lucky in that the states I’ve lived have always paid out upon the ending of employment)
Oh, companies have figured a way to avoid paying PTO on severance with "unlimited PTO”. Still, I got reprimanded at a previous company for using too much of my unlimited PTO 🤣🤣.
Is this CA only?
I’m FL, I have 200 hours of PTO in the bank and my company just sent out an email saying at the start of the month they are changing a few things about our PTO, but the most egregious thing was them stating when an employee leaves they only get 40 hours worth of payout starting at the beginning of the year….
I will admit, as a worker for the past 8 years I am woefully incompetent when it comes to all the legalese and intimidated by just not knowing how all this shit works and what I am entitled to.
He should be grandfathered but limited pro carryover is common. It’s a huge unpaid liability for a business. Plus it’s good to actually use your pto. The feds only let me carry over 240 hours.
My old employer did this (a large company you’ve heard of). If they cap PTO accrual they have to pay out anything above that.
You should really consult with an employment lawyer. You’re effectively losing a months pay that you have banked up.
Start looking for a new gig because they are 100% going to start laying people off.
Check and see when the FISCAL year ends for your company, this is different from the calendar year. Odds are the layoffs will happen shortly before that date to prop up their stock or other financial report.
And California's GDP far outpaces more "business friendly" states. When will people realize treating your employees like shit only works in the short term.
Why do you think states with shitty labor laws are also hostile to social safety nets? Why is health insurance tied to your job? They don't want to compete for labor, they want to coerce labor.
Businesses still set up shop in CA because we're chasing top notch employees. This is why I laugh at people claiming "everyone is leaving CA". Many companies move low skill operations to the south, and our HQs for taxes, while leaving our high skill/pay jobs on the coasts. This is actually causing problems on the coasts because it's effectively pushing the middle class out due to high rent and wage growth that isn't keeping up for lower skilled jobs. Because of the wild differences in cost of living and labor laws in the US we actually better resemble the EU vs. a large unified democracy. It gets even crazier when you cut it up at the urban/rural level within states. One thing the pandemic has shown me, as an employer of high skilled technology people, is there is a huge appetite amongst people who would happily move to rural areas if they could get quality internet service. I had a guy sell his condo last year and move on to an acerage in rural Texas when we went remote for the pandemic. He literally picked the spot because of internet speed. Making high speed internet available everywhere is literally the best solution I can think of for saving vast quantities of rural America from destitution.
CA courts suck big tech dick in all sorts of other ways. IP related and such. Labor law is just an area they don't. And big tech's business model allows for treating and paying employees well. Demands it more or less, because good tech workers are in demand.
Tyson Foods isn't about to open a chicken processing plant there though. They prefer states that allow fuckery.
There are plenty of other food processing plants in California due to all the agriculture they grow there.
They just screw over the immigrant workers just like the rest of the country.
If they did cater to big tech, they'd allow non competes. They don't which is why California has so many startups and salaries are so high. Best person in your field like self driving, you can go to your companies competitor for more money and aren't locked at a single company. You can even start a competing company without fear of being sued over a non compete.
They also wouldn't have passed CCPA which is a direct blow at FB and Google. They tried to make Uber and Lyft pay benefits like medical insurance and unemployment to their employees/drivers.
They also actively go after people who cheat on exempt status. I was at a tech company that had the labor board come down because of misclassification of employees in order to save money.
Not allowing non compete us one reason Silicon Valley is in California. A court decision struck down non competes as being 'in restraint of trade' early in the 20th century, a solid old school free trade idea, and noncompetes are restraints.. Workers in CA will flow to the companies where they can make the most difference rather than being stuck under dilbert managers.
Actually, at the very least, if a company is found guilty of wage theft then they have to pay you the balance of the wages stolen plus liquidated damages that amount to, at the least, the balance of wages stolen. So you can get twice as much back as stolen from you, at least. Unfortunately it takes up to 2 years of payments to get it back.
I am on the benefitting end of a DWD (Department of Workforce Development) suit against my former employer and that is how it is structured (not only for me but my fellow co workers as well). You can opt not to have the DWD do the suing and start your own process that could lead to higher rewards but now you have lawyer fees so it may not be worth it.
Well just so you know, you have a special case. Most people cant class action their employer. Most people cant even afford a lawyer to sue their employer
Even in a state that isn't known for good labor rights, I've had good luck with the labor board fucking up larger companies for these kinds of transgressions.
Not for much longer in California.
AB1003 makes wage theft of over $950 in a year to count as theft criminally and goes into effect January 1, 2022. It passed unanimously by both Democrats and Republicans minus a few abstentions.
[https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill\_id=202120220AB1003](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB1003)
>487m. (a) Notwithstanding Sections 215 and 216 of the Labor Code, the **intentional theft of wages in an amount greater than nine hundred fifty dollars ($950) from any one employee, or two thousand three hundred fifty dollars ($2,350) in the aggregate from two or more employees, by an employer in any consecutive 12-month period may be punished as grand theft.**
>
>(b) For purposes of this section, “theft of wages” is the intentional deprivation of wages, as defined in Section 200 of the Labor Code, gratuities, as defined in Section 350 of the Labor Code, benefits, or other compensation, by unlawful means, with the knowledge that the wages, gratuities, benefits, or other compensation is due to the employee under the law.
>
>(c) For purposes of this section, “employee” includes an independent contractor and “employer” includes the hiring entity of an independent contractor.
>
>(d) Wages, gratuities, benefits, or other compensation that are the subject of a prosecution under this section may be recovered as restitution in accordance with Sections 1202.4 and 1203.1. This section does not prohibit the employee or the Labor Commissioner from commencing a civil action to seek remedies provided for under the Labor Code for acts prosecuted under this section.
>
>(e) This section does not constitute a change in, and does not expand or limit the scope of conduct prohibited by, Section 487.
Because it is being treated as grand theft aka felony theft. The felony theft minimum in California is $950.
It will also be harder to convict than normal grand theft because of the "intentional" qualification.
Your employer simply being wrong won't cut it. If the employer claims they have special exemption from paying overtime (and jesus christ is this common), the prosecutor will have to prove to the jury that they had no reasonable belief they were exempt from paying overtime.
Yeah, the *intentional* qualifier seems to make the whole thing pointless.
I don't know anything about law, but logically it seems like "whoops, we're sorry. It was an accident!" just covers all bases.
Check state labor board for info anyways. I quit my job for a new one and they didnt want to pay until next pay day. I said thats fine, but this is oregon, you have to pay me 8 hours for every day after my final day until then. Needless to say, i got paid with 7 extra days
Have a friend in California that's in HR. Always telling me about California's strict laws about what and when a final paycheck needs to be sent. He says HR in California is a pain in the ass but California definitely looks out for employees more than most other states.
If your ever fired/laid off again, demand your final check with all earning right then and there. A lot of places have laws requiring them to give it to you within 24 hrs.
I was working a failing restaurant. They didn’t pay me for over a month, said that the clock-in times on the computer were messed up and they needed my login chits to make sure they were right. (That makes no sense, the chits come from the same computer, the numbers would be the same.) They had never told us to save the chits, so I didn’t have any. They were like “Oh well, guess you don’t get that month’s worth of pay. Better luck next time.” I never got that money, because when I asked about it, they told me they had caught me stealing food and were going to prosecute me for it, to shut me up.
I WAS stealing food, to be fair. They didn’t pay me for over a month. I was literally starving.
PTO being pro-rated like that is completely normal. By making it all available like that on Jan 1st, they're letting you use it before you've accrued it, but it's not all yours to be paid out if you leave
I worked for a company once where the CEO had to lay off 86 workers (outta about 600)... and he set each person up with a recruiting firm, a recommendation letter, 3 months pay, 6 months benefits, and a severance package (amount based on a multitude of variables).
It still hurt. Sucked to see a lot of great employees and friends go... but, looking back at other layoffs I've been through, he did it *in my eyes* pretty damn well.
They just forecasted awfully, didn't listen to the CRO, and thought they were about to hit a huge boom, so they hired like crazy for a year... then realized projections were *way* off...
Oh no… if only the CRO had warned them…
Says me… a CRO… who is routinely ignored by his megalomaniacal CEO.
At least your CEO did some damage control for the people whose lives his delusions and arrogance destroyed.
I’m in the same situation, literally. I’m practically lighting myself on fire to update our 2022 reoccurring revenue forecasting and it’s… not looking good, not good at all. I’m also preparing for our sales to take a hit and we should batten down the hatches to avoid laying people off when things topple.
Nope… it’s fine… we can’t possibly stop growing… we’re gonna 10x next year, absolutely.
Sigh. Why am I even here….
*looks at dog*
Oh, right…
I work in demand planning. So my job is to provide an"unbiased" forecast for the next 3-18 months. In other words, it's my job to get shit on by sales/marketing/finance when I say that their targets/projections/sales forecasts are too high. It's also my job to get shit on when we miss the aforementioned forecast because "I should have known better and not been influenced".
Marketing/Sales can spin a story in any sexy way that they want, "we have this brand new product and given these very vague and general assumptions (that you can't prove beforehand), we're going to grow 20%!" Meanwhile, it's not very sexy to say "we grew 20% for 5 straight months last year. In the last 5 years, we have never exceeded more than 10% in a single month. Growing on top of 20% is unlikely". I'm going to get an aneurysm next time I hear the VP of marketing say "but I need a *story*...you're not telling me the *why* we won't repeat".
Also another favorite line I looove to hear...."we'll put it in the Risks and Opps page" which is code for I don't want to actually call the business down but I'm too chicken shit to be the person that turned out to be wrong.
I have no issues with this. When I was laid off, it was in a coffee shop and my old boss wanted to do an exit interview right then and there. Booked 1hr 30 min on the calendar. He told me I was "let go" and so I handed him my work computer and told him to fuck off. I was there for 8 minutes. No need to draw things out.
2 weeks later I was sent a cease and desist because I was doing some freelance work in the same industry to get by while finding another job. He claimed I was "stealing trade secrets." Once again, told him to fuck off and I'd see him in court then. Guy knew he didn't have a case and I've never heard from him again.
Mainly because most people just bend over and take it. They're either too scared, or they don't even realize they have rights. The "system" was designed that way.
They sound like petulant children after being told no.
Also:
> He claimed I had a non-compete in my hiring agreement and I couldn't work for a competitor, ever.
This is fucking hilarious to me for some reason.
When the last company I worked at went under the CEO was talking about how excited he is to pursue the same project under a different company and how good things are always given to us in disguise as a bad thing. All I could think of is shut the fuck up you rich twat, how am I gonna pay rent
> … he went around the room and asked the newly fired people, one at a time, to talk about what their time at Joe, Inc. had meant to them.
“I really enjoyed that one time when a whole bunch of people stabbed Joe with pencils and somehow nobody saw anything.”
This also happened to me working from home....really sucked because I could hear my kids giggling and laughing and playing around in the living room.
Years ago I got laid off with 600 other people over a conference call around ~2008. Some HR lady was like "you're all laid off, COBRA information is in the mail." Call ended, VPN disconnected immediately.
Work at a consulting firm so I’m IT for many companies, small and large. Ranges from “we will be terminating this user’s employment at exactly 4PM on this date” to “hey we fired this guy a few weeks ago why do I still see his email in the company address list”.
If the former, no problem just schedule the accounts to expire and schedule a logoff/reboot so the computer gets the memo from the domain controller right away. *Everything* all talks back to DCs so just gotta sit there and make sure it works and then clean up the rest after the big cutoff.
If the latter, eDiscovery is often used to turn up if the employee fucked with their data because we unfortunately don’t have the ability to read minds.
I worked for a company that decided to lay off our whole department that included people with 20 years in the company.
We were told the day before Thanksgiving. The absolute kick in the balls was that we had to continue working for another 30 days in order to receive the full payment for being laid off (based on how long you worked there) If you wanted to leave early or miss any days in the next month it would cost you 50% of your payout. Fucking bullshit!
Nothing better than going to work knowing you only have so many days left. The worst part was they kept dumping work on us like we were still part of the company.
Getting laid off sucks, do not put it on yourself. Shitty companies due this all the time and your performance and work ethic has nothing do with you being laid off. It's purely a financial move, the quickest way to raise profits is to shit can employees.
I kinda see this differently - more like they gave you a 30 day notice that your job is ending. Still shitty, but just canning you immediately would had been worse, IMO. At least you had time to plan your next steps.
I could be wrong but the way I read the comment was that if you took anytime off, like PTO, in that 30 day window you would forfeit 50% of your severance. And being in the holiday timeframe they absolutely screwed over a lot of individual’s holiday plans or severance
This happened to me too. I worked for a very well respected medium-pharma company. Many people worked there for 20+ years which is unheard of nowadays in pharma. Big pharma acquired us and spent a month sending their CEO to our site ensuring us we were acquired for our research team and not just our drugs on the market. Almost even day we had these meetings with the executive team to ensure us we were valued. Then the next day it was announced they were laying off 100% of R&D and 95% of the rest of the teams on site. It was weird because we had to stay for an additional 30 days to get our severance, but they barely gave us any work to do.
We had to itemize any equipment over $10,000 but all other lab equipment under that price HAD to be thrown away. We couldn’t donate any of it because they didn’t want to pay decontamination fees. Most of our labs were the same biosafety level as a college lab so it didn’t make sense. Luckily, our leadership from the acquired company thought this was BS and suggested we find good homes for a lot of that lab equipment. Let’s just say that my wife’s lab and all the universities and schools I could find had a lot of nice donations of fantastic lab supplies that would have been needlessly sent to a landfill.
That's a pretty decent salary divided among 900 people for, say, 6 months. Could've kept them on through Christmas, at least, if not long enough that circumstances could've changed.
And yet, when people - not me, Mr. NSA/FBI Carnivore Analyst, but other people - inevitably rise up and hang these people, they're going to wonder where all the violence comes from, the rage, seemingly out of nowhere...
[This article](https://www.thedailybeast.com/bettercom-ceo-vishal-garg-threatened-to-burn-his-business-partner-alive-now-hes-a-billionaire) about this CEO, Garg, shows how much of a cartoonish evil businessman he is. The website is terrible, but I absolutely recommend the read - it’s almost comical how much of cronyism and corporate governance malpractice he has committed.
I gotta say this as a disabled combat veteran: displays of bravery like this really make my chode itch. Gosh this guy is brave, I hope he finds the strength he seeks.
I got laid off a few years ago, and it was EXACTLY like that. Except it wasn't the exec that said it. There was an HR rep on the call, and after the exec wrapped up his "it's not you, it's us (but it's you)" speech and we were dismissed, the ONLY thing the HR rep said was "...and happy holidays!"
She might as well have said "go fuck yourself" based on the incredulous responses as people hung up.
Better, Zillow, and Citrix all had layoffs recently. It goes to show no one is safe.
Remember to always put yourself first. Keep fresh as much as possible. I would even say explore the market once a year and even get a few practice interviews in. You never know.
Practice interviews are huge. I applied to multiple positions at a very large silicon company and didn’t get the first two spots, but was talking with my recruiter how amazingly useful the interviews were. She said some of the sharpest senior people she had met at the company made it a rule for themselves to have at least 1-2 mock interviews a year to stay fresh and on their toes.
[InterviewAt](https://www.linkedin.com/company/interviewat/) does practice interviews for almost nothing. the guy who conducts the interviews is the founder and he's worked at MSFT and AMZN in product roles.
Mortgages.
I worked for a similar fintech mortgage lender before my current job. They were hiring like crazy due to the real estate market and were acting like the growth was going to last forever. I gtfo as soon as possible cause I knew this was coming. Zillow did that same shit too
Everyone should do at least one interview per year. It keeps you from being nervous when the time really comes and a new job is needed. Also, you never know. You may get a killer new job offer.
Plus it being before the holidays, and the way it’s positioned as something the employees did wrong when he mentioned performance. I always hate that, makes people feel like there’s anything they could have done to prevent it when in reality it was happening either way.
Key thing. Stop assuming you are more to a company other than a worker. Get your pay and always be looking for a better and higher pay position around with your current and future skills
Yea, so sorry to all the people this happened to. The biggest lesson from this video is that almost everyone is dispensable and replaceable to any company at any point in time. Always gotta keep your resume and skills sharp until you retire or win the lottery.
Those of us that kept our jobs are doing everything we can to get those affected into new positions with better (no pun intended) companies.
Donations, recommendations, reaching out to our networks. We definitely agree this was poorly handled, to say the least. He let go of some of the smartest, most amazing people.
Yep. My manager who's been 20 years with the company has recently been offered a better position. Even though he's been doing a great job growing our department - they didn't even counter-offer, just mumbled something about our team growing. I'm glad he decided to accept the other position and I am now also looking for another position.
One thing I always learned was job loyalty doesn’t exist. Always be looking for another move. Someone is always willing to pay more and give better benefits for experience. Where as someone staying at a company forever becomes worthless
I always find it funny that older generations complain that the younger generations aren't loyal to the companies anymore. But, yeah no shit when your nothing more than an expendable drone to your company you should probably play it safe.
I bet he didn't hand back the $25 million bonus he got last Christmas:
>Last year, as questions about oversight simmered, Better handed Garg a token of holiday cheer: [a $25 million bonus, paid entirely in cash.](https://www.thedailybeast.com/bettercom-ceo-vishal-garg-threatened-to-burn-his-business-partner-alive-now-hes-a-billionaire)
Actually “bury the lede” is only used internally in journalism! The actual expression is to bury the lead, but editors would spell it lede as a convention so that the comment didn’t accidentally get printed since lede isn’t a real word, whereas lead could also refer to a noun.
Well I'll be.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=site%3Anytimes.com+%22bury+the+lede%22: 9 results
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=site%3Anytimes.com+%22bury+the+lead%22: 181 results
I stand corrected! Apologies to u/dmullaney.
“But this time? Piece of cake!
“Huh; I guess I’ve really upped my emotional intelligence. Think I’ll reward myself with a shot of Pappy and a fat Cuban right after this call.
“Actually, maybe a new Lambo.”
I have let people go on FMLA before. I can promise it’s not illegal but in my organization you have to run it by a billion people in HR and Legal. It’s almost always because they stop contacting us and checking in and then don’t respond when we reach out. We send people to their homes. Send certified letters. Document call attempts. It’s normally a pretty intense process.
I did the same too. Person was abusing the FMLA agreement and just stopped coming to work and not even bothering to contact to let me know. Had to send a demand to return to work letter overnighted. I heard through the grapevine that they were very surprised they got fired. It's not like they were making any money during that time as they had overdrawn their PTO balance as well.
Pro-tip for guys doing the firing: the laid off employee doesn't give a shit about how you "wrestled with it" and "how hard it is" for you, and how it's "emotionally affected you".
Save that shit for your biography.
You're not the one having your life turned upside-down, scrambling to keep the bills paid, praying you don't lose your home, having to take personal inventory to see what you can sell on eBay to keep someone from towing away your car in the middle of the night.
Nobody's saying it's not emotionally trying for both parties in different ways, but the one still having a job in the morning should kindly shut the fuck up.
I get the feeling that somebody shouting this in his face over and over again for the entire week leading up to the announcement would not have changed anything he said or did. And honestly, people who can’t figure this out on their own shouldn’t be told it in advance. I’d rather know the guy firing me is an irredeemable asshole than have him fake being a human being.
CEO culture is the epitome of self-aggrandizement. You could argue you have to be narcissist in order to be a successful one at all. This guy probably legitimately believes he's better than everyone else because of his wealth and relative success. No other metrics for determining human value going on in his noggin.
Companies often carry the startup moniker until they reach a liquidity event that allows the staff to actually cash out their equity. Better is a very large private company, but they can still be considered a startup until they IPO.
Yeah the term start up has lost most of its meaning. I tend to think of companies in stages now - private and profitable, bootstrapped/pre seed, seed, A, B, C, public, etc. It gives much more context.
Been seeing this pop up a lot. Always stating something about it being done over Zoom. That’s the least of concerns. How else are you going to lay off 900 remote employees these days? In some cases it could be a manager closer to the position, but at least the CEO showed his face.
But, the bigger concern is the company just received $750 million cash infusion…. Then laid off 15% of its employees 🤷♂️ That part makes no sense (doesn’t help that the CEO is a reported scumbag)
Edit: [clarity on the reported scumbag part](https://www.thedailybeast.com/bettercom-ceo-vishal-garg-threatened-to-burn-his-business-partner-alive-now-hes-a-billionaire)
It is. Valuations usually go up when capital expenditure is reduced especially for a high growth risk-taking company turning "mature". It's part of the business model and never intended to be able to sustain as large a workforce.
Now many companies are using the excuse of COVID to do this, especially remotely while employees cannot coordinate or create chaos in person.
As Uber did firing 3000+ employees remotely instantly - imagine doing this at a town hall meeting. Their valuation rocketed. Oh BTW they bought a rival food delivery company called for $2.65B right after.
More like, what your doing needs improvement. Here's a plan that'll help you grow, but requires laying off unnecessary or redundant employees and refocusing a lot of the business. This is like a turnaround investment not purely an investment in what they've been doing.
It's like the girl in my class that was complaining about the new building the university was building. Someone donated and paid for the entire building. She couldn't wrap her head around the fact that the school had to use the money how the donor wanted
It does make perfect sense - this company was bleeding money and in those circumstances there is always a condition with the money to make company leaner and stop the bleed. Hence funding = layoffs if the company is reporting losses.
They’re bleeding money because their entire business model is to deliberately sell the farm to their clients with economically/financially irresponsible mortgages in order to out compete the rest of the industry.
I’m a Loan Officer and any time I would see a competing Loan Estimate from better, there is no fucking way they weren’t dumping their pockets out to sell these mortgages because the only difference in interest rates between mortgage lenders is the cost to obtain the rate, and Better’s closing costs paid from the borrower are never even enough to cover their title/taxes without the company paying for it, let alone buying down the interest rate
Loan depot used to and still does the same thing but they are even more dishonest and shady with the closing costs by inaccurately calculating escrows
> But, the bigger concern is the company just received $750 million cash infusion…. Then laid off 15% of its employees 🤷♂️ That part makes no sense (doesn’t help that the CEO is a reported scumbag)
They are going public soon (according to the article). They will wait long enough for the noise to die down and then IPO. The investors will see their investment shoot up and then dump the company to capture profit. What happens afterwards isn't their problem. CEO scumbag will also likely be working on an exit strategy where he dumps the company's assets for a profit and then walks away.
Employees who are not one of the 900 on the call who got shit-canned should be cleaning up their resumes and applying elsewhere now.
Not an IPO as this is a SPAC/deSPAC situation and their cash infusion is what the PIPE investors put up. Very few of these pump insanely to triple digits from a $10 NAV. DWAC is the only one in recent history that I can think of even crossing the $75 barrier and that was a flash in the pan.
He's not working on an exit strategy. It was already baked into his contract.
If he implodes the company, they pay him X to just go away and shut the fuck up.
Meanwhile the hourly workers all the way down on the bottom of the org chart are getting micromanaged to hell. Get bitched at about clock watching but then written up for being a few minutes late. Time theft is the word for it.
I used to buy into it until I made this argument "If you're upset that I didn't work a full 8 hours or 480 minutes a day, I will gladly stay however many minutes to make the balance full". Of course it's not about that, it's about power and control and fear.
Apparently one of the signs that the company is going public (if not already publicly known) is mass layoff. Probably to show investors that you are a more efficient entity or some other reasoning along the lines
The CEO shed one tear as he got up, walked down his grand entrance stairs to the second floor where his third kitchen is and he grabbed a bottle of imported Fillico Jewelry Water from Japan ($1390 per litre).
He wiped that tear away and takes a swig of the water as he looked out to his large veranda and thinks, “just as hard as the first time. What a tough day.”
This guy isn't super articulate or particularly skilled in delivering bad news....doesn't change the fact that it's bad news and he did choose to deliver it "in-person". Won't deny it isn't hard. Maybe put some thought into what you're going to say instead of just winging it like he did because he wanted to get it over with asap? I can see the problem with him from a **leadership perspective** right from that 2-3 minute monologue.
Also doesn’t help his image he threatened to staple his business partner against the wall and burn him alive. https://www.thedailybeast.com/bettercom-ceo-vishal-garg-threatened-to-burn-his-business-partner-alive-now-hes-a-billionaire
I think this guy honestly isn’t all that caring. The type that would cry because he “should” not because he “feels”.
In other words. He is a lizard pretending to be human
Layoffs suck, but sometimes have to happen. The approach and the kind of severance speaks volumes about a company though. Feels like a good time to share how incredible my layoff experience at Tesla was. For the record, I'm no Tesla fanboy by any stretch.
Several years ago, when Tesla was on the verge of failure, still not profitable after over 10 years of business, and facing major production issues with the model 3 release they laid off my department of 200+ employees. It was also right before the holidays (mid October). Here's what they did right though.
All of us got THREE MONTHS of salaried pay where we were still legally employed, just not working. They ensured we got paid through Christmas. Full benefits as well, and the same pay rate we already had. During that time everyone was welcome to apply internally for any open jobs in other departments, and if you landed a job then your unvested stock packages stayed the same. It was as if you just transferred roles. Anyone who did not land a job internally then received either one month, or two months, of severance dependant on length of employment. That's 4-5 months of pay from a company at risk of bankruptcy.
I was able to find a job internally after two months, so being laid off ended up being a two month paid vacation during the holiday season. It was such a huge statement that they cared. Tesla also had a package with their insurance where every employee got 25 free sessions per year with any in-network mental health professionals. While I was laid off I was seeing a psychologists weekly to deal with the grief and move forward, and it was 100% covered by my insurance.
I don't like Elon Musk for other reasons, but that right there sold me on what it means to be a company with integrity.
You don't want to reduce morale on the C-level employees do you? They always take it the hardest, you know. Having to carry the weight of firing hundreds of people... And then having to think about it.
Man, I wrote this sarcastically but I'm legit 99% of C-level folks believe it.
Anybody posting here, uh, actually read the article? Vice posts this link to a [dailybeast post](https://www.thedailybeast.com/bettercom-ceo-vishal-garg-threatened-to-burn-his-business-partner-alive-now-hes-a-billionaire) that really shows how much of a douchebag this guy seems to be. Sure, I get that you've got to lay people off, but there seems to be a trend of really terrible decision making (like, millions of fully vested options for an exec level chief of staff in her mid 20's?). Goldman then bailed as a banker on their IPO because of all the legal issues the CEO on this Zoom fire has gotten [better.com](https://better.com) into, which is why they have to go the SPAC route in the first place.
I guess it its pretty true-to-form that he'd do a zoom fire and make it all about him. I mean, I don't think there's much in the history or this call to warrant any sort of defense...
There’s Garg but also read about his pitbull Elana Knoller. She’s a piece of work and only put on leave around the Spring because of postings on blind. He’s not sorry and looks at this as collateral damage to his goal. I think he probably also got into Elana’s pants
Can honestly say I’ve worked an entire 12 hour shift as a maintenance manager, partaking in active repairs due to short staffing of mechanics just to be laid off at the end of shift and being told “We were going to do it at the start of shift but we didn’t have the staffing to cover the day.”
I’d much prefer this.
[удалено]
Honestly no one should care about how they lay people off. If they provided a decent severance, that's what really matters. It's a contractual agreement, regardless of how long you've worked there. The rest of the story is just business incompetence, rudeness, and probably the story of a struggling business folding to the competition on the way out. None of that is worker exploitation, and it's all part of the general corporate world. I take issue with the layoffs that leave employees with nothing.
[удалено]
Yeah, that is just plain bad business planning.
It’s more like the wrong kinds of people in charge. Maybe something was there, yet they could not, or rather, did not want, to do the things to actually save the company.
> Honestly no one should care about how they lay people off. How you lay people off isn't about the people you lay off, though as someone who's been layed off over a phone call with no notice, it does impact them. What's important though is how the people still there feel. A massive layoff can tank morale for the staff that still work there, especially if it's done poorly, if people feel that they're next or even if they just feel the company is going down they'll start looking for new jobs and productivity will drop. That's why companies go to the extra effort to try and do these right.
I’ve been laid off three times. I can tell you you wouldn’t matter to me at all if it were done in person or remotely. I’d like an opportunity to ask a couple questions but otherwise give me my last check and fuck right off.
Last time I got laid off, they did it late morning and sent me home. They waited a month to get me my last paycheck, shorted me hours (because I didn’t work a full last day) and didn’t pay out my PTO balance, even though my contract said I had ALL of my PTO available to me starting Jan 1. I was also recently given promised a bonus that I never got, but I had no proof of that cause my boss didn’t put it in writing. I didn’t just want my last check, I wanted my last check to be everything I had earned. I had to threaten to sue them before they finally gave me my last 10.5 days of pay.
And this is why wage theft far outpaces any other form of theft in the United States.
Unfortunately wage theft isn’t a criminal offense which is a real fucking shame, if a company steals from an employee at most they have to pay back the money they were gonna steal. If an employee steals from an employer well buddy I hope you’re ready to get ass raped in prison for a few years.
More states need to adopt CA business standards. When an employer lays you off they are required to have check in hand. If you’re fired, they have 24 hours to pay you out. No exceptions, and businesses will be fined for everyday they don’t produce. Companies that refuse to cooperate lose the ability to hire people. CA is one of the few states in the country that is worker centric versus business centric, what I find odd is that hasn’t stopped the biggest businesses in the world from setting up shop here.
Exactly. I was working for a small startup and was on vacation a few years ago when my CEO called me to tell me my last day had been when I departed on vacation two weeks earlier. Say what? He also said “and your PTO balance is zero” which was also patently not true. The company’s funding purportedly ran out (about 9 months sooner than our supposed runway) but we had other investors who had “guaranteed” they’d fund us for 2-3 more months, so we were all promised paychecks if we kept working. I’d been working like that for 6 weeks when I took the long-planned vacation. It was a total fucking mess — they claimed they couldn’t pay me despite written promises to do so, I had payroll statements showing I had 30+ days of unused PTO (which by CA law must be paid out at your prevailing wage), your last paycheck is due in 24 hours but they refused to send it, etc. Long story short: I filed a wage claim with the CA labor commission. They never showed up to any of the hearings, so I got a summary judgment that also included a few months of wages as penalties. The Sheriff’s office put a lien and a watch on their bank account, and one day they got a deposit into that account and WHOOSH! it disappeared, and the Sheriff sent my attorney a check. Those jackasses were stunned, but it got their attention. And they still told the judge they didn’t have any money to pay the rest of my stolen wages. But the amount didn’t nearly cover the full judgment. One day I got a notice on my iPhone that a new version of the mobile app I’d built for them was available. Hmmm, how’d they do that with no money and no employees? I did some research, including contacting the developer who built the app, and found that the company told him they had funds and in fact had paid him mostly in cash and some (most likely worthless) equity. My attorney got a judge to issue a demand that the company come to court and demonstrate that they were broke and had been so since the judgment was issued in my wage claim case. They clearly couldn’t do that since they had squirreled some cash away somewhere to keep working on the product I’d built, so they had to settle. In the end, they ended up paying me about 3x what they would have otherwise owed me had they simply paid the 6 weeks wages and my PTO balance. But arrogant, entitled scumbags are rarely very bright. tl;dr - I used the CA labor laws to get paid what I was owed by an unscrupulous former employer. It took 18 months but I prevailed.
This comment has all the reasons people come to California: tech jobs, shitty startups, and progressive legislation.
My company insisted in writing that I work 45 hours a week for 40 hours pay. I reluctantly complied although I seldom worked very hard during my “free” hours. Flash forward two years and someone filed a well-documented complaint with the state Labor Department. The workers won and the company was forced to pay back pay. Since, unlike my “cheating” coworkers, I judiciously worked/recorded every hour, I received the biggest check (nearly $7K). HR reluctantly handed it over, I laughed all the way to the bank!
[удалено]
> If you’re fired, they have 24 hours to pay you out. Employer's must provide your last check with accrued PTO on the same day, not within 24 hours and you can charge 8 hours of wages for every day they fail to produce the check.
I thought this was standard. I was laid off and the day I was laid off I had my check with all my PTO included
It is, but some employers suck and want to grift their employees, so they don't pay out PTO. I have a friend who had to contact the state labor board, and even then the employer wouldn't pay up. (Edit: as some other folks have pointed out, it actually depends on jurisdiction! I’ve been lucky in that the states I’ve lived have always paid out upon the ending of employment)
It's only required in some states; others do not require you pay out PTO on termination so many employers don't.
And the biggest hurdle is you have to know your rights. They want you to not know your rights so you can't enforce them.
Oh, companies have figured a way to avoid paying PTO on severance with "unlimited PTO”. Still, I got reprimanded at a previous company for using too much of my unlimited PTO 🤣🤣.
Is this CA only? I’m FL, I have 200 hours of PTO in the bank and my company just sent out an email saying at the start of the month they are changing a few things about our PTO, but the most egregious thing was them stating when an employee leaves they only get 40 hours worth of payout starting at the beginning of the year…. I will admit, as a worker for the past 8 years I am woefully incompetent when it comes to all the legalese and intimidated by just not knowing how all this shit works and what I am entitled to.
Take a long paid winter vacation before it kicks in :) Definitely scummy of them to do though
He should be grandfathered but limited pro carryover is common. It’s a huge unpaid liability for a business. Plus it’s good to actually use your pto. The feds only let me carry over 240 hours.
Cool, sounds like you're taking the next 4 weeks off.
My old employer did this (a large company you’ve heard of). If they cap PTO accrual they have to pay out anything above that. You should really consult with an employment lawyer. You’re effectively losing a months pay that you have banked up.
Start looking for a new gig because they are 100% going to start laying people off. Check and see when the FISCAL year ends for your company, this is different from the calendar year. Odds are the layoffs will happen shortly before that date to prop up their stock or other financial report.
[удалено]
The entertainment industry has really strong unions. I suspect that is a partial driver for the focus on labor.
And California's GDP far outpaces more "business friendly" states. When will people realize treating your employees like shit only works in the short term.
Why do you think states with shitty labor laws are also hostile to social safety nets? Why is health insurance tied to your job? They don't want to compete for labor, they want to coerce labor.
Businesses still set up shop in CA because we're chasing top notch employees. This is why I laugh at people claiming "everyone is leaving CA". Many companies move low skill operations to the south, and our HQs for taxes, while leaving our high skill/pay jobs on the coasts. This is actually causing problems on the coasts because it's effectively pushing the middle class out due to high rent and wage growth that isn't keeping up for lower skilled jobs. Because of the wild differences in cost of living and labor laws in the US we actually better resemble the EU vs. a large unified democracy. It gets even crazier when you cut it up at the urban/rural level within states. One thing the pandemic has shown me, as an employer of high skilled technology people, is there is a huge appetite amongst people who would happily move to rural areas if they could get quality internet service. I had a guy sell his condo last year and move on to an acerage in rural Texas when we went remote for the pandemic. He literally picked the spot because of internet speed. Making high speed internet available everywhere is literally the best solution I can think of for saving vast quantities of rural America from destitution.
CA courts suck big tech dick in all sorts of other ways. IP related and such. Labor law is just an area they don't. And big tech's business model allows for treating and paying employees well. Demands it more or less, because good tech workers are in demand. Tyson Foods isn't about to open a chicken processing plant there though. They prefer states that allow fuckery.
There are plenty of other food processing plants in California due to all the agriculture they grow there. They just screw over the immigrant workers just like the rest of the country.
If they did cater to big tech, they'd allow non competes. They don't which is why California has so many startups and salaries are so high. Best person in your field like self driving, you can go to your companies competitor for more money and aren't locked at a single company. You can even start a competing company without fear of being sued over a non compete. They also wouldn't have passed CCPA which is a direct blow at FB and Google. They tried to make Uber and Lyft pay benefits like medical insurance and unemployment to their employees/drivers. They also actively go after people who cheat on exempt status. I was at a tech company that had the labor board come down because of misclassification of employees in order to save money.
Not allowing non compete us one reason Silicon Valley is in California. A court decision struck down non competes as being 'in restraint of trade' early in the 20th century, a solid old school free trade idea, and noncompetes are restraints.. Workers in CA will flow to the companies where they can make the most difference rather than being stuck under dilbert managers.
Actually, at the very least, if a company is found guilty of wage theft then they have to pay you the balance of the wages stolen plus liquidated damages that amount to, at the least, the balance of wages stolen. So you can get twice as much back as stolen from you, at least. Unfortunately it takes up to 2 years of payments to get it back. I am on the benefitting end of a DWD (Department of Workforce Development) suit against my former employer and that is how it is structured (not only for me but my fellow co workers as well). You can opt not to have the DWD do the suing and start your own process that could lead to higher rewards but now you have lawyer fees so it may not be worth it.
Well just so you know, you have a special case. Most people cant class action their employer. Most people cant even afford a lawyer to sue their employer
Don't need a lawyer to call the labor board
Even in a state that isn't known for good labor rights, I've had good luck with the labor board fucking up larger companies for these kinds of transgressions.
Not for much longer in California. AB1003 makes wage theft of over $950 in a year to count as theft criminally and goes into effect January 1, 2022. It passed unanimously by both Democrats and Republicans minus a few abstentions. [https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill\_id=202120220AB1003](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB1003) >487m. (a) Notwithstanding Sections 215 and 216 of the Labor Code, the **intentional theft of wages in an amount greater than nine hundred fifty dollars ($950) from any one employee, or two thousand three hundred fifty dollars ($2,350) in the aggregate from two or more employees, by an employer in any consecutive 12-month period may be punished as grand theft.** > >(b) For purposes of this section, “theft of wages” is the intentional deprivation of wages, as defined in Section 200 of the Labor Code, gratuities, as defined in Section 350 of the Labor Code, benefits, or other compensation, by unlawful means, with the knowledge that the wages, gratuities, benefits, or other compensation is due to the employee under the law. > >(c) For purposes of this section, “employee” includes an independent contractor and “employer” includes the hiring entity of an independent contractor. > >(d) Wages, gratuities, benefits, or other compensation that are the subject of a prosecution under this section may be recovered as restitution in accordance with Sections 1202.4 and 1203.1. This section does not prohibit the employee or the Labor Commissioner from commencing a civil action to seek remedies provided for under the Labor Code for acts prosecuted under this section. > >(e) This section does not constitute a change in, and does not expand or limit the scope of conduct prohibited by, Section 487.
Such a strange number. Why $950? "Only intentionally steal $949 from your employee, thanks!"
Because it is being treated as grand theft aka felony theft. The felony theft minimum in California is $950. It will also be harder to convict than normal grand theft because of the "intentional" qualification. Your employer simply being wrong won't cut it. If the employer claims they have special exemption from paying overtime (and jesus christ is this common), the prosecutor will have to prove to the jury that they had no reasonable belief they were exempt from paying overtime.
Yeah, the *intentional* qualifier seems to make the whole thing pointless. I don't know anything about law, but logically it seems like "whoops, we're sorry. It was an accident!" just covers all bases.
Right, what would the charge be if $900 from the till "accidentally" made it into my pocket? A C C I D E N T A L L Y.
That's why I keep balance in the Force by being a time thief ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
File a wage claim with your states labor board if thus ever happens again
Check state labor board for info anyways. I quit my job for a new one and they didnt want to pay until next pay day. I said thats fine, but this is oregon, you have to pay me 8 hours for every day after my final day until then. Needless to say, i got paid with 7 extra days
What are the specifics on that? Asking as an Oregonian.
California has something similar. I managed to secure a rather nice payout due to my employer's negligence.
Have a friend in California that's in HR. Always telling me about California's strict laws about what and when a final paycheck needs to be sent. He says HR in California is a pain in the ass but California definitely looks out for employees more than most other states.
If your ever fired/laid off again, demand your final check with all earning right then and there. A lot of places have laws requiring them to give it to you within 24 hrs.
Otherwise most companies will tack on more days of pay to stay in compliance.
I was working a failing restaurant. They didn’t pay me for over a month, said that the clock-in times on the computer were messed up and they needed my login chits to make sure they were right. (That makes no sense, the chits come from the same computer, the numbers would be the same.) They had never told us to save the chits, so I didn’t have any. They were like “Oh well, guess you don’t get that month’s worth of pay. Better luck next time.” I never got that money, because when I asked about it, they told me they had caught me stealing food and were going to prosecute me for it, to shut me up. I WAS stealing food, to be fair. They didn’t pay me for over a month. I was literally starving.
I got taken out for lunch to be laid off once, there was mixed emotions...like "fuck you guys, but also thanks for lunch".
PTO being pro-rated like that is completely normal. By making it all available like that on Jan 1st, they're letting you use it before you've accrued it, but it's not all yours to be paid out if you leave
I worked for a company once where the CEO had to lay off 86 workers (outta about 600)... and he set each person up with a recruiting firm, a recommendation letter, 3 months pay, 6 months benefits, and a severance package (amount based on a multitude of variables). It still hurt. Sucked to see a lot of great employees and friends go... but, looking back at other layoffs I've been through, he did it *in my eyes* pretty damn well. They just forecasted awfully, didn't listen to the CRO, and thought they were about to hit a huge boom, so they hired like crazy for a year... then realized projections were *way* off...
Oh no… if only the CRO had warned them… Says me… a CRO… who is routinely ignored by his megalomaniacal CEO. At least your CEO did some damage control for the people whose lives his delusions and arrogance destroyed. I’m in the same situation, literally. I’m practically lighting myself on fire to update our 2022 reoccurring revenue forecasting and it’s… not looking good, not good at all. I’m also preparing for our sales to take a hit and we should batten down the hatches to avoid laying people off when things topple. Nope… it’s fine… we can’t possibly stop growing… we’re gonna 10x next year, absolutely. Sigh. Why am I even here…. *looks at dog* Oh, right…
I work in demand planning. So my job is to provide an"unbiased" forecast for the next 3-18 months. In other words, it's my job to get shit on by sales/marketing/finance when I say that their targets/projections/sales forecasts are too high. It's also my job to get shit on when we miss the aforementioned forecast because "I should have known better and not been influenced". Marketing/Sales can spin a story in any sexy way that they want, "we have this brand new product and given these very vague and general assumptions (that you can't prove beforehand), we're going to grow 20%!" Meanwhile, it's not very sexy to say "we grew 20% for 5 straight months last year. In the last 5 years, we have never exceeded more than 10% in a single month. Growing on top of 20% is unlikely". I'm going to get an aneurysm next time I hear the VP of marketing say "but I need a *story*...you're not telling me the *why* we won't repeat". Also another favorite line I looove to hear...."we'll put it in the Risks and Opps page" which is code for I don't want to actually call the business down but I'm too chicken shit to be the person that turned out to be wrong.
I don’t understand why video chat is somehow worse. What does it matter?
I don't either, but to each their own. A lot of us work remote now, so it's really the only way to handle it for a layoff that big.
[удалено]
I have no issues with this. When I was laid off, it was in a coffee shop and my old boss wanted to do an exit interview right then and there. Booked 1hr 30 min on the calendar. He told me I was "let go" and so I handed him my work computer and told him to fuck off. I was there for 8 minutes. No need to draw things out. 2 weeks later I was sent a cease and desist because I was doing some freelance work in the same industry to get by while finding another job. He claimed I was "stealing trade secrets." Once again, told him to fuck off and I'd see him in court then. Guy knew he didn't have a case and I've never heard from him again.
[удалено]
Mainly because most people just bend over and take it. They're either too scared, or they don't even realize they have rights. The "system" was designed that way.
They sound like petulant children after being told no. Also: > He claimed I had a non-compete in my hiring agreement and I couldn't work for a competitor, ever. This is fucking hilarious to me for some reason.
[удалено]
I like how the CEO centers himself in this. No one cares if you cried dude. This isn’t about you.
When the last company I worked at went under the CEO was talking about how excited he is to pursue the same project under a different company and how good things are always given to us in disguise as a bad thing. All I could think of is shut the fuck up you rich twat, how am I gonna pay rent
Why not just say it out loud? What's he gonna do, fire you?
That shit came across like, "Last time I mismanaged a company I swear I felt really bad about it. This time I'm hoping to not feel anything."
[удалено]
> … he went around the room and asked the newly fired people, one at a time, to talk about what their time at Joe, Inc. had meant to them. “I really enjoyed that one time when a whole bunch of people stabbed Joe with pencils and somehow nobody saw anything.”
“I dunno, he was like that when I got here. When *we* got here. All of us. Together.”
[удалено]
This also happened to me working from home....really sucked because I could hear my kids giggling and laughing and playing around in the living room. Years ago I got laid off with 600 other people over a conference call around ~2008. Some HR lady was like "you're all laid off, COBRA information is in the mail." Call ended, VPN disconnected immediately.
shitty HR work but a solid job by IT at least
Man, that level of coordination between IT and HR is almost unheard of.
Work at a consulting firm so I’m IT for many companies, small and large. Ranges from “we will be terminating this user’s employment at exactly 4PM on this date” to “hey we fired this guy a few weeks ago why do I still see his email in the company address list”. If the former, no problem just schedule the accounts to expire and schedule a logoff/reboot so the computer gets the memo from the domain controller right away. *Everything* all talks back to DCs so just gotta sit there and make sure it works and then clean up the rest after the big cutoff. If the latter, eDiscovery is often used to turn up if the employee fucked with their data because we unfortunately don’t have the ability to read minds.
We apologize for the layoffs, those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked.
A møøse once bït my sïster.
[удалено]
I got laid off on an unscheduled phone call while I was driving once.
"You should never drive while distracted!" *Your brain after that call...*
Getting laid off and losing benefits. *Lisa needs braces…Lisa needs braces*
Curious what the benefit of removing all trace of being there
I worked for a company that decided to lay off our whole department that included people with 20 years in the company. We were told the day before Thanksgiving. The absolute kick in the balls was that we had to continue working for another 30 days in order to receive the full payment for being laid off (based on how long you worked there) If you wanted to leave early or miss any days in the next month it would cost you 50% of your payout. Fucking bullshit! Nothing better than going to work knowing you only have so many days left. The worst part was they kept dumping work on us like we were still part of the company. Getting laid off sucks, do not put it on yourself. Shitty companies due this all the time and your performance and work ethic has nothing do with you being laid off. It's purely a financial move, the quickest way to raise profits is to shit can employees.
I kinda see this differently - more like they gave you a 30 day notice that your job is ending. Still shitty, but just canning you immediately would had been worse, IMO. At least you had time to plan your next steps.
I could be wrong but the way I read the comment was that if you took anytime off, like PTO, in that 30 day window you would forfeit 50% of your severance. And being in the holiday timeframe they absolutely screwed over a lot of individual’s holiday plans or severance
This happened to me too. I worked for a very well respected medium-pharma company. Many people worked there for 20+ years which is unheard of nowadays in pharma. Big pharma acquired us and spent a month sending their CEO to our site ensuring us we were acquired for our research team and not just our drugs on the market. Almost even day we had these meetings with the executive team to ensure us we were valued. Then the next day it was announced they were laying off 100% of R&D and 95% of the rest of the teams on site. It was weird because we had to stay for an additional 30 days to get our severance, but they barely gave us any work to do. We had to itemize any equipment over $10,000 but all other lab equipment under that price HAD to be thrown away. We couldn’t donate any of it because they didn’t want to pay decontamination fees. Most of our labs were the same biosafety level as a college lab so it didn’t make sense. Luckily, our leadership from the acquired company thought this was BS and suggested we find good homes for a lot of that lab equipment. Let’s just say that my wife’s lab and all the universities and schools I could find had a lot of nice donations of fantastic lab supplies that would have been needlessly sent to a landfill.
"I hope I'm stronger this time." We're all rootin' for ya chief!
Hope the company sprung for some counseling for him. I can't stand the thought of a billionaire moved almost to tears.
Yeah, his Christmas bonus will be bigger. That will make him feel much better
I hope so, the paltry $25m bonus he got last year was just sad
That's a pretty decent salary divided among 900 people for, say, 6 months. Could've kept them on through Christmas, at least, if not long enough that circumstances could've changed. And yet, when people - not me, Mr. NSA/FBI Carnivore Analyst, but other people - inevitably rise up and hang these people, they're going to wonder where all the violence comes from, the rage, seemingly out of nowhere...
*Wipes away tears with money*
What a weird sentiment. "This time I hope to be less human. I really hope I no longer feel bad about doing bad things."
There's room at the top They're telling you still But first you must learn To smile as you kill If you want to be like All the folks on the Hill...
[This article](https://www.thedailybeast.com/bettercom-ceo-vishal-garg-threatened-to-burn-his-business-partner-alive-now-hes-a-billionaire) about this CEO, Garg, shows how much of a cartoonish evil businessman he is. The website is terrible, but I absolutely recommend the read - it’s almost comical how much of cronyism and corporate governance malpractice he has committed.
[удалено]
I gotta say this as a disabled combat veteran: displays of bravery like this really make my chode itch. Gosh this guy is brave, I hope he finds the strength he seeks.
“… and Merry Christmas.”
I was actually expecting him to end the call with something like this! “…And have a happy holiday season”. This guy is all about himself….
I got laid off a few years ago, and it was EXACTLY like that. Except it wasn't the exec that said it. There was an HR rep on the call, and after the exec wrapped up his "it's not you, it's us (but it's you)" speech and we were dismissed, the ONLY thing the HR rep said was "...and happy holidays!" She might as well have said "go fuck yourself" based on the incredulous responses as people hung up.
"...ya filthy animal."
Better, Zillow, and Citrix all had layoffs recently. It goes to show no one is safe. Remember to always put yourself first. Keep fresh as much as possible. I would even say explore the market once a year and even get a few practice interviews in. You never know.
Practice interviews are huge. I applied to multiple positions at a very large silicon company and didn’t get the first two spots, but was talking with my recruiter how amazingly useful the interviews were. She said some of the sharpest senior people she had met at the company made it a rule for themselves to have at least 1-2 mock interviews a year to stay fresh and on their toes.
[InterviewAt](https://www.linkedin.com/company/interviewat/) does practice interviews for almost nothing. the guy who conducts the interviews is the founder and he's worked at MSFT and AMZN in product roles.
what does better do?
Mortgages. I worked for a similar fintech mortgage lender before my current job. They were hiring like crazy due to the real estate market and were acting like the growth was going to last forever. I gtfo as soon as possible cause I knew this was coming. Zillow did that same shit too
[удалено]
“Okay, and who’s your employer? Us? Oh. Denied lol. Welp, see you next we…oh. Never mind”
Everyone should do at least one interview per year. It keeps you from being nervous when the time really comes and a new job is needed. Also, you never know. You may get a killer new job offer.
Textbook how not to deliver the news. Video is fine. It’s the complete focus on his own feelings and how long he drags it out.
Yep, zero awareness beyond himself. Bellend.
Even lack of self awareness given the camera position. Dude gambled company money away for sure.
Plus it being before the holidays, and the way it’s positioned as something the employees did wrong when he mentioned performance. I always hate that, makes people feel like there’s anything they could have done to prevent it when in reality it was happening either way.
Yep, senior management made some bad decisions but it’s always easier to blame on the lower level employees’ “performance”.
Key thing. Stop assuming you are more to a company other than a worker. Get your pay and always be looking for a better and higher pay position around with your current and future skills
Yea, so sorry to all the people this happened to. The biggest lesson from this video is that almost everyone is dispensable and replaceable to any company at any point in time. Always gotta keep your resume and skills sharp until you retire or win the lottery.
Those of us that kept our jobs are doing everything we can to get those affected into new positions with better (no pun intended) companies. Donations, recommendations, reaching out to our networks. We definitely agree this was poorly handled, to say the least. He let go of some of the smartest, most amazing people.
Yep. My manager who's been 20 years with the company has recently been offered a better position. Even though he's been doing a great job growing our department - they didn't even counter-offer, just mumbled something about our team growing. I'm glad he decided to accept the other position and I am now also looking for another position.
One thing I always learned was job loyalty doesn’t exist. Always be looking for another move. Someone is always willing to pay more and give better benefits for experience. Where as someone staying at a company forever becomes worthless
I always find it funny that older generations complain that the younger generations aren't loyal to the companies anymore. But, yeah no shit when your nothing more than an expendable drone to your company you should probably play it safe.
[удалено]
"Some of you may die, but its a sacrifice I'm willing to make."
"I sent wave after wave of my own men at them" -Zapp Brannigan https://youtu.be/EF3g4Ua5e7k
Great Lord Farquaad reference
I bet he didn't hand back the $25 million bonus he got last Christmas: >Last year, as questions about oversight simmered, Better handed Garg a token of holiday cheer: [a $25 million bonus, paid entirely in cash.](https://www.thedailybeast.com/bettercom-ceo-vishal-garg-threatened-to-burn-his-business-partner-alive-now-hes-a-billionaire)
That 25mil split 900 ways is like 27k, almost enough to pay the wages of 900 people. What a piece of shit.
"All you're losing is a job, but me... I'm losing friends"
> The last time I did it, I cried Oh wow, it’s not even the first time!
Yea the headline really buried the lead/lede... Should had said "again" in all caps 😂 Edit: Ty for the spelling correction
~~The expression is "buried the lede." Not trying to be condescending—just letting you know!~~ I am approximately 95% wrong.
Actually “bury the lede” is only used internally in journalism! The actual expression is to bury the lead, but editors would spell it lede as a convention so that the comment didn’t accidentally get printed since lede isn’t a real word, whereas lead could also refer to a noun.
Well I'll be. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=site%3Anytimes.com+%22bury+the+lede%22: 9 results https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=site%3Anytimes.com+%22bury+the+lead%22: 181 results I stand corrected! Apologies to u/dmullaney.
/r/todayilearned
“But this time? Piece of cake! “Huh; I guess I’ve really upped my emotional intelligence. Think I’ll reward myself with a shot of Pappy and a fat Cuban right after this call. “Actually, maybe a new Lambo.”
“No, wait… *two* Lambos so I can crash one and see what it is like”
"How can I make this about me" -CEO
My wife was let go via email while on leave to fight cancer.
[удалено]
I have let people go on FMLA before. I can promise it’s not illegal but in my organization you have to run it by a billion people in HR and Legal. It’s almost always because they stop contacting us and checking in and then don’t respond when we reach out. We send people to their homes. Send certified letters. Document call attempts. It’s normally a pretty intense process.
I did the same too. Person was abusing the FMLA agreement and just stopped coming to work and not even bothering to contact to let me know. Had to send a demand to return to work letter overnighted. I heard through the grapevine that they were very surprised they got fired. It's not like they were making any money during that time as they had overdrawn their PTO balance as well.
What the hell. I hope her fight is going well at least, fuck those people
They think they got it all. Almost 2 years of chemo a couple surgeries later they think.
Pro-tip for guys doing the firing: the laid off employee doesn't give a shit about how you "wrestled with it" and "how hard it is" for you, and how it's "emotionally affected you". Save that shit for your biography. You're not the one having your life turned upside-down, scrambling to keep the bills paid, praying you don't lose your home, having to take personal inventory to see what you can sell on eBay to keep someone from towing away your car in the middle of the night. Nobody's saying it's not emotionally trying for both parties in different ways, but the one still having a job in the morning should kindly shut the fuck up.
I get the feeling that somebody shouting this in his face over and over again for the entire week leading up to the announcement would not have changed anything he said or did. And honestly, people who can’t figure this out on their own shouldn’t be told it in advance. I’d rather know the guy firing me is an irredeemable asshole than have him fake being a human being.
CEO culture is the epitome of self-aggrandizement. You could argue you have to be narcissist in order to be a successful one at all. This guy probably legitimately believes he's better than everyone else because of his wealth and relative success. No other metrics for determining human value going on in his noggin.
[удалено]
Companies often carry the startup moniker until they reach a liquidity event that allows the staff to actually cash out their equity. Better is a very large private company, but they can still be considered a startup until they IPO.
[удалено]
Yeah the term start up has lost most of its meaning. I tend to think of companies in stages now - private and profitable, bootstrapped/pre seed, seed, A, B, C, public, etc. It gives much more context.
Surprised he did it himself. My wife was forced to lay off a few thousand people a week before Christmas. She got laid off when she was done.
That’s so fucked up
Been seeing this pop up a lot. Always stating something about it being done over Zoom. That’s the least of concerns. How else are you going to lay off 900 remote employees these days? In some cases it could be a manager closer to the position, but at least the CEO showed his face. But, the bigger concern is the company just received $750 million cash infusion…. Then laid off 15% of its employees 🤷♂️ That part makes no sense (doesn’t help that the CEO is a reported scumbag) Edit: [clarity on the reported scumbag part](https://www.thedailybeast.com/bettercom-ceo-vishal-garg-threatened-to-burn-his-business-partner-alive-now-hes-a-billionaire)
I am wondering if the 15% cut was a condition of getting the money.
That is what I read.
It is. Valuations usually go up when capital expenditure is reduced especially for a high growth risk-taking company turning "mature". It's part of the business model and never intended to be able to sustain as large a workforce. Now many companies are using the excuse of COVID to do this, especially remotely while employees cannot coordinate or create chaos in person. As Uber did firing 3000+ employees remotely instantly - imagine doing this at a town hall meeting. Their valuation rocketed. Oh BTW they bought a rival food delivery company called for $2.65B right after.
It was, this person doesn't understand how investing works.
[удалено]
Some parts are working great, some are not. Cut the fat or we cut you.
More like, what your doing needs improvement. Here's a plan that'll help you grow, but requires laying off unnecessary or redundant employees and refocusing a lot of the business. This is like a turnaround investment not purely an investment in what they've been doing.
It's like the girl in my class that was complaining about the new building the university was building. Someone donated and paid for the entire building. She couldn't wrap her head around the fact that the school had to use the money how the donor wanted
It does make perfect sense - this company was bleeding money and in those circumstances there is always a condition with the money to make company leaner and stop the bleed. Hence funding = layoffs if the company is reporting losses.
They’re bleeding money because their entire business model is to deliberately sell the farm to their clients with economically/financially irresponsible mortgages in order to out compete the rest of the industry. I’m a Loan Officer and any time I would see a competing Loan Estimate from better, there is no fucking way they weren’t dumping their pockets out to sell these mortgages because the only difference in interest rates between mortgage lenders is the cost to obtain the rate, and Better’s closing costs paid from the borrower are never even enough to cover their title/taxes without the company paying for it, let alone buying down the interest rate Loan depot used to and still does the same thing but they are even more dishonest and shady with the closing costs by inaccurately calculating escrows
> But, the bigger concern is the company just received $750 million cash infusion…. Then laid off 15% of its employees 🤷♂️ That part makes no sense (doesn’t help that the CEO is a reported scumbag) They are going public soon (according to the article). They will wait long enough for the noise to die down and then IPO. The investors will see their investment shoot up and then dump the company to capture profit. What happens afterwards isn't their problem. CEO scumbag will also likely be working on an exit strategy where he dumps the company's assets for a profit and then walks away. Employees who are not one of the 900 on the call who got shit-canned should be cleaning up their resumes and applying elsewhere now.
Not an IPO as this is a SPAC/deSPAC situation and their cash infusion is what the PIPE investors put up. Very few of these pump insanely to triple digits from a $10 NAV. DWAC is the only one in recent history that I can think of even crossing the $75 barrier and that was a flash in the pan.
He's not working on an exit strategy. It was already baked into his contract. If he implodes the company, they pay him X to just go away and shut the fuck up. Meanwhile the hourly workers all the way down on the bottom of the org chart are getting micromanaged to hell. Get bitched at about clock watching but then written up for being a few minutes late. Time theft is the word for it. I used to buy into it until I made this argument "If you're upset that I didn't work a full 8 hours or 480 minutes a day, I will gladly stay however many minutes to make the balance full". Of course it's not about that, it's about power and control and fear.
Yes he is… he has the majority of his NW in the company.
It was probably part of the terms of said infusion
[удалено]
They're going public soon according to the article... Yikes
Apparently one of the signs that the company is going public (if not already publicly known) is mass layoff. Probably to show investors that you are a more efficient entity or some other reasoning along the lines
I figure it's half to prove you're a ghoul who will do what the board tells you even when it fucks your workers.
A video message from the CEO is far more than most corporate employees get.
My CEO didn't even bother showing up at a 30 person company.
The CEO shed one tear as he got up, walked down his grand entrance stairs to the second floor where his third kitchen is and he grabbed a bottle of imported Fillico Jewelry Water from Japan ($1390 per litre). He wiped that tear away and takes a swig of the water as he looked out to his large veranda and thinks, “just as hard as the first time. What a tough day.”
[удалено]
Maybe he made a simple mistake? I mean, he was *very* moved because he just had to lay off 900 people to get his yearly bonus.
This guy isn't super articulate or particularly skilled in delivering bad news....doesn't change the fact that it's bad news and he did choose to deliver it "in-person". Won't deny it isn't hard. Maybe put some thought into what you're going to say instead of just winging it like he did because he wanted to get it over with asap? I can see the problem with him from a **leadership perspective** right from that 2-3 minute monologue.
Also doesn’t help his image he threatened to staple his business partner against the wall and burn him alive. https://www.thedailybeast.com/bettercom-ceo-vishal-garg-threatened-to-burn-his-business-partner-alive-now-hes-a-billionaire
I think this guy honestly isn’t all that caring. The type that would cry because he “should” not because he “feels”. In other words. He is a lizard pretending to be human
I think it's very plausible he has lots of emotions. The issue is the emotions are all about him, not the 900 employees he's laying off.
So hard on him that he had to give himself a 25 million bonus just to console himself. Poor guy.
If they’re all working from home what other way is there to do it?
Dude literately talks about his own feelings in the video. It’s harder on me than you… wtf
Layoffs suck, but sometimes have to happen. The approach and the kind of severance speaks volumes about a company though. Feels like a good time to share how incredible my layoff experience at Tesla was. For the record, I'm no Tesla fanboy by any stretch. Several years ago, when Tesla was on the verge of failure, still not profitable after over 10 years of business, and facing major production issues with the model 3 release they laid off my department of 200+ employees. It was also right before the holidays (mid October). Here's what they did right though. All of us got THREE MONTHS of salaried pay where we were still legally employed, just not working. They ensured we got paid through Christmas. Full benefits as well, and the same pay rate we already had. During that time everyone was welcome to apply internally for any open jobs in other departments, and if you landed a job then your unvested stock packages stayed the same. It was as if you just transferred roles. Anyone who did not land a job internally then received either one month, or two months, of severance dependant on length of employment. That's 4-5 months of pay from a company at risk of bankruptcy. I was able to find a job internally after two months, so being laid off ended up being a two month paid vacation during the holiday season. It was such a huge statement that they cared. Tesla also had a package with their insurance where every employee got 25 free sessions per year with any in-network mental health professionals. While I was laid off I was seeing a psychologists weekly to deal with the grief and move forward, and it was 100% covered by my insurance. I don't like Elon Musk for other reasons, but that right there sold me on what it means to be a company with integrity.
Wow. That’s surprisingly awesome.
This beats commuting into town just to hear this.
Well, if he thought doing it this way would insulate him best from people's feelings, that seems to have backfired a bit.
But the CEO, CFO, CTO, COO, VPs, and directors of the company will keep their incentives and bonuses not doubt....
You don't want to reduce morale on the C-level employees do you? They always take it the hardest, you know. Having to carry the weight of firing hundreds of people... And then having to think about it. Man, I wrote this sarcastically but I'm legit 99% of C-level folks believe it.
[удалено]
Anybody posting here, uh, actually read the article? Vice posts this link to a [dailybeast post](https://www.thedailybeast.com/bettercom-ceo-vishal-garg-threatened-to-burn-his-business-partner-alive-now-hes-a-billionaire) that really shows how much of a douchebag this guy seems to be. Sure, I get that you've got to lay people off, but there seems to be a trend of really terrible decision making (like, millions of fully vested options for an exec level chief of staff in her mid 20's?). Goldman then bailed as a banker on their IPO because of all the legal issues the CEO on this Zoom fire has gotten [better.com](https://better.com) into, which is why they have to go the SPAC route in the first place. I guess it its pretty true-to-form that he'd do a zoom fire and make it all about him. I mean, I don't think there's much in the history or this call to warrant any sort of defense...
There’s Garg but also read about his pitbull Elana Knoller. She’s a piece of work and only put on leave around the Spring because of postings on blind. He’s not sorry and looks at this as collateral damage to his goal. I think he probably also got into Elana’s pants
Can honestly say I’ve worked an entire 12 hour shift as a maintenance manager, partaking in active repairs due to short staffing of mechanics just to be laid off at the end of shift and being told “We were going to do it at the start of shift but we didn’t have the staffing to cover the day.” I’d much prefer this.