Fraud Claims and Dumb Dolphins - Mass Layoff!

[bjcheung77]

The more I read about this CEO, the more I laugh at the way he's leading the company.  I can't believe the executive board members or largest shareholders, or even upper management/staff hasn't asked him to "leave/resign".  Having a toxic boss is one thing, having a toxic CEO tops the list!  Guess who that "dumb dolphin" is, the CEO himself, not the staff members he's targeting... I would not accept his apology if it happens more than once...

Link: Better.com CEO Vishal Garg apologizes to current employees for ‘blundering’ of mass layoffs; SPAC delayed | TechCrunch
Link: Mortgages, Fraud Claims And ‘Dumb Dolphins’: A Tangled Past Haunts Better.com CEO Vishal Garg (forbes.com)
Link: Better.com CEO Fires Employees In A Cold, One-Way Video Announcement (forbes.com)

[dfrecore]

I did hear that many/most of the employees being fired/laid off were because they were logging in and doing 2 hours of work or less, and then saying they'd worked for 8 hours a day. He warned people months ago.

That being said, it's much easier to just deal with issues as they arise. Bob Smith is not working 8 hours a day? Fire him when you figure it out. Susan Black does the same. Fire her. Word wold get around that this was unacceptable, and you'd get rid of the dead weight quickly, and then the rest would either work harder, leave, or get fired. If they would have fired people when the problems started, they wouldn't have needed to do a mass layoff now.

[rachel83az]

If you complete your goals, what does it matter if you took 2 hours or 8? People cannot be productive for literally 8 hours a day, that's impossible. Now, if they were only doing 1/4th of the work that they should be doing, that's something else entirely. But the idea that you have to be at your desk, actively doing something every single hour of the workday (and that things like emailing coworkers for clarification is not actually work) is toxic.

[dfrecore]

If you complete your goals, what does it matter if you took 2 hours or 8? People cannot be productive for literally 8 hours a day, that's impossible. Now, if they were only doing 1/4th of the work that they should be doing, that's something else entirely. But the idea that you have to be at your desk, actively doing something every single hour of the workday (and that things like emailing coworkers for clarification is not actually work) is toxic.

No, they were not getting their work done.

Also, I have a friend who has to log in to do work each day.  They know when she's emailing coworkers, when she's chatting on the Teams platform, etc.  She is not expected to do something every single hour of the workday, but she expected to get a certain amount of work done, and it's a lot more than 2 hours a day.

Allowing people to not work multiple hours each day, when their coworkers are working, is toxic.  I've been that person working in the office while Jim Bob needs to take 14 smoke breaks a day.  It creates a lot of resentment.  There are plenty of losers out there who are just not working.

[bluebooger]

If you complete your goals, what does it matter if you took 2 hours or 8? People cannot be productive for literally 8 hours a day, that's impossible. Now, if they were only doing 1/4th of the work that they should be doing, that's something else entirely. But the idea that you have to be at your desk, actively doing something every single hour of the workday (and that things like emailing coworkers for clarification is not actually work) is toxic.

I was at work today 8 hours           
I worked about 45 minutes             

that is a typical day for me             

check email 
take 10 minutes to run a report          
watch twitch and youtube for 2 hours          
go take a one hour nap in a chair near the cafeteria  
eat lunch               
respond to a couple of emails 
spend 30 minutes running a few more reports       
watch more twitch and youtube 
go home  

i cannot believe they actually pay me a full time wage for this

> No, they were not getting their work done.

are you sure about that ?

I get all my work done
there just isn't enough to do
15 years and I've passed every performance review with flying colors

[ashkir]

Employers want people to use Teams because Teams has a hidden admin setting which means they can watch your activity.

[ss20ts]

Employers want people to use Teams because Teams has a hidden admin setting which means they can watch your activity.

Lots of companies don't use Teams. If you're working for a company who is this anal, then you need to find a better company.

[freeloader]

FWIW, the idea that they workers had been working 2 hours/day came from an anonymous blog post that was posted by Garg, the CEO who did the layoff conference call. There has been no other evidence, including no corroboration by many people who resigned after Garg’s call, to support that. Garg has a long track record of bullying and making other outlandish comments (see: dolphins) about his workers, so I am not going to simply accept his anonymous post as gospel truth.

It is also worth noting that his company had just received a big infusion of cash ($750 million) to help boost the financial position. Investors would want to see ROI on that. Housing sales are cyclical during each year, with a substantial downturn during winter months.  Rising housing prices and economic uncertainty (including inflation) are pointing to further cooling in the housing market in the spring. All of that means that better.com probably would not have seen an increase in revenue, if anything the opposite would have been true, in the next couple of quarters.  Only a couple of ways to increase the bottom line: make more or spend less. They weren’t going to be making more, so they had to be spending less. So, cut labor costs. 

Were some of the workers probably not high-performing?  Yeah, probably. Most companies don’t intentionally fire their best performing employees (unless they are also the most expensive, that is).  But, again, that doesn’t mean the people let go were bad or even unproductive workers. To me, this whole thing reads as a boss who is a d**k, who has contempt for his employees, and who wanted to CYA by saying the employees were stealing from the company when, in reality, he was a piss-poor manager and was running a company that couldn’t adjust to market fluctuations without massive layoffs.

[jsd]

an anonymous blog post that was posted by Garg, the CEO

To your point, this isn't just a rumor either, he later admitted (in a Forbes interview) that he was in fact the anonymous poster.

[ss20ts]

Wouldn't surprise me to see him charged with fraud or something down the line. Seems like CEO's who behave like this are just trying to CYA. All too often they face criminal charges for their actions. The actions they're trying to cover up.