Layoffs are never pleasant, but this CEO is notorious for his coldness; now he claims to have learned from it.
The title image is a symbolic image.
Who fires 900 people via video conference? No one likes to be fired, but there are methods that hurt particularly much. When the counterpart shows no decency to at least make an effort to soften the blow, a situation is created that no one forgets quickly.
Just under Christmas 2021, 900 employees (about one in ten of the workforce) of the financial service provider better.com faced this reality. During a video conference, he announced to those present:
If you are participating in this video call, you are part of the unfortunate group being laid off. Your job here ends immediately. You will receive an email from the HR department.
Anyone who wants to watch a recording of the roughly three-minute call can still find it on X, formerly Twitter.
After that, events escalated: A wave of outrage rolled in, a letter was written, and the CEO disappeared from the scene. Now he is back and has something to share with everyone, as he announced in an interview with Techcrunch.
Interestingly, this also happened to another CEO, although he stumbled over something else instead of a mass layoff and lost his company.
Behavior Courses for a CEO
Is the CEO still at the helm of the company today? Yes, Vishal Garg still bears, or rather regains, responsibility. Because after the scandal, a storm of criticism descended on the company and especially on him. The board then took him out of the firing line, and Garg wrote an open letter in which he apologized for the action.
Previously, he had spoken poorly about employees in leaked messages, further damaging his reputation as a boss.
What does he want to do differently now? He recently underwent training for leadership to learn from it. Vishal Garg wants to become a nicer boss and earn the trust of the remaining employees: ‘I have worked very, very hard on this.’
However, there were still waves of layoffs in 2022 and 2023. Since the infamous video call, around 4,000 employees have had to go. Perhaps their last conversations were a bit more personal and conciliatory.
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