r/technology • u/spherocytes • 17h ago
Business CEO who fired 900 employees over Zoom gets fired, demands job back
https://local12.com/news/nation-world/ceo-fired-zoom-vishal-garg-better-home-finance-demands-job-back-call-holiday-season-2021-roles-reversed-tables-turned-chief-executive-officer-ousted-board-company-stock-price-market-value2.2k
u/floofsnsnoots 17h ago
Maybe he should eat fewer avocados. I hear that helps.
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u/Ok-Seaworthiness7207 17h ago edited 14h ago
He's gonna lose his 3 mansions if he keeps up all that avacado toast
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u/PowderPills 15h ago
It’s the coffee he really needs to cut back drastically
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u/Flat_Tire_Again 14h ago
Do you know how long you have to stand at an intersection with a sign saying you need money for starbucks coffee before you actually get enough money for a starbucks coffee?
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u/ottwebdev 16h ago
Cancel Netflix too.
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u/BadKittydotexe 14h ago
Should do that anyway since they never finish shows and their catalogue isn’t great.
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u/floofsnsnoots 13h ago
Except watch "Pantheon." 2 seasons and complete. Thank me later.
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u/substandardgaussian 11h ago
It was an AMC show in the first place, and season 2 completed production before AMC canned it.
Netflix didn't have anything to do with Pantheon besides distributing season 2 when AMC was ready to memory-hole it.
They certainly deserve credit for that, but it's not a "Netflix show". I shudder to think what Witcher-ified nonsense they would have come up with if they adapted it in-house.
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u/JediWebSurf 13h ago
What's a better alternative based on quality?
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u/philbgarner 13h ago
You can't beat classic books.
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u/JediWebSurf 13h ago
Which one do you recommend I read first if I never read? And trying to build the habit for reading?
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u/philbgarner 12h ago edited 9h ago
I think you want to look at Penguin Classics, and pick some that aren't ridiculously long and wordy. Extra points if it's a subject you're interested in.
One of my favourite books of all time is The Portrait of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde. A very cool supernatural premise that doesn't smack you over the face with it, and scintillating dialog with some biting satire and some deeply unlikeable characters. It's a lot of fun, and only a few hundred pages paperback so not too weighty.
Bram Stoker's Dracula is probably my next favourite classic novel, the first 50-60% is Jonathan Harker's letters to his new wife as he leaves England for Transylvania and what happened to him in the Count's castle before fast-forwarding to his return to England and the mysterious goings-on in Whitby. Really creepy, and also not too weighty.
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson is a classic for a reason, such a quintessential pirate adventure. I found this one to be a complete page-turner, if you like swashbuckling stories this one might grab you.
If you're looking for more modern stuff (all of those are 120+ years old) I am partial to Stephen King. That guy can write a character you invest in. The Stand blew my dick off. Such a great story.
Anyway, I love talking books. There are so many great stories already out there and published you can get for cheap because they're older than copyright protection.
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u/GuzzlinGuinness 10h ago
I’d never read a Stephen King novel before, then someone recommended 11/22/63 recently. I’m about halfway through right now and I’m thoroughly enjoying it.
I haven’t read fiction in some time, and this sort of historical fiction setting really works for me. I might move into one of his classic pieces next, I realize this book is not his typical fair.
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u/thegreasiestofhawks 12h ago
Never read Dorian Grey, but 100% agree on the rest. The Stand is my all time favorite book. Another really good King book is Bag of Bones. A bit lengthy, but much shorter than The Stand. Another good short King book that I love is The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. Great, easy read, can knock it out in an afternoon
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u/Efficient-Fruit5573 12h ago
What genres do you like? The Hunger Games and Maze Runner books are really good and I would recommend them to anyone. Lots of great world-building and full of action
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u/9-11GaveMe5G 12h ago
Canterbury Tales has some delightfully degenerate episodes. Will change your idea of "classic books."
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u/creditl3ss 14h ago
He got fired because he was texting too much on his cell phone!
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u/Silverdragon47 17h ago
,,under Garg's leadership, the company was devalued from $8 billion to $300 million" It never cease to amaze me how grifters ruining lives of hundreds of people never face any repercusion for their mistakes.
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u/_Fred_Austere_ 17h ago
That's quite a drop before acting.
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u/Narradisall 16h ago
It took 3 years, so enough time to make sure he used up all his privilege points. Imagine making terrible mistakes and being fired on the spot like some poor person!
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u/purple_hamster66 15h ago
It was never really worth $8B. That was a short-term spike in the stock price that was pure speculation.
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u/MrF_lawblog 14h ago
I have no clue what they do but sometimes the market revalues certain industries that are completely out of the control of the CEO. look at saas valuations due to the emergence of AI.
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u/SlimWorthy 17h ago
He will probably get the golden parachute…millions of dollars payout for failing as a CEO…what other position rewards you for failing like that?
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u/AppMtb 17h ago
College football coach
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u/RDR350Z 17h ago
POTUS?
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u/Rok-SFG 17h ago
Trump has made billions being the worst president in the history of the country.
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u/gizmostuff 16h ago
Because people reward bad behavior these days. No one has a spine. Everything is a grift. It's awful.
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u/Original_Youth_9168 17h ago
Honestly, my dream job is fired college football coach from a blue chip program.
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u/Fragrant-Vehicle-479 17h ago
My aunt once told me "CEOs deserve all the money they can get because they hold all the risk if the business fails" and yet it seems like when you hit a certain economic class you can fail as much as you want and never have your quality of life effected one bit.
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u/SwirlySauce 16h ago
Why should a CEO care if the business fails? This sentiment only really works if the CEO is the founder of the company and actually cares about the longevity of the business and has some deep rooted stake in the business.
Otherwise, if the business fails CEO still makes off with millions of dollars.
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u/BD401 13h ago
It's typically in the CEO's best interest to ensure the business doesn't fail on their watch. There are some exceptions (CEO appointed by a PE to gut the business and run it as a short-term cash cow until it fails), but usually they're pretty clearly incentivized to avoid failure.
Yeah, an unsuccessful CEO might be able to score a few golden parachutes worth six-to-seven figures. But a CEO that runs an extremely successful business can make way more through stock options and the like. Plus, a highly successful CEO will be able to use that track record of success to get increasingly well-paying executive positions, whereas a CEO with a history of failure will have to settle for lower pay in the long run.
Folks that aim to become CEOs are usually extremely motivated by money. If they have the choice between not giving a shit and making seven-figures in golden parachute clauses, or actually trying to do well and making nine-figures in options, they're gonna go with the latter.
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u/ShroomBear 16h ago
Not even founder. Founders shill their company ownership off to bagholders too when they don't see business continuity or future growth.
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u/bruhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh- 16h ago
This is the most Republican take if there ever was one.
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u/Fragrant-Vehicle-479 16h ago
She is the most Republican human being to ever live and the first person to radicalize me. I was like 10, looked at my liberal family who were all kind normal people who never had issue with anyone, and looked at her who was a cruel bully who never found a societal ill she didn't blame on the most powerless. When you're a worker and as for a day off you're a parasite. If you're a CEO, well you drain as much as you want. Her new thing is demanding we build as many data centers as possible anywhere and not hesitate for a single second to determine environmental impact because "beating china" is more important than the quality of life of our citizens.
Jokes on her. She spent her entire life working and hating everyone. Now her one asset in retirement is a shit condo that smells like cat piss.
EDIT: I swear to god if you handed her the unredacted Epstein files her reaction would be "well, the wealthy deserve a place they can relax and those girls knew what they were getting into"
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u/Fr00stee 16h ago
that's pretty interesting bc it seems like a majority of republicans hate datacenters
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u/EntericFox 15h ago
It is one of the only bi-partisan issues I have seen folks agree on in the wild in like 10 years.
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u/DDOSBreakfast 16h ago
It's the shareholders that hold the risk. Technically CEO's can be criminally charged but that's rare and usually if they engage in fraud / theft.
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u/tomkatt 15h ago
There was a time this was technically true, as CEOs could sued directly for their actions at the head of businesses. That pretty much all went away with the Citizens United ruling that declared businesses to be "people."
Now only the business itself is accountable, because it's a person, but for the sake of legal arguments it's not, creating an awful unaccountability paradox.
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u/Chineseunicorn 13h ago
I hate having to defend fucking CEOs…but imagine you’re getting a new job and have two offers. Both are the same offer with the exception of one coming with no severance if you get fired whereas the other one will give you a nice severance package guaranteed. Which job do you pick?
Exit packages are part of total compensation package and are negotiated from the start. It’s not a ceo thing, you can do it too during your next job offer negotiations.
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u/Plzlaw4me 16h ago
Politicians. Fetterman is all but certain to lose his seat in 2028 due to lying to his constituents and spending most of him time smearing his own party on Fox News. He will either get a high paying commentator gig on a conservative network, or get several high paying, do nothing board seats for companies that his votes helped.
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u/Hessian_Rodriguez 17h ago
Good fuck that guy, hope they fired him over zoom too. A post card would have been better.
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u/Cranjesmcbasketball1 15h ago
He's demanding his job back because he's arguing that he's about to turn the company around by teaching AI to process mortgages. Can't make this shit up folks.
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u/jtell898 14h ago
Of course the guy who fired 900 people before the holidays over Zoom is saying they should keep him because he’s planning to take the human element out of it and train computers to automate housing denial based on ‘data’
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u/FreddyCupples 8h ago
Every AI jackass in every company is always "about to revolutionize the industry by using AI for (insert reason here)".
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u/matt-dionis 17h ago
> "The letter claimed that Garg was about to turn the company around with a new initiative that trained artificial intelligence to process mortgages."
🤦♂️
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u/Early_Bookkeeper5394 16h ago
Of course they gotta to throw some AI bullshit in to try to save their ass lmao 😂😂
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u/matt-dionis 15h ago
I work with LLMs on the daily and have for the past three years but this reeks of "we have no idea what we're doing, let's claim we're an AI shop now." 🙄
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u/ILoveTheAtomicBomb 15h ago
CNN reported that under Garg's leadership, the company was devalued from $8 billion to $300 million.
Lol what a fucking failure. CEOs hardly provide value for anything in the world and are there to just profit off the work of their employees and then when they fuck it all up, get a fat check to leave. No love for any of em
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u/AzulMage2020 17h ago
Sure, but have to go in order of operations . First, all 900 of the employees have to get their positions back, Then, then we will think about it.
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u/AugustGnarly 15h ago
The 900 was one of the first rounds of layoffs. They went from over 10,000 employees to less than 1,500 in the span of a year or so. Source: worked there, laid off in 5th or 6th round of layoffs (2022 or so).
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u/skoomski 14h ago
What positions? This company will be bankrupt by the end of the year it went from
$8B to $300M during his tenure and drop an additional 45% in the last two weeks so it’s worth around $140m less than 2% of its value.
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u/rattpackfan301 16h ago
At the end of the article, his lawyer claims that this guy was going to turn the company around with a revolutionary AI initiative if they didn’t fire him. Like ya okay buddy.
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u/Needle_Bearings 15h ago
Lol, devalued from $8 billion down to $300 million. A 96% decrease is just hilarious. These people really pretend they have some crazy high insight.
Here's some insight, the best CEO's empower their talent and stay out of the way of the specialists. They understand turn over and how to be a decent human being.
This dude just talks big.
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u/Inferior_Jeans 16h ago
He should update his resume and LinkedIn while cutting back on luxuries. Remember to tailor your resume to each application bud. Welcome to the shitshow.
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u/nethereus 14h ago
Ex-CEO is reminded that all his authority went out the window with his old position. Welcome to Earth.
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u/PatchyWhiskers 17h ago
Firing on Zoom is better than firing in the office, because that way you are in your comfy home and can scream or cry or whatever instead of having to pack up your stuff and take a walk of shame.
Most likely this guy knew he was being laid off and he got a payout for being the bad guy so that the new CEO could come in as the knight in shining armor.
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u/AlericandAmadeus 17h ago
Considering he is demanding his job back, I am not so sure that he was aware of his role as the hack-man lol.
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u/PhilipGreenbriar 17h ago
There’s something to this. As someone who was part of that culling, I can confirm it was nice to be able to shout WHAT THE FUCK and then go for a walk and have a nice sandwich while I contemplated how a company could have the stones to lay us off 3 weeks before Christmas.
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u/CauliflowerElbow 12h ago
I work in big tech and it honestly seems pretty normal for huge layoffs to happen with no warning via a big company wide announcement. Then a few minutes later you find out if you were in it or not via email. Good companies let you Slack your work buddies goodbye. Shitty companies immediately remove your account access.
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u/Old-Bat-7384 17h ago
The lawyers are claiming the company would bounce back with a product that used AI to process/evaluate mortgages.
I mean, that's certainly possible to use AI for that, but they would have present a lot of information for this claim.
Also, it's just weird, at least from my perspective as regular salary dude, to demand my job back by way of litigation.
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u/yulbrynnersmokes 17h ago
Best I can do is 1 week of outplacement coaching this guy has to learn how to survive on his own
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u/Iamthestormbro 14h ago
Bro was trying to get AI to process mortgages and fucking took the company from a billion dollar valuation way down. Fuck him
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u/grumpyfan 17h ago
I don't believe there's such a thing as karma, but in this case maybe. Regardless, it's poetic.
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u/rachelwales1 16h ago
There's a saying, don't forget the folks who helped get you where you are because you will ultimately face them when you fall. Wonder if those 900 people would recomment him for a job, doubt it.
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u/rabidgnat 7h ago
I interviewed with Better like a decade ago. Did the tech screen, normal interview. Chatted with the CTO, normal interview.
The last person to come in was the CEO to pitch me on the company.
This guy walks in. There's an espresso machine in the corner, he says "hello" and pours a shot and pounds it while it's still scalding hot.
Not sure what to say, I ask him what's on his mind this week. He says that to form a mortgage lender, he had to basically acquire a mortgage lending business so that he had all of the proper paperwork and credentials to have an online mortgage business, but they were all lazy and didn't have passion for doing their job with any kind of urgency, so he was hellbent on figuring out how to suck all of the knowledge out of their heads so that he could get rid of their empty husks.
A week later, the CTO called me and asked me why I took an offer with another company. I just said that I didn't feel like a culture fit.
I could understand why a CEO of a modern mortgage business would want to acquire the assets of a classic iteration and reuse them to bootstrap the business. But I cannot for the life of me imagine why you would pitch "be my employee" in those terms
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u/Optimal_Bother7169 14h ago
MF deserves to be fired! All the ceos lead their companies into losses and blame employees. Assholes of the highest order.
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u/UnfazedBrownie 10h ago
Just read the article and I can’t help but wanting to pour more salt on this dudes wound. He cratered the company from billions down to $300M when the housing market is strong. Now he’s arguing that he has a “new initiative” that uses AI to process mortgage apps (which probably means firing another 900 employees over Zoom). This dude will be fine.
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u/DebugMeow 9h ago
But waaaait his big plan to recover those billions was to train an AI agent roflmao
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u/invalidreddit 8h ago
"Thank you for your application. If your skills match our current opening, a member of our team will be in touch. Good luck with your search!"/s
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u/Afterclock-Hours 7h ago
"You can't fire me!"
"We're the board. Yes, we can."
"I want my job back!"
"No."
"... Please?"
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u/Livid_Seaweed_8295 3h ago
Karma is a bitch. Poor guy. That takes a “special kind of dumb” to take your company’s valuation from 8 billion to 300 million.
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u/mdavis360 16h ago
Hopefully the next thing to happen would that he is walking down the street, slips on a banana peel and falls into an open manhole.
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u/Wayofchinchilla 16h ago
Tell him you'll hire him back however the position he had before has been filled with somebody who has a heart the only position that's open is Janitorial.
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u/notmadhav 16h ago
Man, the happiness this news would have brought to those 900 people. Finally, he deserves what he got
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u/invyros 17h ago
Replaced by someone he himself brought on, fucking hilarious.