The Better.com CEO Who Axed 900 Staff Via Zoom Is Back & He's Laying Off Thousands More

As if firing 900 people over a single Zoom call wasn’t bad enough, Better.com CEO Vishal Garg is now laying off more than three times that amount.

His mortgage lending company is reportedly laying off about 3,000 employees this week, or about one-third of its staff in the U.S. and India, according to the New York Times.

The news seems to be coming out in leaks and blunders, but it could have been worse; Garg could have told everyone on a single Zoom call.

Critics blasted Garg late last year after he did exactly that, laying off some 900 employees in one brutal video message before the holidays.

An employee recorded the Zoom call and posted the video on TikTok, where many people watched it last December.

"I blundered the execution," Garg said after facing widespread backlash over that last layoff. "The way I communicated this news made a difficult situation worse."

He also stepped away for a "break" after several executives quit over his leadership, and ultimately returned to the job early this year.

Better.com expanded drastically in both the U.S. and India during the pandemic amid super-low mortgage rates, but execs say they've been struggling to keep up with changes in the real estate market.

Better.com's interim president and financial officer, Kevin Ryan, explained that the layoffs were necessary due to market fluctuations, in an email to staff obtained by The New York Times on Tuesday.

“Unfortunately, that means we must take the difficult step of streamlining our operations further and reducing our workforce in both the U.S. and India in a substantial way,” said the email.

One employee who shared the last round of layoffs on TikTok was back at it against this week, after news of the next round leaked out.

User @wanderella shared screenshots of the email sent to the employees and pointed out that this had been rumoured for a while.

Many employees allegedly found out about their layoffs this week when they saw severance checks on the company’s payroll app.

“They accidentally rolled out the severance payslips too early,” an employee told TechCrunch.

When execs found out about the blunder, they apparently tried to delete some of the checks, but their efforts were futile.

The employee told TechCrunch that “leadership remained absolutely silent, never acknowledged anything in regards to layoffs. They still haven’t.”

The company says it will provide those who are laid off with 60-80 days of severance and three months of health care coverage.