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900 People Fired Via Zoom Call (cnn.com) 270

Posted by msmash from the times,-they-are-a-changin' dept.
quonset writes: If you're on this call, you are part of the unlucky group that is being laid off," Garg said on the call, a recording of which was viewed by CNN Business. "Your employment here is terminated effective immediately."

Thus spoke Vishal Garg, CEO of Better.com during a Zoom call on Wednesday. Roughly 9% of the company's workforce was let go in fell swoop.

Garg cited market efficiency, performance and productivity as the reason behind the firings. Fortune later reported Garg accused the employees of "stealing" from their colleagues and customers by being unproductive and only working two hours a day.

Among those fired were the diversity, equity and inclusion recruiting team.

The Softbank-backed mortgage lender announced in May it was going public through an SPAC and last week received $750 million in cash as part of the deal. The company is prepared to have more than $1 billion on its balance sheet.
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900 People Fired Via Zoom Call More

900 People Fired Via Zoom Call

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  • A lot less than 15% will be fired (Score:3)

    by Bruce66423 ( 1678196 ) on Monday December 06, 2021 @12:26PM (#62052381)

    Because all the really competent staff will be out the door as soon as they can.

    • Re:A lot less than 15% will be fired (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 06, 2021 @12:31PM (#62052409)
      Why? That's a common fallacy people spout to try to make themselves feel more secure. For instance, there are many awesome teachers and many people that absolutely should not be anywhere near children and are horrible teachers. If the school let all the crappy teachers go, the good ones would be celebrating at the local watering hole after work, not plotting their own departure.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Brymouse ( 563050 )

        Teachers have a union which protects the bad ones.

        • Yes, but it's not there to protect bad teachers. The main goals of the public teachers unions are to make sure that they don't have to renegotiate contracts each and every year. Even teachers with "tenure" can get fired. I have had several relatives who were teachers and many family friends because of that, and they all seem relatively relieved when a bad teacher is let go.

          Unions are also the big force pushing for smaller class sizes, which means having to hire more teachers, whereas upper administrators

      • Re:A lot less than 15% will be fired (Score:5, Insightful)

        by AleRunner ( 4556245 ) on Monday December 06, 2021 @12:49PM (#62052525)

        Why?

        This is an incompetent way to fire people. There's no way that 900 people have exactly the same case and so there's likely to be legal fallout. Let's just skip discussing human decency, which is actually important for successful companies, and just address other practical issues. This has got out into the news. From now on all remaining employess are damaged goods since this is what the company they work for is famed for. Would you hire someone who was happy to work for a company like this? Would you hire someone who was still working for this company and was unhappy? Sure, the latter if they leave soon, but it's going to be a question in any interview.

        People who leave your company can be an advert for the company. There are companies I've left I would recommend without hesitation. Others I would warn against. Again, this is 900 people who will never recommend this company. If you just give people a clear, good and understandable reason, often they have no problem with leaving. There's so much wrong here. If you can't see that it might explain why you always get hired to the wrong companies.

        • Why?

          This is an incompetent way to fire people. There's no way that 900 people have exactly the same case and so there's likely to be legal fallout.

          I don't get your point. This isn't a layoff due to performance, it is a general downsizing.
          Their positions have been eliminated.

          • Re:A lot less than 15% will be fired (Score:5, Informative)

            by Anubis IV ( 1279820 ) on Monday December 06, 2021 @02:47PM (#62053057)

            This isn't a layoff due to performance

            So that part where the CEO "accused the employees of 'stealing' from their colleagues and customers by being unproductive and only working two hours a day" during a meeting in which he fired everyone in attendance shouldn't be taken as an indication that their lack of performance was the cause for them being fired?

            It sounds like it's actually a downsizing intended to make the company look more desirable to investors, but that they're trying to frame it as a for-cause firing to sidestep contractual or legal obligations they may have. When someone is laid off in the US (i.e. downsized), they're legally entitled to unemployment benefits. They may additionally be entitled to a severance package from their former employer, depending on their terms of employment. When someone is fired for-cause, depending on the circumstances the person may not be entitled to unemployment benefits and the employer may not be obligated to provide a severance package that they otherwise would have.

            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              by Darinbob ( 1142669 )

              This may come as news to you, but CEOs like all the time. Lying is a part of their job responsibilities.

              It seems highly unlikely that 9% of the workforce was actually only working 2 hours a day and that they have enough evidence to defend this in court for all 900 of the "fired" workers. More likely, as many companies trying to go public do, they want to cut the work force to look better to the investors. So it looks like a duck, it quacks like a duck, but really it's a squirrel?

      • Re:A lot less than 15% will be fired (Score:5, Insightful)

        by aerogems ( 339274 ) on Monday December 06, 2021 @12:57PM (#62052579)

        That is 1) not how it tends to work in the corporate world and 2) not even the point being made by the OP. Assuming for the sake of argument that everything he said was true, some people were using the pandemic to only work 2-days a week or generally just slack off, it's not so much the WHY he fired all those people as the HOW. It was done as a cattle call over Zoom.

        If I were an employee there, I'd definitely be making sure my resume is up to date and be joining the Great Resignation as soon as I could find something else. Laying people off, or firing them, is rarely a pleasant experience for either side, but doing it en masse over Zoom and then the guy spending a lot of time talking about his own feelings... You'd have to try pretty hard to be more unprofessional. I would definitely be left with the distinct impression that 1) this is not a company that values me in any way and I should leave while the market is hot, and 2) that this is a company that is very poorly managed if they had 900 people on the payroll that they could get rid of in one fell swoop like that.

        What would be hilarious, IMO, is if the fired employees banded together to buy enough of a stake in the company that they could force out the CEO... over Zoom, naturally.

        • Re:A lot less than 15% will be fired (Score:4, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 06, 2021 @01:34PM (#62052759)

          That is 1) not how it tends to work in the corporate world and 2) not even the point being made by the OP. Assuming for the sake of argument that everything he said was true, some people were using the pandemic to only work 2-days a week or generally just slack off, it's not so much the WHY he fired all those people as the HOW. It was done as a cattle call over Zoom.

          If I were an employee there, I'd definitely be making sure my resume is up to date and be joining the Great Resignation as soon as I could find something else. Laying people off, or firing them, is rarely a pleasant experience for either side, but doing it en masse over Zoom and then the guy spending a lot of time talking about his own feelings... You'd have to try pretty hard to be more unprofessional. I would definitely be left with the distinct impression that 1) this is not a company that values me in any way and I should leave while the market is hot, and 2) that this is a company that is very poorly managed if they had 900 people on the payroll that they could get rid of in one fell swoop like that.

          What would be hilarious, IMO, is if the fired employees banded together to buy enough of a stake in the company that they could force out the CEO... over Zoom, naturally.

          I worked for a large company. Multiple times during the pandemic we were promised there would be no layoffs. The morning of our quarterly report (over US$5 BILLION in revenue), over 1,000 employees were individually contacted to receive word that due to the pandemic and market changes, they were being laid off. Within an hour of receiving the news, there was a company-wide meeting. None of us which were laid off could pose questions. All 1,000+ of us lost all contact within the company. A week later, our previous employer announced the purchase of a different company with roughly 1,000 employees.

          • Re:A lot less than 15% will be fired (Score:4, Interesting)

            by aerogems ( 339274 ) on Monday December 06, 2021 @01:56PM (#62052845)

            A company I worked for decided that they were going to lay off someone in the finance department. She was maybe a year or two from retirement anyway, so they apparently worked out some kind of deal where she'd just take early retirement after a few more months.

            However, when you lay someone off, you're essentially signing a legal document that says you don't need that position and you can't fill it for a certain period of time after. However, within a couple months they had hired a direct replacement for the woman they forced out. The message was clear, it had nothing to do with the older woman's performance or anything else, it was classic age discrimination. I heard from a friend at the company that they did the same thing again a couple years later. My former boss's boss was laid off and then they hired someone younger to do effectively the exact same job, just with a slightly different title. Another classic case of age discrimination.

            Now if only there were a government agency that had the authority to proactively deal with these kinds of things. Like OSHA or FDA or almost any other agency where people can submit tips/complaints/reports, they investigate, and impose penalties if warranted. Why the EEOC and NLRB are explicitly barred from taking any kind of action unless the employee directly affected files a complaint is beyond me.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by bjwest ( 14070 )

          ... it's not so much the WHY he fired all those people as the HOW. It was done as a cattle call over Zoom.

          Why? This is better than a text message, which is the modern version of a pink slip that people have been receiving for years. This is more personal than a text message or pink slip in an envelope sitting on your desk, handed or mailed to you. I see no reason to spend hundreds of man-hours contacting each employee individually over Zoom.

      • This. Good people want to work with people who are on top of their responsibilities and are responsive and really pitch in to the team. There is going to be bad publicity, but it sounds like they were tracking their employees time actually spent dialed in and working, and were not happy with what they found.
        • There is going to be bad publicity, but it sounds like they were tracking their employees time actually spent dialed in and working, and were not happy with what they found.

          Perhaps they found these people (or at least a good portion of them) were working a second job [foxbusiness.com] at the same time they should have been doing their first job.
      • This assumes, of course, all those accused of being crappy teachers were in fact crappy teachers. If the real reasons appeared to be their seniority was costing too many benefits, someone with pull simply didn't like them, they expressed an unpopular opinion unrelated to in-classroom activity, or because of things outside school... then people would feel much differently.

      • It is probably more to the fact that we have the wrong teachers teaching the wrong students.
        The Truly bad teachers often do no last long, even if there is a strong union behind them. Mostly a bad teacher will wash out after a year or two at doing their job, as they realize they are not meeting the quota, and probably just being miserable at doing their job.

        What we often consider the bad teachers, are actually adequate teachers, who are not teaching the right students.

        Often what we consider the star teacher

      • It depends. Often layoffs mean that those left over now have extra work to do. It's added stress just from that. Also stress bcause usually thre is no clear evidence in mass layoffs that those who were let go were actually underperforming, and so those who left fear that they might be next. A 9% number is a huge number, and likely it is NOT due to performance but an attempt to keep their new stock price high. 9% is more typical of a general reduction in force and not that they located and documented 9%

    • Garg:
      If you're on this call, you are part of the unlucky group that is being laid off...
      ... employees are unproductive and only working two hours a day.

      If they're only working two hours a day they might be lucky enough to not even be on the call.

    • You throw people overboard when there is a problem with the business. Staying to the bitter end when a business is sinking will be no fun. Therefore you are better off jumping now when you can voluntarily, and with a good story to tell about how you need a new job because there are clearly issues at this company.

      If you are demonstrably competent you will easily walk into a better job - especially in this market. And, amusingly, you are being kind to those who were sacked, for whom their labelling as 'not re

  • This is just the latest from this guy (Score:4, Interesting)

    by alaskana98 ( 1509139 ) on Monday December 06, 2021 @12:26PM (#62052385)
    He also emailed employees the following lovely message:

    "You are TOO DAMN SLOW. You are a bunch of DUMB DOLPHINS... SO STOP IT. STOP IT. STOP IT RIGHT NOW. YOU ARE EMBARRASSING ME,"

    Wow.. just wow.
    • Sounds like it is pretty mutual. They may be embarrassing him, he is certainly embarrassing them (and himself of course). No one in their right mind would want to work for this fool.

  • That guy is a dick. (Score:3)

    by Petersko ( 564140 ) on Monday December 06, 2021 @12:28PM (#62052389)

    I don't know what else needs to be said. Let's all agree to that, and move on.

  • Never heard of them before but went to their web page. It is currently a placeholder. Something about real-estate and mortgages and stuff.

    So they have 10,000 employees (9,100 left) and they don't even have an operational web page?

    Yes I would say a force reduction is in order. How the hell do you ramp up that much payroll without having a secured revenue stream to pay for it?

    • I don't know if we saw the same things, but it doesn't seem like a placeholder to me. It looks like a way to get mortgages easier or cheaper, which certainly could be a reliable revenue stream. I don't think there is much you can do with the site before you create an account and sign in, which I was unwilling to do.

    • How the hell do you ramp up that much payroll without having a secured revenue stream to pay for it?

      Is this a trick question?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      Real estate isn't real. It's all built on dreams.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      That's an efficiency measure. You only want to put in the bare amount of effort required to get SoftBank to give you buckets of money. You need a web page, but it doesn't have to *do* anything. You need a "team," which unfortunately you have to pay, but it's the cost of doing business.

  • Would in-person firing be better? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by PeeAitchPee ( 712652 ) on Monday December 06, 2021 @12:30PM (#62052405)

    I think people would be pissed that their time was wasted. I've seen this type of news communicated via telephone typically -- how is this materially any different? Does using Zoom automatically make it "news for nerds?"

    Also, what is the point of highlighting that the diversity and inclusion team was whacked (other than to imply that the company has racist motives, of course).

    Trash journalism. No wonder the industry is in the toilet.

    • Re:Would in-person firing be better? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by bird ( 12361 ) on Monday December 06, 2021 @12:36PM (#62052445) Homepage

      It's not the medium that's the message here. I think that there is very little dignity in a mass firing, whether it's in-person or on Zoom. Better would be for each manager to contact each of their discarded reports individually and show some respect.

      • When you're letting a whole bunch go, its better to do it all at once - otherwise the rumor mill gets going, and moral suffers for the duration of the process (and likely stays bad for a longer period after its complete than doing the mass firing)

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Targon ( 17348 )
          They can do it at the same time, by having their managers/supervisors pull them in and tell them straight up on an individual basis. Picture you are a hard working employee and you are just pulled in on a meeting and told that everyone is fired for being a lazy and unproductive employee. You personally might have been let go due to downsizing, but the way this was done is an example of how NOT to do things. Seriously, most executives are clueless about how the company actually operates and what the pr

        • It also affects the company's stock price and the venture capital funding, and can help reduce the security burden of locking out employee accounts from sensitive systems.

      • While i dont totally disagree with you, I do wonder the math.

        900 firings in one call vs 900 individual meetings that need to be planned, set up and followed up on. That is a LOT of man hours. Its probably the better way to do it, but i do understand the cost analysis.

      • In a major layoff, that's not really desirable. I've been in that situation before, and it is much, much worse. The information that the company is conducting a layoff spreads like wildfire, and every employee is left to wait half the day to see if they remain employed. Every Slack message causes a minor heart attack. Unless you're going to do rush through each individual layoff meeting in five minutes, there aren't enough managers to complete the task in less than a few hours.

        Beyond that, there are logist

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by e3m4n ( 947977 )
        its the hurry-up-and-ruin-christmas part that they do. The primary reason was because its publicly traded and they, according to the article, were trying to turn 750million into 1 billion. When I first left the Navy, I got a job working the call center for Anthem Blue Cross. It was some spinoff company that processed all their claims and managed their members. One day we got informed that they were closing down the entire operation in that city and was concentrating all their workforce in Indianapolis. So w

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by lazarus ( 2879 )

        Back in the 90s when the working world was very different, a manager at a company I worked for called a department meeting (30+ people if I remember correctly) and laid out an entire slide presentation as to why they were all losing their jobs.

        The last slide informed everyone that it was April 1st.

        Let's just say that not everyone thought it was funny, and the exercise did not help moral...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Junta ( 36770 )

      For one, you generally would have a more controlled 'firing'. than 'a' zoom call for 900 people. Sure, remote is fine but it's pretty stupid to have them all in one call.

      For another, it's stupid to make specific accusations about the large group being fired unless you can *really* back it up. I doubt his accusation of '2 hours a day' can be substantiated. In a layoff context, you don't accuse the people of anything in particular, you say some proven generic stuff about having to cut back. He might have cr

      • For one, you generally would have a more controlled 'firing'. than 'a' zoom call for 900 people. Sure, remote is fine but it's pretty stupid to have them all in one call.

        I'm not sure. It might be better to just rip the bandaid off all at once. If you start firing 10-20 employees a day, it's going to kill morale as everyone is going to wonder if they are next. If you fire 900 and say that you're done, the ones that are left know that they are not one of the unlucky ones and everyone can continue to be productive without looking over their shoulder.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

          If you reorganize and then sell off the parts with the employees to some unknowing corporation then you have dropped the problem.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Junta ( 36770 )

          Firing 900 people all at once isn't the thing, doing it in a single meeting is insane. You'd have 900 meetings between a person being let go and their immediate manager.

          In this case, given the person's reputation for repeatedly and indiscriminately berating his entire workforce, I doubt anyone would/should feel like they are one of the 'safe' ones.

        • the ones that are left know that they are not one of the unlucky ones and everyone can continue to be productive without looking over their shoulder.

          ...until next time, which they expect to occur any day.
          A staggered firing process would instill fear in some, but reinforcement in others. Sudden mass firing instills fear in everyone.

      • Yup, having fired about six or seven people now, two of which involved the company attorney's advice, it was made very clear that you stick to a script. If it's a for cause termination, you generally just say "the reasons for the dismissal are in the following letter", or if you do list them, you do so precisely. You do this because if you do anything, either commiserating, or inflammatory, you may very well have to explain it to a judge. And you certainly keep the reasons as confidential as possible (cowor

    • I think people would be pissed that their time was wasted. I've seen this type of news communicated via telephone typically -- how is this materially any different? Does using Zoom automatically make it "news for nerds?"

      Also, what is the point of highlighting that the diversity and inclusion team was whacked (other than to imply that the company has racist motives, of course).

      Trash journalism. No wonder the industry is in the toilet.

      There's several ways to approach this.

      Psychologically speaking, men are more plainspoken and pragmatic than women, and would probably appreciate the efficiency. Men are, on average, more individualistic than women and so this method of firing would better suit their temperament.

      Women are more group oriented, and would better appreciate a human firing SO LONG AS it was attended by a humanistic environment: a person who would commiserate, offer encouragement, reassure the person about a reference, and so on.

      T

      • It's cold. It's heartless, but still better than having employee morale go down in the entire company as people quiver with that sickly feeling in their stomach wondering for days or months on end if they are the next ones to get the axe.

    • I knew a guy who was fired via email. They sent it to a junk account like Yahoo or some place and when he showed up the next day they were quite shocked. It was a small company with 30 employees so it's not like the owner didn't know the guy. He was just too much of a pussy to say it to his face.

  • CNN reports "better.com" is being renamed "worser.com" .

    To reply to the [redacted] folks who said who cares if it was a multi-zoom call: first of all, you have no control or guarantee that everyone invited to the call attended. Even if you somehow managed that magical feat, it's grossly abusive to lay people off without their direct supervisor present as well as some transition-management person to start the fired people on their way to jobhunting.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Mitreya ( 579078 )

      you have no control or guarantee that everyone invited to the call attended.

      Firing people on Zoom is not that special. They were just notified on Zoom.
      What matters is that 900 people were fired. I doubt that missing the Zoom call prevented them from being fired.

      • Having that many people fired like that indicates a much deeper problem in the company and that there is a good chance of it going belly up in the near future.

          Even if I didn't get the "Dear John" Zoom call, I would start job hunting anyway because I would not want to be left with no employment at all when the whole ship goes down.

  • I've seen far, far worse.

    One company laid people off while they were engaged in business travel, and shut off their company Amex cards the very same day. So they had to get home at their own expense and were often stuck with hotel bills.

    Another company for just refused to pay the Amex bills of laid-off employees. Since we had tech support people flying all over the country there were a few dozen laid-off folks stuck with several thousand (I recall one case that was over twenty thousand) dollars in charges. When you get that card you are effectively cosigning for it so they were all screwed.

    • Re:That is amateur-level jerkiness (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Brymouse ( 563050 ) on Monday December 06, 2021 @12:51PM (#62052543)

      I worked at a place and they decided to lay off the field tech in Orlando. The company was based in St Petersburg. They requested the tech drive to St Pete for a meeting and then fired him, took his cell phone, company van, and company card. They provided no way for him to get back home, and he didn't have a call phone to call anyone. He ended up having to take the bus line and it took him 12 hours to get home.

    • One company laid people off while they were engaged in business travel, and shut off their company Amex cards the very same day.

      When you get that card you are effectively cosigning for it

      There's nothing effective about it. Look at the agreement you sign when the card is issued; you are co-signing the card and have liability, nut just for the card you have in your hand, but every fucking AxEx issued to that company. It's a toxic, toxic card but that's why corporations like it.

    • That's the type of shit that will get you run over in a dark parking garage.

  • How else should he have done this? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by evilquaker ( 35963 ) on Monday December 06, 2021 @12:41PM (#62052467)
    This might have been the best way to accomplish such a large staff reduction. Staff reductions are best done quickly, because news spreads quickly in an office. With a small reduction you can do the meetings individually, but each one takes time and once the process gets moving, news starts to spread. Doing a staff reduction that large would be a pretty complicated thing to coordinate.

    That doesn't excuse his other actions -- calling them dolphins, accusing them of stealing, etc. -- or the fact that such a large staff reduction was necessary in the first place, but the fact that it was done by Zoom doesn't seem problematic to me.

    • Is calling someone a dolphin a thing now? What does it mean? I always thought of dolphins as relatively smart and friendly.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by N1AK ( 864906 )
      I don't know their situation but I can't think of many situations where informing 900 people unexpectedly in a mass Zoom call is the most effective or ethical way of doing it; the other behaviours imply that this was simply laziness and lack of care for their employees rather than a carefully made decision.

    • Re:How else should he have done this? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by UnknowingFool ( 672806 ) on Monday December 06, 2021 @01:00PM (#62052603)

      This might have been the best way to accomplish such a large staff reduction. Staff reductions are best done quickly, because news spreads quickly in an office. With a small reduction you can do the meetings individually, but each one takes time and once the process gets moving, news starts to spread. Doing a staff reduction that large would be a pretty complicated thing to coordinate.

      Of the top of my head, how about the immediate bosses of these 900 people tell them in small groups or even one-on-one sessions. From what I can tell these 900 are across the company and country so it is not like they were all clustered in one area.

  • Don't you love it when your continued employment is a matter of luck. Anyone who stays on that ship should be a world class swimmer.

    • And if you lose your job and become homeless for any reason, then it must mean you are lazy, a drug addict, and mentally ill*, and you deserve to be beaten up by cops and set on fire by teenagers while you sleep- the current popular thinking in America.

        *Yeah, we still have the "mentally ill people are evil sorcerers and witches" line of thought too.

  • ...from the moment I saw this on HN this morning, I knew msmash would be posting it up here straight away

    just a perfect storm of 'rich CEO is asshole to peons' done in a new-fangled tech-based way; for msmash, it's like matches to an arsonist

    now, on to justifying my own culpability in msmash's efforts...

    the only thing 'bad' about this is that the sumbitch has the worst bedside manner for someone in management delivering an unwanted message to folks; he is not only responsbile for them being there in the fi

  • " Christ, what an asshole "

    This would put the company immediately on my list of places to NEVER work for. Doing this right before Christmas is especially egregious, but the overall vibe is Manglement.

    • Reading that Forbes article, it'd be hard to believe the people that worked for him didn't already know he is both unethical and an asshole. Probably good to steer clear, otherwise 5 years from now you might be deposed when this guy is taken to court for lying to investors.

  • With a company of that size, there's certainly some chance that a small handful of people who might have been invited to the call could not make it for one reason or another, such as being on vacation, or a variety of other legitimate reasons.

    Are they going to be coming back from whatever and finding that all of their peers in some teams are gone?

    Or were they fired by email?

  • That would have been the moment to be a cat on the zoom call.

  • Thats it! (Score:3)

    by Malays2 bowman ( 6656916 ) on Monday December 06, 2021 @01:24PM (#62052717)

    This in fact confirms that The Simpsons was a documentary all along!

  • "If you're on this call, you are part of the unlucky group that is being laid off," Garg said on the call, a recording of which was viewed by CNN Business. "Your employment here is terminated effective immediately."

    What a great day if you missed *that* Zoom meeting ... phew!

    Fortune later reported Garg accused the employees of "stealing" from their colleagues and customers by being unproductive and only working two hours a day.

    Probably why some people missed the call ... :-)

  • Desi dude, could be a H1B too.

    Warning to all those people who attribute the apathy, indifference, callousness and simple a**holery of the Criminal Executive Officers to things like race, religion, language, ethnicity of the office holders. These attributes are not characteristics of any demographic. It is simply the basic qualification needed to get to the C Suite.

  • Oracle fired thousands on a conference call (Score:4, Informative)

    by sethmeisterg ( 603174 ) on Monday December 06, 2021 @01:46PM (#62052803)
    In September 2017. Only the scumbaggiest of the scumbags do it this way. Heartless bastards. Too much effort I guess to look the fired employees in the eyes.

  • An Indictment of Sr Management (Score:3)

    by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Monday December 06, 2021 @01:50PM (#62052817) Journal

    A few points.

    The reality is sometimes companies have to look at a changing marketplace and decide to go in a new direction with a lot of service offerings and practices. When that happens sometimes as a practical matter, mass layoffs are about the only way forward. Its never pretty. Its always hard for the majority of employees, both the ones leaving and the ones not. It seems like people are making a story of this because they did it on Zoom. Well this kind of thing is typically done with an all hands meeting or conference calls or series of same. Obviously after the first group goes the cats out of the bag and its just as uncomfortable. Reality is Zoom is just a buzz work here but procedural this isn't much a departure.

    If there is a story here its the 'insulating' and unprofessional statements the CEO made. Its one thing to be honest with people and tell them 'you are in this meeting because you have been identified as one of our lower performers' or whatever. I highly doubt the has the metrics to know if someone was only working 2 hours week or just not working effectively. Unless the place was already a surveillance tech nightmare. Even if he does really know the only reason to get that specific with someone is if you are going to try to improve their performance, if you are already firing them you should not do it. They know perfectly well if they were under performing because they were simply not doing the work vs not being effective.

    Finally unless there is some big re-org new alignment if 9% of your staff is dead weight as this guys is implying, well how the heck the problem get so big? If its a public company the shareholders ought to sue; because certainlly there are some C-suite folks like COO/CFO that have been down right negligent...

  • Diversity, equity and inclusion recruiting team? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Murdoch5 ( 1563847 ) on Monday December 06, 2021 @04:51PM (#62053577) Homepage
    That's one team that should be fired, because the only metric that matters is what you bring to the table, not what you look like, or where you're from.

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