Better.com, a digital mortgage company run by Indian-American CEO Vishal Garg, laid off nearly 3,000 in the US and India, just months after it laid off 900 employees over a Zoom call in December. These employees received their severance checks in the payroll app on Wednesday, which were mistakenly triggered early. The company was scheduled to announce the layoffs on Wednesday.
Employees took to LinkedIn to share harrowing experiences of the lay-off process with a woman saying her computer shut down in the middle of work. The social media platform is covered with posts and their devastating stories from former employees of Better.com.
“I couldn’t find out through our payroll system, my bank account showing a severance check, or a phone call from HR. My computer is in the middle of me,” Amanda Bullard wrote on LinkedIn, answering one of my clients. It just got closed.”
Another employee was disappointed to be fired soon after his birthday. “I just turned 26 and I never thought I’d have a birthday present. But as I told my team representative this morning: “It’s part of life’s journey. Obstacles don’t break us, they make us It makes us stronger. It is the obstacles that take us on the road to greatness,” wrote Hiren Gihwala.
They have now started a spreadsheet that contains all the details of the employees hired to make connections and find jobs.
The company apparently forgot to change the date on its accompanying Weekday app and employees reportedly showed a severance check in the app at 12 a.m. on March 8 (US time). According to the employees, the severance check arrived without any additional communication from the company. The severance package is reportedly 60 to 80 days’ salary.
Better.com had reportedly planned layoffs for March 8, but moved that date to March 9, when news of the opening date leaked.
Among the 3,000 employees who were laid off was Kiana Brown, a single mother who moved to a different city on her own, spending hours preparing and studying mortgage knowledge to advance her skills at the company. She is the sole bread earner of her family.
“I am heartbroken more than anything else. I moved to a new city as a single mother on my own for this opportunity. Spent countless hours preparing and studying mortgage knowledge to advance my skills Like I don’t mind. I understand layoffs happen. I don’t understand how the company communicated this news,” Brown wrote.
As reported by TechCrunch, Better.com is laying off about 50 percent of its employees, with one employee taking the task of noticing the odds of pregnant employees being fired.
Eric Blatberg shared a post where an employee urged CEO Vishal Garg and CFO Kevin Ryan on business communication platform Slack to offer expanded medical benefits to all pregnant women on Women’s Day.
Indian-origin Garg returned to his position as CEO after a month-long break following a controversial Zoom call where he laid off 9 per cent of his company’s workforce. The 43-year-old had then stepped down and apologized for his way of handling the layoffs.
Founded in 2016 and headquartered in New York, Better.com provides mortgage and insurance products to homeowners through its online platform.
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