After sacking 900 employees over a Zoom call, Better.com announced 3,000 more layoffs.
Better.com, the embattled online-mortgage lending company that laid off nearly 900 employees over a Zoom call in December 2021, announced on Tuesday (March 8) that it was laying off more than 3,000 employees.
The company said it is taking the difficult step of streamlining its operations and substantially reducing the workforce in both the United States and India.
In a letter posted to the company’s website on Tuesday, Better.com interim president Kevin Ryan said the layoffs were driven by a “dramatic drop in origination volume due to rising interest rates.”
“Unfortunately, this means we must take harder steps to further streamline our operations and substantially reduce our workforce in both the US and India,” Ryan said.
“This decision is driven heavily by headwinds affecting the residential real estate market,” said Kevin Ryan.
“Affected employees will be eligible for cash severance pay for at least 60 working days and 80 working days,” news agency Reuters quoted the interim head of Better.com as saying.
They will also be eligible for expanded medical benefits, severance and a “suite of services” to help them find new jobs, CNN reported on Wednesday (March 9).
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Meanwhile, online-mortgage lending company Better.com also made headlines in December 2021 when its CEO Vishal Garg fired 900 employees of his company over a Zoom call in a video.
Garg made a video call in which he laid off 9% of Better employees. “If you are on this call, you are part of the unlucky group that is being laid off,” Garg said. “Your employment here has been terminated, effective immediately.”
Garg briefly stepped down from his post, but returned in January.
Better.com was once worth $6.9 billion. The company ranked No. 1 on LinkedIn’s Top Startups list in 2020 and 2021. According to Bloomberg, the SoftBank-backed mortgage lender is trying to go public, though those plans have been shelved because of Garg’s handling of the December layoffs. ,
As the video went viral, Vishal Garg apologized for his way of dealing with layoffs at the mortgage company. Later, he decided to take time off from the company while conducting a “leadership and cultural assessment”.
In order to avoid “potentially” another public relations disaster, such as the decision to fire CEO Vishal Garg in the aftermath of Zoom’s mass shooting, Better.com said affected employees would be notified in person over the phone, CNN reported.
However, some workers were inadvertently notified of their firing after seeing a severance payment in Better’s internal payroll system or their bank accounts prior to the official announcement, multiple reports said.
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