CEO Vishal Garg of Better.com fires 900 employees on a three-minute Zoom call, says 'this is the second time I'm doing this in my career'

From the time work-from-home mode became a reality off due to the pandemic, corporate and professional meetings turned to Zoom calls. And over the course of the last almost-two years, we have heard many bizarre and shocking video calls.

Here's another. According to reports, a New-York based mortgage lender on Wednesday fired over 900 employees on a Zoom call just before the holiday season kicked off in the United States and other parts of the world without any forewarning about their termination. The call didn't even last three minutes.

In the short video clip which was uploaded on Twitter by an employee who had been given the pink slip and is currently making the rounds on the Internet, CEO Vishal Garg, of Better.com, fires the employees with a short message. The boss told the employees they were part of the "unlucky group" that was being laid off.


"This isn't news that you're going to want to hear...If you're on this call, you are part of the unlucky group that is being laid off. Your employment here is terminated effective immediately," he is seen as saying in the video now gone viral.

Also read: Edelweiss MF CEO Radhika Gupta slams Vishal Garg, says 'time we value compassion & dignity at the workplace'
Garg started off by warning the employees that he comes with a piece of bad news. "I come to you with not great news. The market has changed, as you know, and we have to move with it in order to survive so that hopefully, we can continue to thrive and deliver on our mission," he is heard saying in the video.


According to a report in DailyMail.co.uk, Garg's mortgage company received a $750 million cash infusion last week. Better.com is backed by SoftBank and currently stands on a valuation of $7 billion, according to the report.

"This is the second time in my career I'm doing this and I do not want to do this. The last time I did it, I cried," he said.

He then tells the fired employees that they can expect an email from HR detailing benefits and severance.

While the CEO blamed market efficiency, productivity and performance for the layoff, Fortune later reported that Garg had accused the employees of "stealing" from their colleagues and customers by being "unproductive" and only working two hours a day.

Garg has made headlines in the past as well, for all the wrong reasons. According to DailyMail.co.uk, Forbes in 2020 obtained emails in which the CEO had allegedly accused his employees as "too damn lazy". While The Daily Beast in August had reported that Garg once threatened to "burn a business partner alive."

Garg's LinkedIn profile describes him as the "founder and CEO of Better, the fastest growing homeownership company in America that is empowering economic opportunity and mobility by making life's largest single purchase, expense and debt obligation more affordable, understandable and accessible".

Garg, who has studied finance at the NYU Stern School of Business, also claimed in his bio that Better.com "grew over 400% in 2020 to over $20 bln in annual origination and are growing 3x again in 2021". Better.com was launched in January 2016, backed by Goldman Sachs and Kleiner Perkins.

During the initial stage of the Covid-19 pandemic, many companies and employers fired or trimmed their staff due to tumbling market and a drop in revenue.