After infamously sacking 900 staffers via Zoom, Better.com CEO Vishal Garg to fire 4000 more

After stirring up a huge controversy by firing over 900 employees over a Zoom call, Vishal Garg, CEO of Better.com is set to fire 4,000 more workers.

The Better.com CEO Vishal Garg had earlier fired 900 employees on a Zoom call. Now, reports suggest that he will fire 4,000 more workers in a mass layoff. (Better.com)

Vishal Garg, the CEO of the New York-headquartered online home mortgage platform Better.com, is reportedly sacking 4,000 employees in a new mass layoff drive. This comes just three months after Garg infamously fired 900 employees over a Zoom call meeting. The move will see the company's total workforce of 8,000 employees cut short by 50%. According to the reports, the layoffs will take place on Wednesday, March 9. But the sacked employees in India and the USA have apparently received severance cheques earlier on March 8 in the payroll app leading to the reports of the incidents

First reported by TechCrunch, the mass layoff was originally planned for earlier in the month but the dates were pushed back after executives found out that the information was leaked. “While the majority of its staff are in sales and operations roles, the layoff is believed to be impacting the whole company and will directly affect approximately 4,000 people,” the report stated. The incident follows up after the Zoom call sacking and is expected to be met with further criticism.

Better.com CEO Vishal Garg to layoff 4,000 employees

The report suggests that Garg's antics might have played a role in this latest mass layoff. The Better.com CEO has displayed a history of insulting behavior, including towards staff and investors and various ex-employees have reported on his verbal abuse. However, the company's official stance over the sacking is the need to adjust “volatility in the interest rate environment and refinancing market”.

It appears that with changes to the interest rates, Better.com was making a pivot to a purchasing business assisting people with new loans. However, with a lot of negative publicity, the company was struggling to find new customers.

“Macroeconomic factors have also had a negative impact on the company's business. Higher interest rates, which led to a large drop in demand for refinancings, led to the original layoffs in December. Interest rates are only continuing to rise. Rising inflation is not helping matters,” states TechCrunch.