Better.com Employees say a screwed computer just tells them they’re activated

The trend continues for mortgage startup Better.com, which grew to a $7.7 billion valuation before its founder. ruthlessly fired 900 workers in December, causing the company to go viral for all the wrong reasons.

Better has already begun laying off a large number of additional workers, according to an email from the company’s CFO Kevin Ryan obtained by The Daily Beast.

TechCrunch report On Monday night, the final figure will reach about 4,000 people, or about 50 percent of employees – a number that is in line with what multiple sources have told The Daily Beast.

According to sources and screenshots of Slack messages, some current employees believe they found out they were fired after logging into their company account, which shows the help tab. severance level at the top of the list.

Many current workers have posted in one company’s Slack that the deposit has reached her bank account, according to screenshots of their messages.

“Is this the way we’re supposed to find out?” One current worker wrote, later adding that the situation had reached “cowardly… grade A”.

“I’m sorry… that’s the craziest way to find out,” wrote another.

“This is disgusting— for people to find out through a payment app,” a third current employee told The Daily Beast.

It’s unclear if the severance tab was posted by mistake, as many said the information later disappeared. One person posted on Slack that someone at the company “must have pressed the button too soon.”

Better’s decline was driven by both the impact from the layoffs in December – in which the founder and CEO, Vishal Garg, expelled employees through mass webinars – and from the decline. broader downturn in the mortgage industry.

It’s still unclear how Garg captures this week’s news. Some of his employees have previously expressed frustration with his seemingly unfriendly attitude.

Case in point: One day last summer, Garg arrived at Better’s World Trade Center offices with a miniature safe, a gift for an executive who had just laid off several employees, according to three people with knowledge of the situation.

The gift delighted the building’s security team, who noticed the ax as it passed through a scanner at a security checkpoint. For some at the company, it was another incident that conveyed, at least, Garg’s poor taste.

It is better not to respond to requests for comment.

The company has been in turmoil for months. “We are so fed up of being mistreated, that’s why there is no loyalty. We are all sick of being bullied and yelled at,” a recently departed employee told The Daily Beast. “The layoffs are what the public sees…[but] it is only the last straw”.

A large number of current and former Better employees were leaked to the press, which created a state of heightened paranoia internally. Some employees fear that company officials are posing as journalists to find out who is talking.

Like TechCrunch report In January, earlier this year Garg hosted an “Ask Me Anything” session for some employees but declined to live-stream the event more widely. Attendees had to put their phones in a paper bag and were asked to go through a metal detector to remove any other tape recorders.

Chaos broke out on December 1, just a day after Better announced that it had raised $750 million in new financing.

That morning, Garg led workers on a mass webinar, which many employees assumed was related to money transfers. Instead, he gave a steady three-minute speech announcing that they were out of work.

“If you’re on this call, you’re part of an unlucky group,” he said. “Your employment is terminated effective immediately.”

After a video of the layoff went viral, Garg was forced to briefly resign as CEO, just return in January.

The fickle founder who used to threatened to burn his former best friend is alive, has previously made the news of a series of lawsuits from former business partners and questions about the massive equity allocations he alleges grant on one of his top lieutenants.

It remains to be seen whether Better can recover from the chaos.

According to recent company filings, Garg has agreed to “compensate” itself to one of its main backers, Japan’s SoftBank group, for certain losses it may realize from its investment.

And things are trending poorly. The company said in a February filing that it expected a loss in the fourth quarter alone is between $167 million and $182 million.

As for layoffs, many current and former employees feel that Better has been hiring too aggressively over the past two years, as record-low interest rates boosted their business.

“This is what happens in the mortgage market, eventually the gravy train stops,” said one former senior employee.

A more cautious executive could have explained the inevitable downturn, the person said. Instead, “Vishal joined them all.”