Vishal Garg-led Better.com fires 3,000 workers including pregnant women, expecting parents
Indian-American CEO Vishal Garg-run digital mortgage company Better.com laid off nearly 3,000 of employees in the US and India including pregnant women, expecting parents.
The layoffs were meant to be announced by the company on Wednesday, but one employee told TechCrunch that “they accidentally rolled out the severance payslips too early.” Better.com reportedly planned the layoffs for March 8 but moved the date to March 9 when news of the initial date was leaked in the media.
The company apparently forgot to change the date on its accompanying Workday app and employees reportedly saw severance cheques appearing in the app at 12 a.m. on March 8 (US time).
According to the employees, the severance cheques arrived without any additional communication from the company. The severance package is reportedly 60 to 80 days’ pay.
Several employees took to LinkedIn to share their experiences of the lay-off process with a worker saying that her computer just shut down in the middle of her responding to one of her clients.
Eric Blattberg, Senior Product Designer at Better.com pointed out to a Slack post where an employee urged on Garg and Better.com CFO Kevin Ryan on business communication to provide extended medical benefits to all the pregnant women getting laid off on Women’s Day.
Blattberg later updated a post on his Linkedin post, stating a comment by Vishal Garg. “We will pay for current health insurance through term and for 36 month after till the kid is enrolled in 3-k. Will pay for it personally if better can’t, thank you,” Blattberg citing Garg said.
In December 2021, Garg laid off nearly 900 employees even after his company, which is a digital mortgage lender, had announced it received a cash infusion of about $750 million from Aurora Acquisition Corp and SoftBank.
At the time of the early December layoffs, Better.com had about 9,100 employees, and several left afterwards.
Ironically, Garg remains at the helm of the company after taking a month-long “break”.