[HN Gopher] Better.com CEO Vishal Garg steps back as employees d...
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Better.com CEO Vishal Garg steps back as employees detail how he
'led by fear'
Author : myth_drannon
Score : 113 points
Date : 2021-12-10 20:25 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
| gigglesupstairs wrote:
| > Garg "leads by fear," she said, preferring not to be named.
| "Nothing is ever good enough. He would threaten employees to work
| harder, faster and not be lazy, but there was never clarity on
| what the consequences might be."
|
| Standard toxic leadership.
| mfrye0 wrote:
| I bought a place with Better.com last year. While really cheap, I
| don't think I would use them again.
|
| It seems like the model is to have a slick UI and hire
| contractors from India with second rate English skills handle the
| grunt work. There were multiple instances where there was
| miscommunication, no reply, or we couldn't get ahold of someone
| to get the current status. Overall it was really frustrating.
| suresk wrote:
| I refinanced with them last year and it was a "meh" experience.
| Their rates/fees were good, and the UI made it pretty easy to
| work with, but they were incredibly slow. I would have
| understood - it was a really busy time for refis - but the work
| flow would go something like this:
|
| They'd ask for a document that they hadn't asked for previously
| and make a big deal that I needed to provide it to them in the
| next few hours or else we'd lose our rate, then when I did
| provide it I wouldn't hear from them for 2 weeks. Overall, even
| with an appraisal waiver, it took like 3 months for it to go
| through and I never waited more than a day to respond to
| requests for info/documents.
| mfrye0 wrote:
| My experience exactly, though they also asked for the same
| document multiple times.
| suresk wrote:
| Yes! That too!
|
| A lot of this started after the rate lock was set to expire
| and they had to keep extending it (costing them a bit of
| money each time), so part of me thought the whole "You have
| until tomorrow morning to send us this document you've
| already sent us 3 times, or else your lock will expire" was
| a way for them to get out of it, but more likely it was
| just incompetence/overwork.
| tebuevd wrote:
| what if i told you that this is the business model for a lot of
| SV startups ;)
| cwkoss wrote:
| We used them ~three years ago, and seemed like our account
| manager was US-based.
|
| I wonder if their recent 'success' with outsourcing is the
| primary impetus for the layoffs.
| david38 wrote:
| Same. Very frustrating, but the money savings was substantial.
| andrew_ wrote:
| Every story that's come out since this mess started vidates the
| bad vibes I got from their recruiter on the first call, and my
| decision to walk away.
| didip wrote:
| This guy is fascinating (in a bad way). In what universe can you
| call your employees: DUMB DOLPHINS (with all caps)?
| pkaye wrote:
| Looks like he didn't maximize shareholder value!
| vanusa wrote:
| _He already had a reputation for using abusive language in emails
| to employees, but the treatment toward his investors was yet
| another shock._
|
| Abusing employees is more or less expected, out in techland.
|
| Ruffle investors' feathers, however, and there may be
| consequences.
| sharken wrote:
| Maybe expected but certainly not accepted. In tech the only way
| to gain respect is to know what you are doing, shouting and
| using abusive language makes you lose that respect.
|
| Keep it up, and you have to start looking for a new employee.
| vanusa wrote:
| _In tech the only way to gain respect is to know what you are
| doing, shouting and using abusive language makes you lose
| that respect._
|
| That's the platonic ideal, at least. The reality on the
| ground is often far different.
| weare138 wrote:
| If your career is in tech sure but Garg's of the world are
| seldom one of us. In business world the end justifies the
| means. This type of behavior is not only tolerated but often
| encouraged. This is only becoming an issue now because the
| story went viral and is generating bad press which is bad for
| profits.
| polote wrote:
| > Ruffle investors' feathers, however, and there may be
| consequences.
|
| Because that's their main power
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29320078 Your Board of
| Directors is Probably Going to Fire You 718 points
| eikenberry wrote:
| > Abusing employees is more or less expected, out in techland.
|
| Which techland do you live in? In my techland there are tons of
| jobs at places without abusive leadership where you can get a
| job in a few weeks. No one I know in my land expects this sort
| of treatment as everyone knows it won't stand.
| bsuvc wrote:
| I guess it depends on what they meant by "techland".
|
| I think companies who are tech companies or where tech is
| central to the product tend to attract good tech leaders who
| treat their teams well.
|
| But at companies where tech is seen as a secondary to the
| product tech employees are sometimes treated poorly, with
| things like overwork/abuse of agile processes to extract more
| work out of developers, unsustainable on-call rotations,
| unreasonable support response expectations, understaffed
| teams, restricted budgets, inadequate equipment like super
| cheap budget laptops, etc.
|
| Sure they might add a foosball table and buy a pizza once in
| a while, but by and large many companies don't treated tech
| especially well. I'm not sure if it is a lack of respect
| (some companies see developers as a pluggable commodity) or
| resentment for having to pay them more than they think they
| should have to.
|
| I guess it depends on where you live, but some cities just
| don't have a lot of pure tech companies, so you are stuck
| with places like these.
| eikenberry wrote:
| I agree that there are places like that, I worked at one
| briefly.. the key there being the word 'briefly'. As soon
| as it got annoying I started looking and had a new job
| pretty quick.
|
| Lack of mobility used to be an issue as well, but with all
| the current remote work possibilities this is no longer the
| case. The bad employers will end up with the bottom of the
| barrel, just like in cities with lots of good options, as
| all their talent will be able to find work elsewhere.
| schnevets wrote:
| I did a search here just to figure out what Better.com did
| without visiting their web page, and the results are quite a
| saga:
|
| > Simple, Online Mortgage - Better Mortgage (3 years ago)
|
| > Better.com CEO Vishal Garg Threatened to Burn His Business
| Partner Alive (2 months ago)
|
| > Better.com CEO Vishal Garg lays off 15% of employees [video] (7
| days ago)
|
| > Better.com CEO blasts laid-off employees, accusing them of
| 'stealing' (4 days ago)
|
| > The Better.com CEO says he's 'deeply sorry' for firing workers
| over Zoom (2 days ago)
|
| > Better.com's's CEO is 'taking time off effective immediately'
| (2 hours ago)
| z2 wrote:
| > Mortgages, Fraud Claims And 'Dumb Dolphins': A Tangled Past
| Haunts Better.com CEO Vishal Garg (1 year ago)
| mfrye0 wrote:
| I was tempted to do the same to my business partner. After he
| bailed on me the day before we were going to close a funding
| round, among other things.
|
| I think about that quote from Elon sometimes, that starting a
| company is like eating glass and staring into the abyss.
| Kina wrote:
| I think your situation is different.
|
| > His former business partner and college friend, Raza Khan,
| claims that Garg improperly moved $3 million from a software
| company the two men started to his personal bank accounts,
| and then used stolen technology to help build Better. Garg
| denies those claims and is countersuing, in a dispute so
| bitter that during a deposition Garg threatened to burn his
| former friend alive.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjeans/2020/11/20/mortgages.
| ..
| mfrye0 wrote:
| Yeah, I was exaggerating. While my situation sucked, it
| definitely wasn't as bad is this.
| chirau wrote:
| Don't forget the wild email he sent to one of Better.com's
| largest investors. You can't make this stuff up.
|
| Link: https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkpgkm/bettercom-ceo-
| called-...
| schleck8 wrote:
| Wow...
| antisthenes wrote:
| Sounds like his mental health issues finally caught up with him
| and resulted in involuntary burnout.
| josh_carterPDX wrote:
| I find it interesting that the only reason the investors took any
| action was because of the attention this is getting in the press.
| As many have already read, Garg had a reputation for bad behavior
| yet SoftBank and his other investors let it play out leading up
| to their SPAC.
|
| I feel like we watched this movie before.
|
| **cough**WeWork**cough**
| jedberg wrote:
| I refinanced with the at the beginning of this year. If they had
| a toxic internal culture they did a great job hiding it from
| their customers, because I had an amazing experience with
| incredible customer service.
|
| I'm not saying the culture isn't toxic, I'm saying it's
| surprising how well they hid it.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| I've had amazing experiences at any number of restaurants that
| I later discovered treat staff horribly (Urasawa, Mario Batoli
| come to mind).
|
| Abusers work very hard to make sure other people don't realize
| what's going on behind the scenes (whether that's the office,
| or at home).
| deckar01 wrote:
| I financed my first mortgage and refi through Better. They did
| ping me about once a week even when there was nothing for
| either of us to do while waiting for an appraisal. I got the
| feeling they were hitting arbitrary engagement quotas.
|
| Compared to my experience with Rocket it was great. I sat on a
| phone with Rocket for hours having them put me on hold and go
| to a manager to negotiate rates only for them to have shuffled
| the numbers around so that the interest rate looked lower, but
| the total cost of the loan broke even due to extra points and
| fees rolled into the loan. The salesperson was manic and
| desperate. They pretended to have a nice async process on the
| front end, but they end up dumping me into a phone call at the
| end where I had to tell them everything I just typed in.
| Several other online companies had similar tactics. The worst
| was one that just harvested my info and sold it to every shady
| lender who proceeded to call me non-stop for weeks.
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| Hated that company when I was shopping for a refinance. They had
| the slickest website (which is probably why they call themeselves
| fintech) but were extremely opaque about their quotes even after
| they forced me to answer 100s of detailed personal finance
| questions. And very spammy
| bombcar wrote:
| And their rates/pricing wasn't even any better than other
| places, just obfuscated so it was harder to compare.
| treis wrote:
| Both of these are the opposite of my experience with them.
| You could fiddle with down payment, price, and points to your
| heart's content and it'd spit out a quote for you. Also a few
| thousand cheaper than other places.
| kn0where wrote:
| But they have Better in their name, so it must be better
| right?
| kreeben wrote:
| I Can't Believe They're Not Better!
| keewee7 wrote:
| Two takeaways from this is:
|
| 1. Be a nice boss.
|
| 2. Fire people as discretely as legally possible. Don't do it
| over a Zoom call that will leak and make you the face of the
| #EvilCEO archetype the Internet hates so much.
| kingcharles wrote:
| I still have a tab open in my browser from week's ago.
|
| LinkedIn: 50 Top Startups in the U.S.
|
| #1 Better [Financial Services]
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Payola?
| baby wrote:
| This story is only getting better and better.com
| rmason wrote:
| I remember talking with an investor about a founder CEO and said
| I was friends with a lot of his employees who say he's a bully.
| The investor shrugged and then said with a smile but he's a bully
| who gets results.
| vanusa wrote:
| Until the day arrived when they were shocked to find themselves
| on ... the receiving end of that very same treatment.
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(page generated 2021-12-10 23:00 UTC)