– [Vishal] Heading into the new year, Effective immediately,
prior to this meeting, I informed about 10% of the company That they were terminated. (tense music) – My name is Clint Rainey,
I am a contributing writer For Fast Company, and I am
here today with Christopher, And we are going to watch some footage Of a video that was leaked to us. It is from an all-hands meeting That better.com held on December 1st, Follows a much more famous video, Where the CEO, Vishal Garg, Laid off 900 employees without notice. And this is the meeting that
began immediately after, 30 minutes later, where he
spoke for the first time To the remaining 8,000
employees at the company, And he let them know,
essentially, what he had just done With the 900 former co-workers of theirs. – [Vishal] Off about 10%
of the company today. We did it for a number of reasons, To increase productivity,
reduce head count, Performance management, and
to right-size the business. In order to survive And eventually thrive, We have to change with the market. – The thing that jumps out when I watch That first 30 seconds is,
if he had stayed right there In that spot that he was in,
essentially breaking down Why we had to do this,
it might have been fine. – It’s not as if no one has
sympathy for a CEO having To lay off nearly 1,000
employees at his company, But whatever amount of
empathy he had at the start, The longer he talks, it
seems to slowly dissipate.
– [Vishal] We’ve continued
to improve our technology And our processes. We’ve been able to identify,
through the technology, Those of you who haven’t
been as productive And those who are perhaps great, But in the wrong roles of
performing the wrong task, And we’ve tried to exit many of them From the company earlier today. To the extent possible, We’ve cut underperformers,
but make no mistake about it, We did also eliminate redundant roles. We also did eliminate folks
who might be strong performers, But were just in the wrong
place at the wrong time With the wrong task and
weren’t mission-critical To taking the rocketship forward. – The indication he gives there is that, If you’re still on this call, You are critical to our new mission, To our leaner, meaner
versions of ourselves, But then, of course, what we don’t know, At least what these employees
didn’t know, at the time was They were gonna lay off thousands
more, so a lot of people On this call ended up
losing their jobs anyway. It was very frank that he said,
”We’re using this technology ”to figure out who’s productive,” But then he didn’t really go Into detail about how it’s used. If I were a remaining employee, The first thing I’d wanna know is How are they using this stuff on me? – Two things to put next to one another, Here are 250 underperforming employees, But that wasn’t enough. We had to lay off another 700,
And they just had the misfortune Of being in the wrong
place at the wrong time. – Some of you might ask Why, if we’re firing 10% of the workforce, We’re continuing to hire on-campus, Continuing to hire interns, Continuing to hire various
people to come into the company. It’s because we expect those people To be super productive and to add value, And if they don’t, we will exit them, too. – This line of Garg’s is One of the few that almost
everybody remembered. You’ll notice-
– Right. – That Garg has a habit
of going off-script, And this is one of those moments
where he seems to do that. I don’t know what the
script said beforehand, But my guess is that the part
where he just suddenly goes, ”And we will exit them, too,” Is him just throwing that out
there just as a little warning Or something to what what’s
to what’s to come, I guess. – There’s only one way to take that. If you’re a new employee, if
you’re a current employee, If you’re someone who’s
thinking about working At a place like this, it’s a
clear warning or even a threat. You might look at it as a threat To say, ”You better be super
productive or we’ll exit you.” I mean, there’s no other way to take it, And that he would say it on a call With the entire all-hands staff, It’s pretty remarkable. – [Vishal] We are going
to be leaner, meaner, And hungrier going forward. We will not be spending time
trying to raise capital. We will not be spending time focused
On what investors think. We will be spending time
grinding this business forward In what will likely be a blood bath. – So this is the other line
that everybody remembers. – It just shows a lack of empathy again. – A word that gets used To describe Garg a lot
of times is mercurial, And he does have this sharp edge To the way that he talks that
doesn’t just sound robotic. I mean, he can be robotic, too, But that line, blood bath, He says with so much passion and emotion. You can tell that he
feels that that is true, So he’s capable of showing That kind of emotion When he wants to, and it never comes out When he’s talking about his employees. It comes out when he’s talking About how much money they stand To lose in the market moving forward. – He is someone Who clearly almost sees himself As being ruthless, maybe necessarily so. I mean, you can see that
in those two moments Because he’s so animated by
the thought of the blood bath And then also the exiting the employees When they’re not being super productive. I mean, you can clearly see the parallel In his mind that he’s drawing. – [Vishal] Are we gonna make new mistakes? Yes, mistakes, failure is The way we learn. Failure is the greatest teacher. Today, we acknowledge that we over-hired
And hired the wrong people, And in doing that, we failed, I failed. Parts of this organization That have not been
deadline-centric before will be Extremely deadline-centric going forward. You will not be allowed to fail twice. You’ll be encouraged to fail once, But not allowed to fail twice. Not meeting deadlines
will not be accepted. – So this is probably the
closest he comes to a mea culpa, But the admissions that he
makes there are wild. (laughs) – Yeah, I mean, this was The most incredible
moment in the whole video. He here is saying, essentially, He didn’t manage the company well And that’s why we’re in this predicament, And he then tells the employees
they’re not gonna be allowed To fail in the same way that he did, Which I find incredible.
– It’s a warning wrapped In an irony because, Three months later, More than three times as
many employees get laid off, And that one’s not handled- – Right.
– Well, either. Garg didn’t do it through
a Zoom call again, But there’s a serious
amount of mismanagement That went into the way Better
handled that round of layoffs, And since then, they’ve continued To make blunder after blunder. So if he was holding himself To that same standard of not
being allowed to mess up twice, He unfortunately wouldn’t still
have a job, I don’t think.
