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The Zoom call part isn't really the issue, although individual Zoom meetings would have been better.

> In another email obtained by Forbes last year, Garg wrote:

> > ‘You are TOO DAMN SLOW. You are a bunch of DUMB DOLPHINS and…DUMB DOLPHINS get caught in nets and eaten by sharks. SO STOP IT. STOP IT. STOP IT RIGHT NOW. YOU ARE EMBARRASSING ME.”

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The funny thing is that sharks are more likely to be eaten by dolphins (especially orcas) than vice versa. And sharks also get caught in nets.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/killer-wh...

I guess Garg is just as weak on marine biology as he is on leadership and business ethics.

Perhaps he's got some breakdown on how dolphin intelligence impacts those stats given his emphasis on them being dumb dolphins

I imagine it as a callback to some company wide training or team-building exercise or corporate culture story where the keynote/"message from our fearless leader" was some sort of dolphin parable.

But maybe I'm giving him too much credit.

Given that he threatened to staple his business partner to the wall and burn him alive, you are probably giving him too much credit.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/bettercom-ceo-vishal-garg-thre...

to be fair, he was talking about DUMB dolphins.

You are more kind than I would be.

I bet this dude talks a lot about alpha wolves too

He is the Sigma Wolf.

Correction: Omicron Wolf

Not to fixate but this is kinda interesting to me. I very much believe orcas will kill and eat sharks, but dolphins do too? I didn’t see a mention of it on the article.

Orcas are large dolphins.

Well that’s news to me, very interesting. But they’re a member of the dolphin family. When you say dolphin people think porpoise hence my confusion. Thanks for the info!

Better.com CEO Threatened to Burn His Business Partner Alive. Now He’s a Billionaire.

Last fall, employees at one of America’s fastest-growing startups began making anxious phone calls. They believed that CEO Vishal Garg—a volatile entrepreneur with a history of disgruntled business partners—had been giving huge amounts of equity... https://www.thedailybeast.com/bettercom-ceo-vishal-garg-thre...

Nice, when we started playing with some financial engineering we also noticed that vesting could be any unit of time.

So we did grants with super low cost basis (it was very early there was nobody else to placate), and the recipients did 83(b) elections to recognize the income at the low cost basis, so when they exercised at fair market value soon after it wouldnt be income at that point in time, only capital gains when they sale (which is offsettable much more easily than income, or gets a lower tax rate if you hold it ling enough anyway). This just nullifies a big income tax bill.

Fun game, if you know what you’re doing. Expensive annoying game if you dont.

I don't think that was the point of the linked article

Pretty sure it was the threatening someone to burn them alive

oh, right, that.

it also presented the shareholdings and the compliant ways of transferring consolidated ownership in a negative light

You can't really fire 900 people on individual Zoom calls. After the first 10 minutes everyone will know what their meeting is about and it makes the problem worse. People will be texting their managers begging for information and the manager will have to lie for a day or two until they are authorized to say in the meeting.

Those logistics are no worse than the equivalent in person.

This was done at my previous company near the beginning of the pandemic, where half of the company (about 1200 people) were laid off, entirely with one-on-one calls. It worked well and I appreciated it personally.

But the anxiety of waiting all day, as you watch your coworkers slowly drop, and send their farewell emails... wondering if you'll be next... I'd rather find out all at once.

> After the first 10 minutes everyone will know what their meeting is about and it makes the problem worse.

Huh? It’s not a surprise birthday party. I’m not sure why a key goal would be that each fired person is taken completely by surprise.

Obviously to spare the poor manager the hassle of being asked if they will have a job in two days or not

That's actually the goal in most firings so employees can't use their access to sabotage things on their way out. You have IT revoke their all their access once the meeting starts.

The reasons why may not be obvious if you're not a manager or haven't run a large organization before, but the simple truth is, "employees" are not a magically ethical bunch of people simply by virtue of being the underdog and poor and downtrodden and being all fired and stuff. You do not want a significant number of employees running around who are either uncertain they are going to be fired for a significant period of time, and even worse, you don't want a whole bunch of employees running around who have a pretty good idea they're going to be fired in a couple of days, because some fraction of them are going to take advantage of their access to wreck things up for the company. Wrecking things with technical access, wrecking relationships with companies... there's hardly anyone in a position in a company who couldn't do quite a bit of damage if they know they're out the door anyhow. All you have to do is be sure to keep it under the threshold where it's worth getting the legal system involved. (e.g., more "wreck relationships with customers" and keep the damage difficult to quantify and less "set the place on fire during peak business hours").

If a company told me they were going to fire me in two weeks, the worst risk the company would be taking is that I might just decide that they can't fire me in two weeks because I quit. I wouldn't do any other deliberate harm on the way out. Perhaps that's most people.

It certainly isn't all people, though.

Maybe it would be nice if we could all get along well enough to see being fired in some period of time as just business and not worth lashing out. Then again, maybe your sympathies lie with the employees lashing out. But in that case, the company has no choice but to get you out the door with as little warning as possible, to defend both itself as an abstract entity and all the rest of the employees.

This is one of those things that seems to be an institutional part of Americans quitting or being fired from jobs, but it's far from universal.

In Germany (and I believe most of Europe) several months notice is usual (three months minimum), and typically people keep working until the end of that time (aside from taking unused vacation). Sure, motivation suffers in that time, but don't think the cases of employees taking revenge on their employers is any higher here than in the US (in fact, I suspect it's less).

This is how it should be in the US

In some cases, you will be escorted off the premises immediately, then paid to stay at home until the end of your notice period. This is mostly for people with somewhat sensitive jobs, though (research, sales, some management positions) and probably more common in finance than elsewhere. And usually imposed no matter what side initiates the departure.

It’s literally extremely common for companies to inform people that they will be laid off weeks in the future. Companies often have entire facilities that get shut down with months of advance notice.

Not to mention that temporary jobs are also extremely common, so this explanation that the only thing ever preventing employees from sabotaging their employer is the hope that they will be employed there indefinitely is pretty clearly insufficient.

You can’t explain this as “managers/executives have no choice.” They have the choice, and they sometimes choose the option that they determine is easier for them. Not surprising, of course, but also not worth defending.

My understanding is that in those cases, the employees are generally offerred a significant severance package that is conditional on them not causing any problems until the day they are laid off. This way, the employee still has something to lose.

Most people wouldn't cause any problems, but a small fraction will cause trouble if they're put in a position where they feel harmed and can retaliate with no consequences to themselves.

In my previous work, people wanted to remain on good terms because they were good jobs they were hoping to return to once economic conditions were better. It also helped that they were unionized so they got a reasonable package to make ends meet in the interim.

> If a company told me they were going to fire me in two weeks, the worst risk the company would be taking is that I might just decide that they can't fire me in two weeks because I quit.

Maybe that's just a German thing, but here you'd (usually) be loosing the severance pay and some social benefits if you quit instead of being fired w/o direct cause.

In Canada/Quebec too.

Right, some people will be jerks, so treat all employees like criminals. That's why I left my last job. Got tired of seeing people escorted out by security. Talk about a toxic work culture.

The company could let employees in on key decision making and thus not create the environment of distrust and paranoia. Why is it ever a surprise how the company is doing? Solely, solely to keep employees ignorant of matters concerning their livelihoods. A company has the choices it cultivates for itself.

That is very American company thing. Non American companies dont do "escort you away the very same day" thing.

> because some fraction of them are going to take advantage of their access to wreck things up for the company.

These stories always float around, but this is quite rare and depending on what “wrecking” means, could end in jail time for the ex-employee. Most are capable of making that connection therefore most don’t. Yet the fear and treatment from upper management for this mostly fictitious hypothetical still runs rampant. There’s even a high profile case of an ex-Ubiquiti employee having a real good time because they wanted to extort their employer.

The goal there is to minimise the time spent waiting for the other shoe to drop.

After all, if you know layoffs are happening, and your boss schedules a confidential one-on-one meeting with you tomorrow, how well are you going to sleep tonight?

And what of the people who aren't getting fired - you can't really reassure them their jobs are safe before you've told the people whose jobs aren't safe. So you'll be keeping them in limbo too.

Of course, no amount of careful management is going to make people enjoy getting fired (except perhaps a generous voluntary early retirement package)

If the element of surprise is important, then you set up one-on-ones with all employees regardless of whether they will be laid off. Probably going to want to talk to the ones staying, anyway.

Have you never been at a company that has had layoffs?

I was at a company that did ~400 people layoff during pandemic. The place didn't even have a great culture but everyone, even people remaining (> half the company) got a one-on-one chat with their manager.

There was, of course, a company all hands later.

Sure people know what's up, but it's dramatically more human to have your manager call you and tell you a.) you are going to be okay or b.) we're very sorry this has happened, it's been a pleasure working with you, please use me as a reference anytime you need. We even personally called each candidate we were supposed to hire.

Company wide zoom as notice of layoffs is grotesque.

Not only is the all-hands layoff grotesque, but the guy spent a few minutes talking about how hard it is to fire people.

“I did this before and I cried”

This is what seems right to me. It's not the virtual nature, it's the lazy mass group layoff that's objectionable and disrespectful.

If you're being laid off, you probably have a lot of questions. A 1:1 meeting would allow for that.

Hell, 10:1 would be okay and 1/10th of the price.

Disagree. Why make the HR team go through 900 individual calls? At the same time this will leak and other employees will learn that they might get fired before they get their own call. Recipe for disaster. Just rip off the band aid.

Presumably the 900 people already had leaders that could talk to them.

Each manager would have to make that call to their laid-off reports, or the next manager in line if the manager is being laid off too. Maybe after that it would be ok for HR to have larger meetings with those affected to sort out the details.

“or the next manager in line if the manager is being laid off too“

What if the whole chains are axed? Recursive "or the next manager" could easily lead to exactly what happened: a CEO lucky to have a pandemic voiding all expectations to do something like that in person.

I think it boils down to leadership is really about managing relationships. This method is just too impersonal for most people, just like breaking off a romantic relationship via text is generally considered weak and frowned upon.

Wait, you're not supposed to break up over text? Since when?!?!?!

I'm almost certain this is a joke. Right?

Yes. My apologies, I thought it seemed obvious.

I suspect it is rare, though I suppose not impossible, that anyone needs to break off 900 romantic relationships at once.

I understand your point, but if there aren’t subordinate leaders below the CEO who can perform this function, I suspect they have organizational structure problems.

I believe a good approach would be to have those first line leaders (who actually have that relationship built with their subordinates) break the bad news and then the CEO speak to everybody and own the decision.

Why would you need to text?

Surely after seeing your relationship status change on Facebook, they would understand?

> Why make the HR team go through 900 individual calls?

The entire reason companies have hierarchical power structures (in theory) at least, is so that information can be passed along with the log of the company size.

Having every manager have 10 min call with each direct report, or in the worse case a team meeting, would be much more human and could accomplish the task of notification in roughly the same time window as an all hands firing.

You got it right up until the point where you think it’s to pass information from top to down. It’s not. It’s to pass information from the bottom up.

Tbh from the quotes it seems Vishal Garg is not only incompetent, but also a bit of a shitgibbon. Not sure if 1:1 meeting would help in anything here.

Ah, I didn't mean a 1:1 with the CEO. A 1:1 meeting with your leader or an HR person.

The problem is that 900 people is a lot of people. Imagine all managers scheduling meetings with their reports to tell them, then the managers themselves are probably being let go, in the meantime it would create A LOT of stress not knowing whether you will be called in for a meeting or not, just sitting there seeing people being let go around you 1 by 1. The whole process would take a week just to have a proper meeting and give everyone decent time to process and ask questions.

In a way, I think this is better - it's quicker, everyone knows where they stand, there is no uncertainty about it.

However, I do agree that

1) the communication from the CEO could be better

2) people should be given an opportunity to then still ask questions, either for HR or their managers(if still employed).

Companies do massive layoffs all the time without large meetings to tell everyone at the meeting they are fired. It isn't that hard.

It can be done and it isn't hard for the company. I'm going to float a guess that you haven't experienced a mass layoff where they pop your coworkers one by one over the course of the workday. It's very painful and takes a very long time. Anybody who has been around for one would almost certainly take the mass layoff over 8+ hours of constant worry just to lose your job at the end anyway.

I have been around for a number of mass layoffs, and you are right it sucked. It will always suck, there is no way around it.

It doesn’t have to take all day. Managers meet with the people being laid off in the morning. If it is too large to do 1on1, you can do small meetings with a few people and their manager.

Point is that it should come from your direct manager (or the closest direct manager in the chain if managers are also being laid off).

For large US companies there are rules (Warn Act) about how you make people redundant

> Imagine all managers scheduling meetings with their reports to tell them, then the managers themselves are probably being let go…

Yeah, I imagined all of this and it seemed like exactly what a competent company would do.

Leave it to HN to argue that having a shitty mass layoff through Zoom is better than having a 1 to 1

It's absolutely not better than having a 1-1, and I never said it was. But I will argue that it's better than waiting a week to have your scheduled "mystery call" with your manager while you see everyone around you being laid off left and right. It would have been stressful as hell, and in that sense yes, finding out in a single call with the CEO is "better". I'd still like to have a 1-1 with my manager to discuss either way.

Imagine all managers scheduling meetings with their reports to tell them

I was in a company that had a mass layoff (well, it was getting bought for IP/assets and a few employees). I found out about it from my boss one morning, knew I was getting laid off, then scheduled meetings with my direct reports later that day. It was pretty easy to find time to schedule the meetings since it's not like anyone had any project work to do any more.

By mid day the cat was pretty much out of the bag and everyone knew what was happening, but I and other managers still held the individual meetings.

Managed to hire most of my my former direct reports at my new job.

> It's not the virtual nature, it's the lazy mass group layoff that's objectionable and disrespectful.

Is it? I can plausibly make the other argument that not having to do it yourself and offloading it to middle managers/HR is also "objectionable and disrespectful".

I've been on both sides, but yes, just my opinion. On the other hand, this is newsworthy because it's unusual. I suspect it's unusual for a reason.

If the CEO didn’t want to seem like he was passing the buck, he could have had an all-hands meeting afterwards and explain it was ultimately his decision.

Unlike when someone is being fired individually, in mass layoffs there simply are no individual answers to questions - any questions are either relevant to everyone and should be communicated in a mass manner, or they are questions which are not answerable at all. Any proper questions that have a reasonable answer would absolutely deserve that answer to be made to everyone else in the exact same manner, even if they don't think to ask that question.

Any questions about "why" are reduced to essentially "your individual job performance and role does not matter, it's just that this business unit ceases to exist as of yyyy-dd-mm". Any questions about "what next" are answered by "Here's the details on the severance conditions for you - the exact same as for the other 899 people".

I know this looks bad but I generally appreciate manage giving clear warnings like this before firing. I have seen firings in companies where employee had no clue that the manager was not happy with him. I know this type of warning is the thing that would get published in the press by disgruntled employee and so managers couldn't give negative feedback and in the firing speech managers just tell that someone is not a good fit for the company or some other HR shit.

I think you can warn people about their performance without using abuse.

Abuse? Really? Is a single email where someone vents frustration for 2 lines actually abuse?

Yes name calling - 'dumb'.

Say a couple has a good relationship. One day, Partner A has a bad day at work. A comes home and screams at Partner B: "you're dumb! you're slow! why isn't dinner ready? you're a dolphin!"

Partner A was just venting frustration after having a terrible day. Is that abuse? YES! Unequivocally, yes.

There is no excuse for insulting, yelling, or otherwise treating other human beings as lesser than. It's abuse, always, even one time. And frankly if it happens once, it's very unlikely it isn't a repeated pattern of behavior.

Yes, in my opinion it is. Think about abuse in other contexts to put it in perspective. If a teacher in the middle of giving a homework assignment had said the same thing, would that be okay? What about a police officer who pulled someone over during a traffic stop? What about a customer at a drive thru saying this into the speaker?

This is not a random person on the street corner shouting at other random passers by. This guy is in a position of power over the people he is communicating with.

Absolutely right. You can smash a good relationship in a few seconds, even if it was one that took years to build.

> Think about abuse in other contexts to put it in perspective. If a teacher in the middle of giving a homework assignment had said the same thing, would that be okay? What about a police officer who pulled someone over during a traffic stop? What about a customer at a drive thru saying this into the speaker?

Calling a group of people "DUMB DOLPHINS" on an email chain ... Inappropriate, un professional, dis-respectful all seem like a better way to characterize it.

Its like the reverse of when Prince Andrew described Jeffrey Epstein behavior as "Un-Becoming". There is probably a better way to characterize it.

I dunno. Seems clearly abusive to me from someone in a position of power. This wasn't said among friends at a bar or by or about someone unrelated to the people in question. It was their boss, or bosses boss.

my heart goes out to all the victims of abuse, but not the ones that one time were on an email chain and their bosses-boss called the team they were on a bunch of "dumb dolphins"

I didn't know verbal/emotional abuse requires a minimum word count! Please tell, what is the magic number that serves as the threshold?

I knew you would get downvoted. HN is a weird mixture of professionalism and childishness. Getting angry at two lines without context/relationship with manager is all I could expect from here.

In what context would it be OK for a CEO to send ENTHUSIASTICALLY YELLING e-mails to employees telling them they are SLOW DUMB DOLPHINS and to STOP EMBARRASSING ME STOP IT STOP IT RIGHT NOW...?

Also how would our knowing more about the CEO/employee relationship here improve our perception? The most "positive" thing I can think of is, the employees are so used to it they would tell us something like "oh, that's just CEO, he communicates really passionately". That's not actually positive, though. It's Stockholm Syndrome. [1]

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome

> I knew you would get downvoted

Hold on though. You don't have the full context/relationship between GP and the people who downvoted them. It would be irresponsible for you to jump to conclusions about Hackernews or those commenters based on just a one-line grayed out comment.

If you think allowing someone with a massive power differential to call you dumb and degrade you is not abuse then you have been working and some pretty terrible places and I hope you find somewhere better.

Agreed, to characterize it as such is a dis-service to people who have suffered abuse in the workplace.

"You're moving slowly and dropping tasks. That is impacting the business and we are losing customers. This needs to change by next month/quarter/whatever."

vs.

"YOU ARE A DUMB DOLPHIN BLAH BLAH BLAH"

Massive difference.

The former is a warning rooted in a sincere desire to lead the org/employee towards positive change. The latter is verbal abuse that accomplishes nothing but placating the ego of the abuser.

The context here is the mortgage market is declining as rates rise. These are people who mostly were performing but there's no longer a market fit.

It's possible to be really clear without going ad hominem. Reality is usually already harsh enough. I'd prefer the first with a clear indication that the company will probably not be able to continue keeping to employee since they need to save a lot of costs. So the person can get a new job in time. IMHO it should be the minimum standard for anyone working in management to maintain a respectful and clear communication.

What warning? 900 people were let go without any warning best I can tell.

In what way is that message "clear"? It reads like a temper tantrum from a pre-teen, not a manager providing negative feedback to an employee.

This dude is embodiment of why we created agile. What a childish way to look at engineering.

Product: "What are you working on?"

Engineering: "That is up to you. What is important? The answer can't be everything."

Product: "Why is it taking so long?"

Engineering: Here is what the developers expect it to take. It will almost certainly take longer. When are we supposed to get X project done with our current workload? What falls off? If we crunch we will lose our best talent who will leave to go do the same work for more pay somewhere else.

Got his metaphors wrong:

"The Dark Secrets That Dolphins Don’t Want You to Know"

https://slate.com/human-interest/2009/05/the-dark-secrets-th...

assuming they did a 20 minute meeting for each employee thats 233 hours or 29 business days to fire all 700 of them...

he would have to fire 1000 people to cover the cost

This reads like a solution to a twisted elementary school math problem, but:

Assuming 1 manager for 10 employees, that's 90 managers each doing a 3h20 minute block of 20 minute meetings, allowing all to be fired in one morning.

What if the manager is also getting fired?

That's the cost of doing business, you keep the profits and in exchange you don't treat your employees like fucking garbage.

He didn't even need to lay them off, according to the article. He just wanted "a fortress balance sheet going into the holidays"

From the employees' perspective, who wants to sit around in angst for a month while your friends and colleagues are dropping like flies, wondering if you're next?

One and done is the way to do it in my opinion. Dragging out bad news seldom works out well.

You can pass out layoffs across the whole company in a couple of hours through the same infrastructure you use to pass out work items, KPIs, and paychecks

Your unspoken assumption: A company of 6000 employees only has 1 manager/HR rep capable of talking to pink slip recipients.

Exactly. Hire 20 extra HR people to make that firing faster. Then fire the 20 HR people. It's simple.

Just over 233 person-hours of work isn't 233 hours of work. Assuming team sizes average 20, that work can be spread across 35 managers, requiring less than a business day to complete. Even assuming 900 people as mentioned in the headline, that's still less than a day's work. Larger-than-average teams may require more time, but this could still be easily accomplished over two business days.

Now do the math on all the less important meetings that you have every day.

That is very surreal to read, for some reason.

Now this is just moving the goalposts. Can someone please help me understand what I’m supposed to be outraged about? It seems to be a confetti of grievances meant to evoke an emotional reaction.

I guess your ok with the CEO of the company you work for calling you a dumb dolphin? Lol

Is there a link to this?

It's in the posted article.

At the end of the article

Sadly, no. There is a quote from a section of it in the linked Forbes article, though.

We'll have to wait for it to show up on https://twitter.com/TechEmails

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