I'm not sure it's mental health issues so much as "got away with being a bad person to work with and then couldn't anymore".
Looking in from the outside, it seems like he kept more or less succeeding (financially, in the eyes of friends/family, etc), while doing dodgier things and insulting more people, which spurred him to keep going along as before. Eventually he flew too close to the sun.
> 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.
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.
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.
I bought my first house through them this year and it went pretty well, up until closing day. The interface is great, the rates were the best I could find, and it was mostly smooth...except...
At one point, Better asked what title company I wanted to use. They had a bunch of services under "you can shop for this, or use what we recommend", so I figured it was like that and said "I have no idea, I'll let you figure it out". Well they picked a closing company, and then my agent and the closing agent were like "oh we already picked one, can you change it?". So I forward along to Better, they say sure, but the website doesn't update. A couple days before closing it still doesn't update but they assure me it'll be fine. During closing, neither us nor the title company noticed it wasn't updated on the documents. And the check from Better hadn't showed up yet, but they figure it was a delay so they sent us home to our new house and told the sellers the check should be ready later that day. Around 3pm, after celebrating our new house, I get a panicked call from my agent. The money never showed up. Have I heard from Better at all? Nope. I call them. Can't get through to my loan officer. They finally call me back and say they sent the down payment to the original title company. They're going to try to get it back but it might not be today. And I need to go back to the title company to re-sign since it's all the wrong title company on the docs. The sellers are FURIOUS (they're supposed to move to another country in a couple days, understandable). When we get to the title company to resign, my agent says the sellers might take the keys back. We've started unpacking and our dogs are at the house. Better offers me $1500 off the closing costs, which we forward along to the sellers, so they're at least moderately pissed rather than furious. Right before 5, the money finally lands in the correct title company's account and they cut a check to the sellers. One of the happiest days turned into one of the most stressful days.
That's what I've heard is their secret sauce. They spider the best rates on the web, and price a few bps lower so they always show up in google searches.
The obvious thing for local good mortgage brokers/originators to hire some UX designers and get themselves a slick ui too. And yet, for a lot of them the UI is atrocious. It can't be that expensive, so it looks like they just do not care.
Did refi with them twice, all was smooth and the grunt work people spoke perfect English (at least as much as I could tell). Their UI is one of the best I've experienced so far (detailed task lists really help) and the process was mostly painless. YMMV of course.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
Worked in tech for decades, had some very heated disagreements many times, never had abusive language used towards me by bosses or used it myself towards colleagues or subordinates. I don't think it's expected. It happens, but it's not a normal thing.
Why? When engineer salaries are quite good, many engineers are able to easily move laterally between top firms. It should not be normalized to be awful to your employees.
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 worked for a nice version of this, spot raises, flying around trying to aquire other companies. Drinks on the company card. Every Friday we'd go out drinking !
The it happens, we're all brought into a room. Given 2 weeks serverance. Apparently we forgot to make money. The CEO apologized to each one of us personally, I said thank you.
If your going to be immature at least be kind.
I hope if I'm ever CEO I'm just stupid and not mean
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.
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.
Rocket is known in the Detroit area for having a boiler room culture and a cult like mindset. Not surprised to hear that the person on the other end of the line was manic, probably was under intense pressure.
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.
> 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.”
Readit News
> 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)
Link: https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkpgkm/bettercom-ceo-called-...
Deleted Comment
"Better.com CEO Vishal Garg Threatened to Burn His Business Partner Alive"
Huh what the fuck?
Looking in from the outside, it seems like he kept more or less succeeding (financially, in the eyes of friends/family, etc), while doing dodgier things and insulting more people, which spurred him to keep going along as before. Eventually he flew too close to the sun.
I think about that quote from Elon sometimes, that starting a company is like eating glass and staring into the abyss.
> 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...
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.
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.
At one point, Better asked what title company I wanted to use. They had a bunch of services under "you can shop for this, or use what we recommend", so I figured it was like that and said "I have no idea, I'll let you figure it out". Well they picked a closing company, and then my agent and the closing agent were like "oh we already picked one, can you change it?". So I forward along to Better, they say sure, but the website doesn't update. A couple days before closing it still doesn't update but they assure me it'll be fine. During closing, neither us nor the title company noticed it wasn't updated on the documents. And the check from Better hadn't showed up yet, but they figure it was a delay so they sent us home to our new house and told the sellers the check should be ready later that day. Around 3pm, after celebrating our new house, I get a panicked call from my agent. The money never showed up. Have I heard from Better at all? Nope. I call them. Can't get through to my loan officer. They finally call me back and say they sent the down payment to the original title company. They're going to try to get it back but it might not be today. And I need to go back to the title company to re-sign since it's all the wrong title company on the docs. The sellers are FURIOUS (they're supposed to move to another country in a couple days, understandable). When we get to the title company to resign, my agent says the sellers might take the keys back. We've started unpacking and our dogs are at the house. Better offers me $1500 off the closing costs, which we forward along to the sellers, so they're at least moderately pissed rather than furious. Right before 5, the money finally lands in the correct title company's account and they cut a check to the sellers. One of the happiest days turned into one of the most stressful days.
That's what I've heard is their secret sauce. They spider the best rates on the web, and price a few bps lower so they always show up in google searches.
I wonder if their recent 'success' with outsourcing is the primary impetus for the layoffs.
Seems more and more common unfortunately
Dead Comment
Abusing employees is more or less expected, out in techland.
Ruffle investors' feathers, however, and there may be consequences.
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.
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.
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
Keep it up, and you have to start looking for a new employee.
That's the platonic ideal, at least. The reality on the ground is often far different.
I feel like we watched this movie before.
**cough**WeWork**cough**
I worked for a nice version of this, spot raises, flying around trying to aquire other companies. Drinks on the company card. Every Friday we'd go out drinking !
The it happens, we're all brought into a room. Given 2 weeks serverance. Apparently we forgot to make money. The CEO apologized to each one of us personally, I said thank you.
If your going to be immature at least be kind.
I hope if I'm ever CEO I'm just stupid and not mean
I'm not saying the culture isn't toxic, I'm saying it's surprising how well they hid it.
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).
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.
Standard toxic leadership.