Better.com employees were informed of its latest layoffs via severance checks

Better.com

Better.com, the online mortgage lender that laid off 900 people over a call in December, has reportedly issued another wave of layoffs by inadvertently notifying employees via its payroll app.

The company was supposed to announce the layoffs on March 8th, but later pushed it back to March 9th after learning of the original date. Better forgot to change the date on its Workday app, and employees reportedly saw severance checks in the app at 12AM on March 8th.

Better CEO and co-founder Vishal Garg was criticized for firing hundreds of employees over a single call on December 3rd of last year and allegedly referred to them as part of the unlucky group that is being laid off during the meeting. He apologized to employees and then took time off to conduct a leadership and cultural assessment.

An employee at Better said that the company leaders didn't bother to contact employees to apologize or acknowledge the layoffs because they deleted the checks from employees' Workday accounts. The email notice was supposed to go out on March 9th, but was delayed due to current market conditions.

Almost half of the company's 8,000-person team are being let go, with the majority of affected workers having jobs in sales and operations. Employees get 60 to 80 days worth of pay in the severance package.

Better said that it would be holding one-to-one calls with affected employees after they were notified of the layoffs.

Better received $750 million in cash from SPAC and SoftBank before the layoffs.