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- Hacker News
- Great irony: the names under which the company which Vishal Garg was CEO of (Better Home & Finance Holding Company) does business are Better and Better.com [1]. :-)
- You read this from the outside and ask yourself, "how does this guy sleep at night?". He sleeps fine, of course, justifying his own actions/behaviors without thinking of others.
Luigi Mangione spent months trying to contact someone at United Healthcare to no avail. Only when he pretended to be an investor managing a large number of assets did he hear a response.
by jazzpush2 - > “He hoodwinked me,” the just-ousted Better Home & Finance CEO said about Daniel Lewis, the man who replaced him last week. “He said he liked the company’s strategy. He praised us on X and used that to get on our board and win our confidences.”
I love SpaceX's strategy for getting us to AGI, the moon, and beyond!
> just as he brought the company to the precipice of success.
I love how success has a precipice.
by BeetleB - Leopard who eats faces surprised to find out other leopard ate his face.by mrhottakes
- > Garg acknowledges he’s “hard-nosed” and the famous Zoom layoffs severely damaged the company’s reputation — a mistake he knows will continue to haunt him. But as criticized as Garg has been for placing near-impossible demands on the company and its employees, he said Lewis convinced the board he didn’t push hard enough.
> So when shareholders said, ‘You need to take a back seat,’ I complied.”
Man shocked to learn the evolution of shareholder value did not, in fact value him.
by tolugenius - > It bounced back by training AI models to quickly process mortgages…
Between the years of 2018-2025, I led very many professional discussions and educational presentations regarding the theory and application of AI/ML in the org I worked (a ~120 person org lacking in any substantive expertise or awareness of the field).
One of the most important topics within those conversations was demystification. Several times I was asked (in earnest, by adults, in public fora) about “terminator/skynet scenarios”, sometimes intended metaphorically (related to the profession) and sometimes literally.
My response every single time:
I don’t fear “skynet”. My biggest fears surrounding the continued proliferation of AI are the mundane, boring, and nascent uses that completely bastardize the world as we know it. Uses like mortgage/loan approval, healthcare coverage approval, hiring, legal adjudications etc., etc.
Uses where the decision outcomes have a direct, major, intimate impact on people’s lives.
I am generally pro-AI/ML (when applied thoughtfully), but my greatest fears are and have ALWAYS been in knowing just how much easier it enables these kinds of decisions to inevitably be outsourced or made in an otherwise (more) thoughtless, dehumanizing way.
While it’s easy (and at times cathartic) to criticize big corp leaders, the CEO and company described in the article gives me a visceral reaction deeply within the uncanny valley that is actually difficult to describe.
by sota_pop - Former employee (though not part of that famous round of layoff)
The noise around Zoom firing was ridiculous. We were a largely remote company with most people having never been to the office (I don't think I had, at that moment) so how exactly do you lay off people except remotely? VG didn't do a great job there but the idea of doing it remotely being evil or whatever was ridiculous - should the people be flown in to NY just to get fired?
Overall I find VG a flawed but reasonable dude. He definitely put his ass on the line for the business, was generous with equity - and was a pretty engaged leader. I don't think much about my time at Better but it was fine.
by xyzelement - > Garg acknowledges he’s “hard-nosed” and the famous Zoom layoffs severely damaged the company’s reputation — a mistake he knows will continue to haunt him.
I really hope Garg is here reading this. It’s not just a mistake that will continue to haunt him, it’s all he’s ever going to be. It’s how he was introduced in this headline. It’s how he’ll be referred to when he starts his next venture. If newspapers publish his obituary someday, it’ll be in the first few sentences explaining why anyone knows his name.
by catgary