The CEO who fired 900 people on a Zoom call is out
In December 2021, Better.com CEO Vishal Garg let 900 employees go on a single Zoom call. The clip went around the world. For most people, that was the whole story.
It wasn’t. On 3 August 2026, Better Home & Finance’s board voted unanimously to remove Garg as CEO. According to a company complaint reported by Forbes, the board pointed to net losses of more than $1.5 billion since 2022 and a share price that fell over 90% during his tenure.
A Zoom call doesn’t lose $1.5 billion. But what it said about the culture at the top is worth paying attention to.
The 2026 statistic every board should read
Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2026 report, published in April 2026, found that global employee engagement fell to 20%, the lowest level since 2020. Gallup puts the cost of low engagement at around $10 trillion in lost productivity.
The number that matters most sits underneath that. Manager engagement fell from 31% in 2022 to 22% in 2025. The biggest single drop came in the last year, from 27% to 22%. Engagement among individual contributors barely moved.
Gallup’s point is that managers used to be more engaged than the people they led. That premium has gone. Managers are now about as disengaged as everyone else.
Why this happens, and when
Managers take their cues from the top. When senior leadership treats people as a cost to be cut, managers absorb that pressure and pass it down. They stop pushing back. They stop raising problems. Their teams notice.
It usually starts with a moment everyone remembers. A public dressing down. A mass layoff handled badly. An email nobody forgets. After that, the culture doesn’t collapse overnight. It just stops telling the truth upward.
What happened at Better Home & Finance
Here is what has been publicly reported, with sources.
Garg founded Better in 2016. It grew into a major digital mortgage lender backed by SoftBank and Goldman Sachs and went public through a SPAC merger in 2023 (Forbes, 18 August 2026).
Forbes previously reported that Garg called his staff “dumb dolphins” in an email. In 2021, he fired 900 employees on a Zoom call and later called them lazy. He was placed on leave after the layoff, then reinstated as CEO in 2022. An internal review prompted by his behaviour found he “failed to set a tone at the top” that supported a strong culture of internal controls (Forbes, 18 August 2026).
On 3 August 2026, the board removed him as CEO and appointed Daniel Lewis as interim CEO. The board cited net losses of more than $1.5 billion since 2022 and a stock price drop of more than 90% (Forbes, 18 August 2026).
Since then, Garg has launched a shareholder campaign to remove five directors. The company has sued him in federal court in New York. In September, it said his claim of more than 46% shareholder support has no basis, and it opened an investigation into alleged breaches of fiduciary duty (Better Home & Finance statements, 3 September, 23 September and 24 September 2026).
Both sides of the story
When he stepped down, Garg said now was the right time for new leadership. He has since changed his position, saying the company used its technology to grow the business almost three times in two and a half years, and accusing the board of securities law violations. The board’s Special Committee says his latest plans lack a credible foundation in the company’s operations.
It is also fair to say that the 2022 jump in interest rates hit every mortgage lender in the United States. Not all of Better’s losses come down to leadership. The model below reflects that.
The MoodyBot probability model: what Better could have saved
MoodyBot, the AI layer inside Moody At Work, reads anonymous daily mood check-ins across teams and departments. It can’t fix interest rates or stock markets. What it could have done is give the board a clear, early view of what the people inside the business were feeling, long before losses showed up in the accounts.
At a company like Better, the signals MoodyBot could have surfaced include sharp mood drops after major leadership events like the 2021 layoff, check-in reasons clustering around fear, job insecurity or lack of respect, falling manager mood in sales and loan operations, and participation dropping as people stop believing anyone is listening.
Those signals matter because the internal review linked leadership tone to weak controls and to the business being less effective than competitors at capturing customers. Culture problems like that show up in how people feel well before they show up in revenue.
The model below uses only publicly reported figures. The share of losses linked to leadership and culture, and the probability of early action, are illustrative assumptions stated openly so anyone can test them.
| Risk | Publicly reported loss | Model assumptions | What MoodyBot could have saved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Net losses | More than $1.5 billion since 2022 | 5% to 10% linked to leadership and culture (the rest to rates and market conditions); 30% to 50% chance early signals lead to action | $22.5m to $75m |
| Shareholder value | Stock price down more than 90% under Garg’s tenure | Dollar value of lost market cap not stated in reporting | Not quantified |
| Workforce | 900 employees let go on one Zoom call in 2021 | Severance and rehiring costs not publicly disclosed | Not quantified |
| Governance fight | CEO removed; federal lawsuit and live proxy battle in 2026 | Legal and advisory costs not publicly disclosed | Not quantified |
| Total quantified | $22.5m to $75m on the one line with a public dollar figure |
How the numbers were built: The only publicly reported dollar loss is the net loss of more than $1.5 billion since 2022. Because the whole mortgage market was hit by rising rates, the model only links 5% to 10% of that to leadership and culture. It then applies a 30% to 50% probability that anonymous early warning signals could have led to action in time. $1.5bn x 5% x 30% gives $22.5m. $1.5bn x 10% x 50% gives $75m. Every other cost is undisclosed, so it is left out rather than guessed.
What every leadership team can take from this
Gallup’s data says your managers are probably less engaged than they were three years ago. The question is whether you would know if yours were.
Most boards find out how the culture feels at the same time the public does. The cost of that delay is the gap between what could have been fixed and what ended up in the accounts.
Frequently asked questions
Why was Better.com CEO Vishal Garg removed? Better Home & Finance’s board voted to remove Garg on 3 August 2026, citing net losses of more than $1.5 billion since 2022 and a share price drop of more than 90% during his tenure, according to a company complaint reported by Forbes.
What did Gallup’s 2026 report find about managers? Manager engagement fell from 31% in 2022 to 22% in 2025, including a five point drop in the last year. Engagement among individual contributors stayed largely flat.
How does leadership culture affect company performance? A 2026 Gallup report estimates low engagement costs the global economy around $10 trillion in lost productivity. At Better, an internal review linked leadership tone to weak internal controls and to the company being less effective than peers at capturing customers.
How can a company spot a leadership culture problem early? Anonymous daily check-ins let employees and managers share how they feel without risk. Moody At Work turns those signals into early warnings leadership and boards can act on.
Sources: Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026 (April 2026); Forbes (18 August 2026); Better Home & Finance Special Committee statements via Business Wire (3 September, 23 September and 24 September 2026); Garg Group statements via Business Wire (21 September 2026).
All factual claims are sourced from publicly available reporting. Better Home & Finance’s representatives have stated that Mr. Garg’s plans lack a credible foundation in the company’s operations, that his claims of shareholder support have no basis, and that the company has opened an investigation into alleged breaches of fiduciary duty. Mr. Garg has disputed the board’s position and stated that the company grew almost three times under his technology strategy. MoodyBot projections represent an independent illustrative probability model based on publicly reported information and are not guaranteed outcomes.