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‘I loved this!’: Fox News host endorses Better.com CEO firing hundreds of people on Zoom

Emily Compagno says she ‘loved this so much’ and called the staffers ‘snowflakes’

Alisha Rahaman Sarkar
Thursday 09 December 2021 07:09 GMT
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Fox News host endorses Better.com CEO firing hundreds of people on Zoom

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Fox News host Emily Compagno cheered the CEO of a digital mortgage lender who abruptly fired over 900 employees over a Zoom call last week.

Compagno on Wednesday's Fox & Friends repeatedly said she "loved it" and called the fired employees "snowflakes" who needed to "learn work ethic."

Vishal Garg, the CEO of Better.com, announced the termination of about 15 per cent of his company in the US and India over a short Zoom call. He received severe backlash after a recording of the announcement went viral on social media.

Co-host of the show Lisa “Kennedy” Montgomery slammed the CEO for firing his employees in a "classless way" just prior to the Christmas holidays.

She suggested that the company is "clearly a disaster" and Mr Garg is "a horrible person to work with".

However, Compagno encouraged the mass termination and declared that she "loved this so much". She said that she understood the "indelicate nature" of the firing but added that the employees deserved to be terminated because of low productivity.

Mr Garg had cited market efficiency, productivity and performance as the reasons for the mass layoffs.

"The productivity of those 900 individuals averaged two hours a day even though they were paid for eight," she argued.

Compagno then continued that part of her role as a federal attorney in the past was of "terminating individuals."

"I love that for 900 people, he stayed safe and let them know that their theft was not tolerated. For me, good riddance," she said, adding that she felt bad that Mr Garg had to apologise for it.

"For all of them, they are snowflakes, probably Millenials and Zs (Generation Z). They need to learn work ethic," she concluded.

Compagno's remarks left the other panellists, who have been tearing into Mr Garg, visibly stunned.

In the wake of the company’s controversial move, three top executives reportedly tendered their resignations. The company’s head of marketing Melanie Hahn, head of public relations Tanya Hayre Gillogley and vice president of communications Patrick Lenihan are all reported to have resigned.

After the debacle, the CEO defended his move and accused employees of stealing from the company in a post on Blind, an anonymous review site.

“You guys know that at least 250 of the people terminated were working an average of 2 hours a day while clocking in 8 hours+ a day in the payroll system? They were stealing from you and stealing from our customers who pay the bills that pay our bills. Get educated,” Mr Garg wrote under the username “uneducated”.

He then apologised to his staff for the way he handled the mass firing, according to a mail leaked by an employee on Blind.

“I failed to show the appropriate amount of respect and appreciation for the individuals who were affected, and for their contributions to Better. I own the decision to do the layoffs, but in communicating it, I blundered the execution. In doing so, I embarrassed you,” he wrote.

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