{"id":42660,"date":"2021-12-09T17:40:04","date_gmt":"2021-12-09T17:40:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/?guid=6834292a223b6f2346f74f0c84a50476"},"modified":"2021-12-09T17:40:04","modified_gmt":"2021-12-09T17:40:04","slug":"modern-technology-might-seem-heartless-but-convenience-and-cruelty-shouldnt-be-confused","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/modern-technology-might-seem-heartless-but-convenience-and-cruelty-shouldnt-be-confused\/","title":{"rendered":"Modern technology might seem heartless, but convenience and cruelty shouldn\u2019t be confused"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n Bobby Hellard<\/a><\/span>
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9 Dec, 2021<\/span><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Bad news can\u2019t be delivered over\u00a0Zoom<\/a>; that appears to be the feeling behind a thousand angry tweets directed at Vishal Garg, the CEO of US mortgage startup Better.com, after a video showing him sacking 900 employees in one savage swoop\u00a0went viral<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThank you for joining,\u201d Garg begins. \u201cErm\u2026 I come to you with not great news. If you are on this call, you are part of the unlucky group being laid off. Your employment here is being terminated, effective immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n

By his own testimony, this was Garg\u2019s decision, and he wanted those 900 poor souls to hear it straight from the source. As mass sackings go, it\u2019s fairly heartfelt; he let everyone know this wasn\u2019t his first Zoom cull and he even admitted to crying after the previous one.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, those 900 people reportedly make up just 9% of Better.com\u2019s workforce, which is said to be an organisation worth around $7 billion (roughly \u00a35.3 billion). Could it have kept them on till after Christmas, at least? You betcha. But this is, sadly, very common at larger organisations due to \u2018market changes\u2019 or whatever corporate jargon suits.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Garg has received flak for sacking 900 workers over Zoom, but is the alternative really any better?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Last year,\u00a0IBM announced 10,000 job cuts across Europe<\/a>\u00a0as part of the separation of its cloud and infrastructure businesses. Its HR team probably dealt with it a bit more traditionally, likely sending out formal emails or letters, but, it\u2019s also worth noting that no\u00a0video conferencing\u00a0<\/a>service accommodates 10,000 participants.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, we are creatures of convenience; you can get lattes delivered by underpaid gig economy workers on bikes, so you don\u2019t have to endure a five-minute walk to the coffee shop. It doesn\u2019t seem extra baristas are hired for this, either, they just have to increase their output, essentially.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This type of convenience is also apparent in\u00a0the government\u2019s use of WhatsApp for official business<\/a>, while simultaneously calling for WhatsApp to compromise the integrity of the end-to-end encryption that makes the service what it is. It\u2019s tempting to think the worst; that the Tories are a shady bunch using destructible messages to conveniently hide any evidence of alleged misgivings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is, however, also a government with a\u00a0terrible track record on technology<\/a>, and one that probably doesn\u2019t fully understand WhatsApp. That ministers, too, supposedly began using WhatsApp messaging to avoid their communications being caught out by\u00a0the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act<\/a>\u00a0(mistakenly, it turns out) only adds to the confusion.<\/p>\n