Vishal Garg, the CEO of mortgage company Better.com, announced on a Zoom webinar that the company was laying off about 9% of all its employees.

He abruptly informed more than 900 employees on the webinar that they were being terminated just before Christmas.

On the short and emotionless call, Garg said the reasons were market efficiency, performance, and productivity, and he then said that employees would expect an email explaining benefits and severance. However, employees¢¥ access to the computers was terminated, their screens went black, and they lost access to email and messages.

Garg was in problems before, after sending an email to staff saying they were too slow and were dumb dolphins.

Difficult words: lay off (to end a worker¡¯s job, usually for reasons that have nothing to do with the worker¢¥s performance), terminate (to bring to an end), benefits and severance (the things a company gives its workers when they leave their jobs).