他在一场 Zoom 会议上开掉了九百个人。今年他自己被开掉了，现在他想回去。

First, who this man is — you will probably remember.

He is the boss who fired nine hundred people in a single video meeting.

His name is Vishal Garg, the company is called Better, and the business is mortgages online.

It happened in December 2021, a few days before Christmas.

That day he ran a video call with nine hundred people on the screen.

He spoke very briefly, with almost no preamble.

He said: you are the group being laid off.

And with that, the meeting ended.

Employees later said they only worked it out when they opened their bank card and no wages had come in.

There is another thing that made people angrier.

It was reported afterwards that he had described his own staff, elsewhere, as "dumb dolphins".

Nine hundred people out of work, plus a phrase like that, and the story could not be contained.

Once that recording got out, the whole world knew who Vishal Garg was.

In the years since, his reputation has never washed clean.

At the time he apologised, then "took some time off", and later came back to the company.

But the recording did not go away. It stayed online.

Mention "how not to do layoffs" and he is the first person a lot of people think of.

Right — now this year.

On the third of August this year, Better’s board replaced him.

The boss who laid off nine hundred people had been laid off himself.

Better brought in a new boss.

What happened next is what makes this complicated.

After the new boss took over, the company’s share price fell by nearly half.

To be clear, the stock was already falling this year before he left.

But it fell faster after the change, and that is hard to deny.

Garg looked at that number and started wanting to go back.

He said publicly that this is the company he built, and that it is right on the verge of results.

He puts the efficiency gains of recent years down to AI: work that used to take dozens of people several days, a machine can now do.

He also said something very direct — he said the new boss had hoodwinked him.

Then he put a condition on the table, and it is hard not to read something into it.

He said he does not need a salary — one dollar a year is fine.

Once the company really starts making money, he will step aside himself.

Will Better’s board let him back?

There is still no answer.

There is something uncomfortable in here.

If he really can turn the company around, what will the people he fired in a single meeting make of that?

Think about it: a man did something people have remembered for five years.

Can he have his old job back?