Envoy Mortgage laid off its third layoff a week before Thanksgiving, according to affected employees.
The company has cut nearly 30% of its workforce at its headquarters in Houston, Texas. As of Wednesday, the company has more than 1,000 employees per his LinkedIn, but interviewed employees said that number is far higher than the actual number of employees right now.
Full-time employees who survived the layoffs were forced to take a 20% pay cut, while contractors experienced a 25% cut. employees) were minimally impacted, employees said.
Envoy Mortgage did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The layoffs surprised many as upper management informed employees in October that they had enough resources to weather the market conditions.
“We were told that our jobs were safe and that the company would weather the storm,” said the former Envoy manager. has been securitized and said there was no need for additional layoffs.”
Two layoff rounds took place in August and October, during which the company implemented mandatory pay cuts for underwriters and eliminated 401k matching for all employees, former employees say.
different from others Execution of layoffs Industry-wise, Envoy employees received nearly four weeks of severance pay, and the rest of the PTO was paid off.
While upper management explained that the layoffs were the result of a downturn in the market, former employees also say the company was making unnecessary investments in technology.
In recent months, Envoy has updated its loan origination platform and moved most of its infrastructure to the cloud.
“Given the current state of the market and how the company is doing, now is not the time to focus on these migrations, moving to the cloud and adding all these unnecessary costs,” said the former IT manager. “We had to go into cost-cutting mode instead of doing these big projects. We should have tried to cut fat, stay lean, and save money.”
A veteran originator who let go in the recent Envoy purge pointed out that lenders should focus on education rather than throwing money at new technology.
“We have a generation of owners who have never experienced a recession and don’t know how to handle it,” the founders said. “Instead of relying on people like me or coming to us and asking what to do, they treat us like rocking chairs for the rest of our lives in nursing homes. ”
“Now is not the time to go buy new technology and try to build a reporting infrastructure,” added the loan originator. “It’s time to put our heads down a little and put money into education. We haven’t done enough in this industry. We haven’t trained enough people to know how to make this transition.”
