It was cringe. When I first saw it, I couldn't make it past the first few sentences. He turned layoffs into a marketing post for his company or at least it appeared so since his company does LinkedIn content consulting. Hence, people didn't think it was genuine. And many commentators were right that he made it about himself.
People making the layoffs need to stop saying things like "I take responsibility. I made the choices. It was my fault". Saying this is an insult to the rest of the company and to the people being laid off. It's the company's responsibility. Hiring and firing is not a one-man show. If it is, then you're micromanaging. It also insults the people getting laid off because you're making it about you, as if you get to hire and fire anyone at anytime. If you truly take all the responsibility and blame, then set your compensation to $0 or much lower and keep as many employees as possible.
Apologize to the employees leaving as a company. Explain why. Tell them what happens next. Apologize again.
> It's the company's responsibility. Hiring and firing is not a one-man show.
The buck stops with the CEO.
Every hire/fire decision may not be made by them. (It should be at a smaller shop.) But the decision to lay off must be.
> Apologize to the employees leaving as a company. Explain why. Tell them what happens next. Apologize again.
Apologising to people you’re letting go is condescending. Doing so publicly is asinine. Telling them what happens next is…awkward? There is no next, at least not in a mutual context. You laid them off.
Messaging should focus on the people remaining. The CEO should speak to them and honestly acknowledge the mistakes they made that lead to a lay-off. Explain how they are over-correcting in response to those mistakes to safeguard the jobs of those who remain. Then get back to work.
Caveat: every culture is different. What’s expected in one is cringe worthy in another. This is what makes anything said publicly likely to backfire for all but the most anodyne firms.
> set your compensation to $0 or much lower and keep as many employees as possible
If you’re independently wealthy, sure. If not, you’re liable to freak everyone out. It says quite plainly your shop is at the red line.
> Apologising to people you’re letting go is condescending. Doing so publicly is asinine. Telling them what happens next is…awkward? There is no next, at least not in a mutual context. You laid them off.
This reads to me like: “Sorry we hired you in the first place, and now have to let you go. But (what happens next) we’ll give you 3 months of severance, which will hopefully soften the blow a bit.”
The people getting laid off work for the company, not for the CEO. The CEO is also an employee of the company.
>Apologising to people you’re letting go is condescending.
"I want to apologize to the people leaving today. We failed our commitment to you as a company."
How is that condescending?
>Messaging should focus on the people remaining. The CEO should speak to them and honestly acknowledge the mistakes they made that lead to a lay-off. Explain how they are over-correcting in response to those mistakes to safeguard the jobs of those who remain. Then get back to work.
Part of softening the blow to the people remaining is treating the people leaving with respect and dignity. How does it look to the remaining employees if you treat the people leaving like shit?
This isn’t true! You didn’t commit to hiring them for life. If you wanted to, you could have contractually granted that. You didn’t. You hired them at will and are terminating them similarly. Lying to people is condescending.
The company has no place apologising. The CEO may, personally, though I think that should be limited to expressions of sympathy for what the laid off are going through.
Wrapping executive decisions in the veneer of the firm feels like deflection. Their peers didn’t make this call. You did, as CEO.
The commitment is to running the company well. If you overhire and fail to lower costs / positions over time to match the revenue, that's a problem. If you haven't significantly slowed down hiring in the previous year to make the natural attrition help with the issue, that's a problem. If you suddenly need to let lots of people go, that feels very much like a last resort thing and problems with planning.
I don't see how setting your compensation to $0 freaks everyone out. Steve Jobs set his pay to $0. A top level executive who has pay is communicating that they would like to argue that they're technically an employee and thus should be paid for services rendered regardless of company performance. Setting your pay to $0 says that you wish to yolk your fortunes to the company. That is an act of confidence.
More importantly, this is a public corporation and finances are disclosed to some extent that outside parties may consider the profile of the company.
Jobs was independently wealthy. That’s fine. (And tax efficient.)
If the CEO isn’t, paying themselves zero puts them in a financially precarious position. That isn’t great for decision making. If done so with the aim of reducing layoffs, it could suggest operations close to a red line. (One person shouldn’t have a material effect on the cash cushion unless the CEO was making off like a bandit, in which case they’re not the type to do this anyway.)
What the CEO could do is cut their pay to the median, to what they need to survive or to the lowest employee’s pay. This could be part of the overcorrection if the mistake made was high pay. But it’s unlikely to save anyone’s job, and shouldn’t be positioned that way.
> this is a public corporation
The LinkedIn consultancy the crying CEO leads isn’t public.
A lot, mostly in form of capital gain taxes incurred through stock sales from exercised options. But hey, he technically paid zero taxes on his wage of $1.00.
Not exercised options. Exercised options and resale, likely with a 2 year hold period. Otherwise, you are essentially paying income tax via short-term capital gains.
> Apologising to people you’re letting go is condescending.
For me personally that depends on what the apology is for. If I recently joined a company and was laid off I’d be pretty pissed for having put time and energy into getting up to speed. In that situation I’d appreciate an apology for wasting my time.
If it was more of a “I’m so sorry you will now die in the gutters because obviously you were just on our payroll as a charity”-apology, then yes, that would be condescending. :)
//Hiring and firing is not a one-man show. If it is, then you're micromanaging.
Have you heard of small businesses?
I agree with your point about it being insulting and making it about himself, but there's plenty of businesses out there where one person's decision making leads to lay offs, and that doesn't equate to micromanaging...
I dont think it's bad that he took personal responsibility. And normally people would applaud it. But it was too obvious.
Too be honest almost all linkedin posts are ingenuine. It fathoms me how many people use their or their family diseases, suicides and misfortune to gain a bit of attention on LinkedIn (and ofc other social media). But he was just too much. At the same time I do think a female would have maybe gotten away with it.
> Apologize to the employees leaving as a company. Explain why. Tell them what happens next. Apologize again.
100% bang on. I've been through a layoff, it sucked but the company were straight-forward, didn't mince their words and didn't fuck around. If I had to sit through some spiel about how the manager or CEO felt, I would've been upset.
It reminded me of the scene when Jonah Hill's character in Moneyball learned how to tell a player they were cut/traded from their baseball team, and then had to actually do it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTjhHrcyiQI)
Or it could backfire and cause businesses to blacklist his firm, existing customers to end contract, and leave a negative impression of him and the company on the remaining employees.
I don't have a problem with him or his company profiting from this. But at the same time, I believe the backlash is well deserved.
I've always thought the phrase "I take [full] responsibility" should be viewed as being completely and utterly meaningless, unless it's immediately followed by the words "so I am resigning with immediate effect".
This is how I felt when I read Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong's self-centered layoff letter opening:
"Today I am making the difficult decision to reduce the size of our team by about 18%, to ensure we stay healthy during this economic downturn. I want to walk you through why I am making this decision below, but first I want to start by taking accountability for how we got here. I am the CEO, and the buck stops with me."
To me, this actually highlights how we like to vilify individuals who are emblematic of a larger trend - to make ourselves feel better (while ignoring the disturbing or ridiculous 'norm').
I saw this post around when it came out; I thought it was ridiculous, but not even top-5 cringe on LI for the day. How many of the people slamming this guy are authors of 10s or 100s of histrionic self-laudatory posts that try to deliver some big lesson? It's all gross. Don't act like this guy is uniquely terrible!
It reminds me of how Americans love to point to the outrageous actions of other countries as a way to whitewash our own sordid past...but I digress!
Cynically, i think he accomplished what he probably set out to accomplish: get more publicity and attention. Sure some of it is negative, but he also probably got a lot of ppl Googling his company and some might become customers. He’s the CEO of a marketing company after all.
>Yep. And that's what they aim to help their customers achieve.
Any business can go viral at anytime easily. It doesn't mean it's good for business.
For example, if I owned an ice cream truck business, I could record myself throwing ice cream at my customers' face instead of handing it them. I'll go viral. But it doesn't mean it's good for business.
I don’t understand why you would ever think this is a good idea? There is no way to post a crying selfie on any form of social media without making it a form of attention seeking.
If you are going to do this as a form of damage control, at least have someone else post a ‘surreptitious shot’ of the CEO crying after layoffs.
It may be hard to believe until you see it, but a nontrivial number of people are perceptive enough to know that attention-seeking gets them what they want, but not calculating enough to disguise it.
Even if it was perfectly authentic it'd still be cringe.
If someone on your company dies, that you knew personally, and you're making a statement about it, ok, maybe.
Otherwise, get a grip.
For me it's a fail on all fronts, lacking in authenticity, shallow attempt to gain empathy, marketing trick and sadly melodramatic, over sentimental.
Go out there, explain what the problem is, assume some degree of responsibility without saying things like 'it's all my fault', do not be overly familiar (i.e. 'we are all family!'), but don't be a jerk and get on with it.
Sadly melodramatic. If anyone needs sacked, it's half the executives in the US. I witnessed one sobbing publicly on stage at GE about his diversity program--while parading his hand-picked brown people around on stage. It has gotten out of hand.
Oh I would not have been able to contain myself, I would have been laughing out loud.
That said, there's this weird wave of 'empathy realization' happening among the traditional white boomer business class with the diversity thing. It's as though they haven't thought about the issue before, and they're all having these personal 'moments' making these 'realizations' for the first time.
It's a bit like when you visit a country for the first time, you're overwhelmed by all of the details until the familiarity and 'reality' of it wipes away the romanicization.
I think a lot of those tears of empathy are actually 'real tears'. While might in a way be more authentic, it almost doubles the cringe factor because WTF kind of person is so 'moved' because they have a 'diversity program'. It's like those Hollywood movies where the white family adopts the black kid who 'does well' etc..
We need much, much more reasonable cynicism and satire in pop culture. SNL for example doesn't do it so much except for politics. I think too many studios are afraid of what big advertisers might think.
> a company specializing in optimizing LinkedIn posts, has been criticized after posting a crying selfie of himself on a LinkedIn post
And got press pickup from it. Everybody in the media (really, everybody on social media) should read Trust Me I’m Lying by Ryan Holiday. It talks about how companies plant negative media stories about themselves for publicity (from the pov of someone who has done it).
There is. If an e-commerce provider got publicity for a data leak revealing unencrypted credit card number, unhashed passwords, and email addresses, it is definitely bad publicity, because its a negative story about a core feature of the company.
So seeing how the CEO of a marketing company is so out of touch with reality, and created a PR disaster for his company, it is in no way good publicity.
I agree, but maybe a more modern angle is “there’s no bad engagement”. Algorithms don’t distinguish whether a post is going viral because people like it or because people are dunking on it, and a category of posters have definitely exploited that.
You'd be surprised how quickly people forget those bad things and go back to shop at said e-commerce provider, though... I've seen it happen so many times. Sometimes it takes days, other times months, but people eventually go back once the anger subsides and they remember that website. :/
The weirdest thing about this is not the post itself but the reactions of some people. I saw a lot of comments that argued not only that the post was authentic , brave and well made but that any criticism came from a place of bitterness, envy, hate, unhappiness, lack of empathy or all of the above. I get that different people will have different opinions about the post and I understand how some might view it as authentic, but I really don't understand the mechanism to completely dismiss all criticism because "it's bitter people".
A couple of days ago HN led me to an article about Napoleon Hill, New Thought and motivational speekers and trainers. The 2020s really have more in common with the 1920s then I feel comfartable with. All those motivational and pseudo spiritual grap, together with stock and crypto scams, is just pathetic. I rigorously unfollow people on LinkeIn whenever such content shows up.
I've dubbed this toxic positivity. You find this everywhere in business and tech where people have a vested interest in selling you some fool's gold. Anyone who is sceptic is jealous, envious, a Debbie Downer and so on. The more a business seems to rely on wishing itself into existence the more prevalent this seems to be.
In tech it seems to me like it has become more common with startup culture and with everything being focussed around customers and marketing. I can't imagine someone at Bell Labs would have tought of strong criticism as anything other than necessary.
LinkedIn used to be so valuable. I owe a lot to it in terms of jobs, generating business, knowledge and networking.
Since the pandemic though it’s really become a cesspit of virtue signalling and attention seeking. It’s just people and companies shouting over each other for likes.
I am convinced it’s not a worthwhile use of time to engage with it for more than say 10 minutes a week.
I still found their job boards very useful. The social media part is indeed very cringe, however sometimes I found hidden gems like detailed CV dissections,etc.
Consider it as place for venting I guess.
> I am convinced it’s not a worthwhile use of time to engage with it for more than say 10 minutes a week.
I used to agree with you, but I’ve recently seen some extremely mediocre engineers land some big career opportunities simply because they had cultivated an image on LinkedIn that made them a minor “influencer”.
I did a lot of laughing at the vapid, daily platitudes they would post and the dissonance between the capabilities I saw at work vs what they often claimed LinkedIn. Now I’m wondering if I am the dummy.
I've concluded that LinkedIn is like Reddit. Your experience with it depends very much on which parts you go to.
If you stick to the networking and direct messaging there are sometimes useful opportunities and some of the people there are worth the connection. Some of the better recruiters also post real roles they have available with useful details.
If you see your home page feed for longer than it takes to click to somewhere else then you're probably doing it wrong.
This is the first time seeing this. Man I've read so many layoff letters recently with the same tone as the video. The lack of emotional intelligence is eye opening.
It reminds me of Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong's self-centered opening paragraph in his layoff letter:
"Today I am making the difficult decision to reduce the size of our team by about 18%, to ensure we stay healthy during this economic downturn. I want to walk you through why I am making this decision below, but first I want to start by taking accountability for how we got here. I am the CEO, and the buck stops with me."
Most "tech" shows or hacker scenes are akin to the police procedurals, courtroom dramas, and medical shows that generally don't bear much relationship with what it's like day-to-day for cops, lawyers, or hospital workers. (Hence shows/films like The Wire and Reno 911, My Cousin Vinny and Suits, St. Elsewhere and Scrubs stand out.)
As a founder of a venture-backed startup with first-to-market tech that went through an accelerator in Palo Alto in the 2010s, Silicon Valley is basically entirely accurate. Actually tamer and more restrained than reality in many regards, at least anecdotally.
The satire wasn't that distant from reality and at times it could be uncomfortable to watch because of how real it was.
Then in 2022 a CEO posts a picture of himself crying for firing employees which might have been off taste and break the feel of realism in the show. I can kind of imagine Russ Hanneman posting a crying selfie then Gilfoyle and Dinesh making fun of it but that would still look like a caricature.
I just cannot imagine any situation where I would make a call as CEO that the correct and sane thing for me to do is take a photo of myself crying and post it on social media.
I didn't mean to make it a man vs woman debate. I don't know why it's been made a big deal. The guy could be genuinely feeling bad about laying off his staff. The "company" seems like a small tight-knit group of people working together like a family.
This reminded me of a recent post about using cute error messages to enhance the user experience. I feel like many of the arguments translate here as well (more expressive "error messages", texbook empathy vs real empathy...), so I'm linking the discussion post:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32337520
Everyone else seems to have covered how cringe this was, how inauthentic it was, how this guy just made it about himself, etc. All true. I would add that I don’t see how a person this weak could ever be a successful leader/CEO. Sorry man, it’s a tough gig, suck it up and stop (pretending?) being so weak that you can’t handle it. Is this what people want in a boss/CEO??? I find it pathetic. Guy has zero business running anything or anyone.
What a farce, this guy couldn't care less about the employees he fired, but he put on this ridiculous show to act like a victim. Let's see what tricks all these companies about to fire employees resort to in the era of tiktok and "inclusivity" in order not to loose their "good guy" badge... fake and pathetic all the way.
For Facebook and Google the narrative is already set: "suddenly too much dead weight", trying to shame them 'lazy' employees...
This really reminds me of that bit from Luis C.K where people annyoed by crying babies make it about themselves.
"I have two daughters and both of them at one time were babies and I held them and they cried on planes. It’s happened to me, I’ve had a baby on a plane. If you’re ever- This is how selfish people are.
When you’re on a plane and you hear a baby crying, you think that’s happening to you.
You’re like, “Ugh, this is gonna ruin my flight! It’s gonna ruin it!” Well, look at the parent, ’cause that person is holding a crying baby on a plane, which means they’ve been traveling with a baby all day, which means they have a baby, okay? So their life isn’t even good. They don’t like anything. Their whole life is, ugh, Jesus! If there’s any joy for them, it’s that this is now bothering other people. “Yeah, you listen to this shit now!” Waah!"
It's odd for this article not to mention the company's size and the number of people laid off. From what I can tell, this is a local marketing agency with 12 (now 10?) people. We're not talking about a CEO of a XXX-person company with $XX million in funding.
I wonder how people's reactions and intensities would differ if they knew we're talking about a small business basically the size of your local bakery.
(Don't get me wrong, I think this is pretty cringe, but I feel like many people are venting their feelings about big-tech CEOs onto this guy.)
While his company is small, I think at a larger tech startup’s scale there might be some things you could do to avoid being “forced” to lay people off:
- Avoid taking VC money. This will force you to be disciplined and responsible even when everyone is bullish, while also avoiding having to do layoffs/pay cuts/freezes/etc. during a bear market when profits dip. As long as the company remains viable, you can ride out the storm and not have to listen to investors and “advisors”.
- Somewhat related, don’t go on hiring sprees. If you poach someone from another company because your idea is one “rockstar” away from taking off (it always is, isn’t it?), that employee may no longer be able to rejoin the old company, and when laid off may resent having being convinced to join your company. Hire responsibly and sustainably, otherwise people’s lives will inevitably get ruined.
- Always set an example by not having extravagant salaries, bonuses, and perks for yourself and your leadership team.
- If you’re a business owner, dedicate a decent percentage of profits that flows back to employees. They are taking a risk by working for a startup, so they should get a share of the upside, as well.
- If money does become tight, “taking responsibility” means freezing/cutting your own salary first, then those of other executives, and so on. You won’t die if you have to forego the Benz for an Accord, but employees with a beat-up Civic will definitely feel the pain if you start with them.
- If worse comes to worst and you can’t avoid layoffs, doing all of the above will reduce resentment. Doing the layoffs in a humane, empathetic manner and offering counseling and job placement help is the right thing to do, and can leave a lasting impression on your former employees and the general public.
Just to point out: This is a 10-12 person marketing agency from Columbus, Ohio. They (most likely) did not take VC money, go on hiring sprees, or have extravagant salaries and perks. Would you draw lessons about running a tech startup from your neighborhood accounting firm?
> It's incredibly powerful of you to be vulnerable and put your feelings out there
People that say this are quick to demand you to cry when THEY expect it. Doesn't have to do anything with empathy. Perhaps it is good for marketing indeed.
To be honest, if I were laid of and see my former boss crying about it I would have mixed feelings too.
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[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 167 ms ] threadPeople making the layoffs need to stop saying things like "I take responsibility. I made the choices. It was my fault". Saying this is an insult to the rest of the company and to the people being laid off. It's the company's responsibility. Hiring and firing is not a one-man show. If it is, then you're micromanaging. It also insults the people getting laid off because you're making it about you, as if you get to hire and fire anyone at anytime. If you truly take all the responsibility and blame, then set your compensation to $0 or much lower and keep as many employees as possible.
Apologize to the employees leaving as a company. Explain why. Tell them what happens next. Apologize again.
Don't insult them by making it about yourself.
The buck stops with the CEO.
Every hire/fire decision may not be made by them. (It should be at a smaller shop.) But the decision to lay off must be.
> Apologize to the employees leaving as a company. Explain why. Tell them what happens next. Apologize again.
Apologising to people you’re letting go is condescending. Doing so publicly is asinine. Telling them what happens next is…awkward? There is no next, at least not in a mutual context. You laid them off.
Messaging should focus on the people remaining. The CEO should speak to them and honestly acknowledge the mistakes they made that lead to a lay-off. Explain how they are over-correcting in response to those mistakes to safeguard the jobs of those who remain. Then get back to work.
Caveat: every culture is different. What’s expected in one is cringe worthy in another. This is what makes anything said publicly likely to backfire for all but the most anodyne firms.
> set your compensation to $0 or much lower and keep as many employees as possible
If you’re independently wealthy, sure. If not, you’re liable to freak everyone out. It says quite plainly your shop is at the red line.
This reads to me like: “Sorry we hired you in the first place, and now have to let you go. But (what happens next) we’ll give you 3 months of severance, which will hopefully soften the blow a bit.”
I pictured a regaled tale of overcome personal hardship, the modern “stiff upper lip, kid.”
If “what’s next” is within a mutual context, it’s fine.
The people getting laid off work for the company, not for the CEO. The CEO is also an employee of the company.
>Apologising to people you’re letting go is condescending.
"I want to apologize to the people leaving today. We failed our commitment to you as a company."
How is that condescending?
>Messaging should focus on the people remaining. The CEO should speak to them and honestly acknowledge the mistakes they made that lead to a lay-off. Explain how they are over-correcting in response to those mistakes to safeguard the jobs of those who remain. Then get back to work.
Part of softening the blow to the people remaining is treating the people leaving with respect and dignity. How does it look to the remaining employees if you treat the people leaving like shit?
This isn’t true! You didn’t commit to hiring them for life. If you wanted to, you could have contractually granted that. You didn’t. You hired them at will and are terminating them similarly. Lying to people is condescending.
The company has no place apologising. The CEO may, personally, though I think that should be limited to expressions of sympathy for what the laid off are going through.
Wrapping executive decisions in the veneer of the firm feels like deflection. Their peers didn’t make this call. You did, as CEO.
More importantly, this is a public corporation and finances are disclosed to some extent that outside parties may consider the profile of the company.
Jobs was independently wealthy. That’s fine. (And tax efficient.)
If the CEO isn’t, paying themselves zero puts them in a financially precarious position. That isn’t great for decision making. If done so with the aim of reducing layoffs, it could suggest operations close to a red line. (One person shouldn’t have a material effect on the cash cushion unless the CEO was making off like a bandit, in which case they’re not the type to do this anyway.)
What the CEO could do is cut their pay to the median, to what they need to survive or to the lowest employee’s pay. This could be part of the overcorrection if the mistake made was high pay. But it’s unlikely to save anyone’s job, and shouldn’t be positioned that way.
> this is a public corporation
The LinkedIn consultancy the crying CEO leads isn’t public.
No, he earned $1 a year. Guess how much he paid in income taxes.
For me personally that depends on what the apology is for. If I recently joined a company and was laid off I’d be pretty pissed for having put time and energy into getting up to speed. In that situation I’d appreciate an apology for wasting my time.
If it was more of a “I’m so sorry you will now die in the gutters because obviously you were just on our payroll as a charity”-apology, then yes, that would be condescending. :)
Have you heard of small businesses?
I agree with your point about it being insulting and making it about himself, but there's plenty of businesses out there where one person's decision making leads to lay offs, and that doesn't equate to micromanaging...
I'm not referring to small businesses. The layoff letters we see and read about on the internet are all from companies.
I've yet to read a layoff letter from a small business during this layoff cycle.
The crying CEO leads a twenty-something person firm, according to LinkedIn.
Too be honest almost all linkedin posts are ingenuine. It fathoms me how many people use their or their family diseases, suicides and misfortune to gain a bit of attention on LinkedIn (and ofc other social media). But he was just too much. At the same time I do think a female would have maybe gotten away with it.
What the heck is this? "A female"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOjm9g767xs
https://ksltv.com/499014/man-in-custody-after-leaving-hot-sa...
100% bang on. I've been through a layoff, it sucked but the company were straight-forward, didn't mince their words and didn't fuck around. If I had to sit through some spiel about how the manager or CEO felt, I would've been upset.
It reminded me of the scene when Jonah Hill's character in Moneyball learned how to tell a player they were cut/traded from their baseball team, and then had to actually do it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTjhHrcyiQI)
Good. This is what a CEO should be doing. Maybe if it is successful the company will generate more revenue and prevent further layoffs.
I don't have a problem with him or his company profiting from this. But at the same time, I believe the backlash is well deserved.
I don’t know if it’s a trend but I’ve noticed it a lot more over the last several years
"Today I am making the difficult decision to reduce the size of our team by about 18%, to ensure we stay healthy during this economic downturn. I want to walk you through why I am making this decision below, but first I want to start by taking accountability for how we got here. I am the CEO, and the buck stops with me."
https://blog.coinbase.com/a-message-from-coinbase-ceo-and-co...
Since it's driven by people who want to get hired (or hire) I guess it cannot be more authentic than a job interview.
LinkedIn feels like a social network full of teenagers who knows their parents monitor everything they do.
I saw this post around when it came out; I thought it was ridiculous, but not even top-5 cringe on LI for the day. How many of the people slamming this guy are authors of 10s or 100s of histrionic self-laudatory posts that try to deliver some big lesson? It's all gross. Don't act like this guy is uniquely terrible!
It reminds me of how Americans love to point to the outrageous actions of other countries as a way to whitewash our own sordid past...but I digress!
For individuals who think "any publicity is good publicity", it might have worked.
Any business can go viral at anytime easily. It doesn't mean it's good for business.
For example, if I owned an ice cream truck business, I could record myself throwing ice cream at my customers' face instead of handing it them. I'll go viral. But it doesn't mean it's good for business.
If you are going to do this as a form of damage control, at least have someone else post a ‘surreptitious shot’ of the CEO crying after layoffs.
If someone on your company dies, that you knew personally, and you're making a statement about it, ok, maybe.
Otherwise, get a grip.
For me it's a fail on all fronts, lacking in authenticity, shallow attempt to gain empathy, marketing trick and sadly melodramatic, over sentimental.
Go out there, explain what the problem is, assume some degree of responsibility without saying things like 'it's all my fault', do not be overly familiar (i.e. 'we are all family!'), but don't be a jerk and get on with it.
That said, there's this weird wave of 'empathy realization' happening among the traditional white boomer business class with the diversity thing. It's as though they haven't thought about the issue before, and they're all having these personal 'moments' making these 'realizations' for the first time.
It's a bit like when you visit a country for the first time, you're overwhelmed by all of the details until the familiarity and 'reality' of it wipes away the romanicization.
I think a lot of those tears of empathy are actually 'real tears'. While might in a way be more authentic, it almost doubles the cringe factor because WTF kind of person is so 'moved' because they have a 'diversity program'. It's like those Hollywood movies where the white family adopts the black kid who 'does well' etc..
We need much, much more reasonable cynicism and satire in pop culture. SNL for example doesn't do it so much except for politics. I think too many studios are afraid of what big advertisers might think.
And got press pickup from it. Everybody in the media (really, everybody on social media) should read Trust Me I’m Lying by Ryan Holiday. It talks about how companies plant negative media stories about themselves for publicity (from the pov of someone who has done it).
So seeing how the CEO of a marketing company is so out of touch with reality, and created a PR disaster for his company, it is in no way good publicity.
In tech it seems to me like it has become more common with startup culture and with everything being focussed around customers and marketing. I can't imagine someone at Bell Labs would have tought of strong criticism as anything other than necessary.
Since the pandemic though it’s really become a cesspit of virtue signalling and attention seeking. It’s just people and companies shouting over each other for likes.
I am convinced it’s not a worthwhile use of time to engage with it for more than say 10 minutes a week.
I closed my account and don’t miss it one iota.
I used to agree with you, but I’ve recently seen some extremely mediocre engineers land some big career opportunities simply because they had cultivated an image on LinkedIn that made them a minor “influencer”.
I did a lot of laughing at the vapid, daily platitudes they would post and the dissonance between the capabilities I saw at work vs what they often claimed LinkedIn. Now I’m wondering if I am the dummy.
Nowadays though I dont think I could force myself to post the vague platitudes and false positivity.
If people need or want to do it, my advice is to minimise time investment, ignore the feed and at least post with some authenticity.
If you stick to the networking and direct messaging there are sometimes useful opportunities and some of the people there are worth the connection. Some of the better recruiters also post real roles they have available with useful details.
If you see your home page feed for longer than it takes to click to somewhere else then you're probably doing it wrong.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u48vYSLvKNQ
It reminds me of Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong's self-centered opening paragraph in his layoff letter:
"Today I am making the difficult decision to reduce the size of our team by about 18%, to ensure we stay healthy during this economic downturn. I want to walk you through why I am making this decision below, but first I want to start by taking accountability for how we got here. I am the CEO, and the buck stops with me."
As a founder of a venture-backed startup with first-to-market tech that went through an accelerator in Palo Alto in the 2010s, Silicon Valley is basically entirely accurate. Actually tamer and more restrained than reality in many regards, at least anecdotally.
Then in 2022 a CEO posts a picture of himself crying for firing employees which might have been off taste and break the feel of realism in the show. I can kind of imagine Russ Hanneman posting a crying selfie then Gilfoyle and Dinesh making fun of it but that would still look like a caricature.
"Some of you will be loosing your jobs... in other news though I'm getting a promotion, so, every cloud..."
But I just assumed it was the CEO version of that same social mechanism.
old.reddit.com/r/notliketheothergirls/
For Facebook and Google the narrative is already set: "suddenly too much dead weight", trying to shame them 'lazy' employees...
"I have two daughters and both of them at one time were babies and I held them and they cried on planes. It’s happened to me, I’ve had a baby on a plane. If you’re ever- This is how selfish people are. When you’re on a plane and you hear a baby crying, you think that’s happening to you.
You’re like, “Ugh, this is gonna ruin my flight! It’s gonna ruin it!” Well, look at the parent, ’cause that person is holding a crying baby on a plane, which means they’ve been traveling with a baby all day, which means they have a baby, okay? So their life isn’t even good. They don’t like anything. Their whole life is, ugh, Jesus! If there’s any joy for them, it’s that this is now bothering other people. “Yeah, you listen to this shit now!” Waah!"
I wonder how people's reactions and intensities would differ if they knew we're talking about a small business basically the size of your local bakery.
(Don't get me wrong, I think this is pretty cringe, but I feel like many people are venting their feelings about big-tech CEOs onto this guy.)
While his company is small, I think at a larger tech startup’s scale there might be some things you could do to avoid being “forced” to lay people off:
- Avoid taking VC money. This will force you to be disciplined and responsible even when everyone is bullish, while also avoiding having to do layoffs/pay cuts/freezes/etc. during a bear market when profits dip. As long as the company remains viable, you can ride out the storm and not have to listen to investors and “advisors”.
- Somewhat related, don’t go on hiring sprees. If you poach someone from another company because your idea is one “rockstar” away from taking off (it always is, isn’t it?), that employee may no longer be able to rejoin the old company, and when laid off may resent having being convinced to join your company. Hire responsibly and sustainably, otherwise people’s lives will inevitably get ruined.
- Always set an example by not having extravagant salaries, bonuses, and perks for yourself and your leadership team.
- If you’re a business owner, dedicate a decent percentage of profits that flows back to employees. They are taking a risk by working for a startup, so they should get a share of the upside, as well.
- If money does become tight, “taking responsibility” means freezing/cutting your own salary first, then those of other executives, and so on. You won’t die if you have to forego the Benz for an Accord, but employees with a beat-up Civic will definitely feel the pain if you start with them.
- If worse comes to worst and you can’t avoid layoffs, doing all of the above will reduce resentment. Doing the layoffs in a humane, empathetic manner and offering counseling and job placement help is the right thing to do, and can leave a lasting impression on your former employees and the general public.
People that say this are quick to demand you to cry when THEY expect it. Doesn't have to do anything with empathy. Perhaps it is good for marketing indeed.
To be honest, if I were laid of and see my former boss crying about it I would have mixed feelings too.