A CEO Is Getting Destroyed For Posting A Picture Of Himself Crying On His LinkedIn After Laying Off Employees
Vice- The CEO of a company that specializes in optimizing LinkedIn posts is facing criticism after he posted a tearful selfie on the social media platform alongside an announcement that he had laid off some of his employees. But he told Motherboard he was only trying to show the difficulties business owners go through themselves when they have no other choice but to enact layoffs.
“This will be the most vulnerable thing I'll ever share,” HyperSocial CEO Braden Wallake wrote on LinkedIn Tuesday. “Days like today, I wish I was a business owner that was only money driven and didn't care about who he hurt along the way. But I'm not. So, I just want people to see, [sic] that not every CEO out there is cold-hearted and doesn't care when he/she have to lay people off. I'm sure there are hundreds and thousands of others like me.”
Wallake told Motherboard over the phone on Wednesday morning that the company had laid off two employees on Tuesday evening. He performed one of the layoffs and his “girlfriend slash business partner” laid off the other employee while he watched.
Can everybody leave this guy alone?
He’s obviously grieving. He wouldn’t have taken to his LinkedIn to let all his 1st and 2nd connections know just how bad it was if he wasn’t.
Sure his company sucks, but their business model is LinkedIn optimization after all. So he wouldn’t be practicing good business if he let a golden content opportunity such as this slip through the cracks.
Practice what you preach. That’s what real leaders do.
You might laugh and think it’s the people getting fired who should be doing the crying, not the people doing the firing. But that’s just selfish of you. It’s easy to receive bad news. It’s harder to deliver it. Much harder.
Wallake said it was true that he was sharing his own personal experience of the layoffs, and that he did not mean to imply his experience was tougher “than what they're going through,” but that he believed in “a level of transparency” on LinkedIn and wanted to share the difficulties of being a small business owner.
Ah yes, transparency. One of the favorite in a handful of many buzzwords CEO’s and other corner office big shots LOVE to throw around all the time. Along with- alignment, synergy, drill-down, bandwidth, and pivot, to name a few.
Real talk here for a minute, LinkedIn is a weird fucking place man.
What the Facebook is to rubbish opinions from fringe extreme left and right wing mouth breathers, LinkedIn is to top ten lists of career advice from self appointed business gurus.
Like this Braden guy.
I get you started a small business man. That’s fucking awesome. Seriously. It takes a lot of balls and is admirable. You also employ others and help them make a living. (When you’re not laying them off and using the opportunity to promote yourself). But none of that makes you a CEO.
Just because you’re an owner, or founder or whatever doesn’t mean you’re CEO. You kind of need other executives in the company to even have a need to refer to yourself as that. Don’t they teach that in business school 101?
The good news in the story is the employees laid off took it all in stride. Shocker, I know. They assured the crying Braden, and his “partner/girlfriend” (sweet), that they would be just fine while the two of them delivered the bad news.
Sounds like an awesome company culture.
Can you imagine if Jon Taffer spent a few days at the WeWork this guy and his company work out of? He’d shut this shit down so fast and really give Braden a reason to cry.
No news on if they can use this viral LinkedIn post as a reference for future applications.
P.s. - isn’t it ironic (don’t ya think?) that the people who always make sure to tell you they don’t care about “titles” are always the ones throwing them in peoples faces?
“So, what do you do?”
“I’m executive vide-president of the regional sales division of multi-national national chiefs of development and management. But I’m not big on titles.”
It’s also nuts how many actual Fortune type company CEO’s make it to that level they do while having absolute zero self awareness.