The headline here is obviously intended the CEO look like an uber asshole. What’s interesting is how many comments defend the CEO and say low the Creative Director must have lost his mind to be taking a phone pic of the CEO during such super-tense critical circumstances where the CEO is on the phone to effectively the while company discussing the downsizing and re-organization.
Includes audio.
I was all ready to consider him as the bad guy, but in the big picture the Creative Director’s behavior in snapping the pic was super inappropriate for the circumstance. If your judgment is that incredibly bad IMO you probably deserve to be fired.
From the comments it sounded like the picture was for… a company blog update? I don’t buy that. I’m shocked that anyone thinks that taking the picture is defensible, even for a flimsy excuse as “It’s for the company blog.”
It appears that Tim Armstrong fired a valuable employee in a moment of personal annoyance. And if Abel Lenz wasn’t a valuable employee, why had he risen so high in AOL? Either way, this is a sign that AOL is suffering from terrible management.
My first instinct would be “of course the CEO is a douchebag” but if somebody is taking pictures while the CEO discusses hundreds of layoffs and millions of dollars in cuts, then somebody pretty much deserves whatever happens next.
I remember when they mailed 3.5 inch floppies…I worked in the IT department of a bank at that time, and for some reason we got a lot of them. We would happily format those discs and add them to our supply cabinet. Ah, good times.
Without the CEO being aware it was going to happen. This sort of thing works - the Creative Director says "we will stage this and take a few pictures for the blog - sort of a FDR fireside chat thing - you’ll have gravitas and look serious. One of those ‘necessary sacrifices’ sort of thing.’
This works especially well if people are getting fairly decent packages
But to be distracted by someone pulling out his iPhone when you are trying to make a point - no.
Eh, as a general rule, you should fire people in private. And even aside from that, doing it in a meeting where your announcing layoffs is a terrible idea. It makes it seem to employees like the boss is just going to spend the next week wandering around randomly firing people that happen to piss him off that day.
Not to mention the fact having the recording out there is pretty crappy PR, spawning a thousand “sinking ship” comments on a thousand websites.
Taking the picture was a bit gauche, but of the two, the CEO seems to be suffering from much worse judgement then the guy he fired.