They also own Moviefone, TechCrunch, Engadget and Mapquest. Also, they own Patch.com, which provides news pages for individual towns. Even fairly small ones in Connecticut.
AOL CEO fires exec for taking his photo during important phone call to all staffers- Right or wrong?
The fired employee often took pictures during conference calls for use on AOL’s internal website, so it would seem he was doing what he was expected to do, according to this story: LEAKED AUDIO: Listen to AOL CEO Tim Armstrong Fire a Patch Employee in Front of 1,000 Coworkers
They’ve been ordered by the United Nations to ship CD’s to the other side of the planet for 20 years to correct the wobble in the planet’s rotation they created.
As far as you know. 
I never paid for floppies when I was a kid. For a while, AOL even had a thing you could fill out to make them send disks to your friends. I just had them send disks to me. Over and over again. I think the limit was like 10 disks a week.
All those are second fiddles to other sites. Further evidence of poor management.
They’re also all profitable (except for MaqQuest.) Terrible managers, them, hanging onto second-fiddle properties that actually make money.
Wait a minute – the photographer was literally a guy named “Abel Lenz”?
This isn’t AOL, it’s a Richard Scarry book.
Maybe everyone is so embarrassed by the fact that they work at AOL that they all do so using pseudonyms. So maybe things aren’t so bad for Mr. “Lenz”, as his carefully concealed genuine identity remains unsullied.
Its a photo, he didn’t record the conversation. Plus, unless there’s a rule against it, I don’t see how the firing is appropriate. Its not like he was going to use the photo for blackmail or something
Of course Abel did take the picture right after the CEO said he wasn’t concerned about the leaking of any information, so I could see how he could have assumed it would be OK to get the shot. What’s more, the CEO hadn’t really gotten around to any specifics about which departments or locations were going to be axed–up to that point he’d only really said that he assumed full responsibility for the success or failure of the enterprise, and that people who work at Patch really ought to be using Patch themselves, which doesn’t sound too much to ask. He certainly hadn’t gone as far as naming any other individuals who would be fired or demoted.
Assuming Abel wasn’t using a flash, I’d have thought it was OK. I wouldn’t do it myself, but I wouldn’t expect someone to get fired for it.
I sure don’t know about the rarified-air breathers, but I wonder if my company were to fire someone on the spot who was doing something that he’d been doing with full approval previously. What’s the difference between an accepted job practice and an assigned one, legally? Probably not much. As for the inappropriate timing, it’s too much like the “don’t make Daddy angry when his team is losing” rule of good behavior. Somebody’s going to get sued.
Reminds me of Dagobert on Neotrantor.
Actually, it strikes me more as something Dogbert would do.
Yeah, I think the fired employee is going to get a pretty nice settlement, not only was he fired for doing one of the things he’s supposed to be doing, but he got fired in a humilitating way in front of his peers and then the world. I would lawyer up by the end of that conference call.
Abel Lenz was in charge of an AOL project called Patch 2.0 - Tim Armstrong didn’t like the result, and I can see why. So maybe he just needed an excuse.
Then he should have fired Lenz for Patch 2.0. Firing Lenz for doing what was normally a part of his job is the sign of a petty jerk. Firing someone for a project that goes very wrong is business as usual.
Also, firing him on a conference call with his peers is super douchey. The only way that would have been okay would have been if instead of "put down that camera, you’re fired " he had said, “put down that gun, your’e fired.”
There are two issues:
- Was Armstrong wrong to fire Lenz?
- Was Armstrong wrong to fire someone during the conference call?
Whether or not Lenz should have been fired, it was monumentally stupid and rash to do it during the conference call. It could have been discreetly handled later. Instead, he had to do it that second with 1000 people listening in. That kind of action does not instill the employees and investors with trust that the CEO can lead the company through troubled times. Instead, it paints him as a guy who rushes to action without thinking.
Is there a backup to Lenz? What sort of transition plan is there? Is he working on any urgent projects? I fail to see how taking a picture is a bad enough offense that Lenz needs to be kicked out of the company that second. It would be much more responsible to fire him later after making sure the transition will go smoothly.
[Geeky question]Dagobert IX or Dagobert X[/Geeky question]