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AOL CEO Fires Somebody for Pulling Out a Camera in a Meeting About Layoffs
- mpyne 13y ago"You can't fire me! I'm being laid off!" (Though I'm sure there was more to it than that...)
- stevewillows 13y agoIt seems harsh, but in the same it's inappropriate to snap photos of a meeting with so much impact.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- rhizome 13y agoIsn't it reasonable to think that is a most appropriate thing to memorialize?
- jcc80 13y agoMaybe I'm old fashioned but I think the story is that someone thought it was OK to randomly start filming a company meeting - one where they were discussing future layoffs & partnerships apparently. edit: don't know if they were filming or taking still shots - either way.
- rhizome 13y agoI don't think it's at all apparent that the guy wasn't getting laid off anyway. I imagine the unemployment claims will be easy either way, but at the very least Armstrong did him a favor by kicking him out so he didn't have to listen to a half-hour of hooey about how sorry the company is for laying them off. We're talking about 1,000 people, there's going to be a lot of touchy-feely in that call.
- russelluresti 13y agoBecause two wrongs make a right? If you're a person with character, you handle the impropriety of others in a mature and professional way. Then again, if you're a person with character, you don't refer to your business meetings as a "locker room" or use terms like "loserville."
- jlgreco 13y ago> you handle the impropriety of others in a mature and professional way. Sure, and sometimes the mature and professional way is to fire somebody. (Now, the execution of that was less than ideal, but a firing in general was not entirely out of line.)
- arkades 13y agoExecution and Result are not independent things. Firing someone in a professional, mature, tactful way is a different thing than what the CEO did. They're not just different styles: the firing of a person is an act intended to have a particular business outcome, and those different routes will have different outcomes. To quote Steven Brust, "The relationship between ends and means isn't one of justification, it's one of proscription."
- jlgreco 13y agoI don't approve of the execution, but I cannot condemn the decision to fire.
- russelluresti 13y agoTrue. I don't take issue with the fact that he was fired, but, rather, with how it was done. No one should be fired without the opportunity to defend themselves or explain their actions. Being fired should also be a private matter, as studies have shown it's bad for morale which is bad for business. WHAT you do isn't the only thing that matters; HOW you do it is equally important.
- jcc80 13y agoNot sure who decides what's officially mature & professional but suspect it's a matter of opinion.
- Lagged2Death 13y agoIt was a conference call. The whole thing's being recorded anyway. And hey, if you're innocent, you've got nothing to hide, right?
- scrabble 13y agoIs there a problem here? You shouldn't be recording a video like that on your phone.
- eterm 13y agoIt's shitty behaviour by the filmer, certainly, but it is also terrible that firing someone in that manner is even legal. (In the UK it would not be, misconduct must be handled by verbal then written warnings. Only a narrow range of "gross misconduct" can result in immediate termination - and even then it wouldn't be handled with "you're fired.")
- Jormundir 13y agowhat a god-awful process an employer has to go through to fire a bad employee. That's a terribly bureaucratic law that only protects bad employees.
- pc86 13y agoIt is the UK.
- smtddr 13y agoWhat's awful is that you seem to think you shouldn't have to do those things to fire someone. Just a verbal, a written, then fire. What's so awful about that? Do you want to be able to fire someone on less than 3 warnings[1]? And yes, I understand there are some things - like maybe bringing a gun to work or punching a co-worker is auto-termination on the spot. But besides those outrageous things, you should be able to give a person a fair chance if it's a performance issue. 1.Depends on what is a "warning". At $LARGE_TELECOM, you get 2 warnings. First is verbal/email. The 2nd warning is in the form of a 6 month probation. That's a 6-month-long warning. If you haven't figured out how to succeed by then, I think you're now fair-game of getting fired.
- CamperBob2 13y ago(Shrug) As long as it's legal for me to quit with no prior notice, it should be legal for the company to fire me the same way. I really don't understand the European notion that a private-sector job is some sort of government-sanctioned entitlement.
- DanBC 13y agoPlease could someone with knowledge of UK employment law say what the difference here would be? I'm guessing the guy is still firable, but with a more formal process?
- Sauer_Kraut 13y agoWhy are open questions being down-voted? Is there something wrong with the questions?
- Sauer_Kraut 13y agoWas the person under NDA? Forbidden from filming beforehand? The most of you seem to be leaping to the defense of the CEO for something that could've been a personal action based on a perceived slight instead of a corporate policy. Out of the 1,000 or so there, wonder how many others started to record as soon as that went down. To also start recording would've been my immediate reaction.
- azim 13y agoI don't know anything about AOL specifically, but I've worked for a handful of BigCo's. All have required signing some sort of agreement at the start of employment which explicitly forbids leaking confidential information. So it's very likely that this person was under an NDA. What may be surprising to people who haven't worked at a BigCo is that due to legal implications, often times companies actually have guidelines about what should be discussed in recorded formats versus in person/phone.
- Sauer_Kraut 13y agoTrue that, from my POV I received requests on an event by event basis. Many of these people probably had to sign as part of employment.
- ghshephard 13y agoSomewhat off topic, but I found it incredibly ironic the time (at our company, not AOL) I was told not to take pictures of a slide deck being presented at an all hands (I could barely make it out from where I was, and I would use my iPhone to zoom in) - given that every single person (numbering in the hundreds) on the conference call was able to just screen shot each and every page of the presentation. People are weird about camera's "visibly" in their presence. Have you ever noticed how places like Starbucks will go absolutely batshit if you take out a zoom lens (like a 70-200 on a Canon SLR), but not blink an eye if you snap pictures with your iPhone. I wonder if anyone in audience was wearing GoogleGlass at the time...
- hnriot 13y ago"Have you ever noticed how places like Starbucks will go absolutely batshit if you take out a zoom lens (like a 70-200 on a Canon SLR)" no, not at all, maybe it's different in different parts of the country, but if you start shooting with a long telephoto inside a coffee shop its pretty rude to the people there. If you want to take photos in coffee shops use a more discreet camera and a 35mm lens, not a telephoto, it will look less creepy.
- hga 13y agoExtending this, a normal power lens by definition "sees" about what your eye can see, a telephoto much, much more.
- ghshephard 13y agoInside a though, zoomed out, in dark light - my telephoto lens is pretty much useless. People are just put off by the sheer physicality of the lens, not so much what it is doing. Likewise, (getting back on topic) - the poor guy fired at the AOL event wasn't fired for what he was doing, so much as the fact that he was visibly doing it.
- ghshephard 13y agoYou're repeating the point I was trying to make - the Long Telephoto lens freaks people out, but my iPhone (which actually does a better job of capturing details in low light than my EOS-10D+70-200) has always been ignored. The big lens is considered "rude" and looks "creepy" whereas the discreet camera (or iPhone) doesn't cause issues. It has nothing to do with what you are doing, just what you are doing it with.
- fleitz 13y agoIsn't a meeting with 1000 people pretty much public anyway? Media reports aren't making patch look like 'loserville', patch simply is 'loserville'.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y agoIt was a conference call. There is zero chance to keep it from being recorded. The next one will still be filmed/audio recorded, but with a little more discretion.
- kumarm 13y agoWouldn't multiple divisions of AOL go ahead and publish the Photo if someone took a similar picture of another company? Take TechCrunch for example. Wouldn't they publish a Photo of MSFT having layoff's if someone sent them a picture?
- jlgreco 13y agoWhy shouldn't they publish such a picture? You are trying to suggest some sort of hypocrisy here, but I'm not seeing it. Expecting loyalty from your employees and expecting loyalty from employees of other companies to their company are entirely separate issues. If somebody gets a photo of MSFT layoffs, that is MSFT's problem, not TechCrunch's.
- Sauer_Kraut 13y agoAOL is a public company. It's actions at large events are public unless explicitly noted otherwise. What is large? Stagehand here, 1000+ is large. I've been made to sign agreements for smaller venues. Edit: To elaborate, smaller venues can easily close doors. Not so much in auditoriums or arenas. Concession is selling goods, other building customers are milling about right behind your event's curtains. Employees of the building are milling about as well, waiting for your talking to be done with. Pipe and drape is not a privacy filter. You are often in a private space used by the public. Rather pissed edit: Now that I think about it, this guy is at the helm of a company that sells out people's privacy to anyone with cash and legal assurances. He is firing someone for using a camera while booming his voice over a PA[1] system much like those my friends and I have handled over the years. Screw him. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_address_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_address_system
- rm999 13y agoMost of the comments here are missing the obvious point: it's bad form for managers to publicly admonish their subordinates, let alone publicly firing them (always a sensitive topic). The CEO could have said "no filming please" and then fired him later. He could have even asked the executive to be removed from the meeting if he was concerned he was a leaker. IMO the CEO should have gotten the executive's side of the story before making a decision like that. It's got to hurt morale even more to see how expendable people at any level are.
- hnriot 13y agoThis is 100% correct. This is an HR nightmare in the making. The guy will likely get a much bigger settlement from this incident than he would from getting laid off. Regardless of whether he violated company policy, the CEO had no proof of filming, didn't make it clear that this was a proprietary event, didn't do a whole suite of things any halfway competent lawyer will throw at him. This just makes me dislike AOL even more.
- azakai 13y ago> didn't make it clear that this was a proprietary event how do you know?
- umsm 13y agoWell, the article mentions a "tipster" that described the event. This seems like important information that should have been included if it was said.
- j-b 13y agoHe may have already been on the CEO's "radar" so to speak and this was the tipping point. The CEO didn't say "you over there, put that away" rather he called him out by name and fired him on the spot.
- mathattack 13y agoI think he was trying to make an example out of him. Perhaps he already knew that Abel was leaking company information? (A fireable offense) This just seems like a very well calculated move. Anyone referring to a part of the organization as loserville isn't worried about morale.
- IanDrake 13y agoSadly, I probably would have had the same reaction. Between the stress of things not going well and the stupidity of others, I start to get a short fuse. I'm not sure I would have fired the guy, but I suspect I would have at least said, "Put that f'n camera away before I shove it up your ass". Actually, saying that would probably be worse.
- throwaway420 13y agoThat's really bad form by Armstrong. For all he knew, the guy was taking a snapshot to post on the company blog as part of his job or something. Or maybe he was just checking his phone. At the very least, if you fire somebody over that, you at least announce "no filming please" and fire him privately afterwards.
- mathattack 13y agoI doubt that there is any business reason for taking pictures of an execution. Armstrong would know if there was. He caught a leaker in the act. The question is how do you handle it? If you want to make an example, you do it on the spot. If you want to be professional, you tell him to put the camera down and do it later. If you refer to a part of the company as "loserville" then you're not too worried about appearing professional.
- johnbellone 13y ago> If you refer to a part of the company as "loserville" then you're not too worried about appearing professional. He was citing the press they were getting, or at least that's how I took the article. This is not the type of thing you announce on a public phone call (that people may get laid off) because all of your employees are now going to be job surfing irregardless of what division they are in.
- INTPenis 13y agoMy bet is that traffic to job postings increased dramatically from AOL office networks after that meeting. :)
- afterburner 13y agoMaybe it's the new normal among the power elite/police forces/NSA.
- ivanbrussik 13y agoMy cousin was in that meeting, apparently the back story is that he was responsible for a design that everyone is against. He says he was probably going to be fired anyway.