AOL CEO Fires Somebody for Pulling Out a Camera in a Meeting About Layoffs

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/aols-ceo-just-fired-somebody-for-pulling-out-a-camera-in-a-meeting-about-layoffs/278541/

by hglaser • 13 years ago

55 69 13 years ago

theatlantic.com

mpyne• 13 years ago

"You can't fire me! I'm being laid off!" (Though I'm sure there was more to it than that...)

stevewillows• 13 years ago

It seems harsh, but in the same it's inappropriate to snap photos of a meeting with so much impact.

rhizome3• 13 years ago

Isn't it reasonable to think that is a most appropriate thing to memorialize?

jcc803• 13 years ago

Maybe 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.

rhizome3• 13 years ago

I 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.

russelluresti3• 13 years ago

Because 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."

jlgreco5• 13 years 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.)

jcc803• 13 years ago

Not sure who decides what's officially mature & professional but suspect it's a matter of opinion.

Lagged2Death• 13 years ago

It 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• 13 years ago

Is there a problem here? You shouldn't be recording a video like that on your phone.

eterm• 13 years ago

It'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.")

Jormundir2• 13 years ago

what 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.

nateberkopec• 13 years ago

We're an employment-at-will country here in the US, you can be fired for (almost) any reason or no reason at all at any time.

Sauer_Kraut5• 13 years ago

A video like what?

What about the video contents mandates it shouldn't be recorded?

fleitz2• 13 years ago

Why not? Is a meeting with 1000 people an off the record sort of thing? Does the CEO not stand behind his words?

Also what kind of non-game plan involves telling people they'll be fired in a week, maybe. You can't reveal game plans when there are none.

DanBC• 13 years ago

Please 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_Kraut5• 13 years ago

Why are open questions being down-voted? Is there something wrong with the questions?

Sauer_Kraut5• 13 years ago

Was 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• 13 years ago

I 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_Kraut5• 13 years ago

True 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.

ghshephard3• 13 years ago

Somewhat 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...

hnriot2• 13 years 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• 13 years ago

Extending this, a normal power lens by definition "sees" about what your eye can see, a telephoto much, much more.

ghshephard3• 13 years ago

You'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.

fleitz2• 13 years ago

Isn't a meeting with 1000 people pretty much public anyway? Media reports aren't making patch look like 'loserville', patch simply is 'loserville'.

fnordfnordfnord• 13 years ago

It 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• 13 years ago

Wouldn'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?

jlgreco5• 13 years ago

Why 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_Kraut5• 13 years ago

AOL 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

rm999• 13 years ago

Most 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.

hnriot2• 13 years ago

This 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• 13 years ago

didn't make it clear that this was a proprietary event

how do you know?

j-b• 13 years ago

He 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.

mathattack4• 13 years ago

I 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.

devb• 13 years ago

Do you have any evidence of that at all?

potatolicious• 13 years ago

If indeed the individual was leaking company information, it would make this an even more poorly calculated move.

Firstly, you may know this individual was leaking company information, but the rest of your employees do not. So what is, to you, a righteous punishment would seem to everyone else as arbitrary and vindictive. A display of force may be a calculated move, a display of force that appears random and arbitrary, is just stupidity.

So you just rightfully fired someone while dropping morale through the floor because it looks like you're out for random blood.

rhizome3• 13 years ago

So you're saying ARmstrong elected to give this guy severance and unemployment benefits instead of firing him for cause and having to deal with none of that?

doubledub• 13 years ago

So true. Someone needs to mail him a 3.5 floppy disks with management tips plastered all over it. No sense in buttering up "layoffs" as "impacts" if he can't keep his cool. Rough day I guess.

IanDrake• 13 years ago

Sadly, 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• 13 years ago

That'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.

mathattack4• 13 years ago

I 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• 13 years 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• 13 years ago

My bet is that traffic to job postings increased dramatically from AOL office networks after that meeting. :)

afterburner• 13 years ago

Maybe it's the new normal among the power elite/police forces/NSA.

ivanbrussik• 13 years ago

My 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.

AOL CEO Fires Somebody for Pulling Out a Camera in a Meeting About Layoffs

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