The CEO of Hyper Social, which specializes in marketing services like optimizing
LinkedIn post, sounds like a lot of fun, posted a long sob story along with
a very cringe photo of himself crying after he laid off his own employees.
He says in the post quote, this will be the most vulnerable thing I'll ever share.
We just had to lay off a few of our employees.
I've seen a lot of layoffs over the last few weeks on LinkedIn.
Most of those are due to the economy or whatever other reason, ours?
My fault, all right?
So, he made some bad decisions, he's still employed,
but others got laid off as a result of his poor decisions.
But he continues to write days like today, I wish I was a business owner that was
only money driven and didn't care about who he heard along the way, but I'm not.
So I just want people to see that not every CEO out there is cold hearted and
doesn't care when he or she have to lay people off.
I'm sure there are hundreds and thousands of others like me,
the ones you don't see talked about, okay?
And then finally he ends his post by saying,
I know it isn't professional to tell my employees that I love them, but
from the bottom of my heart, I hope they know how much I do.
Every single one, every single story, every single thing
that makes them smile and every single thing that makes them cry.
Their families, their friends, their hobbies.
I've always hired people based on who they are as people.
People with great hearts and great souls, and
I can't think of a lower moment than this.
And then, here's the photo that he posted, Jesus Christ,
along with this post announcing that he's a good guy.
He made a bad decision business wise and he had no choice but
to fire others as a result of his bad decision.
Now, there was a lot of backlash to it.
We'll get to the backlash at the moment.
But first, why don't we share our thoughts, Cenk?
>> Okay.
So I have nuanced take on this cuz I too.
>> Cuz you're a CEO.
>> So, >> Do you love us, Cenk?
>> More than you'll ever know.
Seriously?
Look, if he had asked me, should I do this post, I would have tackled him and
told him don't do it.
It is not going to be well received, okay?
You think it's gonna be well received, but it ain't,
it's just gonna get you in trouble, okay?
But number two, I know a lot of executives and I think having read that message,
he is significantly better than a lot of them.
And why?
Because honestly, some of the executives I know it wouldn't even occur to them to
write that message, just like why would, no, I got to do a layoff?
I'm done with it.
And so, it wouldn't occur to them to cry,
it wouldn't occur to them to pretend to cry, right?
So, actually we are beating them up a little too much in what's happened.
Now, having said that, the selfie, no, you cannot put a crying selfie.
So you took the picture when you were crying so that you could post it online,
that is not the definition of authentic, right?
And so that was just a disastrous choice in every way.
>> Also, yeah.
I mean, look, the only thing that people are gonna take from that post
other than the fact that the image that you shared is cringe worthy,
is the fact that you're confessing to making poor decisions.
That have now essentially ended the livelihood of some of your employees.
Like that's all they're gonna get from the message as they should, okay?
And so, there was backlash later he said that the company had laid off two
employees Tuesday evening.
Both of the laid off employees he said were over the top nice about it and
assured him and his business partner that they were going to be okay.
But the post infuriated some people on LinkedIn who thought that he made
the layoffs about him, right?
It's, look, it comes across as, let me do some damage control and
yeah, it does come across as I'm making this about me.
And the only thing that you should do is maybe,
if you genuinely feel this terrible about what
happened to your employees, I don't know.
I mean you're taking responsibility for making poor decisions but
you're not suffering consequences for making poor decisions.
You get what I'm saying?
>> I do, but we don't even know that.
So but probably not.
>> Yeah, he's still employed, he's still the CEO right, okay?
But anyway, so nonetheless, a few hours later he was back on LinkedIn after he got
a lot of backlash with a follow up regarding his crying selfie.
He says, I was just sitting here at my desk just kind of crying I guess.
And decided to make the post because I have seen a lot on LinkedIn recently of
how awful business owners and CEO's are for laying off their employees while
they're getting their third house in the Bahamas or whatever.
There's a lot of other business owners out there who are letting people go and
it's not because they're padding their own profits, but it's how their business is.
And they may have done a lot and I just wanted to kind of put it out there,
it's just like a PR stunt for CEO's, were not all bad.
It feels like it, we're not all bad people and look it's not about,
this is important to understand, okay?
Yes, what he posted is cringe worthy, but I think that it's wrong for
the conversation to center on CEO is bad.
No, it's how this system works, right?
So the way the system works under a profit driven company is you have in many cases,
if it's a publicly traded company, you've got shareholders, okay?
You might have a board of investors and those are people who wanna do what?
Maximize profits and they see labor, they see the workers as what?
A cost, a giant cost to the company, even though these are individuals who
are generating the revenue and the profits for the company in the first place.
So, if you genuinely want to make a point about how you're a great CEO
who's looking out for your workers, are they shareholders, right?
Do they have a stake in the game?
Are you looking out for them in that way?
Do they have a seat at the table when it comes to decisions about the direction of
the company?
These are actual substantive things that you can do and say, but
instead you posted a picture of yourself crying so we can all feel empathy for you.
>> Yeah. No, I don't think he's,
I disagree with a good amount of what you're saying.
I don't think he's trying to get sympathy for CEO's in general.
I just said,
he threw a lot of CEO's onto the bus said a lot of them wouldn't do that, right?
And I agree with him.
He said that it was his fault for making a poor decision.
I don't know a lot of other executives that would say that publicly.
I mean, I'm not sure I know any that would say that.
So I think we're beating up on the wrong guy.
I think that he did it in a super awkward and cringe e way, right?
But he bothers to care enough even if you think he's pretending,
most of them don't bother pretending at all, right?
And to your point about profits, it depends, right?
So if you're Amazon and you've got gazillions of dollars in profits,
don't cry me a river about how it's gonna cost you an extra nickel for
salary increases, right?
But if his startup is not making money and there was
a part of the company that isn't making money, you just can't keep doing it.
There is, you can't say, you know what?
We're gonna lose money we don't have, right?
So it depends on the situation and
I have no idea if his company is massively profitable.
If that part of the company was profitable or not?
So I'm just giving you the full context and look,
somebody wrote in one of our members on YouTube Pitchforks Dragon and said, no lie
when I had to fire an employee, I cried, hell, it still bugs me now years later.
So there are good people who are managers that sometimes have to take that action
and it does bother them, but if you're gonna do that,
do not take a picture of yourself crying and put it online.
Just a terrible idea, that would be another poor decision.
>> And I wanna be fair.
So, he did also admit that he agrees that the photo of
himself crying is cringe worthy.
I've laughed at people on other social media platforms who have posted pictures
of themselves crying and then I did it.
But I have no doubt this post can be a useful tool to either keep those
employees or help them find better positions, whatever, okay?
>> Yeah. And then people are saying to him,
you have to take down the post.
But then if he took down the post, I guarantee you other people would say
ha he's trying to hide it, he took down the post.
So once you do it, there's no winning.
So the initial mistake is is kind of unrecoverable.
But if you're gonna be mad at him, then let me at least put it this way,
then you should be mad at all the other guys who never did the post, fired folks.
Didn't give a damn and went home.
>> I mean, we talk about those people all the time.
I'm mad at them.
>> Okay, fair.