I think anyone that survived the dotcom boom and crash has stories like this. Pud's F-ed Company was full of them.<p>We had the meeting where only half the company was invited and the half that wasn't invited was let go. We had the VP that found out he was let go when his card key stopped working in the middle of the day. We had the employee lock himself in the office and refuse to leave. We had the contractor that was "let go" that laughed and just kept showing up for work. My boss that "let him go" was fired 3 weeks later. We had the guys that were let go but slipped through the cracks and nobody told them until HR sent them a packet. I saw the CEO fly into town just to fire my boss but she panicked and left before he got to the office and refused to answer her phones. Most of us kept all of our stuff packed in cardboard boxes, ready to walk out the door or change offices whenever people left. One friend kept a wall of ex-employee nameplates in his cube. The day I quit, I handed him my nameplate on my way to meet with my boss to resign, so everyone else knew by the time I walked out of his office.<p>The winners were two I didn't get to see. In some customer crisis, we hired a new guy with some special expertise on a platform and put him on a plane somewhere with a VP / Director of Development. They start talking on the plane and by the end of the flight, the VP realized he was so full of crap that he fired him, told him to not even leave the airport and go rebook his return flight back home.<p>The same VP hired another new guy but on his first day he went to lunch with other developers and somewhat joked about how he realized that it isn't what you do but what they think you do that gets you ahead in this business. He was fired 30 minutes after lunch.
"We spent 100s of millions of dollars the board is committed, I am committed"<p>Choo-choo, everyone jump on the fail train. No really, this is what is wrong with big companies. They pick a failed direction and they can't stop. It is a giant rusty ship heading to its grave, the captain waving his big dick around "Doesn't matter what everyone says, this will be successful!"<p>I think most people there know it is failure that is why the explicit warning not to joke about it (there is probably enough of that to warrant that comment). Critics who don't believe in the failed cause are pushed out as non-team players. It leaves the desperate and the brainwashed. ... Yes, patch will be the next Facebook if you just work an extra night no matter if your daughter fell of the stairs and broke her leg.
I used to work for a high level executive that would throw around the words "you're fired" as a joke sometimes during all hands meetings. The fact is, using those words on someone in public (joke or not) is embarrsing and cringeworthy for all.<p>I've also had the "get on board or leave" speech thrown at me. More times then not, those words are a sign to run away as fast as possible.<p>This guy is a joke and his product is a joke.
A quote from the Business Insider article linked to in this thread:<p><pre><code> This source tells us that Lenz always took photos at Patch
all-hands meetings. He would later post them to Patch's
internal news site.
</code></pre>
There isn't enough background to understand why this happened. AOL may have a clause in their employee contracts that makes picture taking at certain meetings a "firing offense". The source says that Lenz "always took photos", but it's possible that Lenz might have been warned not to take any more photos at meetings. Lenz's silence about the matter is also ambiguous.<p>Nevertheless it is odd that an employee was fired for taking pictures of a meeting when the audio was leaked to the media.
Sounds bad. But almost certainly was not simply a spur of the moment decision, but rather that Lenz was on the list of people to be fired later in the day and had done things that Armstrong knew about (like leaking Patch information). Still bad to do it like that on a call where people are getting fired for real, but this gives some context.<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/aol-ceo-tim-armstrong-appeared-to-fire-this-man-in-front-of-1000-coworkers-2013-8" rel="nofollow">http://www.businessinsider.com/aol-ceo-tim-armstrong-appeare...</a><p><pre><code> A few minutes later, Armstrong complained about leaks to
the media. He said the leaks were making Patch seem like
"loser-ville" in the press. He said, "That's why Abel was
fired." "We can't have people that are in the locker room
giving the game plan away."</code></pre>
I would leave that company immediately if I worked there. This isn't a TV show. You don't fire people that coldly and abruptly regardless of the circumstances, especially not in public.
Off topic, but if Armstrong is serious about wanting people to leave the company if they're not committed, why not offer buyouts? That would remove one reason why people may decide to stay even if they don't believe in the company.<p>I know Zappo's offers new trainees a cash bonus if they decide to /not/ join the company after completing the training program. That way Zappo's can be more sure that their new hires are not /just/ financially motivated but also are excited about the company itself.<p>Buyouts are commonly used during downsizing, but any thoughts as to why this isn't more widespread - i.e., used during 'normal' times as well? You could imagine companies offering a cash bonus (or health insurance for a certain # of months, or something) to anyone that quit but didn't have another job lined up.<p>That, presumably, would have the effect of empowering people to leave their job. So people who were not aligned with the company itself or otherwise dissatisfied could leave, improving the culture of the company as well.<p>On a more meta level, pleas like Armstrong's, to "leave if you're not committed" reminds me of the quote from North Dallas Forty [0] (A movie about professional sports): "Every time I say it's business, you say it's a game. Every time I say it's a game, you say it's a business." Leaders of businesses can try to pull the same thing; they alternate between appealing to your sense of mission, and then make decisions under a different logic.<p>[0] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Dallas_Forty" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Dallas_Forty</a>
What an awkward time to take photos.<p>My company was interviewing a candidate once. He was spectacular during the interview, but then he stared taking pictures of our office and our employees, which made us all uncomfortable, and that's the only reason we did not offer him a job.<p>What may seem like normal behavior to one person may be offensive or intrusive to someone else.
I wonder if this was a publicity stunt to get people to go check out patch.com?<p>I'm only half-kidding.. I had never heard of it before, and I went to look at it after reading the article. Anyone else?<p>I'm not an American so I'm not in the target market, but a lot of these kinds of sites live and die by early adopters and tech influencers who start using them and advocate to their networks.
It does not matter what the circumstances, to fire someone in any sort of public setting is a since of profound ineptitude and immaturity. I was surprised that AoL even still exists, I do not know who this person is, but if he is in charge of AOL then it is only a matter of time before it is no longer in existence.
If Aol is still making most of its revenue by charging monthly fees to people who have forgotten it exists, I find that more reprehensible than anything on this call... and I'd be happy to see them go out of business.
I have on occasion used Patch (I live about 30 miles outside a metro area on the border of suburb vs farming land). I don't read the site, but instead read a twitter feed of the local corespondent. She happens to be fairly good at filtering good community news. I'll be keeping her in my twitter stream (assuming she isn't let go) but I will think about that recording every time I start to click a link to patch.com from her feed or anywhere. I will probably just query the main terms from her tweets in a Google news search from here on out if I want to know more. Somethings should be handled privately even when the opportunity may be presented publicly. There is no value to any point that was presented by firing someone in that manner.
To me this is just arrogance and probably even irresponsible. If I employed someone in my company and if I could fire the person at a moments notice, then I believe the employee and his skills were not leveraged to the benefit of the company in the first place. I agree company's shouldn't create exclusive dependencies with employees but if nothing is affected by letting an employee go suddenly or if the employer didn't have to think twice before doing so, then the employee probably wasn't needed in the first place. Both the company and the employee should be invested in each other in terms of skill, effort, time and compensation. Not to mention that you just burned a bridge that you didn't have to.
I doubt that this call and the exchange that we're shown is all that there's to it. Having said that, if you're on a conference call and you say such a thing without context, you can expect it to get interpreted in ways it might not have been meant.
I'm curious.<p>For those of you who have lead and managed teams of 100 or more, would you ever resort to firing someone spontaneously in front of their peers?
What a dirtbag scum. What can you learn from a leader that loose it because someone was taking his photos. This CEO made a fool of himself and I can bet some people wont work with someone like that in the future.<p>This was not only embarrasing but unprofessional too. What was the reason he got fired? Real reason?
Wait what?! Am I being thick or something? He mentions several times that he doesn't care about information leaking, then fires someone for taking out a camera.
Relevant older post from a different source:
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6195996" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6195996</a>
really? a site that is centered around local news that doesn't have miami or fort lauderdale as an available area for florida?<p>you'd figure the first thing they would do is have all the major markets covered