The ‘crying CEO’ sacked two people then posted a weeping selfie on LinkedIn. No wonder the backlash was swift
Braden Wallake had a difficult choice to make. The 32-year-oldCEO of HyperSocial, a marketing agency, had just sacked two of his 17 employees and needed to choose between quietly helping the newly unemployed pair move on with their lives and turning their misfortune into self-aggrandising online content.
You guessed it: Wallake chose option two. You see, no one really thinks about CEOs’ feelings. Wallake wanted everyone to know that chief executives are humans, too. They get hurt and feel pain just like mere mortals do. So, he snapped a selfie of himself crying and posted it on LinkedIn, along with an inspirational message about what a great guy he was.
“This will be the most vulnerable thing I’ll ever share,” he wrote. “Days like today, I wish I was a business owner that was only money driven and didn’t care about who he hurt 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/she have to lay people off.” Then he clicked “post” and sat back to watch the likes roll in.
Quite a few likes did come in – but not at the same pace as the backlash. Rather than being floored by how “vulnerable” Wallake had been, the consensus seemed to be that the guy was a tone-deaf narcissist. The post went viral and the “crying CEO” quickly became a meme.
Internet detectives started mining Wallake’s online history and discovered that he had donated to the World Wildlife Fund in July to financially support a sea otter. This would be a sweet thing to do in normal circumstances, but doesn’t sit so well if you are the internet’s baddy du jour.
“Maybe it’s not a great idea to adopt a sea lion [sic] at the beginning of a recession?” one person snarked in Wallake’s comments.
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