After laying off some of his employees, HyperSocial CEO Braden Wallake posted a photo of himself in tears (crying) on social media.
According to reports, Wallake, who founded Hyper Social in 2016, posted a lengthy message on LinkedIn this week explaining his anguish at firing the employees.
“I know it is not professional to tell my employees that I love them. But from the bottom of my heart, I hope they know how much I do,” he said.
According to the report, he admitted on Wednesday that only two of his employees were let go, with his girlfriend Emily Chucta, the chief operations officer, firing the other.
Meanwhile, social media users took to various platforms to criticise the CEO.
“Maybe the crying CEO who had like 20 employees did a good thing for those still there. It is probably the most publicity his company has ever received. I had never even heard of HyperSocial before. They are not even on Twitter,” a user wrote on the microblogging site Twitter.
“#BradenWallake, the ‘crying CEO’, used #LinkedIn to consolidate his position on sacking employees. Poor guy just wanted to present his human face. Wrong decision to use Linked. He should have used TikTok or Instagram instead. LinkedIn is the new Facebook!” taking a dig at the CEO, another user wrote.
Wallake told Motherboard that both of the laid-off employees were “over-the-top nice” about it and “assured” him and Chucta that they were “going to be okay”.
He stated that he made the LinkedIn post several hours later.
“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 CEOs are for laying off their employees and that they are laying off employees while they are getting their third house in the Bahamas or wherever,” Wallake said.
