He admitted the layoffs were 'my fault'
A business owner who shared a selfie of himself crying after announcing company layoffs has responded to criticism.
On Tuesday, Braden Wallake, CEO of business-to-business marketing agency HyperSocial, took to LinkedIn to post "the most vulnerable thing" he will "ever share."
He wrote: "I’ve gone back and forth whether to post this or not. We just had to layoff 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.
“I made a decision in February and stuck with that decision for far too long. Now, I know my team will say that ‘we made that decision together,’ but I lead us into it.
“And because of those failings, I had to do today, the toughest thing I’ve ever had to do.”
He went on to reveal that he had to fire a number of employees who he loved from the "bottom of my heart."
Wallake said he couldn't think of a "lower moment than this."
The post racked up more than 33,000 reacts and over 7,000 comments, but not all were positive, with several questioning why the CEO chose to write the post instead of trying to stop the layoffs.
On Wednesday, Wallake responded to the criticism in a post in which he labelled himself the "crying CEO."
He wrote that he was determined to turn the situation into something positive and that it was not his intent to "make it about me or victimize myself."
Wallake continued: "I am sorry it came across that way. It was not my place to out the employees’ names publicly.
“What I want to do now, is try to make better of this situation and start a thread for people looking for work.”
He went on to urge fellow LinkedIn users looking for work to post their CVs in the comments, in the hope that the comments section on the post would provide an "opportunity to hire amazing people”.
But some continued to be critical of the CEO, pointing out that he had not removed the previous post with the selfie of him crying.
One person commented: “You’re sorry it came across that way? If you were really sorry you would have deleted that post and not even made this post and just started fresh by talking about something else."
They added that the "crying post is still up, and it is apparent you are loving all the attention this is bringing to you."
Another said: “Quite literally what you did. You made bad decisions and then stole the moment to make yourself the victim for likes. You are now riding the 15 minutes of fame to loosely promote yourself and/or your brand. Delete it all and don’t do this.”
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