Poor, Poor Boss: CEO Posts Crying Selfie Following Layoffs to Show He Is Not ‘Cold-Hearted’

The CEO of social media optimization service HyperSocial faced major backlash this week after posting a crying selfie following the layoff of a number of employees.

Vice News reports that the CEO of a company specializing in optimizing LinkedIn posts is facing criticism after he posted a selfie in which he was crying following the layoffs of a number of employees. Braden Wallake posted the selfie to his LinkedIn profile earlier this week, writing:

This will be the most vulnerable thing I’ll ever share. 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, [sic] that not every CEO out there is cold-hearted and doesn’t care when he/she have to lay people off. I’m sure there are hundreds and thousands of others like me.

Wallake told Motherboard that he was only trying to show business owners’ difficulties when they are forced to enact layoffs. Wallake’s post went viral, receiving more than 20,000 likes in less than a day, but it led to a debate among LinkedIn users in the comments with some celebrating Wallake’s vulnerability and willingness to admit his mistakes.

Others, however, called the post “cringeworthy and tacky,” and criticized him for centering the layoff of his employees on his own feelings and experience. Wallake told Motherboard that the company laid off two employees on Tuesday evening. He performed one layoff while his “girlfriend slash business partner” laid off the other employee while he watched.

Hours later, Wallake decided to post to LinkedIn in an effort to show the emotional difficulties that leadership faces. “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’re laying off employees while they’re getting their third house in the Bahamas or wherever,” Wallake said.

“There’s a lot of other business owners out there who are letting people go,” he continued. “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 that it’s not all just profit-hungry, rich businesses who are making layoffs, and there are normal people behind many layoffs as well.”

Read more at Vice News here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan