After he announced that he was going to lay off some employees, the CEO of a company offering marketing optimization services is being criticized.
“This will be the most vulnerable thing I’ll ever share,”Braden Wallake, HyperSocial CEO wrote the following Aug. 9 post. The post has since been edited.
“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. I’m sure there are hundreds and thousands of others like me.”
Wallake’s post went viral, receiving more than 33,000 interactions in the two days since it was posted.
The comments sparked discussion about the nature of Wallake’s post. While some applauded Wallake for showing compassion to his employees and sharing a vulnerable moment, others felt the post was inappropriate. “cringe”As one person stated, was to share “Fake emotions for likes and exposure.”
On Aug. 10, Wallake TelledMotherboard was informed by the business that it had fired two employees just the previous day. He did one of the layoffs. Motherboard heard that he also watched his. “girlfriend turned business partner”You can fire the employee.
Wallake claimed to Motherboard, that the two laid off workers were “over-the-top nice”Learn more “assured”His business partner and he agreed that everything would be okay.
Motherboard reports that he posted on LinkedIn just a few 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’re laying off employees while they’re getting their third house in the Bahamas or wherever,”Wallake stated to Motherboard.
“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,”He spoke to the outlet.
According to its website, HyperSocial is a marketing firm that assists B2B (or business-to-business) organizations in creating sales campaigns and raising brand recognition. According to HyperSocial, it focuses primarily on LinkedIn and offers clients LinkedIn outreach, LinkedIn posting techniques, as well as LinkedIn profile improvement.
Prior to the layoffs, Wallake told Motherboard he tried to make sacrifices by cutting his income from the $250 per week that he had been paying himself to zero. Wallake noted that he hadn’t received any income since the rebranding of his business in 2019 before he started receiving paychecks last year.
“This was a low time in my life,”Wallake spoke to Motherboard.
“[I] was not attempting to compare my low time to the laid off employees low time, because theirs is much worse. But just to simply share the journey that I am going through personally as a business owner in the current world.”
Wallake said to Motherboard, that he agrees that the photo is cringeworthy.
Motherboard reported Wallake that despite the criticism he received, it encouraged him to see other business owners respond with interest in possibly hiring the laid off workers.
