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PagerDuty CEO Quotes Martin Luther King Jr. In Worst Layoff Email Ever

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Re: PagerDuty CEO Quotes Martin Luther King Jr. In Worst Layoff Email Ever

#141

I'm really happy for her. Worst CEO has typically been a male dominated category. It's nice see some diversity in lacking empathy and having over inflated egos.

In my book, the unsurpassed champion is Marissa Mayer. She was a product manager at early Google who dated Sergey and was promoted to VP. One of her accomplishments at Google was choosing the palette for the Google logo using a data-driven process. Based off of this success, she was made the CEO of Yahoo!, which she promptly proceeded to drive into the ground.

Don't forget that she not only ruined Yahoo, but also companies that Yahoo acquired like Tumblr.

>On May 20, 2013, Mayer led Yahoo! to acquire Tumblr in a $1.1 billion acquisition.[53][54] In February 2016, Yahoo! acknowledged that the value of Tumblr had fallen by $230 million since it was acquire

She also covered up Yahoo hack, that was one of the biggest in history:

>U.S. Charges Russian FSB Officers and Their Criminal Conspirators for Hacking Yahoo and Millions of Email Accounts

Not easy to achieve that much on a single CEO position, without being forced out from a company

Re: PagerDuty CEO Quotes Martin Luther King Jr. In Worst Layoff Email Ever

#142
post #8

> Nonetheless, it all starts to go downhill when she decides to use the same email where she announces layoffs to celebrate recent employee promotions, reveal good financial results for the fourth quarter of last year, and state that the company expects to end the year strong. The MLK quote: > ‘the ultimate measure of a [leader] is not where [they] stand in the moments of comfort and convenience, but where [they] sta…

The original MLK quote doesn’t actually seem, to me at least, to be much about leadership at all. More about personal virtue or something. The brackets were used to totally change the meaning rather than clarify the context (which is what they are conventionally used for). This is not really a quote at all, it is a new sentiment written in the general shape of something Dr. King wrote. This makes it seem even tackier…

I'm not sure if it's tackier to do this this week or if waiting until Feb 1st* would have been worse.

*For those outside the US, February is Black History Month here.

Re: PagerDuty CEO Quotes Martin Luther King Jr. In Worst Layoff Email Ever

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking about diversity. We need some diversity among men who collect garbage and plumbers. Why? Because diversity is good. /s

I’m not sure if you’re being sarcastic, but yeah, we should have diversity in all fields. And it’s slowly happening. My garbage person is female, as was the electrician that replaced my electrical panel. The garbage collection is mostly automated using an arm from the truck, but she can still lift a full compost bin to dump in the truck that’s too heavy for me to lift.

>I’m not sure if you’re being sarcastic

Meant to be sarcastic, made my edit.

Re: PagerDuty CEO Quotes Martin Luther King Jr. In Worst Layoff Email Ever

#144
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suggest this is sexism here - and I'm generally the last person to call that kind of thing out, usually assuming goodwill. Specifically for implying that someone traded sex for a promotion, unless you have some legit data there. Marissa was a very early person at Google, and contributed to a lot of things [1]. Obviously a Wikipedia entry is going to be hagiographic, and some early players are going to be better tha…

Great new (to me) word: Hagiographic Definition: Excessively flattering

The origin adds additional color here - hagiography is writing about the lives of saints. So the adjectival form just means that it's portraying someone as (perhaps excessively) saintly.

Re: PagerDuty CEO Quotes Martin Luther King Jr. In Worst Layoff Email Ever

#145

Here's what a layoff email should include: - Broad specifics on who is getting laid off (numbers, teams/areas, geography). To help everyone understand the scope/nature of it. - Specifics about when people impacted will be notified by (ideally as short as possible, so people aren't e.g. waiting over a weekend to hear on Monday). Also, exactly how they will be notified. - Specifics on severance/support/benefits and or…

I’m sure ChatGPT will pick up on the 11 weeks sounding better than 3 months. ;)

Re: PagerDuty CEO Quotes Martin Luther King Jr. In Worst Layoff Email Ever

#146

I'm really happy for her. Worst CEO has typically been a male dominated category. It's nice see some diversity in lacking empathy and having over inflated egos.

In my book, the unsurpassed champion is Marissa Mayer. She was a product manager at early Google who dated Sergey and was promoted to VP. One of her accomplishments at Google was choosing the palette for the Google logo using a data-driven process. Based off of this success, she was made the CEO of Yahoo!, which she promptly proceeded to drive into the ground.

That's a very uncharitable take. By the time Mayer took over Yahoo, it was already a sinking ship and had been so for a few years. It would have taken extraordinary leadership (and a lot of luck) to turn it around. Turned out Mayer couldn't, but that doesn't necessarily make her a bad leader.

Re: PagerDuty CEO Quotes Martin Luther King Jr. In Worst Layoff Email Ever

#147
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original MLK quote doesn’t actually seem, to me at least, to be much about leadership at all. More about personal virtue or something. The brackets were used to totally change the meaning rather than clarify the context (which is what they are conventionally used for). This is not really a quote at all, it is a new sentiment written in the general shape of something Dr. King wrote. This makes it seem even tackier…

Thank you for pointing out the brackets. I thought that the HN commenter above added them. No, those 3 sets of brackets are in the original press release. Reminds me of the Teddy Roosevelt quote: "It is not the [words themselves that count]: [but the status] of the [person who said them]."

Or the words of JFK:

> Ask not [what a historical figure said] — ask what you [want them to have said].

Re: PagerDuty CEO Quotes Martin Luther King Jr. In Worst Layoff Email Ever

#149

I'm really happy for her. Worst CEO has typically been a male dominated category. It's nice see some diversity in lacking empathy and having over inflated egos.

In my book, the unsurpassed champion is Marissa Mayer. She was a product manager at early Google who dated Sergey and was promoted to VP. One of her accomplishments at Google was choosing the palette for the Google logo using a data-driven process. Based off of this success, she was made the CEO of Yahoo!, which she promptly proceeded to drive into the ground.

Yahoo was on its way out even before Mayer took over. No one was going stop it. Her Y! tenure is textbook glass cliff.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_cliff

Re: PagerDuty CEO Quotes Martin Luther King Jr. In Worst Layoff Email Ever

#150
post #10
post #4

tldr; You’re fired, we’re doing great thanks to cutting your cost, but stay strong in your job search during this recession like those who have been persecuted for the color of their skin!

The quote in question had nothing to do with that. It was a generic statement about leadership: "‘the ultimate measure of a [leader] is not where [they] stand in the moments of comfort and convenience, but where [they] stand in times of challenge and controversy,’”

Maybe you should check the context because it was absolutely about civil rights.

As a general rule, people shouldn’t use quotes when they don’t understand the context. It’s distasteful at best to use a quote like that for something so routine and trivial.

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