The CEO of a San Francisco-based tech company is facing backlash online for the manner in which she announced the company’s layoffs recently. PagerDuty laid off seven per cent of the company’s staff amid mass job cuts across major tech companies in the world.
In her now-viral email to staff last week, Jennifer Tejada, CEO of PagerDuty, quoted civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.
“I am reminded in moments like this, of something Martin Luther King said, that ‘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,’” Tejada wrote in her 1,669-word email.
She also termed the job cuts as “refinements” instead of layoffs. Twitter users who saw the email hit out at her for celebrating promotions given to employees in the same email in which she announced the layoffs.
The most tone-deaf layoff email I read so far was written yesterday, and it comes from PagerDuty CEO Jennifer Tejada.