A US tech company says its chief executive has quit after he was apparently caught on a big screen at a Coldplay concert embracing a female co-worker, in a clip that went viral.
The clip showed a man and a woman hugging on a jumbo screen at the arena in Foxborough, Massachusetts, before they abruptly ducked and hid from the camera.
The pair were identified in US media as Mr Byron, a married chief executive of Astronomer, and Kristin Cabot, the firm’s chief people officer.
Its so weird tha dude had to resign and get suspended just because he had an affair.
Dont get me wrong, dude is a scumbag (like most CEOs) for cheating on his wife and so is the lady who also cheated on their partner. Without question they did wrong and should face their personal consequences.
But why in the USA hell is this an issue on the work side - it shouldn’t be Let whoever fuck with whoever non of the companies business.
It’s not the cheating. It’s the “porking your HR lady” part that’s a problem for companies who dont want to get sued.
I haven’t read to many articles on the matter but for all we know hr lady does not like him at all but wanted to keep/get that job and now she is stuck in an abusive relationship. Can’t share with her partner cause yeah… And can’t get HR to step in cause… Yeah.
No evidence that is the case but that’s why we should fire CEOs who date their underlings. You are right we should absolutely not be firing people for not abiding a religious/social contract that has nothing to do with their job.
At no company is HR ever going to step in over something the CEO is doing because they don’t have the authority. -It is difficult to get an objective business take from a subordinate you’re porking, though.
Mostly true. Depends on the structure of the company I’d imagine. Pretending shit works like it’s written in the rule book and not exactly what you just said (won’t get involved cause he is boss) HR would absolutely bring this to the board of directors as it jeopardizes the company’s bottom line. And we all know Money is the real boss.
Because it’s a conflict of interest to not disclose a relationship with a subordinate. This is a normal course of action, it’s just been denormalized as of late.
He was technically her boss. And he gave her that job. Was it because she was sleeping with him? That will certainly cause people at the company to assume so. So whenevr the next person doesn’t get a promo, they will sue because the company fostered an environment where you only get ahead by having sex with your superiors. Also, most companies have a written policy about fraternizing with subordinates. It usually states termination as a consequence of breaking the policy.
This is completely fucking moronic. Employees are not a company property. Good there is the article 8 (right to private life) of Humans Rights Act in the UK, stopping madness like this.
I am from the UK and this wouldn’t fly here either.
You can’t be sleeping with your employees dude that’s a clear power imbalance dynamic and you would be fired here too for having a relationship with a subordinate.
It’s not like companies give a shit who you sleeping with but they have rules in place to prevent abuses of power and also to protect their own image.
Seems pretty naive that you can only see this from a very limited angle.
Educate yourself.
https://www.employmentlawreview.co.uk/personal-relationships-at-work-what-does-uk-law-say/
You can be forced to disclose relationships and sacked if you fail to do so. You cannot be sacked for having a relationship.
Note in your first paragraph of the quote, it only says likely. So even they admit that there is wiggle room. Nothing in the article specifically protected the right to have a relationship with a subordinate, and in fact says if disclosed they can move people so they are no long subordinate as a result of thier relationship. Which is clearly not saying that company policy can’t involve consequences for having a relationship with a subordinate.
The CEO wasn’t transparent about it to the board, so he can be fired for that.
He was married, so he would be breaking a law by having sex with anyone else in many jurisdictions, and the bad image/press that gives the company would be enough to fire him even if it wasn’t illegal where he is.
The liability alone that she “could” claim she felt pressured into the relationship because he was the boss would likely give them cause to fire him based on his contract.
I am not aware of any instances where it is against the law to cheat on your wife.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adultery_laws “There are fifteen[6] countries in which stoning is authorized as lawful punishment” (for adultery)
Plenty more it is just illegal.
16 us states.
Punishment and enforcement vary. But it is certainly against the law in a lot of places. In others it will put you “at fault” in divorce proceedings. So maybe not illegal, but has legal consequences.
I don’t believe I said it was the law. I’m saying most companies have policies against it.
Read again. You cannot be sacked for having a relationship and companies are not allowed to forbid that. Admit you were wrong and move on.
Your article clearly says they can have policies about it. The penalty for not following policies is often termination. So the article doesn’t say what you are claiming it does.
Read. Again. Slowly. 🤦
Hey if you can show me some legal precedence then perhaps I’ll admit to being wrong but you only provided a non official article discussing this not some legal precedence of these rules in employment contracts being contested and overturned in a court of law.
Removed by mod
Are you seriously suggesting is perfectly normal in the UK for the CEO to have an affair with the head of HR that he hired, and no one would complain because of human rights act?
The Europeans had, and still have in some cases, dynastic royalty and state religions and stuff. They’re surprisingly backward in a lot of ways. The personal freedom to use your power imbalance at work for sexual gratification seems like the sort of thing they’d never move forward away from.
Look, I come from the middle east where my entire life way ruled over by monarchs installed by England and currently controlled by America… They are literally untouchable, more so than ornamental monarchs like Europe. And if a big shot company owner is caught having an affair, they could literally both be killed by their respective families… I don’t think European CEOs can get away with it because they have royalty.
Royalty (even ornamental) in the 21st century is just an example of having backwards and ridiculously outmoded cultural constructs. I admit that I could have phrased that better.
European résumés include photographs and marital status, which would be an outrageous reach into one’s personal life in the states. It’s not surprising that they’re ok with the idea that bosses should be able to have relationships with their employees and still keep their jobs. I guess that makes the resumes make more sense.
It is perfectly normal to not have your personal life controlled by a company, yes.
Blows USians mind, eh?
You’re not understanding the full context of this situation. And then acting like everyone else here are the dumb ones.
You should just stop embarrassing yourself.
Either doesn’t understand or doesn’t want to understand. I’m not sure
Are you a teenager? 🙄
I’m not a USian, I just have critical thinking skills.
It’s called conflict of interest, and disclosure is often required to avoid accusations of favoritism.
Disclosure - yes. That can be requested and an employee may be sacked if he fails to disclose such information. Unlike USA however, companies are unable to tell an employee to NOT have a relationship with someone at work. It can make a decision to move employees in relationship to other teams if for example there is a risk involved.
That’s what happened here… He didn’t disclose the relationship because it was an affair.
It isn’t real just because you imagine it… That’s not how it works in the US.
Once again, America shows how “free” they actually are.
And to show that the protection is not theoretical in Europe: Walmart implemented that policy when they tried getting into the German market twenty years ago. They were so insistent that it took a judge to tell them to stop it since it was against the law(It’s sraight up against the first and second article of the German constitution, which protects personal freedom).
They were free to disclose it. It is this way because people have used interoffice relationships to better their positions and create favor, which leads to an imbalanced an unfair workplace. Having a secret romance in the office has the potential for failure at best.
Got a source? Sounds like an interesting story. I can’t read german though…
If you do a “germany walmart before:2023” search, you’ll find a bunch of English articles about the whole ordeal. It was in Forbes, NYT, etc. almsot twenty years ago because of how badly they failed on multiple levels.
Thank you, try to explain it to morons who downvoted my comment.
So what happens when a CEO uses his position of power to force somebody into a relationship how does she prove that it was not consensual? These rules are in place to make sure the underlings are protected.
If she gets promoted because she had sex with the boss, you’re telling me that won’t create a hostile work environment for the rest of the people that work there? If they are passed over for a promotion?
If she gets promotion, even if it was a earned promotion, you’re telling me the rest of the office won’t question it if she gets that promotion because of a belief that she got it because she slept with the boss?
There’s a lot that the US gets wrong. This is one item we got right. Yes, they are free to sleep with whoever they want, but they have to disclose it to the company. And there cannot be a boss underling type relationship if they are sleeping with each other.
But this has been explained to you by other people and you just are basically ignoring what others are saying.
I think the main issue is that he was cheating with the head of HR
The main issue is hiding it. Hes not fucking batman or something. Divorce your wife and get with the hr lady who gives a fuck, dont act like its some schoolyard secret.
The main issue for the company is that he’s having an affair with a person directly under him in the company - it’s a conflict of interest at the very least, with the possibility of the person higher up in the hierarchy having leveraged their position to get sexual gratification from their underling and/or of the underling having used their sexuality to influence that higher up in the professional domain (for example, to get salary raises).
Absolutely, they might both be impeccably professional and not let their romantic relationship influence their professional relationship, but the company doesn’t know that and it’s hard to disprove that it wasn’t so.
On the Moral and Ethical plan, the main issue is indeed that they’re betraying their respective partners in secret rather than having assumed their relationship.
Its entirely possible that if they disclosed the relationship to the board or whoever, they would have an arrangement where he doesnt have to quit.
True.
It boils down to how much they could keep their relationship professional at work even whilst romantically involved outside, and them keeping it hidden, whilst understandable, doesn’t exactly indicate to the board that they were professional about it (people who are impeccably professional about it immediatelly realised the potential conflict of interest and would have tried to address that risk and the impression around it, even if trying to keep it discrete).
Having come clean about it at least to some board members might have helped once the news came out because said people would have mentioned to the rest when the news blew up that they had been kept appraised of the situation, which might have helped. On the other hand it might’ve just guaranteed termination when they did come clean.
I had in my own professional career a situation which had the potential to explode (legal trouble, small but none the less some) and informed and kept my direct superior appraised of it, and when it did blow up and ended up in the newspapers (purelly by chance there was a freelance reporter there and the whole thing was “juicy” and a bit sleazy and made everyone involved look bad - great for gossip kind of news - so I guess that freelance reporter managed to sell the article to a couple of newspapers - good for her as she looked like she needed the money) I still got kicked out of my contract (I was a freelancer) because it made the company look bad. I was literally told that had the thing not ended up in the newspapers it would’ve been fine.
Thats a fair point to make although I would hold leadership to a different standard than freelancers.
I’m not really trying to pass judgment on the right or wrong of the situations.
I’m just pointing out that in my experience (not just personally but also for what I’ve seen with others) most companies will just ditch employees/“colaborators” if they can do so legally when some scandal involving those people hits the Press, quite independently of those people having done the professionally correct thing before it all became a scandal.
Being more of a well connected insider might protect one from this, but my impression is that the initial reaction is to remove the person connected to a scandal in the Press, and then maybe they’ll come up with some arrangement if that person has enough influence with the right people within the company, and I guess this guy - even being the CEO - did not.
(Obviously in my own situation, is was a freelancer hence easy to legally let go even in Europe, and with enough distance down the chain from the ultimate decision makers that even with my direct manager trying hard to keep me, they didn’t care enough about me or even him, so the outcome was pretty much guaranteed)
Two coworkers on equal footing is one thing (though still discouraged), but when there’s a power imbalance (ceo-hr, manager-associate) it becomes a pretty significant conflict of interest.
Some examples;
A Manager gives favor to their lover and promotes them over other employees that fit the position better or did more to earn it.
CEO signs off on a big bonus for their subordinate lover, who then shares it with them on a fancy cruise.
He should run for President instead
All this tells me is that he is rich enough to not care about a job and just take a sabbatical until the commotion has died down.
Its all just not wanting to deal with other humans.
A big part of being a CEO is being the face of the company. Many companies hire a CEO simply based on their recognition in the industry. If you have a bad image, companies won’t want to associate with you.
Because if you’ve been proven to be immoral and a liar no one wants to work with you or buy your product. Of course they’re going to force the CEO out.
Just like mr trump right? Right?
It’s different when you’re majority stakeholder. No one with enough influence to force you to do anything.
Ehhh, cults are a little different
They only get forced out when they get caught.
Immoral liars are mandatory for C-suite positions otherwise.
*Donald Trump enters the chat
This story is being promoted in the media to distract from trump being a child rapist
YEAH GEE I WONDER WHY THIS BECAME THE NUMBER ONE STORY GLOBALLY RIGHT NOW IT’S SUCH A FUCKING MYSTERY OH MY LET’S CALL SCOOBY DOO AND THE GHOSTBUSTERS
Fucking jesus almighty christ have you people learned NOTHING!?