The head of a San Francisco cloud computing company was widely mocked on social media when she sent an email to employees announcing layoffs while quoting the late Martin Luther King Jr.
Jennifer Tejada, CEO of PagerDuty, has come under fire for being “deaf” yet You sent a long email of 1,669 words announcing to its employees that the company would “optimize” its business structure by cutting back 7% of its global workforce.
Tejada ended the note with a quote from a sermon delivered by King, which was later included in the 1959 book A Measure of a Man.
I remember in moments like this, something Martin Luther King said, that ‘the ultimate measure of [leader] not in it [they] Standing in moments of rest and comfort, but where [they] “Standing up in times of challenge and controversy,” Tejada wrote.
The half-hearted CEO was instantly burnt out on social media
One Twitter user commented that it was “the most deafening deaf email I’ve read yet,” adding that it “looks like it was written by an AI that took all the phrases people usually say, and put them into one long email.”
One Twitter user offered some advice to PagerDuty, writing: “Maybe you don’t quote MLK when firing 7% of your workforce?”
Another Twitter user posted a screenshot of a Google search that showed Tejada’s annual salary was $13.2 million.
“Has Pagerduty seriously decided it was a good idea to quote MLK in a press release as they are laying off 7% of their workforce?” another Twitter user asked.
An “improvement” of 7% means that the company fired 66 people out of the 950 it had hired a year earlier.
Tejada has also been criticized for using the occasion to celebrate employee promotions and tout the company’s positive financial results for the fourth quarter of last year.
Last month, PagerDuty reported that it brought in $94.2 million in revenue for the most recent quarter — a 31.3% year-over-year increase. The company also said its net loss for the same quarter was $32.8 million — higher than a year earlier.
“We expect to finish the year strong — in fact, we reaffirmed our guidance for fiscal ’23 today — and these results, along with the improvements described above, put PagerDuty in a position of strength for the successful execution of our platform strategy no matter what,” Tejada wrote in an email. earlier this week.
The Post requested comment from PagerDuty.
Tejada seemed to try to show sensitivity to those who were left behind, writing: “I consider Duttonians more than employees; they are very accomplished and talented individuals # who brought ourselves and drive the innovation and culture behind our products and services to deliver experiences that delight our customers.”
“I appreciate every Dutonian’s contribution to PagerDuty,” the CEO wrote.
“I expect us to show all of our colleagues the grace, respect and dignity they have earned.”
Tejada writes that “As someone who has worked in this industry for decades, I’ve experienced this before and it’s never been easy, and I also know from experience that while we may not work together in the short term, our relationships and this community live beyond our tenure in PagerDuty”.
Those canned will be given severance pay at 11 weeks average pay plus extended healthcare coverage for themselves and their dependents “for a minimum of three to four months.”
The fired employees were also promised assistance with future employment.
The tech industry has been hit hard by the economic downturn – forcing companies to lay off tens of thousands.
Former Google employee Posted a TikTok video this week That showed the moment I learned she was one of 12,000 employees let go by the tech giant.
else Tech giants like Amazon, Microsoft, Twitter, Meta, and Snap We also have layoffs of large numbers of employees in recent months.