AOL CEO Tim Armstrong Apologizes For Firing Employee

What really bothers me about Armstrong's behavior is that in the recording, he's talking about how he doesn't mind people giving the information to the press. "I don't care if people leak information. . .I want to clear up the fact that leaking information or anything around Patch isn't going to bother me." That's a direct quote from him on that call. Today, he's claiming that the confidentiality of these meetings is paramount and that Abel was fired for violating that confidentiality.

The issue is that seconds before the firing, he had explicitly given the opposite direction to everyone listening - that leaks were fine by him. Now he's attempting to play the other side. He claims that he learned a lesson, but from the memo, it's clear that he hasn't. Or maybe he's learned the wrong lesson: that's it's ok to be mercurial and to act on whims, just make sure that you backstop your actions better so that it doesn't make you seem so crazy. "I acted too quickly" . . .if I had told him to stop, waited a week, and then fired him for some made-up reason, no one would be the wiser to my crazy behavior.

Sorry, this is no apology when he says "Abel had been told previously not to record a confidential meeting, and he repeated that behavior on Friday, which drove my actions."

This is really quite shocking. Surely there is something unlawful about publicly firing an employee in this way. All that needed to be said was "Please stop filming".

That's a non-apology apology. If he wants to apologize properly then he should hire the person back. Otherwise it's just damage control.

Patch's grave is being dug at a slower rate now. It is still being dug though.

This is interesting. Wonder if the staffer that was fired might take legal recourse for reputaional damage or defamation. Armstrong certainly lacked class on the day. The legal posturing in this letter is pretty obvious if one reads between the lines.

the most telling thing from the audio of this incident, is how Tim went on with the presentation after firing the guy. he might have as well stopped to take a sip of water..

I don't understand why AOL hasn't been shut down yet.

so, anyone want to go work for this guy yet?

Techcrunch: "In the memo obtained from a tipster"

Tim Armstrong: "On Friday I acted too quickly and I learned a tremendous lesson and I wanted you to hear that directly from me."

First Armstrong doesn't detail exactly what the lesson he learned was (so you know others that he is sending the memo to can learn from it).

Second if you know that the memo is going to be "leaked" why not just provide the memo as a press release so it doesn't appear that the "tipster" has done anything wrong? (If in fact it was a tipster).

Then you can just send the employees the press release by email. And then they have a more definitive idea that leaking info is wrong because you are drawing a distinction between public and private info.

This more or less adds questions to whether it is possible to hold a private meeting and not have things go public (after all someone recorded the meeting which is what added so much color to the situation (hearing it directly is worth a thousand words, not as good as a video but the next best thing).

Add:

And that in a large meeting the assumption is that anything and everything that you say will get out there.

Which it will because it's a trivial to have a hidden camera record everything. And if the meeting is large enough the chance of someone doing that would be great.

This whole episode ends up being positive PR for Patch (even if the employee never gets rehired)...or at least better spin than what the meeting was actually about, which was how Patch is going to shut down a large number of its sites in an unlikely bid to become profitable by the end of the year.

Instead, the narrative is, whoa, Tim Armstrong really is going to be personally invested in Patch, so much so that he's firing people in a blink of an eye. Which doesn't mean that Patch will suddenly be successful, but at least Tim Armstrong's personal investment is tied to the Patch-part of AOL in a way that was before, just lip service.