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The CEO of marketing firm HyperSocial, Braden Wallake, is being roasted on social media after posting a “cringeworthy” selfie of himself on LinkedIn as he addressed his company’s layoffs. In a lengthy post, he was rambling about his decision to terminate his employees and had a picture of himself shedding a tear about the same.
Netizens have since blasted Wallake for his exultant post and one of them even said that the CEO managed to "make it all about himself."
The CEO of the Ohio-based marketing service recently took to the professional networking site to announce their recent firings. While it remains unclear how many people were laid off by the company, Braden Wallake attached an image of himself shedding a tear along with a self-aggrandizing post which read:
“This will be the most vulnerable thing I’ll ever share. I’ve gone back and forth whether to post this or not. We just had to layoff a few of our employees.”
Wallake went on to announce that the company has gotten rid of “a few of our employees.” He also expressed how he has seen several employees being fired in recent weeks due to “the economy, or whatever other reason.”
He then wrote that HyperSocial had to terminate certain employees because of him and continued:
“I made a decision in February and stuck with that decision for far too long. Now, I know my team will say that “we made that decision together,” but I lead us into it. And because of those failings, I had to do today, the toughest things, I’ve ever had to do.”
Wallake also claimed that his company believes that they are a “people first business. And always will be.”
He added:
“Days like today, I wish I was a business owner that was only money driven and didn’t care about who he hurt along the way. But I’m not.”
Netizens react to the CEO’s Instagram post
The post by Braden Wallake has acquired over 30,500 reactions with over 5800 comments and over 500 shares. Most of the reactions were negative, and many found his post “cringey.”
Several netizens were outraged by the post and criticized him for making the whole thing about himself. A few tweets read:
Along with the immense backlash he received online, the CEO was also forced to clarify about a recent sea otter adoption. Under his now infamous post, a LinkedIn user had commented:
“Maybe it’s not a gread idea to adopt a sea lion at the beginning of a recession?”
Wallake pushed back and admitted that the adoption was “a donation made on my behalf as a birthday present to me.” He also added that he does not “actually have a sea otter running around our van.”
Braden Wallake responds to backlash
After all of the criticism he received online, the CEO posted another message on LinkedIn defending his earlier post and said:
“Hey everyone, yes, I am the crying CEO. No, my intent was not to make it about me or victimize myself. I am sorry it came across that way. It was not my place to out the employees’ names publicly. What I want to do now, is try to make better of this situation and start a thread for people looking for work.”
According to HyperSocial’s LinkedIn page, the B2B organization was founded in 2019 and has up to 50 employees.
