Boss Celebrates Having 'Fired My First Employee' With Smiling LinkedIn Post Sharing What It Taught Him About Leadership
He may have learned many things from the firing, but empathy doesn't seem to be among them.
Rido | hidesy / Getty Images Signature | Canva Pro Firing someone is a delicate business, and unless you're some kind of robotic corporate monster, it's not an easy or fun thing to do. It's even harder to pull off in a way that's kind and empathetic.
One boss on LinkedIn thought he struck that balance. But his post on the platform about the experience has struck some as anything but empathetic, but rather self-congratulatory and callous.
The boss marked having fired his first employee with a LinkedIn post about leadership that struck some as insensitive.
Misguided LinkedIn posts are certainly nothing new. In fact, it almost seems like they've become the bulk of the platform's content, so much so that there are entire corners of the internet dedicated to cataloging all the misguided content that shows up there nowadays.
Real estate investor and podcaster Matthew Baltzell's post is of a different breed, however.
It's the kind that, at first glance, sounds like an insightful, empathetic, thoughtful musing on the nature of management. But the deeper you look at the details and the more you think about the context, the more it starts to seem like the opposite.
The post talked about how to handle firing an employee with respect and tactful transparency.
"Last week, I fired my first employee. Here's what I learned," Baltzell's post began. He then explained how a boss handles an employee's firing "can either strengthen or weaken your company culture."
Baltzell then went on to explain how he went about it. He "kept it short and direct" with a quick 10-minute meeting. He offered a generous severance package and provided a recommendation and reference for the employee's job search.
Matthew Baltzell / LinkedIn
Perhaps most importantly, Baltzell acted with transparency, notifying the entire staff over Slack that the employee would be leaving the company in order to stay "clear and honest" with everyone.
"Gossip doesn't help anyone," he wrote, so he went the extra mile to avoid "secrecy" so that his team would know that when they part ways with the company, regardless of how it goes down, "they'll be treated with respect, not discarded like trash."
All of which is great — and shows far more care, concern and tact than most employers show at their best of time, let alone while terminating people. But a few of the finer, more subtextual details of his post hit many people the wrong way, and seemed to undermine his entire point.
Many felt the photo and wording of the post made it seem like the boss was celebrating firing someone — on a public forum, no less.
There's no arguing that Baltzell handled the firing well, but you could also argue that his post about it undoes all the good he did.
For starters, there's the choice of photo he used. Baltzell smiles at the camera with seeming satisfaction, almost as if congratulating himself on a job well done.
@RobFreundLaw / X
A job well done… firing someone and upending their life. With just a moment's consideration of the employee's realities, it just starts to seem kind of unseemly.
And that's before you even realize the obvious: The person he fired likely logged into LinkedIn to begin their job search and was confronted with a post from their former boss celebrating how well he did at turning their life upside down.
As one person on X put it, "Imagine getting fired, heading over to LinkedIn, and seeing this."
Many of Baltzell's fellow professionals felt similarly. Some raked him over the coals for being so callous. Others cautioned him that firing people would soon lose the luster he seemed to find in it. "Once you do it a hundred times, you won’t smile for the pic," one commenter wrote. "Don’t feel so proud."
Others lambasted what one person called the "doofie… self-aggrandizing selfie" he included in the post. "I understand it’s an 'influencer tactic,'" one user wrote, "but all that tells me is you’re more interested in getting people to follow you than sharing any meaningful information."
For all we know, Baltzell spoke with the employee ahead of time and got their blessing to post this story (though there's nothing to indicate that's the case). And to his credit, he was receptive to some of the criticism he got.
Still it's hard not to get the feeling that self-congratulatory LinkedIn "influencing" took priority over empathy here. And when it comes to bosses, that's always a red flag.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice, and human interest topics.