To think the CEO caught at Coldplay resigning is a bit of a performance

It’s not about the shagging though. He has the responsibility of millions of dollars on his shoulders. The people who work there or who have invested in the business deserve to have their interests looked after by someone who is doing their job properly and with impartiality.

It is was discovered that his Mum was head of HR and he hadn’t told anyone it would be the same conflict of interest.

If you want to know if the actions are too far, put yourself in the position of an Astronomer employee.

You want to go to HR about an issue regarding the CEO or company culture. You have an issue with HR, so need to go to their direct report, who happens to be the CEO she's having an affair with.

There is a clear conflict of interest and the misconduct would have came in, when neither party informed anyone of this conflict of interest.

Imagine you are a business. You were in negotiations to sign a contract with Astronomer, or provide funding. The news breaks that the CEO and HR director are having an affair and have caused widespread media mayhem. Both employees are kept on. Would you sign a contract or provide funding?

Astronomer did this to protect their business and their integrity for future business and funding, and to ensure theres no conflict of interest at the top. If they didnt, they would have lawsuits galore, which is what a start up will want to avoid.

Imagine if someone did anything illegal/immoral/questionable, and was stupid enough to do it in a public place, and got caught on a Jumbotron.

I would argue the majority of people have done something illegal/immoral/questionable in public at some point. I did 25mph in my 20 mph zone late last night when I realised we had no milk.

Whether they sit in your chain of command is also critical.

Companies are well aware that people fall in love (and fall in less high-minded things as well) and most don't even try to stop that happening. But at most companies, if you start a relationship with someone you work with directly and especially with someone in your chain of command, you must declare it asap so that from a work POV you can be separated, because you cannot have one person assessing the workplace performance and deciding the compensation of someone they're sleeping with.

Where the relationship is adulterous is where a lot of people come unstuck, because they don't want to declare and risk it getting back to their spouse, so when they do get caught, whoops, there goes their marriage along with their job. FAFO, as they say.

This. I’m generally not a “but what about” type as the world is a many-faceted thing. But come on. What a distraction.

I have zero sympathy for him.

His behaviour, engaging in an affair in the first place, an ingrained sense of entitlement to do what he wants when he wants, no matter who might get hurt in the process (here, his own family). It also shows an incredible lack of judgment and a feeling of being untouchable to be so out and public with his affair, and I'm not referring to the kiss cam. He was happy to take the risk in the first place.

I have little doubt his inflated ego is also evident in how he interacts with people he manages and works with, and I suspect a lot of people there won't be sorry to see him gone,

He's just another entitled, self-important white American 'nice guy' who actually isn't very nice at all, and people really do need to start calling this out for what it is instead of feeling sorry for him and defending him and his job: ingrained misogyny.

He didn’t just resign though, so it’s not performative. The board will have required him to resign before they dismissed him for gross misconduct (bringing company into disrepute, etc.).

It definitely matters in the UK.

And yet affairs in the workplace are so common...

Abuse of power, lack of integrity, reputational damage, conflict of interest. There are any number of reasons why such a relationship is not tenable in a company.

Bernard Looney - former CEO of BP - lost his job when undisclosed relationships with work colleagues became known.

His successor is in a relationship with a colleague but it was disclosed and that’s a whole different thing.

It definitely matters in the UK.

I think it's ridiculous.

I agree. There is zero expectation of privacy at concerts, especially not at concerts of major artists like coldplay. Hundreds of people will be recording from across the concert. I have literally seen the exact moment from different angles posted by other people.

I really don’t understand why people can’t comprehend this.

I understand why he lost his job & don't have an issue with that. Although I wouldn't say that happens in every case in the corporate world, it's normally the women pushed out. It's the gleeful public shaming I don't like.

This!

I really don’t understand why people can’t comprehend this.

Bad press and high end employees are expected to lead by example.

You cannot have a CEO conducting a relationship with a head of HR.Its unethical and unprofessional.This is common knowledge and if you have worked in the corporate world you would know this..

it’s brought bad press to the Company and yes,it is a big deal.I expect his bit on the side to be pushed into tendering her resignation at some point very soon..

This is about his capability to do his job. It’s about him showing he can’t be trusted with important issues as he has poor character.

Hasn't stopped Trump getting the top job!

I think it's mad in this day and age. Ok embarrassing and major personal implications but good grief Queen Victoria isn't still on the throne.

They went to a Coldplay gig - not some secret walk or hotel meet up or stock cupboard shenanigans. A bloody concert, the arrogance of it lol, makes them look like arseholes. The global memeifying of it IS fascinating though, I'll give you that.

Only take-aways are:

I hope it's helping the wife cope by seeing him so publicly humiliated & that it's cathartic for her

That the commentary with 'comparison photos' of the two women along the lines of 'cheat on her with that?!' can absolutely fuck off

People take their own lives over less than this.

That's the bit that makes me very uncomfortable.

Their reaction to being on camera was absurd. Just act normally, the camera moves on and in all likelihood nothing would have happened.

Why do people keep saying this? They reacted as many would, very easy to sit there in hindsight & say they should have acted "normal".

I don't think most are led by their generic moral compass, no.

There is no way they were the only people in that stadium who were having an affair. It's wrong, obviously, but international shaming on this scale is out of all proportion. People take their own lives over less than this.

I am, like many others, a little glad that our generic moral compass has called them out on both their affair and workplace responsibilities. That there is still some recognition out there that this is wrong.

I disagree with that. Lots of people shaming them will have done morally questionable, wanting to ahame them is morally questionable imo.

The ageism and misogyny is strong with this one.

It's the determination to utterly crush. The affair is a drop in the ocean compared to the tsunami of public humiliation.

Yes