WTF?! Firing 99 people and telling them to "get the f*ck out" because they never attended a meeting seems a tad excessive, even by CEO standards. But what makes this situation even more shocking is that many of those let go were unpaid remote part-time workers. The boss in question, however, remains unrepentant.
Baldvin Oddsson, CEO of Wyoming-based musical-instrument online storefront the Musicians Club, was far from happy when just 11 of the company's 110 employees and contracted freelancers turned up to a meeting at 8:30 am on Friday, November 15. His response was to fire the offending 90% of staff via Slack.
A message sent at 8.24 am warned that anyone not at the meeting would be fired by 1 pm. Keeping to his word, Oddsson sent another message later that day. It started with "This is Baldvin, the CEO."
"For those of you who did not show up to the meeting this morning, consider this your official notice: you're all fired," he wrote. "You failed to do what you agreed to, you failed to complete your part of the contract, and you failed to show up for the meetings you were supposed to attend and work for."
Baldvin said all agreements between workers and the company were being canceled. He instructed the now jobless staff to return anything from the firm, sign out of all accounts, and remove themselves from the Slack group, "immediately."
"I gave you an opportunity to make your life better, to work hard, and to grow. Yet, you have shown me that you don't take this seriously," his rant continued.
Just in case anyone doubted Baldvin's indignation, he signed off the message with "Get the f – k out of my business right now."
An anonymous source told MusicTech that "there was virtually no notice of a meeting […] At around 8:23 AM CST, [Oddsson] threatened anyone who did not show up to be fired," adding that it "sent the group leaders and long-time workers into a frenzy."
We've seen CEOs make mass layoffs over messaging platforms before, like the Better.com boss who fired 900 employees during a three-minute Zoom call in December 2021. But it's hard to recall an instance as profanity laced and angry as Baldvin's, and what's even worse is that many of the people he fired were working for free.
Fortune notes that many of the Musicians Club's jobs are targeted at classical music students looking for work experience. One listing from earlier this year for an unpaid operations manager offered "in-depth understanding of e-commerce operations within a competitive market," and "practical experience in managing and optimizing online sales platforms." There was also a "high-potential" that the role would become full-time and paid in 2025.
A former intern for the company wrote on Reddit that the Musicians Club is a startup that relies on remote interns willing to work for nothing.
"A big problem was that because all of the workers are unpaid and remote, they all had different schedules, so apparently it was difficult to set a specific time for attendance, which was what the CEO was so mad about," they wrote. The intern had joined the company in an unpaid cybersecurity role an hour before the 99 people were fired. They wrote that after "attending a meeting and hearing about the terrible work conditions caused by the CEO, I deactivated my account and left. There's no way I'm going to put work into this potential headache of a company."
Baldvin wrote about the incident on LinkedIn, stating that some people have attempted to "cancel" him. He stands by his decisions and says firing the individuals was the right move. His LinkedIn profile shows he is currently hiring. Good luck with that.
CEO fires 90% of his company for missing a meeting, many were unpaid workers
