The audio has been leaked everywhere which claims that a Patch Employee working for AOL was fired by CEO Tim Armstrong on a conference call involving 1000 other employees. The conversation happened to be in such a way that it can termed as one of the most intense moment one could hear in a conference call.
In the recorded audio it is reported by media business blog Romenesko that Armstrong was speaking to 1000 or so employees of AOL’s local news network, Patch. As per the scene on the day earlier to call at AOL’s Quarter 2 earnings call, Armstrong addressed the Wall Street analysts that patch would be shrinking from 900 to 600.
It was a clear message to the Patch employees that took Armstrong’s comments to mean that a large amount of people might actually lose their jobs. But this call escalated the morale of the employees which was an attempt of Armstrong to rally the troops.
In the first minute of the recording, Armstrong said stuff like: “If you don’t believe what I’m about to say, I”m going to ask you to leave Patch…We have to get Patch into a place where it’s going to be successful.”
But suddenly the conversation gets haywire. After 2 minutes into the recording Armstrong addressed somebody who was in the room with him and said, “Abel, please put that camera down, right now.”
Then without even waiting for a second he exclaimed, “Abel, you’re fired. Out.” It was a shocking stuff for everybody. The person with whom Armstrong was talking to in the recording was Abel Lenz who was the Creative Director of Patch. Obviously Lenz is no longer with the company and the reason picked up by Armstrong to fire him was odd.
As per the press reports, Lenz was based in New York and he would always take pictures of people talking on the company wide conference calls so that they can be posted on Patch’s internal news site.