Vice Media has gone viral online for its botched layoff meeting. In a video on TikTok that has over 2 million views, a virtual meeting at Vice was quickly cut short by its Chief Operating Officer Corey Haik and another executive when Haik began to discuss layoffs at the company. And it was all because of one thing: an emoji.
Or a slew of them.
During the meeting, which took place last week on Google Meet, Haik began to discuss Vice’s plan to shrink its business due to a difficult “macro landscape.”
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“It's, very, very, very difficult time in the macro landscape,” said Haik. “I think you all know that I've talked about that a lot. You know, as Bruce said, the Vice publishing business is now going to operate as a smaller break even business, it is no longer unprofitable, but it is a much smaller offering.”
Before she could go into further details about layoffs at the company, many employees during the virtual meeting began sending a flood of thumbs down emojis while she was speaking, prompting another executive on the call to intervene and call for the meeting to conclude.
“It's impossible to ignore the emojis from outside,” said the executive. “And I think we're gonna organize this in a way where we can actually give the information to people who wanna receive it, in the way it's meant.”
The executive then claimed that his team would answer the questions they received about layoffs “in a form that makes sense for this company” at a later time.
@bobbymang666 Vice Media CCO Corey Haik wss girved to cut her layoff meeting short due to an onslaught of thumbs down emojis from employees #vice #vicemedia #vicemediagroup #layoffs #medianews #firing #failure #loser
♬ original sound - Bobbymang666
TikTok users took to the comment section under the viral video to hurl criticism at the Vice executives’ handling of the negative feedback from employees during the meeting.
“They’re telling people they’re getting laid off and they can’t handle some emojis? Come on people,” wrote one TikTok user.
“Imagine being told that you need to be happy to receive news you’re being laid off. Wow” wrote another user.
In February, Vice sent a memo to staff warning them that they were laying off hundreds of employees within a week claiming that it is “no longer cost-effective” to distribute content in the way it has done so in the past, and that it is partnering with other media companies to distribute its digital content.
“With this strategic shift comes the need to realign our resources and streamline our overall operations at Vice,” read the memo. “Regrettably, this means that we will be reducing our workforce, eliminating several hundred positions.”
Layoffs have been plaguing 2024, and employees are starting to feel the strain from it. According to a recent survey by financial consultant Clarify Capital, 1 in 3 Americans have layoff anxiety. Also, the survey found that 1 in 3 Americans believe that their company isn’t being transparent enough about financial or operational challenges.
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