Guess you could say the Coldplay era is over at Astronomer?
The company whose name has been a bit of a punchline in the last week is trying to quickly brush the whole “Our CEO was exposed on camera cheating with one of his subordinates” thing under the rug. Former Astronomer CEO Andy Byron was allegedly caught cheating on his wife with the organization’s human resources chief Kristin Cabot in the now mega-viral jumbotron video.
If that’s not the textbook definition of being caught red-handed, I don’t know what is.
Just in case you haven’t seen the actual footage (do you live under a rock?), the viral clip from last week shows the jumbotron camera operator honing in on Byron and Cabot – his work subordinate – cuddled up at the concert. They quickly separated and tried to hide their faces, but it was too little, too late… and honestly just confirmed that they were guilty.
Coldplay’s lead singer Chris Martin narrated what was unfolding in real time, and seemingly figured out what was happening in a matter of seconds:
“Oh look at these two. Oh come on, you’re okay. What? Either they’re having an affair, or they’re just very shy.”
The Coldplay frontman has been much more careful showing people on the jumbotron since then.
That video quickly spread across the internet and captivated the masses. To be honest, I can’t think of the last time that the online world was united like it was against this tech CEO and his mistress. Maybe the white-dress, blue-dress thing? Sheesh… that was 10 years ago. All that to say it’s been a long time since the internet collectively jumped on something like that.
And while everyone online was coming together, the lives of the Astronomer CEO and the HR off were tearing apart. Astronomer issued a statement last Friday (July 18) about the incident, announcing that they had opened an investigation while also putting to bed a rumor that the shocked woman beside them was another Astronomer employee:
“Astronomer is committed to the values and culture that have guided us since our founding. Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability. The Board of Directors has initiated a formal investigation into this matter and we will have additional details to share very shortly. Alyssa Stoddard was not at the event and no other employees were in the video. Andy Byron has not put out any statement, reports saying otherwise are all incorrect.”
Good to clarify that at least one of the rumored Astronomers at that fateful Coldplay concert weren’t actually there.
As for Andy Byron and Kristin Cabot, there was no doubt it was them in the video. And not even 24 hours after Astronomer announced that they were investigating the incident, the CEO of the company made it known that he’d be stepping down. In the company’s second statement since the scandal broke out, Astronomer said that their “standard was not met” and that Byron had tendered his resignation:
“As stated previously, Astronomer is committed to the values and culture that have guided us since our founding. Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability, and recently, that standard was not met. Andy Byron has tendered his resignation, and the Board of Directors has accepted. The Board will begin a search for our next Chief Executive as Cofounder and Chief Product Officer Pete DeJoy continues to serve as interim CEO.
Before this week, we were known as a pioneer in the DataOps space, helping data teams power everything from modern analytics to production AI. While awareness of our company may have changed overnight, our product and our work for our customers have not. We’re continuing to do what we do best: helping our customers with their toughest data and AI problems.”
That was the first domino to fall, but there was still one other domino that was a) just as guilty and b) just as awkward to keep around at the company.
Following a scandal of this nature, the obvious decision is to start fresh and have a clean slate. Obviously the CEO can’t stick around after getting an affair with an employee that’s underneath him. And one would argue that the chief HR officer, who ironically is supposed to make sure things like this don’t happen, can’t keep their job either.
So it really seemed like a matter of time before Kristin Cabot also put in her resignation. And earlier today, TMZ confirmed that the human resources chief was no longer with the company. Astronomer provided this statement:
“Kristin Cabot is no longer with Astronomer — she’s resigned.”
Yeah… saw that resignation coming from a mile away.
So now, Astronomer can officially move into a new, post-Coldplay-scandal era. Definitely tricky waters to try and navigate, but their first move was to appoint an interim CEO. That position went to Pete DeJoy, the co-founder of Astronomer.
In his first step in moving the company past all of the controversy, he put out a statement on his LinkedIn page called “Moving Forward at Astronomer” addressing the scandal and the fact that he’d be stepping into the role of CEO temporarily.
And at one point in DeJoy’s writing, he strangely implied that the scandal a blessing in disguise:
Considering how shameless of a response that was to the whole ordeal (you know, being kind of happy that the scandal has brought attention to your company), I can only imagine how the search for a new CEO and head of HR will go. Since Astronomer evidently like the attention, I wouldn’t be surprised if “Bandy Ayron” and “Cristin Kabot” are announced as the new CEO and chief HR officer, respectively.
That’s obviously just a play on the bit where the same people come back to their old jobs in disguises. It doesn’t work textually as well as it does visually…
