Andy Byron, CEO of Astronomer, is facing more than just embarrassment after that Coldplay concert moment. Now people are bringing up serious complaints from his past.
A report from Page Six says Byron had a reputation for mistreating staff back when he worked at Cybereason. Several employees said he would lash out and even threaten to fire people who didn’t agree with him.
The Information reported that Byron was hired at Cybereason in 2017 as chief revenue officer and stayed a little over two years. His LinkedIn profile used to show this but it’s now deactivated.
People who worked with him said he created a lot of pressure. One former employee said: “We started off in the right direction and were very successful, but [with] the pressure to grow employees and revenue, it was never enough to just say we were a fast-growing company. We had to be the fastest-growing.”
Byron’s management style reportedly pushed many staff to quit. To replace them, he brought in salespeople he already knew from his last job at Fuze.
When asked about it back then, Byron said the company hired him to grow the business and that meant making “difficult decisions” that not everyone liked. He denied doing anything wrong.
Now it’s seven years later and he’s back in the spotlight for a completely different reason. A video from the Coldplay show went viral after he and Kristin Cabot, the company’s Chief People Officer, were caught on the kiss cam.
Byron is married, which is why the video set off so many reactions. As the camera zoomed in and Chris Martin pointed them out, Cabot tried to cover her face and Byron ducked behind a barrier.
The crowd laughed when Byron appeared to say, “f****** hell, it’s me,” and Martin joked they were “either having an affair or just very shy.”
The timing couldn’t be worse. Cabot has only been with the company nine months, and her LinkedIn says she can “win trust with employees of all levels.”
Byron himself praised her as a “proven leader” with strong skills in talent management. Now people are pointing to those profiles and calling out the irony.
Their moment on camera has blown up online, with tons of people saying it looked like cheating. The internet hasn’t been kind.
