Big Screen

Well, as the kids say these days, that escalated quickly.

One Andy Byron, whom I never heard of before yesterday, was at a Coldplay concert on Wednesday with one Kristin Cabot, who I'd also never heard of. The two were shown on the "Kiss-Cam," displayed on the concert's Jumbotron, well, kissing. Their reactions made it evident that they didn't want to be seen together (which is likely what sealed their fates...), and the internet took it from there.

Mr. Byron, it turned out, was the chief executive officer of a technology company named "Astronomer." And Ms. Cabot was Astronomer's chief people officer. Who Ms. Cabot wasn't, however, was Mrs. Byron.

Mr. Byron tendered his resignation, and the board of directors accepted it, in a statement they noted: "Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability, and recently, that standard was not met." Which is all fine and good, but the statement lacks one detail that I would like to have known: What standard was breached?

Presumably, Ms. Cabot reported to Mr. Byron, and so I can see the problem there. But in most companies, that's not an issue of standards of conduct and accountability... that's a matter of the actual rules; one does not enter into romantic relationships with subordinates. The power dynamic there is just too freighted, and so it too often results in relationships that are later labelled as sexually abusive.

But if the extent of the problem is that Mr. Byron and Ms. Cabot forgot that big concerts with "Kiss-Cams" are a bad place to carry on a relationship that's meant to be a secret (not that big concerts without a "Kiss-Cam" are all that much better), then the only people who should really care about this are Mrs. Byron and the divorce lawyers who will be tasked with ensuring that when she returns to being a single woman, she's a pretty wealthy woman.

Outside of that, no laws were broken, so what's the big deal? If sleeping with someone other than whichever partner one had committed to were a firing offense, the unemployment rate in the United States would be significantly higher than it is (or the participation rate lower, take your pick). Again, the reason why this would be verboten in most American companies is the reporting relationship, and Astronomer's statement  doesn't speak to that.

Astronomer is throwing Mr. Byron (and Ms. Cabot too, I presume) under the bus to show that they still pay fealty to a standard of marital fidelity that most Americans no longer hold themselves to. And for what? Were their customers really going to go to competitors over this? I get that Mr. Byron and Ms. Cabot's carrying on, and being called out (over, and over, and over again) on social media was embarrassing. I think I saw five different posts related to it on LinkedIn alone yesterday over breakfast. But marriage in the United States isn't what it used to be, and I'm not sure why corporate America is so invested in helping the more Puritanical elements of the general public pretend that it is.