Rooting for Ozymandias

Nobody wakes up thinking "today's the day my empire crumbles in a public spectacle"

Andy Byron did not wake up on July 16, look in the mirror, and affirm “today is the day my empire crumbles. Today I become Ozymandias.” Ego-hungry CEOs don’t think that way. Company “crisis communication plans” don’t usually include a public moral spectacle by the chief executive—that is, unless the chief executive already committed moral spectacles just waiting to become public.

All kinds of people lead double lives, and the saying “the bigger they are, the harder they fall” is proven true over and over through history. And one public indiscretion, as Sadiba Hasan noted in the New York Times, is subject to our modern world, where cameras are everywhere.

I’m certain that the number of days where Andy Byron wakes up and relives his fifteen minutes of fame will number in the thousands. The one thing the CEO of maturing tech startup Astronomer didn’t plan on is having a concert camera operator looking for a nice live shot for a love song, capture him and his human resources chief in a very tender embrace, both of them being married to other people. I’m certain the moment has consumed his thoughts every second of every day since Wednesday night.

If only he hadn’t reacted by dropping out of frame, leaving Kristin Cabot, Astronomer’s chief people officer, standing by herself with a look that prompted Coldplay frontman Chris Martin to remark “Wow, what? Either they’re having an affair, or they’re just very shy. I’m not quite sure what to do.” Perhaps the moment would have gone unnoticed by 55 million who have viewed it on social media. When your own public shaming becomes the thumbnail of “Daily Dose of Internet,” there is no place left to hide.

I disagree with Hasan’s headline. It’s not that cameras are everywhere, because you’d expect cameras to be at a stadium rock concert. Many bands capture the crowd as part of their show. My wife and I saw “Train” last summer; lead singer Pat Monahan literally operated a handycam, grabbing selfies off fan smartphones tossed on stage. At concerts and sports events, nobody is safe from fan cams, kiss cams, and having their mug plastered on a Jumbotron. The main factor that brought the name Andy Byron to everyone’s lips is the man’s own hubris. He lit himself on fire, and millions delighted to watch him burn.

Morally, such spectacles are terrible signs for society. It’s not Schadenfreude when a CEO worth some $20 to $70 million implodes his life. We don’t know Andy Byron. From what I see online, Byron’s wife has a decent job, and they’ve got two teenage sons. I have two teenage sons. They live in a small suburban community in Massachusetts. I live in a suburban community outside Atlanta. I am not a tech CEO, but I’ve led tech startups and worked in C-suite jobs for many years. I actually sympathize with Andy Byron, whose wife Megan Kerrigan Byron now goes by her maiden name Megan Kerrigan on social media, while all Andy’s social media is deleted. But nothing on the Internet is ever really deleted.

What is really deleted is Andy Byron’s job. He resigned from Astronomer on Saturday, July 19. His Ozymandias moment took only 36 hours to take his career, family, and public life, and turn it into a shambles. I really wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

Yes, yes, it’s nobody’s fault except Andy Byron’s. He went to a concert with a coworker and fondled her as if she was his wife or lover. The world assumes they were lovers. I don’t know if they were or not, but Chris Martin hit the nail on the head, assuming what was visibly obvious.

Whether this will be good for Astronomer or not is an open question. When 55 million people hear of your rather unknown company, and the board accepts the CEO’s resignation, this can be a prime example of “there is no bad publicity.” It’s not as if Astronomer was using child labor, or euthanizing puppies. They make web-based AI tools to measure application performance and optimize site data flow, from what I gather. It’s a very niche market. No matter how many people view the company’s website, it won’t increase the number of new clients. No CIO or CTO is going to say, “Hey, let’s give Astronomer’s product a chance because I just saw their CEO plastered on every celebrity rag in America!”

If I was the guy now running Astronomer, I’d take the website’s home page and get some 16-year-old very online kid to design me a T-shirt and other merch, and sell it on the site. I mean, Elon Musk sold flamethrowers on The Boring Company’s website. There’s go to be something that ColdPlay would get in on and split the profits. The damage has already been done, and Astronomer should not suffer for its (former) CEO’s personal indiscretions. At least not publicly. There will likely be other backlash, like EEOC lawsuits, because when it’s established that the CEO is hitting the chief people officer in a very personal way, that will lead to all kinds of credible allegations. It has already begun.

The larger issue here is our culture creating more Ozymandias moments. One example is the carnage from Jeffrey Epstein. If you remember, Epstein took down the founder of Microsoft, one of the richest men in the world, Bill Gates. It ended Gates’ marriage. It moved him purely into the realm of philanthropy and severely damaged Gates’ credibility in the public eye. It wasn’t Gates’ Ozymandias moment: by market capitalization, Microsoft is currently the second most valuable corporation in the world, after NVidia. And NVidia might not keep its number one position, but Microsoft is the software king, not to mention its X-Box business. Bill Gates survived.

Epstein’s ghost may well take President Donald Trump down a few notches (if that’s possible). The rubbed off filth just won’t seem to wash off, like so many of Trump’s other indiscretions. Heck, if it had been Trump and Kristi Noem embracing on the Jumbotron at the Super Bowl, nobody would even question it. That’s Trump. He wouldn’t duck the camera either.

But Andy Byron did. Somewhere inside that man he realized he was caught not being the guy he wanted to be, the guy his family wanted him to be. Donald Trump is a known item—Melania knows exactly who she’s married to. The public knows pretty well who Trump is, and any association with Jeffrey Epstein would surprise precisely nobody. It would be like some revelation that Ozzy Osbourne did more drugs than previously disclosed. “So what?”

I am reminded of a fictional character. Last week, my oldest son and I completed binge watching Breaking Bad. The third to last episode is titled Ozymandias. The reference is from a poem by romanticist Percy Bysshe Shelley, who tragically died at 29 years old, but was married to Mary Shelley, who wrote “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.” (What a couple!) Ozymandias Pharaoh Rameses II reigned over ancient Egypt from around 1279-1213 B.C. His statue is estimated to have been 57 feet tall.

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Spoiler here.

The fictional meth empire of Walter White, and his $80 million in buried cash, came crashing down and was dug up and hauled away by neo-Nazis. It happened because Walter White didn’t wake up that morning thinking he’d be outmaneuvered by his manipulated protege, Jesee Pinkman. He didn’t wake up thinking he’d be outfoxed by his brother-in-law, Hank, the DEA guy. He didn’t wake up thinking he’d watch Hank be murdered in cold blood by the neo-Nazis that he summoned to the exact spot where the money was buried. But all that happened. It was good writing and good acting. One of the best television episodes I’ve ever seen.

Andy Byron could be worth up to $80 million. And in one Jumbotron moment, it’s likely a lot of that was dug up and hauled away. It’s not as dramatic as watching neo-Nazis in a gunfight with the DEA, but it’s way more real and too close to fiction for comfort. Walter White had cancer, and knew he was dying. Andy Byron has the rest of his life to live with his regret. It’s a morbid coincidence that Walter White and Andy Byron were about the same age within months when they had their Ozymandias. They both had a teenage son. They both ruined their wive’s lives. No, Andy Byron was not a meth kingpin (I hope!). But art imitates life, which imitates art, as they say.

One indiscretion is the trigger that can crumble the most carefully constructed empire, the most cultivated life. It’s better to repent while there is still time on the topside where the flowers grow, than to take that kind of destruction to the grave.

I pray for Andy Byron. He had his Ozymandias moment, and, with grace, he can move past it, accept the consequences, and get right with himself, his family, and God. So many others who wake up thinking it couldn’t happen to them need to watch and listen closely. It can, and one day, it will.