CEO apologizes for using MLK quote in layoffs email

While announcing layoffs for her technology company in a long email last week, Chief Executive Jennifer Tejada offered a quote about leadership from Martin Luther King Jr.

“I am reminded in moments like this, of something Martin Luther King said, that ‘the ultimate measure of a [leader] is not where [they] stand in the moments of comfort and convenience, but where [they] stand in times of challenge and controversy,’” Tejada wrote.

People criticized Tejada across social media, saying she used King’s quote out of context. On Friday, Tejada apologized in an email to her staff at Pagerduty, a San Francisco-based cloudcomputing company.

“There are a number of things I would do differently if I could,” Tejada wrote.“the quote I included from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was inappropriate and insensitive. I should have been more upfront about the layoffs in the email, more thoughtful about my tone, and more concise. I am sorry.”

The announcement comes at a time when major technology companies are gutting their staffs. This month, Amazon, Google and Microsoft announced they’re each cutting at least 10,000 employees. IBM, Spotify and Vox Media have also laid off employees this year. Those slashes followed layoffs by Meta, Salesforce and Twitter last year.

On Jan. 24, Tejada wrote in a roughly 1,700-word email that Pagerduty would eliminate about 7% of its positions, though she didn’t mention the layoffs in the email’s opening six paragraphs.

Tejada, who was appointed as CEO in July 2016, wrote that laid-off employees would receive severance with an average of 11 weeks of pay, health care coverage for at least three months career transition support.