Aol Patch Tim Armstrong

Aug 14, 2013  AOL CEO Tim Armstrong told employees Tuesday that he s sorry about publicly firing an employee for taking a photo during a conference call.

Listen to AOL CEO Tim Armstrong Fire a Patch Employee in Front of 1,000 Coworkers

Aug 13, 2013  After a call with the AOL-owned Patch team included the public firing of Patch Creative Director Abel Lenz last week, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong has issued.

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• Aug 12, 2013  AOL s Armstrong apologizes AOL s Tim Armstrong fired an employee on a conference call. Armstrong has since issued an internal memo apologizing for.

Listen to AOL CEO Tim Armstrong Fire a Patch Employee in Front of 1,000 Coworkers; Preceded by Randy Falco: CEO of AOL 2009–present: Succeeded by Incumbent.

Tim Armstrong is CEO of AOL Inc., a leading global media technology company headquartered in New York City and operating in over 20 countries worldwide.

Mon, Aug 12, 2013, AM EDT - U.S. Markets close in 5 hrs 8 mins

Associated Press/Mary Altaffer - In this Friday, April 22 2011 photo, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong speaks during an interview with The Associated Press at AOL headquarters in New York.

Below, we ve linked to probably the most intense moment you ll ever hear during a workplace conference call. It s from a call AOL CEO Tim Armstrong hosted Friday morning.

In the recording, obtained by media business blog Romenesko, Armstrong is speaking to the 1,000 or so employees of AOL s local news network, Patch.

Listen here: https://soundcloud.com/jim-romenesko/aol-ceo-tim-armstrong-8-9-2013

The day before the call, during AOL s Q2 earnings call, Armstrong told Wall Street analysts that Patch would shrink from 900 to 600 websites.

Patch employees took Armstrong s comments to mean that hundreds of them would soon lose their jobs.

Obviously, this sent morale plummeting.

The call was supposed to be Armstrong s attempt to rally the troops.

During the first minute or so of the recording, Armstrong says things like: If you don t believe what I m about to say, I m going to ask you to leave Patch We have to get Patch into a place where it s going to be successful.

But then things go suddenly awry.

At exactly two minutes into the recording, Armstrong addresses someone in the room with him.

He says, Abel, put that camera down, now.

Then, without taking a breath, Armstrong says, Abel, you re fired. Out.

The person Armstrong is talking to in the recording is Abel Lenz, Patch s Creative Director. Obviously, Lenz is no longer with the company.

Armstrong picked an odd reason to fire him.

We hear that Lenz, based in New York, would always take pictures of people talking on company-wide conference calls so that he could post them on Patch s internal news site.

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AOL CEO Tim Armstrong lashed out at an employee and fired him in the middle of an all-hands conference call Friday with 1,000 people listening in.

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong isn t bothered that he has a new boss. Instead, he s happy that he has more time for work.

For me the most enjoyable thing about the Verizon deal personally is that I can do more work, Armstrong said on stage at Code/Mobile in Half Moon Bay, California on Wednesday.

Verizon bought AOL in May 2015 in a 4.4 billion deal. For the wireless carrier, it was a media play so it could bring on AOL and its brands like Huffington Post, Engadget and TechCrunch.

The media opportunity for them is to build something on top of Verizon and bring it to other carriers, Armstrong said, explaining the deal.

For Armstrong, a game-changer part of the deal was how he gets to spend his time. Being a public company, Armstrong had to spend about 30 percent of his time in what he called ancillary meetings, as a result. Once again private, Armstrong can re-focus the company and his schedule without dealing with the needs of the public market.

For me, the most enjoyable thing about the Verizon deal personally is that I can do more work, Armstrong said.

He starts every morning with an 8 a.m. executive call for product updates. Monday is reserved for more internal things while Tuesday is for partnership and product meetings. The rest of the week is reserved for being on the the road seeing partners and visiting M A targets. He s particularly interested in video and machine areas, he said.

The Verizon deal, though, wasn t just about giving Armstrong a break from being a public company CEO. Instead, he had five targets for how he wanted to advance the company: mobile, video, ad tech, data, and talent and Verizon brought too much to the table to miss a chance.

There was no way we could turn down the Verizon offer, Armstrong said.

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SEE ALSO: The inside story behind AOL s 4.4 billion sale begins the week this photo was taken.