Jennifer Tejada, CEO of PagerDuty, apologized on Friday after receiving backlash for quoting Martin Luther King Jr. in a layoff announcement. According to CNN, Tejada sent an email to employees on January 24 informing them that the digital operations management company would be laying off 7% of its workforce.
In the letter, Tejada, however, cited a leadership quote from the iconic civil rights leader. “In moments like this, I am reminded of something Martin Luther King said: ‘the ultimate measure of a [leader] is not where [they] stand in times of comfort and convenience, but where [they] stand in times of challenge and controversy,” Tejada wrote. “PagerDuty is a leader who stands by its customers, values, and vision — for an equitable world in which we transform critical work so that all teams can delight their customers and build trust.”
The tech CEO quoting MLK, however, did not go down well with social media users, who claimed she used it out of context, according to The Washington Post. An individual in the technology industry tweeted that the letter was the “most tone-deaf layoff email I read.”
In the wake of the backlash, Tejada sent a memo apologizing for using the quote. “The quote I included from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was inappropriate and insensitive,” she wrote in the Friday memo. “I should have been more upfront about the layoffs in the email, more thoughtful about my tone, and more concise. I am sorry.”
According to CNN, tech companies have gone on a layoff spree in recent weeks, affecting tens of thousands of people. Amazon announced in January that it would lay off over 18,000 employees. Salesforce, a cloud-based software company, also announced plans to reduce its workforce by 10%. Microsoft, on the other hand, is said to have laid off approximately 10,000 employees.