Look at the stars, astronomers, they shine for your CEO.
Astronomer CEO Andy Byron resigns
There was nowhere else to begin than Astronomer CEO Andy Byron’s resignation in mid-July, coming just over a week after he was caught on camera at a Coldplay concert on July 16 having an affair. Even worse, said affair was with the company’s head of HR, Kristin Cabot.
The moment went viral and Byron stepped down on July 24.
“Astronomer is committed to the values and culture that have guided us since our founding,” the company said in a statement. “Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability, and recently, that standard was not met.”
It was a fall from grace for the longtime tech leader, whose experience includes executive roles at Fuze, Cybereason, and Lacework. He joined Astronomer in 2023.
Meta swipes OpenAI’s Jason Wei
Begun, the AI job wars have. In the latest salvo, Meta grabbed AI researcher Jason Wei from OpenAI. Fellow researcher Hyung Won Chung is expected to join him.
The move, as Wired reported, comes as part of Meta’s recent “hiring frenzy.” But OpenAI isn’t sitting idly by; the company hired several high-profile engineers from Meta, Tesla, and xAI earlier in July.
Wei joined OpenAI in 2023 after two and a half years at Google Brain as a research scientist. His work “helped popularize chain of thought, instruction tuning, and emergent phenomena,” according to his website.
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Globant COO Patricia Pomies steps down
Software development firm Globant is saying goodbye to its COO, Patricia Pomies, and dispersing her responsibilities across the company. It’s a streamlining move that comes after the company and Pomies mutually agreed to the conditions of her July 31 resignation.
“I was given the opportunity to lead high-impact initiatives that contributed to the company’s sustained growth,” Pomies wrote on LinkedIn. “Together, we took the company revenue from hundreds of millions to over two billion dollars.”
Pomie joined Globant in 2013, working for over two years in executive roles related to operations. After a brief break, she returned in 2017 as chief delivery and people officer, working her way up to COO.
Linda Yaccarino leaves X
It’s all happening on X—well, not “all.” Linda Yaccarino isn’t CEO anymore. The executive, who found herself playing defense over the behavior of site owner Elon Musk, stepped down July 9.
“The historic business turn around we have accomplished together has been nothing short of remarkable,” Yaccarino said in a post on the platform.
Yaccarino, who spent over 11 years at NBC and nearly 20 years at Turner before moving over to X, was widely understood to have been picked primarily for her marketing prowess. While the company was able to maintain engagement in the social media space, the advertising side of the business struggled.