By Andrea Obston, Andrea Obston Marketing Communications
“Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy.”
These 10 words changed the careers of Astronomer’s former CEO Andy Byron and Kristin Cabot, the company’s chief people officer. He has resigned, and she’s on leave pending an investigation. Before this, I’d never heard of Astronomer. Have you? And yet, they ended up being the punchline in every “did you see?” conversation for a good 48 hours. The first time many people heard of the company, someone was shoving a phone in their face. And it wasn’t a sponsored message.
Within hours of the tease by Coldplay’s Chris Martin, the video of Byron and Cabot ducking out of a kiss cam shot went viral on TikTok. It was Wednesday, July 16. The clip garnered millions of views and sparked widespread discussion across social media platforms, including TikTok, X, and Instagram.
Doing Nothing While the Internet Caught Fire
What did the company do as this firestorm raged? Nothing. It wasn’t until Friday afternoon, more than 24 hours after the video went viral, that the company finally issued a statement. It said their board had initiated a formal investigation. Their statement also made it clear that Byron had not issued a personal statement, and all comments circulating online were fake. The company’s 24 hours of silence opened the door for phony statements, a raft of memes, and spoof accounts that dominated every discussion.
Finally, on Saturday, the company issued statements on X and LinkedIn:
As stated previously, Astronomer is committed to the values and culture that have guided us since our founding. Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability, and recently, that standard was not met.
Andy Byron has tendered his resignation, and the Board of Directors has accepted. The Board will begin a search for our next Chief Executive as Cofounder and Chief Product Officer Pete DeJoy continues to serve as interim CEO.
Before this week, we were known as a pioneer in the DataOps space, helping data teams power everything from modern analytics to production AI.
While awareness of our company may have changed overnight, our product and our work for our customers have not.
We’re continuing to do what we do best: helping our customers with their toughest data and AI problems.
For a sophisticated company, the whole set of blunders is shocking but not unexpected. Like many tech-driven companies before them, they believe anything that’s not tech-related isn’t essential. That the force of their superior products will obscure anything else, and that if they can ignore the extraneous nature of non-tech things, they can get back to changing the world.
Lessons for Companies
So, what are the communications lessons companies can learn from this fiasco?
- What your people do in the real world can and will impact how others perceive your company and its products.
- If you don’t take control of your reputation, someone else will.
- You can’t wait 24 hours to issue an initial response indicating that you are aware of a situation.
- When you do issue a more comprehensive statement, lead with the hard news (Byron’s resignation) and save the higher principles (“Astronomer is committed to the values and culture”) for later.
- Taking back control of the narrative is a constructive first step towards getting back to business. The last three paragraphs are a positive move towards recovery.
As long as there are humans in companies, they will do dumb things that threaten the reputations of those institutions. Smart companies will have people and processes in place to monitor the environment and respond to those threats before they set the world on fire.
Andrea Obston was a guest on this topic on “Computer Talk With TAB” on Saturday, July 20, 2025.
