The defamed CEO of Astronomer Andy Byron, who was placed on leave by the company, after his video canoodling with the HR chief went viral, has tendered his resignation. Astronomer issued a statement Saturday announcing that the Board of of Directors has accepted the resignation. In its statement, Astronomer also reflected how their reputation changed overnight because of the incident and asserted that Astronomer’s product and services have not changed.“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,” the company said.Andy Byron and Astronomer’s HR chief Kristin Cabot attended the Coldplay concert in Boston Wednesday night. They were caught on a Jumbotron at the concert as Coldplay’s Chris Martin drew the attention of the audience to the canoodling pair. When they saw themselves on the big screen, they ducked the camera and got awkward. Chris Martin made it more awkward saying that either they were very shy or they were having an affair.By Thursday morning, the second option proved to be correct as the video of the moment went viral and people identified them as the Astronomer CEO and the chief of HR.The video snowballed into an unprecedented Internet frenzy as social media users looked them up and found out everything about their personal and professional lives. They were placed on leave as Astronomer announced an investigation into the issue and named Pete DeJoy as the acting CEO.
