Photo Credit: Christin Hume
The Musicians Club CEO Baldvin Oddsson has fired 90% of his staff after a missed morning meeting on November 15. The notice came as a Slack message and many of those fired were freelancers or interns.
“For those of you who did not show up to the meeting this morning, consider this your official notice—you’re all fired,” Oddsson wrote in the Slack channel for all team members. “You failed to do what you agreed to, you failed to complete your part of the contract, and you failed to show up for the meetings you were supposed to attend and work for,” the message continues.
“I gave you an opportunity to make your life better, to work hard, and to grow. Yet you have shown me that you don’t take this seriously,” Oddsson continues. “Out of 110 people, only 11 were present this morning. Those 11 get to stay. The rest of you are terminated. Get the f—k out of my business right now.”
Except some of those who were impacted—99 out of 110 employees—have taken to reddit to share their side of the story. One of the people impacted by the mass firing says, “I received no notice of a meeting. In the Slack workspace, they didn’t give me access to the division I was supposed to end up at.”
“I was part of the 99 because I had literally no notice of any meeting related to the cyber division,” another says. “I joined the internship early this morning and got that message an hour later. I had joined a meeting established by the group leaders.”
“All of them explained how bad the CEO was. It’s bad when the manager of your own company hates you. After hearing about the work conditions, I deactivated my Slack and just left.”
“Internally, everyone was put into a frenzy. There were some workers that had worked with the CEO for literal years and had no warning about something like this. A big problem was that because all of the workers are unpaid and remote, they all had different schedules, so apparently it was difficult to set a specific time for attendance—which was what the CEO was so mad about.”
Those fired from the Musicians Club appear to be unpaid interns and part-time workers. The jobs are marketed towards classical music students who are looking for work experience. Fortune reports that a job listing from earlier this year for an unpaid operations manager role in the company received 51 applicants.
The listing said the job would offer interns with an “in-depth understanding of e-commerce operations within a competitive market” and “practical experience in managing and optimizing online sales platforms.” The job also dangled the possibility of “full-time paid conversion in 2025.” Funny how that conversion never has to happen now that 90% of the company has been fired.
Those impacted are calling out Oddsson’s business model on social media. They say the company relies on remote interns willing to work for free. Oddsson himself posted about the incident on LinkedIn last week, decrying those calling him heartless and stating he made the right decision for his business.