The shocking scandal involving CEO Andy Byron and HR Director Kristin Cabot of the technology company Astronomer has taken a whole new turn, after the BBC exclusively reported that the video recording the intimate moment of the two at a Coldplay concert was actually an elaborate trap – not an accidental act or a transparency strategy of the company as many speculated.
According to the information revealed, Andy Byron and Kristin Cabot initially believed that the leadership or an internal group at Astronomer secretly recorded their private moments with the aim of forcing them to resign or creating a scandal to change the internal situation. However, after conducting their own investigation with the legal and personal security team, they discovered a surprising detail: it was a subordinate – who had been rejected for promotion and given a bad review by both of them during the performance review – who orchestrated the whole incident.
A close source revealed: “This person had carefully prepared from booking concert tickets, arranging seats with good views to record, even hiring a third person to pretend to be a guest to accidentally record the scene with a phone and then spread it on social networks as an ‘accidental’ action.”
The video was then quickly shared across social networking platforms, with millions of views in just the first 24 hours. Both Andy Byron and Kristin Cabot were later suspended from their positions to serve an internal investigation. However, with this new discovery, the role of “victims of a personal conspiracy” has been brought to light.
Andy Byron, in a brief statement to the media, said: “We do not deny that our personal relationship crossed the line of work, but that does not mean we deserve to be publicly shamed or framed in such a despicable way. This is a great lesson in trust and caution in a highly competitive work environment.”
Kristin Cabot also shared: “I feel deeply hurt, not only by the virality of the video, but by the feeling of betrayal by the very people I once trusted in the company.”
Astronomer has yet to make an official statement on whether the couple will be reinstated, but it is reported that the board of directors is reviewing the entire process of handling the incident, including whether the dismissal was too hasty.
Meanwhile, the person suspected of being the mastermind of the incident submitted his resignation before the truth was revealed. Several inside sources said that the man had left the country the night the video was released, raising suspicions that his actions were not merely personal, but may have been linked to a competing force in the tech industry.
The incident has not only left Astronomer facing a media and internal crisis, but also raised questions about ethics in the modern corporate environment: how far is the line between personal privacy and work life being pushed, and who is really behind the calculated “backstabbing”?
While the outcome of Andy Byron and Kristin Cabot remains to be seen, one thing is certain: this incident will be talked about for years to come as a prime example of how technology, reputation, and power can be manipulated in a fierce internal war.
