Amazon’s former Vice President Ethan Evans has caused quite a stir online with his claims that the CEO of a startup where he once worked seduced his wife. The Seattle-based retired executive was offering advice on LinkedIn on how to deal with “unethical leaders” and “political snake pits” at workplace.
“A CEO that I worked for seduced my wife in direct retaliation for my pushback on him at work. He won. I got divorced and left the company,” Evans claimed.
He said he had recognized early on that his CEO in the divorce story was unethical and dishonest.
“My mistake was letting fear of a tough economy convince me to try to stay in the job and ‘win’ by pushing back. It cost me far more than I ever thought it could,” he said.
Evans, however, acknowledged that when he refers to the situation as “he won”, he was referring to our conflict at work. He also said that his wife is a person with agency and can make her own choices. “While she was not looking for a liaison at the start, in the end she made her own independent adult choices.”
Evans added that when he says he understands how some executive teams can be “political snake pits”, he said, he trusts people will believe him.
Turning his “pain” into a lesson, Evans shared five points to help netizens manage such toxic workplaces:
- When you have a good manager, lean in and take advantage of it.
- Spot the snakes.
- Do excellent work, even for nasty leaders.
- Don’t confront the snakes directly
- Don’t become a snake
Ethan Evans dedicated more than 15 years to Amazon, starting as a senior manager and ascending the ranks to become the vice president of Prime Gaming in 2019. He retired from Amazon in September 2020 and subsequently initiated his own newsletter – Level Up by Ethan Evans – focused on career development solutions.
Netizens speculate the CEO Evans has referred to is Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon. However, Bezos is unlikely the chief executive being referred to in this anecdote.
Firstly, Evans explicitly mentions that the CEO in question led a startup, which Amazon definitely is not. Additionally, he suggests that he outlasted the manipulative leader and left the company to join Amazon as a Vice President, where he remained until his retirement.
‘I seduced him’
An X user, who has claimed to be Ethan Evans wife, shared a screenshot of the retired VP’s post and said she was the one to seduce the CEO, and not the other way round.
However, LiveMint has not been able to verify the claim independently.
“Ex-wife here! To clear the record, his CEO did not ‘seduce’ me. I seduced him,” she said in a post, adding that every moment she had alone with Ethan, “all he would talk about was his CEO – In the car. At dinner. While making love.”
Eventually, the user said, she knew she had to meet this man for herself.
“And when I finally did, it was a no-brainer! Ethan still spends all his time talking about his former boss (my now husband), but now he has a big audience, and I get his former boss all to myself.”
“I generally consider this a win for everybody; I just wish he’d stop bringing me into it as well.”
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