Jason needs to chill. It is not clear to me if Evan has damaged his brand as an individual. But it is clear that Jason has damaged Mahalo as a brand. As the CEO, Jason has responsibility to his shareholders. If you promote someone and still he leaves, you need to find out why and you need to ensure that the team left behind is still motivated. A good CEO does that by inviting the departing employee to a face-to-face in order to provide a reasonable explanation to the rest of the company. It is all optics, but it is important optics. How Jason feels emotionally is not important. What he does to maintain shareholder values is.