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Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

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131–140 of 678 posts

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#131
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't already have one, have you considered having a collection of users who you can privately ask about potential features (or run email wording by) to figure out how it would go over? A user of the product could easily have told you, in advance, "some people are looking for a job secretly and this would be a problem". You could also come up with incentives to encourage job seekers to opt in; for instance, yo…

I really like this idea. I'll talk to my head of product about it.

Now I am curious what the conversations so far have been about if opt-in was never discussed? Are you looking for product managers?

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#132
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realise that if you have any European users you have majorly contravened GDPR regulations and data protection rules. I'm talking 20 million euros in fines

Triplebyte is not for EU users. You're forgetting that Triplebyte is an American company, they're not subject to European nanny laws.

Eh, likely some of the people who have gone through Triplebyte are now in Europe, subjecting its use of their data to GDPR law.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#133
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would have gone over a lot better if he didn't spend a couple days on HN telling people they shouldn't be mad about it. And it would have gone over a lot better if he was honest about what happened. He got caught with his hand in the cookie jar and he's all "was that wrong? Should I not have done that?". They knew exactly what they were doing and calculated that it was worth it.

I can see how that conclusion gets drawn. Any new feature that is announced can be met with some negativity. Sometimes it just ends up working despite that. It is not surprising to me that at first, they tried to defend their plans. It probably took a while for the backslash to sink in and their own opinions to change. I wouldn't expect every company, even ones that target HN's primary audience to turn everything aro…

Nobody is mad about a "feature". They're mad because Triplebyte made sensitive private data public.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#134

I've had the good fortune of knowing the TripleByte team personally. I'm not at all surprised to see this being handled in such a sincere and agreeable way. Ammon is a sincere and truth-seeking individual. He's willing to be convinced that his opinion is wrong, a character trait we don't do enough to praise and which I've found to be exceedingly rare these days. Situations like this highlight exactly why I've trusted…

Great job PR dept.

Unfair. I’ve worked with Ammon IRL at a different co, he’s one of the most genuine people in the valley. Did PR consult? Probably. Is it just spin? Definitely not.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#135
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My head was still in the place it was when we were developing the feature. I thought it was a communication problem (if I could only communicate how this feature could help a lot of people everyone would understand). Perhaps I'm just slow. But it took some time and repetition for the magnitude of my error to sink in and me to really hear what people were saying.

If you don't already have one, have you considered having a collection of users who you can privately ask about potential features (or run email wording by) to figure out how it would go over? A user of the product could easily have told you, in advance, "some people are looking for a job secretly and this would be a problem". You could also come up with incentives to encourage job seekers to opt in; for instance, yo…

> you could temporarily tag such users as "likely to get hired sooner"

Lets start lying to the customers on top of this fiasco.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#136
post #78

One of two things happened: 1. Triplebyte attempted a big move against LinkedIn, tried to ease the blow to users by dumping on a Friday before memorial day weekend 2. Triplebyte, the company built around helping people find jobs, truthfully didn't understand that people might have concerns about their current companies knowing they are job-hunting It's pretty obvious it's #1, and that opt-out rather than opt-in was t…

I'd say it was both. I wanted to move against LinkedIn profiles, I thought that opt-out was the way to get critical mass, and I screwed up and did not realize how large a privacy violation this was.

Let’s be honest. This was out of desperation. Without this pivot Triplebyte was dead. And now it probably is anyway.

Ammon, the big money is going to be chasing cost savings as more remote workforces can now take advantage of overseas labor. The perfect storm of cost reduction pressure and remote workplace growth gives Triplebyte a great position to be the front runner in helping companies find less expensive overseas talent.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#137

Not a good look from all the pro-privacy folks here to redouble your criticism after you got what you wanted. Assuming good faith is part of the HN guidelines, so let's give Ammon benefit of the doubt here as well.

I agree - it's as good an apology as it gets. Let's honour this and react more positively than had Triplebyte send a non-apology apology.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#138
This sounds like the best response they could have given under the circumstances, and it's not like they can undo the announcement or the initial response. I deleted my account, and I'd be hesitant to have anything to do with them in the future, but I'm open to having my mind changed if the company winds up placing a higher value on business ethics as a result of this whole thing.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#139
post #76
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Friday announcement was a result of us pushing to get the profile toggle feature out that the email linked to, and shipping late. Not something I'm proud of (either from an eng management perspective, or, more importantly, from a not violating the trust of our users perspective). It was a rushed schedule. In hindsight I see that the timing of the Friday announcement is ALSO a problem.

> The Friday announcement was a result of us pushing to get the profile toggle feature out that the email linked to The absolute most important part of the feature was a last-minute addition?

It sounds like the overall feature was delayed because the eng work for the profile toggle landed late.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#140

I am not an active Triplebyte user, but I have an account and followed the thread(s). This e-mail (which I also got) seems like a heartfelt apology. They fucked up, realized it and turned the ship around. They listened and that's what counts for me. They listened to the negative feedback and responded to it. Some comments around here are extremely negative of the whole situation. More negative than I think they deser…

> This e-mail (which I also got) seems like a heartfelt apology.

Even if it is heartfelt, I'd argue that if no alarm bells went off internally when they were discussing this feature, they are not the group of people to entrust with information such as this.

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