Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology • Hacker News Board

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#221

Post by swang » Mon, May 25, 2020, 7:55 PM UTC

i tried out triplebyte when they were first coming out and i had a negative experience with them. okay fine whatever. on to the next.

then all this hubbub came out. i was annoyed because i had ignored the email like most people until they saw the hackernews post. so i went to their site, spent way too long finding the opt-out flag and was about to close the window when i saw that my "profile" that i never agreed to said i had zero years of programming experience.

i'm actually very upset about this. a company who most people think is "legitimate" is telling potential companies who are looking me up that i have zero experience. they could have cost me a job in the future all because i didn't agree to play their game and fill out their profile.

so no thanks. i've already been put down twice by them.. no real need for a third time now is there?

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#222

Post by andrewljohnson » Mon, May 25, 2020, 7:55 PM UTC

mosselman wrote: post #140

photonios wrote: post #33

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.

Both a cynical and wrongheaded answer.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#223

Post by enriquto » Mon, May 25, 2020, 7:55 PM UTC

mosselman wrote: post #140

photonios wrote: post #33

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.

> 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.

On the other hand, once shit hit the fan, you could argue that these people would be extra-careful about fucking it up again, as opposed to another company where everything seems silently OK.

It's a bit like the story of the engineer who did a 400.000 dollar mistake on his first job. Asking the manager if they were going to fire him, he was told that no way they were going to fire somebody that just cost them so much money to train!

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#224

Post by Throwaway42123 » Mon, May 25, 2020, 7:56 PM UTC

What a crock of $#(& the backtrack is.

The answer is they are so incompetent they did not realize that publicly exposing job seekers could threaten their employment... an company who's soul vertical is to deal with employment... Is triple-byte that incompetent I honestly doubt it.

No what happened was what all companies that get to greedy do, try to expand to fast and do dirty tricks like email a marketing email on a Friday before a holiday weekend in hope most people wont notice it to get a good "kick off" for your profiles. Got to have big numbers for the board/VC's right? At the cost of those who trusted you with their data and private job search.

No the only incompetence here was they did not account for HN and other engineering communities spreading the word and need to backtrack to not have it hurt their core business. Anyone would be a fool to trust Triplebyte again.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#225

Post by RandomBacon » Mon, May 25, 2020, 7:56 PM UTC

photonios wrote: post #33

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…

I'm in a different industry, but I read the HN thread about it a few days ago. In the CEO's comments, I saw a lot of 'I'm sorry you feel that way' type of apologies. I wrote that he should take responsibility for his own actions.

Perhaps he read that and took it to heart. Perhaps he read that and realized it would sound better if it seemed like he took it to heart. Perhaps after the monumental PR screw-up, they hired a PR professional that wrote the apology.

Who knows. Actions speak louder than words.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#226

Post by PopeDotNinja » Mon, May 25, 2020, 7:56 PM UTC

tmpz22 wrote: post #109

photonios wrote: post #33

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…

Even the greatest of apologies is not a time machine that will completely undue what happened. A C-level/director-level team pushed out a massively privacy violating policy with zero feedback in an effort to compete against an incumbent company (LinkedIn) on a Friday afternoon. It reeks of they-raised-too-much-money-and-now-have-to-do-BIG-things syndrome and would seriously discourage me as either a user or enterpris…

People screw up. It happens. I accept the apology.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#227

Post by JMTQp8lwXL » Mon, May 25, 2020, 7:56 PM UTC

tikthot wrote: post #50

photonios wrote: post #33

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…

> Some comments around here are extremely negative of the whole situation. More negative than I think they deserve People would have gotten laid-off to this. The dark patterns are just cherry on top. The negativity is well deserved.

Are workers in a competitive industry such as tech really at risk for getting fired for possibly looking for new work? Having a TripleByte profile would say as much as having a LinkedIn profile. It doesn't necessarily mean you're looking for a job. And when it's extremely difficult and expensive to replace an engineer, it seems like a bad business decision to fire a worker for this reason.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#228

Post by dang » Mon, May 25, 2020, 7:56 PM UTC

vehementi wrote: post #143

treis wrote: 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.

You're just full of misinformation, aren't you?

Hey, please don't break the site guidelines even if another commenter is wrong (or you feel they are). This is particularly a bad way to defend someone because readers will instinctively take the other side in response to the personal attack. Instead, please provide correct information in a conversational way, like some of the sibling replies did.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#229

Post by ironmagma » Mon, May 25, 2020, 7:57 PM UTC

trfhuhg wrote: post #154

Nothing to see here. Ammon has tried a bold move to chase big money, used a few common tricks (release on Friday night, opt-out and other dark patterns), it didn't pan out and now he's doing damage control. When the dust settles, he'll give this idea another try. This is all from a corporate playbook, but it seems Ammon hasn't read the entire book. There's a chapter there that tells how to systematically manufacture…

Your critique is a weird way of saying “they could have done worse.”

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#230

Post by jki275 » Mon, May 25, 2020, 7:57 PM UTC

tikthot wrote: post #50

photonios wrote: post #33

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…

> Some comments around here are extremely negative of the whole situation. More negative than I think they deserve People would have gotten laid-off to this. The dark patterns are just cherry on top. The negativity is well deserved.

I really doubt this.

If a company would lay you off because you have a profile on a jobs network, they’re really a shit company you wouldn’t want to work for anyway.

Not that I agree with their actions - anything like this ought to be opt in only, but I can’t see people getting laid off. I have a profile on linked in with my boss and multiple people from my company as contacts, I’ve got profiles on multiple additional jobs board both locally and nationally. I’m not really looking for a job, but I have absolutely no reason to think I’d get fired for having a profile on triplebyte (which I do as well).