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Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

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381–390 of 678 posts

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#381
I have no idea what this is, but I'm a huge fan. The reign of Linkedin as de-facto standard has to end. It's unacceptable recruiters expect me to have a profile on some proprietary website. Luckily not everyone is a moron and it's not a blocker in getting a job, but I still hate people asking me about it.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#382

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 don't have an account there, and didn't even know about them a week ago, but based on what people posted I don't understand the drama.

They want to make profiles pubic, like LinkedIn. The public profiles only contain subset of information from actual profile. Their FAQ page says that you can enable/disable sharing of your profile. They sent email to their users announcing the change and giving plenty of time to change settings.

I don't see how could they do better than that.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#383

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.

He dropped it on the Friday before the biggest holiday weekend of the year. He knows what he's doing. He's done it before, and he's still doing it. Just pulling power moves. Move fast and fuck shit up.

The dude has personally tried to pull fast ones on me. This is a fucked company since day one. I brushed it off, but when you keep up these patterns for years...jog on.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#384
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any chance of a post-mortem write up on how exactly things went wrong? Including some discussion on how data's going to be protected moving forward? Now that everyone knows this is a type of privacy violation that could occur, it's going to stay back of mind (a "why should we trust you with this sort of data now?" sort of deal). Potentially losing a job or having career plans stunted because a website added a new fea…

We're working on a post-mortem internally right now. The thing I want to do externally is make a more clear/binding commitment to user privacy. The idea is still a bit inchoate, but I want to do something that makes this not just about trusting us.

“I want to do something that makes this not just about trusting us.”.

Is that because deep down inside you know the public would be foolish to trust your company in its current form?

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#385

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…

My personal belief is that any educated, native English speaker who peddles in non-apologies like "I'm sorry that YOU feel that way" is to be avoided as much as possible (socially or professionally). In my experience, these are typically the same people who will do other weasel-y things like tell lies by omission and justify it to themselves (and others) by saying didn't technically lie so what's the big deal?

Indeed I've learned this the hard way.

Having said all that, the above apology goes even farther in accepting personal blame than I would have expected... so I'd be slightly torn on this one if the cynic in me didn't know he was likely coached heavily in crafting it.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#386
post #382

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 don't have an account there, and didn't even know about them a week ago, but based on what people posted I don't understand the drama. They want to make profiles pubic, like LinkedIn. The public profiles only contain subset of information from actual profile. Their FAQ page says that you can enable/disable sharing of your profile. They sent email to their users announcing the change and giving plenty of time to cha…

Explanations in comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23279837

Synopsis IIRC: Dark paterns, requiring ID to close account, 30 days to close account (and they quietly cancel the request if you log in), only 7 days notice, no permanent opt-out.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree with this. When I see corporate apologies I look for two things: 1. Actions speak louder than words. In this case, they are reversing what originally caused the outcry. 2. Did they look introspectively to try to really understand what made people mad in the first place. In this case I believe the CEO did. If we don't ever accept sincere apologies, then we're left with a world where there is never an i…

It is sad that you felt you had to use a throwaway account to post this totally reasonable opinion.

It’s a three year old account. Not everyone wants a HN account in their real name.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#388

Luke 17:4 and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.”

Single-purpose accounts aren't allowed on HN, and the religious material is off topic, so I'm afraid we've banned this account. Nothing against Jesus.

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

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#389
post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised they didn't consider beta testing the feature with a subset of users to see how it'd go first.

According to one of the CEO's replies in the other comment thread, one of the drivers to push forward was that they need to meet their sprint goal. I don't have any inside information but it seems that this could also be a case of the downsides of deadlines. They set a deadline and then all other considerations go out the window when trying to meet that.

Lol. Gotta have priorities. That's some serious b school negative work.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#390
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sure, Triplebyte made a dumb move here. But “massively privacy violating” is hyperbole. It seems as if everything is considered “private” now. No, not everything is private. You interviewing for a job isn’t private unless both parties make it private with a legally binding contract. It is a mistake to wishfully label public information as private simply because we don’t want it to be public. It also makes it harder t…

> You interviewing for a job isn’t private unless both parties make it private with a legally binding contract.

I would gently suggest that you look into the idea of "reasonable expectation of privacy" which has a long history in the courts.

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