Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 678 posts

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#451

Post by __blockcipher__ »

AgentME wrote: post #440
skinkestek wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They kicked a mod (Monica) who dared to ask questions about the implementation of their new policy regarding gender words. IIRC Monica asked if would be OK if she (or someone else?) wrote in a way that sidestepped the whole issue, for example by writing about "the user" instead of "he and/or she". Again IIRC they leaked information to newspapers, misrepresented the case and issued one or more non-apologies before try…

Is it really surprising that a moderator, who is meant to be enforcing the rules, protesting a "respect trans people's pronouns" rule with "what if I just stop using pronouns" didn't go well for them? StackOverflow should pick moderators that respect the spirit of the rules they're going to be enforcing.

You should read more about the situation. I think your take is quite naive, frankly.

And why it became okay to compel someone to use a certain pronoun as opposed to compelling them to _not misgender_ is absolute lunacy. Monica wanted to write her sentences in a way that did not require pronouns period, and they decided that was not okay. Not to mention all the mud-dragging and character assassination they pulled.

I’m on mobile so won’t dig up the link but go find what Monica wrote on it

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#452

Post by ByteJockey »

akerl_ wrote: post #401
coldtea wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As soon as a company does something that a chunk of people on the internet don’t agree with, there’s really no way out. And yet, tons of companies had done that, and suffered very little. Heck, any company has done something that "a chunk of people on the internet don’t agree with"... It's not about never doing anything wrong, or it being futile to apologize. It's about, you don't do THIS kind of privacy affecting…

Given that there don’t seem to be actual business repercussions from the internet mob’s displeasure, and the internet mob’s displeasure, once roused, cannot be quieted by apologies, changes in behavior, or explanations, it’s unclear to me that we’re actually “instilling” anything in companies, other than the lesson that it’s not worth bothering to pay attention to the internet mob.

That's probably the greatest lesson companies could learn at this point.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#453

Post by EGreg »

gbear605 wrote: post #439
EGreg wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly right, it does take away that value from TripleByte and gives it to everybody. The value that TripleByte provides is because of the current state of technology. Take for example the telephone industry. We had telephone switchboard operators, and it cost $1-3 a MINUTE to make overseas calls. You could make the same argument: "AT&T is the perfect example of a company that should be centralized. They have…

Unfortunately, TripleByte’s solution has nothing to do with technology. When a company is looking to hire, the reputation of TripleByte means that they can trust that whoever TripleByte gives them is high quality. It’s work just as well if TripleByte didn’t even have a website and required all their candidates to come into their office - that’d just need a lot more capital and be discouraging for potential users. Tha…

I hear you. And yes, this reputation thing is different. But how do we know we can’t decentralize this trust?

Remember, the phone company was the canonical example of a “natural monopoly” by economists even including Milton Friedman. That’s why I chose that example. It eventually got decentralized too.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#454

Post by mrmr1993 »

Aeolun wrote: post #432
mrmr1993 wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current position is "sorry for breaking your trust, please trust us". It's hard to find it compelling. > Given the prevalence of comments like this, I wonder why any company would ever bother offering an apology or retraction. To project my own opinion onto others: these comments are warranted because an apology has no actual value. The fact remains that Triplebytes can still do this if they wish to, and they are…

> The current position is "sorry for breaking your trust, please trust us". It's hard to find it compelling. Why is this a hard thing to do? It’s literally what everyone who ever messes something up is asking you to do. Just because someone once committed a broken build, doesn’t mean I’ll never again trust them with access. It’s argubly more like “sorry for being a moron, but I hear you. Please give us another chance…

> Just because someone once committed a broken build, doesn’t mean I’ll never again trust them with access.

I don't think this analogy is useful. An error in execution can be quite different in an error in judgement.

To offer an alternative example: a contractor decides to publish the source code to a company's closed-source software, so that they can use it as evidence of their work for their next job application.

> It’s argubly more like “sorry for being a moron, but I hear you. Please give us another chance”?

When these kinds of bad judgement happen, the person normally loses some decision-making power to stop it from happening again. This is in noticeable contrast to Triplebyte here: an apology as a PR exercise, and no material change to prevent it in future.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#455

Post by rplst8 »

enriquto wrote: post #223
mosselman wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 mistak…

> It's a bit like the story of the engineer who did a 400.000 dollar mistake on his first job.

The primary reason not to fire this person is that if something like this can happen, it's a process failure.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#456

Post by wslack »

akerl_ wrote: post #306
mosselman wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Given the prevalence of comments like this, I wonder why any company would ever bother offering an apology or retraction. As soon as a company does something that a chunk of people on the internet don’t agree with, there’s really no way out. They’re going to get bad press regardless of whether they retract, whether they apologize, and whether they say they’re taking actions to avoid the sequence that led to the actio…

Apologies maintain norms and standards. They define the lines we shouldn't cross by noting areas where they were crossed.

We should reward apologies and punish those who don't. Our failure to do so is creating a market incentive that will destroy or weaken valuable norms.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#458

Post by monksy »

mrmr1993 wrote: post #380
akerl_ wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the prevalence of comments like this, I wonder why any company would ever bother offering an apology or retraction. As soon as a company does something that a chunk of people on the internet don’t agree with, there’s really no way out. They’re going to get bad press regardless of whether they retract, whether they apologize, and whether they say they’re taking actions to avoid the sequence that led to the actio…

The current position is "sorry for breaking your trust, please trust us". It's hard to find it compelling. > Given the prevalence of comments like this, I wonder why any company would ever bother offering an apology or retraction. To project my own opinion onto others: these comments are warranted because an apology has no actual value. The fact remains that Triplebytes can still do this if they wish to, and they are…

> An apology is just a meaningless PR exercise.

Not to mention this terrible default practice landed them some great pr to start with and the apology gives them more (this time "good pr")

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#459

Post by TomVDB »

Aeolun wrote: post #435
sbergot wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I can accept an apology when I can somehow understand the initial intention. In the thread the CEO was answering "but stackoverflow also has public accounts!" to people explaining why this was a very bad move. The guy seemed completely clueless. It was like trying to explain that hurting people is bad to someone who has just punched you in the face. And this guy justifies his move saying that he has watched a…

But no harm was done? It’s like he enthusiastically told you he was going to punch you in the face next week and you told him that’s a bad idea, so he stopped.

The fact that you had to tell him that punching somebody in the face is bad, is sufficient reason for me to never wanting to deal with that person again.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#460

Post by judge2020 »

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #451
AgentME wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really surprising that a moderator, who is meant to be enforcing the rules, protesting a "respect trans people's pronouns" rule with "what if I just stop using pronouns" didn't go well for them? StackOverflow should pick moderators that respect the spirit of the rules they're going to be enforcing.

You should read more about the situation. I think your take is quite naive, frankly. And why it became okay to compel someone to use a certain pronoun as opposed to compelling them to _not misgender_ is absolute lunacy. Monica wanted to write her sentences in a way that did not require pronouns period, and they decided that was not okay. Not to mention all the mud-dragging and character assassination they pulled. I’m…

This is the best high-level overview: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/334417/302954
Post reply on HN