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

471–480 of 678 posts

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#471

Post by tersers »

dllthomas wrote: post #345
tersers wrote: post #5

Yeah, no. I already deleted my account and I'm not going back. I realise the type of candidate they cater towards would find jobs at companies I wouldn't really want to work at anyway. I'm ashamed that younger me fell for this in the first place.

I'm curious what type of company you're looking for that you'd expect to be underrepresented.

Basing your worth around a quiz only further enables whiteboard and leetcode style interviews. I've never seen why these interviews are useful or an indicator of anything beyond someone's ability to sit at home for hours on end doing the same things over and over. A company I would want to work for would be doing something for sustainability/climate change or another social good and would focus more on behaviour and critical thinking skills.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#472

Post by bigiain »

grawprog wrote: post #412
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.

People do make mistakes. Sometimes people really do just fuck up. We're only human. All of us. Whether you're a CEO or just a worker. Whether it's even heartfelt or not, it's nice to see someone without any bullshit or wishy washy words, just straight up say, sorry everyone, i really fucked up. Personally, i appreciate the honesty from people, whether they mean it or not, it still takes some bit of honour and humblen…

How many times have we heard Zuckerberg say "I'm sorry, we let down our users" in a eloquent and humble and seemingly heartfelt way, only to find they were right then in the middle of an even more brazen abuse of their users?

Do you suppose Ammon truely realises this plan was a totally unacceptable betrayal of his users, or that he admires and aspires to be Zuckerberg still?

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#473

Post by bigiain »

glenstein wrote: post #267
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.

>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. On one level I agree with this, in that I don't think 'heartfelt' is a fair metric. It's subjective, it's a ritual, and on some level the demand for performative contrition feels to me like something that doesn't have well def…

Both the heartfelt-ness and the acknowledgement of error are things that talented writers at crisis management agencies oe OR firms or even internal comms teams can ghostwrite for anyone. All they tell us is that someone (not necessarily the person who fucked up) recognises what the right things to say publiclly right now are. Apart from Ammon's ability to accept words assigning blame to himself, we can not really read anything more into those words.

Lets wait and see what he, and the entire team who didn't stop this before they launched the idea to significant negative outcry, actually do in the future.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#474

Post by bigiain »

ravenstine wrote: post #150
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.

They're undoubtedly going to have to do more to make things right in the future for those who have been following this issue, but it's at least refreshing to read what seems like a genuine apology. If we can take away anything from this, it's that Triplebyte actually understand why people were upset over this. I've read lots of apology emails where those in charge clearly either didn't understand the problem or they…

> If we can take away anything from this, it's that Triplebyte actually ...

... have a decent crisis management or PR firm on retainer.

Which might be as much of a red flag as the initial fuckup...

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#475

Post by chegra »

I am happy that he reverse his position. I think once they keep providing value to their user in mind that they should be in good stead. Even if this idea falls apart, and users see that they genuinely tried to provide value, users would not mind taking a chance on them the next time.

Right now they are in a hole, but I think providing value will definitely dig them out of that hole.

I think the first act of good faith can be removing dark patterns, allowing users to unsubscribe easily from your service.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#476

Post by didibus »

akerl_ wrote: post #461
didibus wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's with all the apologizing lately. I don't pay for people to mess up. How many mess up does your employer tolerate before they find someone else to take your place? This isn't kinder garden, we're not here to educate those companies, they run a business, you mess up, you're out, we give the competitor a chance. That's how it works.

In the interest of providing a counterpoint: I’ve definitely made many mistakes per job at multiple jobs, without the employer “find[ing] someone else to take [my] place”. As a user, I’m also not dropping a company that provides me a useful service at the first (or likely second, or third) mistake. Not everybody subscribes to this one-screwup-and-you’re-done mindset that you seem to be describing.

That's not really the mindset. The mindset is: what will serve me best. If you no longer qualify, you no longer qualify.

> that provides me a useful service

And what if the service stops being useful? What is an apology going to change? No longer useful, you'll move on.

That's where I find these apologies to be a sham. It's trying to play on people's emotions, to keep them around even once they've stopped providing value and utility, or in this case, actually causing you harm.

The only reason your employers have kept you around, is because your "mistakes" were within the expected range of what people in your position will be making as well. If you fall below that threshold, trust me, you will not be kept around for very long.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#477

Post by darksaints »

camjohnson26 wrote: post #45
ammon wrote: 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.

Unfortunately the most vocal people are the only ones you’re hearing. I got the email and didn’t really care. My angel.co and LinkedIn are already public, why not Triplebyte too, especially if it raises my market value. Haters gonna hate and I wouldn’t take it too seriously.

Actually, he's getting loud voices from people that are:

1) really pissed off about it

AND

2) compassionate enough to tell him why

The easier course of action, which I chose, was to quietly say "fuck you" and delete my profile. Ammon is getting a lot of valuable feedback right now. Yes, hatemail is valuable feedback. Because for every hatemail you get, there are ten users like me that will just bounce without a peep.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#478

Post by bigiain »

Aeolun wrote: post #437
lonelappde wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After digging in his heels repeatedly on Friday against a tidal wave of opposition, Ammon found a "how to apologize" book and banged out an apology, while still devoting paragraphs to defending his mistake and selling his origin myth. Even his well researched apologize reeks of narcissism not respect.

I guess he also needs some amount of reasoning to explain his mistakes. I do too, and it somehow infuriates people if an apology contains anything but ‘groveling’. Doesn’t it show that I’ve properly reflected on how I could screw up like this so O can adjust my behavior in the future to avoid it?

> I guess he also needs some amount of reasoning to explain his mistakes.

An apology 100% does not need explanation or justification of why mistakes were made.

And if you're going to put those in, you 100% need them not to be "Our company is doing it really hard due to COVID, so we though we'd just {{monetise user data provided under strict expectations of total privacy}} "

People who beat their partners regularly say "look what you made me do!". Ammon just said "but I was going broke, I had to try this!"

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#479

Post by TomVDB »

kragen wrote: post #465
TomVDB wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out the original HN topic. It would be one thing if he apologized immediately after people pointed out the flaws in their plan. But he didn’t. He ignored all the objections, and defended his decision over and over again. He clearly didn’t care. There is huge difference between “whoops, we didn’t think things through, sorry about that” and “after seeing tons of people cancel their account, let’s pretend that I’m…

Link?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23284667

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#480

Post by bigiain »

RandomBacon wrote: post #400
rammy1234 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question is why was it there in the first place , so hideous, so late on Friday, one week time to update the profile. Why not more time when it concerns privacy.

The fact that it got to this point I think would be concerning: a) No one thought this was a bad idea, or b) people who thought it was a bad idea didn't want to say it was a bad idea (why?), or c) people who did say it was a bad idea were not listened to (feedback was not acted on).

I wonder if searching LinkedIn/Crunchbase might reveal a small team of people with experience in the technical recruiting space who've very recently left Triplebyte?

That might be a good indicator that perhaps _they_ are the sort of people who might sensibly be trusted with job seeking personal information...

Post reply on HN