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Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

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Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#481
post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 v…

Your prior comment says “... you mess up, you're out, we give the competitor a chance. That's how it works.”

I’m saying that’s not how I approach my interactions with businesses. As you noted in your reply, employers expect an employee to make mistakes within a reasonable threshold. I have the same expectation for companies that provide me services. Making a mistake does not suddenly evaporate all their “usefulness” to me, as you seem to be suggesting.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#482

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 was about to read this apology cynically but I think this is one of the best apologies I've ever read.

Sure. Great case study for the crisis management team who got it together over the long weekend. I wonder who they were? (And which other companies they work for that I should avoid?)

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#483
What you need to do is to imagine you are designing a hammer, not a honey trap.

With a hammer, you are creating a tool that you will sell to people that they can use (or not) freely and they are in control of it. Design the handle so it doesn't splinter and the head so it doesn't fall off. Make a great product. The mind set is user-first. Or "Don't fuck the user"

With the honey trap you are trying to attract pests and trick them to coming in thinking they'll get something special but really they just get stuck. The users are the victims of the trap and you are the trap owner. You are more interested in how to attract and leverage users than how to serve them. The mind set is, how do we leverage the user to make our business more valuable, or "How do we fuck the user?"

Step 1: Sniff out all dark patterns and eliminate them. For example 1 month time limits on preference opt-outs e.g. "I am not interested in looking for a job". WTF?. It should be no time limit on that, and no follow up "are you sure" emails. Be a resource, not another 'shady recruiter'. My hammer doesn't yell at me that I haven done any DIY jobs lately.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#484
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…

I guess what's missing is the corrective steps they are taking to make sure a mistake like this doesn't happen in the future. I think even a short statement like "In the future, all feature plans will undergo a thorough review by an independent or in-house privacy expert before being greenlit." would give me more confidence that they understand that this was a privacy incident and not a PR issue.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#486
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.

Quick correction: > spend a couple days on HN telling people they shouldn't be mad about it. It was actually a only a couple of hours and a few (very inflammatory and highly downvoted) comments, near the beginning of the thread, and then radio silence as the fire raged on. I think that he took a step back and began reconsidering after realizing that his comments weren’t helping any, but because they were the only thi…

I suspect the board and/or legal and/or investors confiscated all his devices and put him in total lockdown...

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#487
post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's too hard to scale and protect margins. If Triplebyte proves out a business model you'll get a bunch of Triplebyte for X competitors. For example, someone will start the equivalent of Triplebyte focused on DBAs another for Erlang devs, another for embedded, etc.

Wouldn't a growing company that needed to hire for several different roles rather deal with a single service than a separate service for each specialty role?

Yeah, I'm not saying there's not a viable business there. Just not one that's going to be worth a billion dollars in a couple years.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#488
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He certainly spent a great deal of time saying "I'm sorry you feel that way" (a classic non-apology... there's no better way to make a bad situation worse than by starting off with those words).

What I've come to observe is that you can never make everyone happy - a truism detached from this specific incident. So when you receive negative feedback on something - how should you respond? What if you're used to some certain baseline level of negativity? How should you respond then? I feel like there is feedback on the individual level and the aggregate level. Clearly in this case TripleByte saw that they would…

> What I've come to observe is that you can never make everyone happy

Most of us get through life without ever making that many people that unhappy all at once though. It's not like this outcry wasn't obvious and predictable to any reasonable person.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#489

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 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…

I look for one more thing:

3. What steps the corporation took to prevent this issue from occurring in the future.

While a believe that the CEO is sorry, I can't consider the issue resolved without #3.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Tell that to TripleByte, amirite?
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