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Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

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Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#501

Post by didibus »

akerl_ wrote: post #481
didibus wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”…

That's just because we're using weasel words.

When I say "mess up", I imply a quantity of mistake that is beyond acceptable for the value I get.

You seem to quantify "mess up" to a much smaller degree, like "mess up" implies a reasonable set of mistakes.

So we're not discussing the same scenario, due to us quantifying "mess up" to different degrees.

It seems if we normalize our quantity of "messing up", that we actually fundamentally agree. No amount of lack of or of providing an apology really affects the consequence. Mess up within reason, you don't even need to apologise, as long as I'm still getting good value I'll continue to be a customer. Mess up beyond reason, and an apology won't help, as soon as I'm no longer getting good value, or if you're actually providing me negative returns, I will begin to look for an alternative.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#502

Post by bbulkow »

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…

For the Cambridge Analytica case, FB had to pay $5b. there is recourse.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#503

Post by takeda »

RandomBacon wrote: post #386
takeda wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ah, had no idea, thanks for explaining.

So the real issue are those dark patterns, not that much making profiles public. If they would execute it right, I think majority of people wouldn't have problems with it.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#504

Post by 9935c101ab17a66 »

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…

> They could've pushed through and ignored all the feedback they got.

That’s a very charitable analysis of the situation. For all we know, this decision was motivated by internal KPIs that immediately reflected what a disaster this was.

The whole situation reeks. Announcing on the Friday on a long weekend, the ceo defending it ardently in HN comments, the very deliberate decision to make it opt-in, the difficulty in disabling it. I mean, sure, this apology could be heartfelt. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a shady as hell thing to do, and a shady as hell way to do it.

There are really only two ways this happened:

A) The company’s culture and values are so maligned they actually, genuinely thought this was something that would excite users and go over well.

B) They were 100% aware that this move was ethically dubious (at best), but were willing to take the risk. This is the much more likely path when you take into consideration how exactly they went about it.

An apology can be heartfelt, but that doesn’t have anything to do with whether it undos the damage. And it can’t make people forget that TripleByte thought this was a good idea. That says so much more about the company and their integrity than any apology ever can.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#505

Post by bigiain »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #329
lmeyerov wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This gets into all sorts of dynamics and who controls them: -- Layoffs are happening around COVID, now who do you think a manager will feel more OK picking? -- For luckier companies, bonuses/refreshers/promotions happen at different times, a candidate may want their manager thinking about their work vs. them exploring greener pastures That's sensitive stuff! Some candidate may like being exposed (it's a threat!), som…

I didn't downvote, but I reasonably question how much energy is put into looking if employees have a TripleByte page. Performance reviews are typically backwards looking (what did this individual deliver for us in the last year) and forward looking (what trajectory does this person have in continuing to deliver value to our organization).

> I reasonably question how much energy is put into looking if employees have a TripleByte page.

Right now? None. Because sensibly there is no such publicly available thing.

Any recruiter or hiring manager who doesn't at least look for a candidate's public LinkedIn page (and in those roles, they should also have LinkedIn premium or whatever it's called too) is not doing their job properly.

I have little doubt that this would have become "standard procedure" for managers when prepping for the "forward looking" section of a performance review and when making decisions about promotions/layoffs/payrises - if Ammon had got his way.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#506

Post by bigiain »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #247
dangerboysteve wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, the site is by developers for developers. Every developer on planet earth is well aware of privacy issues and the evil dark pattern of negative options. They knew this ahead of time, they took a gamble and shit hit the fan. The apology is not heartfelt or sincere, its just damage control. If they want to correct this mistake, turf the product manager or make a $25K donation to the EFF as an act of penance…

If they make a $25k donation to the EFF, people will just ask “why not $50k?” or “why not pay me ?” They can’t win against people who have their mind made up.

You also can't win against companies/founders who have their mind made up about acceptable monetisation strategies and PII handling.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#507

Post by soared »

9935c101ab17a66 wrote: post #504
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…

> They could've pushed through and ignored all the feedback they got. That’s a very charitable analysis of the situation. For all we know, this decision was motivated by internal KPIs that immediately reflected what a disaster this was. The whole situation reeks. Announcing on the Friday on a long weekend, the ceo defending it ardently in HN comments, the very deliberate decision to make it opt-in, the difficulty in…

Rofl chill out. There are a million shades of grey between your midnight black and Christian white.

First, this was not shady as hell. Shady as hell would be selling your data to a 3rd party and never telling you. Not-shady is building a feature, seeing negative feedback, and cancelling that feature.

It’s more than likely they had discussions and came to a decision through thoughtful discourse, rather than knowingly saying “fuck the user”.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#508

Post by bigiain »

my_usernam3 wrote: post #218
momokoko wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s be honest. This was out of desperation. Without this pivot Triplebyte was dead. And now it probably is anyway. Ammon, the big money is going to be chasing cost savings as more remote workforces can now take advantage of overseas labor. The perfect storm of cost reduction pressure and remote workplace growth gives Triplebyte a great position to be the front runner in helping companies find less expensive oversea…

He was honest and completely addresses this > The floor has fallen out on parts of our business, and other parts are under unprecedented growth. We've been in a state of churn as we quickly try various things to adapt. But I let myself get caught in this rush and did not look critically enough at the features we were shipping. In fact that paragraph is what made me accept his apology. The reflection and honest answer…

While for me, that paragraph highlights his untrustworthiness...

"Money got tight, so we decided to monetise your sensitive data!"

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#509

Post by dgreensp »

One way to avoid making mistakes like this would be to run your big ideas by a handful of average users of your product. Take the information that will be in the eventual announcement, show it to 10 users, and ask for their feedback. Better yet, have a panel of trusted users that advise you.

The reality is, pretty much anyone could have told you this was a bad idea, and that should suggest a process that involves asking someone, and listening to the answer. It's a certainty that people within Triplebyte knew this was a bad idea, and may have even said so. I'm sorry to say that most CEOs I've worked under don't really believe anything that didn't come from a business book or their own brain. Anything else is just one poor idiot's opinion. There are many truths known by the team at large, discussed over lunch and around the water cooler on a daily basis, that the CEO has heard before, but just isn't interested in taking seriously.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#510

Post by hagy »

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…

In your hypothetical narrative I would say that Triplebyte's investors would be the Machiavellian operators setting up a situation where they stand to gain from the company's risk and be shielded should it go badly. After all, investors in high growth companies are looking for one or two massive wins out of a portfolio of numerous companies and can justify such risks. The founder and CEO of such a company doesn't have the same risk profile since all of their eggs are in one basket.

To be clear, I don't have any reason to believe that this is what happened and I think such narratives are more appropriate for works of fiction. Reality is far messier.

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