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Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

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Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#591

Post by xpe »

bigiain wrote: post #474
ravenstine wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

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

On what basis do you say they have a firm on retainer?

I think many/most CEO's in this situation would make some calls to get advice on how to manage the situation -- I don't that is a red flag.

If they don't take strong, concrete steps to mitigate these kinds of problems in the future, I will have less confidence and trust in their company.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#592

Post by philwelch »

kerkeslager wrote: post #540
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…

> Given the prevalence of comments like this, I wonder why any company would ever bother offering an apology or retraction. Because the people running the company have a conscience which causes them to feel bad and want to apologize when they harm people? Are we really entertaining the idea that the only reason someone might apologize is if it benefits them? It's disturbing to me how absolutely normal your comment is…

> Because the people running the company have a conscience which causes them to feel bad and want to apologize when they harm people? Are we really entertaining the idea that the only reason someone might apologize is if it benefits them?

>... And before you tell me that everyone acts selfishly--no, they don't. I've met hundreds of wonderful people in my life who were generous, honest, kind, and/or brave, at great personal cost and risk to themselves. The behavior you're engaging in isn't normal, and it's not okay.

I can see that you’re trying to be charitable, so let me try and be charitable in return.

I actually kind of agree with the comment you’re responding to, but I don’t interpret it the same way you do. A normal, moral person like you or me will apologize out of genuine guilt. But then again, a normal, moral person like you or me doesn’t operate a business in a way that betrays the trust of its users.

I don’t think everyone acts selfishly. But I do think that some people do. And even a selfish person would want to try and convincingly feign remorse for their selfish actions once those actions backfired and were no longer in their own self-interest.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#593

Post by xiphias2 »

erik_seaberg wrote: post #391
rebotfc wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, they had European users? They are fucked. This is about a serious and willful GDPR contravention as you can get. I hope they have good lawyers because they are gonna be hauled over the coals by multiple countries' data commissioners. Wow just wow.

If Triplebyte has no staff or assets in an EU jurisdiction, what could they do?

Setting up a country based IP filter is trivial if they don't want to serve EU and California.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#594

Post by kinkrtyavimoodh »

bbulkow wrote: post #502
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…

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

Which is particularly damning given it wasn't even FB's fault.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#595

Post by gjs278 »

lmeyerov wrote: post #233

Good lesson for other founders here. Early on nobody knows you, but as soon as they do, you'll need to have chosen if you're on the trust-and-brand-building marathon or not. By default, if you do nothing, you're building up to an explosion like this that can take years to recover from. How did the CEO, the board, the sales team, the marketing team, customer support team, and the engineering team all fail to notice an…

lol why do you think this company even has a board

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#596

Post by edanm »

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…

You're making a false dichotomy there - there aren't only two ways. They could also have sincerely not thought about how this new platform would behave given the opt-in nature of it.

There have been similar incidents throughout tech history (and history in general) - it's not always that the culture is bad. It's also sometimes an honest mistake (at least, thinking through the ramifications of it is).

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#597

Post by [deleted] »

paulcole wrote: post #184
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.

There was a study about surgical fuckups. In almost every case, multiple people in the OR admitted they recognized the problem but were too scared to speak up because the surgeon said things were going fine.

[deleted]

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#598

Post by gjs278 »

ponker wrote: post #202
adnanh wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, did you have any engineers/product owners telling you that you should probably not do this feature, especially not push so hard (doing stuff late on Friday that can easily wait for Monday, etc...) to get it out?

Yeah, we don’t even do any kind of code deploy on Friday after 10am. Not even bug fixes unless they are for site reliability.

the site is offline - well we won’t fix it until monday

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#599

Post by atroche »

adnanh wrote: post #49
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.

Just curious, did you have any engineers/product owners telling you that you should probably not do this feature, especially not push so hard (doing stuff late on Friday that can easily wait for Monday, etc...) to get it out?

I think it's very telling that Ammon never replied to this. I'm guessing it's because engineers did push back, and he overruled them.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#600

Post by metrokoi »

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…

It is still important to apologize so that potential or previous users can begin to form an opinion on whether or not a company can even attempt to earn their trust back. Of course an apology does not erase Triplebyte's actions, but I think that it is possible the CEO truly did lose sight of his goals and become removed from the user. The section about his experience job searching during the recession seems genuine.

Companies are becoming more sterile and calculated, and perhaps statistically issuing an apology has no impact on user retention, but I for one am glad there is still some humanity to be found even if it's a hollow gesture.

Publicly taking responsibility and acknowledging mistakes can be a powerful tool in changing. Because of this apology, I will at least monitor Triplebyte's progress to see if significant structural changes are made to keep a decision like this from being made, instead of not even giving them a chance to gain back my trust. Their actions will tell whether this apology is genuine or not.

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