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Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

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Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#531

Post by [deleted] »

mosselman wrote: post #140
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…

> 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.

[deleted]

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#532

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

woofie11 wrote: post #527
colejohnson66 wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your team has a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value That’s actually not true. Also, your comment comes off as needlessly offensive: > 3. You didn't have enough trust in the first place to really take advantage of this opportunity. > I would encourage you to think about how you can earn that trust You’re attacking him when he’s come back, owned up, and apologized for the mistake.

I apologize if they come off as offensive. That was not the intent. I wasn't trying to attack him -- it's not personal. I'm criticizing a system he has in place, which this incident highlighted. I'm also suggesting an alternative which I /think/ would have more privacy and more business value. I'm not an insider, so I could be wrong about either of those, but that's the point of a conversation. This way, he knows wha…

> > Your team has a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value

> That’s actually not true.

@woofie11, you should internalise this.

What the board has a duty to do is enact the desires of shareholders as they have made those desires clear. If the shareholders want to sacrifice profitability for some other goal, that's fine, normal, expected, and ordinary.

There is no fiduciary duty to maximise shareholder value.

Obviously negligence, fraud, and other possibly criminal or immoral behaviour that reduces or ruins shareholder value can certainly be a problem, but that's a separate issue.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#533

Post by lspears »

ammon wrote: post #13
minimaxir wrote: post #6

One question that wasn’t addressed in the response: if the CEO did not realize that implementing the feature would be bad for users, then why did the company announce the feature as an email footnote at 5PM Friday before a holiday weekend, which is when bad news typically drops?

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.

I have used TripleByte as a candidate and company and it’s an awesome product. If we keep getting great hires, I could care less what you make public. Thanks for your hard work.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#534

Post by perl4ever »

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…

"maligned"

Their culture and values have been much maligned, but you mean malignant. Please don't take this personally, it's just that it seems like this misuse of the word is going viral.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#535

Post by tcbasche »

gliese1337 wrote: post #511
tcbasche wrote: post #429

Imagine being on the dev team and hearing this. I'd probably quit. Good grief ... Having said that, it's weird that no-one raised this as dodgy while working on it.

What, just because a feature got cancelled? Heck, that's every single day at my last job. North of 50% of the code I ever worked on because a C-O insisted it was top priority got thrown in the trash. C-O screwed up, feature won't o to production, hurry up and work on this other thing instead? Oh, I guess it's Tuesday. Paychecks keep coming, I keep workin'....

Seems like it was an entire platform rather than just a feature. I don't know how you do it! I've worked somewhere like that too and I found it so demoralising.

Reminds me of the study where people built things out of Lego, and watched on as someone disassembled them and handed them back to be rebuilt, finding this to be deeply unsatisfying. (well duh)

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#536

Post by paulcole »

Judgmentality wrote: post #196
paulcole wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you have a link to the study? I certainly believe it. Projecting my own anecdotal bias, most surgeons I've met have been a special kind of arrogant.

I actually just made it up to farm karma.

There’s a guy who will buy accounts if you get up to like 2500 karma. I see you’re getting close and if you’re willing to give me a cut I can hook you up w/ his info. Great dude.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#537

Post by grawprog »

bigiain wrote: post #472
grawprog wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I haven't heard Ammon call his users a bunch of dumb shits and repeatedly do shady things and i've never heard him directly apologize without somehow not only insulting users but saying a bunch of hypocritical shit and contradicting himself.

No I doubt he truly realizes it. There's no way he can empathize or truly understand the needs and worries of people using his service. But, like I say, I respect and appreciate upfront admission of wrong doing. I don't think anyone should trust them.

Tryplebyte fucked up, anyone believing this shit wasn't intentional and planned to derive revenue from users during an obvious downtime is naive. The mistake was not realizing this was a horrible idea and continuing to such a ridiculous thing. They should be abandoned. But I respect the admission of the fuck upery.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#539

Post by ammon »

sbergot wrote: post #352
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…

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…

I was clueless. The posts I made Friday night were what I thought at the time (which was badly wrong). I was still focused on what I'd been thinking while we were developing the feature (still trying to make it "work"). What it took was a bunch of friends and mentors reaching out Saturday morning (and basically telling me I'd made a big mistake and betrayed the trust of our users). I wish I'd been able to understand this sooner based on the original HN thread. But it took me some time.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#540

Post by kerkeslager »

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…

> 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 on Hacker News. There's a significant portion of HN whose entire concept of ethics seems to be, "if it's profitable, it's right" and who can't imagine any motivation except profit. Over and over again we see profitable corporations doing terrible things and people on HN defending them on no other grounds but the fact that what they are doing is profitable. And when people disagree, it's almost always because the profitable corporation's actions affect them directly. All I can conclude is that a significant number of HN users are just amoral, which is terrifying, because a lot of HN users hold positions with significant power.

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.

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