Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology • Hacker News Board

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#581

Post by Dylan16807 » Tue, May 26, 2020, 5:35 AM UTC

AgentME wrote: post #440

skinkestek wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They kicked a mod (Monica) who dared to ask questions about the implementation of their new policy regarding gender words. IIRC Monica asked if would be OK if she (or someone else?) wrote in a way that sidestepped the whole issue, for example by writing about "the user" instead of "he and/or she". Again IIRC they leaked information to newspapers, misrepresented the case and issued one or more non-apologies before try…

Is it really surprising that a moderator, who is meant to be enforcing the rules, protesting a "respect trans people's pronouns" rule with "what if I just stop using pronouns" didn't go well for them? StackOverflow should pick moderators that respect the spirit of the rules they're going to be enforcing.

It wasn't a protest, and Monica already didn't use pronouns.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#582

Post by lazyasciiart » Tue, May 26, 2020, 5:44 AM UTC

danieltillett wrote: post #565

lazyasciiart wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a three year old account. Not everyone wants a HN account in their real name.

This kind of missed my point. I know this is not something we are supposed to talk about, but I miss the old HN. The sad thing is these days I get more value reading the new post raw feed than the conversations on the front page.

I didn’t miss your point. Your point was not based in reality.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#583

Post by lazysloth » Tue, May 26, 2020, 5:48 AM UTC

ammon wrote: post #556

pgodzin wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did it take friends and mentors reaching out when hundreds of users had already been telling you the same on Friday?

I don't have a great answer. I guess just an entrenched/combative view of what was going on? I'm not proud of it.

It is because he thinks he is above us, who listens to the cows when you sell milk.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#584

Post by xpe » Tue, May 26, 2020, 5:56 AM UTC

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…

In the context you mention, the word mob is usually understood to mean: "a large crowd of people, especially one that is disorderly and intent on causing trouble or violence"

With this understanding of the word, using the phrase "the internet mob" seems quite negatively loaded. Consider the context of companies harming their users in ways that may not be obvious to everyday people: I, for one, want people organizing to get the word out.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#585

Post by bobrobinson960 » Tue, May 26, 2020, 6:02 AM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #275

travisjungroth wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also read a story on HN where a devops engineer made a $80k mistake and got fired. He got hired at a new startup and the founder thought "of course he won't make the same mistake twice". He did.

At least we can be sure lightning won't strike thrice !

I wouldn't count my blessings!

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#586

Post by philwelch » Tue, May 26, 2020, 6:14 AM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #432

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…

> The current position is "sorry for breaking your trust, please trust us". It's hard to find it compelling. Why is this a hard thing to do? It’s literally what everyone who ever messes something up is asking you to do. Just because someone once committed a broken build, doesn’t mean I’ll never again trust them with access. It’s argubly more like “sorry for being a moron, but I hear you. Please give us another chance…

There’s a distinction between a mistake and an unethical decision.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#587

Post by IanSanders » Tue, May 26, 2020, 6:14 AM UTC

toodles1628 wrote: post #566

ammon wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It seems convenient to be clueless. Certainly makes for a better apology than "Of course I knew the issue but wanted to try to push it through." To me it doesn't seem credible that you as the CEO of a recruiting company didn't realize the issue of "default public" profiles. You literally have a section about confidentiality on the front page of your website so you must have known it was important to users.

Users are obviously not the customer, and recruitment business is shady in itself, sadly. No wonder.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#588

Post by philwelch » Tue, May 26, 2020, 6:18 AM UTC

geofft wrote: post #513

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. Correct. I don't want apologies or retractions from companies. I want postmortems. This is really no different from a technical outage, e.g., "As a result of a bad deploy to prod on Friday, all Triplebyte profiles became public." Why was it not noticed in testing? What is the testing process? Is…

You can’t install business processes to prevent unethical decisions. You can only hold the people making those decisions to high ethical standards, and replace them when they fall short of those standards.

Now, I suppose it may be possible that the CEO in this situation dramatically misunderstood the situation. It may even be possible that he had good faith even as he militantly defended those misunderstandings in previous threads. But from the perspective of trust, I can’t get past the suspicion that he’s just sorry that he got caught.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#589

Post by phlakaton » Tue, May 26, 2020, 6:20 AM UTC

geofft wrote: post #513

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. Correct. I don't want apologies or retractions from companies. I want postmortems. This is really no different from a technical outage, e.g., "As a result of a bad deploy to prod on Friday, all Triplebyte profiles became public." Why was it not noticed in testing? What is the testing process? Is…

If there's one comment I think the CEO ought to take to heart, it's this.

I'm sure the CEO has been taught that good leadership means fessing up when you've screwed up, and to an extent that's true. But it's also an act of ego to assume full responsibility. Ego got them into this mess, most likely, and it will not get them out of it.

The CEO needs to realize there was a systemic failure. It's not just about him having an epiphany – it's about surrounding himself with people, processes, and values that can help keep a runaway product idea from breaking their customer base ever again.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#590

Post by IanSanders » Tue, May 26, 2020, 6:20 AM UTC

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…

Turning the ship around was just the only rational move from the business perspective. They thought they can pull it off, doubled down, found out they cannot. Too late now.