Consider the fact that if Ammon had fully considered this rollout, it would be very obvious to him that this would be the response. The legal ramifications would also have been obvious.
I think the only reasonable explanation is that it wasn’t fully thought through. I think his business being hit hard by the pandemic is a reasonable explanation for that. There’s no way TripleByte isn’t hit hard by this. Rushing a major feature out is exactly the kind of thing he’s supposed to be doing right now. It seems he just thought too much on making the business and tech side of the feature successful, and didn’t give enough time to the human and legal side of it.
Personally I thought his email was way more introspective and revealing than it even needed to be, and I think he’s being genuine.
The best founders I know, when they make mistakes like this, aren't doing it for the money. They're doing it because they are trying to create the world they want to see exist, and that blinds them a bit. In this case, I genuinely believe Triplebyte just wanted to have a bigger impact on the hiring world, and try to fix it for engineers. Did they fuck up badly? Oh yeah. But I don't think it was for "money".
Triplebyte has 33 employees. They don't have VPs getting "fat bonuses". They don't have "golden parachutes". Look at their about page (https://triplebyte.com/about), it's all engineers and designers and CSMs. They're just a group of people doing their best to try to fix something we all hate (technical interviewing/hiring).
I see them as mission driven, this was a bad step but I trust that they're still focused on trying to fix a broken hiring system.
This was my reaction when the word "feature" was still used in the apology. If it creates risk or user unhappiness, we call it a bug, not a feature. It's like calling mitigations for spectre from Intel a "generous rollback of performance features".
> Basically, he should've created a clueless VP of business relations or something of that sort
reminded by of the Gervais principle which I learned about from this nice article
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
> I still believe there's a need for something like this. But to release it as a default public feature was not just a major mistake, it was a betrayal.
Isn’t it more likely that he just made a mistake, realized it, and apologized? You can reject the apology, of course, but it doesn’t seem like you have any evidence that it’s not genuine. In fact, the evidence you claim (“classic playbook”) you then invalidate immediately after (“he clearly forgot half the playbook”).
If someone makes a mistake, is there just nothing they can do to ever convince you it was not pure maliciousness? It seems like even an apology is then taken as evidence of ill intent. Why would anyone ever reverse course or apologize under your view?
But the parent is indeed correct in implying that the comments he did make were anything but receptive or conciliatory.
That all makes sense, this isn’t the end of the world, can we just move on, please?
Regarding your question. Mistakes and apologies are words from the lexicon of normal emotional people. Companies, on the other hand, are soulless profit driven maniacs and their lexicon has words justifiable, plausible and profitable. When a company gives an apology, it's because it deems this combination of words the most efficient way to influence its user base and minimize damage (to profits) just done. People who run companies usually embrace this mindset if they want to get rich.
That seems unbelievably unlikely.
Venture capital is quite the opposite of passive investing. I guess everyone on here is well aware investors are not doing it for fun but first and foremost for protecting and, ideally, multiplying their assets.
VCs also like to be able to attract the best founders by being 'founder-friendly' and replacing a founder hurts that image. Starting a company is hard enough - you don't really want investors who add to the pressure.
From what I've heard, COVID seems to have stopped new investments (outside of companies that have gotten a boost from COVID) so that VCs can focus on their existing portfolios.
But, the damage is done. I ended up deleting my account over the weekend. The process to do so wasn't as convoluted as some said it would be, it only took 1 hour.
P.S. I didn't receive the apology letter, so at least I got taken off the mailing list.
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.
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 situations where all the blame flows downwards while all the rewards flow upwards, so when a bold move like this pans out, credit for it would go to the top, and if it fails, blame goes to the bottom. Basically, he should've created a clueless VP of business relations or something of that sort, manufacture the situation where the only way that VP can get a fat bonus is by implementing this shady move (the idea should be delivered via another channel to have plausible deniability later) and watch the action from his armchair. And when it's failed, blame that VP for too much eagerness and fire him with a golden parachute.