Agreed - but I also suspect he's been writing this letter in his head for quite some time.

I think the guy knows his statement is going to be the lede of a lot of very popular news stories.

I don't care who threw the grenade at this point, Mason jumped onto it.

It's a great letter.

Got to agree with you, tptacek. People are conveniently forgetting that so many other fired CEO's with fat bank balances have not bothered to be honest about their reasons for leaving.

This is classy.

The first grenade was waiting to be jumped on almost two years ago. Then there were more grenades every quarter.

The only thing Andrew Mason's jumping on at this point is a pile of Scrooge McDuck money.

It seems like there might be a lopsided U-shaped curve to the expected benefit of "cut[ting] through the crap." On the left, at zero admission of guilt, is the baseline. It seems that in the middle there would be a diminished return expected when making a qualified or partial confession, but if you can get past a certain threshold (which may not be possible for all people in all situations), the expected benefit shoots back up.