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by whimsicalism 1958 days ago
"On February 10th, a new Canonical Sales Representative contacted one of these developers via LinkedIn, with a poor choice of word. In light of this incident, Canonical will be reviewing its sales training and policies.""

My reading of this statement is that they are scapegoating the guy.
3 comments
johnsoft 1958 days ago
They are trying to scapegoat the guy. Thankfully, people are not falling for it.
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srndsnd 1958 days ago
I pulled up his LinkedIn. He started at Canoncial three weeks ago, fresh out of undergrad.

I really hope he comes out of this unscathed.

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cptskippy 1958 days ago
This. Typical Marketing and Sales tactics involve using the lowest level employee both because they're naive and because they have nothing to lose because they're already lowest on the pecking order.
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daveFNbuck 1958 days ago
I think an attempt to scapegoat would look more like "in violation of our established policies and rigorous training, a Canonical Sales Representative contacted one of these developers via LinkedIn."

The actual quote acknowledges that the company's training and policies are at fault. I'd also expect a scapegoat to be publicly fired or disciplined, did they say that elsewhere?

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jacurtis 1958 days ago
> "On February 10th, a new Canonical Sales Representative contacted one of these developers via LinkedIn, with a poor choice of word. In light of this incident, Canonical will be reviewing its sales training and policies."

This was their official statement regarding this matter. They provided this to The Register to defend their actions when this story got written up: https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/11/microsoft_azure_ubunt...

Edit: Yes so just to be clear, according to their official statement they are scapegoating the salesman. They call him a "new Canonical Sales Rep" to imply he isn't experienced and made a mistake. The only responsibility that Canonical took is that they will "review its sales training".

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daveFNbuck 1958 days ago
The only blame they gave him was that he had a poor choice of words. They're not saying he went against training or policy. They're not saying that he's being disciplined or fired.

Canonical said that they need to review their policies. To me, this implies that what he did was not against policy.

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young_unixer 1957 days ago
Poor guy must be having a hard time.
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