[bbyars]

Should we have said nothing? For the past several months Aaron has led the development of an online petition application working with several senior programmers at ThoughtWorks for a project we paid for ourselves, because we believed in his cause, and we believed in Aaron. Friends of Aaron who worked with him built rememberaaronsw.com because they are hurt and they wanted to honor the man in the best way they knew how. This wasn't a group of people trying to capitalize on a public figure. This was his friends and colleagues.

I'm sorry if this came off the wrong way to you, but you should realize that the message of internet freedom doesn't necessarily help us sell our services in a lot of places.

[sokoloff]

For me, that last paragraph ("About Thoughtworks") is what left a poor taste in my mouth. Up until that point, I personally thought it was in good taste. If someone doesn't know who ThoughtWorks is and needs to know, I assure you that they'll find it via a search engine. I'd also drop the contacts phone numbers as well.

The addition of that About TW paragraph, no matter how "standard" in a PR setting, is incredibly inappropriate in my view and makes it appear that you are taking the occasion of an employee's suicide to market ThoughtWorks. Don't do that.

[candeira]

Try to see it from the other side. The "About Thoughtworks" is just how companies talk.

The fact that it looks exactly like an official ThoughtWorks PR broadside makes it even clearer which side the company is on. No "this is the private opinion of colleagues/friends", but "this is how strongly the company feels about this".

I say well done.

[bbyars]

Understood, but it looks like the About ThoughtWorks section is just part of the press release template (look through the previous press releases and you see the same thing). I don't think our website team was prepared with a template for this kind of statement.

[alexpopescu]

I would have actually appreciated more your comment above, then that cold press release.