Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Recoil42 4480 days ago
>Pretty much a full admission that everything that Julie said is true.

No, it isn't. It's standard operating procedure pretty much everywhere to put employees on leave while an investigation is conducted. It shouldn't be construed as an admission at all.
2 comments
greenyoda 4480 days ago
"I would like to personally apologize to Julie" certainly sounds like an admission that the company wronged her.

And don't lawyers frequently tell their clients not to apologize (even if they feel they ought to), since that may be construed as an admission of wrongdoing in a subsequent legal proceeding?

link
bradleyjg 4480 days ago
That's the standard advice, but things are changing after recent empirical work found that doctors who apologized for mistakes ended up paying out less in malpractice claims than those who didn't.

The cheapest way to win a lawsuit is for it never to be filed in the first place.

link
ephemeralgomi 4480 days ago
If anything, "I would like to personally apologize to Julie" would mean that defunkt personally wronged her, not the company.

Maybe he's just sorry because she's obviously hurt and things didn't work out for the best?

link
greenyoda 4480 days ago
If a CEO writes on his company's web site, it's usually understood to mean that he is speaking on behalf of the company.

In any case, the company did wrong her by allowing an environment to exist in which these kinds of behaviors were tolerated. The actions that the CEO took today should have been taken a long time ago.

link
JeremyMorgan 4480 days ago
No but the apology says a lot...
link
Throwadev 4480 days ago
Maybe, but it could also be calculated: "If we don't apologize, the mob will cry for our blood even more, and we obviously can't do a non-apology apology, because they'd hate us for that too. Just be humble and supplicate to them so we can keep our IPO--I mean reputation intact."
link
sdesol 4480 days ago
The apology could be interpreted in a lot of ways. It could be we fucked up and we are sorry. Or it could be, Julie really blew things out of proportion/overreacted/misinterpreted things and we wish we were better able to react to her hysteria, and we apologize for not being able to.

GitHub is a business and they aren't dumb enough to not consult one or more lawyers before releasing their statement. If they are in the wrong, I would have to imagine their best play would be to compensate Julie behind the scene and have her formally come out and say GitHub is doing everything they can to ensure this doesn't happen again.

link