{"id":964,"date":"2022-11-12T09:08:11","date_gmt":"2022-11-12T14:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/?p=964"},"modified":"2022-11-12T09:08:11","modified_gmt":"2022-11-12T14:08:11","slug":"apologies-from-tech-leaders-this-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/2022\/11\/apologies-from-tech-leaders-this-week\/","title":{"rendered":"Apologies from Tech Leaders This Week"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/its-the-new-saying-among-tech-ceos-i-apologize-11668109641?mod=Searchresults_pos1&amp;page=1\">The Wall Street Journal yesterday<\/a> compiled apologies offered this week from leaders of several tech firms as they announced staffing cuts (\u201cTech Founders Apologize for Growing Too Fast\u201d).<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cI got this wrong and I take responsibility for that.\u201d Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook parent Meta Platforms, announcing that it would cut 11,000 workers.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cI grew the company size too quickly. I apologize for that.\u201d Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, after its new owner announced a 50% staff cut.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cI take responsibility for choosing to grow our team faster. And now I also own the decision\u2026resulting in this layoff.\u201d Jeff Lawson, CEO of Twilio, announcing a cut of 11% of the company\u2019s workforce.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cI\u2019m sorry. That\u2019s the biggest thing. I [screwed] up and should have done better.\u201d Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of troubled crypto exchange FTX, detailing its swift decline. Mr. Bankman-Fried offered another apology <a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/2022\/11\/11\/sam-bankman-fried-apology-ftx-bankruptcy\/\">as he resigned today<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These apologies meet the basic criteria: acknowledgement of wrongdoing \u2013 in this case, errors in judgment \u2013 coupled with personal responsibility. To their credit, the apology was followed by a period. If the speaker added more \u2013 as Mr. Zuckerberg did &#8211;, it sounded more like explanation than excuse, because he led with the apology, followed by a period.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s easier for corporations to issue statements in passive voice \u2013 \u201cmistakes were made.\u201d To their credit, these leaders spoke in first-person.<\/p>\n<p>Hopefully the full text of each apology also includes an acknowledgement of the harm done \u2013 in this case, to employees, many of whom were hired just in the last two years. Ideally, an apology would also include a statement of how the offender intends to fix things, and to avoid similar mistakes in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Wall Street Journal yesterday compiled apologies offered this week from leaders of several tech firms as they announced staffing cuts (\u201cTech Founders Apologize for Growing Too Fast\u201d). \u201cI got this wrong and I take responsibility for that.\u201d Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook parent Meta Platforms, announcing that it would cut 11,000 workers. \u201cI grew [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apologies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=964"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":965,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964\/revisions\/965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}