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It might have been better to simply reference the discussion without singling out the person involved. At the end of the day it was an organizational decision.

It might have been better to simply reference the discussion without singling out the person involved. At the end of the day it was an organizational decision. It's to GitLab's credit that there's enough transparency to even see this; I don't think it's too cool to turn that into a finger-pointing tool. As a developer, we don't do this with bugs. Perhaps bad business decisions are not any different. (For the record: I don't know this person, I am not this person, I'm pretty sure I don't know anyone at GitLab at all.)

hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
I understand your viewpoint, and to be honest I was on the fence about posting names, but I decided to for 2 important reasons: 1. First, the info is totally public and easily viewable in any case. 2. I think there is a danger in just saying "It was an organizational decision." When everyone is "responsible", then no one is. And in addition, both of the people mentioned are senior execs at the company. Having to deal with public scrutiny is one reason they get paid more. I do give GitLab a lot of credit for being transparent, and for (at least for now) backing off this decision. But I hope they are able to do a deeper root cause analysis of what went wrong. While obviously on a whole other order of magnitude, Boeing didn't fuck up because MCAS was a faulty piece of software, they fucked up because they let financial concerns take precedence over engineering ones. EDIT: one other thing, since I brought up 2 folks who I think made poor decisions, I should have pointed out Lukas Eipert (@leipert), who was the engineer who originally brought up his strong objections. Even more telling, when Eipert was asked to re-review the code change, he explicitly asked to be taken off the review - his sentiment was clear.
root_axis 7y ago
The whole point of transparency is to facilitate accountability, so it does not help to shy away from accountability in service of encouraging transparency. Of course, transparency is definitely something to laud, but it's only half of the ideal.
- jefftk 7y ago
  You're putting pressure on the norm that organizations should be sharing this sort of thing. If the norm were strong, the pressure wouldn't keep people from sharing similar things in the future. But since the norm is weaker we need to be careful to nourish it, not pushing it harder than it can stand. (I wrote more about this: https://www.jefftk.com/p/responsible-transparency-consumption https://www.jefftk.com/p/responsible-transparency-consumptio...)
darkmarmot 7y ago
The difference here is that bugs generally lack motive and agency. Bugs are often unintentional. When faced with bad intentions, it is imperative that a community name offenders. It is, as others replied, an important distinction for accountability.
Legogris 7y ago
This is a person in a C-level position. It's very much inherent in those positions to take responsibility in situations like this. If the comment had been made by a random fellow team-member without any authority, I would have been more inclined to agree.
cwkoss 7y ago
I think it's good that the poster named Paul Machle because now, this controversy will follow Paul Machle to Paul Machle's next business after Paul Machle is (hopefully) fired for doing severe damage to the reputation of Gitlab. Hello to future google searches looking up Paul Machle's employment history! Click "on: Gitlab ‘rethinking’ third-party telemetry" above to learn more! (also index by: san francisco sonoma chief financial officer CFO gitlab why fired controversy scandal illegal privacy telemetry incompetence opt-in opt-out transparency violation regulatory compliance dangerous data protection third-party surveillance tracking risk API TOS GDPR freeborders livescribe exigen kanisa northwestern university of california berkeley palo alto biography resume MBA sybase investors stock bay area silicon valley)
- hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
  This is not cool. Yes, I did copy the posting of Paul Machle's name, and as a senior executive (likely worth at least 10s of millions at Gitlab's last valuation), he has a lot of responsibility here, and he should own up to his mistake. But the point is still not to "blame" it on one or a couple people. If you look at that GitLab comment thread, it's clear that many GitLab employees had strong objections to the change: "I hereby declare my highest degree of objection to this change that I can humanly express." and "I agree with @leipert moral wise, I'm not happy with this change". So the question is why the company made the decision that ignored the right people and followed the wrong people (hint, it's HiPPO). Firing Paul Machle won't fix GitLab's problem. GitLab needs to figure out how to change its culture so that it listens to the right people, even if they're not the highest paid.
  - cwkoss 7y ago
    I sincerely believe that our society would be a much more just place if C-level executives were held accountable for profit motivated decisions that harm the privacy and security of their users. He is choosing to go override his engineers moral and legal objections in the hopes that it will make his stock go up in value by a few percentage points. This kind of greed motivated behavior is at the heart of nearly every evil brought upon society by silicon valley. Do I expect my post to actually affect Paul Machle in any way? Probably not, but I really hope it does. Society will be better off without these greed-at-any-cost types having positions of power.
caseyf7 7y ago
A CFO concerned about valuation and experienced in negotiating contracts should be thinking: 1) Fortune 1000 companies and the government will never accept this. I need to make sure the product team is designing a way to allow these customers to shut this off. 2) This is more risk than we will gain from tracking individual customers. We can't afford to indemnify our customers against these third-party tools. How will we address GDPR, CCPA and future regulations if we don't allow an opt-out?
krageon 7y ago
An organisation cannot make decisions. At the end of the day, it is always a person. In this case, maybe it was the wrong person. What is the trouble in questioning this process?

hn_throwaway_99 7y ago

I understand your viewpoint, and to be honest I was on the fence about posting names, but I decided to for 2 important reasons: 1. First, the info is totally public and easily viewable in any case. 2. I think there is a danger in just saying "It was an organizational decision." When everyone is "responsible", then no one is. And in addition, both of the people mentioned are senior execs at the company. Having to deal with public scrutiny is one reason they get paid more. I do give GitLab a lot of credit for being transparent, and for (at least for now) backing off this decision. But I hope they are able to do a deeper root cause analysis of what went wrong. While obviously on a whole other order of magnitude, Boeing didn't fuck up because MCAS was a faulty piece of software, they fucked up because they let financial concerns take precedence over engineering ones. EDIT: one other thing, since I brought up 2 folks who I think made poor decisions, I should have pointed out Lukas Eipert (@leipert), who was the engineer who originally brought up his strong objections. Even more telling, when Eipert was asked to re-review the code change, he explicitly asked to be taken off the review - his sentiment was clear.

root_axis 7y ago

The whole point of transparency is to facilitate accountability, so it does not help to shy away from accountability in service of encouraging transparency. Of course, transparency is definitely something to laud, but it's only half of the ideal.

jefftk 7y ago
You're putting pressure on the norm that organizations should be sharing this sort of thing. If the norm were strong, the pressure wouldn't keep people from sharing similar things in the future. But since the norm is weaker we need to be careful to nourish it, not pushing it harder than it can stand. (I wrote more about this: https://www.jefftk.com/p/responsible-transparency-consumption https://www.jefftk.com/p/responsible-transparency-consumptio...)

darkmarmot 7y ago

The difference here is that bugs generally lack motive and agency. Bugs are often unintentional. When faced with bad intentions, it is imperative that a community name offenders. It is, as others replied, an important distinction for accountability.

Legogris 7y ago

This is a person in a C-level position. It's very much inherent in those positions to take responsibility in situations like this. If the comment had been made by a random fellow team-member without any authority, I would have been more inclined to agree.

cwkoss 7y ago

I think it's good that the poster named Paul Machle because now, this controversy will follow Paul Machle to Paul Machle's next business after Paul Machle is (hopefully) fired for doing severe damage to the reputation of Gitlab. Hello to future google searches looking up Paul Machle's employment history! Click "on: Gitlab ‘rethinking’ third-party telemetry" above to learn more! (also index by: san francisco sonoma chief financial officer CFO gitlab why fired controversy scandal illegal privacy telemetry incompetence opt-in opt-out transparency violation regulatory compliance dangerous data protection third-party surveillance tracking risk API TOS GDPR freeborders livescribe exigen kanisa northwestern university of california berkeley palo alto biography resume MBA sybase investors stock bay area silicon valley)

hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
This is not cool. Yes, I did copy the posting of Paul Machle's name, and as a senior executive (likely worth at least 10s of millions at Gitlab's last valuation), he has a lot of responsibility here, and he should own up to his mistake. But the point is still not to "blame" it on one or a couple people. If you look at that GitLab comment thread, it's clear that many GitLab employees had strong objections to the change: "I hereby declare my highest degree of objection to this change that I can humanly express." and "I agree with @leipert moral wise, I'm not happy with this change". So the question is why the company made the decision that ignored the right people and followed the wrong people (hint, it's HiPPO). Firing Paul Machle won't fix GitLab's problem. GitLab needs to figure out how to change its culture so that it listens to the right people, even if they're not the highest paid.
- cwkoss 7y ago
  I sincerely believe that our society would be a much more just place if C-level executives were held accountable for profit motivated decisions that harm the privacy and security of their users. He is choosing to go override his engineers moral and legal objections in the hopes that it will make his stock go up in value by a few percentage points. This kind of greed motivated behavior is at the heart of nearly every evil brought upon society by silicon valley. Do I expect my post to actually affect Paul Machle in any way? Probably not, but I really hope it does. Society will be better off without these greed-at-any-cost types having positions of power.

caseyf7 7y ago

A CFO concerned about valuation and experienced in negotiating contracts should be thinking: 1) Fortune 1000 companies and the government will never accept this. I need to make sure the product team is designing a way to allow these customers to shut this off. 2) This is more risk than we will gain from tracking individual customers. We can't afford to indemnify our customers against these third-party tools. How will we address GDPR, CCPA and future regulations if we don't allow an opt-out?

krageon 7y ago

An organisation cannot make decisions. At the end of the day, it is always a person. In this case, maybe it was the wrong person. What is the trouble in questioning this process?