7 ms·

What does “taking full responsibility” even mean? Like people lose their livelihood and you can get away with “I take full responsibility”. Taking full respons

What does “taking full responsibility” even mean? Like people lose their livelihood and you can get away with “I take full responsibility”. Taking full responsibility mean taking a pay cut or stepping down or basically taking consequences for yourself first before others have to.

dougmwne 4y ago
That would be meaningless virtue signaling. Standard corporate speak.
- davezatch 4y ago
  What would non-“meaningless virtue signaling” look like to you? This seems quite decent as far as these things go.
  - dougmwne 4y ago
    Well, seeing as how saying that means nothing, adds nothing, and says nothing, then not saying it at all would be more meaningful. The non-corporate speak translation would be “I tried my best to make this company bigger and more valuable, but it didn’t work. Some of you will now need to be sacrificed, but not me!”
  - MerelyMortal 4y ago
    "I am responsible for overhiring/mismanaging, I'm sorry."
  - cbozeman 4y ago
    That's because you didn't come up in a time when people who fucked up like this would step down from their position for their clear and obviously failed leadership. You're not used to seeing what "full responsibility" actually is. Full responsibility is a samurai killing himself painfully while his best friend cuts off his head to end his suffering. That's full responsibility. This is, "I fucked up guys, here's 3-6 months pay and some benes... my bad. And yeah I know I fucked up last year too, but I took full responsibility then as well, so it's all good..."
    - dougmwne 4y ago
      Yes, that is a good image. I don't think litteral seppuku is called for (though it is a helpful reminder of what shame has looked like in the past), just that people are getting a bit tired of executives saying "I take full responsibility for this failure," while getting handed a giant bonus, a pat on the back from the board and shareholders and another biz mag feature.
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    He quits / pay cut. Something where his actions affect him
    - lowercased 4y ago
      We don't know that he hasn't taken a pay cut. Posting about it might just come across as self-serving, but then not posting about it makes it seem like he's not doing it. Lose-lose, it seems. And... I suspect whatever he's doing is also affecting him emotionally/mentally, and... to some extent career-wise. Taking these sorts of public steps may make it harder to be entrusted to CEO someplace else in future. Given patreon specifically, I doubt he's planning to leave and go CEO someplace else, but overall, there's no easy outs in scenarios like this. He'll be getting second-guessed and pilloried regardless of what steps he takes.
  - remram 4y ago
    Removing that meaningless sentence, or replacing it with an apology.
    - bolyarche 4y ago
  - rchaud 4y ago
    Putting your money where your mouth is. Resignation and public, in-person apology like they do in Japan. Better yet, refuse to take a bonus, not that the board should award one. If the board awards one anyway, contribute 100% of it to helping laid off employees.
- gausswho 4y ago
  The rest of the letter reads well to me. He should have avoided that phrase given how pilloried it's been recently, with reason. But that doesn't take away from the generous actions he's fought for for the departed.
bombcar 4y ago
It's a far sight better than some of the "the employees we let go were worse than worthless, likely the spawn of Satan himself" memos you see.
- bagels 4y ago
  "dumb dolphins"
stu2b50 4y ago
It means that the employees are being let go because he did a bad job, not that they were low performing or that other employee performances caused patreon to perform better. It doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things but it’s just that he is claiming culpability for all of the ills patreon is experiencing.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
dilyevsky 4y ago
Corpspeak for “your call is very important to us, all our operators are currently busy…”
rdl 4y ago
The main significance here is "please hire the people we're letting go as if they were normal Patreon employees you'd want to poach; they weren't let go for performance or other individual reasons".
- cmeacham98 4y ago
  This is what a layoff means no? My understanding was "Fired = Your Fault" and "Laid Off = Your Employer's Fault". Is it possible to be "laid off" for performance reasons?
  - phpisthebest 4y ago
    some companies have a policy to layoff the bottom x% of "lowest performers" so yes it is possible to be laid off for performance reasons. For example "The bottom 10% of salesmen by sales volume"
  - TheCondor 4y ago
    Yeah, absolutely. A company finds itself in a situation where it needs to reduce headcount for reasons. Do you a) just role the dice and randomly pick who goes? or b) Have managers rank their performers and use it to get rid of the lower performers or protect their most valuable people? In a case like this is means some variation of "you're too expensive for what you do for us."
- unity1001 4y ago
  They seem to have contracted a placement company to do that.
  - nosianu 4y ago
    Yes, and the parent's point is that companies that end up looking at those people's resumes are going to know that they were not let go because of poor performance. What the parent said.
unity1001 4y ago
Nobody looks like they are going to lose their livelihood over this: https://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack https://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack 3 months' of pay + longer depending on tenure at the company. Healthcare until the end of the year. Mental care up to 6 months. They contracted a placement company to place the laid off staff to other companies in the sector. A lot of those people will already get hooked up by a company within a week or so, even without the placement company being able to take action. This looks as decent as layoffs go.
- backspace_ 4y ago
  Why was an Instagram post shared instead of the blog post on patreon?
  - unity1001 4y ago
    That's the choice of the person who posted the Instagram post at HN instead of the actual blog post that was posted before the Instagram post, obviously.
- awb 4y ago
  > Nobody looks like they are going to lose their livelihood over this We don’t know everyone’s unique situation, even if they did go beyond what most companies do.
  - nomel 4y ago
    No. That's not the social contract for employment. It's dangerous to think it is. There's a mutual need from both parties. When that need changes, both parties are free to respond. Forcing a company to keep someone would be just as bad as forcing someone to stay. What we also don't know is the companies financial situation. Keeping people on when they can't be afforded can be a way to make a company completely collapse. I was in two startups that would have collapsed completely, without layoffs, around the time of the last recession. This is why the "keep x months of salary" are rules you strictly follow.
saos 4y ago
He said the same thing last year lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV-3GgU6rlo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV-3GgU6rlo It seems to be what most CEO are saying lately.
- cbozeman 4y ago
  It's like people didn't read the statement at all. He clearly says they're going to invest more into engineering and some other shit... so it's not about money. They're going to spend more fucking money. This sounds like a bunch of people got their jobs automated away through algorithms or intelligent systems or just whatever innovation you wanna chalk it up to, and they redundant to the company, so they gotta go. This is why I will never be a CEO. I'd just come right out and say, "17% of you are expendable and I had your jobs replaced by scripts and a few machines. I'm going to use that money to buy more machines, hire more brilliant engineers, and see what percentage of the company I can replace by next year."
  - rchaud 4y ago
    Forget about CEO, could you even be a competent manager if that's how you think?
    - cbozeman 4y ago
      I hate to be the one to break this to you, but this is how an extraordinarily large amount of high-level individuals think - they just won't admit it. If you're able to automate a large portion of your workforce, why wouldn't you? You'll be rewarded for it in every aspect. You'll be praised by the Board of Directors for cutting costs and improving productivity (since algorithms and robots don't have to sleep, never get tired, never call in sick, never get drunk and shit in their husband's bed, etc.). You'll be praised by Wall Street as a "visionary, technologically-minded thinker / leader". There's zero downside for you. There's enormous downside for parts of society. The difference is, I'm willing to admit that when I do this, it's directly to my benefit.
      - 4y ago
jstx1 4y ago
> What does “taking full responsibility” even mean? It means "I'm not blaming anyone else for this". Which might not mean much but it's probably better than the alternatives.
julienb_sea 4y ago
He's taking responsibility for over-hiring relative to the needs of his business, and taking corrective action for the long term health and viability of the business. This is the right thing to do. Yes, it sucks for the people who lose their jobs, but unfortunately some risk is always involved in an employment arrangement. It would be far more unfortunate if Patreon overspent to the point that their business had to close, as that would affect their entire userbase and entire employee base.
- NoFactualActual 4y ago
  > He's taking responsibility...and taking corrective action for the long term health and viability of the business. Maybe this is just a language thing, but in my world "taking responsibility" involves some action to personally shoulder the pain of the layoffs beyond saying "my bad". I'd expect it'd at least begin with resignation in this case. Just like you can't just announce "I declare bankruptcy" to shrug off debts.
  - ajkjk 4y ago
    The post includes tons of details about complicated things Patreon is doing to help out the people affected. Do those count for nothing to you? It feels like you are insisting not on "support" or "generosity" but on "sacrifice".
    - db579 4y ago
      Those are things the company is doing to take responsibility, not him personally which is what his statement should imply.
      - ajkjk 4y ago
        I tend to think that non-profit-maximizing actions of a company are almost entirely due to top-down leadership, so I would give him credit for those actions.
      - weego 4y ago
nscalf 4y ago
Taking full responsibility used to look like getting fired for poor planning. Now taking full responsibility means "I say in public that this is my fault" versus trying to push the blame off.
dlandis 4y ago
Agreed. That part was not well written. It seems like a vacuous, self-important phrase unless it is immediately tied to something else like, "I take full responsibility and as such I will be <taking the following meaningful actions or stepping down, etc>.
Thaxll 4y ago
If every CEO would be sanctionned for every situations no one would want to be CEO.
cush 4y ago
You might be overthinking... Jack over-hired. That's it. Doesn't really warrant a CEO stepping down. He's simply empathetic and wants to let people know that the employees are good to hire, and Patreon is still doing well as a business.
guntars 4y ago
Even if they didn't bend over backwards to make sure everyone lands okay, saying "lose their livelihood" is a bit much, no? These are not peasants losing their land, rather they're highly paid professionals that should have no issue finding work. Shameful plug - we're hiring at Vitally :) Feel free to reach out in the DMs.

dougmwne 4y ago

That would be meaningless virtue signaling. Standard corporate speak.

davezatch 4y ago
What would non-“meaningless virtue signaling” look like to you? This seems quite decent as far as these things go.
- dougmwne 4y ago
  Well, seeing as how saying that means nothing, adds nothing, and says nothing, then not saying it at all would be more meaningful. The non-corporate speak translation would be “I tried my best to make this company bigger and more valuable, but it didn’t work. Some of you will now need to be sacrificed, but not me!”
- MerelyMortal 4y ago
  "I am responsible for overhiring/mismanaging, I'm sorry."
- cbozeman 4y ago
  That's because you didn't come up in a time when people who fucked up like this would step down from their position for their clear and obviously failed leadership. You're not used to seeing what "full responsibility" actually is. Full responsibility is a samurai killing himself painfully while his best friend cuts off his head to end his suffering. That's full responsibility. This is, "I fucked up guys, here's 3-6 months pay and some benes... my bad. And yeah I know I fucked up last year too, but I took full responsibility then as well, so it's all good..."
  - dougmwne 4y ago
    Yes, that is a good image. I don't think litteral seppuku is called for (though it is a helpful reminder of what shame has looked like in the past), just that people are getting a bit tired of executives saying "I take full responsibility for this failure," while getting handed a giant bonus, a pat on the back from the board and shareholders and another biz mag feature.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  He quits / pay cut. Something where his actions affect him
  - lowercased 4y ago
    We don't know that he hasn't taken a pay cut. Posting about it might just come across as self-serving, but then not posting about it makes it seem like he's not doing it. Lose-lose, it seems. And... I suspect whatever he's doing is also affecting him emotionally/mentally, and... to some extent career-wise. Taking these sorts of public steps may make it harder to be entrusted to CEO someplace else in future. Given patreon specifically, I doubt he's planning to leave and go CEO someplace else, but overall, there's no easy outs in scenarios like this. He'll be getting second-guessed and pilloried regardless of what steps he takes.
- remram 4y ago
  Removing that meaningless sentence, or replacing it with an apology.
  - bolyarche 4y ago
- rchaud 4y ago
  Putting your money where your mouth is. Resignation and public, in-person apology like they do in Japan. Better yet, refuse to take a bonus, not that the board should award one. If the board awards one anyway, contribute 100% of it to helping laid off employees.
gausswho 4y ago
The rest of the letter reads well to me. He should have avoided that phrase given how pilloried it's been recently, with reason. But that doesn't take away from the generous actions he's fought for for the departed.

bombcar 4y ago

It's a far sight better than some of the "the employees we let go were worse than worthless, likely the spawn of Satan himself" memos you see.

bagels 4y ago
"dumb dolphins"

stu2b50 4y ago

It means that the employees are being let go because he did a bad job, not that they were low performing or that other employee performances caused patreon to perform better. It doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things but it’s just that he is claiming culpability for all of the ills patreon is experiencing.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

dilyevsky 4y ago

Corpspeak for “your call is very important to us, all our operators are currently busy…”

rdl 4y ago

The main significance here is "please hire the people we're letting go as if they were normal Patreon employees you'd want to poach; they weren't let go for performance or other individual reasons".

cmeacham98 4y ago
This is what a layoff means no? My understanding was "Fired = Your Fault" and "Laid Off = Your Employer's Fault". Is it possible to be "laid off" for performance reasons?
- phpisthebest 4y ago
  some companies have a policy to layoff the bottom x% of "lowest performers" so yes it is possible to be laid off for performance reasons. For example "The bottom 10% of salesmen by sales volume"
- TheCondor 4y ago
  Yeah, absolutely. A company finds itself in a situation where it needs to reduce headcount for reasons. Do you a) just role the dice and randomly pick who goes? or b) Have managers rank their performers and use it to get rid of the lower performers or protect their most valuable people? In a case like this is means some variation of "you're too expensive for what you do for us."
unity1001 4y ago
They seem to have contracted a placement company to do that.
- nosianu 4y ago
  Yes, and the parent's point is that companies that end up looking at those people's resumes are going to know that they were not let go because of poor performance. What the parent said.

unity1001 4y ago

Nobody looks like they are going to lose their livelihood over this: https://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack https://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack 3 months' of pay + longer depending on tenure at the company. Healthcare until the end of the year. Mental care up to 6 months. They contracted a placement company to place the laid off staff to other companies in the sector. A lot of those people will already get hooked up by a company within a week or so, even without the placement company being able to take action. This looks as decent as layoffs go.

backspace_ 4y ago
Why was an Instagram post shared instead of the blog post on patreon?
- unity1001 4y ago
  That's the choice of the person who posted the Instagram post at HN instead of the actual blog post that was posted before the Instagram post, obviously.
awb 4y ago
> Nobody looks like they are going to lose their livelihood over this We don’t know everyone’s unique situation, even if they did go beyond what most companies do.
- nomel 4y ago
  No. That's not the social contract for employment. It's dangerous to think it is. There's a mutual need from both parties. When that need changes, both parties are free to respond. Forcing a company to keep someone would be just as bad as forcing someone to stay. What we also don't know is the companies financial situation. Keeping people on when they can't be afforded can be a way to make a company completely collapse. I was in two startups that would have collapsed completely, without layoffs, around the time of the last recession. This is why the "keep x months of salary" are rules you strictly follow.

saos 4y ago

He said the same thing last year lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV-3GgU6rlo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV-3GgU6rlo It seems to be what most CEO are saying lately.

cbozeman 4y ago
It's like people didn't read the statement at all. He clearly says they're going to invest more into engineering and some other shit... so it's not about money. They're going to spend more fucking money. This sounds like a bunch of people got their jobs automated away through algorithms or intelligent systems or just whatever innovation you wanna chalk it up to, and they redundant to the company, so they gotta go. This is why I will never be a CEO. I'd just come right out and say, "17% of you are expendable and I had your jobs replaced by scripts and a few machines. I'm going to use that money to buy more machines, hire more brilliant engineers, and see what percentage of the company I can replace by next year."
- rchaud 4y ago
  Forget about CEO, could you even be a competent manager if that's how you think?
  - cbozeman 4y ago
    I hate to be the one to break this to you, but this is how an extraordinarily large amount of high-level individuals think - they just won't admit it. If you're able to automate a large portion of your workforce, why wouldn't you? You'll be rewarded for it in every aspect. You'll be praised by the Board of Directors for cutting costs and improving productivity (since algorithms and robots don't have to sleep, never get tired, never call in sick, never get drunk and shit in their husband's bed, etc.). You'll be praised by Wall Street as a "visionary, technologically-minded thinker / leader". There's zero downside for you. There's enormous downside for parts of society. The difference is, I'm willing to admit that when I do this, it's directly to my benefit.
    - 4y ago

jstx1 4y ago

> What does “taking full responsibility” even mean? It means "I'm not blaming anyone else for this". Which might not mean much but it's probably better than the alternatives.

julienb_sea 4y ago

He's taking responsibility for over-hiring relative to the needs of his business, and taking corrective action for the long term health and viability of the business. This is the right thing to do. Yes, it sucks for the people who lose their jobs, but unfortunately some risk is always involved in an employment arrangement. It would be far more unfortunate if Patreon overspent to the point that their business had to close, as that would affect their entire userbase and entire employee base.

NoFactualActual 4y ago
> He's taking responsibility...and taking corrective action for the long term health and viability of the business. Maybe this is just a language thing, but in my world "taking responsibility" involves some action to personally shoulder the pain of the layoffs beyond saying "my bad". I'd expect it'd at least begin with resignation in this case. Just like you can't just announce "I declare bankruptcy" to shrug off debts.
- ajkjk 4y ago
  The post includes tons of details about complicated things Patreon is doing to help out the people affected. Do those count for nothing to you? It feels like you are insisting not on "support" or "generosity" but on "sacrifice".
  - db579 4y ago
    Those are things the company is doing to take responsibility, not him personally which is what his statement should imply.
    - ajkjk 4y ago
      I tend to think that non-profit-maximizing actions of a company are almost entirely due to top-down leadership, so I would give him credit for those actions.
    - weego 4y ago

nscalf 4y ago

Taking full responsibility used to look like getting fired for poor planning. Now taking full responsibility means "I say in public that this is my fault" versus trying to push the blame off.

dlandis 4y ago

Agreed. That part was not well written. It seems like a vacuous, self-important phrase unless it is immediately tied to something else like, "I take full responsibility and as such I will be <taking the following meaningful actions or stepping down, etc>.

Thaxll 4y ago

If every CEO would be sanctionned for every situations no one would want to be CEO.

cush 4y ago

You might be overthinking... Jack over-hired. That's it. Doesn't really warrant a CEO stepping down. He's simply empathetic and wants to let people know that the employees are good to hire, and Patreon is still doing well as a business.

guntars 4y ago

Even if they didn't bend over backwards to make sure everyone lands okay, saying "lose their livelihood" is a bit much, no? These are not peasants losing their land, rather they're highly paid professionals that should have no issue finding work. Shameful plug - we're hiring at Vitally :) Feel free to reach out in the DMs.