
How to Apologize - hcayless
http://philomousos.blogspot.com/2012/03/how-to-apologize.html
======
DanielBMarkham
This is good, and I like it, but I wonder if we're not painting this in too
much black-and-white. It's certainly possible to feel sorry that you expressed
your opinions in ways that others found offensive, without feeling sorry you
had those opinions. In this case you are really sorry about your choice of
words, not the intent of your message. That's okay. It doesn't have to be one
way or the other.

I'm not going to try to defend these bozos, so let's try some crazy made-up
example.

For instance, I might have an opinion that we should bring back slavery. A
totally offensive opinion, yes, but dammit, I'm entitled to have it. In this
case I very well may be sorry that I brought it up on MLK day, or that I
interjected it in your discussion about feeding the poor, but I'm not really
sorry for feeling the way I do.

That's okay -- the part about differentiating between being sorry for being
rude and being sorry for ideas, not the part about supporting slavery. People
should never have to be sorry for expressing their opinions, only expressing
them poorly.

We need to make sure we are not trying to tell people how to think. We can
challenge them, call them out, ask them questions, demand an apology for their
being rude or offensive, yes, but we change people's thinking by gentle
persuasion, not by public mockery or lynch mobs. If we're not careful, the
only thing we're going to teach misogynistic youngsters is to bullshit on the
net better. And that's not good for anybody.

That's why the apology was weak -- because it was for the wrong reasons, shame
instead of understanding. (And I don't think beating them up in public further
is going to do much good. In fact, I think we've long past the point of
actually doing something useful with this story.)

Or to put this in a business context, it's okay to have policies people don't
like, and it's certainly appropriate to apologize if you've expressed your
policies in a way that offended people. But it's not okay for a mob to dictate
to you what your policies should be. They're two different things.

~~~
samth
> For instance, I might have an opinion that we should bring back slavery. A
> totally offensive opinion, yes, but dammit, I'm entitled to have it.

I think this is confusing two very different things. You are "entitled" to
have this opinion in that (a) you shouldn't be locked in prison for stating
this opinion and (b) I am not allowed to beat you up for having this opinion.
However, that opinion is _wrong_. You should stop having it, and if you
express it at work you will and should be fired.

I think this is exactly analogous to this case. Sqoot could have held a
successful hackathon if they didn't display their sexism in their ad copy, but
the root problem is the _sexism_ , not the ad copy. That's why the apology
rubs people the wrong way.

~~~
kyberias
> However, that opinion is wrong. You should stop having it, and if you
> express it at work you will and should be fired.

I think this opinion is wrong. If one expresses his opinion about slavery, he
should not be fired. Now that you had this wrong opinion about opinions,
should you be fired? From work? From Hacker News? Anywhere?

~~~
samth
Really? If someone at your job expressed the "opinion" that you, personally,
should be chained and sold as property, and that they should be allowed to
beat, rape, and murder you as they saw fit, that would be acceptable behavior
at your job?

Because that's what the OP was suggesting, except that they used the umbrella
term "slavery" to refer to it.

~~~
kyberias
Yes, really. The OP did not really say that. OP used the word "slavery" and
having opinions about slavery is totally different than saying that some
specific person should be murdered. If someone at my workplace would support
slavery, whatever that is by today's standards, I would probably feel that I
don't want to work with that person. And depending on that someone's role, his
employer might want to have a word with him and might ultimately have some
good grounds for terminating his contract. But just having opinions are rarely
a reason to fire someone. And that is just right (my opinion).

------
orblivion
I'm a bit torn on this whole issue, I wonder if somebody could give me some
perspective. There are two conflicting things I don't like here. In the first
place, I don't like when people are so sensitive that there's no room for a
harmless joke. In most cases I really would say "oh come on lighten up." On
the other hand, among us computer programmers, there's so much social
ineptness (and perhaps outright disrespect for women, but I'm giving the
benefit of the doubt because I really don't understand why it would be
particularly prevalent here, other than perhaps a result of ineptness) on the
part of the males that a lot of it really isn't so harmless. Not necessarily
because it sets out to make women uncomfortable, it's just _not funny_. And if
it's not genuinely funny, the only conclusion women (having better taste than
men, I hope I'm not sexist for saying so) can draw is that they're being
disrespected.

I feel like this joke is somewhere on the line. In a world where people aren't
putting pornography in their slide presentations for no apparent reason, maybe
we could take this joke at face value (ha ha, we're all sex deprived computer
nerds who would do anything to interact with women for a second). On the other
hand it's not particularly funny (and I didn't really get the joke before they
explained it), and in this world I can have some sympathy for the women.

I guess my ultimate point is, and I'd like to hear what others here think, I
hope it's not too late to turn this around, such the solution is more genuine
respect and tact so we can safely go back to actual harmless jokes, rather
than this turning into another "PC police" scenario that's going to start
making us uncomfortable for different reasons.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I can't and won't defend these guys, but I remember my teenage years, and I
remember being pretty shallow when it came to women. Looking around, I suspect
many other males were the same way.

I got over this by slowly growing up, not by having a crowd tell me I was an
ass. I think if the crowd had pressured me back then, I'd tell them to go jump
in a lake.

These guys were wrong, no two ways about it. My concern is that we've created
a system where kids can't go out and get drunk, make racy comments about girls
-- basically act like kids -- without the entire world coming down on their
head. Everything you do online lasts forever. That doesn't sound like a good
thing at all.

~~~
carlcoryell
There are many places in our society where kids can do stupid and immature
things but I don't think the adults in our engineering profession need to
support or sponsor them. I respect Heroku etc for pulling their sponsorship
dollars. I'm a huge fan of supporting adult standards of behavior to
participate in adult society and I have no patience for sexism in our field.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Perhaps I should have been clearer. You are correct. We can and should
encourage adult behavior. Heroku and the rest did the right thing -- from an
adult, socially-responsible position. There is nothing new about this, it's
the way professional groups have conducted themselves since forever.

From a longer-term view, this incident will still be around 50 years from now
when these guys are grandfathers. This is completely new and has never existed
before in the history of humanity.

I don't think it's an either-or situation. The immediate response could be
exactly correct and the long-term impact could be entirely out-of-whack.

~~~
anthuswilliams
This story won't be around in 50 years. We think it will because when we grew
up, our social flubs simply disappeared. Now they're around forever, but the
important thing is they don't exist in isolation.

This story, like all the embarrassing comments I have personally published in
forums across the internet, can for all intents and purposes be just as lost
to time in a deluge of data as it can in a drought.

A year from now, when one searches the names of one of these founders, or the
name of their company, this episode will not even appear in the first few
pages of Google search results. Perhaps for a person with a sufficiently
strong memory that he/she was specifically searching for this exact story, the
incident could be dredged up. But for the vast majority of humanity, probably
even those looking for some vague form of dirt on sqoot, the episode will have
vanished.

------
meterplech
The first thing I thought when reading this article is that it's a shame the
author chose this topic as his way of framing the post. If you remove the
focus completely from the potentially flame-war issue this is based on there
is some great advice in this article.

Specifically: "When I worked at Lulu, Bob Young used to say that whenever you
screw up, it's actually a tremendous opportunity to win a customer's loyalty
by making it right."

Pretend the topic is a bug found or any customer job delayed/flubbed. This is
a great piece of advice. Generally engineering-types focus very much on
explaining what happened and not enough time on hearing the customer,
apologizing, and explaining that it won't happen again. It's our natural
personality as problem solvers.

But I've seen how apologizing for even a major mistake can win loyalty, get
help fixing the problem, and even make deals bigger/longer. "Wait, that
problem happened because we are sending the data to you in that convoluted
way? We should either fix that or work together on how to make it easier for
you to support it." If done right, the relationship will become more
collaborative (your ultimate goal) and the customer will appreciate you more.

~~~
hcayless
I framed the post around Sqoot's apology because that was what gave me the
idea. I didn't intend to slap them around any more than they have been. It's
just an example of what I think was meant to be a genuine apology that fell
totally flat.

But yes, my central point is that when someone (or the whole Internet) is
pissed off at you, you have their attention and a chance to turn things
around, if you have the right goals in mind. Nurturing your relationship with
your customer(s) or audience is likely more important than saving face or
winning an argument.

~~~
meterplech
I wasn't knocking you at all- sorry if it seemed that way! I was merely saying
it's unfortunate that the discussion is going to focus too much on what made
you think of this post (this particularly hot-button issue around women in
tech), instead of the post itself, in which you included some really useful
and practical advice for everyone. Proper apologies to win customer loyalty is
a huge and important idea.

------
jeswin
"Women: Need another beer? Let one of our friendly (female) event staff get
that for you."

I suppose it varies with culture, but I can't imagine any of the women I know
getting upset about that line.

So a genuine question, are we getting to a point where you need to think so
much before actually saying anything? Personally, even if I were the butt of a
mildly racist joke I would probably enjoy the joke than be offended.

~~~
Jem
As a woman, and a woman in tech at that, I'm not /upset/ by it, but it does
bother me.

It bothers me that the organisers assume the attendees will all be straight
males and therefore interested in the fact that the servers are women. It
bothers me that it plays on the antiquated notion that "women are there to
serve". It bothers me that women are being treated as a 'perk', full stop.

~~~
cheez
But for men, the ultimate perk is a good woman. Is there something wrong with
wanting women around? I've seen actual sexism in the workplace but I don't
think wanting women around a sausage fest is sexist. It's being male.

~~~
kaens
_But for men, the ultimate perk is a good woman._

I'm a man, a mostly hetero-normative one, who disagrees.

The idea that there is something _undesirable_ about a situation that gets it
called a _sausage fest_ is not about being male per se, it's part of a very
large set of assumptions about gender and sexuality that are fairly pervasive
and ingrained and present enough that they are part of identity for a lot of
people.

The idea that the term _sausage fest_ , and the idea that it implies -- that
there too many penises in the room and not enough vaginas, and that this is
making the penises sad, in the context of a _hackathon_ is sexist. It has a
sexist nature. It makes crass and sweeping assumptions about a group of people
who are passionate about a topic on the basis of their genitalia, when there
are plenty of people with other sets of it that share a passion for the topic,
and no ones genitalia is relevant whatsoever to the purpose of the event.

~~~
cheez
Dude, we work all day with a bunch of other men. It's boring as hell.

If we can get some women in the context of our passions, that is awesome.

You sound like someone who is apologetic about their manhood, to be honest.
It's unfortunate. Look up Bill Maher's rant about the feminizing of America.

~~~
kaens
While Bill Maher may or may not make good points, I'm not naive enough to
think that he's discovered some sort of thing intrinsic to everyone with a
penis, nor to think that he has some great insight on sex, sexuality, gender
or much of anything else.

I don't work all day with "a bunch of other men". From a literal standpoint,
my workplace is about 1/3 female. It's a small shop, but out of the 4 people
writing code there, one of them is female. Even if that wasn't the case, it
wouldn't be something I even thought about too much, because when I deal with
people I tend to view them as people, not as points on a gender scale.

Maybe I'm just much more left-brained than most people I know. I get absorbed
in my work, and I get absorbed in discussing it with peers, regardless of
their ... well, anything. A large part of the time, I don't know if the people
I'm talking to in those discussions are male or female or whatnot. Their sex
is, frankly irrelevant when it comes to the stuff we're doing. Variety and
diversity are good to have, but _I don't think humans are so static as to be
boring_ because of a ratio skew. Because they're people. Not genders or sexes.

I'm not "apologetic about my manhood". I'm "someone who treats humans in the
same manner unless they give me reason not to, and calls out pointless things
when he sees them". I also do not happen to fall very much in line with
western male stereotypes. I never have. I was not raised in anything _near_ a
home that thought that feminism, particularly the more recent waves of
feminism, had any sort of legitimacy, I know about that school of thought, and
others that have had influence on me because I read a lot of books as a kid.

Something being sexist doesn't mean that someone is necessarily consciously or
purposefully stomping on or belittling some other group of people. It means
that there are needless disparities about something based on sex. Thinking
that a conference would be better _just_ because it had more women or less
women or more men or less men or more hot vapid men or women or more people of
sex B for no reason other than because there aren't any there is sexist.
"Sausage fest" has pejorative terms. It's normally used to refer to keggers,
not hackathons. People who go to keggers _at least_ can know that part of the
reason people go to alchohol-fueled parties is to find sexual partners, giving
at least a reason for the term. Not hackathons.

There's nothing intrinsic about having a penis and testicles that makes me
less of a person if I don't fit into the behavioral profile of the ideal
western male. There are 7 _billion_ people, even assuming biological trends in
behavior directly linked to sex that are unaffected by cultural pressure,
that's more than enough for it to be ridiculous to try to shove all of any
group of people into an absolutist box, and tell them they sound like they
feel sorry about some intrinsic thing about them.

If you're getting bored just because someone with different jibbly bits isn't
around, I would suggest finding something that isn't so boring to do. The
world's a fascinating place.

------
deanproxy
> Women: Need another beer? Let one of our friendly (female) event staff get
> that for you.

I must have missed this entire story, but is this really a line that people
are upset over?

Can someone explain why? Maybe I'm not reading into it enough or there is some
missing context? To me it seems like they're just saying another female will
get them a beer if they want one. How is that offensive?

~~~
hythloday
Yeah, that quote is out-of-context to the point of disingenuousness. Women are
listed as one of the "great perks" that (male?) attendees can enjoy:

[https://img.skitch.com/20120320-fmsc5mciy8e7n3nxhakmegxxg9.p...](https://img.skitch.com/20120320-fmsc5mciy8e7n3nxhakmegxxg9.png)

~~~
deanproxy
Ah, Thank you! That definitely brings a lot more context into it and I can see
how some may get offended by it.

I still question whether this is offensive to myself. Compared to the ads I
hear on the radio and TV for local clubs and bars and how they're touting
their female attendance or "hot bar tenders" as a reason to come, this seems
relatively tame to that...

~~~
hythloday
Don't take this as a dig at you, but I think that's a very revealing
comparison. A hackathon is a professional event; people go there to code, not
to hook up. Men are largely immune to being propositioned in professional
spaces, partly because it just doesn't happen and partly because men perceive
public space as "theirs" (there's research to show that women don't). So the
cost to men of presenting this as a sexualized event is virtually nil or
slightly positive. The cost to women, on the other hand, is phenomenal,
because not only does it signal that this is an event where they'll be
assessed by their tits rather than ability, but that the organizers of the
event are likely to be indifferent or overtly hostile to problems of sexual
harassment.

This is often a gedanken experiment that's often as distracting as it is
illumination, but (assuming you're a straight man), imagine that 90% of
programmers are gay or bisexual, and that one of the few hackathons available
to you advertises itself by promising that "beefcake hunks" will fetch you
drinks (which is just a couple of points down from the "massage" perk). Would
that change your perception of the expected atmosphere of the hackathon?

------
Argorak
Sqoot now has a statement on their blog that is better, especially when it
comes to the "humor" part:

<http://blog.sqoot.com/we-can-do-better-an-apology-from-sqoot>

------
kristiandupont
This is a very interesting topic. The thing is that an apology doesn't really
make any sense unless the person offering it is actually sorry (for what
happened, not that they got caught).

I see three different kinds of cases:

1) You do something that has a consequence that you didn't intend and you
immediately regret it, like spilling coffee on someone.

2) You say or do something that you don't find offensive until you realize
that the other person has a reason to be offended ("my mother is a redhead,
you know!")

3) You say or do something you don't find offensive, but the other person
does.

Now for #1, the apology will be sincere and it's easy to offer. With #2 it's
harder but still possible but if like #3 you basically don't think you did
anything wrong but just think the other party is uptight or over sensitive, it
doesn't really make any sense to make an apology. People do all the time
obviously and it can be the only way to move forward.

~~~
hullibu
I am not known for being very politically correct, but I disagree with your
assessment of #3. Some people just don't know where the line is and
continually cross it, and that is not ok, but they shouldn't fail to apologize
and they should try to learn from their mistakes if possible, and if not
possible they should avoid situations that lead to #3.

------
CoffeeDregs
I was fairly surprised to read a decent explanation of how to apologize. I
took a fairly wide ranging linguistics class a few years ago and an apology
was explained as follows:

    
    
        * An apology is not something you "say"; 
          it is a *commitment* to the following:
        1) You explain that you understand the situation you 
           produced and why you did it.
        2) You understand how it harmed the other party.
        3) You explain how you will prevent it happening again.
    

Again, an apology is a _commitment_. If you don't commit, then you're just
saying stuff and are not apologizing. And if you try to commit without
explaining the 3 parts, then the commitment is worthless.

Sqoot seems to have failed on all 3 requirements and so their commitment is
worthless. For the most part, they merely described what happened, which
everyone already knew.

------
losvedir
What if there had been a line immediately following with the genders reversed,
with attractive serving men as a perk?

Are people upset with the objectification of women, or the assumption that
women wouldn't be participants and aren't the audience of that flyer?

You need to know what the offensive issue is before you can apologize and
correct it.

Does the apology go more "We're sorry we contributed to the objectification of
a group of people, treating them not as an intelligent whole, but simply as a
pretty object to be admired, like a piece of art, while the others work."

Or should it be along the lines of "We're sorry we made women feel excluded by
targeting solely men in our advertisement, perpetuating the idea that we don't
expect women to be participants in the tech event."

To me, I think the latter issue is the major one to be solved. It's something
that can be easily corrected, and is specific to the tech industry (and other
male-dominated fields).

I reject the idea that the two issues can be conflated, that the very practice
of objectification _is_ what makes women feel unwelcome. (Correct me if I'm
wrong?) My internal counterexample I'm using is how I'd feel if the flyer
offered as a perk "Men: Tired from your long hack-a-thon? Have our hot,
muscled men bring you a refreshment or carry you to the lounge area to take a
power nap." It's human nature to enjoy attractive people, landscapes, art,
etc, and I, as a man, don't feel worse off knowing that women might enjoy
ogling attractive men.

~~~
creamyhorror
Think of it this way: if you were a African-American, or a Hispanic, or an
Asian, would you be happy to attend the event if one perk was "Asians: Tired
from your long hack-a-thon? Have our hot Asians bring you a refreshment or
carry you to the lounge area to take a power nap."

What does this reflect? Simply that objectification has much more of an effect
when the group being objectified is not the dominant or majority one. Sure you
don't care if men are being objectified, but you very well might if you were
an ethnic minority and you've been enduring overt or subtle racism all your
life. It's the same with women, who in many places still put up with
objectification and obviously don't like it.

------
copious
Perhaps the most unfortunate outcome of this whole incident is that Squoot--a
heretofore completely unknown startup--has gotten a substantial amount of
exposure. Thanks to their bigotry, the percentage of the tech world that knows
of them has gone up dramatically. What a shame.

~~~
rsynnott
Well, yes, but "oh, those are the sexists who can't spell and are bad at
admitting responsibility" is not necessarily the reputation they'd like.

------
MattBearman
Very good article, I'd never really thought about it before, but the 5 points
listed would definitely make me feel a lot better about an apology from a
company.

I'd also love to see a company's apology where the 'how we will fix it'
statement is "I shall be entering rehab tomorrow morning"

------
rbarooah
This a good analysis.

I wonder though whether over time this kind of understanding is just going to
become a formula or best practice that ends up being handled by a PR
department.

If it does, then how will we detect an authentic apology from a formulaic one?

~~~
dominicrodger
Presumably only by observing a company over time: does their behaviour change?
Have they kept their promises for how they're going to fix it?

~~~
tbsdy
An excellent point... but to be honest, if every company reacted like this
when they screwed up it wouldn't actually be a bad thing :-)

~~~
rbarooah
It would if it was just a rote statement that they hadn't thought about.

A bit like the call centers which effusively state "I'd be more than happy to
help you with that" after each thing you say to them.

~~~
tbsdy
I don't think they can do rote statements. They have to explain what caused
the problem, explain what they are going to do to prevent the issue occuring
again and admit that they cocked up. Nothing really very rote about that!

------
SystemOut
This is pretty close to the apology model as it was told to me via
leadership/management training at one of my previous employers.

It works amazingly well in practice. Basically, people appreciate when you're
honest about your mistakes because they make them too. I've had more than one
of my engineers say that they respected me more by admitting fault.

And for those that don't appreciate the honesty? Well, you can't please
everyone. I just don't worry about them because there are too few hours in the
day to care about it.

------
benohear
My biggest problem is that the joke wasn't particularly funny.

I grew up on Hara-Kiri, Reiser, Vuillemin and co, and later Derek and Clive.
They are all way, way more offensive, but they are _really_ funny and also
quite aware that they are going to piss people off.

What I find disturbing in both the joke and the apology is the surprise that
people would get upset. Basically that's it's perfectly normal.

------
hzay
"They probably shouldn't quote the line that made everyone mad (it will make
the readers mad all over again)."

That doesn't sound very honest, and I thought the post was about being honest
while apologizing. I think quoting the offensive line shows spunk. One could
easily argue that not citing it and hiding behind vague words like "something
stupid and sexist" will offend people.

------
seclorum
"We're sorry we inferred that only female tenders would be there to service
you. Male tenders will be there to serve beer, also. We want you to focus on
code, so whatever you need, just let us know and we'll help you get there
(within reason, of course..)"

------
swombat
Relevant: [http://uncrunched.com/2012/02/12/im-so-so-sorry-heres-my-
bel...](http://uncrunched.com/2012/02/12/im-so-so-sorry-heres-my-belly-now-
please-move-on/)

------
lwhi
Apologies are usually self-serving.

Step one .. realise what you've done wrong. Step two .. don't do it again.

------
TomGullen
If people need a guide for an apology then I would question it's sincerity.

~~~
perlgeek
I don't. You can be really sorry, but have a hard time finding the words to
say it.

~~~
mistercow
You can also be really sorry, and have an easy time finding the _wrong_ words
to say it. It's a shame that being sincere and sounding sincere are so weakly
correlated, while our monkey brains have us so convinced that they are
strongly correlated.

------
vu0tran
Am I the only one that thought their comment was in good humor? Maybe my sense
of humor is twisted, but having attended many hackathons, I got a good chuckle
as it was obvious that many of them turn out to be sausage fests. I felt this
comment poked fun at this.

~~~
j_baker
I can see why someone who meant well could have said this without realizing it
was offensive, but that doesn't change the fact that it genuinely _was_
offensive.

------
grandalf
And the smug "sum it up" blog posts start to appear like flies after a corpse.

------
cheez
I like chicks. What's the problem with chicks?

Oh right, I can't say that I like chicks.

That's sexist.

~~~
mistercow
No, saying that you like chicks is not sexist. Implying that women are for
getting beer is sexist. Saying that the presence of hired female staff is a
"perk" is sexist.

~~~
cheez
Why? I enjoy women.

~~~
mistercow
Here's a trick for finding out if something is sexist, which can also help you
understand _why_ it's sexist. Replace "women" (and "female" etc.) with "black
people" and see if it suddenly sounds incredibly racist.

~~~
cheez
Haha, having black people serve beer would be incredibly racist.

Alright, fine.

