With the amount of “important” emails you get in a position with any kind of responsibility, writing thoughtful elaborate responses to each and every one would leave you with no time to do your actual job.
So you communicate the core message clearly and bluntly, and move on to the next fire.
Cook sees the fire, gives a brief thought, and leaves it to Schiller on Christmas Eve to figure out why it started and how to fix it.
Unfortunately, it was truncated in your post
Cheers and thanks for the reference!
I think I originally picked this up from professors, because I'd write a well thought out response (an unreasonable amount of time spent on it), and the professor would respond with all the info I'd need in two sentences.
But he ultimately just sent something like “Steve, you know how I feel. But you’re the boss. Let me know tomorrow if I’m fired or not”. He never heard back and just kept working at Apple.
Now I personally think the engineer’s like-kind response is probably what let him keep his job. But there’s something elegant about straightforwardness like this.