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Comment by candiddevmike | Hacker News Reader

Wonder what kind of deliberation led to them accepting the award.

something along the lines of, how do you reach your most influential customers all at once with a sincere message. this was the right thing to do.

anyone who makes serious decisions will see acknowledging this in front of peers was correct. it's funny how the hacker ethic of celebrating failures as lessons becomes impossible when you have a chorus angling for leverage all the time. the failure mode of most tech is catastrophic, where all the convenience you get from it disappears suddenly and randomly. I'd be mad about the lost time during the recovery and over missed flights or even health services, but managing that risk is the job.

to anyone else, next time something fails and messes up your plans or puts you in a spot, try to remember a time when you had a chance to do something well but didn't because you were thinking, "not my problem."

They screwed up. They know it, and everybody else knows it. Trying to pretend they didn't would just make them look even more lame.

Or, viewed from the other side: Owning your failures makes you a grownup.

Shhh, the people here want blood.

BTW, did you know that there's an endless stream of "satisfying" drama on YouTube? I heard that Mr. Beast is finally in some hot water!

The outage caused actual human deaths. Yeah, most people here probably think the priority is criminal justice, which you might call "blood" in a dishonest attempt to make us appear cynical when they're the ones accepting funny nerdy awards after causing so much chaos.

Maybe next time a doctor causes death because of their negligence, they should accept an "oopsie award"? It would be le funny lulz XD

In the cases where outages caused human deaths you’re 100% right that there should be worse consequences.

But in many cases, hopefully it’s also a lesson to the places where people were harmed, to never let one piece of software get in the path of life or death without redundancies.

(Not at all defending their screwup, I just don’t think EVERYONE deserves the same restitution, some more than others.)

Refusing to show up generates the same, if not more, negative PR without the opportunity to show humility and promise to do better.

Hubris: the belief that they are special and will get away scot-free for all damages they caused.

Did you click through to the video? Because the acceptance speech seemed to show the opposite of hubris to me. Specifically in owning up to the mistake, and using the award as a reminder to do better in the future.

I’m sure he does not represent the PR and legal teams at CrowdStrike. I’d take anything he says with a grain of salt

CrowdStrike is publicly traded and he's accepting the award as president of the company. You bet your ass he does represent the PR and legal teams here.

Exactly. In fact when I saw this I was impressed that he said things that his PR and legal teams would’ve STRONGLY advised him not to say.

If anything, his attitude of (paraphrasing) “we accept this; we screwed up, and we will prominently display it as a reminder to our staff to never let this happen again” was about the best response he could’ve given.

Interestingly, multiple studies have shown that doctors owning up to mistakes and apologizing results in smaller med mal settlements. I believe a few carriers recommended it.

As an attorney, I’ve made mistakes and screwed things up. The initial instinct is to be less than candid and not admit anything. Then, after a sweaty sleepless night, I bit the bullet and was open and honest with the client, admitted fault, apologized, and offered to do what I could to make it right. Every reptilian synapse was screaming “don’t do it,” but it was the right thing to do, and I have no doubt, cost me much less in the end.

"No such thing as bad press" I assume.

Comes a point when some people just have an "ethical breakdown (breakthrough)". It's a positive thing. It's where recovery starts. He's owning it. There's no absolution until you throw yourself in front of the lions. At this point who cares what the PR and legal teams have to say. They'll be lucky to have a job in a few months.

I really hope he makes the most of a great opportunity to tell some truth, so that we can break the cycle of bullshit solutions causing further pain and loss in the future: Something like;

   "Thanks for the award. Well, we all knew this managed endpoint
   cybersecurity shit was never gonna fly. And on Windows? Seriously?!
   You all knew it too, but you pays yer money and takes yer chance
   for a lucky charm to keep the auditors and insurance ghouls
   away. So here we are. We all got caught with our pants round our
   ankles. It was a good racket while it lasted. Oh well... Anyone
   hiring?"

Probably firm they outsourced their public relations to thought this would be a good idea. It’s backfired

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