Another day, another Casey post dunking on my team. Hi!
This tweet misses the mark only a little bit; in a previous blog post, we apologized[1] pretty frankly to everyone involved in this discussion. I'll admit that we didn't list him by name, but neither did we list the other handful of folks involved. We should have. In turn, Casey rightly did not acknowledge it except to tell his followers that it was not a real apology[2].
This blog post is matter-of-fact, but Casey is right. However, he said himself that it was trivial to do this. Is it not acceptable that we use the same language?
Casey, I'm sorry. We made a mistake. I made a mistake! We didn't know what we didn't know, and thought we were clever enough to pass for it.
Using a texture atlas was a great idea, and we didn't know about it until you told us. We should do better to credit you.
[1]: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/windows-terminal-... (scroll down under the image)
[2]: https://twitter.com/cmuratori/status/1489406091318349826
--
(Note: I've iteratively edited this post, as it was originally a one-sentence diatribe written in anger. I originally asked, "I just don't know what else he's asking for here. Credit? Us to die screaming?" It was not a good look. It also originally contained "I get it, Microsoft sucks, we should all be fired, rah rah rah." As the message evolved, that became more and more out-of-place.)
This kind of tone really doesn't engender sympathy:
> We get it, Microsoft sucks, we should all be fired, rah rah rah.
> I just don't know what else he's asking for here. Credit? Us to die screaming? The blog post is matter-of-fact, and Casey is right: however, he said himself that it was trivial to do this. Is it not acceptable that we use the same language?
Your "apology" really is anything but. If anything you and your team come off as combative, thin skinned and hostile to outsiders. But, you do you bro.
This is Microsoft culture spilling into the real world. There were several times when I pointed out a fix for a flaw or problem we were suffering from and was mocked and told it’s a silly idea that I shouldn’t be wasting time on. Fast forward 1-3 months later and that same person is singing the praises for the same idea someone else “came up with”. Except it was me shopping my idea around. Seeing the tweet and the thread makes me realize this is systemic to MSFT as an org (who now is the champion and host for all major open source organizations)
Cut scene to me explaining my new product to a Google VP (hoping to get funding) who instead made a crappy copy and released it 6 months later. Don't meet your heroes.
This really is every org, even if someone starts lukewarm to an idea it can percolate, get established and then come back out again as a fresh opinion without any malice intended. It’s always fun to get your own ideas back almost verbatim.
To clarify I didn’t work for Google
Even in this case they seemingly "forgot" the idea that was told to them. I don't doubt that this is a possibility, but there is also a possibility that they could've just stolen it.
Oh yeah people also steal other peoples ideas pretty regularly but I'd not automatically assume malice.
From this example the same feeling would be generated by someone else internally already working on the same idea without needing any prompting from anyone in the actual meeting. This can actually be quite common in games where people will give a lot of unsolicited design ideas as feedback or part of bug reports. There's going to be collisions there without anyone's ideas being copied or stolen without credit.
Recently former Microsoft here. This is the culture of one specific team. My prior role interfaced with both customers and product teams in Azure. Interactions were constructive and collaborative. There certainly were the occasional individuals that lacked interpersonal skills, it was the exception not the norm.
Yeah I get the feeling that the general "tone" around Microsoft is "making sarcasm your defining personality trait". Maybe that flies in Seattle, but in the world of silicon valley, we've moved past caveman-like sarcasm into the superior snark and passive-aggression personality traits.
yeah I get the feeling that people look for any reason to shit on Microsoft then do it with glee, without care about the human beings on the receiving end.
Oh that's definitely true, even moreso for shitting on the company itself. Well I haven't encountered many MS employees, so I'm mostly basing it on the two who have been replying here. Extremely unscientific and probably wrong, but I couldn't help but dogpile.
> We admit this feature began with a kerfuffle we caused in the summer of 2021. When confronted with being told our rendering pipeline had terrible performance, we turned inward. We relied on our existing experiences and we leaned heavily on our partner teams’ work to conclude the DirectWrite general purpose renderer was the best fit for our product. We were wrong. As such, we dedicate this experimental renderer to the community as an olive branch. We know we have so much more to learn, but we hope that you will accept our apology and understand we’re humans behind this product with a capability and willingness to learn from our past mistakes. Thank you for sticking with us. We strive to make this an experience we can all learn from to not only improve ourselves, but to improve our product and delight you all.
That is "combative, thin-skinned and hostile to outsiders"?
They say they caused it. They explain the cultural attitude that led to it. They plainly state they were wrong.
The "We get it, Microsoft sucks, we should all be fired, rah rah" is responding to the typical outraged rants from immature people who think it's cool to leverage extreme levels of criticism at people and teams who work in large corporations.
>That is "combative, thin-skinned and hostile to outsiders"?
Yes. They reference an apology, didn't actually make one, and it was roughly a year after they were combative, thin skinned, and hostile to outsiders. So their words now don't negate the fact that they were actually those things.
And the original now-edited response here was itself still combative, so I don't have much reason to believe they've actually changed rather than just trying to put a nice public face on about it.
They do this because OP keeps twisting the blade. He was right, now whatever, maybe find another target.
I don't see it as twisting the blade. He's calling them out for having insulted him and then making a half-hearted (at best) apology without giving proper credit (which the MS employee up the thread admitted they should have actually done.)
I don't know about others, but that does sound like a real apology to me. At least they plainly write that they were wrong and not only "sorry for how this was handled" or something similar. I'm really curious what more you could expect...
Specifically naming Casey and specifically apologizing for the specifics of how it unfolded. The fact that a team member went into Casey's Discord to harass him would be one example to apologize for.
I dunno. I can read that as a ‘sorry’, but it kinda feels like ‘we know we were being assholes but we’ll be good from now, forgive us please’ kind of thing.
There’s too many fluffy words in that.
“We were dicks to the person (people) that pointed out a better way. We didn’t truly investigate the proposed solution at first, we acted combative,
and we were wrong.
We’ve now implemented the proposed solution in an experimental renderer that you can all use and we’ll try to do better from now.”
> I just don't know what else he's asking for here. Credit? Us to die screaming? ... We get it, Microsoft sucks, we should all be fired, rah rah rah.
Someone is upset and venting. This comment comes across to me as "Ugh we already said the right words. Their distress is so inconvenient to me, why isn't it stopping?"
EDIT: Typically in this community we denote when a comment has been edited to change a critical piece of the message...
I'm detecting very little genuine authentic empathy
It's already been edited twice. The original message ended with the snarky "we should all be fired, rah rah" thing. They're already on damage control.
> I'm detecting very little genuine authentic empathy
Welcome to Microsoft!
Everyone can rant. I think it's fine, at least a lot better than a faked smile.
A fake smile at least tells me they know that a different response would be unprofessional, rather than making the an unprofessional comment and not being self aware enough to realize it until it's pointed out.
Since this is not a professional place I think it's OK. I mean if Casey can rant then he should be able too. Of course I guess it doesn't look good and I'm fine with that.
Sure, this is an informal environment, but Casey is acting as an individual working on an issue in their own time. The MS employee above is acting as a defacto representative of MS whenever they speak about their work in public.
Casey is also responding to unprofessionalism initiated by MS. (Though admittedly the "they started it" defense isn't a great one)
Would you be empathetic to a jerk who keeps insulting you?
I don't get where the big issue is, a guy smugly makes a suggestion, the devs argue with it and point out that his tone isn't helping. The guy turns out to be right, the devs implement his suggestion. They don't have a history of thanking people by name so they make a vague attribution. Guy continues to be hostile against them, dev calls him out and now he's the asshole? Come on.
> They don't have a history of thanking people by name
That's... Not better?
EDIT: Actually, I thought of a way for that to be better, but it still doesn't make anything better here. If MS is used to working with b2b, where a customer comes in with a bug and MS fixes it and pushes the fix out, there it could be reasonable to not give credit; I don't condone it but it does match the culture there. The problem is that this very much does not translate to FOSS and/or public collaboration with individuals, where there very much is a culture of sharing credit.
MS: "In our defense, our reflexive response it to never give other people credit for their ideas, so you can see how it's not really our fault, it's just instinct."
> except to note that it was not an apology at all.
Ctrl-F there doesn't show a single "sorry" in the text. Or "Casey" for that matter.
Why is it so difficult to say: "Casey, we are sorry, you were right and we were mistaken.". Instead there is a nebulous ~extended a branch to community and hope to accept our apology~ (paraphrasing) without offering an apology in the first place.
try looking for the word "apology"
edit:
> We know we have so much more to learn, but we hope that you will accept our apology and understand we’re humans behind this product with a capability and willingness to learn from our past mistakes.
If someone said that to me, I would say "oh ok, no problem dude" and move on with my life. Not even defending the microsoft guy, I have zero skin in the game and couldn't care less. but people being weirdly pedantic about which words do and do not constitute an apology just because the source is Evil Microsoft Guy.
Sticking the word "apology" on a letter does not make it an apology.
But sticking "Sorry" does? Your whole post was Ctrl-F for a keyword, while refusing a synonym.
But there is no "We apologize" either.
There is a "we hope you (the community) accept the apology" - which apology ?! there wasn't one to begin with, because there is no "I/We apologize/are sorry" in the first place.
And the apology should go to the individual harmed, not to the "community"
I find the format of "I've done wrong; please accept my apology" to be common and sufficient; clearly we have different expectations though -- or they are getting unanticipated amount of pedantic and semantic scrutiny (which in turn will eliminate posts like this, we'll get more corpo-santized-PR, but somehow I don't think that'll make people happy either :).
But this is not direct speech that they use - they use indirect speech referring to "the community" and "our" apology, trying to avoid associating personally with either the problem or the apology.
Then they come out and blame Casey for "not accepting the apology".
So in fact if they can't own the mistake, issue a direct apology, and act like adults, perhaps it's better to let the corpo PR speak in bland tones.
EDIT: the GP of this thread edited their post:
> Casey, I'm sorry. We made a mistake. I made a mistake!
Now, this is an apology.
But there's a big difference between saying that directly to a person and not. Addressing many people, or rather trying to and failing, without getting specific severely reduces the sincerity and effectiveness of the apology.
The apology focuses more on what they did wrong internally, without getting into enough specifics of how it affected the external parties. And, some very serious issues weren't even mentioned.
Saying “accept our apology” does make it an apology.
"we turned inwards, we were wrong. We hope you will accept this ... as an olive branch and accept our apology."
That is 100% an apology
But not to Casey. You dotted out who they apologized to and it was not the person they insulted, but to the "community".
> We were wrong. As such, we dedicate this experimental renderer to the community as an olive branch. We know we have so much more to learn, but we hope that you will accept our apology and understand we’re humans behind this product with a capability and willingness to learn from our past mistakes.
Seems rather childish.
Syntactically it's a reference to an apology. Semantically it sort of is, but the phraseology of indirect an apologies are common when the speaker wants to distance themselves from the wrongdoing. This tends to happen either from embarrassment or lack of sincerity.
In this case, the comment from an MS employee in this thread indicates a potential lack of sincerity. If not for that I'd probably give more benefit of the doubt.
Except "but we hope you will accept our apology" is not an apology. If they'd written "but we hope you will accept our apologies", it would have been an overly formal apology. In the informal tone they are otherwise using, saying "sorry" would have been most appropriate.
we hope that you will accept our apology and understand we’re humans behind this product with a capability and willingness to learn from our past mistakes.
Seems pretty sincere and decent to me.
Nah, this is the pestilent child response when they are wrangled into giving a "sincere" apology.
It's at least a small step up from "We're sorry if you feel bad but..."
I'd rate it 4 out of 10 on the NOTSORS scale [1]
[1] No Apology to Sincere Apology Rating Scale™
And I wouldn't even be so hard about them if their initial now-edited reply in this thread wasn't also combative & demeaning.
!! I like it, but you mean "petulant" .. "pestilent" may also apply though..
If we’re being critical it’s missing the “we apologize” and skips to “hope you accept our apology” and then jumps down a “we’re only human” escape hatch.
In other words, a try-catch-finally statement right out of the PR handbook
How is “we hope you accept our apology” not an apology?
Try replacing apology with other words.
Its like an email that says “attached”, but there’s no attachment.
I'm not following. It's not the same at all. The apology is right there.
It sounds like a big part of the issue here is that someone from the team joined Casey’s discord server pseudonymously after the drama, and more drama ensued.
If stuff got that personal, then I’m not shocked that an impersonal apology was not accepted. If I were to apologize in a situation like this, I’d probably have started by talking to Casey directly about the whole thing before posting in public.
https://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Genuine-Apology
1. Know what you did wrong: > When confronted with being told our rendering pipeline had terrible performance, we turned inward. [...] We were wrong.
2. Keep it simple, being careful not to start up a fight, a disagreement, or open up the situation for further discussion or recriminations. Subjective. You decide.
3. Be prepared to meet resistance. They are here meeting their resistance.
4. ...I hope you will accept my apology. > we hope that you will accept our apology
5. Be polite. Subjective. You decide.
6. Remind the person of all the fun times that the two of you had together. > experience we can all learn from to not only improve ourselves
7. Try not to smile. It's text. Sure.
8. In some situations a small gift may serve as a token of apology. > As such, we dedicate this experimental renderer to the community as an olive branch.
9. Express yourself. > a capability and willingness to learn from our past mistakes.
10, 11 remain to be seen.
This is a good exhibit of an almost perfect apology. If you've been okay hearing "sorry" your entire life then I am afraid you've been lied to more often than not.
> Remind the person
They don't even mention the person. Pretty hard to argue they covered this.
I assume WikiHow thought it was too obvious that you had to actually send it to / mention the person you were actually apologising to.
> almost perfect apology
>This is a good exhibit of an almost perfect apology. If you've been okay hearing "sorry" your entire life then I am afraid you've been lied to more often than not.
If you specifically focus insults on an individual and call into question their competence and then make a vague statement that avoids actually saying you did something wrong ("We turned inwards), you have failed to do #1, which is arguably the most important step.
It was an awful attempt at an apology that could easily pass for something written by a politician. Directness is a virtue when it comes to apologies.
Counting check marked boxes on a wikihow list isn't a good way to measure the quality of an apology.
> It was an awful attempt at an apology
> Counting check marked boxes on a wikihow list isn't a good way to measure the quality of an apology.
If anything, it's a way. Suggest something better for your definition of "good", as it looks like you're making a speculative criticism for your own edification.
>Suggest something better for your definition of "good"
I already mentioned two things that would make it a "good" apology:
- Directly mentioning whom you are apologizing too. In some cases addressing a group might be appropriate but in this case it seems like he should have mentioned Casey.
- Directly mentioning what you did wrong instead of phrasing it in an intentionally vague way like "we turned inwards".
Apologies are simple in composition. The hard part is getting over our egos.
> The hard part is getting over our egos
In this scenario it really isn't Microsoft who are demonstrating a bleeding ego.
Whatever you think about the apology, Microsoft made it without being called to do so. As an inconvenient data point, the apology (again, whatever you think about it) was omitted from the tweet. Casey blatantly rephrases the employee's words from "could be seen as impugning the reader" to "you are impugning the reader". This is all p-hacking convenient facts into one specific world view, and the fanbase is all too eager to echo it.
All of this drama is great for one specific ego.
>In this scenario it really isn't Microsoft who are demonstrating a bleeding ego.
My bad that part of the comment wasn't directed at Microsoft, its just something that everyone in general has to face when apologizing.
I do agree that Casey should have linked the apology blog regardless of whether he felt it was sufficient.
...except that they literally write "we were wrong" - so I'm not sure how you can interpret that as "avoiding to actually state they did something wrong"?
They admitted to being wrong about the technical solution to this problem, but not their mistreatment of community members. Huge difference.
That's not an apology, as written. You say you did something wrong and say "we hope that you will accept our apology", having not actually given one. Maybe English isn't your first language, and so you don't know the difference between "accept our apologies" (which is a formal/distant apology) and "accept our apology" (which refers to a previous apology).
Also, good apologies come with admission of fault and steps you'll take to make sure you don't make the same mistake again.
I did see admission of fault:
> We were wrong. As such, we dedicate this experimental renderer to the community as an olive branch. We know we have so much more to learn, but we hope that you will accept our apology and understand we’re humans behind this product with a capability and willingness to learn from our past mistakes.
Whilst not hitting all the grammar notes “we hope that you will accept our apology” is quite normal colloquially.
> We get it, Microsoft sucks, we should all be fired, rah rah rah.
This response shows how little you value users feedback (and how unafraid of them you are). Probably should leave this kind of thing to your developer relations team...
Yep, that part just seemed so condescendingly dismissive.
Typically, when apologizing, you should name the person you are apologizing to. Otherwise, they might do something like not acknowledge your apology.
Yep, Naming the person and linking to the "kerfuffle" inline that you created would be minimum to consider that post an apology. Calling it a "kerfuffle" is odd phrasing that downplays the actions.
> I'll admit that we didn't list him by name, but neither did we list the other handful of folks involved
It's only an apology in the manner of soulless corporate jargon then. A generic statement following a personal/directed insult does not count as an apology.
Edit: also the following
> (Note: I've iteratively edited this post, as it was originally a one-sentence diatribe written in anger. I originally asked, "I just don't know what else he's asking for here. Credit? Us to die screaming?" It was not a good look.)
I think your comment and it's different iterations demonstrated very well how you guys (still) feel about this.
Aight, bud. When I was a kid, my parents taught me how to apologise. first, I have to acknowledge what I did wrong. Then, I have to actually say the word ('sorry', if you don't know) to the person I wronged. finally, I need to offer some way forward. don't know how your team works, but I hope at least you (as a team) are mature enough to actually apologise in a clear cut manner.
They acknowledged what they did wrong. They said "we hope you accept our apology" which, according to what I was taught, is a replacement for "sorry." They offered the renderer as a gift I guess, and they did a mini post mortem and talked about what they learned. Really seems like you're reaching for straws here.
I’m kind of in awe by the unprofessionalism of this response. In an era of incessant corporate PR, it’s somewhat refreshing lol.
Chastising devs who address issues directly is a great way to make sure canned PR responses is all we get.
Exactly. And it'll be these same exact people who will complain about canned PR responses :->
And we should not accept rudeness and unprofessionalism just to avoid canned PR responses
People should learn to express themselves professionally and keep up the standards, on the professional communities, this is not /b/
Adressing issues directly in the wrong way is a much better motivation for PR teams to jump in.
No, devs giving bad responses is what creates PR jobs.
> Another day, another Casey post dunking on my team. Hi!
> Casey rightly did not acknowledge it except to tell his followers that it was not a real apology
> Casey, I'm sorry. We made a mistake. I made a mistake! We didn't know what we didn't know, and thought we were clever enough to pass for it.
Your edited post starts of with the feeling that you are pissed at Casey, they are dunking on your team yet again. Then you go on to apologize to them.
Jesus fucking crist mate, no post would have been better than this.
>except to tell his followers that it was not a real apology
Well, it wasn't a real apology. It was "We hope you accept our apology
When you apologize, you say "I am sorry [insert other words of explantion]." Then you can say "We hope..."
What you did simply refers back to an apology that wasn't actually made. Considering that he was correct in saying the problem was simple, his tone was not actually combative, it accurately characterized the problem. So you belittled him & insulted him, and as you admitted you then failed to give credit where due to him & others. He has a career as well. Wouldn't it be nice for him to be able to pad his Vitae with a win on something like this?
Then your initial response he was, as you said, "not a good look". The edited post is better, but still not very good.
I understand issues are always more complicated than at first glance, but your tone doesn't exactly invite sympathy for yourself or your team.
> Another day, another Casey post dunking on my team
Man, you have to take criticism better than that. Remember, we don't know anything about this other than the tweets plus these replies from you and your colleague here on HN. So the tweets honestly didn't seem to describe a particularly bad problem, the only thing that stood out to me was the fake-name-on-discord thing which is yet to be substantiated. I was willing to chalk it all up to an OSS contributor feeling ignored and ranting a little, but the feeling I have now is that there's some pettiness and bickering going both ways.
Wow, that's sure a weird way to post something on behalf of your company. Curious how long will it take to delete this message, seeing how it was written mostly in the heat of the moment.
Okay look, you've probably stopped reading comments at this point and have thrown your Hacker News password into the ocean. But just in case you haven't, here's how to fix this: Just go away. You're clearly not sorry at all, so the best thing you can do, for your own sake, is to stop trying to fool everyone into thinking that you're sorry. We're too smart for that. Just go radio silent and have someone else do PR for your team from now on. In a few years everyone will have forgotten about this incident, and you can start posting again.
Here is some extremely simple advice: If you are going to publicly lecture someone because of a technical opinion that hurt your feelings, you better yourself be a grandmaestro on the subject of tactfulness. That might work within your company if the company had a culture that includes radical candor, but these are public conversations with community members. Setting the merits of your point of view aside, your communication skills suck.
I'm impressed you could write this without the self-awareness to realize this only makes your team look worse.
The idea that vaguely saying sorry to an abstract community should resolve this entire issue is repulsive. Merely stating an apology does not thereby grant you forgiveness.
I had a neighbor who once tore up my yard doing construction. They apologized profusely, but outside of words never made any meaningful recompense. If I complain about the damage am I in the wrong simply because he utter some words of apology?
The tone here sounds like you're more annoyed that Casey was right and wish you could go back to feeling clever.
Have you thought about not managing your team in such a way as to engender hostility from the outside world? It would be a good start to credit people outside the team for their work improving your product, instead of trying to take credit for it yourself.
Writing an "apology" for taking credit for someone else's work, without naming the person who did the work, is just adding insult to injury. Actually making amends would involve giving credit, both in your apology and by adding their name to the top of the original announcement if you can still edit it.
> we apologized[1]
Yeah, that's not an apology. That's something saying you did apologise. It doesn't look like you actually sent an apology, and you never mentioned Casey at all.
If this were a security vulnerability Casey would have gotten a mention (and a Bug Bounty). I guess Microsoft don't care about credit for other stuff.
In the future, when you think someone is being a fucking moron, never actually call them a fucking moron. Because if it turns out they weren't a fucking moron and you were wrong all along, you're going to look, well, like this.
The way to navigate the conversation would have been something closer to this: "I thought it was already doing this, but I'll check again, maybe we misread the doc. Also there's X, Y, and Z to consider that may make what you suggest harder than it seems on the surface".
That all being said, I kind of don't like anybody in this kerfluffle. I think your assessment of his character isn't terribly off the mark and now you're caught in a version of "the worst person you know actually has a point".
Now, we can sit here and discuss whether his approach engendered a response in kind or not, but at some point, someone has to be the duck and let the personal slide off their backs.
In short, be humble, and don't assume your own position is always correct, and leave room for doubt and criticism. Seek to find why someone else would consider your position wrong - it can't hurt because if you can find proof that your position is correct this way, it only strengthens your position, and if your position turns out to be wrong, you can learn and gain experience (while thanking the people who critisized you).
unfortunately, ego is what prevents this in a lot of people. Their self-worth is linked to being correct, and people pointing out that their foundational beliefs are wrong cannot be acknowledged.
> dunking on my team
Translation: While I'm ostensibly apologizing please note that I'm actually the victim here, everyone please feel sorry for me and my team.
> Using a texture atlas was a great idea, and we didn't know about it until you told us.
One is forced to wonder how, in an entire team working on a terminal emulator, no one thought to use the texture atlas. I mean, that's basically how the actual physical terminals the software is emulating worked in the first place. Then, when told about the obvious implementation, the reaction was not to slap one's forehead and say "Of course, it was so obvious!", but instead to tell a decades-experience game engine developer that they didn't understand how rendering works.
Mind boggling.
They've bragged in the past that the team members are younger than conhost.exe. I think that about sums it up.
It's not a crime to be naive, but lashing out in response is a problem, as we've seen.
- You and lhecker insulted Casey Muratori
- You insisted this was a "doctoral research" (your words) and that he was "misguided" (Leonard's words)
- When it turned out he was right, you posted a non-apology (you didn't even name the person you were apologizing to)
- A year later Leonard who claimed it was so hard now writes a blog post that "solution is trivial" and was "suggested by a community member". Once again failing to acknowledge the person who gave you this trivial solution
What more you could've done? What do you think?
> - You and lhecker insulted Casey Muratori
And Casey didn't? Please take into consideration that Casey's definition of the solution as "simple" can sound quite insulting as well.
If someone stated that something is "simple" with an overtone of "are you blind", instead of showing more humility, I would feel insulted too.
> Please take into consideration that Casey's definition of the solution as "simple" can sound quite insulting as well.
It can sound insulting only to people who originally claimed that what Casey suggested requires "doctoral level research into performance". Only to then implement exactly what he suggested.
> If someone stated that something is "simple" with an overtone of "are you blind", instead of showing more humility
Please re-read the original GitHub issue from the start: https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/10362
He is there trying to understand an issue, providing suggestions etc. And generally being baffled how a modern terminal on a modern machine can output text at something like 5 frames per second.
After that Windows Terminal team barges in with "what you’re doing is describing something that might be considered an entire doctoral research project in performant terminal emulation" to... only do exactly that later.
And what Casey said was going to be simple is this: https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/10362#issuecomm...
Tell me how this is insulting to anyone except the people who now claim that "oh we'd been aware about this approach before Casey opened the issue"?
Read the thread, read the posts, read this reply... it would've been trivial to write a nice apology and move on, but instead you tripped over your own ego (twice). Well played! Should've just let it go when you had the chance.
> Is it not acceptable that we use the same language?
Good question why insult him for his use if you feel its appropriate language?
> As the message evolved, that became more and more out-of-place.
The wording didn't "became more" it was inappropriate from the start and instead of acknowledging this you and lhecker have tried walking back every excuse to downplay this. You both don't think it was out of place or inappropriate you are both just upset that you got called out on it.
A good apology has three parts:
1. I'm sorry 2. It was my fault 3. How do I make it right?
They skipped straight to the 3rd step, without doing the first 2.
It seems you have posted the wrong link because there isn't really an apology?
"We admit this feature began with a kerfuffle we caused in the summer of 2021. When confronted with being told our rendering pipeline had terrible performance, we turned inward. We relied on our existing experiences and we leaned heavily on our partner teams’ work to conclude the DirectWrite general purpose renderer was the best fit for our product. We were wrong. As such, we dedicate this experimental renderer to the community as an olive branch. We know we have so much more to learn, but we hope that you will accept our apology and understand we’re humans behind this product with a capability and willingness to learn from our past mistakes. Thank you for sticking with us. We strive to make this an experience we can all learn from to not only improve ourselves, but to improve our product and delight you all."
You have to scroll down a bit. Whether that's an apology or just "please accept our apology that isn't actually here," is debatable. An actual "We were wrong, we're sorry" would have been clearer.
I have no skin in the game, but I don't think the paragraph above meets the specification claimed by the GP: "we apologized[1] pretty frankly to Casey and everyone else involved in this discussion."
This does seem more like they're apologizing for being wrong and not apologizing for how they treated him. Like, if they were right, it would have been fine in their eyes to use that tone.
Maybe it's a non-native speaker thing, but "I hope you'll accept my apology." makes me think "Maybe I will, maybe I won't, depends on what apology you are going to make ... So where is it?"
It's halfway. In my book, MS did a half-assed, semi-asshole-style token apology. It was indirect enough that you need to know English quite well to see the actual apology.
> We were wrong. As such, we dedicate this experimental renderer to the community as an olive branch. We know we have so much more to learn, but we hope that you will accept our apology and understand we’re humans behind this product with a capability and willingness to learn from our past mistakes.
What more really needs to be said? Feels like one of those times where if everyone just sat around at a pub with a beer, everything would be resolved. Instead it's just little snide remarks back and forth. It's a shame, I really like Casey, and he was definitely right, but it's probably time to move on.
I'm being facetious here. As far as apologies go that's a pretty weak attempt.
Heh, my bad! This is the problem with text based conversation between strangers :).
It was dumb and passive-aggressive comment (by me) so every kind of response is fair game, I guess... :)
I doubt this would have gone any better face-to-face. In a text-based conversation you at least have the opportunity to reflect before you reply.
> What more really needs to be said?
Well if I were to write an apology "frankly to <person>" I would probably mention <person> by name in the apology.
Dear X, we are sorry for Y
Addressing the person you are apologizing to. I can understand if you had a draft with the person and a lawyer told you to remove it.
The quoted text is vague and non-directional, whereas the biting response to the GitHub issue screenshot posted in TFA are incredibly directed. I'm new to all of this, and so I dunno if the author was being catty and insulting when making their suggestions, but the responses posted certainly are.
I tell my kids this all the time. An apology has several parts:
1. In clear terms, admit fault. "I responded to a comment with some vitriol, and at the time that seemed okay but looking back that was insulting and rude, and not how I want to address our community members. This is true in any case, but doubly so when the original commenter turns out to have provided good advice that I was ignoring." 2. Express remorse. "I'm sorry. I regret letting my passions get the better of me and hope I didn't damage any relationships." 3. Offer to remediate. "As you can see, we're embarking on doing exactly the work that $AUTHOR suggested, and I'd like make sure they receive appropriate credit. If it helps, I'll link to the original thread and this apology." 3. Do better.
The quotes above are just examples off the top, I have no horse in this particular race, but I do have a lot of experience eating crow and having to apologize for being an ass to someone who later turned out to be right.
> What more really needs to be said?
An actual apology. Jesus Christ, has no one at Microsoft ever apologized to a human being? I mean apologized, not passive-aggressively, condescendingly issued a generic apology line in the P.S. to an email on a completely different topic? It goes like this: heeeey, Casey, we're really sorry about <whatever we did> and we would like to apologize. We understand we were wrong to do it because <reasons>. This is not how we want to treat people and the fact that we let it happen was a mistake. I'm sorry we went through this but <here's what we plan to do so that we don't make the same mistake again with someone else>.
That is an apology. Once you say that, you're entitled to asking the community at large to accept it. But you can't say "please accept our apology" without issuing a damn apology. That's like saying "please accept our complimentary cake" without sending any cake!
I realize basic human decency may be a faux pas in large corporate settings but doesn't Microsoft employ at least one PR person who understands PR 101?
The team hasn't lined up and cut out their own stomachs yet.
Just below the screenshot.
I hope that you will accept my comment
Man this whole interaction really makes you guys look incompetent DHowett
"I just don't know what else he's asking for here."
ASK HIM
We've created the most incredible communication platform in human history and no one actually talks to each other, everyone just tries to publicly snipe.
You're not doing your company any credit here......
Any response to his claim that the author of the blogpost was talking about Windows Terminal in his Discord? The license of Casey’s project would be an issue if you guys used it.
> I'll admit that we didn't list him by name, but neither did we list the other handful of folks involved. We should have.
This week's blog post refers to them as a "community member" [of Microsoft]. Such a self aggrandizing term.
Someone reported a bug on github. Your team dismissed them and peppered them with deflective words to pretend that the team is making a safe space for employees that don't care at all.
Your edits are getting closer.
> I get it, Microsoft sucks, we should all be fired, rah rah rah.
Unironically, yes, UNLESS...
- You're willing to take a serious look in the mirror (and understand that the way you reacted to the situation was defensive, passive aggressive and inflammatory rather than direct, constructive and conciliatory)
- You assign credit where credit is due
- You do a good faith post-mortem and come up with some way to make sure this won't happen in the future
Now, if that happens, then obviously you should not be fired; if anything, you should be rewarded as handling difficult situations like this correctly tends to be the true test of one's capabilities as a professional. Unfortunately, it's high stakes, high rewards -- which also means high risks and consequences.
It's not easy to say "We made a mistake. Not only that, but there's no easy 1-shot fix to undo what went wrong. Let's sit down together and discuss, and we'll listen. Then, we'll go and think about that for a while and come back to you with where we align, where we differ; and so far as where we agree, where we think we can improve. What do you say?"
It may not be easy, but it's worth it.
Relationships are built in the muck.
I'm all for firing these people for their disrespectful and unprofessional behavior but... being assholes and writing shitty software is on-brand for Microsoft. It'd be hypocritical of them to fire these people for this (although I guess hypocrisy is also on-brand for Microsoft, so who knows lol)
For what it's worth, I think it's commendable that you are engaging this externally no matter the tone, instead of the usual cowardly radio silence like most big cos. I find the this-is-not-actually-an-apology nitpicking disappointing; community should be encouraging this kind of conversation, not squashing it.
They are engaging externally because the issue has gained traction in the community. I also don't think people need to be grateful because they were blessed with a response.
Really cool apology! I wonder why you're choosing this hill to die on with this tone. Belligerence in the original post is what led to this and you're continuing with the same tone. You and your team do deserve to be dunked on
Your tone is way, way off.
This response, to me anyway, is worse than no response at all.
> Is it not acceptable that we use the same language?
Good question why insult him for his use if you feel its appropriate language?
Now can you get Microsoft to fix their broken implementation of FMA? (see https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/cpp-docs/pull/3526 for details)
When I read your tone here, I don't even need to read your “apology” to know that it was not a real apology.
No, Microsoft doesn't suck. It's a great company. It's some people there that suck, and one just got self-identified.
I think that Seinfeld already covered this situation https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A6nWTZF08LA
Yikes this gets worse.
Yikes. Ego and open source do not mix well.
Ego and human interaction doesn't. Open source just exposes those clashes publicly.
Let's all just agree that computers suck and we should all just go back to churning butter for a living.
> "(Note: I've iteratively edited this post, as it was originally a one-sentence diatribe written in anger. I originally asked, "I just don't know what else he's asking for here. Credit? Us to die screaming?" It was not a good look.)"
So you stole his idea and realized a one-liner dismissal was not a "good look" for yourself, so you wrote an "apology"? It's not about him, it's about saving yourself from the blowback. This and the events documented are the closest thing to a psychopathic programmer I've ever seen.
It's so ironic that people are criticizing this comment and the linked apology for their language but fail to see that the original issue was caused by Casey's language and not the actual technical details.
No the original issue was the Microsoft team not understand their own code and then claiming you needed a PhD to use a different renderer.
Thanks for your response; you're getting a lot of flack here, even repeated suggestions of ESL, by people who I feel have unreasonable expectation of perfection of others that I doubt they'd be able to fulfill 100% in every facet of their own life.
English is indeed not my first language, but I've lived in North America for 25 years and stakeholder communication is part of my job description. "I did something wrong; please accept my apologies" to me is boiler-plate standard, sufficient, acceptable way.
Your blog post goes way past that! It says "We caused the kerfuffle". Even "We were Wrong", explicitly! I for one understand your frustration and probably real question of "What else do you want from us - keel over and die?" - it's just that humanity is not an acceptable feature to show from people HN wants to hate on already.
That's OK though. Their reaction here will simply mean we'll get less sincere humane posts like yours, and more corporate-sanitized meaningless PR, which I'm sure will make those very same people much happier. And yes that's a pointed /s :-)
You're missing out on a lot of details. For instance, one of the team members went into Casey's discord to harass him. That was not apologized for in any way. Secondly, the apology doesn't mention Casey specifically, and it's arrogant to believe you can address everyone adequately without mentioning specific names with specific apologies for the exact errors.
The apology is written almost tactically to avoid dealing with specifics. When the OP additionally started this entire thread with anger, the idea that steps have been taken forward is pretty much dead.