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Comment by mabbo | Hacker News Reader

There's what's legally required, and there's what's morally required. Here's a guy who did some serious soul-searching and said "holy shit, maybe I'm wrong on a very bad way". It's about doing more than what he is bare minimum allowed to get away with.

He's taking personal responsibility for his actions, openly and publicly. That takes a level of maturity and openness that I know is hard, and I fully respect.

All that he missed, in my opinion, is what his next steps are, and how going forward he can assure that this won't happen again. It sounds like he does have plans, but a good apology goes "I was wrong; here's why/how I was wrong; here's what I'm going to do in the future so that I don't repeat the mistake".

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But it won't be enough, it won't be seen as positive, and like half the comments in this thread show once you're outed as a PC heretic you're a non-entity.

Read through the smarmy "he doesn't mean it" comments all over this thread to see what I mean.

This culture is toxic in the tech community and needs to stop.

The culture of being being mad at sexual harassment offenders even when they apologize is what is toxic in the tech community.

Did folks who flagged this understand it was sarcastic?

Not being enough doesn't make the public apology a wrong thing.

It is part of the solution.

It's also a very loud social signal.

Well he did mention he began counseling a month ago.

I think it was a great PR move. I don't know the depth of the situation but if he simply said "idk if I should hire you or hit on you", then I think most people are going to read the apology coming away with the belief he is a victim losing his company for a trifle. I did at least. If this was the extent, and he didn't touch her or send lewd photos, frankly I'm angry for him. A society that requires this level of mea culpa for telling a mutual acquintance that was potentially interested in a job over drinks that you were interested in seeing them socially is fucking baffling.

Conversely, (again based on my less than complete knowledge of situation) it seems equally rediculous to say that she made unwanted advances to 500 Startups. They were in a social setting and it isn't clear they were hiring for something she qualified for. Should she apologize for leveraging her relationship with his acquintance to use a social situation professionally? Of course not! Dave did a borderline unethical thing in that scenario and based on the NYT article which is scant with details, I'd at most email her an apology for misreading the situation and being unprofessional

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