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Comment by macromaniac | Hacker News Reader

Apologies are not always needed. When you really mess up its usually pretty obvious and saying youre sorry doesnt do all that much. "Sorry I introduced a bug that causes the system to crash once a week" doesn't really help anyone, of course you're going to be sorry. I heard this from someone and it stuck with me: "Don't apologize, fix it."

Edit: I made a mistake while writing this, I am trying to say be objective about your mistakes but many people took that to mean don't admit your mistakes. I should have been more specific with my terminology.

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Disagree....

I play soccer 3 times a week, and the number one conflict in the field (up to fist fights) is when a guy plays rough, does a couple of bad tackles, and doesn't apology after them.

Non-apology on a bad mistake = people perceive it as intentional, and rightfully they get angry. Number one way to diffuse situations is to apologize and move on.

On the other hand, people do mistakes in passing, shooting, etc... it is part of the game. A quick acknowledgment of the mistake to your teammates is useful (usually just by a raising of your hand/body gesture), but over-apologizing for normal mistakes is not that useful.

Same in engineering. If you caused a bug/crashed something: Just say "Sorry guys, I am on it/fixing it", is more than enough. No need to send long winded apology emails, but not even acknowledging it makes you look like a sneaky, "self protecting ego at any cost" type of guy/girl, and people lose trust on you.

Acknowledging that you know you caused the problem has important social function: it provides sympathy to others who may be annoyed at you ("they are annoyed at themselves too, so I shouldn't be so hard on them") and signals that you are aware of your actions so are less likely to screw up in future.

But yes, you should clean up your messes.

Acknowledgement of your shortcomings is not the same as an apology.

In my experience apologies are not making things better, but saying yeah that’s my fault and moving forward does.

They’re the same as far as I’m concerned. Whether you say “I’m sorry” or “oops. my bad” doesn’t matter as long as you acknowledge that you did something that may have fucked up someone’s morning/day/weekend.

Okay then it's just semantics. I admit mistakes but I try to be objective about it. If that's considered an apology then I do apologize.

An apology says “yes, I know I inconvenienced you/somebody other than myself”

> yeah that’s my fault and moving forward

This sounds like an apology to me (just a rather casual one, befitting a minor screwup).

If you e.g. said you’d be at a routine 9:00 work meeting and you didn’t get there until 9:20 because your sick dog vomited on the rug you can make a quick and casual apology like that. If you e.g. cheated on your spouse while you were on a business trip, you shouldn’t leave it at “yeah that’s my fault let’s move forward.”

A good apology has 3 parts:

1. State what you did.

2. State that you regret it. (It wasn't your intention to harm.)

3. State what you'll do mitigate the damage and prevent the problem from repeating.

(Then, after the apology, comes the fix: Do what you said in Step 3.)

Step 1 gets mutual awareness of the relevant facts. Step 2 stakes a claim that you aren't an enemy, and Step 3 (plus the follow-up) backs he claim with a meaningful action.

The goal of the apology is to rebuild trust that you are an ally and you are reliably, not an enemy or a liability.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/liking-the-child-you-lo...

That works when your mistake is on a machine and you fix it with code. When you make a mistake with people, apologizing is part of fixing it.

Apologizing helps indicate the person will make an effort to avoid their mistake in the future. Focusing on someone in the present without acknowledging they are a person with intentions and feelings reeks of lacking empathy.

I agree but feel that "fixing it" is itself a form of apology especially when acknowledging the problem. I don't feel an actual "I'm sorry ..." type of apology is needed unless you really had an impact on someone's feelings, emotions, or in the work scenario you knew it caused them unexpected grief (work on their day off, etc). Otherwise, people messing up is just part of the job and they should expect that they will occasionally have to deal with some mess ups.

Alternatively, I might just be low on the self-compassion spectrum.

While I agree that fixing problems is more important than letting someone know you share a concern for their problem...

Can't you see that someone who won't even offer a simple verbal agreement that there IS a problem, is probably less likely to be the fixer of a problem than someone who is?

Apologies have nothing to do with bugs.

This. Bugs are a normal part of working on complex systems to tight deadlines. Would a sales person say sorry if a deal fell through? A cold caller if they didn't get an appointment?

I know what you mean about words not really changing the physical world around us. Still, sometimes I feel like how the other person’s attitude towards their misstep means more to me. Or, otherwise I feel like I’m being “bought” with some action. Does anyone else find this?

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