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Comment by mumblemumble | Hacker News Reader

That statement is for PR purposes; you can't take it at face value. Let me attempt a translation into plain English:

"I, personally, totally expected this, as did everyone who I talk to on a daily basis. But someone up the chain of command thought we could get away with it, and forced us to try and push this change. I'm going to use the pronoun 'we' to refer to the company in the abstract, and not anyone on the immediate team I work with, because I jolly well can't be throwing my boss's boss, who happens to also be a commisar from the large company that recently acquired us, under the bus."

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> But someone up the chain of command thought we could get away with it

That person is Paul Machle (CFO):

"I don’t understand. This should not be an opt in or an opt out. It is a condition of using our product. There is an acceptance of terms and the use of this data should be included in that." [1]

[1] https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/merge_requests/14182#no...

Ouch, that whole thread under there is painfully oblivious:

> @cciresi if we follow Paul's guidance and just make this part of our terms and conditions, are we covered legally?

Earth to GitLab: You are not yet big enough to be at the "are we covered legally" stage. You are toast if that is your mindset.

When someone raises an ethical question and instead of addressing ethics, the company calls in the lawyers to address whether it's legal... your company is likely on the wrong track.

To be fair I’d say half the time I’m summoned into a discussion like that it’s because the person asking fully expects and wants me to say no to the proposal. Raising an issue with the plan of action set forth by someone more senior can be tricky to navigate politically.

On the other hand, if you need to find a hill to die on, this is probably a good one.

AKA "well it's not illegal," a lousy lower-bound.

Man, that reply in particular left the biggest impact on me. The fact that this c-level exec is making decisions like this in such a ham-fisted way would scare me away if I were a customer. There are a chain of repercussions as a result of this.

Having been in a few of these kinds of discussions inside companies, it's super-fascinating to find one that is open to the public! It shows what is always true: that any "corporate decision", seemingly made by some sort of AI machine, was actually made by one specific (usually unidentified) person. Popcorn moment for sure.

Twelve thumbs down and one middle finger. (I'm not a native speaker of emoji and I'm not sure what the 8 ball means). These are from employees?

Sure, but that just changes it to "someone up the chain of command is hopelessly out of touch". Still doesn't bode well.

Which large company was it that recently acquired GitLab Inc.? I must have missed that.

Nah, you didn't. I was mistaken - I thought I had read something about that recently, but it looks like it's just that they raised another round of funding last month.

Funding rounds are changes in ownership structure.

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