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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
Seems pretty sincere and decent to me.
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.
Its like an email that says “attached”, but there’s no attachment.
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.
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.
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"
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.
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.
That is 100% an 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.
Seems rather childish.
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.