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Comment by ToucanLoucan | Hacker News Reader

I really wish this wasn't the shocking revelation it is, but holy fuck, a ton of people just refuse to do this.

I've done it all my life, personal and professional. I will (not happily, but I will) explain how I fucked up, and why. But similar to your experience, this catches people completely off guard. They don't expect it and I know why, because in my interactions in turn with people who also, categorically, fucked up: they will NEVER admit it. Most people will die on the hill of not just owning a simple fucking mistake and it's so bonkers to witness. Like... it's fine. You're human. You made a human error. Just like... acknowledge it so we can get on with whatever?

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I can't think of many better ways to demonstrate to your colleagues and corporate overlords that you are worthy of their trust than to readily hold up your hands if you've screwed up.

So long as you're not so incompetent that you're repeatedly doing stupid stuff or cynically causing issues so that you can make yourself look virtuous by owning up, of course.

In corporate context, admitting exernally-facing liability too easily violates executives' fiduciary responsibility to shareholders. For incentives aligning, need to figure out how to unravel that beasty.

On the contrary, I think it can be sold as a PR win: Think about how many companies torch customer goodwill by making a bad decision and then doubling and tripling down on it for months (before backpedaling and losing a ton of customers anyways).

I don't know, but I'd hazard a guess: not many? Or rather, plenty do, but they don't lose much customers - any company worth their salt is positioned to screw over their users, unintentionally or otherwise, with little to no consequences to its business.

Unfortunate but true.

It’s so refreshing when people do this and it totally disarms most people who are angry with you.

I also find it effective when talking to people that may not be angry at me specifically, but angry at the company I work for. I may not have written the code that fucked up, but I certainly can apologize on behalf of the company and empathize with the user. I’ve found when I do this I’m able to quickly get to a solution rather than degrade further into finger pointing.

Fwiw, I don't see "disarming" as a particular goal or win. It's neutral maybe. It might even be a bit unjust if we think the aggrieved is owed some form of recompense.

I guess my framing of these things goes something like:

* Person A made an error that made things worse for Person B

* A sorta owes B now. Could be A making up for the error—like if A knocked over B's coffee, A could get them a new one. Or another, perhaps disagreeable, sorta justice is B now getting to do something back to A—like B knocking over A's coffee, or just cursing at A for a bit.

* These things would put them back to even.

I feel several comments are thinking of "owning the mistake" primarily as a tool to neutralize B's ability to get back to even. This, rather than owning it to take responsibility or just because it's honest. Saying we're "owning our mistake" is not owning our mistake. The point is to know you were in the wrong—whether that's by introspecting on it, having to buy an extra coffee that day, or getting cursed at.

I think maybe you're thinking it in the wrong way? If A immediately owns up and apologizes, B not getting into a frenzy of swear words is not only good for A, but it's good for B, too (unnecessary stress and getting-worked-up is probably not really good for us!). Clearly if they were still upset (despite the apology), they might still feel the need to yell and vent a bit, and if they do, perhaps they will. But if they don't, then likely the acknowledgement of fault and apology has been appreciated, and B has gotten out of it what they need to.

For something like knocking over a coffee, certainly, the knocker owes the knockee a new coffee, and acknowledging fault and apologizing is the first step to getting there.

(B retaliating by knocking over A's coffee is always going to be unproductive and childish, even if A is unrepentant and rude about it.)

I agree that just saying that you own your mistake isn't enough; owning it means doing the best you can to make amends. But sometimes the person you wronged is fine with just an acknowledgement and an apology. For example, if someone knocked over my coffee, and it seemed like a genuine mistake (that is, it wasn't because the person was being careless or negligent), I probably would accept an apology but decline a new coffee. The apology would be enough for me. Not saying that it would be for everyone, but people are different.

A caring about B is a good point. If A thinks to themself, "Crap, I effed up. I should apologize. B will be mad, what can I do to make B feel better? I could buy them a coffee", that's pretty good. If A thinks, "Crap, I effed up. I should apologize and reconsider wrestling near people's desks", that's also pretty good. Ideally, both the reflection and the coffee would be nice. If I had to choose just one, I'm leaning towards the latter as owning the mistake more than B being made whole with coffee, but that's debateable (and might be where we differ).

If it's, "Oh, B will be mad, what can I do so that this doesn't take too long? I could apologize and buy them a coffee", it feels less right. It inches toward that phrase that goes something like "the fastest way to get someone to shut up is to agree with them." It might be true in a practical sense and yet it's woefully sociopathic.

When I'm dealing with an upset customer on the phone, disarming means that we can move past the "I'm pissed at you, why can't you fix your stuff" useless conversation into the "how can we help you" much faster.

In other words, disarm means the "emotional" center of the brain can safely disengage and the logical center can take over. When someone is angry, most likely, their emotions have taken over and, once that happens, you're going to spend a lot of time dealing with emotions and not moving toward a mutual solution.

Therefore, if you look at it this way, how is the pure emotional response from the aggrieved helping them get to a sort of recompense? I would argue the short answer is that it is not helping at all, it's just pure lashing out. Which, of course, could be a rational response to the situation. However, no matter how justified the aggrieved may feel in lashing out, the act of lashing out itself doesn't actually move the needle.

If I can show compassion and empathy toward the customer, including saying the simple words "I'm sorry" I'm trying to move out of the emotional state and into a logical state where we can come to some sort of agreement on the next course of action. I'm not trying to "get out" of anything, just trying to literally disengage a part of the brain that is not doing anyone any good for either party.

To your point though the apology has to be authentic. And, yes, I do empathize with the customer's anger in the moment. I've been there myself. So I can easily put myself in their shoes. Of course, as the great philosopher Daniel Tiger says, "Saying I'm sorry is the first step, now how can I help?" [0]. So unless you just want to enrage the customer further, you need to immediately follow that apology up with action - in my case, it could be escalating to the right engineering group, finding a workaround, helping identify the root cause, whatever it could be...

Hope this helps clarify. I'm in no way trying to "pull one over" anyone. I truly want to help - which is probably why it works so well.

[0] https://pbskids.org/videos/watch/saying-im-sorry-is-the-firs...

  disarming means that we can move past the "I'm pissed at you, why can't you fix your stuff" useless conversation

I'm not so sure this part is "useless." It's not the most pleasant part (particularly to the perpetrator), but it is deserved. It would be like catching a thief, having the possessions returned, and the thief arguing that punishing him would be useless because everything was returned. Getting yelled at might be the punishment. Having to buy a replacement coffee (in my earlier example) could also be it. It would be weird to assume the perpetrator has the largest say in the matter.

  disarm means the "emotional" center of the brain can safely disengage and the logical center can take over. When someone is angry, most likely, their emotions have taken over and, once that happens, you're going to spend a lot of time dealing with emotions and not moving toward a mutual solution.

There of course can be benefit to toning down the emotion, but this part is grayer than described imo. It isn't exactly the perpetrator's place to choose when and whether the victim should chill out (assuming they stay within some limits). I find there to be a latent privilege (for the perpetrator) in the framing of a lot of this. The perpetrator has shifted from taking blame (in the sense of consequences, not apologies) to moving on. Some of moving on can be meant well for sure, but the shift is there. The reason they "have to spend time dealing with this" is because they caused it. Those are the consequences of the mistake. Again, getting yelled at might be the solution. To encourage wrapping up the emotional part is to encourage moving past the parts that are uncomfortable for the perpetrator—which also might explain the perpetrator's inclination to "find a mutual solution" sooner than the victim.

This is an aside, but I find this shift in a lot of places. Someone double parks on a busy street, a person gives them a honk (doesn't lay on the horn, doesn't curse them out, doesn't flip them off), and the doubleparker gets pissed (lays on the horn, curses at them, flips them off). This seems a rather common scene today. One honk is a fairly low form of accountability for the inconvenient/selfish behavior, but culturally we often treat the honk as the bigger faux pas. We expect the driver to "chill out" and "move on" and don't expect the doubleparker to accept the tiny consequence let alone own the mistake.

I think this may ultimately involve some amount of personal philosophy. I would stand by the notion that disarming shouldn't be a particular goal of owning mistakes. It focuses too much on the victim. Owning mistakes is a kind of hygiene for the mistake maker (which they/we often skip) yet the victim is getting a lot of scrutiny. Totally agree that saying "sorry" is only the first step of being sorry—that phrase has been used by friends/myself before, though I didn't know it was a wider one. Thanks for the thoughts, definitely no concern on my end about intent.

Heck, I'll do it happily. I don't enjoy screwing up, but owning your mistakes is the first step to improvement.

Typically such people were punished severely for admitting mistakes as a child, while lying about it and pretending nothing happened was "fine" and got them off the hook.

Being a programmer has made this a lot easier for me.

The average line of code that I type has three typos and one syntax error, so I'm accustomed to making mistakes (and fixing them).

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