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Comment by t8sr | Hacker News Reader

I have never said and rarely thought this before, but I really hope the person who came up with / approved this idea got fired for it. It’s rare that you see something so unbelievably stupid and destructive of the shared pool of trust, which Apple spent 30 years building, only for one self-interested PM to blow a chunk of it up for no gain.

If the person who came up with this reads this site, I hope they see this comment and think about how screwed the industry would be if everyone acted the way they did.

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I think the person who came up with this shouldn't be fired, the person who _approved_ it should be reprimanded.

There's some intersection point between who "owns" the wallet and who is coming up with ways to generate marketing revenue.

Whoever lives at that intersection point is the real shot caller here aren't they?

Imo you don't fire people for generating bad ideas, that just creates a culture of not thinking outside the box. But the person who is filtering those ideas is the critical lynch pin.

Why not fire them both?

> Imo you don't fire people for generating bad ideas,

If an idea is that bad, at the very least they should be transfered into a role that doesn't involve coming up with good ideas, since obviously that is outside of their skill set. And what's the argument for not firing the chain of people who approved it? Their job was to stop bad ideas and they catastrophically failed.

> at the very least they should be transfered into a role that doesn't involve coming up with good ideas, since obviously that is outside of their skill set.

Proposing one bad idea is not unusual for people whose job is idea-driven. When ideas are the primary currency of your occupation, you'll necessarily generate some losers. But in a company of Apple's size, that's why you rely on colleagues and - critically - a more robust approval process to move from idea to deliverable.

I hate your idea of firing (from org. or role) the idea person based on one bad idea. I don't hate the idea of firing (from org. or role) the leaders accountable for getting this idea into the world.

Job security seems to hold higher esteem than prison.

Social norms exist outside of criminal law, and a single extremely poor decision is reason enough for people to lose their freedom.

Why shouldn’t it be possible for people to lose their jobs?

You're seriously comparing a single advertisement to crimes like murder? Crimes that land you in prison are generally crimes that even children can understand are wrong. You're using "extremely poor decision" for 2 wildly different things, and if you think they're remotely equivalent, perhaps you should reflect on why you think that.

I am seriously suggesting that a single bad decision (like taking some money from the cash register) can land you in prison, why do we hold jobs to a higher standard?

Learning from our mistakes is one thing, slip ups happen after all, but I’m just drawing a comparison to “a single misjudgement”.

If you don't know societies values (stealing is wrong) or a companies values (tarnishing the brand by looking cheap and desperate) the outcome should probably be the same: expulsion or exclusion.

Also, don’t go to the most extreme negative interpretation of what someone says, it’s against guidelines.

> the outcome should probably be the same

Why exactly besides the fact that you like extreme solutions?

Because accountability?

Either you’re suggesting jail is too punitive a punishment or that being fired should never be a viable option.

I’m not saying we should jump to extremes, I’m saying that the option should be on the table if you violate the core principles of the company, especially in a way that causes loss of consumer trust.

Whats the difference between defrauding Ford out of $200M and causing $200M in damages because I decided that every new Ford will include the word “I solemnly swear I will shit on the American flag when requested”?

In essence, in either case I am putting my own needs above the needs of the company and above the needs of the consumer - in a way that undermines future sales for the company too.

> Why shouldn’t it be possible for people to lose their jobs?

This is a strawman argument that seems made in bad faith, but I'll bite anyway: I am not saying that no single bad idea or mistake should result in the loss of a job. I am saying that most of the time such a response would be an extreme reaction, especially when directed at the lower-level source of the ideas vs. the more senior accountable parties who are paid to know better.

Magnitude matters, as does accountability. Creating this world of extremes where one mistake of poor idea leads to termination is a pretty quick way to a toxic and non-productive work environment. Enact accountability where it sits, not across the entire chain.

I think you and I are saying the same thing honestly.

The parent seems to be of the mind that it's never a viable option for someone to lose their jobs for something; which I find an extreme position in itself.

I'm not sure how this context is lost, as precisely this point is what I'm getting at. I'm not jumping to extremes as some imply (including you), I'm saying it should be on the table for the most hopeless egregious offences.

There’s bad ideas like “it wasn’t possible to execute this the way we thought we could”, and bad ideas like “this goes against the core values of what this company is”.

The first is something that might have gone better in better circumstances, so it’s a learning opportunity. The second shows you either don’t understand the company and decided to carry on despite that, or you just don’t care about the company, but either way it reflects poorly enough on an individual that a firing should be on the table.

Yes, but there’s nuance. We each assume a version of events and nobody really knows. In my experience, big tech companies attract a certain type of person (among others) who will not only think of stuff like this, but actively fight for it and consequences to the long term be damned. VPs who actually approve this stuff will have limited time to think about it and a lot depends on the proposal.

This looks like a group PM level decision. Bluntly, at that level we get paid enough to exercise good judgement.

> Imo you don't fire people for generating bad ideas, that just creates a culture of not thinking outside the box.

No, you fire people for generating ideas that are shady and against your own policies.

disagree. brainstorming should never be seen as a negative. trying to _promote_ and _act_ on shady ideas is the problem.

“What if we just charge a bunch of hidden recurring fees?”

Some ideas are so bad they indicate that you aren’t aligned with the goals of the company

Agreed, even when brainstorming there needs to be left and right bounds. It needs to be constructive and it needs to align to the vision.

ok, i agree that an idea that’s actively malicious toward your customer should maybe be a fireable offense. That’s extreme but we can agree. :)

You definitely fire people for pitching ideas that are against the ethos of the company. Otherwise you have no culture. It shouldn’t come down to one approver on the wallet side to see how dumb this was

Tim Cook is in charge. This wasn't decided in a bubble. A single person can't do this. It takes a lot of people to do this. A culture that allows this. This wasn't a mistake. It wasn't malicious. It wasn't even the first time.

Tim Cook did this, and anyone that can't put the blame on him is lying to themselves.

You’d think he would have learned after that U2 album disaster 11 years ago, clearly not. He’s been doing this kind of stuff since he took over.

It seemed like Jobs used the products and was trying to make stuff that he would want to use. Cook seems like he doesn’t use any of these products, and is willing to sacrifice the user experience to try and make a few extra bucks.

It seems time for some new blood leading Apple. A product person who can get the company back to the core of trying to make insanely great products that people want to use, without compromise.

As the saying goes:

“Never attribute to incompetence that which is adequately explained by profit motives.”

Then you’re in agreement with the article:

> I try very seldom to call for anyone to be fired, but I think whoever authorized this movie ad through Wallet push notifications ought to be canned.

Apple should be sued for this. This is their responsibility. They built it, left it unsupervised, and allowed the obvious to happen.

This is not the fault of ONE low level worker and there is no reason to punish them and then walk away like you've accomplished /anything/ meaningful in the long term.

These are precisely the types of public cases that should be brought against them. It would lend a lot of aid to the anti trust efforts against them as well. They clearly privilege themselves and see the devices and app store as their asset, not something they maintain on behalf of customers and developers.

> destructive of the shared pool of trust

Will there actually be any short, mediumm, or long term consequences for Apple? What real, tangible trust has Apple lost that could lead to meaningful harm to them?

The only thing I can come up with is people who hold Apple to some kind of high-minded ideal, that they constantly run foul of for other reasons already.

Apple does a lot of things that are not allowed by any of the 3p developers. Someone like EU could look at that (for instance in this case a direct to consumer marketing channel that they are using to favor their own properties) and say it violates the DMA.

Google is being forced to take Google Flights links out of Search results, for instance.

Apple’s behind of curve of its third party ecosystem. All of the apps on the App Store send spam notifications, violating Apple’s own guidelines that it has no intention of enforcing.

Threads like this one are a short-term consequence for Apple.

People here, discussing it, a) demonstrate that they find the act to represent a breach of trust, and b) spread that understanding and opinion among those who read it.

That's not, in itself, a direct consequence for Apple, but it is something they need to be, and I genuinely believe are, worried about, because losing trust in them is precisely the kind of thing that will get people to stop buying their products. This is especially true given the way they've positioned themselves as a more trustworthy actor in the privacy field.

The thing is, while we care about it here at HN, most people don't really care. Apple is a cult among consumers and they aren't going to switch even if they started putting in way more ads. They know, similar to Windows, that they have an ecosystem lock in and people aren't going to escape it.

People think they don’t care, or they tolerate it, but it still has an impact on the experience. It comes in the form of fewer glowing reviews, fewer recommendations to friends, more complaints and less forgiveness for problems. The pressure builds up over time, and then they snap.

Windows is the perfect example against the claim that Apple should be comfortable to abuse their users. Windows marketshare has been steadily dropping for the last 15 years. People are tired of the abuse, and slowly but surely leaving the platform. We now have people like PewDiePie making videos about switching to Arch Linux and self hosting, large companies offering employees a choice of Windows or Mac… things that would have sounded extremely unlikely 10+ years ago.

I’m pretty deep in the Apple ecosystem, having been in it since 2003. I could transition out of it within a week if I had to. There are some things I’d miss, for sure, but I’d live.

Exactly. Just because someone says they don't care, or they don't even consciously see it, doesn't mean it's not internalized in some way. A lot of the time it simply degrades the importance of the notification, making them more likely to be passively ignored in the future, however it probably runs deeper too.

I assume that this was approved by the CMO or at very least at the VP level. Previously I was the eng TL for house ads at a big co. We would've run anytime vaguely controversial all the way up the chain.

It shows they must be REALLY worried about this movie. All the reviews I’ve read say it sucks. I’m an f1 fan and from what I’ve read it sounds all pretty dumb and fake.

It was fun in IMAX. It's not cinema

I saw it last night. The cinematography of the racing sequences was interesting. The races they actually depicted were not, though. The human story line was trash, just a really hokey "old guy uses gut feeling to beat young people using science" movie plot. And Pitt did himself no favours in this movie with his acting.

>if everyone acted the way they did.

Everyone with the power like Apple does

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