ThoughtWorks Mourns Colleague Aaron Swartz, Responds to MIT’s Statement | Hacker News Reader

ThoughtWorks Mourns Colleague Aaron Swartz, Responds to MIT’s Statement

thoughtworks.com

87 pointsABS15 comments

As a close friend of Aaron's who was on the email chain between ThoughtWorks and his family about this statement, I can tell you that marketing played no role in this. There is intense, genuine, sadness and anger there about what happened, from the top down. Having "About ThoughtWorks" on the page is an oversight if anything. A team of engineers has been working through the night to build http://rememberaaronsw.com, which is a beautiful tribute to him--even the _content_ is open-source, kept in a github repo rather than a proprietary database. And TW was very concerned to support the family's wishes. I'm proud of them.

Thoughtworks using any opportunity to market themselves as usual. I hated working there.

Call me crude, but this is just a thinly veiled ad for thoughtworks attached to the tragic topic of the day

Should we have said nothing? For the past several months Aaron has led the development of an online petition application working with several senior programmers at ThoughtWorks for a project we paid for ourselves, because we believed in his cause, and we believed in Aaron. Friends of Aaron who worked with him built rememberaaronsw.com because they are hurt and they wanted to honor the man in the best way they knew how. This wasn't a group of people trying to capitalize on a public figure. This was his friends and colleagues.

I'm sorry if this came off the wrong way to you, but you should realize that the message of internet freedom doesn't necessarily help us sell our services in a lot of places.

For me, that last paragraph ("About Thoughtworks") is what left a poor taste in my mouth. Up until that point, I personally thought it was in good taste. If someone doesn't know who ThoughtWorks is and needs to know, I assure you that they'll find it via a search engine. I'd also drop the contacts phone numbers as well.

The addition of that About TW paragraph, no matter how "standard" in a PR setting, is incredibly inappropriate in my view and makes it appear that you are taking the occasion of an employee's suicide to market ThoughtWorks. Don't do that.

Try to see it from the other side. The "About Thoughtworks" is just how companies talk.

The fact that it looks exactly like an official ThoughtWorks PR broadside makes it even clearer which side the company is on. No "this is the private opinion of colleagues/friends", but "this is how strongly the company feels about this".

I say well done.

Understood, but it looks like the About ThoughtWorks section is just part of the press release template (look through the previous press releases and you see the same thing). I don't think our website team was prepared with a template for this kind of statement.

I would have actually appreciated more your comment above, then that cold press release.

He was a ThoughtWorks employee, it only makes sense they made a statement. I work there and they sent a company-wide email saying that they're having a remembrance day for Aaron on the 15th and they're taking time in every office to remember Aaron by discussing his work, his impact on the world, and who he is. This isn't a shameless promotion, this is showing respect for him and honoring his legacy.

not to mention the live townhall meeting done less than a month ago - put together a few days after it was found out that Aaron's trial was going to start on April 1st - organised by ThoughtWorks founder and others to explain Aaron's case and what colleagues worldwide could do to help (indeed I work there too).

On the one hand, it appears he was a lead on an active project there. I think there are tasteful ways to honor a colleague.

I don't think this is tasteful. It looks like it submitted to press release services. The "About Thoughtworks" blurb serves only to promote the company. Even if their motivations really were selfless, it doesn't look like it from the outside.

This was likely what they wanted to say yesterday, but were instead waiting for the PR guys to be back in the office to give it the once over.

He worked for Thoughtworks. Maybe if you spent the time to actually read the article you would've learned that.

The Department of Justice used TOS-violations to prosecute Aaron for wire-fraud. Perhaps we should all add a bit of T.O.S. to our sites to warn visitors from DOJ that that they are not permitted to access our sites, and further violations will be reported.

You can submit your own via pull request: https://github.com/rememberaaronsw/rememberaaronsw

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