Oddbean new post about login | logout @25b1da2f Speaking of optics, immediately after I wrote that, the CTO dropped in yet again to basically say "oh, sure, that guy spent the better part of a decade trashing Qualcomm engineers, etc., but he stepped down 9 months ago, so that has nothing to do with us", along with an anodyne statement about how Discourse is serious about Android. This is also one of the two core things I was commenting on in the main thread — the tendency to pass the blame outside the company. https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/067/754/955/176/886/original/1564a8fa67eb8e36.png
@25b1da2f Of course, as someone who's spent a lot of time in big companies, I'm familiar with the "blame the exec who headed out the door and wash your hands of all responsibility" move, but I think the move's optics are better when it's a hugecompany and there was a leadership purge than when it's one co-founder talking about another, after they had 9 years to speak up when their buddy called other engineers "terrible at their jobs" and spitefully wished for them to all lose their jobs.
@ed709062 To me it just looks like he wanted to snitch tag.
@25b1da2f Personally, if I wanted to do that, I would've just tagged Jeff without the mealy mouthed explanation followed by what sounds like megacorp PR copy. Not that I ever have done that or would do that, but when I've seen people snitch tag, they usually just tag the person without sounding like a corp PR drone. Since Sam doesn't generally sound like a PR drone, e.g., see the quoted bits above, it really feels like he was writing PR copy.
