To be very fair, I love how honest and forthcoming Mike was with this news. That was hard and he could have covered it up. To all the deniers and Mike-haters out there, I think this only goes to show the type of person he is.
Also, I love how the identity of the intern wasn't disclosed. Not only does it allow him to make amends and learn from his mistakes, it also shows the level of professionalism that stems from TechCrunch.
Deleting the guy's account and leading with "Our attorneys have advised us not to disclose the name . . ." indicates that keeping his identity secret was very low priority.
Expect a public apology from the kid in the next 24hrs.
> -> Deleted /var on a production system I had no right touching at a Fortune 500.
The 'you had no right touching' bit should have been 'you should have no possibility to touch'.
Whoever administered that systems shares part of the blame, you have done it, but they should have never let you get within spitting distance of a terminal capable of doing that.
Too right. Production root passwords had a planetary theme - where planetary means one of the giants in our solar system - not hard for a nosey and curious kid to take a peek at any system they wanted.
We all make mistakes as a teenager, often involving a lack of ethics. He just happened to do it in a very public way. As Michael said, hopefully he will learn from this situation.
You're making it sound like it's some sort of minor slip-up that happened to get publicized. Say you make a habit of accepting expensive dinners from a source who is interested in you writing about them. Or embellishing a story a little. Or say you even take a MacBook Air from a source at their suggestion. Those are lapses in ethical judgment. Running around repeatedly asking for people to give you stuff so you write about them is just being an outright slimeball.
"You're making it sound like it's some sort of minor slip-up that happened to get publicized."
I think his point was (EDIT: I am just clarifying what I think his point was, not endorsing it) not that it was a "minor slipup" but that the person who committed this is a kid and not an adult (17 is a bit borderline but still pretty young)and he is asking for some compassion and discretion. At least that is how I read it.
fwiw, I have no position on the matter but I tend to a (purely subjective) viewpoint he has been punished enough.
For some reason, this "oh he's not an adult" line of thinking very much bothers me.
We should be looking at things like..how much experience does he have writing? with publicity and marketing? How many times has he admitted to doing something like this, and how many more people went up to Arrington and voiced their concerns about what he did? Where was the TC team while this was going on...or did he just not ask anyone for any advice and do it on his own, thinking that writing for TC would be a great leverage to get gear without anyone knowing?
Age does correspond with a degree of maturity, cynicism, experience and more, but this person so many people are jumping to defend because of his age of all things doesn't exactly have a lack of experience blogging for business, doing podcasts, organizing conferences and more. I remember seeing his sites about Apple and teens in tech years ago. Don't even know what was going through his head when he attempted to do this multiple times, and TC is far larger than anything he's ever done before, but he should have realized this was a really bad idea. Based on his experience. Not his age or lack thereof.
That being said, I think an outing on a site like TC is bound to hurt his reputation for a long time to come, and that's probably more punishment than he deserves.
Well, as you say, he's not really that much of a kid. And I think filing it under "we all make mistakes" is kind of diminishing it. This isn't shoplifting candy from the corner store for kicks. I just don't think this is the sort of 'mistake' we all make or made.
.. I did far, far, far, far far, far worse when I was 15, as did a number of my hacker friends. Somehow, over time we grow up and become productive members of society despite our earlier transgressions.
Let me ask this question, because it seems it needs asking:
1) has anybody here ever been approached by other 'writers' who will do a write-up in exchange for goodies ?
2) has anybody here been approached by writers to post links under their HN username ?
The second has definitely happened to me, the first was so oblique that it might be my misunderstanding. But I'm fairly surprised, what's your call, should I out the publication ? The person doing the canvassing ?
I've been wondering about what to do with this.
As for the way this 'kid' (I'm putting that in quotes because if you are smart enough to ask for computers worth quite a bit of money you are smart enough to understand there are consequences if you get caught) has behaved, the other side to that story is those companies that did not get written about because they refused to play ball.
We're not talking about an accident or an oversight here, but at a deliberate attempt at fraud, and not a one-off but part of a pattern.
I don't see even being fired and having to return the goods to his employer who will presumably re-imburse the people that 'paid' for it is a punishment, that leaves him at '0'.
TC is handling this as good as they can after the fact, but before you give someone access to the editorial process don't you at least read them the riot act as to what the consequences will be if they do something like this?
Just like the 'real' newspapers companies like TC wield some power and it is important to make sure that everybody that is in on the process knows exactly where the line is.
If TC did make it clear in advance what is permissible I'm sympathetic to naming the guy, if not then probably not.
The key bit in Mikes post is this:
> on at least one other occasion
So, how often did that happen ? Once ? Twice ? More ??
If more then outing the guy looks reasonable, if it is once or twice then again, probably not.
I'm sympathetic with vaksels gut reaction, but slow down a bit and let's get some more data before making that call.
TC has their opinion, that's fine, we're all adults and reasonably smart cookies here, I'd like to be able to trust what I read is not coloured in any way and what Mike is doing is as much damage control on behalf of TC as it is an exercise in ethics after the fact.
Let's hear him out on how he has posted guidelines about how his writers should behave.
No policy -> TC bad, no matter how they spin it now, Yes policy -> kid gets outed, but only if this happened more than the 2 times that we're sure about.
*... has anybody here been approached by writers to post links under their HN username ? [This] has definitely happened to me..."
Really? That's awful. Ha - I've been making comments around saying that people shouldn't be outing the intern. But now I'm dying to ask you who it was. Maybe if the person's real identity can't be guessed from the username...? Jeez, I don't know. This sucks; I'm going to bed. Figure out the ethics yourself. ;)
I completely agree. There's probably many (more than two) sides to the story. I was just clarifying what I thought to be a misunderstanding of a comment. (I did say "I think his point was not X but Y"). I wasn't endorsing his position.
I personally have no interest in wasting time, neurons and keystrokes passing judgment on what level of "punishment" (including naming/outing) for this person would be appropriate, especially here on HN. (Nothing wrong in wanting to, just saying I don't want to).
Most penal codes I know (IANAL) do take age and frequency of crime into account before deciding what punishment is appropriate. I suspect, if taken to court, he would get away with a slap on the wrist.
Frankly I could care less. As I said, I am neutral on this with a very slight bias to "he's been punished enough".
The thing is that there is a more or less guaranteed discussion of your stuff on HN if it gets posted on TC, and vaksel has more than done his bit to promote TC on HN, so I can really understand he feels taken in a bad way. Another option is that vaksel was refused a write-up by that person, in which case I really understand why he's mad.
As for the frequency being a factor, yes but only after it turns out that TC has posted guidelines.
If not then you can basically discount whatever TC writes about anything from now on.
All I read is that Mike got contacted by someone that was approached, but that if that had not happened this could have been going on (and may have gone on) for a long time.
Maybe it was just a joke. Every once and a while I get called up by an especially annoying PR hack asking me to write about their latest iphone cozy (macworld being next week I get 5-7 calls like that per day because I'm somehow on the press list). When they're overly persistent I tell them to give me a Pony and I'll write about them (I'll write that they gave me a pony!). Maybe "give me a pony" is just a lot easier to understand as sarcasm than "give me a macbook air, jerk"?
Also, I love how the identity of the intern wasn't disclosed. Not only does it allow him to make amends and learn from his mistakes, it also shows the level of professionalism that stems from TechCrunch.