> I'm sorry for how you and the Japanese community feel about the MT workflow that we just recently introduced. Would you be interested to hop on a call with us to talk about this further? We want to make sure we trully understand what you're struggling with.
> My timezone is UTC+7, so it should be easier for us to set up time. Let me know how that sound!
What a horribly condescending and patronising response. If I'd received this it would just further vindicate my decision to quit.
> I'm sorry for how you and the Japanese community feel about the MT workflow that we just recently introduced.
English is also not my mother tongue, but this translates to "I'm sorry you feel like that, but we don't care or change anything, can I call you to convince you into doing things our way while completely being off the record?" in my mind.
This is forceful and rude in my culture, but it's very rude and a no-no in Japanese culture AFAIK.
If the person wanted to help genuinely, I'd expect to read something like "I'm sorry you feel like this. I read your comments but I want to clarify some points so I can transfer these up the chain with utmost clarity. We might have made some mistakes and don't want to leave you out in the cold".
This reaction baffles me and feels like online indignation culture. All I could see, as a Latin American English speaker, is someone who's sincerely trying to help and picked their words carefully. Your proposed phrasing sounds unnatural and AI-like.
You're touching the heart of the question, but not in the way you think. Any arbitrary statement could be construed as offensive by SOME culture out there. But people prefer to immediately assume the worst and be offended instead of giving others the benefit of the doubt.
For instance, if I followed the principles of indignation culture, I could be offended by your "I can assure you about that :)" statement. I could say "Are you making fun of me?!?!"
To be clear, your statement is perfectly fine. I understand what you're saying, despite disagreeing.
Also, this happened in an English language forum. It's reasonable to expect that foreign speakers would be somewhat versed in the conventions of the English language and see that the comment was not offensive at all.
It's not just the words that differ. Rudeness can come from underlying values betrayed by language, and those values do matter -- words aren't simply interchanged atop them.
Some cultures value relational power in leadership, and so their language reflects preserving relationships as a base resources. Some cultures value authority, and so their idea of being polite might involve some maintenance of authority at the expense of perceived care or relationship.
I'm just saying the words that convey rudeness are not necessarily just a superficial dressing on the same thing. Politeness is a shorthand that is also about alignment with a cultural value. Cultural values differ. My being annoyed at someone else's cultural posturing as default, that's not just mindless indignation. Values matter.
As a native speaker (American) the phrasing is classic condescending soulless corporate customer service speak. 1) You must always apologize, 2) you must never admit fault. "I'm sorry you feel this way about what we did" comes across _to me_ as "what we did was totally fine, it's too bad that you don't understand the wisdom of our actions." That kind of phrasing is also a bit of a trigger because the majority of the time you hear it from companies that don't give a damn how you feel and will fight to avoid doing anything to actually help you.
It's of course impossible to say if this was just an unfortunate choice of phrasing or if it's a sign that Mozilla has become that soulless corporate entity (I say this as a Firefox user for more than 20 years).
Every culture has a way of discussing and resolving disagreements. Some are noisier and some are calmer. Some cultures do this dance with "apparent" disrespect, with forceful exchanges, some with calmer and tidier demeanor.
Japanese are the latter. There's a polite dance of disagreement. Every side listens others with respect (with respect to the process even if they don't respect the others) and answer politely yet firmly.
This comment smells like there's already some disagreement under this, and none of them have been listened and they are steamrolled with the new workflow.
Implying "Hey you're overreacting, let us convince you" doesn't help on top of it.
Politely say "I don't care what you think but I won't change anything" is perfectly fine in Japanese culture. Taking an issue privately instead of showing disagreements in public is also perfectly fine for Japanese people.
The issue has nothing to do with Japanese culture, but with how you work with a community of volunteers over the web. "Let's jump on a call" is what you say to a coworker, not to a volunteer in an online community.
Let’s jump on a call is something you say when you feel that the tone and intention of your communication is getting lost in text. And whether it’s common in all cultures or not, tone and intention getting lost in text is universal.
> I mean, that question is already well answered within the first (opening) comment of marsf,
No, it's not. Half of the listed reasons are obvious enough, but the half is very vague. I don't know if they are something you would understand as an insider, but as an outsider there would be many open questions if it would be my task to make this work.
The whole communication seems like people on one or both sides lacking information, and one trying to fix this to start the process for solving the other sides' problem. Nothing wrong with this in a professional environment.
But it is not "forceful and rude" by any means and your interpretation is way over the top for what looks like two people from different cultures trying to communicate in a mutually non-native language using words on a screen.
Written messages can feel cold even when it's two native English speakers communicating over email or text and it's best to assume good faith until you see clear evidence to the contrary.
I don't think it even matters how canned it sounds.. it seems like a polite way to move the discussion to a phone call where some real communication can happen. I think that was a perfect response. Forums are not ideal for resolving conflict, especially if language barriers exist.
Nope. Start by apologizing for the impact of what YOU did. Contributor of 20y just quit and provide a clear list of what is wrong. "your feelings" and "your struggles" is not respectful.
You should be sorry that YOU pushed changes on them in a way that impacted badly their work and made them quit. Thank them for the feedback and try to open a discussion on finding a positive outcome.
As a native English speaker, I don't see it as condescending either. Yes it's a bit "corporate" in tone, but that is not uncommon at all in large human organisations (not just for-profit corporations but also government, NGOs, political orgs, etc). Also the reality is that "hopping on a call" can often help to resolve problems that would otherwise devolve into months of bikeshedding on mailing lists. Which is often entertaining but rarely very useful.
But it's Mozilla. There is a segment of the community that will be pissed off by everything they do. Check the username of the person you're replying to.
I am English and the phrasing used is a backhanded way to tell you to shut-up and go away. I've seen it used by both native and non-native speakers in this manner.
It is about 50/50 though as many people don't seem to pick up on backhanded way that many English people speak.
> Also the reality is that "hopping on a call" can often help to resolve problems that would otherwise devolve into months of bikeshedding on mailing lists.
This is also sometimes done to shut you up as well.
The core thing here is the "I'm sorry you feel this way". This immediately deflects all sense of wrong-doing from the people actually doing wrong to the people feeling hurt. There are so many other ways to phrase this that are either more neutral or even acknowledging of some kind of mistake being made that's not on the volunteer's side, but that's not what's happening here. Essentially this means "We did the right thing and now we need to figure out how to make you understand this", not "Something went wrong and we need to figure out how to come to an understanding which might include us having done something wrong".
Having a call is fine, but it's not like the original complaint didn't lay out in plenty of detail what the problem was.
Given the context of corporate doublespeak, I saw the response as "Oh shit, we can't refute your issues, but maybe we can bullshit you privately into putting up with them?".
(I see a few disagreements here, back up with "I'm a native speaker". Me too friend, but understand messages like this is (imho) more about the subtext than the text itself, so interpersonal knowledge is more important than linguistic.)
Native English speaker and worked in IT in multiple corporations for over 30 years and none of this is condescending. The person is trying to reach out and talk.
This is not to dismiss what happened, but to just address the poster who thinks this is condescending.
No it's not. Where are you getting that? It's framing that there is an actual struggle, which is the acknowledgement that it's something they can work on resolving. Rolling back changes might be the answer.
I honestly don't understand where you're getting this cynical interpretation from. It's not in the words.
As an English speaker, I 100% disagree. This does not come across as someone wanting to understand or to help. It’s someone wanting to avoid a scene. Private phone calls are not an appropriate way to deal with community issues like this. In other threads on the site (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/forums/contributors/717387...) it’s clear this change has received massive pushback for months since it was announced, and community members specifically called out the issues enumerated in the OP as potential problems. So the responder already knows exactly what is wrong. No clarification is necessary.
If this were some small bug report, even from someone pretty ticked off, I'd agree.
But this is a response to someone who has just announced that they are quitting an organization they had spent 20 years of their life volunteering for, because of the disrespect they have felt from the org. This is not a "hop on a call" moment. This is a "please accept to meet so I can apologize in person, and see if we can repair this" moment, preferably after acknowledging the disrespect.
It's a community matter posted in a public place, a non-statement with an immediate attempt to direct it to private conversation reads like trying to avoid attention to your mistakes (e.g. hypothetically you don't have to public admit you didn't do anything to check for guidelines to follow). More vibe-y, it all sounds very corporate, like any PR statement in response to criticism ever, or a manager writing to an employee in a big corp, not "humans working together in a community, and one of the humans is clearly pissed off right now".
Also while it's phrased as a question, it doesn't offer any alternative next step. So a better approach would be writing down the initial questions you have and then offer that you'd be open for a call if the OP prefers that. If they don't, they can immediately engage with your questions, and they are open to everybody else in the community. Whereas right now if they say "no, I don't want to call you" that's all you've given them.
(To be clear I can easily believe the writer of the response is not intending any of that and means well, but that's how it comes across)
Reading other comments, US folks seem divided; I am with you and the others on this side of the fence, I've seen this exact situation play out in corporate life many times. They are attempting to quiet a public discussion of dissent and dissatisfaction.
I’m an American. The response is coded as “do nothing”. The proper response here would be to say “we’re going to roll back the changes until we understand and fix things that are going wrong.” The individual may not have INTENDED the dismissive due to the way American corporate language has internalize “do nothing, take no position, take no risk, admit no fault” but it’s definitely the tone. Essentially this is a human problem: how do you deal with someone motivated by project passion rather than revenue goals or personal income? It happens ALL THE TIME with nonprofits interacting poorly with volunteers because the motivations and associated daily language are so divergent.
Non-native here. People "hop on a call" to have a personal guide that helps in stepping through tasks of a proposed solution. Such a call is made to remove ambiguity and provide immediate feedback, to apply the solution as seamless as possible. Used in the context here (without a proposed solution) it just screams "let's avoid public outcry" with a touch of "why don't you overthink your annoyances with me".
Hop on a call is very informal language, and suggests that this is just a small problem we can quickly workaround. The issue isn't so much the idea of getting in a direct call (though there are problems with that as well, especially the tendency to remove this from the record). It's the wording that suggests this is a tiny issue that we can just "hop" on a call to address.
And I’d say claiming that she should hop on an 8 hour flight from Jakarta to Japan to apologize for a decision she didn’t make is more than a bit overly dramatic.
Given that the written complaint already had a list of ways Mozilla had stepped on the toes of those volunteers, expressing regret about their feelings without at least acknowledging that Mozilla's actions might have been rash is very condescending indeed. These volunteers are adding value to M's product for free and they are very angry and threatening to leave and this is your response? Basically saying "I'm sorry you're being such big babies, do you want some tissues?"...
"I'm sorry for how you feel" is widely accepted as a non-apology in English. Sincere apologies show awareness of how one's actions led to the situation that would require the apology.
That's great but we're not all native English speakers. And "I'm sorry for you" seems like a hollow phrase to a Dutch person but this is used all the time in English.
It's like how you say "How are you" when you really don't care but it's just how you start a conversation.
Not saying you "have" to know or that the interpretation is even correct for this case, but, just to explain:
The "I'm sorry you feel this way" is quite a recent phenomenon. It started showing up in public apologies by companies and celebrities, purely for PR. It's basically a deflective euphemism for "I'm sorry that you don't like whatever happened" without really admitting culpability, sidestepping all responsibility.
With that said: I don't even know if the author (Kiki) is a native english speaker, since she's part of other language translation groups, so it might be 100% without intent. But that's how a lot of people perceive it today.
"I'm sorry you feel that way" is shaped like an apology, but is essentially blaming the other party's feelings as being the problem.
"I'm sorry I did that" is an actual apology.
To be clear, I'm agreeing with you. I think that the former version emerged as it's litigation proof. Corporate PR can say that without it being an admission of anything if whatever they fucked up results in a lawsuit.
It has spread to personal communications from corporate ones and it's now so prevalent that it is possible someone might use it and actually mean a real apology. But it's ... tainted.
"I'm sorry you feel that way" was literally the first thing I ever got taught when doing front of house/customer service training. Its definitely a super common phrase, at least in English speaking countries
Not sure if this is what you intended but you're just proving his point. Customer service is full of corporate-speak, scripted deflection, and hollow niceties. Of course the first thing you were taught was an empty apology.
"I'm sorry for you" is a bit weird, normally we would say "I feel sorry for you", both having the meaning of showing sympathy. It would typically be inappropriate to use either of those in a sincere apology message.
Not a native speaker, but to me it reads as canned or AI generated response that acknowledges nothing in the post besides there being some kind of tiny disagreement. I don't see how "I'm sorry for how you feel about this" can be inteprented as anything other than "I'm not at fault, and I'm sorry I'll have to spend time pacifying you".
> As someone from the Netherlands I read absolutely 0 condescending or patronising behaviour in this.
To be fair, Dutch culture is known for its directness[0] and for not interpreting even the harshest criticism as offensive, so I'm not sure I would trust your judgment on this… :-D
> I'm sorry for how you and the Japanese community feel about the MT workflow that we just recently introduced.
This is an emotion that you are feeling, not an actual problem.
> Would you be interested to hop on a call with us to talk about this further?
I'm not going to say that anything is actually wrong, we just want to discuss the best way to dismiss this.
> We want to make sure we trully understand what you're struggling with.
Reiterating that the Japanese translators are the ones struggling to adapt, not that there could be a problem with the new reality.
From my perspective, this is typical middle management speak to allow people to complain into a void without promising improvements. The approach I would recommend if there was going to be some opening to change the approach would have been.
> I'm sorry that the changes to the workflows have disrupted your processes. Would you be interested in hopping on a call so that we can discuss the changes that we will be making, as I think that at least some of the issues have been identified and should be fixed soon? We want to ensure that we do not introduce problems with the community contributions.
If someone, especially one who pretty much worked for free for 20+ years to make YOUR PRODUCT BETTER and you just burned off all their hard work in front of them, just publicly quits with a proper explanation given as to why, and then you ask them to come to a quiet corner to "discuss things", maybe as damage control or whatever, without returning the favor and explaining your point of you as publicly as they did, or even preferring up the chance to give them some sort of agency and an opportunity for yourself to rectify things, I cannot see anything except condescending and disrespectful behavior.
This doesn't need any low-context/high-context nonsense to figure it out, given when the complainer's post was plaintive enough for someone from the Netherlands to appreciate.
As somebody from your Neighboring country, its really comes over as condescending...
"I'm sorry for how you feel" is the definition of non-appology...
Hey, even the AI overlords agree on this...
> The phrase "I'm sorry for how you feel" is often perceived as a non-apology because it shifts blame to the other person's emotions instead of taking responsibility for one's actions. Instead of a genuine apology, it can sound like you're sorry they are upset rather than sorry for your behavior, and it can imply their feelings are the problem. A true apology acknowledges your role and expresses sincere regret for the pain you caused.
In Dutch its something like "Het spijt me, hoe u hierover voelt" ... See the issue, the first part is a apology, that is then reflected to the other person.
"We want to make sure we truly understand what you're struggling with." ...
We do not understand why *you are struggling with this*. For us its perfectly normal, so why are you having a issue with this.
So in Dutch its something like "We willen echt verstaan, waarom u moeite hebt hiermee". Aka, sending the issue back to the other person.
See the issue how both parts flow and shift the issue to the other person. This is not a English language issue because the same way of writing is also done in Dutch if you want to do a non-apology with a dose of gaslighting.
I never see anybody write like this, beyond those that have the intention to rile people up. Its gaslighting 101 ...
I'm from the United States and I read the exact same thing that you did. Somebody really trying to help. Zero condescending or patronizing behavior. It seems like somebody doing their best to reach out and get in contact and yeah I agree completely that hell I could have written this myself. And probably have something like that before. I don't understand what culture would find that condescending at all.
I'm from The Netherlands but have lived in the US for a while and unlike other country brethren responding in this thread, it did come across as condescending to me.
Trying to dissect why it comes across, I think it's just me kneejerking to the 'pattern' of specifically "I am sorry you feel that way". I think my kneejerk disdain of that turn of phrase is correct, though.
Being blunt here: Because that's a terrible apology! You are sorry that I feel this way? We're barely using the same dictionary here; how I feel about a thing is textbook 'stuff you cannot change or barely even fathom', so what is there to be sorry about? You might as well say "I'm sorry for the fact that 2 + 2 is 4". It's not apologetic in any way. It says sorry without taking even a millimeter of responsibility.
A minimal apology that is slightly less condescending might be "I am sorry how our choices led to you feeling this way" because at least now you're sorry about your choices instead of being sorry about how I feel.
I wouldn't want to be buoyed by false hope either, so taking as axiomatic that the moz team wants to hear how to improve matters but are not willing to completely 180º on their sumobot policies, something like: "I apologise for how we've kinda steamrolled y'all with rolling out sumobot. We were trying to improve the state of translations of our knowledge base articles and might have gone too far. We shouldn't have done it without keeping you out of the loop either. Is it possible to have a video call, apologise in person, and try to work out if there's a way sumobot can be helpful for all japanese language users of firefox in a way that works with your excellent work maintaining the KB so far?"
I get that it's just american corpospeak, "hop on a call". But the number of times something that's perfectly normal in dutch culture (a bit brash, but not at all intended to be rude) gets jumped on by americans as being ridiculously rude... well, trying to write a way to be culturally aware of the recipient has to be a two-way street, right?
I dont think this 'apology' is rude, not at all. But it's not apologetic. If you're peeved off at mozilla for foisting sumobot on you, you've already decided to cut ties, and then team mozilla tries to mend the relationship, this is a very poor attempt. In the context of an attempt to mend the relationship this is condescending. Or at least bad diplomacy.
To me the reason it feels like a non-apology is purely contextual: for some time, it was very fashionable as a public non-apology by celebrities and companies doing PR damage-management. Until people started calling it out.
I think there might be a disconnect on how people handle calls in the first place.
At this point getting on a call is seen as a major chore for a majority of people. It's an already tense situation, trying to defuse it by "hopping on a call" is just not great IMHO. They should at least acknowledge they're putting undue burden on the other side and are asking them to go the distance when they're already volunteering their time.
I'm saying that setting aside the opacity of moving from an public to a private setup.
This is a pointer to a somewhat US related POV, but this is nether a generational thing nor a limited phenomenon:
Also from The Netherlands, this is 100% condescending and patronising to me. I read this as corporate-speak for "go fuck yourself". Let's go through it line-by-line:
> I'm sorry for how you and the Japanese community feel about the MT workflow that we just recently introduced.
"We have zero regrets about the changes we made and have no intention of making any changes - the problem is how you feel about them".
> Would you be interested to hop on a call with us to talk about this further?
"I can't be bothered to engage with the points you already raised. You can do some venting in a Teams call, but we don't want there to be a record so we can't be held to any promises we might accidentally make."
> We want to make sure we trully understand what you're struggling with.
"You are the problem: you haven't embraced our glorious changes yet. Accept our "help" to adapt to your new reality, or get out"
So no, that's not what you'd write if you genuinely wanted to help: that's what you write when you want to get rid of someone who is bothering you.
If they genuinely wanted to help, the response would've read something more like this:
> Dear marsf,
> It is shocking to me to learn that our recent rollout of sumobot has caused enough friction to make a 20-year veteran of our community quit. Our intention has always been, and will always be, to use new technology like sumobot to help our communities - not harm them. Reading your report, we have clearly failed at that.
> To prevent it from doing additional damage, we have chosen to pause sumobot for the moment. We still believe that it can become a valuable tool, but it'll remain paused until we have discussed its modes of operation and the impact it has on the way you contribute with representatives of the various communities. We'll work out an approach over the following weeks.
> I hope this is sufficient for now to change your mind about leaving - people like you are essential to open-source applications like Firefox. If you wish to discuss it face-to-face, my team and I am more than happy to hop on a call with you to make sure we are doing the right thing.
I can't believe I had to scroll this far to find a well-articulated example of a proper response. It isn't just a few words that needed changing, the original response by Mozilla mas missing the whole point that you bring up in your example: a 20y veteran volunteer is leaving. Within a small community, the action of a single veteran/leader leaving this way will certainly have an effect on the rest of the volunteers, even more so when you consider the cultural aspects of this specific community.
I don't think there is something inherently patronizing about this. But this tone seems like the most generic possible American corporate faux-friendly tone.
In order to sound truly friendly, one has to break the script
I think what the grand parent meant is that the staff doesn't acknowledge issues - instead, clearly says that this is how _they_ feel, points out that changes were "only recently introduced", and says that is interested in learning what they are struggling with, again, not acknowledging issues with the process or bot, instead wording as if this is marsf issue.
Personally, I don't think this is that bad. This is a public thread and he's Mozilla staff - the wording has to be clinical. The worse part is the _recently introduced_ bit, but I would look over it.
The condescension is coming from "We want to make sure we trully understand what you're struggling with." which is completely dismissing the points they made in the post. Basics "surely there is more to it than just what is in the post". A better response would have responded with actions/talking points to the items listed in the post. Then asking for a call for further clarification of the respondents point.
I'm from the Netherlands as well and I wouldn't interpret this as condescending but as disingenuous corporate BS-speak where someone is doing damage control by showing "how much they value your opinion". And in the end not doing anything at all with your concerns.
"I'm sorry" can mean "I am apologizing" but often it instead means "I feel bad". It depends on context which applies.
"I'm sorry for how you feel" without more explanation often sounds like "The thing that makes me feel bad in this situation is your reaction to it". It can come across as blaming the person for the feelings, regretting not being able to control others' feelings better, or dismissing the root causes of the feelings and any agency in them.
It's a bad apology because of the ambiguity, though passive aggressive types like that aspect. It's honestly a bad way to sympathize as well.
I'd say otherwise - it's a reach out to have a relationship. It's hard to have human relationships only by writing. Of course the best way to build it is to meet in person, but if impossible - it's always good to have a video call.
If someone is frustrated, the following chats won't do much really. They have already built a wall, and we need to meet around it, not throw our letters over it.
Who wants "a relationship" here with some manager who has just delivered the standard corporate nonpology? The problems are listed in the first message, start by fixing them.
> It's hard to have human relationships only by writing.
I don't follow. Some of my most important friendships were built on forums and text-based communication. We never felt any need to have video calls. Some of them I met in person once, 15+ years after we started messaging each other, and we're great friends regardless.
I don't mean to say you're wrong in an absolute sense, but I can't relate to your post at all. Not a single one of my friends has video calls as their preferred method of socialization with online peers.
Your claim is based on the very strong assumption that if you have a phone or video call with a person that you already hate, things will get better.
My life experience does tell me that this is often not the case: if people are already frustrated and have built a wall, it is better to use something more impersonal, like such an online text discussion.
Then at least try to sound like a genuine human that cares and not a PR response when reaching out. Offer a "you can call me if you want" vs making the call the expectation (it's phrased as a question but there is no other path offered).
First of all, I'm shocked to learn about what happened. We at Mozilla had no idea that sumobot is wreaking such havoc on your work. Please accept my sincere apologies.
It would be a great pity to have all your precious work done, so we'll do our best to fix it. I would be very grateful if you could schedule a meeting with me so that I could understend the issues you described better so that they are fixed asap?
Once again, I'm very sorry for what happened and I hope in spite of that you can continue doing great work for the Japanese Mozilla community.
**
Human communication consists of so much more than just words. Tone, loudness, speed, accent (a hint of the other person maybe not being a native English speaker), all that gets lost in pure text. And even voice calls lose a lot of context like facial mimic or gestures that convey emotions.
IME an n vs. m written discussion in a public forum can be clearer, more productive, and a hell of a lot more accountable than some potential n vs. 1 adversarial corporate firing-squad 'discussion' intended to reinforce whatever policy the n have already decided upon. IMO, much of the benefit of voice over text is likely offset by the latter scenario being real time with potential translation issues.
There have been a ton of complaints on HackerNews about companies never letting them talk to a real person. Here's a company offering up a real person, and apparently that's still bad somehow. You can always just say "no" to an offer to talk.
Because so much nuance can be lost in writing, especially if both parties are working in a second language. There is a lot of value in actually talking to someone, especially in a fraught situation like this. Hearing the other person express genuine concern can do a lot to overcome the anger. Otherwise we tend to build up stories in our head about what the other person “really means” and those stories tend to be wildly negative.
Decisions are not fixed. Changing the situation, could revert the decision. Why should someone silently accept a situation, when simple communication could improve the world for everyone involved? That seems like a very ignorant mindset.
I'm not part of Mozilla or any of the communities and I understood the situation by reading the damn post, on the first time.
In the follow-up, any words concerning how the person feels, words on how to talk about this further, and wanting to truly understand what he just wrote in plain and simple terms simply reek strongly of "we really won't change anything, we've made our decision, we are disagree with you but we want you to agree with what we're already doing".
I can hear the exact same tone in exact similar situations with various customer service reps, HR, corporate smooth-talkers, public officials/politicians where the decision is already written in stone and they just pretend they're listening to the customers/employees/citizens affected to quiet down the criticism.
To add to this fire. I recently left my 'recently bought by private equity' workplace of 8 years to work somewhere else not-yet-ruined-by-PE (yet..)
A major part of my decision to quit was this communication pattern.
The whole organisation was very efficiently structured with two separate layers of managers - those who had actual decision power, and a separate layer whose task was to 'deal with us employees' but no decision power.
All communication flowing one way, the same way shit drips (the only resource following 'trickle-down' mechanics).
The only time I got into contact with the former level, was after I had put in my resignation; then they suddenly wanted a 1-1 to "see if there was anything they should learn from this" (presumably to sharpen/hone their skills in mistreating the employee level more efficiently in the future).
it's american english for "oh this must be hard for you. how can we help you to cope?" and no intent to change.
a better response would rather be:
"We're sorry, we were not aware. please can we meet and you help us understand? so we can fix this situation? We'd also like to share our intentions and we hope together we can improve the situation."
The person gives a clear, detailed answer in the post about their problems > "We want to make sure we trully understand what you're struggling with"
To me that's very condescending, like someone who reads but doesn't understand
Borderline AI response
And personally offering a call is like a sidestep "lets move this problem out of the public discourse" which is especially funny considering it's about a forum
> And personally offering a call is like a sidestep "lets move this problem out of the public discourse"
Maybe. But that’s also assuming the worst from the get go, and that’s no way to settle a dispute.
For all we know (which is very little, and thus should offer the benefit of the doubt), offering a call is an admission that text is an awful medium to resolve conflict: It’s time consuming for both parties and a poor conveyor of tone and nuance. Even writing this unimportant comment I had to stop and think and rewrite some parts to get it closer to the meaning I intend, but even so I fazer zero doubts someone will misunderstand it in the worst way imaginable.
Calls aren’t perfect either, but they allow you to understand in real time when a point is not getting through to the other person and calmly resolve each issue as it surfaces. It gets you on the same page faster.
After the call they can still decide to post their conclusions publicly if they so wish, but not every discussion needs to be public. It’s fine (and productive) for two people to discuss something in private and only have to worry about making themselves understood by the relevant party, not worry about having each word scrutinised by every internet rando.
> Maybe. But that’s also assuming the worst from the get go, and that’s no way to settle a dispute.
Offering a call would've been totally fine - if the rest of the reply hadn't been a borderline-insulting cookie-cutter corporate non-apology. If they start by showing bad intentions, why suddenly assume the best for the phone call?
> if the rest of the reply hadn't been a borderline-insulting cookie-cutter corporate non-apology.
“The rest of the reply” is basically one sentence, so let’s avoid reading too much into it. I very much agree it was a bad non-apology and that that is infuriating, but let’s not let irrationality cloud judgement in the pursuit of a resolution.
> If they start by showing bad intentions, why suddenly assume the best for the phone call?
Why are you assuming bad intentions from the start? For all we know this person may just be a bad (textual?) communicator or trying to avoid miscommunication (which seems like a perfectly valid concern, since the original comment isn’t exactly the clearest English). Worse still, the comment I replied to assumed a specific malicious reason for the offer to a call with no evidence, it was just speculation.
Is anyone here familiar with this Mozilla staffer? Do they even know if they interacted with this Japanese user before, online or offline? Do they have a pattern of bad behaviour? Or is everyone just piling on and assuming the devil from a single reply from someone they don’t know? Maybe this staffer is indeed an asshole. Or maybe they’re trying their best and just don’t know how to do better but are open to recognising their mistakes and learning from them. Maybe they would have preferred to be more open, human, and honest in their reply but corporate policy prevents them from doing so. Maybe they have personal issues on their mind and jut couldn’t do better this time. I don’t know. Do you? If anyone in this thread does, they’re not saying it.
This thread is populated by (what seem to be) uninformed commentators throwing fire at the situation from the outside, and that’s unhealthy. Let me ask you: What is, in your view, the desired/best outcome of this situation? Is it to bash Mozilla and/or this staffer? Or is it to provide a solution that would fix the situation in a way the original Japanese commentator would feel valued and happy to come back?
This is the type of response you shouldn't make. Instead you should do your homework and then come back with the receipts.
E.g. figure out why this happened, express why it shouldn't have happened, why it should happen never again, how it is understandable how they feel, express that you cannot expect them to come back, make them an actual offer that would make them come back (e.g. by giving them a better place at the table or offering compensation), etc.
But "I am sorry you feel" is bordering on gaslighting. That is as if you are sorry your wife feels sad after you beat them. You should feel sorry and ashamed for doing the beating, not for how someone feels as a result of it.
The described things are clearly unacceptable and whether someone feels outrage or not doesn't make them more or less acceptable.
I can’t believe what I’m going to say now, but AIs are better at this. Granted, their apologies are good for shit since they have no agency and can’t really learn from their mistakes, but they at least leave no doubts at who is at fault and should be ashamed.
(Cue Gemini with its “I’m a disgrace” self-flagellation)
In addition to not responding to any of the specifics that the poster clearly put time into, there's also a huge mismatch in tone. In general, do not act very corporate when people are personally pissed off, this has a tendency to just annoy most people further.
Well. Too late. Now that they go you want to talk? If I was the one who finally had enough why the fuck would I want to talk to something I turned my back to?
There were very clear statements of what will happen and why. First acknowledge those, express you are sorry for what happened and hint some mea culpa and how you plan to solve it.
Only then if you feel the need to talk realize that you are the one begging them, not the other way around.
>I read it as a person trying to understand the situation.
I have been on the receiving end of such comments enough times to read it as a person trying to appear as if they are trying to understand the situation.
It is gaslighting even. It is extremely manipulative to be sorry about a thing someone else did, while in fact the the fuckup originated from you. Own it or offer to investigate/fix it.
A decent answer would have been worded among the lines of:
"I am personally deeply sorry to see you go [acknowledge you take their decision serious]. I don't know the details, but if what you describe is true (and I have no reason to doubt it), this is clearly unacceptable and should never have happened [acknowledge the issue is serious and confirm it wasn't intentional]. You feeling betrayed as a result of this is only natural and understandable, and it is Mozilla that should feel ashamed for it coming to this [validate feeling, admit guilt]. I will investigate why this happened and want to find ways to ensure something like this never happens again [show that you're willing to do something substential solbing the root of the problem]. Nobody should have their hard work just automatically replaced by AI, not you, nor anybody else [afirm you're on the same page as them by appeal to general principle]. I know you likely don't want to have anything to do with this now, but I would be deeply grateful if you had a moment to talk about this with me, personally, not as a member of Mozilla but as a member of the community [ask them about help, acknowledging you can't expect any, show that you care about this beyond any purely official duties]."
Of course that means some work, but this is how I would answer such a thing.
The OP/article is very clear and very direct on what the problems are. The response is so typical american conflict-shy “let’s talk so we can slowly dimish your critique, and also let’s do talking instead of writing so we cant really be held accountable for specifics”. And, to me it comes across as lazy: the op/article is very specific on the problems, just get to work already, no need to “further clarifications” (obviously disable that stupid bot for the japanese community; then get to work restoring original KBs from backups. Then reach out to talk about next steps)
It’s a tonedeaf response from the staff person. Zero respect for what’s clearly many, many hours of contribured work.
How would you form this response to make it less condensending and patronizing? I won't judge if it is patronizing or not because I'm not very good at this kind of thing but would like to understand the issue.
OP has given all that they need, English is probably not their first language, and the first response was to ask for even more unpaid time and labour (presumably in English) in a format that is likely much more difficult for them to summarise coherent thoughts succinctly in, while addressing zero of their issues. They’re asking for MORE effort of the volunteer to fix their bot’s fuckup.
I’m honestly struggling to think of a more insulting way to respond to this. At least “Fuck off” isn’t pretending to care, it’s fewer words to read and isn’t asking for an indeterminate amount of time from you.
a) don't apologize for the other persons feelings, but for your actions that lead to it
b) don't look like you are trying to take the conversation out of the community space it's happening in and/or hiding details by going to a private call (you can offer a call, but it shouldn't be the expectation)
c) Acknowledge the concrete complaints made. Are you truly "struggling to understand" what someone means when they complain that it didn't happen in a staging environment first?
d) a-c also lead to "don't sound like any cookie-cutter PR response to a complaint ever, people have learned those are not genuine". Especially if you are a project that makes a big deal out of its community interacting with said community.
e) ideally announce some concrete first step, e.g. pausing the bot
One point I'd like to add as someone who has worked in IT support for years:
Don't answer when you haven't done your homework. Either you check for yourself if what they claim has happened happened and acknowledge the fuckup or you just trust them as go on "if this is true and we have no reason not to trust you, it should never have happened".
But not understanding? The description of the incident was pretty clear. Maybe think about it and investigate till you understand what the problem is, and then answer.
Or answer being clear about that if you feel like you need to respond now. Acknowledge there is a problem, say you'll have to look into the details before you can say more, come back with specific questions if you need answers.
> Are you truly "struggling to understand" what someone means
You've turned this around into a very different quote, and shouldn't use quote marks for that. They wrote:
> We want to make sure we trully understand what you're struggling with.
I don't like their response and agree with a lot of people in the thread it looks like they are trying to do the call to take it private. But we don't have to make up stuff.
If the post gave any acknowledgement to the already stated complaints I'd agree with you, but it does not, and that does stand out and leads to my reading.
Yes, but what is there to understand? A bot erased the hard work of people. That is the point.
Sure there may be more fine detail to understand around the guidelines etc, but first you should acknowledge that (A) your bot fucked up big time, (B) everybody would be pissed if years of work would be overwritten in such disrespectful manner and (C) that this isn't how you want to treat your community.
If you don't manage that this person made the right call when they decided to leave.
Sure, but there is no reason to fabricate a quote they never said. Their offputting real response can stand on its own without imagining a new one that never happened.
"We are sorry for overwriting the manual translations of all our volunteers. We have disabled the workflow and are working on restoring the old, manual translations.
We had planned to use the translation bot to help you guys, but based on your response, we have understood that we have overshot our target, and actually made it harmful.
Would you be interested in a call where we can apologize in person, and interview you about how the workflow integration could be designed so it actually helps you and other translators?"
Oops, sounds like we screwed up really badly. Sorry. :(
We'll turn off the sumobot, and put things back the way the SUMO Japanese community was used to operating.
Would you consider not quitting after we've put things back the way they were? :)
"Fuck, sorry, we're going to take the bot behind the barn and shoot it. Hopefully one day we can make it up to you. Also the person responsible for this atrocity was just fired."
Or, alternatively, if you do not intend to even try to do better, at least be honest: "ok, bye."
Yes. In an online community that operates in written text and is separated by timezones, there's several reasons why that's a no-no.
To me, this seems very simple: they introduced a machine translation workflow. Doing so signals the intent to replace their human translators. The human translators understandably quit rather than collaborate with their replacements.
I do. My written English is orders of magnitude better than my spoken English - simply because I practice it a lot more.
I have no problem "hopping on a call" if it's a casual conversation between friends, but when stakes actually matter it would be stupid to put myself in a worse position than strictly necessary. Native speakers have a habit of talking a lot, talking fast, and talking with a lot of subtleties, nuances, and hidden meanings. In written conversations I can read a sentence twice and think a second about the right phrasing to use in response, but in face-to-face conversations this is simply not possible.
It would be like a professional debater like college kids "debating" with late Charlie Kirk: no wonder they end up "getting owned" - they are punching way above their weight class!
The only context I can think of in which it wouldn't be true is if someone learned the language through full immersion with no text involved, it's a bizarre situation.
There's also no reason as to assume that a volunteer translator is good at speaking, especially in regards to English, which pronunciation is not explicitly stated in its writing (like, say, Spanish).
You can't really ascertain how good I am at speaking, for an obvious example.
>You can't really ascertain how good I am at speaking, for an obvious example.
That comma, gives you away. The commas (and punctuation in general) in English are rather special in a way they convey the spoken language rather than designated rules.
Edit: As for the full immersion when I was learning English (as kid, 5th grade or so), I recall visualizing the words (letters) in my head while speaking. Certain mistakes like than <> then, it's <> it, their<>there etc. are unlikely to happen while writing due to the way language was initially perceived (and b/c I leaned if-then much earlier). Still, esp. with English I'd not consider translating anything unless my spoken version of it was good enough.
Fully agree with you, and people who don't understand this should follow through to read the actual link. Marsf explained that sumobot deleted the volunteers' translations, zero coordination, and Kiki's response is "I'm sorry for how you feel?"
Is someone supposed to be happy when a machine deletes their volunteer work? WTF? This needs to be explained further? Marsf needs to risk his time getting on a call to explain that having a machine delete your volunteer work is some fucking bullshit, and expect what, more of the "I'm sorry you feel bad we deleted your work" bullshit?
I don't get it. It's not the best possible phrasing, but people who find this sounds "horribly condescending" are excessively sensitive in my opinion. Like a grown man complaining about being "horribly hurt" when a careless passer-by bumped into him.
I'm sorry you don't get it and that you feel they're excessively sensitive. On the behalf of the HN community would you like to share with us more about how you feel about it so that we can better understand your position. I'm sure we can help you find the best possible phrasing to better express the excess of said sensitivity. We're sorry you've had to encounter such a wording and attitude on our forum.
In keeping with the grand traditions of corporate communications, perhaps we should all jump on a call to explore these issues in an unaccountable and likely adversarial way.
> I'm sorry for how you and the Japanese community feel about the MT workflow that we just recently introduced. Would you be interested to hop on a call with us to talk about this further? We want to make sure we trully understand what you're struggling with.
> My timezone is UTC+7, so it should be easier for us to set up time. Let me know how that sound!
What a horribly condescending and patronising response. If I'd received this it would just further vindicate my decision to quit.