Maintaining integrity usually doesn't consist of calling people "fucking scumbags". Notify people of their mistake, make it known that what they have done is not acceptable but crossing into personal insults and curses is not acceptable.
Not acceptable to who? If the course of action you've outlined (notify people of their mistakes etc..) is what you feel is right then doing so would be maintaining your integrity. If DHH feels like they're contemptible for doing what they did tweeting that they are 'fucking scumbags' is maintaining cohesiveness and integrity between his words and feelings. If you choose to think less of DHH as a result of the way he behaved then that is your prerogative, but based on the things he's said publicly about not caring much about seeming 'unprofessional' I don't think he will care much, if at all.
It's not acceptable if you want to present yourself as the spokesperson for a friendly business. If you use your Twitter account as a platform for expressing both your personal and corporate thoughts I think it's best to keep the wording civil. Roasting Curebit over Twitter like this seems childish to me at best.
I recently had a conversation with one of the friendliest businesses I patronize (an espresso bar in Sydney). The owner swore like a sailor about an ex-staff member who'd come back with the keys he'd "lost", and stolen from him in full view of the security cameras.
You need to know our audience, and to have chosen the personality you're prepared to project as your businesses spokesperson, but DHH (and Ben) have clearly both chosen to be perceived as "guys who'll use strong language when people steal from them". That choice might not "work" if you're in the clergy, or a school principal, but making that choice as a café owner or software company spokesperson falls a long way short of "not acceptable", at least in my book.
It's always impossible to measure the _really_ interesting stuff, but I wonder if 37Signals earned more benefit from people thinking things like "DHH is _really_ passionate about his business." than they lost from people who though "he used curse words on Twitter, I don't want to do business with him anymore"? (Patrick? How do ou a/b test founder personalities for conversion rate? ;-)
Well, he had a conversation with YOU; DHH had a conversation with 52,000. I felt the ad hominem attacks were a little brusque, and while they certainly didn't offend me, I can understand that some would consider his reaction a bit unprofessional.
I'd personally reserve a moniker like "fucking scumbags" for people who would steal from their family/friends to fuel a coke habit. Or maybe Go Daddy.
EDIT: ok, I'll now admit that I misunderstood the term "ad hominem attack". A more appropriate definition would be "overly-generalized insult left open to interpretation", e.g. "douchebag". Something along the lines of "fucking lazy hack" would probably have been more accurate.
I think I could stage strong arguments that 1) DHH considers his coworkers to strongly fit in the second half of the term "family/friends", and 2) that for some people "serial entrepreneurship" carries many of the traits of cocaine addiction...
civility, empathy, professionalism and respect for other people aren't formalities and I think there's lots of room, time and need for them in modern business practice.
> It's not acceptable if you want to present yourself as the spokesperson for a friendly business.
37signals is very open about being an opinionated company. Their blog is quite happy to take a stance, they've always enjoyed mixing it up, and they've never seemed to have an issue with telling people "don't like it, don't use our products".
Good thing you're here to tell 37signals' owners how they have to behave to be taken seriously as a company. With that kind of personal language, they'd never get any serious customers!
Oh wait.
Here's the thing: this is how they've built their company. This is the kind of thing they say.
It's totally "acceptable" for DHH to tweet whatever the hell he wants, because that's the image he cultivated. That's what people love him for. That's why they follow him on Twitter, attend his talk, buy the books he cowrote.
You can dislike it all you like - nobody's forcing you to read it, nor forcing you to talk that way. But where on earth do you get off saying it's "unacceptable"?
Integrity is personal -- and it means doing what you say, and vice versa. In other words, congruency.
Which means that it's perfectly integral and congruent for DHH to call somebody a "fucking scumbag" when that person steals from DHH's company. His values, and his words, and his actions all line up perfectly. He is behaving exactly like himself.
Even if you fall back on the dictionary definition of "the quality of being honest and having strong moral character," it fits.
Just because YOU don't think somebody should use a certain word doesn't mean they lack integrity. It also doesn't mean that anyone else cares.
I'd be interested in understanding why someone would vote this down. I know it's tangential to the discussion, but it's a really glaring hypocrisy. To call it "copyright infringement" in the context of digital media and "stealing" in the context of website design strikes me as disingenuous, at best. I tend to be obtuse when it comes to these matters, however. I'd love to hear some more subtle commentary on the matter.
I find it remarkable the extent to which this comment was down voted. I stand by my comments, and will even go one step further to explicitly state that I think DHH and Curebit handled this unprofessionally. I don't know any of the people involved, so I can't say a thing about their integrity, which isn't my point. How you handle yourself in situations like this signals certain things to people that they then interpret and use a data to form an opinion about you and your business.
I've posted elsewhere how the Curebit misstep caused me to form an opinion about the maturity of their product. I'm not going to bother of relating how DHH's response has changed my opinion of the 37Signals business, especially on HN given the ridiculous moderating practices related to anything remotely critical of 37Signals.
I agree. I'm not sure where the ambiguity around professionalism came about. But, I truly doubt anyone misunderstood what you were saying and decided to take it apart on some weird technicality. DHH could have been the bigger man and I believe his words would have carried gravitas had that been the case. He has the right to publicly react how he likes, but it seemed a bit childish to me and didn't evoke any sense of empathy.
Yup, exactly my point. Thanks for the right words ;-)
I've been thinking this morning about the knee jerk moderation and failure to communicate in this thread. There's a strong undercurrent of "Internet entrepreneur" that makes up HN, and I'd expect the discourse here to reflect the manner in which people communicate in their business endeavours. Knee jerk reactions, pedantry and emotional dogma don't have much place in business.
I'd kinda hoped that there could be some discussion about professionalism, what it means and how we can apply it to what we do. It appears that I expect too much, or the wrong things from HN.
I have found that "professionalism" is generally incompatible with honesty and integrity.
Professionals are judged on appearance and appearance of action: not on what they actually do and the consequences of their actions. Similarly, to act "professionally" often means to act against your personal beliefs, to suppress your emotion, to ignore empathy and to react coldly.
To be "business-like" is often to be cruel and socially irresponsible: that's "just business".
I would like to be judged by my demeanour rather than my appearance and on the consequence of my actions rather than my actions.
An ad hominem is used within the confines of an argument. There is no argument here. He is calling them what they are. They stole, that is clear, the argument is air-tight (they have even apologized).
I wouldn't use this kind of language myself (not in any circumstance), but ad hominem it is not.
(DHH didn't say that using 37Signals assets directly was bad because they were fucking scumbags, just that what they did was bad and they were fucking scumbags as a result.)
That's not true at all. They are appropriate when you are actually trying to deflate the opposing side's character. For example, if someone has a history of making poor choices, it's likely that any further choice they make is also likely poor. That's why judges often take into consideration whether an offense is someone's first, or someone's third.
With that being said, both sides definitely should have reconsidered their PR strategy. Both being techies, it's reasonable to assume that they should be fully aware of how things like this propagate on the internet.
