Apologize or Shutup
There’s been a bit of a dustup over Zynga acquiring another social gaming company. If you hadn’t heard, check out the details, including a response from the CEO.
A couple things that struck me about this story.
Keep It To Yourself
Before Sunday, I had never heard of Shay Pierce. That name meant absolutely nothing. But I found out about this developer via Twitter, and the reason why I heard is because other developers were reacting to the story. Not to whether Shay accepted the Zynga offer or not, but rather to how his former employer was blasting him. If Dan Porter doesn’t have a Twitter outburst, I not only don’t know who OMGPOP is, but I also don’t know who Say Pierce is or why it’s a big deal he didn’t accept some job offer.
Say Your Sorry*
Instead of coming out and saying “Let me reset what was going through my head” or “Let me explain what I was thinking” just come out and say “I’m sorry, that was wrong.” Anything else makes me feel like I’m in the middle of an argument between my kids “Dad, she made a face at me.”
In all honesty, this fauxology (faux-apology) made me think even less of OMGPOP than I did 10 minutes before when I first read some of the tweets. Why? Because we were told that the focus should have been on the team that put blood, sweat and tears into the app, and not into this developer. Yet that’s not what happened, even in the apology we’re focusing on a single developer. I’d prefer to work with someone who, even when offended, deals with the matter in house, instead of making it public.
I’ve worked on projects where we’ve all put blood, sweat and tears in. In fact, one such project might have cost a coworker his job. I say “might” because I don’t know, our boss didn’t come out and tell us. All he told us was that developer was no longer with the company. He kept it between him and the developer. He didn’t make it public among all the developers, or the company and especially didn’t broadcast it out on the internet.”
* The one caveat here is that if you’re not actually sorry, you meant what you said, and would have liked to have actually said more, then just shut up. Don’t insult my inteligence with a fauxology. Just don’t say anything.