jv:
I’m not sure Matt realizes how bad he’s fumbled this whole situation. I don’t think he will ever understand how big a misstep this was. He seems to think Avery is like, one bad actor who is maliciously overblowing the situation to embarrass him.
I dont think he realizes he has completely kneecapped his credibility. For the rest of his tenure here, he will be seen as an object of pity and derision, the butt of an embarrassing joke, a toxic asshole to be avoided at all costs.
like hey, if the man wants to actually finish his sabbatical, talk to his PR team, and return with a proper apology, I would welcome it. I don’t think any of us expect the CEO to be some perfect woke crusader, but we do expect a reasonable amount of effort, dialogue, and transparency. We want level-headed action, not temper tantrums. An apology would be appreciated.
I want to believe in this, that it can be repaired somehow. But in the last couple days the way the bans are striking out at people who are just discussing the situation, overwhelmingly trans women, makes this whole thing seem like kind of an end-of-days gotterdammerung that’s impossible to come back from. I hope I’m wrong. I would be delighted to be wrong
Oh make no mistake this is me grinding my teeth and spitting about how DELIGHTED I would be to be PEOVED wrong. But I’m not exactly holding out hope here.
Look, I worked for the guy for 8 years (pretty closely, for most of the time I reported to someone who was reporting directly to him) and I didn’t see him owning a mistake even once. Even in cases where he was the very obvious source of something bad happening, he always deflected blame, put it on someone else, or pretended it was an unavoidable result.
The very best you can expect from him is a “I’m sorry you are being offended by my very reasonable actions” kind of apology. For MM, self-reflection means “I’ll do better next time, I should have realized how everyone else was going to fail me on this”.
But I honestly think this time he is way past that point.