‘ On Wednesday, some of the people who posted about the gift card said that when they went to redeem the offer, they got an error message saying the voucher had been canceled. When TechCrunch checked the voucher, the Uber Eats page provided an error message that said the gift card “has been canceled by the issuing party and is no longer valid.”’
Am I correct in interpreting that they canceled a multi-use code after it was shared publicly? I think that would be quite reasonable and an insignificant offense compared to pushing code that breaks your clients' computers or offering $10 of compensation for having done so.
This is definitely worse than no gift card. Insulting. A general maxim: When something is a big deal, your response should make a bigger deal out of it than the complaints. $10 says "We don't think this matters." Now watch as everyone explains precisely why it does. PR 101 fail.
More like..."We recognize that we have a moral, ethical, and likely legal obligation to make things right and pay back the damage we have caused...but we're not going to."
“We are sorry. We really messed up with this deployment. In fact, we’ve questioned whether we should be alive, or whether we should have even been born at all. Heck, maybe none of this should exist.”
The only way I can imagine one-upping the detractors at this point.
Heh, at my last job my store was breaking all sorts of profit records and generally put every other store in the district to shame. I don't need to tell you that we worked hard for that.
Corporate sent us a $25 gift card. Not for each of us, one $25 gift card for a team of 8 people. We had made well over three million in sales that year. Felt like a slap in the face for a job well done.
This reminds me of something that happened at a former employer. After I had been employed there for a couple of years, someone in HR or Legal noticed that the programmers had never signed any "our code belongs to the company" agreement. So they asked us to sign a paper to that effect, and gave us each a check for $20. My thought was that I always assumed the company owned this code, but if they were going to pay for it, then $20 was waaaay too little. Anyway I took the $20, signed the paper, and got back to work. But it always gave me a chuckle.
Any contract requires consideration. Without it, it's not a valid contract. It doesn't require fair consideration, so a clause giving e.g. $1 is typical for many contracts. They were nice and bumped it up to $20.
I suspect your work DID belong to the company already, under work-for-hire doctrine, but an explicit contract avoids that ambiguity. Ambiguity can be bad and super-expensive, whether during litigation or even something like an audit. If someone is buying a company, investing, making a major loan, that's the kind thing which comes up in due diligence and can be annoying.
So I don't think they were paying you for the code, so much as trying to come into compliance. Very likely, this was triggered by some similar audit for some deal they were trying to make.
My friends and I contracted to a company in 2004 to build a text message system. The company decided they didn't want to pay us the last month's bill. They'd spent all their money buying a custom Harley as a prize for the customers and now had nothing left.
We met with their CEO+CFO+lawyers and our lawyers. They were adamant they wouldn't pay the last payment. We pulled out our contract and showed they didn't own any of their code because there was no IP transfer in there. They said "We need a minute." We left the room, came back in and there was a check for the outstanding balance in the middle of the table.
This is because it's a contract oddity - if they told you to sign it but offered nothing; you could challenge it in court, and the courts have often said a "one-sided contract" is not valid (e.g., you give me copyright I give you nothing).
The $20 is "due consideration" - just like how some deals involve selling an item for a dollar.
I wonder when we'll start to have some estimate of indirect/direct death toll. This took down several 911 type services and hospitals, some reported imaging down, some being back to paper and pen at ER.
At least their domain is descriptive, that article is much to do about nothing -- civil cases aren't criminal cases with a boolean outcome. The award isn't recognition that the life was worth $4, it is a recognition that the defendant did just about nothing wrong.
50 years from now, unclassified documents reveal that crowdstrike was secretly a CIA controlled business which was operating an offensive botnet created for the anticipated cyberwar, with a peacetime cover story of being security software with automatic updates. Everybody rolls their eyes and asks how anybody ever fell for that when the name openly says what it is.
Probably bullshit, but honestly... Wtf is up with the name?
A girl I went to school with in the American South is now a reporter in the Midwest. She was supposed to go home for a brief visit to see her family, but Delta canceled her flight due to the CrowdStrike outage. A few days later her father was murdered by a disgruntled customer while working at his jewelry store in their hometown.
What an awful coincidence. I can’t even imagine how it must feel to have a freak technical accident deprive you of seeing your father for the last time.
This would happen with literally anything. Bus is late and you miss the flight. Weather is bad, flight gets delayed. You eat out and get food poisoning, can't get the flight.
Anything could have caused that really. Still very unfortunate but c'est la vie sometimes.
Think about this: Someone came up with that idea. A group of people probably approved it. Someone else had to purchase those cards or set up the job to send them to customers.
At no point did anyone think "this doesn't seem like the right response, I should warn someone further up the chain". Probably due to the idea coming from further up the chain.
And those ubereats/doordash/grubhub cards are worthless because $10 won't get you a thing, you'll need to spend another $30. Which is why corporate always buys those because I am guessing they're much less than $10 to buy.
I think the closest level of Brand disaster in our times would be the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
In that case, BP basically threw away their consumer brand in the US - they turned every single BP station into an Arco station (their subsidiary, "lower quality" brand at the time). Then they sold off or spun down a huge portion of their businesses to set aside money for legal fees.
I don't know if Crowdstrike really has any other options at this point. The amount of legal liability the company is going to be under will be staggering and the brand reputation is worse than worthless.
> The amount of legal liability the company is going to be under will be staggering and the brand reputation is worse than worthless.
Citation for legal liability Crowdstrike has?
Re reputation - I've read this about all sorts of annoyances that had real economic impact, i doubt this will make crowdstrike worthless any more than:
* MS became worthless after Code Red or Slammer or any of the other late 90s/early 2000s breaches.
* Apple became worthless after the iPhone that requried you to hold it a certain way while talking
* Toyota became wortheless after the unintended acceleration issues
* Facebook became worthless after screwing up the internet for a day.
* Amazon become worthless after US-EAST went down screwing everyone over for an afternoon (pick a time).
* Norfolk Southern became worthless after the east palastine derailment.
* A thousand others....
This issue wasn't as impacting as many of those - some computers were down for a few hours and it made a mess. It takes a lot more than that to destroy a company or their brand reputation. Look how many people choose comcast- even in areas where there is good competition with fiber from a local reputable ISP.
Many years ago I worked at a financial company that offered various investment opportunities to customers.
Which was based on cold calling people who in general did not need them
and telling them they did.
(I was young and innocent at the time, and I didn't figure this out right away)
(I had not even seen boilerroom)
I worked in IT.
We created a fantastic tool (it really was) that managed the entire process.
You could put someone in front of a screen, given them a phone and the software
would guide them.
1. Name, address, number to call.
2. Script for selling, whith branches depending on how the conversations was going.
Obviously we could only cover small subsets of possible paths.
(but it was reasonably good, since the conversations tended to be much the same)
Let us say the conversation went well.
In order to make the sale, a number of government and financial forms had to be
filled out,
3. Highly guided and simplified data entry that would at the end of the process
cause all forms and documents to be issued.
4. As part of the process prompts for specific things the customer had to be told
to be in compliance
5. Documents go out by Fedex.
(then some boring stuff)
The concept was that you could take someone off the street, who had no training or
understanding of the product or financial matters etc etc, put a phone in front of
then start the software and bang.
The reason I have bored you dear reader with all of that is coming up.
At Christmas bonuses were paid out.
People in sales got some huge $$$$$ cash bonuses and there were some expensive
gifts in there as well. Including a horse,.
Makes sense.
The IT department...
We got coupons for 50% off at Heavenly Ham. (or something like that).
Curious who gets one. Like, a big company (airline, bank, etc) that had to hand touch 10,000+ devices across the world.
Crowdstrike is sending what? Like 15 $10 cards to the little area in IT that handles desktops/kiosks/atms/etc? Or the to the Cyber area that bought it, but mostly wasn't saddled with fixing the issue?
People are just piling on here and I suspect there is a misunderstanding because this makes zero sense. The article is based on 4 tweets, 3 of which no longer exist. It’s a poorly researched and poorly written article based on largely non-credible sources.
Specifically, “partners” were getting gift cards and there is no mention of customers. It sounds more like they were throwing around gift cards to channel partners, MSP’s, contractors, etc. It’s still tone deaf but a far cry from a $10 apology to customers.
I suppose you are downvoted because your last statement is not necessarily true. But you are right that the post is vague about how many people exactly received a gift card, since it only says that "partners" received a gift card. The thought that CrowdStrike sent one $10 gift card per partner company is hilarious. They botched the update and apparently they botched this narrative too.
Well, I'm not a CrowdStrike customer, so I'm not entitled to any gift cards anyway, and I'll refrain from asking snarky questions like "is that per organization, per affected PC, or per minute of wasted support time?"
Instead, let me offer the following, alternative snark: "If I were to share with you the secret of renaming your C-*.sys files to C-*.tmp prior to trying to ingest them, so that if you crash while doing so, you will not repeat that mistake right after rebooting, how many US$10 gift cards is that worth? Keeping in mind, of course, that is, like, 2 hours of parking where I live?"
As if a $10 gift card is anywhere near compensating enough for people impacted by their incompetence. Some people were impacted by delayed flights. Some people were impacted by degraded medical care.
Distributing $10 gift cards is so obviously wrong I can't even comprehend how it was approved.
I wonder how much money in total they represent, and if CrowdStrike would have come out better saying "We've immediately allocated $X amount of funds to making sure this issue won't happen again" instead of dividing in x * $10 uber eats insults.
People in crisis mode do stupid things. This is why the first thing you should do in a crisis is wait a few seconds. Then calm down and think things through. Evidently they never got this memo.
[+] [-] indigodaddy|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] layer8|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Rinzler89|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mikelovenotwar|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ToValueFunfetti|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] CyberDildonics|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] pfdietz|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ramon156|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] amy-petrik-214|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] tikkun|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Sohcahtoa82|1 year ago|reply
More like..."We recognize that we have a moral, ethical, and likely legal obligation to make things right and pay back the damage we have caused...but we're not going to."
[+] [-] ironmagma|1 year ago|reply
The only way I can imagine one-upping the detractors at this point.
[+] [-] mystified5016|1 year ago|reply
Corporate sent us a $25 gift card. Not for each of us, one $25 gift card for a team of 8 people. We had made well over three million in sales that year. Felt like a slap in the face for a job well done.
[+] [-] indigodaddy|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] kogus|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] frognumber|1 year ago|reply
Any contract requires consideration. Without it, it's not a valid contract. It doesn't require fair consideration, so a clause giving e.g. $1 is typical for many contracts. They were nice and bumped it up to $20.
I suspect your work DID belong to the company already, under work-for-hire doctrine, but an explicit contract avoids that ambiguity. Ambiguity can be bad and super-expensive, whether during litigation or even something like an audit. If someone is buying a company, investing, making a major loan, that's the kind thing which comes up in due diligence and can be annoying.
So I don't think they were paying you for the code, so much as trying to come into compliance. Very likely, this was triggered by some similar audit for some deal they were trying to make.
[+] [-] ortusdux|1 year ago|reply
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/consideration-every-...
Any contract request that includes a small cash payout should merit extra scrutiny.
[+] [-] qingcharles|1 year ago|reply
We met with their CEO+CFO+lawyers and our lawyers. They were adamant they wouldn't pay the last payment. We pulled out our contract and showed they didn't own any of their code because there was no IP transfer in there. They said "We need a minute." We left the room, came back in and there was a check for the outstanding balance in the middle of the table.
[+] [-] bombcar|1 year ago|reply
The $20 is "due consideration" - just like how some deals involve selling an item for a dollar.
[+] [-] AdmiralAsshat|1 year ago|reply
[0] https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2018/06/01/jury-awards-family-f...
[+] [-] legitster|1 year ago|reply
https://www.tcpalm.com/story/news/local/st-lucie-county/2022...
All involved very split juries - so I think the low amount was kind of a compromise by the jury in each case.
[+] [-] 01HNNWZ0MV43FF|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Algent|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] kube-system|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] redleggedfrog|1 year ago|reply
I find it funny that their name, CrowdStrike, sounds like an anti-personnel reaper drone. Now metaphorically fits.
[+] [-] lupusreal|1 year ago|reply
Probably bullshit, but honestly... Wtf is up with the name?
[+] [-] DougN7|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] faut_reflechir|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] javanissen|1 year ago|reply
What an awful coincidence. I can’t even imagine how it must feel to have a freak technical accident deprive you of seeing your father for the last time.
[+] [-] xandrius|1 year ago|reply
Anything could have caused that really. Still very unfortunate but c'est la vie sometimes.
[+] [-] justinclift|1 year ago|reply
Ouch. That has potential to go that bit extra badly in the press/media too.
Though with the scale of ClownStrike's fuck up, they might not even notice.
[+] [-] bloopernova|1 year ago|reply
At no point did anyone think "this doesn't seem like the right response, I should warn someone further up the chain". Probably due to the idea coming from further up the chain.
And those ubereats/doordash/grubhub cards are worthless because $10 won't get you a thing, you'll need to spend another $30. Which is why corporate always buys those because I am guessing they're much less than $10 to buy.
What an utter clown strike.
[+] [-] hnthrow289570|1 year ago|reply
I just don't immediately believe a publicly-traded company with this many users does something this stupid.
[+] [-] smtz1012|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] legitster|1 year ago|reply
In that case, BP basically threw away their consumer brand in the US - they turned every single BP station into an Arco station (their subsidiary, "lower quality" brand at the time). Then they sold off or spun down a huge portion of their businesses to set aside money for legal fees.
I don't know if Crowdstrike really has any other options at this point. The amount of legal liability the company is going to be under will be staggering and the brand reputation is worse than worthless.
[+] [-] sophacles|1 year ago|reply
Citation for legal liability Crowdstrike has?
Re reputation - I've read this about all sorts of annoyances that had real economic impact, i doubt this will make crowdstrike worthless any more than:
* MS became worthless after Code Red or Slammer or any of the other late 90s/early 2000s breaches.
* Apple became worthless after the iPhone that requried you to hold it a certain way while talking
* Toyota became wortheless after the unintended acceleration issues
* Facebook became worthless after screwing up the internet for a day.
* Amazon become worthless after US-EAST went down screwing everyone over for an afternoon (pick a time).
* Norfolk Southern became worthless after the east palastine derailment.
* A thousand others....
This issue wasn't as impacting as many of those - some computers were down for a few hours and it made a mess. It takes a lot more than that to destroy a company or their brand reputation. Look how many people choose comcast- even in areas where there is good competition with fiber from a local reputable ISP.
[+] [-] jagged-chisel|1 year ago|reply
That must not have lasted long. I don't recall a time when there wasn't a BP station during and after that disaster.
[+] [-] ThinkBeat|1 year ago|reply
Which was based on cold calling people who in general did not need them and telling them they did.
(I was young and innocent at the time, and I didn't figure this out right away) (I had not even seen boilerroom)
I worked in IT. We created a fantastic tool (it really was) that managed the entire process.
You could put someone in front of a screen, given them a phone and the software would guide them.
1. Name, address, number to call. 2. Script for selling, whith branches depending on how the conversations was going. Obviously we could only cover small subsets of possible paths. (but it was reasonably good, since the conversations tended to be much the same)
Let us say the conversation went well. In order to make the sale, a number of government and financial forms had to be filled out,
3. Highly guided and simplified data entry that would at the end of the process cause all forms and documents to be issued.
4. As part of the process prompts for specific things the customer had to be told to be in compliance
5. Documents go out by Fedex.
(then some boring stuff)
The concept was that you could take someone off the street, who had no training or understanding of the product or financial matters etc etc, put a phone in front of then start the software and bang.
The reason I have bored you dear reader with all of that is coming up.
At Christmas bonuses were paid out. People in sales got some huge $$$$$ cash bonuses and there were some expensive gifts in there as well. Including a horse,.
Makes sense.
The IT department... We got coupons for 50% off at Heavenly Ham. (or something like that).
We were not amused.
[+] [-] tyingq|1 year ago|reply
Crowdstrike is sending what? Like 15 $10 cards to the little area in IT that handles desktops/kiosks/atms/etc? Or the to the Cyber area that bought it, but mostly wasn't saddled with fixing the issue?
[+] [-] 708145_|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jm4|1 year ago|reply
Specifically, “partners” were getting gift cards and there is no mention of customers. It sounds more like they were throwing around gift cards to channel partners, MSP’s, contractors, etc. It’s still tone deaf but a far cry from a $10 apology to customers.
[+] [-] yazzku|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] tky|1 year ago|reply
This is a[nother] highly unserious move and unforced error.
[+] [-] pinewurst|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] PreInternet01|1 year ago|reply
Instead, let me offer the following, alternative snark: "If I were to share with you the secret of renaming your C-*.sys files to C-*.tmp prior to trying to ingest them, so that if you crash while doing so, you will not repeat that mistake right after rebooting, how many US$10 gift cards is that worth? Keeping in mind, of course, that is, like, 2 hours of parking where I live?"
[+] [-] xyst|1 year ago|reply
As if a $10 gift card is anywhere near compensating enough for people impacted by their incompetence. Some people were impacted by delayed flights. Some people were impacted by degraded medical care.
[+] [-] insane_dreamer|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] gouggoug|1 year ago|reply
I wonder how much money in total they represent, and if CrowdStrike would have come out better saying "We've immediately allocated $X amount of funds to making sure this issue won't happen again" instead of dividing in x * $10 uber eats insults.
[+] [-] einhverfr|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jmclnx|1 year ago|reply
I would what cold hard cash, plus I do not want to put a sypware app on my phone for just $10.