Relax. You did no wrong. You reacted to the information that was ‘local’ to you. I am merely objecting (hopefully humorously) to the phrase “take full responsibility “: it is uncalled-for, unnecessary, and vacuous. Try to have a good Thursday. Tuesday was not your fault.

I might be in Cornwall in a bit, so I might take you up on that :)

But yeah, it happens. I could share some stories of me (being responsible for) bricking multiple ~200k circuit boards in a row, if that makes it better. In the end nobody really cared and the world kept on turning. Good decisions might come from experience, but experience comes from bad decisions. It's how it is.

Oh and I’m from Bristol. We might have more in common than you’d expect.

The takeaway shouldn’t have been “don’t post” (mainly because someone else would have) but instead “news reporting is hellaciously inaccurate”.

Shit happens.

Years ago I lost $250K at work, well gave away, so real money out the door. I figured out why we were bleeding, that the mistake was mine (2008 vs 2009 in a function) and then changed the pattern to use explicit names rather than numbered events.

I figured at the end of the day I was fired. My boss laughed at me and told me good job for owning my mistake, fixing it, and then making sure it could not happen again.

Honestly don't just apologize - tell the whole story, in full. Tell us what you should have done differently at each step. Tell us where the process failed you and us. Those sorts of narratives and suggestions are how processes get improved. There is a humble and informative post mortem that you can write up and publish (beyond HN) for everyone's edification. But that should honestly be a Monday thing, when you have a clear head and some more perspective on the whole situation.

Honestly though, dont beat yourself up over this.

“Nobody else’s fault but mine” is a perfectly good way of asserting “nobody else’s fault but mine”; “I take full responsibility” is something else entirely and the two are not synonymous. Hyperbole needs to be radically discounted.

I know nothing of who Pete is or his associations, so any accuracy on the following speculation is purely coincidental.

"Take full responsibility" is also something someone set up as a scapegoat might say. By claiming nobody else influenced, coerced, or otherwise convinced them to make that statement, every/any one else involved can then wash their hands of the situation.

I'm merely playing devil's advocate here, and it's just a sign of the times that a person making an honest admission can be interpreted in such a manner.

>At least that's my read of his sentiment. Pete can expand if need be.

That's about it.

A good-faith judgement was made within a broader context that was unknown to him. What are we expected to demand, hanging on electrified barbed wire?? He acted in good faith, he’s not the architect of a global cataclysm.

Correct, otherwise we need another phrase for when he would pay for damages, like "the fullest responsibility" or "the absolutely utmost responsibility".

It is honourable but it is also linguistic abuse that drains the phrase of its full semantic meaning. “Take full responsibility” must remain a stricture of the highest regard. He is not fully responsible nor should he be held to be nor should we demand that he be and most importantly we must not dilute that phrase of its full semantic import, or else we shall have to come up with another one once this one is devalued to mean essentially nothing beyond “I fucked up in good faith and with a lack of information that was concealed for me for decisions taken by others in good faith way upstream of myself”.

It makes no sense, it is used/abused by politicians and corporations all the time. There are no consequences for the responsible party (of course, if there were then this phrase would not be abused so much)

It's words vs. action, and I couldn't care less about anyone's words.

And honor is in the action, dishonor in the words.

What does “I take full responsibility” mean if not (amongst other things) “I accept it is my duty to pay reparations”? As you yourself rephrase it “he could have said ‘I blame only myself for this mistake, nothing else has to change’”. That would have been sufficient and beyond necessary. “I accept full responsibility” is corporate-speak empty hyperbole, and it has to end. Is he any more responsible than those who introduced the hole in the first place? No. Is he responsible for not adhering to agreements he was not privy to? No. He cannot “take full responsibility” because that is an utterly unreasonable burden to place upon him, a lone well-meaning actor who unbeknownst to him took a misstep. We need to discount this corporate-speak linguistic hyperbole.