CrowdStrike CEO is getting pummeled for his response to the global outage.
Why everyone hates it:
1) WEAPONS-GRADE CORPO SPEAK
Let’s be clear. Legalese doublespeak is designed to dodge and obfuscate rather than inform or communicate. This statement was obviously written by a committee of lawyers and middle managers whose only goal was to avoid legal risk and threats to their own job security.
If you can’t understand what the statement is even saying, it’s working as intended.
2) NO APOLOGY
The first words should be “I’m sorry” — but you won’t find that anywhere in this statement. Nor the watered down “I take responsibility.” Not even the weasely “We regret…” Nothing!
It comes off as cowardly and callous. CrowdStrike caused an outage that took down airlines, a stock exchange, hospitals, ICUs. People might have died.
And the CEO is not sorry.
3) PASSIVE VOICE THROUGHOUT
This is such classic move to avoid accountability, it’s even become a joke: “Mistakes were made!”
This statement is almost comical in its efforts to dodge assigning responsibility.
“This issue has been identified…a fix has been deployed.”
Which issue? (Global outage)
Who caused the issue? (You, CrowdStrike)
What fix? (🤷🏻♀️)
Did it work? (🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️)
4) DISMISSING CUSTOMERS
Don’t bother us with your petty complaints of power going out in your local hospital!
“We refer customers to the support portal” and “we further recommend customers ensure they’re communicating with representatives through official channels.”
You, the customer, are bothering us and making our lives harder.
5) USELESS INFORMATION
So many words, so little meaning. This statement says nothing useful — not what the problem was, who caused it, what they learned, what the fix it, how long it might take, what they’re working on, or anything at all.
It assigns extra work to the customer by telling them to go through official channels but does NOT then link to the official channels. The onus is on you, customers!
If you want to learn more about how CrowdStrike has ruined your day, you go do the work.