Earlier this week, Leslie Miley, Twitter’s only black manager in the engineering department, quit because of how badly the company is managing its attempts at diverse hiring. In a blog post explaining his decision, Miley included a damaging quote from the company’s Senior VP of Engineering. Now the VP is saying he’s sorry.

An apologetic blog post from Senior VP of Engineering Alex Roetter includes a mix of earnest sorry-saying and earnest ass-covering:

“The comments attributed to me aren’t an accurate or complete facsimile, but they conveyed a meaning that was very far from what I intended, which means I did a poor job communicating. That resulted in unnecessary pain and confusion, for which I am truly sorry.”

Roetter also includes a list of initiatives Twitter will undertake in the near future to make itself more inclusive—but it’s hard to tell how this will differ from all the other times a technology company has sworn to do a better job of hiring people who don’t look like Mark Zuckerberg. Roetter concludes by noting “All of the above is only a small start, and we’re going to do a lot more,” and “Ultimately, it’s better to show the world rather than tell the world.” And yet.

Contact the author at biddle@gawker.com.
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