It wasn’t altruism; Zappos was better off without employees who didn’t want to be there. But, I can’t help but think tha

Tony Hsieh speaks at the closing plenary session of the Clinton Global Initiative America at the Sheridan Downtown Denver, Wednesday morning, June 25, 2014. Photo: Andy Cross/The Denver Post via Getty Images

· All anonymous sources were contacted by fact-checkers from The Atlantic and their quotes confirmed prior to the publication of my article. None of this material is in dispute.

On October 29th, when Wemple contacted me with a list of questions about the piece, The Atlantic asked me not to respond. They requested instead that I send my answers to the magazine’s research department, which was in the midst of a line-by-line reexamination of the story.

Hsieh twice built companies from the ground up and found big exits: Zappos to Amazon for $1.2 billion, and before that, LinkExchange, which Microsoft acquired for $265 million before Hsieh turned 25.

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Covid-19 long-haulers have a “smaller energy window,” says Dayna McCarthy, a rehabilitative medicine physician who helps long-haulers at the Center for Post-Covid Care at Mount Sinai in New York. “It’s a completely different ballgame now.”

“Why?” asked Bill Taylor in Harvard Business Review in 2008, when the maximum “offer” was $1,000. “Because if you’re willing to take the company up on The Offer, you obviously don’t have the sense of commitment they are looking for.”

There are many good reasons to remember Tony Hsieh, but I keep thinking about one in particular: an unusual employment policy at Zappos, where Hsieh was CEO for two decades.

Not just the quirkiness for which he was known — a near-billionaire who lived in an Airstream trailer because, as he once explained, he valued experiences over things — but instead, for the 2-word policy Zappos had for new employees.

With his questions still unanswered, Wemple has continued to raise doubts about the piece — and recently tweeted that The Atlantic’s retraction did not go far enough: “There’s still a lot in [the article] to correct, imo. The distortions and nonsense in the piece all lean in one direction — toward making the parents of Fairfield County appear more unreasonable and tyrannical and status-conscious than they are.”

He was also a booster of the city of Las Vegas, where Zappos is headquartered, and a thought leader in entrepreneurship and business, starting with the publication of his book, Delivering Happiness.

· The story went through The Atlantic’s usual rigorous editing and fact-checking process. The Atlantic then reviewed the piece a second time after Wemple raised his concerns. Other than the mistakes I cite above, I’m aware of no additional errors or corrections.

But if you ask me, all of us need to get as much of that as we can, as fast as we can. We were put here to love. As much of life, in all its forms, as we can hold, in the achingly brief time we have. That is what “we’re social beings” means in the most essential, simplest form.

The editors of the magazine viewed my inclusion of a nonexistent son as a cardinal lapse and retracted the piece. That is their prerogative. Unfortunately, this decision has prompted widespread speculation that the article as a whole is not grounded in solid reporting, contains embellishments or is somehow fabricated or made-up.

· The article includes quotes from sixteen named sources speaking in support of the central thesis of the piece. High school and college coaches, trainers, physical therapists, admissions advisors and sports governing body officials are all quoted at length and on the record. No one has disputed the accuracy of their quotes or my story. On the contrary, many have expressed support for the piece and called it an accurate portrait of youth-sports culture in affluent enclaves.

Most egregiously, to protect the anonymity of a source I called “Sloane,” I signed off on inserting a reference to a person who doesn’t exist. I described Sloane, in passing, as the mother of four children — three daughters and a son — when in truth she has only three daughters. I should not have misled readers, and I’ve apologized to The Atlantic for this error.