Wow, blaming the user? That's low. Just like in customer service where the customer is always right, in web development the user is always right. It's not the users fault they didn't see some text, it's YOUR fault.
Boom. That right there pretty much ended any defense the CEO had. HN has countless submissions focusing on site layout/design/user interaction/click rate/etc
If you wanted the user to be able to see the message or cared that they did, you would have made it more obvious what was going on here.
