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SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

mashable.com

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Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#241

Post by WalterSear »

niggler wrote: post #181
WalterSear wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same one she sent this joke about sexual humiliation from: https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425 And the company she was envangelising for on that twitter feed thinks that a visual joke about photocopying your genitals is not inappropriate for their jobs pages: http://i.imgur.com/uWc8P39.png I understand that speaker and context make all the difference, but she made a joke about sexual humil…

I was responding to "Her role is to speak for the company" But yes, you do point out something strange about her tweets. Unfortunately, many people approach this issue with a double standard

She was using her personal twitter account as an extension of her job, which does make her comments 'speaking for the company'. It's part of the role of a tech evangelist.

If she was not comfortable with this, she should have maintained a greater separation between her professional and personal online behaviour.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#242

Post by benologist »

WalterSear wrote: post #139
CptCodeMonkey wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But everyone else seems to like a good pitchfork witch hunt!

There's must be a way to monetize this, turn it into an industry, or at least, a full time career.

Mashable just did!

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#243

Post by zivir »

The voluminous Internet reaction is an example of bike shedding, I think. We don't have strong opinions on a given topic that we don't know much about, but we all know what it's like to be ourselves in social and professional situations, and we all have strong opinions about that.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#244

Post by niggler »

masklinn wrote: post #228
niggler wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read your article: "we will not comment on all the factors that contributed to our parting ways." I still suspect this was a firing for many reasons, not just this incident.

> Read your article: I've read it several times, just in case the text changed between my visits > I still suspect this was a firing for many reasons, not just this incident. And yet the post provides no information whatsoever and crucially does not come close to hinting that this was not the reason, you'd think. There may have been other reasons, but the timing is odd, why wait until he gets involved in something at…

"just in case the text changed between my visits"

I've seen that happen before, so I apologize for my insinuation if the quote was added between your reading and mine.

"the post provides no information whatsoever and crucially does not at any point indicate this was not the reason"

You can't assume that the firing was 100% due to the issue at hand, and I'm saying that I don't think it was 100%. Other people seem to be acting as if that's the only reason he was let go.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#245

Post by cdelsolar »

paranoiacblack wrote: post #170
minimize_me wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could pop over to Zim to see what's wrong with that statement.

> pop over to Zim I don't know what this means. But please elaborate what's wrong with that statement. Please understand that a word's definition is not necessarily it's meaning.

He's talking about Invader Zim; Zim is racist to the other kids because he is literally from an alien race, even though they have the power (he is a very ineffective invader).

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#246

Post by dubfan »

blindhippo wrote: post #136
canttestthis wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DDOS attack on SendGrid's web and mail servers stopped about an hour and a half after they announced that they were firing Richards. Also the community backlash against Richards was huge, while there weren't many supporting her actions. From SendGrid's point of view, this was a good business decision.

No, it sure as hell was not a "good business decision". They got attacked by errant children expressing sad rage at something that while bad, was not deserving of retaliation against the company. So the result: the company ditches one of their employees for very dubious reasons. Basically they caved to internet bullying and validated every sexist moron on the internet. Well done Sendgrid. Well done.

How do we know that SendGrid fired her to stop the DDOS, and it wasn't due to her poor conduct on Twitter? (calling herself Joan of Arc, posting email and IP addresses of blog commenters, baiting trolls, etc.)

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#247

Post by jessaustin »

m4re wrote: post #80
wilfra wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you notice this whole thing going on while it was happening? Did you hear the jokes? Where these guys obnoxious etc? Or was she?

I didn't hear a thing. The keynote and/or lightning talks that were happening during this were pretty loud, and I was paying attention to those (although it certainly doesn't look it from this snap, heh).

Yeah, maybe it's because I'm hard of hearing, but I find that I never hear inside-voice comments from the audience when I'm listening to a presentation. I actually have some pity for those whose hearing is so acute that they suffer from such distractions.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#249

Post by [deleted] »

beachstartup wrote: post #91
danilocampos wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (perhaps with Adria apologizing to the devs). What, exactly, has she to apologize for? The people in question were speaking like they were in a frat house in direct contravention of a code of conduct they'd agreed to. They had the right to speak. And Adria had the right to tweet. If they didn't like being publicly outed for saying this stuff, guess what? All they had to do was shut their mouths. > What if I acciden…

How does accidental immature behavior work? "let's check out this pitch and then grab a beer" at a startup VC pitch event sensitive woman in front of you hears: "let's check out of this bitch and grab a beer" turns around, pics, tweets, gets you fired on the spot. HOW IS THIS OKAY? public shaming is NOT the right response. IT'S JUST NOT. what a stunning lack of imagination.

[deleted]

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#250

Post by eropple »

untog wrote: post #124
pekk wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"See you next year." Understood meaning: I am right, you are wrong, you are eating crow; after I publicly bullied you and got you fired, you are not getting away from me.

What? I'm sorry, but if you can interpret a phrase like "See you next year" in that way then it might be worth speaking to a professional.

I'm of two minds here. Normally, I would agree that it's an innocuous thing to say; I mean, I use the phrase all the time at conferences! That said, I am not so sanguine here; between Ms. Richards's bad faith actions (and you may disagree that she dealt with them in bad faith and that's fine) and her non-apology (I think this is fairly inarguable), I think that it's not unreasonable to infer a negative connotation to the phrase. Especially if you look at it from that dude's perspective, where a not-unreasonable reading might be "she started a massive shitstorm over a joke that could offend a hypothetical person and now I'm fired and why would I ever want to see her again?".

Context does matter.

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