SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas • Hacker News Board

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#451

Post by ssmoot » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 8:54 PM UTC

knowtheory wrote: post #300

WalterSear wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also happens to men in female dominated fields and social enviroments. It's not inherently sexist - humans use stereotypes to categorize everything and everyone, and we haven't, as a society, codified how we should navigate these kind of conflicts without butthurt.

But men in female dominated fields tend not to get death threats and photos of beheaded corpses, or threats of rape. The way that women get treated in male dominated fields like tech really has gotten worse.

I believe in the adage: Don't lead with bad unless you want that to set the tone of your message.

I'm not very good at practicing it always. ;-) But hopefully this is a fairly non-offensive summary of my thoughts:

I believe Adria being fired was a sad turn of events. I unfortunately have to agree that I don't see a way for her to succeed in her former role at SendGrid though. If she had other talent to lend in less public areas of the company, then it's a shame SendGrid didn't explore that first. I don't imply that she should be sidelined; it would obviously have to be something that she was excited to pursue, and had a genuine path forward on. Failing that, it's conceivable that SendGrid didn't have such an opportunity available though, and letting people go when there's no job they can perform is sometimes reality at most places.

I believe the dev being fired was unjust. I get the impression that "it was just an excuse", but that's really not fair of me. If it were as cut and dry as "bad joke, you're fired", then that's really inexcusable.

I do think culpability is an important standard, and that it's possible for the conversation to be both sexist and inappropriate, as well as innocent, without harm, and simply innocent. Intent should matter if we're all being decent.

Adria taking a photo and posting to a large list of followers would probably otherwise probably be labelled "creepy" in almost any other context, and I do think that was the greater sin of the two since the intent to harm was clearly present. She's not responsible for firing anyone, and can sleep at night knowing that truth (IMO), but that doesn't make her actions noble.

Adria's (apparently? I think?) made the claim that she wasn't personally offended, but after consideration decided to take a stand for future generations. I saw another comment that said something like: "Attempting to take offense on someone else's behalf is a bankrupt position." That feels true in my gut.

So that's my long-winded intro to:

I tend to dismiss the comments that call out "feminists" (using that word) as having a greater agenda I'm just not interested in. I think most reasonable people filter the obviously bigoted insults.

One thing (as a man) that bothers me is the apparently high level of tolerance for insults in the other direction. "man-boy", "14 year old teen boy". Even inappropriate usage of "misogynist". Many of these comments I've seen by otherwise reasonable, level-headed people that garner a large number of upvotes.

It's very divisive and unhelpful. It's certainly both belittling and sexist in the exact same way that calling someone "a little girl" is.

It makes me wonder if even writing this is a good idea. "Fearful" is certainly a good adjective. How will future employers see this? Or people I respect in communities I belong to? I get bigots. I'm not afraid of them. A popular mob trying to "do the right thing". That scares me a bit to be honest.

2c.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#452

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 8:55 PM UTC

JohnBooty wrote: post #430

cheald wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference here is that the jokes/comments were not made to her. She overheard them in the context of a semi-private conversation between two people, and took umbrage at them. If they had come up and started making penis jokes to her, then it'd be a very different situation.

It's not as obnoxious as if they'd walked up to her and started telling her penis jokes, but on the other hand a person has to assume that the person sitting in front of them at a conference (seriously, they're what - three or four feet away?) can hear what they're saying. Also, her site is down at the moment, so I can't verify, but didn't she actually converse with them? I might be wrong about that. I wish I could v…

[deleted]

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#453

Post by adamnemecek » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 8:56 PM UTC

knowtheory wrote: post #379

adamnemecek wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, she might. But say you are evaluating Adria and another, equally competent candidate for a position. Why would you pick Adria knowing that if you hire her (despite the fact that she may have changed), you might trigger some 'undesirable reactions'? Just for the record, I feel like Jonah Lehrer's transgression was much less objectionable than Adria's.

Now, that is especially interesting. Because Jonah Lehrer has proven to be a plagiarist and a fabricator on a large number of occasions. On top of that, he demonstrated that he does not understand that he has a responsibility to the truth and accurately representing the world to others. That's basically the journalistic death penalty. I don't trust anything he writes, and neither should you. Adria's behavior was dumb…

Ok, I'm not all that familiar with the Jonah Lehrer situation, but from what I understand it was self-plagiarism. If that was really the case, then that's just stupid. If it was not and he plagiarized other people's works or made stuff up, then that's a different story.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#454

Post by ryguytilidie » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 8:56 PM UTC

knowtheory wrote: post #291

zevyoura wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your experiences sound awful and truly disheartening, and I hope we can move towards a better and more inclusive future for everyone. However, I do feel compelled to make one point about this part: >Okay, time to speak up! Hi, I'm a woman in tech. And this upset me, but not for the reasons you think. I agree that Adria went too far in publicly Tweeting and "name and shaming" these guys. But the vitriol and hate that…

You are making a quantifiable assertion. If you'd really like to back up the claim, go grab some of the threads on this subject, and spider the account pages of the people posting to the threads. Plot them by amount of karma and # of days since the account was opened. As much as i do think /r/mensrights are assholes who are making this situation worse, i would assert that there is a preexisting strain of this behavio…

To be fair, she claimed that these people represented the tech community, the responder said that they didn't represent the tech community and you instantly jump in to put the burden of proof on statement 2? Why not statement 1? If we're really calling the tech community sexist because someone got twitter hate after an article was posted on Reddit I'm just blown away at the logic gymnastics one would have to do to arrive at the point you've seemingly just arrived at...

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#455

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 8:56 PM UTC

ericabiz wrote: post #217

blhack wrote: post #20

I really wish that this whole thing could have ended amicably (perhaps with Adria apologizing to the devs [by the way, the guy who was fired has already publicly apologized]). It's too bad that sendgrid had to fire her, I would never wish that somebody had their livlihood taken from them like that, but her job was to be a developer evangelist, which is a job she isn't realistically capable of performing anymore. I wo…

> "Most [all, actually] of the women I've talked to about this are furious with her over how badly this portrays women." Okay, time to speak up! Hi, I'm a woman in tech. And this upset me, but not for the reasons you think. I agree that Adria went too far in publicly Tweeting and "name and shaming" these guys. But the vitriol and hate that has spewed forth online to her is what takes my breath away. Comments calling…

[deleted]

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#456

Post by danilocampos » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 8:58 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #230

danilocampos wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you had the empathy or personal context to understand what happened here, how these situations work, and how disempowering the behavior can feel, we wouldn't be having this conversation in the first place. No amount of my arguing with you on Hacker News will change that.

Danilo, following up an argument from authority with an ad hominem attack is not constructive either.

It wasn't argument from authority – it was a response to a question as to whether I knew what these people said.

I do.

And it's not ad hominem to say there's no point to the conversation based on missing context. I'm reminded of when McCoy wanted to discuss death with Spock:

"It would be impossible to discuss the subject without a common frame of reference." ... "You mean I have to die in order to discuss your insights on death?"

For reasons I won't speculate upon, OP seems to believe it's impossible Adria knows anything about github, for example. I don't think there's anything constructive to be said to that.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#457

Post by Semaphor » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 8:58 PM UTC

knowtheory wrote: post #399

doktrin wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are making a quantifiable assertion. If you'd really like to back up the claim, go grab some of the threads on this subject, and spider the account pages of the people posting to the threads. I don't see how plotting thread discussions on HN would even vaguely correlate to the Twitter abuse the GP was referring to.

zevyoura was asserting that the behavior seen on twitter is not representative of our community, and that those sentiments are isolated to a set of bad actors. My assertion is that there is a substantial number of people who share that same ill will here on hacker news. Most of the threads that have been posted to HN have been dog piles of hating on Adria Richards. So the question is are those people new and in fact…

I usually stay away from twitter, but reading through some reddit threads (Seen nothing hateful on HN at all), only the communities made up mostly of idiots had any hate speech (SRS, SRSucks and MensRight)

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#458

Post by katbyte » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 8:58 PM UTC

luigi wrote: post #333

blhack wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the way, this isn't exclusive to tech. Women [unfortunately] face this in every male dominated field . It sucks, I know. My girlfriend works in a traditionally male dominated field, and she has to deal with this sort of thing constantly. But that interaction where the person assumed you weren't a dev[1] is only made worse by things like what has happened here. The signal to the dev community from Adria's reaction…

> but I can speak for the other women that I know. Are you certain of that? Really think about it. Put yourself in the shoes of these women you know. Would they really want you speaking for them?

He doesn't know me but i think hes doing a better job of speaking for me then adria did.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#459

Post by jetsnoc » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 8:59 PM UTC

I shared this on a previous thread that was removed:

Wow, just wow. Five wrongs don't make a right.

  1. Two men make crude jokes to one another at conference.
  2. Adria shames them.
  3. PlayHaven fires one of them.
  4. Internet goes berserk and threatens her.
  5. SendGrid fires Adria.

I bet all parties wish that either these men didn't joke around like this or that she would have simply turned around and said "Y'know, boys, I'm trying to watch this lightning talk can you keep it down or keep your jokes to yourself for now?" Or, even kept her twitter posting to simply asking Pycon to take care of it.

Sad. This is a net negative.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#460

Post by jsmeaton » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 8:59 PM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #380

knowtheory wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But men in female dominated fields tend not to get death threats and photos of beheaded corpses, or threats of rape. The way that women get treated in male dominated fields like tech really has gotten worse.

No, but males do get automatically suspected of being pedophiles. Companies / daycare / pre-k - 6 have a strong prejudice against hiring males in education. Insurance companies and some parents play a pretty big role in this situation.

I worked for 5 years looking after disabled children and had some parents absolutely refuse to leave their kids if there weren't any female staff members on for the day. That kind of makes you angry. What REALLY makes you angry though is when the female staff support that decision.