SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas • Hacker News Board

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#461

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

danilocampos wrote: post #159

beachstartup wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So, here's the problem with your little fantasy: These guys were actually making sexual jokes . This wasn't a single mis-heard phrase.

you were asking HOW an accident could occur, not what actually occurred. look, here it is again.

How does accidental immature behavior work?

THESE ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS, which you are conflating ex post facto to rationalize a shitty argument you originally made in the heat of the moment.

i'm fairly certain you would just chalk up my (easily) imagined scenario as unfortunate collateral damage to whatever cause you are so zealously defending, so i guess it doesn't really matter anyway

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#462

Post by jack-r-abbit » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 9:00 PM UTC

Proleps wrote: post #428

jack-r-abbit wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> these things are hard BOOM.. fired! See what happened there? You said it. I overreacted. You were fired. It actually is a real fear that something you say will unknowingly offend someone and get you in trouble. This has less to do with gender and sexism and more to do with just too many people being incapable of getting along. > automatically act in ways that don't offend anyone. Impossible. Everything is capable o…

> these things are hard >> BOOM.. fired! See what happened there? You said it. I overreacted. You were fired. It actually is a real fear that something you say will unknowingly offend someone and get you in trouble. This has less to do with gender and sexism and more to do with just too many people being incapable of getting along. Something similar actually happened on Twitter, Steve Marx said something about a lync…

Cheese & Rice! I had no idea she was that far out there. As a developer I am offended by her claiming to be an evangelist for us.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#463

Post by imallforfair » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 9:01 PM UTC

1) Dongle, penis, vagina, balls, etc are NOT SEXIST JOKES. "Get in the kitchen and make me a pie." is an offensive and sexist joke. 2) She was not fired for standing up, she was fired for dragging her employer into the fight on twitter. 3) What can you tell me about her before this incident? 4) She sensationalized the incident in ways that Fox News couldn't even top. 5) SHE IS AN EVANGALIST/communicator. Are you telling me she is intimidated or doesn't know how to converse with people?

"Yesterday the future of programming was on the line..."

In the end, everyone lost here, but she did start the fire.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#464

Post by JohnBooty » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 9:01 PM UTC

nilkn wrote: post #312

JohnBooty wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would feel really uncomfortable if I was in the same > room as this person. What if I accidentally say > something that she finds offensive? Am I next? I wouldn't feel uncomfortable around her at all, because I find it very easy to avoid saying sexually inappropriate things to women I don't know. I have quite an off-color sense of humor myself. I joke a lot and a lot of those jokes involve sex, bodily functions,…

I'm pretty sure at some point in your life you've made a very mildly off-color joke to a friend and someone else overheard. Should you have lost your job?

  > I'm pretty sure at some point in your life you've 
  > made a very mildly off-color joke to a friend and 
  > someone else overheard.

I'm absolutely sure I have, and shame on me for those times. I was in the wrong.

  > Should you have lost your job?

Well, I was definitely in the wrong during each of those occasions. Should I have lost my job? That would depend on a lot of things, such as whether or not I was being inappropriate while attending a conference on my employer's dime.

I agree that it's awfully harsh to lose one's job over a single penis joke. I'm not saying that this guy should have lost his job. It's possible that this was a kneejerk overreaction on his employer's part, and it's also possible that this guy had other issues that already had him on thin ice when this incident happened.

Nor am I necessarily agreeing with how Adria handled this incident. Whether we think she should have handled it differently or not, though, it doesn't change the fact that it's not cool to subject a stranger to unwanted sexual conversation.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#465

Post by kevingibbon » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 9:01 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…

I think her decision to take this to twitter was the completely wrong decision. She is a developer evangelist at one of the most important developer conferences. She is representing SendGrid on all of her public forums.

How does the public alienation of these two guys go towards building critical mass of support for SendGrid? Even if this was sexual harassment what would she have gained for herself or SendGrid by bringing this to a public forum. She has to know that a large number of potential SendGrid users are men who have similar senses of humor.

If she was deeply offended by the comments these guys made she should have spoken to them directly or privately mentioned it to the staff.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#466

Post by Steuard » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 9:04 PM UTC

georgeorwell wrote: post #435

ericabiz wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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…

I'm sorry, but you just threw up two different straw (wo)men here. It's not sexist to make jokes about the word "dongle" sounding like "dong". They sound pretty similar. It's not very funny unless you're bored stiff or in grade five, but nevertheless it's pretty harmless joke material, and it isn't sexism. The examples you gave are sexism. If the two guys at PyCon had directed the jokes at Adria while also excluding…

"It's not sexist to make a jokes about the word "dongle" sounding like "dong". They sound pretty similar. It's not very funny unless you're bored stiff or in grade five, but nevertheless it's pretty harmless joke material, and it isn't sexism."

I really have to disagree. Dick jokes are perceived to be almost exclusively a part of "guy culture". Want proof? Watch how fast a group of guys making those jokes suddenly clams up and changes the topic the moment an unfamiliar woman walks up. (And when a woman joins in and shows that she's comfortable making those jokes, too, watch how glad everyone is that she can be "just one of the guys".)

So when guys at a conference routinely make dick jokes in public, that contributes to a sense that the conference is a male space. It's not a conscious thing, but it's a real thing, and it would be good for it to change. I don't know that the public shaming in this case was the right way to go about that, but I'm not sure that I have a better alternative to offer, either. (Women are all too aware that quietly saying "Please don't act that way" tends to have no impact at all, apart from the guys thinking she's a humorless busybody.)

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#467

Post by king_jester » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 9:04 PM UTC

Proleps wrote: post #376

JohnBooty wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would feel really uncomfortable if I was in the same > room as this person. What if I accidentally say > something that she finds offensive? Am I next? I wouldn't feel uncomfortable around her at all, because I find it very easy to avoid saying sexually inappropriate things to women I don't know. I have quite an off-color sense of humor myself. I joke a lot and a lot of those jokes involve sex, bodily functions,…

> I wouldn't feel uncomfortable around her at all It is extremely easy to offend this woman. Just look at her twitter posts https[0], she plays every card in the book in this occasion she plays the racism card while arguing that she can't be a racist herself[1]. [0] https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/313946261055221760 [1] https://twitter.com/adriarichards/statuses/6039856858

No, she said she as a black woman cannot be racist towards white people. On an individual level, sure she could be racist towards a white person. However, the social power imbalance is way against her in almost every way compared to white people with institutions enforcing racist actions and policies against black folks way more often and more severely.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#468

Post by king_jester » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 9:07 PM UTC

s_baby wrote: post #423

king_jester wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you say is very true of mainstream white 2nd wave feminism. However, the heyday of the 2nd wave was decades ago and feminist thought and work (academic or not) has gone much beyond the absolutist kind of advocacy 2nd wavers had/have.

2nd wave isn't the leading edge or majority but it's still a huge part of the ecosystem. Third Wave feminist might not commit to any one framework but they are often perfectly happy to take on the language of 2nd wave feminism when it's relevant to do so. When the stars align, these people take on the language of bigotry.

I'm not really sure what you are arguing here. 2nd wave feminism has problems for sure, but they also got a lot right and and 2nd wavers have helped shaped the state of society today. Heck, some prominent woman suffarage folks in the late 1800s/early 1900s were eugenics advocates (which is super messed up), but that doesn't negate the positive things woman's suffrage accomplished.

If you want to talk about the specific things you think that 3rd wavers are getting wrong about 2nd wave feminism, you'll have to be more specific because bigotry isn't limited to radfems who subscribe to 2nd waver philosophy.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#469

Post by ryguytilidie » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 9:08 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…

You seem to have a super inconsistent burden of proof.

-Poster above who says hacker news posters are typically sexist. No problem whatsoever, no burden of proof needed. -Person responds and says they disagree that this represents HN posts. You respond and demand that they produce quantifiable proof. -You then go on to assert that hacker news posters are like this, based on 0 quantifiable evidence, but just your hunch.

How do you make a point like that and not realize how unfair/unrealistic you're being?

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#470

Post by JohnBooty » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 9:08 PM UTC

RyanZAG wrote: post #446

JohnBooty wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She claims jokes were offending, she then posts > racists and penis jokes on her twitter account. > Not only does it smell of hypocrisy it smells of > maliciousness. Wow, so if your mother (or sister, or girlfriend, or wife, or daughter) has ever made an off-color joke in her life, that gives any man in the world the right to discuss penises with her in person? I mean, wow. That's what you're getting at. Twitter ha…

Back up just a second there. As far as I can tell, posting jokes like that to twitter and hearing jokes like that at a conference are entirely comparable in every way. They're exactly the same thing - both are jokes of a sexual/race based background.

  > As far as I can tell, posting jokes like that to 
  > twitter and hearing jokes like that at a conference 
  > are entirely comparable in every way. They're exactly 
  > the same thing - both are jokes of a sexual/race based
  > background.

You don't think that context matters at all when it comes to a joke?

Do you just speak the exact same way everywhere, whether you're talking to clients, joking with your friends during an alcohol-fueled gaming session, in a locker room, or to your parents?

Or do you maybe think that some subjects are appropriate for some situations but not others?

Personally, I say a lot of extremely off-color things to my (male and female) friends that I wouldn't dream of saying to strangers. Even if I had some evidence that stranger had made an off-color joke at some point in their lives.