Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Difficult Situation

blog.sendgrid.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 485 posts

Re: A Difficult Situation

#61

Post by jerrya »

jlgreco wrote: post #31
jerrya wrote: post #14

The situation wasn't that difficult, and Sendgrid's response was inappropriate. Welcome to the Corporate State where every problematic statement you make as an errorful human being prone to making mistakes will be used against you to preserve the corporate bottom line. An actual appropriate response from SendGrid and Play Haven would have been recognition that its employees are human's first, and all of us are subjec…

I am curious what you make of this portion of the response in particular: "A SendGrid developer evangelist’s responsibility is to build and strengthen our Developer Community across the globe. In light of the events over the last 48+ hours, it has become obvious that her actions have strongly divided the same community she was supposed to unite. As a result, she can no longer be effective in her role at SendGrid."

I consider that to be fluff and nonsense.

48 hours is not the right interval to be making that judgment. And firing her in response to correct the situation was about the worse and most extreme of actions.

(And please note, I think Richards made a mistake and showed terrible judgment.)

Re: A Difficult Situation

#62

Post by julesie »

In the end we have two people out of a job.

It is a sad outcome but Adria's position had simply become untenable.

Personally I know who seems the more employable of the two. I do hope Adria gets the time to step back and learn something from this sorry incident.

There are no winners here.

Re: A Difficult Situation

#63

Post by blantonl »

nilkn wrote: post #26

Even if I agree with the decision, this is incredibly hard to read. I hate to see someone lose their job over something like this. Yet I can't disagree with anything he wrote. I personally hope she will learn from this and another company will give her a new chance. The odds of that are slim given how big this has become--it's front-paging repeatedly on HN and /r/programming. But I'd hate to see her whole career ruin…

You live by the sword, you die by the sword.

Social media is an incredibly powerful tool - especially when you are good at "it" and you wield influence. Trip up on your own shoelaces and you run tremendous risk of social media backfiring on you.

Re: A Difficult Situation

#64

Post by Proleps »

nilkn wrote: post #26

Even if I agree with the decision, this is incredibly hard to read. I hate to see someone lose their job over something like this. Yet I can't disagree with anything he wrote. I personally hope she will learn from this and another company will give her a new chance. The odds of that are slim given how big this has become--it's front-paging repeatedly on HN and /r/programming. But I'd hate to see her whole career ruin…

According to this article[1] this was not a single mistake, but a pattern of how she handles things.

[1] https://amandablumwords.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/3/

Re: A Difficult Situation

#65

Post by mikeg8 »

minimaxir wrote: post #2

In the end, the consequences that resulted from how she reported the conduct put our business in danger. Our commitment to our 130 employees, their families, our community members and our more than 130,000 valued customers is our primary concern. Is he referring to the DDOS there? Or the user exodus?

I also think it is very important for their reputation in general so developers and the community feel confident in choosing Sendgrid for future projects. Not always about there here and now...

Re: A Difficult Situation

#66

Post by bmj »

subsystem wrote: post #18

In my opinion he's a coward that doesn't stand behind his employees and that goes for PlayHaven too. They've set a terrible precedent for the industry.

Perhaps a better solution would have been to ask Ms. Richards to take a different position at the company, perhaps one that was less public? The crux for SendGrid was that Ms. Richards was a developer evangelist, and, as Mr. Franklin pointed out, if a majority of the community which she serves is upset and/or against her, how could she actually do her job?

Re: A Difficult Situation

#67

Post by X-Istence »

_delirium wrote: post #52
X-Istence wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer to both is "Yes". When their service is down, companies can't send their email, when companies can't send their email using SendGrid they look for alternatives...

It would be weird to fire someone over other people's criminal activity. That reason would be akin to what Eugene Volokh has referred to as the "heckler's veto": when you e.g. cancel a controversial speech because thuggish opponents have threatened to cause trouble (call in fake bomb threats, etc.), and you blame the speaker for having drawn the thuggish behavior, rather than the people actually engaged in criminal a…

Except that she caused the criminal activity to happen because of the way she acted, and it is now costing the business money hand over fist. It gets expensive fast.

Re: A Difficult Situation

#68

Post by arrrg »

So she was actually fired because of the DDoS: “In the end, the consequences that resulted from how she reported the conduct put our business in danger. Our commitment to our 130 employees, their families, our community members and our more than 130,000 valued customers is our primary concern.”

Firing someone because of the criminal activity of someone else seems very weird.

At least he is opening himself up to that interpretation. Maybe the “consequences” are just disgruntled customers deciding to take their business elsewhere or the loss in trust in her, resulting in a reduced ability of her to do her job effectively, but in that context also talking about the “130,000 valued customers” is very weird. I can only assume that he was at least also referring to the DDoS when talking about the consequences.

To me it’s pretty clear that if the DDoS played any role in their decision, then it’s at least partly based on immoral cowardice.

Re: A Difficult Situation

#69

Post by buf »

What a tough day for Sendgrid, Playhaven, and the developer community as a whole. I've been following this story the last 24 hours and I'm already fatigued. Let's pick up the pieces and work together to unite once again.

Our role as technologists is to build technology. Let us not forget that.

Re: A Difficult Situation

#70

Post by robryan »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #19

I have little to no knowledge of laws in this area. However my gut tells me that Sendgrid is opening themselves up to a hell of a lawsuit. Can anyone who actually does know about such matters comment?

I don't see why. Especially given the role of developer relations. It seems an incident like this is sure to effect her in that role.
Post reply on HN