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A Difficult Situation

blog.sendgrid.com

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Re: A Difficult Situation

#461

Post by thisone »

jennyjenjen wrote: post #451
oelmekki wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people in the media (news readers and so forth) have a "morals clause" in their contract because they publicly represent the company. This situation is much the same. Indeed, community manager (call that evangelist if you want to) is a weird job. You're supposed to be social, natural - to be as you would be in private life. In cases like these, you're even supposed to use your own identity to support the brand…

Ah, two great points: 1) the difficulty / contradictions in community manager / evangelist jobs, and 2) free speech in the US. I am not sure where you are from - France, judging by the hour, grammar, punctuation? - but after living outside the US and having the luxury of observing my home country from the outside, I have found that free speech is not treated with as much value as we seem to claim. Some would say that…

Free speech in the US says the government cannot make laws to curtail your speech in most circumstances.

Free speech does not, however, protect you from dealing with the consequences of your speech.

Re: A Difficult Situation

#462

Post by doktrin »

shantanubala wrote: post #420
dinkumthinkum wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. She wrote in all caps that a class of people "CANNOT" be racist in all caps like a loony bird. She wasn't making some deep intellectual point. Come on. It was stupidity. It's not the same as a layperson describing gravity in terms of some basic understanding of Newtonian physics and a physicist describing it in terms of general relativity. It was just dumb.

> It's not the same as a layperson describing gravity in terms of some basic understanding of Newtonian physics and a physicist describing it in terms of general relativity. It was just dumb. You're mixing up what I said: a sociologist describing a social phenomenon is analogous to a physicist describing a physical phenomenon. In the tweet, Adria colloquially used the word "racism" in a way that's different from coll…

> You're mixing up what I said: a sociologist describing a social phenomenon is analogous to a physicist describing a physical phenomenon.

Sorry, no. All academic disciplines are not analogous and equivalent. The sociological re-casting of "racism" that we are referring to here is an opinion, and not even a majority one at that (among sociologists).

Re: A Difficult Situation

#463

Post by psionski »

shantanubala wrote: post #254
powertower wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It depends on your definition of racism racism - dictionary 1.The belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, esp. so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races. 2.Prejudice or discrimination directed against someone of a different race based on such a belief. This is the original definition of the word - 1 year ago, 10 years ago, 100 y…

> The redefinition of racism is merely a fabrication meant to suit someone elses particular agenda, or to get you to submit to their particular argument or point-of-view. A dictionary only outlines common usage (it does not provide context), and I indicated the common usage in my comment as well. If you ever want to make a nuanced argument , you must clearly define (and sometimes re-define) the words you are using! O…

If twitter isn't suited for "nuanced arguments", well then you shouldn't be using twitter in the first place! Write a blog post and only share the link (and title). It's that simple. It doesn't matter how good something sounds in your head if you can't voice it correctly.

Re: A Difficult Situation

#464

Post by epidemian »

georgeorwell wrote: post #394
cletus wrote: post #318

I'm honestly surprised that anyone is attacking Sendgrid, defending Ms Richards, attacking PyCon or defending Playhaven in this incident. The fact is that what you do reflects on your employer to a degree. If you're a developer evangelist, that's quite a high degree, particularly if you drag them into your public spat. Most people in the media (news readers and so forth) have a "morals clause" in their contract becau…

> I'm honestly surprised that anyone is [...] defending Ms Richards Even though I think she messed up in a big way, that there wasn't sexism, that she is a hypocrite, and that she really kept asking for it, much of the aggressive abuse directed at Adria Richards since the initial event has been totally out of control, and would count as criminal hate in some countries. For starters, look at the comments on her Facebo…

Wow, after seeing her Facebook, i can't believe that so much people would react that way, doing exactly the same thing they are supposedly condemning. Very messed up. Thanks for sharing.

Re: A Difficult Situation

#465

Post by nanoscopic »

Unless someone has a recording of exactly what was said and can convincingly argue that what was said was anything besides harmless immature humor; I think this whole situation is utterly retarded. 2 people fired? Because 1 person made a joke about forking and said something about "big dongles".

I think the immature people are the ones who think it is reasonable for people to lose their jobs over this.

Re: A Difficult Situation

#466

Post by flyinRyan »

benjiweber wrote: post #437
jennyjenjen wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could say that I'm surprised that anyone is attacking SendGrid. Even though they have done nothing to deserve such backlash - both before and after firing Adria Richards - it doesn't surprise me in the least that people are taking the opportunity to unleash hateful comments and demonstrate poor attitudes. I agree with you all the way, other than that. SendGrid made a great case for departing with Ms. Richard…

> Even though they have done nothing to deserve such backlash They fired an employee without due process. Apparently a knee-jerk reaction rather than considered disciplinary process. They capitulated to an anonymous DDOS. Even with a ridiculous demand. Giving the impression they were not technically able to bring the service back up by themselves. Neither of these gives me confidence in trusting SendGrid with email.…

>They fired an employee without due process.

Are you joking? She was basically PR for the company. She obviously can't continue on in that role. What should they have done exactly?

EDIT: Further she even claimed they supported what she did...

Re: A Difficult Situation

#467

Post by nsxwolf »

thisone wrote: post #461
jennyjenjen wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, two great points: 1) the difficulty / contradictions in community manager / evangelist jobs, and 2) free speech in the US. I am not sure where you are from - France, judging by the hour, grammar, punctuation? - but after living outside the US and having the luxury of observing my home country from the outside, I have found that free speech is not treated with as much value as we seem to claim. Some would say that…

Free speech in the US says the government cannot make laws to curtail your speech in most circumstances. Free speech does not, however, protect you from dealing with the consequences of your speech.

But you'd think if we really value free speech in this country, and not just the First Amendment, we wouldn't be so quick to want to suppress the speech of others.

Re: A Difficult Situation

#468

Post by vacri »

katbyte wrote: post #345
sophacles wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what would have been a great freaking story? 1) Guys make inappropriate jokes 2) Adria feels offended. Doesn't matter if she "should" or "shouldn't". It happened. OK so far, different people have different opinions on acceptable behavior. This particular one is explicitly unacceptable in the rules of the conference. 3) Adria texts PyCon staff, and they act exactly as they did in this sitution. 4) Adria write…

> 5) There would still be much internet hate. i honestly don't think there would have been much hate. Allot of the anger was as how drastically she reacted by posting their photos online.

The hate stems from the loss of the job at Playhaven. Without that happening, this event becomes pretty mundane - it's not like social activists don't regularly name and shame with photos.

Re: A Difficult Situation

#469

Post by vacri »

OGC wrote: post #194
mtrimpe wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also known as the good old ad-hominem attack.

> "Doug Walton, Canadian academic and author, has argued that ad hominem reasoning is not always fallacious, and that in some instances, questions of personal conduct, character, motives, etc., are legitimate and relevant to the issue,[10] as when it directly involves hypocrisy, or actions contradicting the subject's words. The philosopher Charles Taylor has argued that ad hominem reasoning is essential to understand…

In those cases, the utterer's circumstances are part of the argument, and it's not 'ad hominem' to point that out - an ad hominem is personally attacking the target rather than attacking the argument. "But Marx was not a prole" is not attacking Marx personally.

Re: A Difficult Situation

#470

Post by theorique »

nsxwolf wrote: post #467
thisone wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free speech in the US says the government cannot make laws to curtail your speech in most circumstances. Free speech does not, however, protect you from dealing with the consequences of your speech.

But you'd think if we really value free speech in this country, and not just the First Amendment, we wouldn't be so quick to want to suppress the speech of others.

It's not about suppressing - she spoke freely, and inadvisedly.

The consequences of this were a man losing his job and a big backlash.

This made it difficult for her to do her job effectively, lowering her value to her company to zero (and probably a large negative).

I don't see that SendGrid was acting to suppress her free speech. Instead, they were writing down an asset that had declined radically in value.

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