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

The PyCon Incident

pastebin.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 1001 posts

Re: The PyCon Incident

#101

Post by wpietri »

crag wrote: post #66
ajross wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's cool down a little here. An irresponsible tweet doesn't really constitute a "personal vendetta" (it's not even personal -- as far as I can tell she never knew their names). And while the post was (apparently, I don't know what the evidence here is) the proximate cause, you really can't say that she "got [him] fired", as she wasn't the employer nor did she advocate for his termination. It's just a bad situation…

BS. I'm getting sick and tired of people not taking responsibility for their actions. Now I do agree with you somewhat. I doubt she saw this "joke" as an opportunity to screw someone over (at least I hope so. If she did, then all bets are off); but that doesn't excuse her wrong. Her actions caused this guy to be fired. She needs to own it. Apoligize, Offer amends and move on.

Note where you stop in the causal chain: with the woman.

You could blame the millennia of sexism that set up the situation. You could blame the gender-imbalanced context: it's easy for humans to be insensitive to minority views. You could blame the guy's parents and teachers for not raising him right. You could blame the guy for saying something inappropriate. You could blame his friends for not reigning him in. You could blame Adria for reporting what he said in public. Or you could blame his boss, the person who actually fired him.

Ask yourself: why is she the one you chose to focus on?

Re: The PyCon Incident

#102

Post by wmt »

While everyone is riled up about Adria Richards getting offended and publicly shaming the person who made a joke about big dongles, you should keep in mind that she did not fire anyone. PlayHaven did.

PlayHaven could have decided to be the responsible party and handle the incident constructively, but they did not want to do that. Even Adria, who still appears to think that the public shaming was a good thing to do, also thinks that PlayHaven should have not fired the person.

So please, if you think the firing was unreasonable, please let PlayHaven know that, and also how this might affect your image of PlayHaven.

http://www.playhaven.com/contact

Re: The PyCon Incident

#103

Post by dbaupp »

djcapelis wrote: post #69
SODaniel wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty obvious they fired the wrong person here. If someone worked for me and posted inflammatory images/statements about/involving a co-worker they would be the one needing to worry about their job.

Please clarify if it is in fact the policy of the company you work at that employees should be "worrying about their job" based on the contents of their Twitter accounts. If so, please let me know so I can ensure that I never work with you.

Presumably the key point is not that it was on Twitter, but rather it was said in public. The medium is unimportant: its the same as if someone posted such things as a blog post, or said it on TV or whatever.

You might like to treat Twitter like a private conversation, but when the posts are completely publicly accessible (and when the person has 1000s of followers) it is certainly not private.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#104

Post by noname123 »

Let's be honest, political correctness culture is here to stay. The accused will be accused by the accuser who feels that they are standing up for racial/gender/sexual orientation equality. Then, there'll be a backlash against affirmative action/preferential treatment for those who feel that they are not privileged and have been reverse-discriminated.

Publicly shaming this black woman is like condemning a person without considering her character, poetic justice or further evidence of shadow white male privilege depending on your creed.

I hope the guy who gets fired finds a new job with a pay-rise; and the woman also gets to keep her job and moniker. Everyone should learn a lesson, just be superficial and PC in public and don't take things so personally. Otherwise, you might get fired or shamed upon in the blogshere.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#105

Post by [deleted] »

mnicole wrote: post #20
WestCoastJustin wrote: post #11

Added context: Inappropriate comments at pycon 2013 called out (twitter.com) [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5391667

Note that this thread was Reddit-bombed, particularly by Men's Rights, so don't bother engaging with some of those commenters and take some of the upvotes/downvotes with a grain of salt. Meanwhile, my response to the victim, mr-hank (wherein he apologizes and sides with Adria as seen here lower in that thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5398681 ) was [Dead] as soon as I posted it (not sure why this happens)…

[deleted]

Re: The PyCon Incident

#106

Post by AnthonBerg »

jamesaguilar wrote: post #37
moistgorilla wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who got harmed by this joke being told? No one, thus it's harmless.

Apparently it harmed someone enough that they were willing to complain to twitter about it. There have been a few good articles posted about why many women feel uncomfortable when the workplace is sexualized, especially in male-dominated industries. If you haven't read one, you may want to check into it.

I find it more plausible that it's about dominative social behavior, rather than harm to the person.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#107

Post by peterhunt »

djcapelis wrote: post #83
peterhunt wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone takes issue with talking to the PyCon organizers and even having them removed from the conference. The employer made a mistake for sure, but so did your friend. Skewering someone in public on the Internet like that is immature and irresponsible. There are a million better ways she could have dealt with this.

> Skewering someone in public on the Internet like that is immature and irresponsible. There are a million better ways she could have dealt with this. I'm pretty sure relating and disclosing a situation that happened in a public place fully to the best of her ability shouldn't be something we call irresponsible. In fact, women who do otherwise are often asked to disclose in exactly the manner she did. No matter how a…

This is not about her being a woman. This is about responsibly dealing with a situation.

"Exactly the manner she did?" No one has ever been asked to disclose a photo with faces on Twitter to 9k followers.

The right thing to do is either deal with the person directly or escalate above them, whether you're a woman or not. Going straight to the mob is never the right answer.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#108

Post by emiljbs »

numbsafari wrote: post #89
blhack wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, I've been thinking... It's also pretty unprofessional to wear jeans to work, and beer after 4:00pm on Friday is just a lawsuit waiting to happen. Also the schedule that the developers keep is really unprofessional. If one of the accountants tried to show up at 11:00am, they'd be fired! I also saw some pictures of one of our devs at Burning Man last year. He was wearing some sort of black, canvas skirt, and…

So... what if the situation were just a tad different.. Let's say it was an Indian guy who is a tech evangelist for a successful startup and two guys behind him in a "private conversation in the middle of a crowded room" made jokes about how indian people speak or act. Those are jokes, and totally unprofessional in a work environment where you are representing your company that is sponsoring the event, right? But we…

That's a very bad analogy though. Perhaps if it was an Indian who made a joke about how Indians talk/act, but even that's stretching it.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#109

Post by numbsafari »

codesuela wrote: post #65
danilocampos wrote: post #22

Couple pieces to this. First – the fact that this guy's employer made a kneejerk reaction is no one's fault but the employer. Next – let's talk about this red herring of "sexism." Making a phallus joke might be sexist depending on context. Or it might not be. Sexism is not at issue here. The individual in question concedes that they did, in fact, make the joke. From PyCon's code of conduct: "All communication should…

Are you seriously suggesting the code of conduct applies to PRIVATE conversations between TWO people who obviously know each other? It is not like they meant to offend somebody. I am assuming they weren't talking loudly but rather meant to converse between each other. How I talk to my buddy is no ones fucking business. How about you tell your friend of of those an American, a Russian and a German walk into a bar joke…

What's private about a conversation being held in a crowd?

Re: The PyCon Incident

#110

Post by WatchDog »

peterhunt wrote: post #43
danilocampos wrote: post #22

Couple pieces to this. First – the fact that this guy's employer made a kneejerk reaction is no one's fault but the employer. Next – let's talk about this red herring of "sexism." Making a phallus joke might be sexist depending on context. Or it might not be. Sexism is not at issue here. The individual in question concedes that they did, in fact, make the joke. From PyCon's code of conduct: "All communication should…

I don't think anyone takes issue with talking to the PyCon organizers and even having them removed from the conference. The employer made a mistake for sure, but so did your friend. Skewering someone in public on the Internet like that is immature and irresponsible. There are a million better ways she could have dealt with this.

I would take issue with it, I think the sane course of action would be to either ignore it, or to ask the people in question to refrain from further innuendo. If they continue to make the jokes then more drastic action like removing them from the event might be appropriate.
Post reply on HN