Live data from Hacker News

SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

mashable.com

131–140 of 605 posts

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#131
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you actually know what the guys said? I can assure you I know substantially more on this than you do. People have a right to attend a conference without sexual jokes leaking into their ears while they attend a talk. It's as simple as that. Should the guy have been fired? No. Should he have been talking like that? No.

>I can assure you I know substantially more on this than you do. Well then do enlighten the class.

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.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#132
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (perhaps with Adria apologizing to the devs). What, exactly, has she to apologize for? The people in question were speaking like they were in a frat house in direct contravention of a code of conduct they'd agreed to. They had the right to speak. And Adria had the right to tweet. If they didn't like being publicly outed for saying this stuff, guess what? All they had to do was shut their mouths. > What if I acciden…

Sigh. Can't everyone in question here be a jerk? We have two sexist/innapropriate developers; one stressed out evangelist who overreacted and innapropriately tweeted a photo; one employer who (apparently, there is STILL no evidence for this fact beyond the anonymous pastebin!) fired one of the first guys on questionable evidence; uncounted hordes of almost-exclusively-male internet users with crystal clear (yet routi…

> one employer who (apparently, there is STILL no evidence for this fact beyond the anonymous pastebin!) fired one of the first guys on questionable evidence

from " rel="nofollow">http://blog.playhaven.com/addressing-pycon/>:

> PlayHaven had an employee who was identified as making inappropriate comments at PyCon, and as a company that is dedicated to gender equality and values honorable behavior, we conducted a thorough investigation. The result of this investigation led to the unfortunate outcome of having to let this employee go. We value and protect the privacy of our employees, both past and present, and we will not comment on all the factors that contributed to our parting ways.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#133
I think Playhaven owes everyone involved with this a better explanation on exactly why this employee was fired. Were they just looking for a reason to get rid of him in the first place, or did what happened at PyCon really justify his termination? Let's not forget - there's a lot of Sendgrid customers who have become collateral damage in this fiasco who have nothing to do with any of it, and probably still have no idea what's going on.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#134

http://imgur.com/5tbXR2c

I don't understand what's wrong with this. This is quite literally the definition of racism in a sociological context: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism#Sociological . You're going to need to disprove a lot of social science before you tackle this definition.

You could pop over to Zim to see what's wrong with that statement.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or for anyone else for that matter. Regardless of what anyone thinks about the situation, I feel like any company would have to be pretty crazy to willing attach their name to hers.

So, you'd rather see her name totally vilified and run out of the industry instead? Where's the understanding and tolerance for questionable conduct that was offered to the two guys making jokes now?

The conduct was not comparable. Their conduct was immature, surely, and PyCon had a process in place to deal with it (and they did). Adria did not let it stop there and used her influence and position to publicly bully them under the guise of fighting for gender equality.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#136
post #8

Although this would seem to be another knee-jerk, exaggerated reaction, and I personally believe that she shouldn't have been fired (and that the first guy shouldn't have been either), we should also consider the SendGrid CEO's position; his company is under attack, might fail, so getting rid of the person whom this attack is targeting seems like the obvious thing to do. I'm guessing that SendGrid will loose some oth…

The DDOS attack on SendGrid's web and mail servers stopped about an hour and a half after they announced that they were firing Richards. Also the community backlash against Richards was huge, while there weren't many supporting her actions. From SendGrid's point of view, this was a good business decision.

No, it sure as hell was not a "good business decision".

They got attacked by errant children expressing sad rage at something that while bad, was not deserving of retaliation against the company. So the result: the company ditches one of their employees for very dubious reasons.

Basically they caved to internet bullying and validated every sexist moron on the internet. Well done Sendgrid. Well done.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#137
post #65

I feel that all the threats and horrible comments she received are disgusting. I didn't find their joke offensive. But thats irrelevant. She had a right to complain. But not by posting their picture on twitter. Posting that picture was a really rotten thing to do. Its an act of bullying. I can take a picture of anyone and they would have said whatever I put on the caption. And its up to them to prove to the internet…

She had a right to complain, but not like that, not with a smug attitude, the oddity of taking a photo of two guys having a private conversation (although she heard them, does not make it a open conversation). Those two guys could easily be and my partner making silly phallus jokes because we fucking like to. You have no right to be offended. Which is why KKK and Westboro has freedom of speech. What she did was beyon…

She has a right to be offended, but it doesn't actually entitle her to have anything done about it.

"Being offended" is weak. It means nothing to others. You can't expect the world to stop because someone gets offended.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not agreeing with anything Adria did, but the issue of being labeled as the "tattletale" probably plays a big part in most women's reluctance to report real harassment. But there is a big difference between mentioning something to someone or someone's boss in private, and posting about it on Twitter with a picture attached.

But everyone else seems to like a good pitchfork witch hunt!

There's must be a way to monetize this, turn it into an industry, or at least, a full time career.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#140
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…

> (perhaps with Adria apologizing to the devs). What, exactly, has she to apologize for? The people in question were speaking like they were in a frat house in direct contravention of a code of conduct they'd agreed to. They had the right to speak. And Adria had the right to tweet. If they didn't like being publicly outed for saying this stuff, guess what? All they had to do was shut their mouths. > What if I acciden…

Actually, her tweeting was also in violation of the PSF Code of Conduct, so she's equally guilty in that sense.
Post reply on HN