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A Difficult Situation

blog.sendgrid.com

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Re: A Difficult Situation

#131

Post by jerrya »

metaphorm wrote: post #49
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…

1) free speech is a guarantee that the government will not pass laws preventing you from expressing yourself. it has nothing to do with your private employer. 2) Adria Richards acted in a way contrary to what her employer was paying her to do. If your job is public relations, but you generate animosity instead of good will you are incompetent at your job. That is grounds for termination in the old fashioned sense, ha…

free speech is a guarantee that the government will not pass laws preventing you from expressing yourself. it has nothing to do with your private employer

Yeah, this is a common fallacy.

There is the first amendment which regards the relationship of our government to our free speech, and then there is free speech that we, as humans, intellectuals, give to each other.

Her speech was piffle, and should have been treated as such. A regrettable mistake, but one that humans make, and ultimately of little impact to the company.

"I Joe Bob, CEO of SendGrid disagree completely with Adria Richard's behavior, she made a mistake. But I know her, I respect her, and there is no way I would fire her over these particular comments, over this particular mistake.

I believe that a Hacker Culture is respectful and encouraging of speech and accommodating of the mistakes we all might make.

I encourage Joe Briggs of Play Haven to take a step back and consider this, even as I support his former developers there in their private communications."

Re: A Difficult Situation

#132

Post by _delirium »

rdl wrote: post #128
mathrawka wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that it is the most reasonable statement because he took time to look over the entire situation and gauge it properly.

I think you could get a reasonable response to an ongoing crisis out in less than a day. They should have discussed this last night, as soon as it broke, with CEO, HR, legal, her, etc. Being deliberate is fine, but when you make something a priority, you can get to the bottom of it faster and still get the right response. Until they got DDoSed to hell, this apparently wasn't a serious priority for them.

> Until they got DDoSed to hell, this apparently wasn't a serious priority for them.

That's what makes me think this was just another example of the "heckler's veto". There are no principles here, just giving the mob what it demands. No action until some idiots on the internet started attacking people, and when it happened, they just gave the idiots what they demanded in hopes of shutting them up.

Re: A Difficult Situation

#133

Post by albedoa »

peripetylabs wrote: post #30

It is never appropriate to distribute photographs of people without their permission, in any context. I think SendGrid is justified in their decision.

Since I don't know your country of residence, I will reserve additional comment, but that is a pretty radical statement for me to read as an American.

Re: A Difficult Situation

#134

Post by [deleted] »

phillmv wrote: post #96
rdl wrote: post #3

This is the most reasonable statement I've seen so far in this whole fiasco. It's a shame he took so long to post it; it should have been the first SendGrid comment this morning.

I thought it was totally spineless. Compare: http://braythwayt.com/2013/03/21/evangelism-pr.html

[deleted]

Re: A Difficult Situation

#135

Post by newman314 »

enjo wrote: post #114
skylan_q wrote: post #80

Where have all the grown-ups gone? What ever happened to those people who didn't have to make a scene of things that should have just been ignored?

This was never about decency. I don't really believe that this was even about being offended. For people who make their living in social media, that follower count is the most important currency. Adria most definitely fits that mold, and any case where she can stir up controversy and increase that follower count is huge for her. I think that's all this was. She has a history of grandstanding, all in an effort to driv…

Interesting that you mention the follower count thing, Adria's follower has increased from 9000+ over over 11,000 (just checked) since this morning.

I only mentioned this because I was reading her twitter stream earlier today and happened to note her follower count.

Re: A Difficult Situation

#136

Post by WalterSear »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #125

Can someone explain to me why "she can no longer be effective in her role at SendGrid"? She tweeted an inappropriate comment that someone made to her in a public forum. I genuinely don't understand why this would affect anyone's professional relationship with her.

Do you mean this tweet from the conference: https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425

Or the other one with the photo? :)

As a developer, considering this, and the other damning stuff in her twitter stream, and her alleged previous track record at other conferences, I would not feel comfortable interacting with her.

So, whatever my reasoning, she's no longer going to be able to reach me, so she's kind of useless (to me) as an evangelist.

Re: A Difficult Situation

#137

Post by vivin »

Proleps wrote: post #64
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/

Wow! What a well-written post. I had no idea that this was a pattern of behavior. It kind of makes sense now. She seems to be extremely touchy and looks for issues where there are none, or simply creates issues out of thin air. Thank you for that link.

Re: A Difficult Situation

#138

Post by mindcrime »

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…

FWIW, while I disagree with your position fairly strongly, I upvoted you. Because I don't believe in the "downvote to show disagreement" idea, and because your position does lead to a potentially interesting discussion about how much "float" an employee should have when making a mistake.

I do believe pretty strongly in the general idea of "stand behind your people", but I also think this situation went far enough that SendGrid was justified.

Re: A Difficult Situation

#139

Post by tdfx »

yogo wrote: post #91
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…

At the end of the day no one really cares. They could rehire her once everyone is consumed by the next big distraction. A couple people will make noise but the majority of people won't care. People make mistakes everyday and usually learn from them. Now if you had someone habitually doing this kind of thing then it would create a problem.

https://amandablumwords.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/3/

Apparently she does things like this frequently, they just never hit the front pages of news sites before.

Re: A Difficult Situation

#140

Post by mathrawka »

mtrimpe wrote: post #106
mathrawka wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that it is the most reasonable statement because he took time to look over the entire situation and gauge it properly.

Unlike when he very publicly fired an employee in the heat of the moment after his company was being DDoS'ed. I think the fact that Paul Graham, after applying Occam's razor, preferred to think it was done from a compromised account speaks volumes here.

Put yourself in his shoes for a moment though... your developer advocate brought on a DDoS. Whether it was deserved or not is an entirely separate discussion. It comes down to the person who is supposed to be helping get customers and grow your company did something that is bringing lots of harm.

With that said... a "heat of the moment" firing does nobody any good, but I haven't seen evidence of the manner of the firing (perhaps I missed some articles that talked about it).

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