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A Difficult Situation

blog.sendgrid.com

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Re: A Difficult Situation

#201

Post by jarjoura »

GhotiFish wrote: post #103
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…

Yah. One common factor in everybody involved is that they're incredibly human. Pride, self-righteousness, and immaturity are a few of the qualities on display, but since they're human I accept that a few of these qualities are tolerable, as should we all. No one committed any action that was overtly horrible on it's own. In a vacuum: Two guys were making childish jokes, and a woman was offended and told her friends a…

I have the pleasure of knowing Adria and she's an awesome person, so sure, in a vacuum these events are super silly. However, in this instance, she is a public figure and used her public forum to promote an issue that was personal to her.

Developers who make business decisions who rely on SendGrid follow her on Twitter and need to work with her.

It's no different than a reporter for the NY Times who covers White House news, and supposed to be unbiased starts, bad mouthing Obama on Twitter. Would you want read NY Times anymore?

Re: A Difficult Situation

#202

Post by gregd »

_delirium wrote: post #182
courtewing wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What in particular do you think makes them vulnerable to a lawsuit? I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is that in the US, it is legal to fire most non-contract employees at any time, without any notice, and for pretty much any reason (or even lack of a reason) other than outright discrimination based on nationality/gender/religion/etc. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment and specifically the "Sta…

Can you fire someone for being the victim of a crime? They clearly fired her here in response to a DDoS. I guess I wouldn't be surprised if shitty American employment law permits it, but it's not ethical on the employer's part.

They fired her because she could no longer be effective in the position they hired her for.

Re: A Difficult Situation

#203

Post by deepinside »

brennenHN wrote: post #184

My email to Jim Franklin: Hi Jim, You have a mess on your hands, and I understand how hard it must be at SendGrid today. I think you've made a defensible move, and it is hard to hold you in contempt for putting your employees and business first. That said, I'm really disappointed in your response. For as long as there have been tech conferences, they have been hostile to women. Sexually exclusive language is the star…

The message sent is: if you cannot properly evangelise for a company, and are prone to gaffs and pulling your employer into overblown Internet dramas, you cannot work as an Evangelist

Had she been serious and professional about this, she would have sought her employer's backing before going ballistic.

Re: A Difficult Situation

#204

Post by shantanubala »

dragonwriter wrote: post #183
shantanubala wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> http://imgur.com/5tbXR2c This is an excellent example of why you should never use Twitter to have a nuanced discussion. It depends on your definition of racism, and most scholarly definitions are "power and prejudice." In other words, a white person who is in the majority has more power than a black person (think Silicon Valley[1]), so the actual impact of the prejudice has a greater magnitude that turns it into "r…

> It depends on your definition of racism, and most scholarly definitions are "power and prejudice." In other words, a white person who is in the majority has more power than a black person (think Silicon Valley[1]), so the actual impact of the prejudice has a greater magnitude that turns it into "racism." I don't know what scholarly sources you've seen that use that definition, but most scholarly sources I've seen d…

Perhaps I should have been more clear: the definition is fuzzy, but Adria's original tweet is not inherently wrong -- it just lacks context and adequate explanation.

I'm definitely not an expert in this, but I'm speaking from reading books on sociology and dominant group psychology. It would take more time for me to look up the original sources, but Wikipedia does agree with me (and they also agree that the definition varies!).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism#Definitions

"David Wellman has defined racism as “culturally sanctioned beliefs, which, regardless of intentions involved, defend the advantages whites have because of the subordinated position of racial minorities”."

"Sociologists Noël A. Cazenave and Darlene Alvarez Maddern define racism as “...a highly organized system of 'race'-based group privilege that operates at every level of society and is held together by a sophisticated ideology of color/'race' supremacy."

Both of these definitions involve power as the main mechanism for preserving prejudice, do they not?

Re: A Difficult Situation

#205

Post by HarryHirsch »

eridius wrote: post #147
powertower wrote: post #98

They need to update that statement with the fact that the joke was not about her, nor directed at her. Their statement leaves that very important part out, making the reader think otherwise - that she was the victim. At the same time (or around that time) this was happening, here is a conversation she was having - http://i.imgur.com/nRC5J7f.png Another gem from years ago - http://imgur.com/5tbXR2c I'd imagine she was…

Can people please stop bringing up that tweet? It has absolutely nothing to do with what happened at PyCon. Whatever she says on her own personal twitter feed is wholly unrelated to what happens at a professional event. Especially since the only people who see her tweet are people that have explicitly chosen to do so (either by following her or by following someone's link to it). What is acceptable in an opt-in scena…

As a tech evangelist Aria is the public face of her employer; she is of sufficiently high profile for her person to be indistinguishable from her role as employee. Most everyone agrees that she also picked a fight to raise her visibility - the sexism incident was addressed appropiately by Pycon, at least no one has said anything to the contrary. Her employer made the correct decision in firing her.

Re: A Difficult Situation

#206

Post by deepinside »

cheald wrote: post #71
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?

Her job was developer-oriented PR. Her actions resulted in a loss of trust in SendGrid by proxy, as well as direct negative impact on SendGrid's operations. By any reasonable measure, that's grounds for termination; her actions harmed the company's reputation and cost them financially. If you can't fire someone for that, I'm not sure what you could fire for.

More so, her actions have opened her up to a lawsuit by Sendgrid for financial losses incurred by her actions outside her contract of employment.

But no smart company would pursue that route, the PR would cost them more.

Re: A Difficult Situation

#207

Post by DannyBee »

taligent wrote: post #191
shock-value wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same twitter account she used to "shame" the two guys who made the joke. It's relevant.

Well this is the most ridiculous logic I've seen for a while. Just because I send two emails from my Gmail account doesn't mean they are related and/or relevant.

I'm sorry, are we really discussing whether a person having recently made jokes about penises in public is relevant to whether it's okay for that same person to publicly shame two guys she accused of making jokes about penises in public?

Re: A Difficult Situation

#208

Post by wintorez »

X-Istence wrote: post #4
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?

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...

Zerg swarm 1 - Self-righteous condescending queens 0

Re: A Difficult Situation

#209

Post by eridius »

devcpp wrote: post #190
mtrimpe wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also known as the good old ad-hominem attack.

No, it's a lack of consistency. This is required of every person making a claim, not her specifically, so this has nothing to do with ad hominem.

If this is about lack of consistency, then where's the lack of consistency? Did Adria go to a conference (or other professional space) and start telling lewd jokes? I don't think so.

Your argument is basically akin to saying that, because I told some dirty jokes to my friends in private, I'm never allowed to complain when someone tells a dirty joke in public.

Re: A Difficult Situation

#210

Post by harel »

brennenHN wrote: post #184

My email to Jim Franklin: Hi Jim, You have a mess on your hands, and I understand how hard it must be at SendGrid today. I think you've made a defensible move, and it is hard to hold you in contempt for putting your employees and business first. That said, I'm really disappointed in your response. For as long as there have been tech conferences, they have been hostile to women. Sexually exclusive language is the star…

There's "Reporting" and there's "Reporting to All". She had many options before hitting that "Report All" button and attaching the image. More than that, she "reported to all" providing a singular point of view - hers. Those two guys could have been completely innocent or misunderstood at that point but it would have been too late as they were already semi famous, somewhat shamed and mostly fired. She had a choice - to be a victim or not to be one. She acted like a victim, and by that made her self a victim allowing herself to behave like she did. I just can't help thinking how one situation got over reacted to, then the over reacting got over reacted, and so on until you end up with this massive snowball of over reactment.

Nobody asked her to give up her voice by reporting it in private. But in cases like that when you present a singular point of view of a situation while carrying your employer's flag you have to be very careful how you do it. She was not careful and it backfired. Not to mention that this to me sounds like bad humour on the part of those guys, not sexism. No sympathy from me, I'm sorry.

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