My understanding of labor litigation: This post will cost the company at least $150K.
IANAL, would be curious to hear the readout from someone who is in the field.
A Difficult Situation
241–250 of 485 posts
Re: A Difficult Situation
#242[deleted]
"Does anyone really believe this?"
Perhaps use of "danger" was a bit strong but they've identified an area of concern (that might be future concern as well) and have decided to cut it out now.
This statement makes plenty of sense to me. The fact that it might sound like corporate-speak bullshit doesn't detract from the point being made.
Re: A Difficult Situation
#243They 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…
Please stop fuelling the fire, we don't need to rehash the same stuff every time something connected to the event is mentioned.
Re: A Difficult Situation
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're confusing cause and execution. Socio-economic problems are often the cause of violent crime, but muggers execute it. To use your metaphor of an author and publisher, if I (as an author) published a reasoned, well argued novella arguing a religion was hateful and bigoted, and my publisher received death threats, would I not be causing the death threats? Regardless of the legitimacy or accuracy of my pub…
An interesting question. I think in an ethical sense, there would be no blame to someone like Richard Dawkins for publishing an anti-religious book. I do agree there could be a causal link: Dawkins's university or publisher might receive threats as a result of his atheist advocacy. But who is really to blame for these threats? I would argue it is the people who would make threats in response to atheist advocacy who a…
I agree that those offering the threats would be to blame but what we were discussing was the cause, who in this case is Adria.
Ethics are tricky, and I don't think there are blanket wrong or right answers here. I agree that simply placating a baying mob by tossing someone (metaphorically) to the wolves is not necessarily ethically right from all perspectives, but therein lies the problem: it's about perspective. Were it about a university defending an author from religious nutjobs then it's ethically right for them to support him. However, when it comes to companies, there are certain other perspectives on ethics that need to be taken into account. For example, ethically a company has to do everything it can for it's shareholders. It's legally required to do this, and has an ethical responsibility to. This might be in contrast to yours or my ethics, but for the company the ethical thing to do would be to fire someone who's losing them money.
Anyway, like I said, it's tricky. Personally I think SendGrid is justified in firing Adria: as a PR employee her job is to promote the company, which is difficult when the community she's trying to promote the product to has taken umbrage with her. If their sole reason was because of the DDoS attack I think that wouldn't be justified, but given the fiasco it's damaging to their reputation to continue to have her on their staff.
As an aside (and to hopefully help explain my viewpoint) in the Dawkins matter: I don't think it would be ethically irresponsible for a publisher to drop him. Publisher's are there to make money, and having that and the lives of employees threatened is a reasonable reason to drop him. I don't think they should drop him, but in my opinion it's ethically reasonable for them to do it. Were it a university, I think they under no circumstance should drop him. The purpose of a university (at least in the UK) is to teach and generate research. By censoring someone at a university you're essentially censoring science and scientific enquiry which holds much greater ethical ramifications than at a publisher.
Re: A Difficult Situation
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
I haven't paid too much attention to this story and completely missed it when it first occurred (though I've been a Sendgrid customer are their product is great) but your highlights are very relevant. This is the kind of employee you would refer to as a wild card. You just don't know what they are going to do and you have to do your best to keep them out of your company. Unfortunately for Sendgrid, if she files a sex…
I'm not sure she has grounds for a lawsuit. SendGrid received quite allot of customer complaints about her. Customers were quitting them, and/or making threats of going to a competitor. Then they got DDoSed over this. Also, if I'm not mistaken, they are located in a - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment - state.
At-will employment don't allow the employer to engage in unlawful discrimination. See exceptions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment#Statutory_ex...
Not at all saying that any unlawful discrimination happened her, just that this may be the base for a lawsuit, eave if she was on a at-will contract.
Re: A Difficult Situation
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly, just two guys making forking jokes (get it?). Even Github sells merch with the words "Fork you". Zealous oversensitive jaded person like her, taking her time to get the phone out, take a picture, possible geo-tagged of two guys who might not want to be on her Twitter. She has no right to do that. Especially when there was no communication between them. You don't like their jokes, tell them or move away. Look…
I'd even offer "contact conference organizers in a non-public way if you don't feel comfortable confronting the other person directly". Some people have a hard time addressing these issues directly – particularly when in the minority (by gender, in this case). It happens, and I'm not going to judge it. The issue here isn't that she was offended, but, rather, that she went from 0 to 100% full-on public on a well-traff…
I'm just disappointed that this is the top thread, since it's basically little more than a cheap ad-hominem attack and doesn't contribute anything to resolving or working towards a better understanding of the underlying issues that have caused this all to escalate so badly.
Re: A Difficult Situation
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
Her action, and the actions she followed that action up with, caused a huge rift in the developer community. Her job is to unite the developer community and help them access the product.
That's what I don't understand. What is this "rift"? What is the chasm, and why is anyone on the side across from her?
The action was the public humiliation of somebody she disagreed with (as he made a sexual joke and she found it inappropriate) rather than handling the matter quietly. The consequential actions included: leaving a number of her own sexual jokes on twitter, making her seem hypocritical, bringing her employer into the fray as agreeing with her actions (probably without their permission), posting a blog post where she advocated speaking to people about things that make somebody uncomfortable, which is not what she did and not saying sorry when she found out that her public shaming had gotten somebody fired.
Later, it was discovered that she has a history of escalating potentially high-friction issues instead of trying to resolve them. This did not win her any sympathy.
Re: A Difficult Situation
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought it was totally spineless. Compare: http://braythwayt.com/2013/03/21/evangelism-pr.html
My respect for raganwald just shot through the roof after reading that. As far as I'm concerned that is the most reasonable response so far, by a long shot.
[deleted]
Re: A Difficult Situation
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
Her action, and the actions she followed that action up with, caused a huge rift in the developer community. Her job is to unite the developer community and help them access the product.
That's what I don't understand. What is this "rift"? What is the chasm, and why is anyone on the side across from her?
[deleted]
Re: A Difficult Situation
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
I haven't paid too much attention to this story and completely missed it when it first occurred (though I've been a Sendgrid customer are their product is great) but your highlights are very relevant. This is the kind of employee you would refer to as a wild card. You just don't know what they are going to do and you have to do your best to keep them out of your company. Unfortunately for Sendgrid, if she files a sex…
Such a lawsuit would be a confirmed kill on her career though. At least now she has a chance to someday salvage her work. Adding a lawsuit to the mix will probably mean she'll never be hired by anyone (who can read and is on the web) again.
At least she'd be certain that her future employers care about womens rights as much as she does.