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SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

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Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#291

Post by knowtheory »

zevyoura wrote: post #272
ericabiz wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Most [all, actually] of the women I've talked to about this are furious with her over how badly this portrays women." Okay, time to speak up! Hi, I'm a woman in tech. And this upset me, but not for the reasons you think. I agree that Adria went too far in publicly Tweeting and "name and shaming" these guys. But the vitriol and hate that has spewed forth online to her is what takes my breath away. Comments calling…

Your experiences sound awful and truly disheartening, and I hope we can move towards a better and more inclusive future for everyone. However, I do feel compelled to make one point about this part: >Okay, time to speak up! Hi, I'm a woman in tech. And this upset me, but not for the reasons you think. I agree that Adria went too far in publicly Tweeting and "name and shaming" these guys. But the vitriol and hate that…

You are making a quantifiable assertion.

If you'd really like to back up the claim, go grab some of the threads on this subject, and spider the account pages of the people posting to the threads.

Plot them by amount of karma and # of days since the account was opened.

As much as i do think /r/mensrights are assholes who are making this situation worse, i would assert that there is a preexisting strain of this behavior on Hacker News, and this behavior is not an incident isolated just to this debacle.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#292

Post by misnome »

JohnBooty wrote: post #279
blhack wrote: 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…

> I would feel really uncomfortable if I was in the same > room as this person. What if I accidentally say > something that she finds offensive? Am I next? I wouldn't feel uncomfortable around her at all, because I find it very easy to avoid saying sexually inappropriate things to women I don't know. I have quite an off-color sense of humor myself. I joke a lot and a lot of those jokes involve sex, bodily functions,…

What about cases where you think it's just you and your friends joking between each other, and someone overhears, takes a picture of you and then publicly crucifies you online?

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#293

Post by RougeFemme »

blhack wrote: post #254
ericabiz wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Most [all, actually] of the women I've talked to about this are furious with her over how badly this portrays women." Okay, time to speak up! Hi, I'm a woman in tech. And this upset me, but not for the reasons you think. I agree that Adria went too far in publicly Tweeting and "name and shaming" these guys. But the vitriol and hate that has spewed forth online to her is what takes my breath away. Comments calling…

By the way, this isn't exclusive to tech. Women [unfortunately] face this in every male dominated field . It sucks, I know. My girlfriend works in a traditionally male dominated field, and she has to deal with this sort of thing constantly. But that interaction where the person assumed you weren't a dev[1] is only made worse by things like what has happened here. The signal to the dev community from Adria's reaction…

When I first got into tech, I didn't want to be viewed as different, either. Even when guys would tell me in very blatant racist/sexist ways that I was different and that that difference made me inferior, I tried very hard to be "just like Mike". But now I say that in all the ways that make me successful professionally, I'm like you. But in some ways, I'm different. And that should be OK. And in many ways, outside of what you do professionally, you tech guys are different from each other, too. And it should not matter. Actually, even within the "professional" realm, there are differences between tech guys - educational background, when you started hacking, how long you've been hacking, professional experiences, preferred technologies - even how you define hacking. Some of you hate footall. I love football. I should not have to be exactly like you to be respected by you.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#294

Post by adamnemecek »

knowtheory wrote: post #225
adamnemecek wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I said, "If you let your toddler play in a tiger cage, you are crazy." would you ask me "Why do you want toddlers to get mauled by tigers"? Maybe I wouldn't want it to happen, but it would regardless of my desires. I was just stating a fact about what will happen, whether you or I agree with it or not.

Mm. A lot of these comments preclude the possibility that Adria might grow, change, or rehabilitate herself. And as such, these come off very much as if they're putting nails into her coffin. There are people who do deserve to be run out of their industries, Stephen Glass, or Jonah Lehrer come to mind immediately. That is not a proportionate or reasonable response to what has happened here, but then, nothing about th…

Sure, she might. But say you are evaluating Adria and another, equally competent candidate for a position. Why would you pick Adria knowing that if you hire her (despite the fact that she may have changed), you might trigger some 'undesirable reactions'?

Just for the record, I feel like Jonah Lehrer's transgression was much less objectionable than Adria's.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#295

Post by anigbrowl »

devilshaircut wrote: post #197
salman89 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I would feel really uncomfortable if I was in the same room as this person. What if I accidentally say something that she finds offensive? Am I next?" 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.

I in fact agree with you and think you are 100% right but I think you are parsing the situation incorrectly. In fact it seems to be Ms. Richards who will cause women to be reluctant to report real sexual harassment. Let me draw from a past experience of mine involving a female colleague who was sexually harassed. She related the situation to me and I had absolutely no doubt that what was said to her was inappropriate…

I have no problem with Adria richards reporting this to the PyCon organizaers - even if the joke was silly, even if it was not really sexual but anatomical or crude, even if it caused a bit of embarrassment to the joker and his friends to be verbally admonished.

It's a fact that people's sensitivities and thresholds of offense vary significantly, and even an impersonal, non-specific utterance like 'ah, shit' could cause offense in the wrong context. Sometimes the smart and decent thing to do is excuse yourself and tone down your personality a bit for the sake of social harmony. Nobody should ever feel afraid to challenge or report what seems like obnoxious behavior, no matter what the basis of offense. There may be no guarantee of a remedy, but there should be no penalty for expressing one's dislike of what others are saying.

The difference in this episode is doing it a) via an audience of thousands of Twitter followers, b) with pictures identifying specific people, c) some of whom were not involved, but whose names are now inextricably connected to this whole fracas, and whose images will continue to appear in related internet searches for some indefinite future period.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#296

Post by silencio »

moogleii wrote: post #281
ericabiz wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Most [all, actually] of the women I've talked to about this are furious with her over how badly this portrays women." Okay, time to speak up! Hi, I'm a woman in tech. And this upset me, but not for the reasons you think. I agree that Adria went too far in publicly Tweeting and "name and shaming" these guys. But the vitriol and hate that has spewed forth online to her is what takes my breath away. Comments calling…

I sympathize, but your story seems a bit of a stretch. I thought somehow you were going to lead to how he implied you weren't smart enough to be an entrepreneur or something absurd like that. The last time I innocently chatted up a "taken" woman next to her boyfriend, I was later told by a number of individuals that it seemed like I was hitting on her and it was inappropriate. The allegations totally blew me away bec…

It's really easy to judge a situation by itself, but keep in mind most blowups from seemingly tiny incidents are because this happens all the time in all kinds of ways to a lot of women. It's a death by a thousand cuts. I normally don't care about one off dick jokes. It's just that man, it gets really old when you hear it all the time at a conference on top of other women telling you that they also heard dick jokes. Exhausting.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#297

Post by Aaronontheweb »

tytso wrote: post #221
jakejake wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the second post I've read recently about the US having no labor laws. Is that what everybody outside the US thinks? There's tons of laws and certain types of jobs are very difficult to fire people (unionized industries and govt. jobs). And there are laws and lawsuits for wrongful termination. Private companies still have labor laws they have to obey. Except for certain types of issues employees can be fired.…

Unfortunately, the vast majority of jobs in the US, especially the ones that in the I/T industry and in the startup world, have "at will" employement, which means very little protection for the employees. Also, startups typically have very little assets, which means that a lawyer is unlikely to take a wrongful termination lawsuit on a contingency basis. In the US, you get the best justice money can buy.

Speaking as an employer, this isn't strictly true. There are a lot of steps we have to follow in order to terminate full time employees.

If we're terminating someone for performance reasons we have to have a documented history of attempting to improve their behavior and objective measures which indicate that they were unable to improve. Otherwise we're likely to be sued for wrongful termination, which is one of the only circumstances where the burden of proof is on the accused and not the accuser (because, according to precedent as I understand it, the employer is at an informational advantage over the employee.)

If we're terminating someone for behavioral issues like sexual harassment or any other type of misconduct, there has to be robust documentation and evidence supporting that too should it ever come to a lawsuit.

In other words, I can't just do whatever the fuck I want. And I'm fine with that - employees and employers should both enjoy equal protection under the law.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#298

Post by rmc »

blhack wrote: 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…

I would feel really uncomfortable if I was in the same room as this person. What if I accidentally say something that she finds offensive? Am I next?

Here's a hint: Don't make dick jokes. Don't belittle and exclude women and other minorities. Be a decent human. You'll be fine.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#299

Post by Dylan16807 »

niggler wrote: post #266
WalterSear wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is the one between negligence and manslaughter. If your negligent actions result in something else down the line, you are still, in part, responsible. There can, and usually is, more than 100% blame to go around.

She wrote: "I'm sorry to hear your employer deciding to not to work with you on this and I hope they reconsider, bring you back on and dealing with it constructively." (emphasis mine) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5399047 I think that's the most we can expect from her regarding the guy getting fired. She didn't fire him, and she clearly expressed that she didn't think he should have been fired over this.

I agree entirely that that's the most we can expect regarding the firing.

But that post has no apology for the public shaming.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#300

Post by knowtheory »

WalterSear wrote: post #271
blhack wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the way, this isn't exclusive to tech. Women [unfortunately] face this in every male dominated field . It sucks, I know. My girlfriend works in a traditionally male dominated field, and she has to deal with this sort of thing constantly. But that interaction where the person assumed you weren't a dev[1] is only made worse by things like what has happened here. The signal to the dev community from Adria's reaction…

It also happens to men in female dominated fields and social enviroments. It's not inherently sexist - humans use stereotypes to categorize everything and everyone, and we haven't, as a society, codified how we should navigate these kind of conflicts without butthurt.

But men in female dominated fields tend not to get death threats and photos of beheaded corpses, or threats of rape.

The way that women get treated in male dominated fields like tech really has gotten worse.

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