SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

  "First of all I'd like to say I'm sorry. I really did not mean to offend anyone and I really do regret the comment and how it made Adria feel. She had every right to report me to staff, and I defend her position"

Well, considering that whenever the actions of an employer are questioned people on the internet are quick to assert that privacy in the work place does not exist and that employment is at-will.

I can see where our foreign friends get the impression.

Really? People seem quite willing to ascribe to "feminists" all the negative attributes they can find. Is that OK? Why it OK to lump all feminists into one group but unfair to do it to "tech".

Also, despite what mad conspiracy theory people say, there aren't really many "extremists" on the "pro-equality" side of the gender issue. There are people complaining that they can't make belitting jokes about women at tech conferences. The other side think we should act professionally. One side is extreme, the other is reasonable.,

Thank you for speaking up. I imagine this is not the easiest time to do so.

> This doesn't portray women as badly as it portrays our entire tech culture badly.

With such a large audience there will always be extreme responses on either side. There will (and have been) DDoS attacks, personal phone calls etc. I don't think those represent the community as much as it represents the general population. Take large crowds of people people. Out of 10000 there will be a number of unstable, vile, and malicious ones to spew hate. It doesn't matter what the issue is. It could have been about vegetables or voltmeters.

I believe most others here are just as upset about those comments and actions as you are. I know I am.

> Oh, wait, I can...the coworking conference I recently attended, where nearly 50% of the attendees were women.

I can think of less hostile and more welcome environments too, a smaller conference usually is. I went to a small 100-150 people tech conference recently and it did feel much more friendly, open, and welcoming than something as large as PyCon. I don't think those people were just selected for kindness and sensitivity I think, statistically those few nasty ones just didn't happen to be there.

> I am hard-pressed to name a conference I've attended where one of these "borderline" sexist issues hasn't happened.

And that is why I like how PyCon recently has started to address the issue and encouraged reporting of such incidents. I think you should report such incidents and you shouldn't have to deal with it. It is unprofessional and creates a hostile environment. I want to personally apologize (for whatever an anonymous apology from a no-name on the internet is worth) for their actions insensitivity. I wouldn't want my wife, daughter, mom or sister to have to face this kind of hostility and will go out of my way to speak up and help when I can.

However, what the issue at hand is not the reporting but using twitter, her social an PR status, her job title, to do it. She did that first before she did the private message. She claims jokes were offending, she then posts racists and penis jokes on her twitter account. Not only does it smell of hypocrisy it smells of maliciousness. She weighed her odds according to her blog and decided this might play out well -- and it seems like it would have 0 to 100 in just one day. What more could a PR person involved with speaking engagements could ask for.

> sometimes you can't take it anymore and you just snap.

I can understand that. Adria confessed has has traveled constantly for day before that. She was exhausted. I can see that. We all make mistakes, we are humans. So what is the right thing to do later? Apologize, that is the right thing.

Now let's revisit what happened. There are 2 distinct things she did 1) she reported it privately 2) she slandered someone publicly. There are distinct. I think 1) was what she should have done. And I think 2) is completely un-acceptable. Talk about a hostile environment.

> This doesn't portray women as badly as it portrays our entire tech culture badly.

I wouldn't want to consider those vile comments and tweets as part of the community. They are just sad examples of humanity. Let's ignore them if we can. But I want to highlight one good thing about the tech community -- it doesn't tolerate injustice. Just like you say you experience sexism and borderline sexual harassment often, many in the tech community were "nerds" and have also experience harassment, psychological and physical abuse in schools. Bullying is not and should not be tolerated. Neither should backstabbing. Or taking credit and advantage of others at their expense. I think that what the community has riled up against.

PSF (PyCon) has gone to hide in the weeds on issue 2) save for a quick Github commit. Yes we noticed that. And it is still not cool.

Just like you feel unwelcome because of veiled and open harassment at conferences. I don't think I will feel safe at PyCon until I know they officially condemn public slandering of attendees (Gold Sponsors, none the less).

And I agree that people are different. I was, I'm sure, [partially due to my chromosomes and reproductive organs] raised in a different context than you.

This doesn't make one of us better than the other, it just makes us different from one another.

But what Adria has done here, and why I think it is so damaging to what I consider important is that she cast this as a "women in tech" issue, not a "me in tech" issue.

SHE was [actually, according to her blog not] offended, but she framed it in such a way that implied that the comments were offensive to women not to her -- as if "women" is one cohesive group that is inherently different than men, who dominate the tech field.