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A Difficult Situation

blog.sendgrid.com

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Re: A Difficult Situation

#331

Post by rdtsc »

drhayes9 wrote: post #282
runarb wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> http://imgur.com/5tbXR2c My first thought was that this quote must be something made up by 4chan users to smear her or something, but it appear to be for real: https://twitter.com/adriarichards/statuses/6039856858

Argh, Jesus, I'm sick of people misrepresenting this tweet! She's not saying that black people can't make racist statements and that they get a completely free pass when it comes to being racists. She's not. Stop saying that she is. She's defining racism with a particularly sociological bent. She's saying that racism is an act by an oppressor towards the oppressed. When an oppressed person insults an oppressor they a…

Argh, Baal, Lord of Darkness, I am sick of people justifying her shit.

> "the oppressed cannot, themselves, oppress their oppressors"

Let me re-define the concepts that tell you are story. But you can't argue that I am telling you bullshit because I redefined basic concepts.

But ok, let's adopt her definition. There are situations based on places, times, locations where black people outnumber the white people (could be a certain organization, a club, workplace, street, city). In that case she is dead wrong as the oppressed oppressor labels get reversed. But you know what this is mental gymnastics bullshit.

Most people have a basic definition of racism. Redefining the terms to support her stupid comment -- smacks of dis-ingenuity.

> dragging this tweet out as evidence of her hypocrisy smacks of willful ignorance.

So is doing complicated mental acrobatics to support her.

Re: A Difficult Situation

#332

Post by akurtzhs »

peripetylabs wrote: post #54
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?

I doubt that. It is explicitly against the PyCon Code of Conduct to photograph attendees without their permission. Adria Richards did just that, on company time.

I've seen this said a few places, but I'm not seeing it in the code of conduct at https://us.pycon.org/2013/about/code-of-conduct/.

"Harassing photography" is banned. I'm setting aside the question of whether her Twitter posted photo counts as "harassing photography", but I can't find a blanket ban on photography without permission.

Re: A Difficult Situation

#333

Post by ceol »

powertower wrote: post #186
mtrimpe wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know Adria personally? Saying that "We got an unstable, hypocritical, oversensitive jaded person out of our way. I think this was a win." without knowing her personally would be ... well ... not exactly OK.

In her blog post about this, she was likening herself to Joan of Arc over this event. And that was just the beginning. Too bad that website is down.

I'd like to see anyone take this level of vitriol and be completely level-headed. I would start stockpiling food, because apparently Jesus Christ has come back and the End Times are here.

Re: A Difficult Situation

#334

Post by rooshdi »

fingerprinter wrote: post #319
rooshdi wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She didn't force them to fire her. People are just blowing this way out of proportion. Everybody needs to chill out, especially the corporate management of both companies.

> She didn't force them to fire her. What would you have done in the situation? You're the CEO of a company. You have someone in a glorified PR position. That same person has caused massive blowback by not once, not twice, but multiple times showing extreme poor judgement. This person then makes a public statement saying your company "supports" that person thereby ostensibly pulling the company into the fight. What w…

No, just human. She seems to have been doing her job quite well, overall. She just voiced her dislike over some fork jokes and some people disagreed. That's life.

Re: A Difficult Situation

#335

Post by rdtsc »

rooshdi wrote: post #276
fingerprinter wrote: post #93

Who didn't see this coming? And when she pulled SendGrid, her employer, publicly into the fray via her twitter feed, who didn't know it was simply a matter of time? I mean, what else could SendGrid possibly do? She basically forced them to fire her. Her value to the company is being a public face to developers . She very publicly destroyed that value. Further, she pulled SendGrid in with her tweet about them "support…

She didn't force them to fire her. People are just blowing this way out of proportion. Everybody needs to chill out, especially the corporate management of both companies.

She did, but didn't know it. Here is how:

SG got a terrible wave of backlash. Customers leaving, a PR nightmare all over the tech forums. DDoS attack to bring their service down. This is not Google or Microsoft. They can only sustain that for so long before imploding.

Now they could have thought about it in 2 way. 1) Simple risk analysis even if they think she is totally and 100% right, still dictates she should be dropped like a nuclear hot potato immediately. Or they actually found her actions objectively reprehensible and decided she doesn't represent what the company stands for.

Re: A Difficult Situation

#336

Post by ceol »

CodeMage wrote: post #298
taligent wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People like that are hard to be around, constantly tip toe. It really isn't. Most of us that actually work in a professional environment aren't making crude jokes about sexual topics. And we sure as hell are on our best behaviour at offsite events. Clearly this is a foreign concept to you.

With certain people, it's not just about crude jokes. I think Lyndsy Simon summed it up pretty well in his comment on Avdi Grimm's G+ post [1]. It's not possible to link to a comment, so I'll reproduce it here: I was at a sprint on Monday, speaking to a female developer. She was discussing a project she'd worked on, and a coworker's method for solving a tricky problem. I said something along the lines of "So, which p…

Well, except nothing happened to him. He wasn't reported, he wasn't fired, his photo wasn't taken. So obviously it's not the same as those jokes.

Re: A Difficult Situation

#337

Post by cameronh90 »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #303
azov wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That tweet is definitely relevant. The whole point is we're trying to protect people from offensive behavior. The definition of what's offensive is vague at best. Common approach - if someone was offended, it's offensive - assumes that we trust victims accounts that they were in fact offended. While context is important, it is much harder to believe that someone would be seriously offended by a joke when they make th…

The only problem with this reasoning is it seems dangerously close to the "they were asking for it" argument. If you are raising concern for something, the entire history of your life does not automatically come into question; this is just an unfortunate side effect of the record-everything technological society we now live in. Corollary to the upcoming ubiquity of Google Goggles, what if the recordings of one's pers…

There's nothing wrong with the logic of "they were asking for it" in some contexts. Rape, violence, etc. of course not, but I think when it comes to being insulted, saying that someone was asking for it is fair. I've been attacked verbally before, and often I was asking for it or deserving of it.

That said, I don't think this is a case of her asking for it. It's just pointing out hypocrisy, which is a perfectly OK thing to do. It's less extreme but analogous to pointing out someone who complains about domestic violence being themselves an abuser.

Re: A Difficult Situation

#338

Post by _delirium »

14113 wrote: post #285
_delirium wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 is not really the case, either as a matter of ethics or a matter of law. It's a widespread myth that there is an overriding legal responsibility to "maximize shareholder value", but that is not the case, and the myth is based on an over-reading of a century…

(Replying here from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5420421 as comment limit reached) As the limit's been reached, and I'm not sure of the etiquette on hacker news for longer comments, I'll finish up my end of the discussion here. I think this is a classic internet situation where everybody's in the wrong, especially the two companies. To sum up my position: -The developers arguably shouldn't have made the jokes…

Thanks for the civilized discussion as well!

I agree that the immediate firings on both sides come off the worst. Announcing some miscellaneous investigation/discipline/etc. is one thing, but going straight to firing comes off, to me anyway, as more impulsive (and worrisome) than reassuring and decisive.

I also agree that Twitter mobs are a bit worrisome. I'm perhaps mostly counter-worried about the principle of posting some words on twitter being seen as problematic. I do it a lot! Of course, I have only ~250 followers, so while technically public, it's only public in the sense that random tumblrs and blogs are public. What crosses the line into the other kind of public? I agree it can happen, I just don't know what to do about it that isn't worse.

As an aside, the comment limit is actually "soft" in that if you click on a comment's own page (the "link" link) you can reply from there even if the reply link isn't showing up on the main page. It's intended to discourage extra-long comment threads, but you can still reply if you really want to, rather than posting a sibling comment.

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Re: A Difficult Situation

#339

Post by sophacles »

chc wrote: post #272
DannyBee wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Your Twitter account is not exactly public in the same way that a crowded conference room is. One is a "pull" medium (i.e. I have to seek out your tweets), while the other is a "push" medium (i.e. I can't unsubscribe from your loud-talking). If you drive someone away from your Twitter feed with inappropriate jokes, that's OK, really — they just aren't a good fit for your feed and you'll both be happier. But if you dr…

Fair usually, however, the conference provided a mechanism by which she could "unsubscribe". Basically she joined a conversation, and didn't like it, and could have just left or asked them to stop. Or if she was uncomfortable with that, because it can be uncomfortable to do that, she could have asked the conference staff to help. Which she did. And they responded and ended the situation.

The real problem is that she took what could have been a simple case of "inappropriate but dealt with" to a completely different and public level.

Re: A Difficult Situation

#340

Post by [deleted] »

eridius wrote: post #268
DannyBee wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Are you really saying that her personal twitter stream, and being in the middle of the audience at a professional event, are the same thing?

[deleted]
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