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SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

mashable.com

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Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#391

Post by jack-r-abbit »

pifflesnort wrote: post #374
jack-r-abbit wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused. Are you saying that just because a person is white they are not allowed to be offended by stuff and not allowed to question the validity of others who are offended?

Well, according to Adria Richards: "Black people CANNOT be racist against White people. Racism is a position of the oppressor who has the power". http://imgur.com/xPztO6k I don't think Adria represents women in the industry, or anyone other than herself. I feel sorry for SendGrid, PlayHaven, the developer who lost his job, and the fact that this is distracting from the real issues of sexism in technology. I don't fee…

I saw that. Of course we know that is bullshit. Just like it would be bullshit to say: "women cannot be sexist against men"

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#393

Post by subsystem »

edderly wrote: post #213

This reminds me why I hate real names on public social networking when talking about these types of issues. Whatever this woman's original motive was got immediately lost in the shallow exchanges which follow, but the commentary becomes important because it is now personal. I feel more contempt for the real name trolls now gloating over her firing too. None of whom I assume were present at the original event. The int…

It does work fairly well as a honeypot though.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#394

Post by anigbrowl »

militiaman21 wrote: post #121
anigbrowl wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, a verbal confirmation seems justified under the circumstances.

From SendGrid's Facebook https://www.facebook.com/SendGrid/posts/10151502570463967 Effective immediately, SendGrid has terminated the employment of Adria Richards. While we generally are sensitive and confidential with respect to employee matters, the situation has taken on a public nature. We have taken action that we believe is in the overall best interests of SendGrid, its employees, and our customers. As we conti…

By verbal I meant spoken, in person or over the telephone. there was some confusion earlier about the authenticity of the FB posting.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#395

Post by JohnBooty »

rdtsc wrote: post #317
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…

> Okay, time to speak up! Hi, I'm a woman in tech 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 rep…

  > 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.
Wow, so if your mother (or sister, or girlfriend, or wife, or daughter) has ever made an off-color joke in her life, that gives any man in the world the right to discuss penises with her in person?

I mean, wow. That's what you're getting at.

Twitter has elements of both a public and private space. It's public, obviously, but people read your Tweets voluntarily.

It's not at all comparable to making unwanted sexual comments to a woman you don't know on a bus, or in an alleyway, or in a convenience store, or at a conference. It's not comparable to subjecting It's

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#396

Post by obviouslygreen »

peripetylabs wrote: post #362

Keep in mind that Adria Richards was acting in an official capacity as a representative of SendGrid at PyCon. SendGrid's business is transactional email, and one of their public spokespersons happily outs private conversations on social media, even distributing photographs of people without their permission -- as a SendGrid customer who takes privacy very seriously, I found this concerning, and I have been looking at…

It is concerning, but it's concerning about Adria and people like her, not about SendGrid. It's irresponsible to assume that, because someone has represented a company poorly, that that is a poor company.

People mess up, and in this situation either Adria messed up or whoever hired her did. That's not to say either party is stupid or a "bad person" or any such thing... it's to say that Adria did something that most of us consider clearly wrong/unprofessional, and if there was a clear indication that she'd do such a thing, the hiring manager should not have brought her on. I'm inclined to think there was no such indication and this is just her personally doing something irresponsible, but then we don't know.

Immediately making that a reflection on her employer is invalid and makes things worse than they already are.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#397

Post by danellis »

joshstrange wrote: post #306
JohnBooty wrote: post #279

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 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,…

But that is the problem, "I find it very easy to avoid saying sexually inappropriate things to women I don't know." They weren't talking to her or even about her. They had their own conversation and she overheard it and instead of being an adult and turning around to say something she tweeted it and caused someone to lose their job. I too can keep from saying sexually inappropriate things to women however that is not…

The adult thing to do would be to just ignore it, and not act like people are entitled to live in some comfortable bubble where they get to whine if anyone in their vicinity acts in a way they don't like or approve of.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#398

Post by niggler »

dfxm12 wrote: post #366
niggler wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" ... I hope they reconsider, bring you back on ..." She didn't fire the guy. The most she could say is that she doesn't think he should have been fired over this, and I read that part of the quote (repeated above) as reflection of my point.

You're right. She didn't fire the guy. She cyber bullied him. She could have apologised for that, but didn't. N.B.: She can do (or not do) what she wants, and it doesn't bother me, but please don't confuse what she said as an apology.

She is not sorry for what she said, and that's fine. That's her prerogative. I take issue with people blaming her for the company firing the guy. She didn't accuse them of a felony or other crime. She pointed to what she thought was inappropriate and the employer overreacted.

I'm frankly saddened that the discussion about the employment circles her and not the employer. Few are asking why, if the joke were so trivial (I also happen to think the joke was rather silly and personally didn't take offense), the employer decided to fire him.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#399

Post by knowtheory »

doktrin wrote: post #371
knowtheory wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 behavio…

> 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. I don't see how plotting thread discussions on HN would even vaguely correlate to the Twitter abuse the GP was referring to.

zevyoura was asserting that the behavior seen on twitter is not representative of our community, and that those sentiments are isolated to a set of bad actors.

My assertion is that there is a substantial number of people who share that same ill will here on hacker news. Most of the threads that have been posted to HN have been dog piles of hating on Adria Richards. So the question is are those people new and in fact not representative of HN? Or are they people who have been around for a while, and have made substantive contributions to the community (using karma as a proxy measure)?

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#400

Post by peripetylabs »

danso wrote: post #33

This post contains no more information than did the other deleted threads. The past threads were deleted because HN mods think that the announcement is fake. This Mashable story adds no new reporting.

There is a statement on the SendGrid blog confirming:

http://blog.sendgrid.com/sendgrid-statement/

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