SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas • Hacker News Board

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#511

Post by jakejake » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 9:51 PM UTC

onemorepassword wrote: post #234

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.…

That's like saying that in Europe people can legally own guns too. It's factually true (in fact, it's not even that hard in most countries), but the way it is legislated is so vastly different that the labor laws the US has are almost insignificant. (The power of certain unions is a different matter, but that doesn't apply here.)

I don't know a thing about gun laws in Europe. Which is why I don't make statements on the subject, even though I may see something on the news involving a crime in Europe.

I'm just saying to anybody who perceives that the US is some sort of Wild West in regards to labor laws - you are not really going off of the facts. The US has a lot if laws that are complex beyond my understanding of them, and I actually am a business owner with employees!

One thing not mentioned - when you do terminate an employee your company often has to pay their unemployment (basically a short-term salary paid to them by the government), and your costs go up if you have many unemployment claims. So it is certainly not a desirable thing for either party to fire employees.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#512

Post by JohnBooty » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 9:52 PM UTC

RyanZAG wrote: post #490

JohnBooty wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As far as I can tell, posting jokes like that to > twitter and hearing jokes like that at a conference > are entirely comparable in every way. They're exactly > the same thing - both are jokes of a sexual/race based > background. You don't think that context matters at all when it comes to a joke? Do you just speak the exact same way everywhere, whether you're talking to clients, joking with your friends during an…

You seem to be jumping over the point here. Both the conference and twitter are public venues, and both the jokes are sexual in nature. You seem to be arguing here that a joke at a public conference is a different situation to a joke posted publicly to twitter - I do not see the difference. Her twitter account is now irrevocably linked to Sendspace's image as she has claimed that Sendspace backs her views, which in t…

  > You seem to be arguing here that a joke at 
  > a public conference is a different situation 
  > to a joke posted publicly to twitter

I'm sorry. Posting something on Twitter is simply not the same as saying something several feet away from a stranger in person. There are two primary reasons.

One, anybody reading Adria's Twitter account is doing so on a voluntary basis. Adria, on the other hand, did not volunteer to listen to a bunch of sexual jokes from these men she doesn't know.

Two, there's the issue of physical proximity. The overwhelming odds are, of course, that the men at this conference were not a physical threat to Adria. Nobody was arguing they were anything worse than some guys who made a joke at a sub-optimal time. However, please understand that sexual violence is depressingly common in America (http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2011/p1214_sexual_violence...) and that it's one more reason why we don't subject strangers to unwanted sexual banter, even if that stranger said something off-color at some point in their lives.

Again, I have to ask: given that every woman you know has probably said something off-color at some point in their lives, perhaps publicly, does that give me the right to speak to them in whatever off-color way I wish?

I'd say that no, it doesn't. You say I do?

Or, let's try another tack. Forget Twitter. Let's compare apples to apples.

Do you think you have the right to go up to any female comedienne who's ever made an off-color joke, and tell her off-color jokes? You don't, because she is not volunteering to listen to your jokes in the same way that you did when you listened to her routine. And honestly, I think you probably do know that, and would probably not walk up to Ellen Degeneres and discuss lesbian sex with her even though she has publicly identified as a lesbian on national television.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#513

Post by doktrin » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 9:52 PM UTC

ceol wrote: post #402

_ak wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shamed publicly, slandered, etc.?

Because Adria is the only person who has the power to shame someone publicly? She's the only one with 9,000 twitter followers, she's the only one with a camera phone, and she's the only one who can upload photos to twitter? I find the concern of being in the same room as her incredibly stupid.

She's someone with a history of senseless public shaming, and apparently a fair bit of grandstanding [1]

You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but what's being discussed here isn't the ability to perform an action but the willingness to do so on a whim.

[1] http://amandablumwords.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/3/

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#514

Post by katbyte » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 9:54 PM UTC

king_jester wrote: post #384

blhack wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, and that is a legitimate problem that everybody has to face. "How much should I let myself be offended before I speak up about it?" But that is NOT what happened here. She even said in her blog post that she didn't find the fact that "dongle" and "dong" sound similar offensive. She decided to try and humiliate these guys over some desire to protect the possible future of some kid whose picture was being shown o…

> Sure, and that is a legitimate problem that everybody has to face. "How much should I let myself be offended before I speak up about it?" For someone in a marginalized group, they hear constant micro-aggression from a large amount of people daily. Each one of those comments and encounters builds that feeling of not belonging and resentment. That is the context in which folks have to deal with this kind of thing, so…

That's not excuse for snapping and overreacting to the extremes she did. There were avenues for her to express her discomfort and she op[ted for the most extreme and disproportionate option.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#515

Post by mkr-hn » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 9:55 PM UTC

gre wrote: post #477

Steuard wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's not sexist to make a jokes about the word "dongle" sounding like "dong". They sound pretty similar. It's not very funny unless you're bored stiff or in grade five, but nevertheless it's pretty harmless joke material, and it isn't sexism." I really have to disagree. Dick jokes are perceived to be almost exclusively a part of "guy culture". Want proof? Watch how fast a group of guys making those jokes suddenly cl…

Two things: she made a dick joke on twitter, and she plays cards against humanity which is nothing but "dick jokes with strangers".

You forgot to make a point. You only listed facts.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#516

Post by katbyte » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 9:56 PM UTC

xauronx wrote: post #382

nilkn wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm honestly curious what this even has to do with women. That's what puzzles me most about this whole incident. Maybe I'm insensitive or ignorant. I'll admit it if that's the case and learn. Right now, though, I just don't get it. I just don't see how a dongle joke is sexist. It's anatomical . It might have some mild sexual undertone, but there's a huge difference between sexism and a sexual undertone--they aren't t…

Yeah, I think that's one of the more frustrating parts of this. My female friends make much more crude penis/anatomy jokes. It's almost like she's saying "talking about the penis around women is inappropriate", which to me is more sexist than anything. I think her real gripe was that they were being crude/unprofessional/immature, but she decided to take it in the sexist route for some reason.

you make a good point, he wasn't being sexist at all, in reality she was kinda the actual sexist one saying hey because i'm female, you can't say that.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#517

Post by cjbprime » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 9:57 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #506

cjbprime wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not sexist to make jokes about the word "dongle" sounding like "dong". It is sexist to create a sexualized environment at a tech conference, because the consequences of that environment hurt women much more than they hurt men; it's a failure to show consideration to women. mr-hank has admitted that he made a sexual joke about big dongles and apologized for it. Making sexual jokes about big dongles is creating…

It would appear to be sexual. I'm not certain it needs to be sexist. For example, if we were to look at sexual repartee in France[1], one would notice sexuality in normal conversation. Among friends, friends of friends and friends and the significant others of friends, between bosses and staff, etc. It's imbued in their culture. [Some] Anglos tend to see this as archaic and sexist, Gallics see it as part of their cul…

> It would appear to be sexual. I'm not certain it needs to be sexist.

This all seems like a waste of time. Here's how I think it should work: we ask women what they want ("hey, how about sexualized jokes at tech conferences?") and they tell us ("actually, we really hate it when you do that, probably much more than you realize") and then we stop, because we respect them and it turns out that making sex jokes wasn't actually an integral part of being at a technical conference anyway.

Deal?

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#518

Post by AlexandrB » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 10:01 PM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #455

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…

[deleted]

I don't see any indication that she didn't just shrug it off - that doesn't mean that she can't talk about it or that it isn't a problem. Indeed, it's something that she will have to "shrug off" that most male founders wouldn't even have to think about.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#519

Post by josh-j » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 10:02 PM UTC

paranoiacblack wrote: post #405

josh-j wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're lacking an understanding of linguistics and philosophy. Both usages are no more correct than the other, and the point of such usages is to ascribe a connotation to a cluster of things along a continuum. Arguing over definitions is pointless (I can create my own definition of racism and it will be equally valid), the point is what they connote.

We'll never agree because I'm arguing about what racism is (a semantic argument) and you're arguing about how racism is defined (a pedantic argument). Perhaps my original post was a red herring. I was merely justifying that what she said lines up with a known definition, not that it is the ONLY correct definition. Also, your definition of what racism connotes is severely lacking as well. Simplifying racism to "someth…

You have it backwards. I don't care how racism is defined. I care about whatever the word "racism" points to in the real world. But you have to realize that a word can point to anything you want it to point to.

And not only that, but words have denotations and connotations. "Ugly", in common usage, denotes and points to a set of subjective physical characteristics. "Ugly" also connotes and points to a negative affect that isn't explicit in its denotation.

I'm not simply saying that racism is "something that connotes immorality", but that is what we're connotating when we use that word in its various denotations (although, it's not necessarily the case). Racism's denotation can be literally anything. I can say, for example, that it's racist to call Canadians effusive pushovers even though "Canadian" is a nationality rather than a race.

And people do exactly that. In the U.K., for example, it's common for people to call people that insult the French "racist."

Language is fluid.

So, I think you can see why people are affronted when someone says "black people cannot be racist" without putting it within a certain context. The implication is that it's not immoral for black people to act denotatively common-usage-racist.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#520

Post by foohbarbaz » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 10:02 PM UTC

Huh? WTF?

My impression is that inappropriate jokes were specifically targeted at a woman seated nearby. In an all male company (of 13-year old youths) it just does not happen.

The people that did this deserved to be reminded that it was not acceptable (although not by firing).

Now, firing Adria Richards is entirely beyond my understanding. Seriously, WTF? Well, this whole story is sad. Blame the messenger now?