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Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

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Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

#61

Post by WalterSear »

corresation wrote: post #14
cooldeal wrote: post #2

For the life of me I cannot fathom why PlayHaven went to the extreme step of firing the dev in question. What he did was certainly wrong, but certainly not a firable offense. A stern warning from HR would've sufficed. Also, I don't understand the hate and DDoS directed towards SendGrid. I think if any, PlayHaven should've been subject of it and pressured to reinstate the dev in question. SendGrid should've been press…

SendGrid should've been pressured to warn her, not fire her like it happened. Their entire business was under assault. They really had no choice in the matter and really are the biggest victims of the whole ridiculous ordeal. This has all turned into farce.

She also said that sendgrid supported her actions.

Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

#62

Post by danielweber »

niggler wrote: post #37
monksy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of transparency is not indicative of further "guilt". Anything more than what was said is speculation.

Given that one employee was retained and the other was let go, the firing could not have stemmed 100% from the issue at hand. One person was clearly not a " valued employee," unlike the other person from playhaven.

Maybe one person said "hey boss, it was me saying all that, Bob was only listening, it's not his fault."

(NB: I pulled the name Bob out of thin air.)

Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

#63

Post by pyre »

sammyd56 wrote: post #8

"Because of my experiences growing up, I have triggers. This means that I’m always scanning for danger; for situations that seem like something from the past that could hurt me. When I recognize something that matches, I can overreact and feel intense fear, anger or anxiety. This is something I’ve worked on a lot. It’s much better now than 10 years ago but there are some things that send me over the edge." http://but…

I've tried to keep a pretty neutral opinion of her. It just seemed like she made a misjudgement. This is the first post (Amanda Blum post) to reasonably say something that makes me question that a bit.

Now, combine Amanda's post with this info and it's just possible that Adria hasn't suffered enough of a negative response to her past actions (and maybe even benefited from them a bit in blog traffic, etc), so she didn't really 'learn her lesson'[1] on the way she should approach these situations. Unfortunately this time the negative reaction was extreme.

[1] This doesn't imply that her reactions were malicious or self-serving. Just that there was never a reaction that caused her to question her way of responding to these things.

Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

#64

Post by [deleted] »

sammyd56 wrote: post #8

"Because of my experiences growing up, I have triggers. This means that I’m always scanning for danger; for situations that seem like something from the past that could hurt me. When I recognize something that matches, I can overreact and feel intense fear, anger or anxiety. This is something I’ve worked on a lot. It’s much better now than 10 years ago but there are some things that send me over the edge." http://but…

[deleted]

Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

#65

Post by newman314 »

cooldeal wrote: post #2

For the life of me I cannot fathom why PlayHaven went to the extreme step of firing the dev in question. What he did was certainly wrong, but certainly not a firable offense. A stern warning from HR would've sufficed. Also, I don't understand the hate and DDoS directed towards SendGrid. I think if any, PlayHaven should've been subject of it and pressured to reinstate the dev in question. SendGrid should've been press…

Just like politicians wanting to appear to be "tough on crime" often leading to horrible decisions, I'm fairly sure this is the same thing at play here.

Had the complaint been private, it likely would have resulted in a warning from HR as you said.

Unfortunately, because Adria chose a public forum, it demanded a public response, right or wrong regardless.

EDIT: Not understanding the down-vote on my post. Someone please elaborate.

Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

#66

Post by knowtheory »

michaelochurch wrote: post #45

Let's simplify the rules to basic decency. Don't Be a Dick. Oh wait, I guess I can't say that now. Well, fuck me. Whoops, can't say that either. I hope mr-hank gets a huge severance out of PlayHaven. (At-will employment is not as simple as employers like to say it is.) At this point, he has position for something substantial, given that they discussed the termination in the public (disclosing an opinion that he is gu…

If you did in fact read the article, you must have missed the point.

You're right that there are more serious problems to deal with, but feigning offense isn't helping the situation.

Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

#67

Post by niggler »

xoail wrote: post #46
redthrowaway wrote: post #22

I think the most interesting part of this post was a simple observation that I, for one, hadn't seen elsewhere: We don't know why PlayHaven fired the dev in the first place. Sure, the controversy undoubtedly played a role. But we don't know if the dev was on the ropes, if he wasn't pulling his weight, or if his boss simply didn't like him. This may have been a gross overreaction, or it may have been the straw that br…

I doubt if there was any other case than the controversy. I doubt that the dev was any where incompetent. I say this simply because of the dev's interest in attending a conference and his company sponsoring it to him using forking and dongles in a sentence... those are simply good signals of a good developer and he being happy at his job. I feel that Pay Haven responded in a most defensive way by simply firing him an…

" him using forking and dongles in a sentence... those are simply good signals of a good developer"

Pray tell, how does a plebeian joke about dongles signal that a developer is good?

"dev's interest in attending a conference and his company sponsoring it"

And as for his presence, it's not uncommon for a company to send a key developer and a friendly coworker to conferences, especially when it is far away (so he may just have been a friendly coworker of Andy Reid)

Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

#68

Post by Maxious »

ramblerman wrote: post #31

Without tumbling deep into a flame war, I'd like to ask a sincere question. I have trouble understanding the sexism behind the remarks, and why the instigator needs to apologize (for sexism). People get offended for all kinds of things, nobody can claim a monopoloy on that. ( http://imgur.com/EX5v4 stephen fry quote) - If they would both have been gay and talking about a homosexual topic, someone in that room would b…

"Sexism" does not appear once in the blog post. So uhh there's that.

The concern with "offensive" discussions/jokes at developer conventions is it can give the sense that some people are not welcome there - if you don't like it, go somewhere else.

Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

#70

Post by breadbox »

dccoolgai wrote: post #19

I am just gobsmacked...I can't believe I just read something so thoughtful and well-reasoned...this whole thing should end with this article marked "End Of Thread".

Or even better -- I want this to be "Beginning Of Thread". I want to skip over all the rampant speculation and name-calling of the last 24 hours and have the discussion begin here, with this. If only we could, then maybe the next sexism brouhaha might lead to something other than repeating history.
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