SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas • Hacker News Board

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#601

Post by largesse » Sat, Mar 23, 2013, 11:02 AM UTC

flaviusb wrote: post #579

largesse wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We all deal with the fact that we're in the middle of change, and it isn't always comfortable. Just as it wasn't comfortable for people dealing with the acceptance of homosexuals: I think everyone accepts that the word "faggot" is no longer appropriate. Nope. That is not it. Men and women joke together freely with innuendo throughout society and most of the time it is not considered a problem. She did that exact thin…

No, context matters. Just as it is fine to be undressed when you go to bed but not when out on the street, it is fine to engage in innuendo with friends if that is what you and your friends do, or to be crass on Twitter to your followers who presumably opted in to reading your crassness (but not in @replies to people who don't follow you), but not at a professional conference in a public space . Can you understand th…

Nope. I don't consider PyCon a "professional conference." Programming is not accountancy, or medicine. "Professional" is a word that people use to lull people into circumspect behavior leaving their basic humanity aside. Sometimes there is a good reason for it but often there isn't. In any case it's not a way of being at ease.

When I am with my close friends at a conference we speak however we like. It isn't church and it shouldn't be. But I'm sure now that I'll never go to PyCon. It's drowning in the crazy.

My sense is that this is largely generational and geographic. There's a strain of political correctness in the California area that is rampant among people in their 20s. I don't see it elsewhere in the US although I have seen it in Canada. PyCon is definitely a California conference.

I'm sure the educational system has something to do with it. It's a trend that rode the general trend in education in the 90s toward making people believe that feeling good was more important than anything and that their sensitivities were positive demands on other people's behavior. That's subsided since then in elementary education so I think this drama may be a blip.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#602

Post by flaviusb » Sat, Mar 23, 2013, 11:21 AM UTC

largesse wrote: post #601

flaviusb wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, context matters. Just as it is fine to be undressed when you go to bed but not when out on the street, it is fine to engage in innuendo with friends if that is what you and your friends do, or to be crass on Twitter to your followers who presumably opted in to reading your crassness (but not in @replies to people who don't follow you), but not at a professional conference in a public space . Can you understand th…

Nope. I don't consider PyCon a "professional conference." Programming is not accountancy, or medicine. "Professional" is a word that people use to lull people into circumspect behavior leaving their basic humanity aside. Sometimes there is a good reason for it but often there isn't. In any case it's not a way of being at ease. When I am with my close friends at a conference we speak however we like. It isn't church a…

So, you can't read then, and you also can't understand that people who are not exactly like you exist?

When you are with your close friends in public do you 'speak however you like' in such a way that it disturbs those around you? If yes, you are an asshole. The public spaces in conferences are much the same - and in the true Pythonic way (explicit is better than implicit) they even spelled out what the social norms were for the 'public spaces' at PyCon. If you call that crazy, you don't understand Pythonicity.

As for 'profession' - yes, programming is a skilled activity, and being paid to program usually involves being in a workplace with norms of behaviour - hence, a profession. You can say "I still don't consider it a profession", to which my reply is "that's nice; it still is one though".

edit: Urgh, I didn't see your edit when I posted. Your edit actually makes your post more stupid. Oh well.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#603

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 23, 2013, 11:24 AM UTC

flaviusb wrote: post #602

largesse wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. I don't consider PyCon a "professional conference." Programming is not accountancy, or medicine. "Professional" is a word that people use to lull people into circumspect behavior leaving their basic humanity aside. Sometimes there is a good reason for it but often there isn't. In any case it's not a way of being at ease. When I am with my close friends at a conference we speak however we like. It isn't church a…

So, you can't read then, and you also can't understand that people who are not exactly like you exist? When you are with your close friends in public do you 'speak however you like' in such a way that it disturbs those around you? If yes, you are an asshole. The public spaces in conferences are much the same - and in the true Pythonic way (explicit is better than implicit) they even spelled out what the social norms…

[deleted]

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#604

Post by minimize_me » Sat, Mar 23, 2013, 3:42 PM UTC

paranoiacblack wrote: post #170

minimize_me wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could pop over to Zim to see what's wrong with that statement.

> pop over to Zim I don't know what this means. But please elaborate what's wrong with that statement. Please understand that a word's definition is not necessarily it's meaning.

Zimbabwe. Or South Africa.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#605

Post by doktrin » Sat, Mar 23, 2013, 5:06 PM UTC

shardling wrote: post #600

doktrin wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She made allegations of harassment and alluded to gender issues. Most people accept that "sexism" was at issue here, and she herself doesn't dispute this. There's no sense in nitpicking on minor semantics.

Ok, so tell that to the folk upthread who started using exactly that set of semantics as part of their attack on Adria. ("The joke was not sexist in any way".)

This is about how she portrayed the events.

She accused them of being sexist, referring to the action as harassment and calling the individuals involved "assclowns".

I don't really see how the joke is sexist either, but that's not really the issue here.