This is really unfortunate. I don't see how Adria can keep her job since she'll now have this reputation which just isn't compatible with being an evangelist. The joker guy and Adria will now both have reputations that will affect their careers. But the fact that they were both being paid to be at PyCon means they're both probably good at the work they do. It's all so unnecessary and sad.
The PyCon Incident
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Re: The PyCon Incident
#92Most Europeans must just be laughing and pointing fingers at the insane political correctness in America and more specifically, the hacker community these days. I knew something was fishy from the get-go on this story but waited to see what else would come out of it. Thanks for this post, it articulates my feelings on the situation perfectly. People are outta control these days. We're turning molehills into mountains…
It is quite insane.
I almost gave a tongue-in-cheek lightning talk at Pycon (mostly about python stuff, but with some tongue-in-cheek political jokes), and decided against it at the last minute. I'm glad I did, otherwise I feel like there would be HN headlines about me getting kicked out of Pycon :)
Re: The PyCon Incident
#93I would also like a response from Sendgrid here. Somebody they sent to a conference, who was representing their company there, went on a personal vendetta against somebody and got them fired. That's awful, and I join the people I see online right now in saying that I cannot, in good conscience, ever do business with a company that supports that behavior. --And to how far Adria has set back womens' rights here-- The c…
> I cannot, in good conscience, ever do business with a company that supports that behavior. I think we need to stop doing this bullshit in general. I'd much rather have our community check each other and shame each other on Twitter than having employers step in and decide that thing X or thing Y is not okay for their employees to say in their personal capacity at a conference or on Twitter. As far as I've heard, Adr…
>But it's also inappropriate (read: fucking insane) to boycott a company because you don't like what one of their employees posts on their personal twitter account.
What's good for the goose...
I.e. if it's only fair for someone to be canned based on the postings on some random's personal twitter account, it's only fair for it to work in reverse. Employers can people based on their personal lives all the time.
Also, as detailed elsewhere, this goes beyond a mere tweet.
Re: The PyCon Incident
#94Again I would like to point out that to slander somebody, you must tell lies about them. Nobody is claiming that Adria is lying , even the person she's talking about. She is clearly not slandering anyone. (Please note: this does not mean that I'm taking a position in any way on this issue)
Pretty sure she fabricated the "forking"-joke.
Re: The PyCon Incident
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's cool down a little here. An irresponsible tweet doesn't really constitute a "personal vendetta" (it's not even personal -- as far as I can tell she never knew their names). And while the post was (apparently, I don't know what the evidence here is) the proximate cause, you really can't say that she "got [him] fired", as she wasn't the employer nor did she advocate for his termination. It's just a bad situation…
Personal vendetta or not. A person that reacts to a private conversation (inappropriate or not) by posting hearsay about two co-workers to 1000s of followers the way she did is NOT a person I would want to work with, even less hire. She has at the very least shown very bad judgement and should not be commended nor rewarded for it.
To nit on terminology: testifying about what you heard yourself is not "hearsay", by definition.
I agree her judgement was bad and she shouldn't have posted the image (she has every right to post about the incident, though!).
But what I'm reading here is an awful lot of bile about this woman. She's being asked to answer for someone else's decision to fire someone (there's still no documentation or testimony about this fact, FWIW). She's being attacked for "setting back women's rights". She's basically being made the target for (what I perceive to be) a bunch of anti-feminist frustration among the male geeks. And that's... just really, really ugly; sorry.
She got pissed off and made a mistake, for which it would probably be a good idea to apologize. That's it. Everything else is on you guys.
Re: The PyCon Incident
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder how long it'll be till we see the first "masked" conference, Italian style. Personal identities concealed! Could be kinda fun actually..
DefCon?
People go by handles at DefCon sometimes, but it usually isn't super anonymous these days especially if you're around people you mostly know. I guess it kind of depends really, if you were to randomly walk up to people and ask them for their name, you'd be unlikely to get it from a significant percentage of folks.
Re: The PyCon Incident
#97Couple pieces to this. First – the fact that this guy's employer made a kneejerk reaction is no one's fault but the employer. Next – let's talk about this red herring of "sexism." Making a phallus joke might be sexist depending on context. Or it might not be. Sexism is not at issue here. The individual in question concedes that they did, in fact, make the joke. From PyCon's code of conduct: "All communication should…
You are "acquainted" with Adria and appeared "together" on a "panel"?! I'm offended and do not appreciate jokes of that nature.
Re: The PyCon Incident
#98I think all of us would agree that technology has a sexism problem. However , the environment in 2013 and the way, as a whole, it seems that we have gone about countering it is roughly equivalent to napalming six city blocks to get rid of bedbugs in an apartment. (Edit: On reflection, a better analogy would be napalming New York City to eradicate bedbugs. I am aware of the scope of the sexism problem.) This little sa…
> I'm going to go a career that isn't completely nonsensical, like fishing. I can't imagine I'm the only one.
I fully intend to do the same. I'll likely always keep programming open source stuff etc. on the side, but the tech industry is so fucking weird and immature on stuff like that. (and also the fact that I don't see myself living the startup life when I have kids, at least not in the first few years of their lives)
Re: The PyCon Incident
#99Adria's actions really clearly violated the pycon code of conduct - has there been an official response yet?
Re: The PyCon Incident
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
She has thousands of followers. She is in a powerful position and she abused it. Just because she wasn't the employer doesn't mean her goal wasn't something along these lines. Why else would you post a clear picture of their faces up to a public lynch mob?
What's the abuse? She described what happened right next to her.
Taking a picture of two people without their permission and posting it on the internet eventually causing one of them to get fired doesn't seem like abuse to you?
Why didn't she tell them to just be quiet? That's what normal people do.