The Disinvitation
blog.cleancoder.com
blog.cleancoder.com
Conference asks Martin to give a presentation. No money is to change hands, no contract is signed.
Conference changes their mind and decides to not have him speak after all.
Martin's reaction is to throw around legal threats like "breech of contract" [sic] and "tortious interference"???
Sounds to me like the conference dodged a bullet.
Even if there had been a speaking fee, the conference could have fulfilled their end of the contract by paying him but not having him speak. There is no scenario under which the conference would have been forced to allow him to give a presentation.
The many spelling mistakes in this post lead me to believe that he was very, very angry when typing this up. I'd not be surprised if it was deleted by Monday.
Of course not. But that isn't my point.
My concern isn't that he would actually file a lawsuit -- that's a non-starter. My concern is that his reaction to being snubbed is to publicly threaten the conference organizers, and the other speakers at the conference. That sort of behavior suggests a hostile, combative attitude that likely goes beyond this incident. That is the bullet I'm suggesting that the conference may have dodged.
Given his views on software-related things, it's not particularly surprising to me that his approach toward a dis-invitation is... provocative, designed to go viral by tapping into certain aspects of a certain subset of dev culture, and not particularly well thought out.
“Breach”, and probably not. While Martin acknowledges there was no written agreement, he provides little reason to believe that whatever communication they had met the requirements for a contract.
He does provide, in arguing for breach of contract where he is the aggrieved party, a much better (but still far from complete) argument for fraud where attendees were the aggrieved party.
In addition to an actual contract, breach would depend on something he strongly implies did not occur, to wit, an actual disinvitation by the organizers. It's clear that his contact wanted Martin to voluntarily back out based on the conflict created by the threatened boycott by other speakers, and Martin seems to describe himself agreeing to do so to make things easy for his contact. That's a change by mutual agreement, not a breach.
> The speakers who refused to speak if I spoke are guilty of tortious interference.
Assuming the required relationship (which may be disputable), Martin seems to establish interference, but not the independently wrongful action that would make it tortious.
Also, this is cute:
> I promised him I would not mention his name or the name of the conference on line.
But then:
> So, this time, I’ll let the legal options rest. Instead, I’m offering a virtual free talk at 10:00 AM CDT, on September 21st, the first day of the conference.
So, you've pretty much guaranteed that the conference, and probably your contact since knowing the conference will make that not too hard for people to deduce, will be publicly identified online soon, even if not under your byline.
Martin himself shows himself to be a biased person which he shows time and time again on Twitter. What if he were to decide who got promoted or hired for companies?
There are literally studies on this.
The fact that people have bias cannot be the issue in itself, problems occur when they are ignored and not taken in account by systems.
For example a hiring process can take in account biases and have ways to correct for them, for example by avoiding to have one single interviewer having way more weight than another, by doing blind reviews, etc.
And that meritocracy on its own cannot work because everyone is biased in one way or another. Got it.
I see meritocracy as an ideal we would like to be able to tend to, not something that has been achieved in the past or current time.
Meritocracy is full of flaws.
I do believe putting more diverse set of people into power makes a difference. Having racial diversity, gender diversity, cultural diversity, financial diversity etc. is important for having fair and fruitful leadership at companies, in gov't, and whatever other places.
I object to using the notion of a "6X difference in murderer density" among Black men as a reason why police are justified in racial profiling.
But I also object to the extremely smug and faux-engineer-rationality of "This does not appear to be racism [...] It looks more like math."
If we're expecting Uncle Bob to be just some guy on Twitter I would write him off as a simple fool. If we're expecting Uncle Bob to be a thought leader in a consequential professional field requiring deep analysis and sound judgement, that's something else.
The one rant I read indicates that he thinks the country was not founded on slavery and that Reconstruction was not thwarted, Jim Crow did not exist, federal redlining of Black neighborhoods until recently did not happen, and none of the people that I’ve hung out with who have chatted about f’ing up n*s actually exist. That’s an issue for another venue and I applaud his candor in stating it, sort of a flat-earther earnestness.
I think Uncle Bob greatly overestimates his pull in the tech talks world.
That's pre-apocalyptic thinking.
Perhaps a write up with what the charges are, to start, is due.
Then the person can reply, appeal or try to say that they are trying to learn & prove & apologize.
We have had to tolerate & had to endure humongous shitbirds on this poor planet for way too long. People should be fed up, up to our ears with terrible behavior, & seemingly nothing to put a damper on it, endlessly ever the malignant poisonous people grabbing attention & stroking their demented egos in public. We do need a way for civil society to begin to emerge defenses, to say, no, you are not a civic participant here. But I also think the current CoC system is remarkably cruel & unjust, almost everywhere, & cause of undue unnecessary harm & division & schizming. (But not with BM).