If everyone responded like Heroku did (immediately, firmly, and without apologies) when they saw such sexist behavior it would improve our industry. Please do so whenever you get the chance, and props to the Heroku team!
They advertised "friendly female event staff to get you a beer". Any reasonable person would believe that they were intending to follow through on that.
If it's a joke, where's the punchline? Were they not going to have women servers? Were the massage people going to be big, hairy, biker types?
What would you expect Heroku have done differently?
HN has seen a sharp increase in negativity lately. What gives?
Some of the other sponsors haven't, and I believe they're all fairly sane.
I don't really see how Heroku could be expected to have been any quicker than they already were in responding to this.
This was a prank gone bad. No one got hurt (apart from a few egos). Pulling sponsorship because of that is just lame.
Don't get me wrong, I have the deepest respect for women but that doesn't prevent me from pulling (even sometimes sexist) pranks on my wife. She does the same to me and we smile at each other.
I dare you, everyone that's horrified by their prank say it out loud (and mean it!):
"I have never, ever made a sexist joke before in my life. At least not a kind that would in any way offend someone"
A prank? As in "haha, we got you!"?
> Don't get me wrong, I have the deepest respect for women but that doesn't prevent me from pulling (even sometimes sexist) pranks on my wife. She does the same to me and we smile at each other.
Your wife presumably is comfortable in the knowledge that you respect her, because she knows you well. A woman showing up at a hackathon likely hasn't known the organizers for years.
I'll smack my wife on the ass, but if I walk up to random women and do it I'm going to get the cops called on me.
Sorry for my poor choice of words
So the whole industry is giving the message: Your effort is totally worthless (and unnoticed) if you make mistakes that offend someone.
The message is "grow up and stop acting like a hormonal 13 year old".
Had they hired a bunch of Chippendale's dancers to serve booze (because alcohol does wonders for your productivity) and big hairy bikers to give massages (as opposed to the girls in tight t-shirts they no doubt retained for the event,) would be a prank.