SendGrid fires Adria Richards?
blog.sendgrid.com
blog.sendgrid.com
Why are all the posts related to Aria Richards getting deleted? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5416578
Effective immediately, SendGrid has terminated the employment of Adria Richards - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5416514
Effective immediately, SendGrid has terminated the employment of Adria Richards - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5416422
SendGrid has terminated the employment of Adria Richards - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5416312
SendGrid has terminated the employment of Adria Richards? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5416021
The best explanation I've ever got from a flagger is that the topic "isn't relevant". Funny how it's only topics that require self-examination of the industry's perception of gender that aren't relevant.
That is what the flag button is for. To scorch the shit off the site. More people need to use it. These threads are horrible and they need to go.
In much the same way that sometimes in a parent's life they need to stop doing the laundry and let their teenager head out to town with smelly, mouldy, crusty garments until the teenager learns that dirty clothes are horrible and that perhaps it might be worth helping parents with housework without the need for bribes.
This story deserves to be flagged for the same reason the half dozen other posts related to this dramatic internet drama need to be flagged. Because it's drama.
Were there actionable advice in the linked article that one could use to improve one's business, it would be a reasonable thing to submit to this site. Were there anything whatsoever to do with technology or computer programming in the linked article, it might deserve to be submitted here.
But there's none of that. So it goes someplace else.
Articles of all kinds are popular on HN- some tech, some business, some lifestyle, some that have absolutely nothing to do with tech. But mysteriously, gender seems to be about the only topic not permitted.
So yes, that's what I'm suggesting. It's also what the guidelines state explicitly.
"anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity"
Discussions about gender would fulfill that criteria, no? There's a post on the front page right now entitled "Dating with Graph Search". Another called "Love for Makers".
By your criteria we should have all flagged the posts about Steve Jobs' death, right?
Ye guys, go back to reading about that one guy who wrote a less popular web framework bitching about every other web framework.
I don't see any "self-examinination" happening on the other side: that this is taken too far, that women maybe don't chose CompSci careers for other reasons besides "sexism" (the least of which are bloody crazy expectations of overtime and having to do rather mundane programming chores 90% of the time), and that not every field has to have a 50-50 men/women representation (nobody fights for more women coal miners. Why is that?).
Looks like "rampant sexism in tech" is the gospel, and only everybody disagreeing must "self-examine his perception".
" We're assuming these are fake, and that someone just got hold of their Facebook and Twitter passwords. On the other hand, I notice the same statement has appeared on their blog. So maybe it's real. "
If you can ignore the actual content of the fired employees' speech, they were both fired for speech that was only tangentially connected to their official duties. Both the joke and the accusation was made on company time (as representatives at PyCon), but not in a direct manner (i.e. not "At PlayHaven, we all have huge dongles").
It's a little disturbing that a firing over he-said/she-said in such an expedited manner, during a time when the facts and intent are still in dispute (arguably moreso, given the fog and noise created by the outburst of discussion and tweets).
Don't forget that.
PlayHaven chose to fire one of the two, and publicly states that the other is a valued employee. None of us know what went into that decision, and there may well be a back story. My guess is that the PyCon incident was more likely a final straw than the full cause. But none of us know.
SendGrid had little choice about firing her. Clearly she is unable to effectively do her job at this point, and is drawing huge negative attention. No matter how well she's done her job until now, or how much the company might believe her side of the story, she's a huge liability.
All of that said, I would bet money that he'll get hired by someone before she does.
Edit: Confirmed mod action (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5416908). I think it's reasonable, but this blog post seems to confirm that the development is real. I agree with pg that reporter confirmation would be nice. Presumably that's on its way.
They're exactly the kind of thing that is a bad fit for HN. No one is going to change their mind after reading the posts. And, after the fifth thread, everything that has been said has been said and there's nothing new.
The post I replied to suggested 2 options - a flagging ring or official moderator action. There is a 3rd option: enough people think the articles fucking suck and are independently flagging that the articles are dropping position.
But -- I've read her blog post on the incident, and it comes off as so unapologetic, self-entitled and arrogant, while never saying that she is at least sorry for getting the guy fired, that I think that in this case she got what she deserved.
This is what I'm against: -- She eavesdropped on a private conversation ("it was loud enough" is no excuse: two people talking are TWO people talking). -- She took a picture and exposed said private conversation on Twitter. -- She got a guy fired and publicly shamed two people for making a joke in private. -- She never asked the guys to stop (if they were talking loudly), or complained to the conference organizers. -- She presented a joke as a "thought crime" to be shamed off. -- After the guy was fired, she never showed any sympathy or empathy. A guy that SHE got fired, and that hasn't done ANYTHING to her personally. -- She took advantage of the whole incident to promote herself and her job.
Still, I wouldn't want anyone to lose his job over something like this. Asked to offer a public apology would be enough.
Yes, it was immature. It was no reason to get up in arms over. Her blog post, with the "Think of the Children" aspect was equally immature in a different way.
The reason I'm sure Adria was fired was because she continued to handle the situation poorly and unprofessionally.
I think both parties should have been reprimanded, and apologized, and that should have been that. Instead there's a few people without jobs and a public disgrace.
I really don't like this idea of internet vigilantism via twitter or DDOS threatening people's jobs.
I would certainly not feel great if somebody who disliked me decided to get back at me by sending a message to my employer threatening to smash up their premesis if they didn't fire me, which is basically what this amounts to.
I wonder if the lady in question and the guys making the dick jokes could get together and make a collective apology to the python community and salvage something from this clusterfuck?
A childish, humorless joke turns into this situation?
PS: I really wish the mods would deign to respons when stuff is getting mass deleted like this. This is quite possibly the most intensely debated story right now, and not letting us talk about it has rather unfortunate implications.
Is there a right or wrong answer? Probably not. To borrow the title of an absurdly sexual book referenced a thousand times in this argument, it's fifty shades of gray.
I'd like to at least see what the community thinks on these topics, so I can make better informed decisions later on. Not to mention understanding even how to communicate those decisions to the public.
What they need to do is hire someone who will simply take care of the situation by assuring their whole base that this sort of thing will: not happen again, and will be dealt in private. Everything blew up because they chose to handle it publicly.
Hey, at least she doesn't have three kids to take care of.
Seriously though, what about everyone else at SendGrid who is suffering through this ordeal because of this one bad employee? They're going through a hard time, too, and they really do need a good PR person. Badly.
Less Eye for an Eye, more code for more peace.
Write code, don't tweet.
Effective immediately, SendGrid has terminated the employment of Adria Richards. While we generally are sensitive and confidential with respect to employee matters, the situation has taken on a public nature. We have taken action that we believe is in the overall best interests of SendGrid, its employees, and our customers. As we continue to process the vast amount of information, we will post something more comprehensive.
My understanding is that the publicity of the reported issue was the cause of the lay-off.
That being said, I don't know what happened behind the doors of SendGrid. I'm not happy to hear anyone lose their job over this and I hope, for the sake of morale at SendGrid, it wasn't the company being scared of the internet.
Everyone would have come out of that scenario smelling better than they smell now.
"Have you ever used SendGrid?" "Oh you mean the people with the crazy vindictive developer evangelist?"
http://www.webpagescreenshot.info/i/240616-321201371406pm.pn...