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Comment by rdl | Hacker News Reader

It's entirely possible they let her go due to the DDoS, as an attempt to save their company. She shouldn't complain if her presence is fucking the company so much (even if not her fault), especially if given generous severance and/or a promise to rehire later. Even if she's not at fault at all, Sendgrid the company is in mortal peril due to her presence, and it's not fair to customers/coworkers/founders/investors.

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Regardless of the rest of this nightmarish mess, I find the idea that tech company individual hirings/firings could or should be influenced by the troglodytic dregs of the script kiddie community to be chilling.

If she has been fired because they're being DDoSed, that's a miserable precedent for anyone who works at a tech company.

I find the idea that tech company individual hirings/firings could or should be influenced by the troglodytic dregs of the script kiddie community to be chilling

I totally agree. It feels like a sort of toxic leakage of what should be safely contained in disreputable corners of the internet.

Her role is Developer Evangelist. I imagine she's being let go because they viewed her behavior as unprofessional for that role. References to 'large dongles' are not inherently sexist, at least in this context. And for her to publicly humiliate a developer for that amounts to SendGrid vouching for her actions, given her role.

Granted you're just saying that _if_ it's because of the DDOS this is inappropriate. I'd agree, but I doubt that's the reason, unless it is just what happened to draw their attention to this.

If her role is 'developer evangelist', then she's doing her role - being an evangelist about the developer culture. Evangelists 'spread the message', which is exactly how she behaved here.

For what it's worth, I think 'evangelist' is a stupid title and 'advocate' is better. Yeah, 'evangelist' sounds cooler, but evangelists get in your face about unprovable stuff and harass you until you comply - not something you want to evoke in your job title. The standard joke about door-to-door evangelists is that you shut the door in their face.

Still, doesn't that just feed the mob mentality? And can't Richards' supporters launch a DDoS as well?

So what you say is possible, and a panicked company might throw an employee overboard, but at the moment (11:13am pt) I still wouldn't rule out account-compromise-and-hoax.

>"And can't Richards' supporters launch a DDoS as well?"

The sentiment around places where "DDOSers" might hang out is pretty heavily against her. Remember, a programmer got fired for a harmless joke, at a programming conference, thanks to an over-zealous "evangelist".

This whole situation is ludicrous.

People who oppose her are more likely to DDoS anyway just for lulz, really. I suspect the lulz here are now self-sustaining, rather than an actual attempt at influencing policy.

Someone on their twitter feed mentioned 5 hours of downtime and that it's affecting his business.

I'd have switched already, because I can't see this getting resolved before next week at the earliest. There are just too many ways to continue to disrupt an ESP -- DDoS on the web, DDoS against SMTP, spam against people who fail to do proper DKIM/SPF, etc. Email deliverability isn't exactly the most reliable part of the Internet even normally, and when large numbers of motivated trolls have declared you the enemy, ...

Switching to Mailgun (for high value stuff) or Amazon SES (for low value/cheap) is pretty easy.

Don't negotiate with terrorists.

That only works when you are dramatically more powerful than the terrorists, though.

I'm not sure I agree. As soon as you reveal you're open for business like that, it's an invitation to be shaken down endlessly.

Normally you negotiate with the first one while hardening everything to take them on if it is attempted in the future. That's why the fledgling USN got the Constitution-class, or in this case, harden, develop better HR policies, and get cloudflare or prolexic.

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