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Comment by tomp | Hacker News Reader

Although this would seem to be another knee-jerk, exaggerated reaction, and I personally believe that she shouldn't have been fired (and that the first guy shouldn't have been either), we should also consider the SendGrid CEO's position; his company is under attack, might fail, so getting rid of the person whom this attack is targeting seems like the obvious thing to do.

I'm guessing that SendGrid will loose some other customers now, as a result of this last action. Suspending her would be more reasonable.

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It does seem like a knee jerk reaction, but speaking just from an HR perspective she failed quite spectacularly in her own duties and responsibilities to her employer, given that her job description involves public relations.

Clearly, her tweets did not bring about the positive effect for SendGrid PR that she might have expected. Even worse, no matter what happens now there is a smoking crater where all the positive feels about SendGrid used to be, whether they retain her or not, and she's the one who knocked the meteor out of orbit.

The whole situation is bad but I don't see how she'd ever be able to continue in the PR role for SendGrid... so what do they do with her otherwise? And why didn't they convince her to (or allow her to) resign?

The DDOS attack on SendGrid's web and mail servers stopped about an hour and a half after they announced that they were firing Richards. Also the community backlash against Richards was huge, while there weren't many supporting her actions. From SendGrid's point of view, this was a good business decision.

I'm more worried about this than I am about the pointless drama that lead up to it. That sort of provocative weakness is going to have externalities on the Internet at large and shouldn't be tolerated.

No, it sure as hell was not a "good business decision".

They got attacked by errant children expressing sad rage at something that while bad, was not deserving of retaliation against the company. So the result: the company ditches one of their employees for very dubious reasons.

Basically they caved to internet bullying and validated every sexist moron on the internet. Well done Sendgrid. Well done.

Every hour let's say they're losing 1% of their customer base. What would you do?

Contact the FBI to report the DDOS attack?

Whats the FBI going to do? Revolutionize a new way of countering DDOS attacks in a few hours?

I want to hang out in your NOC.

How do we know that SendGrid fired her to stop the DDOS, and it wasn't due to her poor conduct on Twitter? (calling herself Joan of Arc, posting email and IP addresses of blog commenters, baiting trolls, etc.)

Agreed.

It seems that she involved them in a battle not of their choosing, one that they apparently don't want to fight, and she has since suffered the consequences.

Maybe not a "good" business decision, but an "understandable" one. If the "errant children" are among the group she was evangelizing to, she clearly could not have been effective in her job, especially since the "errant children's" peers were not coming to her defense - at least not in large numbers, as far as Sendgrid was concerned. I do hate that they caved to bullying/blackmail. I would like to see both fired parties re-hired after the dust settles, but I know that's very unlikely.

Most of the DDOS stuff probably came from teenage 4channers rather than professional python developers. At least I hope so.

No.

She made a big stink about what she overheard in a private conversation between two friends, and posted it on Twitter. Probably would not have been a big deal except that one of them, a father of three, was fired as a result. Not her direct doing, but seemingly a consequence of her actions.

She then was found to be a bit of a hypocrite, based on her own tweets: https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425 (she makes her own dick joke)

Some more digging found that she's made some strangely bizarre comments about racism, saying "Black people can't be racist". https://twitter.com/adriarichards/statuses/6039856858

She then says that her company stands behind her, bringing them into the mix. https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/314452708549603328

That was her undoing.

She made a big deal out of something that shouldn't have been, handled it in a totally unprofessional manner, brought a bunch of unwanted attention to her and her employer, and made her association to her employer a problem for her employer.

She was the author of her demise, nobody else.

EDIT: Edited to better reflect the timeline, which I totally mis-tense-ified initially.

> She then makes some strangely bizarre comments about racism

Actually, that was not "then", that was 4 years ago. Doesn't make it any less wrong or racist, just saying that it's not connected to this scandal.

True. My bad, and edited previous comment appropriately.

Seems that she got the attention she sought, but it quickly became a case of "be careful what you wish for". A little bit of digging into her tweet history brought some real gems to the forefront which didn't help her current situation.

While the timing would seem to indicate it is a direct reaction to the current shitstorm, I also can't imagine how she could continue with the company as an effective "developer evangelist" after an incident like this.

It's possible (although unlikely) that this _is_ a suspension.

"Tell the DDoS clowns that she's no longer employed there, they move on, after the Internet recovers from its non-linear response to this whole situation, reinstate her with a profuse apology to everyone."

I'm not sure that's better than just muscling through the DDoS, but when you can't deliver service to your customers, some folks get creative.

I think that would make the company look even worse. Announcing they're going to fire someone then retracting that statement when things die down? Sounds childish and unprofessional (much like this whole situation).

I'm pretty sure the most professional behavior right now as far as SendGrid was concerned was being able to do their job and provide their service to their customers at all.

And I can neither fully agree nor disagree: there are people specialized in handling and diverting DDOS, but they cost money and they take time, during which customers relying on SendGrid get no service and get frustrated.

Retain her as a consultant, maybe?

> we should also consider the SendGrid CEO's position

Yeah, SendGrid was definitely between a rock and a hard place on this one, they could either resist blackmail and potentially lose a lot of business due to not being able to service their users at all (at least in the short term, bringing in DDOS specialists is not an instant proposition), or they could just fold and look weak but have their service back up.

Both alternatives were shitty for most people involved.

You are probably unfortunately correct.

This should be scary. What if a mob or someone with access to a botnet contacts your employer and demands you be fired?

This whole thing is very sad. People did wrong things but are getting punishment way out of whack for the "crime."

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