This is the most reasonable statement I've seen so far in this whole fiasco. It's a shame he took so long to post it; it should have been the first SendGrid comment this morning.
I think the fact that Paul Graham, after applying Occam's razor, preferred to think it was done from a compromised account speaks volumes here.
I don't know why anyone would believe it could be a hack hours after it was posted and nobody in the company reacted to it.
With that said... a "heat of the moment" firing does nobody any good, but I haven't seen evidence of the manner of the firing (perhaps I missed some articles that talked about it).
For example, I believe that the second amendment allows Americans ownership of AR-15s, which some people refer to as 'assault rifles'. This is a hot button issue right now, and there are reasonable arguments on both sides of the debate. If I posted something that somehow offended approximately half of our customers (assuming approximately half of the people fall on either side of the debate) would that be terminable? Where is the threshold? If I post it from a company Twitter feed?
What is the right recourse if I said something that isn't particularly offensive to my employer, but harvests bad will from potential or current customers? Is "Developer Evangelist" a 'star-like' job position where I lose my right to privacy as a result of it?
Note, all these questions are hypothetical, but I'm curious as to exactly what degree of nonsense a company might be expected to put up with.
I don't know what this has to do with privacy. Adria made her comments in the public sphere, seemingly to deliberately solicit attention. If you take on a role in the public sphere, you should expect scrutiny.
I am a public representative of a software company in a similar role to the one Adria had. I regularly refrain from commenting on a range of socio-political issues to avoid alienating my developer community. It just goes with the territory. If you don't like it, don't get into Developer Relations.
I suppose, in regards to 'privacy', I mention it because at least early on, Adria was commenting on her 'personal' Twitter feed. Understandably that Twitter account is public, I'm sure at least in part because of her role, but at the same time, I routinely make comments on socio-political issues on Facebook or Google Plus which thankfully have better privacy filters (to my knowledge at least, I don't use Twitter for much of anything).
Do you consider your role as an 'always-on' sort of position? If you're at a dinner party that consists almost entirely of close personal friends, do you still monitor your actions on the chance that the one person there you don't know might be a potential customer?
If someone were to trawl through my Twitter feed to make light of something offensive I once said, that's fair game. If I didn't want the world to see it, I wouldn't have put it out there.
When communicating in private, personal settings - and this includes IRC channels populated by friends, dinner parties, and so on - I am unrestrained. If someone were to publicly call me out on something I said personally to a friend in a private venue, I would consider that a breach my privacy.
{{citation needed}}
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5416979
His sin there is having higher expectations of people than are justified by reality, which is hardly the worst thing to be guilty of.
We're assuming these are fake, and that someone just got hold of their Facebook and Twitter passwords.
And he's right; [citation needed] on the DDoS being the motivating factor in her firing, as opposed, say, to her dragging her employer into the internet shitstorm that she started.
Being deliberate is fine, but when you make something a priority, you can get to the bottom of it faster and still get the right response.
Until they got DDoSed to hell, this apparently wasn't a serious priority for them.
That's what makes me think this was just another example of the "heckler's veto". There are no principles here, just giving the mob what it demands. No action until some idiots on the internet started attacking people, and when it happened, they just gave the idiots what they demanded in hopes of shutting them up.
Absolutely. Acting too quickly without fully understanding the situation could lead to a lawsuit
Yes, 48 hours can seem like an eternity in the tech world, but it prevents accidentally exacerbating the situation by acting with good intentions yet without a clear head.
This isn't even taking into account how long it takes to check with HR, legal, etc. All of which were probably necessary here.
Compare: http://braythwayt.com/2013/03/21/evangelism-pr.html
As far as I'm concerned that is the most reasonable response so far, by a long shot.
Amanda however vilifies Aria because she considers her too easily offended and finds her feminist agenda obnoxious.
I don't, because I believe she has the right to be a slightly obnoxious feminist and we should be defending her right to be that, even when we don't personally agree with it.
Raganwald expresses my more deep-seated feelings on the topic much more powerfully in this well crafted piece of satire.
The vast bulk of people who have commented in the last couple of days will have forgotten her name in several months.