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Comment by forrestthewoods | Hacker News Reader

I have little to no knowledge of laws in this area. However my gut tells me that Sendgrid is opening themselves up to a hell of a lawsuit. Can anyone who actually does know about such matters comment?

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Her job was developer-oriented PR. Her actions resulted in a loss of trust in SendGrid by proxy, as well as direct negative impact on SendGrid's operations.

By any reasonable measure, that's grounds for termination; her actions harmed the company's reputation and cost them financially. If you can't fire someone for that, I'm not sure what you could fire for.

More so, her actions have opened her up to a lawsuit by Sendgrid for financial losses incurred by her actions outside her contract of employment.

But no smart company would pursue that route, the PR would cost them more.

What in particular do you think makes them vulnerable to a lawsuit? I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is that in the US, it is legal to fire most non-contract employees at any time, without any notice, and for pretty much any reason (or even lack of a reason) other than outright discrimination based on nationality/gender/religion/etc.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment and specifically the "Statutory exceptions" section.

This is totally correct. I actually really love at-will from both points of view because it promotes freedom for all parties involved. Hate your job? Quit. Hate your employee? Fuck 'em, terminate them.

The timing is what makes them vulnerable. They can claim whatever they want as the reason for firing, but the timing will look bad in they eyes of sympathetic jury.

Can you fire someone for being the victim of a crime? They clearly fired her here in response to a DDoS.

I guess I wouldn't be surprised if shitty American employment law permits it, but it's not ethical on the employer's part.

They fired her because she could no longer be effective in the position they hired her for.

That's the official line, but I don't believe it.

You not believing it doesn't really qualify as a violation of the law.

Yes.

Edit: Especially given my short response, I think it is important to reiterate how much I am not a lawyer.

Why do you think this? Most employment in California (at least from my personal experience) is "at-will". Either party can terminate at any time with no notice and with no cause.

Also in this case the reasons have nothing to do with her gender, but more that she failed at her job at being a developer evangelist.

At will employment does not protect against wrongful termination due to discrimination or retaliation[1]. It's obviously going to be up to a number of lawyers to figure out if there's a strong case for that to be made here.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment#Statutory_ex...

I doubt that. It is explicitly against the PyCon Code of Conduct to photograph attendees without their permission. Adria Richards did just that, on company time.

I've seen this said a few places, but I'm not seeing it in the code of conduct at https://us.pycon.org/2013/about/code-of-conduct/.

"Harassing photography" is banned. I'm setting aside the question of whether her Twitter posted photo counts as "harassing photography", but I can't find a blanket ban on photography without permission.

With most firms, when you join you are required to sign an agreement. In that agreement, usually it is stated that you agree to comply to a certain employee handbook or standards of conduct.

If she violated the standards of conduct, since employment is conditional on compliance, they can fire her and will most likely win any lawsuit on the matter unless a court deems that the standards themselves are illegal.

Most private sector employees in the US are employed at will, which means that they can be fired for any reason or for no reason. There’s a specific set of reasons that you can’t fire an employee for, including some kinds of discrimination (race, sex, religion, and a few other categories). You don’t necessarily need to violate an employee handbook, although if there is a risk that the employer is accused of discrimination, a violation of company rules could help the employer in case there’s a lawsuit.

Why is that? She lost them a lot of business, as he said she was not good PR, it seems pretty reasonable to fire her.

Definitely would be a lawsuit except she plastered who she worked for all over her twitter account, that means they can fire you for the slightest infractions as you are now acting as their PR dept. If it were a private account with no notice who she worked for they would have a court case, but alas.

If you make a big mistake that costs a lot of money a company is allowed to fire you in most cases.

I doubt it. For something this public, they must have consulted with employment law specialists before firing her.

Same. I am also very curious about any legal consequences Sendgrid may be subjected to, even though I COMPLETELY support their actions (and the ability for business managers to have more power over terminating employees).

I don't see why. Especially given the role of developer relations. It seems an incident like this is sure to effect her in that role.

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