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.
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.
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.
{{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.