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I wish I could say that I'm surprised that anyone is attacking SendGrid. Even though they have done nothing to deserve such backlash - both before and after firing Adria Richards - it doesn't surprise me in the least that people are taking the opportunity to unleash hateful comments and demonstrate poor attitudes.

I agree with you all the way, other than that. SendGrid made a great case for departing with Ms. Richards and I think it's pretty clear that her role as a developer evangelist is certainly harmed and she can no longer continue in that role. It has nothing to do with gender, and it has nothing to do with her being offended by those comments, but it has everything to do with the poor way she handled calling out these guys and the fact that she cannot participate in a developer community without developers being fearful of how they conduct themselves within earshot of her (they weren't even talking to her!).

[Edit: Downvoting this eh? If you downvote, you should really participate in the discussion and tell me why I might be wrong.]

> Even though they have done nothing to deserve such backlash

They fired an employee without due process. Apparently a knee-jerk reaction rather than considered disciplinary process.

They capitulated to an anonymous DDOS. Even with a ridiculous demand. Giving the impression they were not technically able to bring the service back up by themselves.

Neither of these gives me confidence in trusting SendGrid with email. The first makes me think they'll be happy doing rash and possibly illegal things like sending email data in response to a subpoena. The second makes me doubt their future reliability.

> They fired an employee without due process. Apparently a knee-jerk reaction rather than considered disciplinary process.

How do you know? Are you at SendGrid? Did you speak to Adria? Have you talked with the founders, CEO, legal counsel?

Colorado, like California, is an employment-at-will state and has been since 1987. The employer may terminate an employee for a million reasons under the sun. IANAL but I think most other people who have been in the working world more than a few years understand what that means.

In a way, I was incorrect... they did do a few things to deserve such backlash. They lacked tact in their initial posts about firing Ms. Richards. They should've led with the "Difficult Situation" post. If you read the post, which they finally churned out a few hours after declaring her employment terminated, you can see that it wasn't terribly rash. They certainly thought it out. Would you have held onto an employee you couldn't trust?

As for their technical abilities, I'm not able to judge that - so you may be correct about such competencies. However, "due process" isn't necessarily for firing an employee in Colorado, and besides, we don't know what went on as this developed and how the company actually went about terminating Ms. Richards' employment. We may find that out soon.

>They fired an employee without due process.

Are you joking? She was basically PR for the company. She obviously can't continue on in that role. What should they have done exactly?

EDIT: Further she even claimed they supported what she did...

I agree that the backlash to SendGrid has been extreme, and an overreaction, but I feel that they were at least partially to blame before firing Ms. Richards. She stated the SendGrid supported her actions, and without SendGrid saying anything, they are implicitly agreeing that they support her. So I feel people have a right to be angry with SendGrid for supporting Ms. Richards, and I understand people who wrote them angry letters, or made a decision to boycott them.

On the other hand, I don't support people launching a DDoS, or any other sort of a more extreme response.

I see what you're saying. I'm not entirely sure I agree, especially since they waited for a while to come out with commentary about it. Additionally, although she said that they support her, that may have never been true. But I see what you're saying and that's legitimate.

> She stated the SendGrid supported her actions, and without SendGrid saying anything, they are implicitly agreeing that they support her.

I don't think we can blame SendGrid for wanting to take a few hours to figure out this mess and respond appropriately, and I don't think we can believe someone that was acting irrationally to begin with to make definitive commentary on where her company stands on the matter.

> I'm honestly surprised that anyone is [...] defending Ms Richards

Even though I think she messed up in a big way, that there wasn't sexism, that she is a hypocrite, and that she really kept asking for it, much of the aggressive abuse directed at Adria Richards since the initial event has been totally out of control, and would count as criminal hate in some countries.

For starters, look at the comments on her Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/adriarichards

Couldn't agree more.

I want to live in a world where I can make dick jokes as much as the next guy, but the response to this scares me a billion times more than the possibility of getting reported/fired/beat-up/shamed for making some insensitive joke.

Many of us are basically rabid babies foaming at the mouth to join some mob, and go wage a holy war against something controversial just so we could calm our own insecurities and complexes. Why are so many people (men mostly) so adamant in expressing their opinion on this one particular issue. Yeah we get it, she messed up and you're indignant.. now shut the fuck up. And then there are other ones who feel that because of the way she handles herself, Adria Richards becomes fair game for anonymous and violent rape threats, being called cunt and bitch... and the 'civilized' ones somehow shrug it off with a "Well.. she brought it on herself.. internet is a cruel place, and she rubbed it the wrong way." This kind of shit makes me more convinced than ever that humanity won't end with a meteor strike or a giant earthquake, but a mob of assholes with superman complexes and pitchforks going around making sure that people understand their vision of justice.

I agree that the reactions and backlash she got were way beyond the line and not deserved.

But that doesn't change the fact that she shouldn't have done what she did, and as a Sendgrid customer I believe they took the right decision.

Wow, after seeing her Facebook, i can't believe that so much people would react that way, doing exactly the same thing they are supposedly condemning. Very messed up. Thanks for sharing.

The joke was between 2 people seated behind her -- were both engineers at Playhaven? Was the other person fired?

Edit: Why the downvotes? Is there something I've missed? Does this comment really prevent further discussion on the issue?

Well, there's tons of commentary on the issue, and I think you are getting down-voted (I didn't DV you, FWIW), because you could've read or searched through them to figure out whether the other guy was fired.

The answers are: if you had seen the photo in question, you'd see that the two engineers are actually wearing PlayHaven T-Shirts, which strongly implies that if one of them works for PlayHaven, then the other does too (which was corroborated in another thread).

The other person wasn't fired because he was the recipient of the joke, rather than the producer.

Thanks for connecting the dots for me. I had every point of data you mentioned, but somehow didn't combine them into that information.

Yes they were both engineers at Playhaven. The other person was not fired. It would make little sense to fire someone for being told a joke.

Comrade Stalin disagrees.

> Most people in the media (news readers and so forth) have a "morals clause" in their contract because they publicly represent the company. This situation is much the same.

Indeed, community manager (call that evangelist if you want to) is a weird job. You're supposed to be social, natural - to be as you would be in private life. In cases like these, you're even supposed to use your own identity to support the brand : you are someone real, that get in touch with real people in the most friendly fashion.

But you can't be yourself too much. That's a problem here, since you don't have any other "real" identity. You have to be the brand and as such, everything you do and say is backed up by the brand.

Adria used her own personal twitter account to make her statement, that sounds legitimate. But developer has been fired because she had the weight of sendgrid brand.

That's something very pervert in the community manager / evangelist job : you sell your social self (something I guess politicians know well).

On a side note, I'm quite surprised this can happen in the US, which places free speech as the one and most important right. Not when related to business.

Ah, two great points: 1) the difficulty / contradictions in community manager / evangelist jobs, and 2) free speech in the US.

I am not sure where you are from - France, judging by the hour, grammar, punctuation? - but after living outside the US and having the luxury of observing my home country from the outside, I have found that free speech is not treated with as much value as we seem to claim. Some would say that free speech in the US is very much threatened nowadays.

France indeed. And sorry for the grammar ;)

Not a bad thing; it is actually quite good. It is more that French speakers compose things certain ways :)

Free speech in the US says the government cannot make laws to curtail your speech in most circumstances.

Free speech does not, however, protect you from dealing with the consequences of your speech.

But you'd think if we really value free speech in this country, and not just the First Amendment, we wouldn't be so quick to want to suppress the speech of others.

It's not about suppressing - she spoke freely, and inadvisedly.

The consequences of this were a man losing his job and a big backlash.

This made it difficult for her to do her job effectively, lowering her value to her company to zero (and probably a large negative).

I don't see that SendGrid was acting to suppress her free speech. Instead, they were writing down an asset that had declined radically in value.

A business has a right to communicate freely as well, for example to make a strong statement by firing an employee.

Getting involved between private parties is generally not productive in the long run, as it necessarily provides the government more control over speech. Private business may abuse civil rights from time to time, but the government has far more potential (and historic precedence) for abuse.

Freedom of speech is the freedom to announce to the world that you are an idiot.

It is NOT the freedom to force others not to listen to or act on what you say. I cannot for the life of me figure out why so many people misunderstand this.

Actions have consequences, and this includes speech. It is not the job of any American to support thouse who espouse beliefs they find repugnant, just because they have the freedom to speak up about those same beliefs.

Yes, I understand that. It was a blanket statement about freedom of speech, not necessarily a direct correlation between the situation and freedom of speech.

> Some other commenters suggest Ms Richards can sue

That will completely total what's left of her reputation and the re-employment perspectives. She appears to be a "people's person" thriving on social interaction, but nobody likes litigious persons.

> I'm honestly surprised that anyone is attacking Sendgrid, defending Ms Richards, attacking PyCon or defending Playhaven in this incident.

Indeed. SendGrid did not have many options there. Playhaven, on the other side, could have dealt with the situation in a graceful and humane manner (absolutely nothing would have been lost if they just temporarily suspended the guy), but chose not to.