Fired SendGrid Developer Evangelist Adria Richards Speaks Out
allthingsd.com
allthingsd.com
What happened at PyCon was nerds making nerd jokes. People talk to each other at public events, even with people on stage, and the appropriate thing to do is turn around and ask them politely to keep it down. That is all there is to say on that matter.
What happened because of what happened at PyCon was the result of people who have nothing better to do than form at-the-minute internet mobs of hate. While we have a lot of growing to do as a community, it continues to disappoint me that the Greater Internet Dickwad Theory as it relates to this situation keeps being strictly applied to developers who I would wager were actually a very small percentage of the actual trolls involved in harassing her. Trolls that have been actively harassing anyone they so please for years.
The best thing about situations like this is that they give you a good excuse to disconnect. To go off-the-grid to try to find yourself again. I would love the opportunity to do such a thing myself and I think we all should; the internet is a quickly moving rapids and it is easy to get sucked under. And while I agree that maybe there should be a group that acts as a safe place for people to shed light on their experiences and try to figure out how to combat them, I don't think now is the time for her to try to say that she should be an "integral part" of such a group. Especially because she used what could have been a perfect opportunity for her to officially apologize to state how hard of a week it has been for her, personally, and not for the man who lost his job and the countless females for whom she claimed to be acting on behalf of.
there's been a rebuttal to this concept in the form of the #iaskedpolitely tag on twitter. Not everyone is comfortable with direct confrontation in situations like these.
That said, PyCon had specifically appropriated their CoC to ensure that people had avenues to communicate problems they were having. The argument was then "But I'm the victim, why should I have to get up and do something about it when I did nothing wrong?" which just kind of boggles my mind. Do you or don't you want to make the effort to report this? You will inevitably have to spend time going over it face-to-face with event staff anyway, digging into time you wanted to spend doing something else, so you might as well just get it over with. Fortunately at events, someone will probably have recorded the talk and you can just watch it later.
Hopefully next year there will be a way to report via SMS, although I suspect that the ease-of-use that provides will bring about its own set of problems.
correct, talking to event staff is absolutely what someone should do if they feel uncomfortable directly confronting someone. I just hope that people feel comfortable doing this at next years Pycon, without fear of being ostracized for "not asking directly first". I'm disturbed at the level of anger over the idea of someone not being comfortable with direct confrontation.
Before you bring out the pitchforks, taking a photo and tweeting is entirely the wrong move and I am not defending that action in any way. I'm only referring to the concept that a safe conference place should be OK with people talking directly to event staff.
> That said, if your anxiety prevents you from standing up for yourself in the first place, then that problem exists outside of the realm of this individual situation and perhaps it is in your best interest to figure out why that is the case and what you can do about it because this will not be the first, last or worst of what life will deal you. Living in fear is the worst way to live, something I am aware of first-hand. It should not hold you captive in your own life. I wish the best to all of those struggling and hope they can find the courage within themselves.
I have a lot of background in this area as well, and while it's always great if people can learn to overcome all their issues and glide through all social situations in an impressively adept style in all cases, it's not very realistic. Everyone is only capable of being exactly where they are at in their lives, and that should not be a reason to avoid conferences. (Edit: nor is it realistic to assume that someone who is afraid to confront someone even has a problem - fear is not intrinsically a disease, it is a mechanism that very necessarily exists to protect the species from harm - it is only excessive and unfounded fear that is a pathology. Direct confrontation is absolutely not advised in many, many cases, and I'm sure you've had your own experiences where this approach goes terribly wrong.)
That was her goal from the beginning, people like that don't really care, for them it's a hustle.
This person was jaded to begin with. With her blog domain "butyoureagirl". She's gonna cash in heavy on the whole ordeal of sexism in our field. She was prepared.
It's odd, though, as a developer evangelist you'd assume she would have her Github on "Connect with me" widget on the site.
LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and even Youtube. But no Github.
"... she work to promote inclusivity within the developer community"
Yeah people like that aren't here for the code, they're here to cash in. Branding baby.
The term conference hoe' comes to mind, you know, all gender neutral and shit.
Agree. But would like to point out that most likely the developer I will assume admitted to readily (and honestly) what he had actually said.[1] He may not have thought it was so bad -or- he simply underestimated the reaction of his employer. Hard to believe that if he had hemmned and hawed a bit and put off saying anything (giving himself a chance to think it through) that the employer would have fired him a) based on what a friend or third party reported or b) based on what Adria Richards did.
[1] Remind me of the scene in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" where Judge Reinhold (the fast food clerk in the particular scene) admitted being surly with a customer and was fired by the manager on the spot.
This sounds a bit like a lawsuit brewing.
This statement seems very pruned compared to her previous writing and blog posts.
Although I'm kind of happy that this fiasco has shed some light on sexism in technology, I'm glad to see that it has stopped snowballing into a circus.
1. They didn't dismiss her until several days after the incident and at a time when SendGrid was being attacked by a DDoS, an attack that Richards may argue was a misogynistic retaliation.
2. Several days, especially when at least a couple of those days were during a company-wide emergency, is a pretty short time to decide on a public dismissal of an employee. What are the chances that some things were not properly lawyered or that email communications were less than flattering on SendGrid's part during this hectic time?
Consider a workplace scenario:
Employee A is unhappy about coworker B. Instead of discretely talking to management about it, Employee A publicly shames B. B is fired. There's a big hoopla about it outside the company. Employer fires A stating that A can no longer perform their job due to the way A handled B.
Did she formally report the issue to her employer's HR department, or did she just make a public tweet?
If there's a lawsuit brewing, it's also possible that she's the one being sued by the developer who got fired due to her actions.
Her ONLY safe play, long-term, was to apologize for how she handled the issue (which was not exclusive to pointing out the inappropriate commentary!) and make a lateral career shift of some sort.
Was she fired for reporting sexual harassment? No. She was fired for making it into a failed personal publicity stunt at the expense of her employer.
In an office environment, if you are the recipient to sexual harassment and you don't feel comfortable confronting the individual, you go to HR or your boss and discuss it. You do not send a company wide email telling everyone what occurred.
It's a prime example of what happens when we defend and escalate an uncomfortable situation rather than face it. Adria is definitely guilty of that, having taken the issue public so quickly. But I am very confident that the two men whose verbal comments prompted her response also allowed the situation to escalate before changing their behavior.
I'm pleased to see those involved address the situation directly, honestly and maturely. That's the only rational way to handle this sort of thing.
Maybe you mean them posing for shot she took without asking permission? Is that it?
This was all In Adrians head, the woman is disturbed and lacks some serious self awareness.
I couldn't get through the first sentence without laughing. How does shaming two men by posting their picture on Twitter qualify as "building bridges for everyone"? I think she is lacking in self-awareness.
The real question is what she thinks suing sendgrid is going to get her. What's she going to try to do, bring a sexism case against them?
Now a speaking or media career maybe...
Read: Adria has been fired from her day job at Sendgrid but will continue to be fine on the feminist lecture circuit.
Especially since we have multiple verified examples (not just PyCon) where she chose destructive escalation over constructive dialogue.
Anyone else feel like this is going beyond political correctness? The article, and her statement, are oozing with spineless statements. What happens when you get offended? Nothing.
Regardless of what you think of Adria's actions, it's not hard to imagine that the last two weeks must have been hellish for her.
I think it's brave and noble for her to make (what seems to me) to be an attempt at civil dialogue.
In effect she's saying: I want to keep talking about this, and including everyone in the conversation. After all she's been through. That's an impressive thing to say. Regardless of how many lawyers it got filtered through.
> In effect she's saying: I want to keep talking about this,
To me, it looks like a statement prepared by a legal team.
i can already see the massive proliferation of female/minority hiring that will overtake the tech industry once this episode is over.
who wouldn't want a week of massively negative PR, a crippling DDOS attack, and then a lovely lawsuit? sounds like every executive's dream scenario.
As for the incident itself, however, it's clearly possible to have different opinions, which is why you see a lot more conversation about it. It's actually the more interesting topic of the two.
When is it O.K. to at least make someone else aware that they are making you uncomfortable? Is it a good idea to create situations where bringing in a third party is an acceptable response to a situation? What is a constructive way to handle situations where someone feels aggrieved but few people agree with them? And so on.
Instead, we get lots of picking at the details of this incident, or uninteresting analysis of what motivates Adria Richards (most of us are flawed enough that we are not fully aware of our own motivations, never mind those of a stranger).
I suppose there is at least some contingent that would point at the legal system and say "There's your guide to behavior, right there." I also suspect that there would be a majority that disagreed with them.
The debate I've seen includes, amongst other positions:
a) It's work, so needs a professional attitude
b) It's just a joke, so should be forgiven
c) It lowers the tone
d) It makes a hostile atmosphere for women
e) It was a private conversation
f) It was a public space
g) It's against the conference policy
h) The problem wasn't the policy, but the public outing
i) Twitter isn't public
j) Is it sexist to use sexual imagery?
k) Have the companies responded correctly?
... etc. Lots of debate from what I've seen
it appears to be a perfect storm, where the deviations from what might be acceptable are minor, but the results are huge. One thing I take away is that if something isn't done* to deal with the tendency of the internet to make something viral, everyone will be walking on eggshells ... whether making a joke or posting something on twitter.
* I have no idea what that could be, though.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/courtneystanton/a-woman-walks-into-a...
That you don't think there's much to say is itself highly indicative of how completely tone-deaf the tech community is about gender issues.
The more debatable issue is getting more traffic, which is only understandable.
You seem to feel that the amount of discussion relates to how acceptable something is. I feel it relates to how debatable it is.
The tech community immediately and decisively latched onto a convenient portrait of Richards as an underhanded, incompetent, cowardly, race-baiting, gender-baiting fraud with a manipulative agenda to aggrandize herself at the expense of everyone around her.
No amount of counter-evidence could make a dent in this depiction, a depiction that is immediately slapped onto every woman who dares to speak up about gender issues in the tech industry [1]. Everyone read and referred to the Amanda Blum post [2], but totally ignored a detailed review [3] of the instances Blum cited that cast them in a far more detailed and less sinister light.
No matter how you try to parse it, it's unambiguously clear that our community whipped itself into an apoplectic firestorm of outrage when a woman complained about behaviour in a conference that violated the conference's code of conduct, but at best shrugged and at worst said she deserved it when that very firestorm of outrage turned into an outpouring of the most vile, vitriolic and disgusting abuse, insults, threats and mockery against her.
That says something most disturbing about our community, and the collective unwillingness even to acknowledge it, let alone come to terms with it, should be all the evidence we need that our blind spot on gender issues is as pervasive as ever.
References
[1] http://www.buzzfeed.com/courtneystanton/a-woman-walks-into-a...
[2] http://amandablumwords.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/3/
[3] http://www.technologywoman.com/2013/03/24/digging-beneath-th...
I would also add that I find it hard to work through your comments as they are laden with the same extremely emotional language you disapprove of.
Paragraph 1: piling on, condescension, chauvinism, summarily dismissed, perfunctory hand waving, shouting down.
Paragraph 2: underhanded, incompetent, cowardly, race baiting, gender baiting, fraud, manipulative, aggrandise.
Paragraph 3: immediately slapped onto, totally ignored.
Pargraph 4: unambiguously clear, whipped itself into an apoplectic firestorm of outrage, at best shrugged, firestorm of outrage, outpouring of the most vile, vitriolic and disgusting abuse, insults, threats and mockery
Paragraph 5: disturbing, unwillingness to even acknowledge it, blind spot on gender issues.
Look, I will simply point out, again, that I disagree with the abuse that Adria has had to suffer.
However, I think that there are also interesting things that can be said about what is or is not acceptable at a conference, and that that debate is ongoing.