If someone's making "fire the $@!#$ or your web site gets it" threats, I would hope SendGrid would have enough integrity to get law enforcement involved rather than just giving the people making the threats whatever they want.
Short story (from what I gathered): she took a picture of two guys saying they were making sexist remarks. Some of the remarks were silly but some of them were plainly made up by Adria Richards. One of the people in the picture lost their job over it and then the internet came to their defence claiming it wasn't just exaggeration but fabrication. Adria Richard's employer then decides to end their relationship with her.
It is an overreaction to say anything was "plainly made up by Adria Richards." She did, I think, misconstrue comments about forking. But there was a little room for misconstrual.
The problem isn't that Adria Richards lied (which makes this sound like a supposedly-typical 'woman lies about being raped situation'). The problem is that she overreacted and then chose to act self-righteously instead of de-escalating.
"misconstrue" becomes "made up" when you announce it to a crowd at large. At some point, confirmation was the polite thing to do, but we have gotten over that as a society.
Not really. I liked how PyCon organizers behaved during this whole thing - so good publicity for them, they showed they can handle such situations well and react to them sensibly.
the best comment yet.
there seems to be a growing segment of the population (mostly from the left) that wakes up each day looking for ways to be offended. It seems like such a miserable way to live one's life.
Are you sure? I'd presume their API cluster is hosted independently from their public website... unless Anonymous did their research and knows their API hostnames.
This is exactly the kind of situation where people discover their well-laid plans were faulty. NewsBlur learned this recently. And it's hard to test it out beforehand if you don't already have the traffic to test it with.
Odds are, this is just hundreds/thousands of new people trying the API out after this incident. DDoS by your own prospective customers.
"A stupid person is a person who caused losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses."
This doesn't seem to be known by most of the people raging about it. PyCon organizers talked to the parties involved. They didn't even kick anyone out, let alone post pictures or get either party fired.
Really? PyCon has done everything right in my opinion. What would you do differently if you were PyCon?
And you can't blame SendGrid for getting backed into a corner. Even without the DOS attack they still would have fired Adria sometime in the next few weeks with good cause.
This was pretty much the only thing SendGrid could have done in this situation. I haven't seen this much stink over a person's actions at a conference in a long time.
I do have to wonder: does this open SendGrid up to litigation by publicly announcing her termination? Affecting future employability, etc (not that she isn't at fault for that here).
They're free to end her employment without cause at any time (depending on local employment regulations). I don't see them making any other statement other than the fact that she no longer works for them, so they're probably in the clear.
It's tragically stupid with overreactions from one woman and two companies.
But still: that doesn't mean it isn't inappropriate/rude (to the point of being talked to by conference organizers) to use sexually suggestive potty humor loudly at a professional tech conference during a talk.
That's stupid. Save it for your buddies at the bar
I think the take-away here is that they were BOTH representatives of their respective companies and their actions reflected poorly on BOTH of them.
If there is one constant in business, it's that some people will constantly make bad choices handling themselves while representing their company. Ask anyone in HR.
Trying to be as sensitive about this, but hard to believe this is all over a dongle! I think it's because anonymous got involved http://pastebin.com/ubmznGhn
Really shitty to publicly announce a firing, regardless of how much of an imbroglio has formed around the situation. I think it would've gotten out without the press release, enough people are watching. Hard to see what Sendgrid gains by officially announcing it.
Congratulations, internet; a completely banal, pointless disagreement with zero stakes has ended with reputations tarnished, factions formed, threats hurled, feelings hurt, and two people out of work- and still nothing has been solved.
edit- this went off the front page REALLY fast, wtf
Wow - any idea on why this disappeared from the front page? It's only received more votes since my last refresh here... perhaps YC is moderating to mute drama from HN? Not a bad idea really... HN != lynchmob
This sucks. Regardless of your opinion of the situation she hasn't been fired because what she did was wrong, she has been fired because the internet is blackmailing her employer by destroying their business. It's almost guaranteed that she will have been well aware this was going to happen, they'll have parted on friendly terms and will be doing everything they can to help her get another job. Hell, she might have even been involved in the drafting of that Facebook post herself. This isn't a victory, SendGrid have been bullied/blackmailed into doing something they don't want to do.
If she was going to be fired for it should have been because of her actions, not because some dickwads are blackmailing the company. How very disappointing and now we'll never hear the last of this. Time to make use of filtering options in HackerNew (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hackernew/lgoghlnd...)
Edit edit: This thread has been killed so nobody is going to see this comment again so I will take the opportunity to say I'm ashamed to be a part of the internet today.
I agree that this is probably a response to public actions - the public actions she made as a public representative of their company.
Even if that is not THE reason, it's certainly a plausible reason, and one I find much more likely and commendable than reacting to a DDoS. However, perhaps we shouldn't just jump to conclusions ahead of a comprehensive statement.
Blackmailing? You have a very odd definition of blackmail.
Do you consider it blackmail when people refuse to buy Apple gear because of their patent trolling? How about people who refuse to buy Chik-Fil-A because of their donations to homophobic groups?
Sendgrid keeping on Adria after her actions would appear to a casual observer to be tacit acceptance of her actions. A stance, which after the thread yesterday, would seem to be morally unacceptable to a great deal of people.
There is nothing immoral about refusing to do business with a company based on their actions or inactions. Welcome to the free market!
The refusal to do service with a business is fine, free will and all that, the problem is that people are attacking the business and preventing them from doing any business with people that want to. This is a reaction to the DDoS...
Sure, it's speculation, that goes without saying but I'll put a lot of money on it.
Situation happens -> posts are made -> drama drama drama -> days go by -> Adria tweets that Sendgrid support her -> Sendgrid is taken offline, company suffers -> Adria is publicly fired.
There's no way she was going to be fired for her actions at the conference, however shitty they were she explicitly stated that Sendgrid supported her: https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/314452708549603328 unless she's delusional too...
It doesn't matter if it's speculation or not. The DDOS attack is disgusting and the instigators of the attack should be ashamed of themselves.
It doesn't matter if it's speculation or not. Anyone that boycotts a company because an employee used her bully pulpit to call out someone's misogyny is an asshole. Any company that reacts to that loss of business is also a company full of assholes.
It doesn't matter if it's speculation or not. The DDOS DID happen and anyone that says that it didn't influence their poor decision, is very confused about the world.
It doesn't matter if it's speculation or not. Everyone has lost in this situation. The original dickhead that didn't have enough sense to keep his misogyny out of ear shot which cost him his job, the company that fired him because they didn't want the exposure of keeping a sexist who was caught red handed being a sexist, the woman who has had to put up with some of the worst trolls on the web because she called out someone making sexist jokes, and the company that felt that they had to fire her because of the exposure of keeping her on the payroll AND because of the vicious disgusting amoral assholes that have attacked that companies servers.
Frankly. Frankly it doesn't matter. This situation sucks and the trolls are behind the steering wheel nearly every step of the way.
she went to the internet instead of actually speaking to the men. as she stated in her blog it was a `calculated` decision... she forgot that there are many other people outside of her twitter circle that could interpret this incident differently than herself. every company involved had to react to the PR storm that adria had caused. no one has gained anything from her actions, and it is a step backwards. the only good thing to come of this is PyCon amending their CoC.
I really think you should check the definitions of misogyny and sexism
misogyny n.: The hatred of women by men.
sexism n. : Prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, on the basis of sex.
Now go back and read what the men were actually making jokes about. As much as I hate to burst your bubble, dick jokes, as crude and inappropriate as they may be for a professional setting, do not show any "hatred" or "discrimination" towards women. Hell, women can make them as much as men can too. If a male overheard two women making vagina jokes do you think they would start to claim they have a "hatred (or discrimination) towards men"? Hell no. I thought the feminist movement was supposed to be about equality?
So what, they're going to give her a hidden paid vacation for a while and hope the attackers just forget about the whole thing? It'd seem to me if they are doing this to give into a demand, then they'd just get DDoS'd after it was found out they lied. Right?
Maybe SendGrid found out more information or found more persuasive arguments and changed their stance of support.
What? How can that make any sense? If they didn't need a Developer Evangelist then why did they have one in the first place? Are you seriously suggesting that their timing in firing her is completely coincidental?
She was fired for being totally clueless about the medium in which she claimed expertise. Your job is to make negative things go away quietly and to amplify the positive, not the opposite.
This story is an embarrassment for everyone involved except perhaps the 2 guys who started the whole thing.
* Adria Richards had a number of options starting with explaining to them that the jokes made her feel uncomfortable to reporting them to staff. Instead she went for the nuclear option of public shaming.
* Sendgrid will only appear to have done this in response to their site being subject to DDOS.
* Playhaven have overreacted in dismissing one of the guys (although their blog post suggests there might have been more behind it).
The guys involved apologised at the time and have done so publicly. I can't help but feel that if Adria had apologised for her course of conduct at the first opportunity, this thing would have blown over.
Instead you have another story about misogyny in the industry that has run for over 24 hours with nobody looking good at the end of it and everybody suffering.
This is why I've pointed out time and again in some other very passionate HN discussions why I don't like lynch mobs (of the Internet variety or otherwise).
that's not fair. So if someone is firing a gun at you, you can't fire back with a gun?
She bullied those men, costing one of them their job. How else do you respond except by bullying her?
God this is awful also. Nobody should have been fired.
Someone made an inappropriate joke at too high of a volume.
Somebody else felt uncomfortable and made a mistake in their reaction.
People make mistakes. Couldn't SendGrid have offered the guy a job and apologized profusely.
You could argue that her job is to be an advocate for SendGrid, and this incident has done the opposite. But I assume she was just fired so the ddos would go away.
Also announcing it on Facebook is brutal, even though they may have had no other choice.
+1. I'd love to see more grace in our industry. This is an overreaction on all fronts. People make mistakes. Let's rewind & keep hacking cool stuff together instead of DDoSing each other.
She didn't make a mistake, she made a calculated play -- she fancied herself a hero and victim at the same time, the level of self-aggrandizement on display was dizzying, she did it in public to make the mob lash out.
SendGrid is in an ugly place, probably losing customers by the minute. If I was currently a SendGrid customer, I would be taking my business elsewhere... for a variety of reasons.
SendGrid would have come out stronger from weathering the storm as a defender and promoter of women in tech. Instead, they're giving in to terrorism. Anyone feeling a sense of relief out of this situation is out of their mind.
I am not sure I agree. I don't think that their customers want to be dragged into any of this, they just want working mail... and will be unforgiving when the service is down.
As for being a "defender and promoter of women in tech" -- I guess it really depends on if you see her as the victim or the bully in the situation. Being a defender and promoter of bullies in tech is a far less noble badge to wear.
"SendGrid would have come out stronger from weathering the storm as a defender and promoter of women in tech."
Is that what they would have been though?
People are drawing attention to a load of things she's said on twitter and elsewhere that are more than a bit dodgy. A picture begins to form of someone on a mission which may not really be aligned with Sendgrid's requirements for an evangelist.
It's one thing to make a mistake. It's another thing to make a mistake when you're a public spokesperson/evangelist for your employer, use a widely public communication channel to publicly shame someone, and not expect your employer to do anything about that.
Every single piece of communication and action taken as a result of this whole boondoggle reads like satire. If I read an account of these events on the Onion, I'd think maybe they'd taken the satire too far; to the point of ridiculous that passes suspension of disbelief.
SendGrid is in a lose-lose situation. Either they keep Richards, deal with the DDOS (which has crippled their mail server), and deal with disgruntled male devs who've sworn to never use their service, or they fire Richards, get good PR from their client base (the male devs who had previously sworn to never use SendGrid), get that DDOS off their back, and deal with some negative PR from the 'feminists in tech' group.
> it only reinforces the 'tech world systematically suppresses women' meme.
No it doesn't. It actually reduces it. She is being treated as a complete equal here, in being called out and held accountable for her actions. It would be a setback if she were protected purely because she was "speaking out" about sexism.
I would have preferred if this entire ordeal was sorted out with a game of laser tag, it'd be a fitting conclusion to the level of bizarro-world-absurdity this issue has become.
> People make mistakes. Couldn't SendGrid have offered the guy a job and apologized profusely.
That sounds like it'd be really awkward for both Adria and the guy and eventually make it worse for SendGrid. If you've followed Adria's comments on her blog post, you'd realize it'd be a serious about-face to back down. The guy would probably have to grovel, and personally, in this case I'd rather be out of a job.
> You could argue that her job is to be an advocate for SendGrid, and this incident has done the opposite. But I assume she was just fired so the ddos would go away.
Why not both? It didn't give me a terribly negative view of SendGrid, but certainly warned me to steer clear of ever working for / with them for fear of stepping on overly-PC toes.
I guess it seemed relevant to me, because the whole point was that Adria was (perhaps too easily) triggered by comments with sexual undertones. There is something scatological and offensive about photocopying your bum, but it doesn't seem all that sexual. Mooning a stranger is obnoxious, but exposing yourself to a stranger makes you a sex offender.
(And yes, it's pretty easy to photocopy your ass without photocopying the other parts if you sit on the photocopier the right way.)
IMHO, it's more public and potential offensive than muttering 'dongle' in a crowded theater.
The point I was trying to make is that every party involved is in definitely in the gray area between offensive and unoffensive. She made sexual humiliation jokes in front of thousands of twitter followers. Her company made scatlogical jokes in a much more professional setting than a conference. Compared to these, muttering 'dongle' in a crowded theater is, you must admit, at least equally as offensiv, if not quite a bit less.
And nobody gave a damn about her twitter jokes or the company jobs page before this.
Nooooo.... this is NOT a good thing. The good thing would have been PlayHaven reinstating the fired person, and everyone apologizing to each other for bad behavior.
Firing is NOT the answer for such minor transgressions. Yes, there were mistakes on both sides, but to lose your job over it is a huge overreaction from HR. Perhaps the DDoS should've been directed at PlayHaven for overreacting and not SendGrid?
I can't help thinking that this is another inappropriate response to this whole debacle. Wouldn't it be better if they said "we won't fire someone because of an opinion they hold, but we will publicly ask the other company to reinstate the fired employee, assuming the reasons leading to the dismissal weren't unrelated to the incident"?
167 comments
[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 221 ms ] threadhttp://www.dailydot.com/society/pycon-dongle-joke-misogyny-s...
The problem isn't that Adria Richards lied (which makes this sound like a supposedly-typical 'woman lies about being raped situation'). The problem is that she overreacted and then chose to act self-righteously instead of de-escalating.
Now she is.
Odds are, this is just hundreds/thousands of new people trying the API out after this incident. DDoS by your own prospective customers.
Posted via HootSuite:
https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/show/314768776577036288.j...
It looks like SendGrid use HootSuite for both Facebook and Twitter - that'd be one way of gaining access to both accounts.
http://www.ecotopia.com/webpress/stupidity/
as an individual, you may be able to tell the balance on your death bed, finally and irrevocably.
as a society, the show always goes on.
Blaming Python for this is really insane
And you can't blame SendGrid for getting backed into a corner. Even without the DOS attack they still would have fired Adria sometime in the next few weeks with good cause.
I do have to wonder: does this open SendGrid up to litigation by publicly announcing her termination? Affecting future employability, etc (not that she isn't at fault for that here).
But still: that doesn't mean it isn't inappropriate/rude (to the point of being talked to by conference organizers) to use sexually suggestive potty humor loudly at a professional tech conference during a talk.
That's stupid. Save it for your buddies at the bar
If there is one constant in business, it's that some people will constantly make bad choices handling themselves while representing their company. Ask anyone in HR.
Congratulations, internet; a completely banal, pointless disagreement with zero stakes has ended with reputations tarnished, factions formed, threats hurled, feelings hurt, and two people out of work- and still nothing has been solved.
edit- this went off the front page REALLY fast, wtf
It's absolutely insane how fast these situations get of control in this generation of twitter/fb/g+ etc...
[0] Or sometimes hunt down each other’s real life addresses and file ridiculous lawsuits, though I assume that’s more of a German thing…
If she was going to be fired for it should have been because of her actions, not because some dickwads are blackmailing the company. How very disappointing and now we'll never hear the last of this. Time to make use of filtering options in HackerNew (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hackernew/lgoghlnd...)
Edit: to clarify, when I say blackmail I'm talking about the DDoS attack the company is suffering which is preventing them from doing any business: http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/21/sendgrid-under-ddos-attack...
Edit edit: This thread has been killed so nobody is going to see this comment again so I will take the opportunity to say I'm ashamed to be a part of the internet today.
Why are we assuming that it was the second and not the first?
Even if that is not THE reason, it's certainly a plausible reason, and one I find much more likely and commendable than reacting to a DDoS. However, perhaps we shouldn't just jump to conclusions ahead of a comprehensive statement.
Do you consider it blackmail when people refuse to buy Apple gear because of their patent trolling? How about people who refuse to buy Chik-Fil-A because of their donations to homophobic groups?
Sendgrid keeping on Adria after her actions would appear to a casual observer to be tacit acceptance of her actions. A stance, which after the thread yesterday, would seem to be morally unacceptable to a great deal of people.
There is nothing immoral about refusing to do business with a company based on their actions or inactions. Welcome to the free market!
The refusal to do service with a business is fine, free will and all that, the problem is that people are attacking the business and preventing them from doing any business with people that want to. This is a reaction to the DDoS...
You do not and can not possibly know that.
Situation happens -> posts are made -> drama drama drama -> days go by -> Adria tweets that Sendgrid support her -> Sendgrid is taken offline, company suffers -> Adria is publicly fired.
There's no way she was going to be fired for her actions at the conference, however shitty they were she explicitly stated that Sendgrid supported her: https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/314452708549603328 unless she's delusional too...
It doesn't matter if it's speculation or not. Anyone that boycotts a company because an employee used her bully pulpit to call out someone's misogyny is an asshole. Any company that reacts to that loss of business is also a company full of assholes.
It doesn't matter if it's speculation or not. The DDOS DID happen and anyone that says that it didn't influence their poor decision, is very confused about the world.
It doesn't matter if it's speculation or not. Everyone has lost in this situation. The original dickhead that didn't have enough sense to keep his misogyny out of ear shot which cost him his job, the company that fired him because they didn't want the exposure of keeping a sexist who was caught red handed being a sexist, the woman who has had to put up with some of the worst trolls on the web because she called out someone making sexist jokes, and the company that felt that they had to fire her because of the exposure of keeping her on the payroll AND because of the vicious disgusting amoral assholes that have attacked that companies servers.
Frankly. Frankly it doesn't matter. This situation sucks and the trolls are behind the steering wheel nearly every step of the way.
misogyny n.: The hatred of women by men. sexism n. : Prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, on the basis of sex.
Now go back and read what the men were actually making jokes about. As much as I hate to burst your bubble, dick jokes, as crude and inappropriate as they may be for a professional setting, do not show any "hatred" or "discrimination" towards women. Hell, women can make them as much as men can too. If a male overheard two women making vagina jokes do you think they would start to claim they have a "hatred (or discrimination) towards men"? Hell no. I thought the feminist movement was supposed to be about equality?
Maybe SendGrid found out more information or found more persuasive arguments and changed their stance of support.
Actually, there is another name for the use of force against soft targets in order to get capitulation to political demands
If she was an indispensable asset they would have found another way to handle the situation.
It's always an equation. If someone is not worth the trouble they represent in the situation at hand -- this is the result.
* Adria Richards had a number of options starting with explaining to them that the jokes made her feel uncomfortable to reporting them to staff. Instead she went for the nuclear option of public shaming.
* Sendgrid will only appear to have done this in response to their site being subject to DDOS.
* Playhaven have overreacted in dismissing one of the guys (although their blog post suggests there might have been more behind it).
The guys involved apologised at the time and have done so publicly. I can't help but feel that if Adria had apologised for her course of conduct at the first opportunity, this thing would have blown over.
Instead you have another story about misogyny in the industry that has run for over 24 hours with nobody looking good at the end of it and everybody suffering.
And PyCon, the PSF and Jesse Noller who behaved pretty much exactly as they should have (but still got insulted over it)
This whole thing sucks.
Someone made an inappropriate joke at too high of a volume.
Somebody else felt uncomfortable and made a mistake in their reaction.
People make mistakes. Couldn't SendGrid have offered the guy a job and apologized profusely.
You could argue that her job is to be an advocate for SendGrid, and this incident has done the opposite. But I assume she was just fired so the ddos would go away.
Also announcing it on Facebook is brutal, even though they may have had no other choice.
SendGrid is in an ugly place, probably losing customers by the minute. If I was currently a SendGrid customer, I would be taking my business elsewhere... for a variety of reasons.
As for being a "defender and promoter of women in tech" -- I guess it really depends on if you see her as the victim or the bully in the situation. Being a defender and promoter of bullies in tech is a far less noble badge to wear.
Is that what they would have been though? People are drawing attention to a load of things she's said on twitter and elsewhere that are more than a bit dodgy. A picture begins to form of someone on a mission which may not really be aligned with Sendgrid's requirements for an evangelist.
Sendgrid is in a crowded space... easy enough to switch.
I can't imagine the office environment with these two working together as anything but cordial.
The choice is pretty obvious here.
I guess this is how we iron out what the Code of Conduct stuff really means, hopefully we learn from it.
No it doesn't. It actually reduces it. She is being treated as a complete equal here, in being called out and held accountable for her actions. It would be a setback if she were protected purely because she was "speaking out" about sexism.
From the same conference:
https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425
The company she is envangelising for thinks that a visual joke about photocopying your genitals is apropriate for their jobs pages.
http://i.imgur.com/uWc8P39.png
Actions must be judged in relation to the society in which they occur.
She's set back "women in tech" pretty far.
I would have preferred if this entire ordeal was sorted out with a game of laser tag, it'd be a fitting conclusion to the level of bizarro-world-absurdity this issue has become.
I feel like this whole incident did more damage to female right then good by making them appear small and fragile.
That sounds like it'd be really awkward for both Adria and the guy and eventually make it worse for SendGrid. If you've followed Adria's comments on her blog post, you'd realize it'd be a serious about-face to back down. The guy would probably have to grovel, and personally, in this case I'd rather be out of a job.
> You could argue that her job is to be an advocate for SendGrid, and this incident has done the opposite. But I assume she was just fired so the ddos would go away.
Why not both? It didn't give me a terribly negative view of SendGrid, but certainly warned me to steer clear of ever working for / with them for fear of stepping on overly-PC toes.
https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425
And Sendgrid has a 'photocopying your genitals' joke on one of their jobs pages.
http://i.imgur.com/uWc8P39.png
(And yes, it's pretty easy to photocopy your ass without photocopying the other parts if you sit on the photocopier the right way.)
The point I was trying to make is that every party involved is in definitely in the gray area between offensive and unoffensive. She made sexual humiliation jokes in front of thousands of twitter followers. Her company made scatlogical jokes in a much more professional setting than a conference. Compared to these, muttering 'dongle' in a crowded theater is, you must admit, at least equally as offensiv, if not quite a bit less.
And nobody gave a damn about her twitter jokes or the company jobs page before this.
Firing is NOT the answer for such minor transgressions. Yes, there were mistakes on both sides, but to lose your job over it is a huge overreaction from HR. Perhaps the DDoS should've been directed at PlayHaven for overreacting and not SendGrid?
The whole thing has set back gender relations in tech by 20 years, IMO.