In the end, the consequences that resulted from how she reported the conduct put our business in danger. Our commitment to our 130 employees, their families, our community members and our more than 130,000 valued customers is our primary concern.
Is he referring to the DDOS there? Or the user exodus?
Given how haphazard DDoS attacks (especially those in the 'hacktivism' category) tend to be, I'd be surprised if they targeted anything beyond SendMail's public-facing website. I would hope that their application servers wouldn't be on the same network as their web server.
The email gateway (smtp.sendgrid.com) and HTTP API endpoints were also down during the same outage period. Seems like it went beyond the public facing site.
It would be weird to fire someone over other people's criminal activity. That reason would be akin to what Eugene Volokh has referred to as the "heckler's veto": when you e.g. cancel a controversial speech because thuggish opponents have threatened to cause trouble (call in fake bomb threats, etc.), and you blame the speaker for having drawn the thuggish behavior, rather than the people actually engaged in criminal activity.
That said, they may have had legitimate reasons to fire her, but "people are illegally attacking us in order to get at her" is not one.
Except that she caused the criminal activity to happen because of the way she acted, and it is now costing the business money hand over fist. It gets expensive fast.
No, the criminals caused the criminal activity. If I publish a book, and you engage in criminal retaliation against my publisher for having published it, I am not the person causing crime. Not even if your excuse was that you really hated the book. And it is no credit to the publisher if they give in to the thugs.
I think you're confusing cause and execution. Socio-economic problems are often the cause of violent crime, but muggers execute it.
To use your metaphor of an author and publisher, if I (as an author) published a reasoned, well argued novella arguing a religion was hateful and bigoted, and my publisher received death threats, would I not be causing the death threats? Regardless of the legitimacy or accuracy of my publication it would still be my actions that caused the effect - in this case death threats.
An interesting question. I think in an ethical sense, there would be no blame to someone like Richard Dawkins for publishing an anti-religious book. I do agree there could be a causal link: Dawkins's university or publisher might receive threats as a result of his atheist advocacy. But who is really to blame for these threats? I would argue it is the people who would make threats in response to atheist advocacy who are to blame, and all effort should be put towards shutting such people down.
And does it mean I would support, as an ethical matter, Dawkins's publisher or university choosing to drop him, on the grounds that he has caused them difficulties, and they are therefore right in firing him to solve them? Obviously not: I would blame those making threats, and would consider his publisher and university spineless cowards if they dropped him as an author or fired him as an employee in response to the threats. I would expect them, rather, to expend their efforts tracking down the people who made the threats.
I agree that those offering the threats would be to blame but what we were discussing was the cause, who in this case is Adria.
Ethics are tricky, and I don't think there are blanket wrong or right answers here. I agree that simply placating a baying mob by tossing someone (metaphorically) to the wolves is not necessarily ethically right from all perspectives, but therein lies the problem: it's about perspective. Were it about a university defending an author from religious nutjobs then it's ethically right for them to support him. However, when it comes to companies, there are certain other perspectives on ethics that need to be taken into account. For example, ethically a company has to do everything it can for it's shareholders. It's legally required to do this, and has an ethical responsibility to. This might be in contrast to yours or my ethics, but for the company the ethical thing to do would be to fire someone who's losing them money.
Anyway, like I said, it's tricky. Personally I think SendGrid is justified in firing Adria: as a PR employee her job is to promote the company, which is difficult when the community she's trying to promote the product to has taken umbrage with her. If their sole reason was because of the DDoS attack I think that wouldn't be justified, but given the fiasco it's damaging to their reputation to continue to have her on their staff.
As an aside (and to hopefully help explain my viewpoint) in the Dawkins matter: I don't think it would be ethically irresponsible for a publisher to drop him. Publisher's are there to make money, and having that and the lives of employees threatened is a reasonable reason to drop him. I don't think they should drop him, but in my opinion it's ethically reasonable for them to do it. Were it a university, I think they under no circumstance should drop him. The purpose of a university (at least in the UK) is to teach and generate research. By censoring someone at a university you're essentially censoring science and scientific enquiry which holds much greater ethical ramifications than at a publisher.
> For example, ethically a company has to do everything it can for it's shareholders. It's legally required to do this, and has an ethical responsibility to.
This is not really the case, either as a matter of ethics or a matter of law. It's a widespread myth that there is an overriding legal responsibility to "maximize shareholder value", but that is not the case, and the myth is based on an over-reading of a century-old Supreme Court case that is no longer valid law. Companies have quite broad discretion to operate how their executives see fit, with expansive authority to take into account ethical or PR/brand considerations in their decisions. In modern caselaw, the shareholders are presumed to agree with their actions by the fact that they continue to keep the executives in place, rather than replacing them, as they have the power to do. Courts refuse to second-guess decisions absent very specific showings of conflict, such as insider dealings; if an executive thinks that a company should pursue a particular ethical strategy, and the shareholders keep him in place, courts are satisfied that they implicitly believe the strategy is in their interests.
As far as publishers go, I do think it would be ethically irresponsible for a publisher to drop Dawkins. A publisher that only wants to make money is a worthless social cancer. They may be legally entitled to do what they do, but nobody should support them.
It's also worth noting that these kinds of decisions can negatively impact reputation as well. I now consider SendGrid to be unethical cowards who I will not do business with, whereas previously they were a company I was strongly interested in using. I will not use them now. I may well be outnumbered by people who think the opposite, but the PR effect is not only in one direction. It's particularly relevant to an email firm, because I now believe they would sell me out as a customer as well, if anything I sent angered anyone. I suspect they would blame me for a DDoS rather than sticking up for their customer.
Fair enough about shareholder obligations: I only have it on hearsay, from a business lecture as part of my CS course.
To try and understand your perspective further though: do you think it was ethically responsible for PlayHaven to fire their guy? Also, were it not for the DDoS, would the posts on twitter and comments have been sufficient to ethically fire her?
I find it difficult to rationalise how firing someone who's views and conduct are in opposition to the company - and who (as a PR employee) is bringing the company into disrepute is unethical.
On the PlayHaven question, I lean towards thinking that wasn't justified either. If I had to identify villains in this case, it'd be both PlayHaven and SendGrid, which, despite their pretenses to being 21st-century startups, are looking a lot like rather backwards 1950s pointy-headed HR places. If people dare to speak in public without corporate approval, they get fired for stirring the pot, as if we still lived in a world where blogs, twitter, tumblr, and HN didn't exist, and companies owned you 24/7. If you know what's good for you, spend your weekends golfing and don't say anything in public!
As the limit's been reached, and I'm not sure of the etiquette on hacker news for longer comments, I'll finish up my end of the discussion here.
I think this is a classic internet situation where everybody's in the wrong, especially the two companies. To sum up my position:
-The developers arguably shouldn't have made the jokes. I don't know if they were actually sexist jokes as (full disclosure) I'm not entirely trusting of everything Adria says, but as other people have mentioned, it was a professional event so they should have been conducting themselves professionally.
-PlayHaven shouldn't have fired the developer. They could perhaps have publicly followed through with some disciplinary action, and issued a statement and apology essentially saying that they didn't support his actions, and it might have ended there.
-SendGrid should have again followed through with disciplinary action in a similar manner. I think that prolonged exposure to Adria would have been harmful to their business, but that's a matter for them to consider and decide on.
In the end though, I think Adria's done the most harm. There were channels available for dealing with sexist comments at the conference, and according to her own blog she used them. It should have ended there, but she unfortunately escalated which started the avalanche after the first firing.
breath
Anyway, I think that's my position summed up really. I would continue this further, but unfortunately I have no more contact info for you than username. As an aside however, I noticed you're a researcher in AI - something I'd like to get into at some point. How did you get into that particular area of research, and what would you say are the main prerequisites to doing research in that area? I'm currently doing a BSc in CS, and I have some space for focus next year, but I'm still a little unsure where to focus at the moment, and what I should be reading and doing at the side.
Thanks for a nice civilised discussion! Have a good day!
I agree that the immediate firings on both sides come off the worst. Announcing some miscellaneous investigation/discipline/etc. is one thing, but going straight to firing comes off, to me anyway, as more impulsive (and worrisome) than reassuring and decisive.
I also agree that Twitter mobs are a bit worrisome. I'm perhaps mostly counter-worried about the principle of posting some words on twitter being seen as problematic. I do it a lot! Of course, I have only ~250 followers, so while technically public, it's only public in the sense that random tumblrs and blogs are public. What crosses the line into the other kind of public? I agree it can happen, I just don't know what to do about it that isn't worse.
As an aside, the comment limit is actually "soft" in that if you click on a comment's own page (the "link" link) you can reply from there even if the reply link isn't showing up on the main page. It's intended to discourage extra-long comment threads, but you can still reply if you really want to, rather than posting a sibling comment.
Thanks for the link tip! I'm rather new here unfortunately, so I don't quite know how everything works unfortunately...
I think this whole debarcle should be noted down in a book entitled "how not to do things". Everything, from the developers conduct, to Adria's reaction, to the internet's counter-reaction to the companies reactions just multiplied the problems further. Essentially the lesson I'm taking away from this is that it's incredibly necessary to think twice or three times before doing anything - especially in this internet connected age.
Anyway - I'm still interested in how you got into AI, but I'll drop you an email to ask to keep the post thread down. I completely understand - it's probably trivial to find out who I am from my HN profile - but it's still better than it being explicit.
Here's a better analogy: you work at a clothing store; you're standing at the door and shout "hey niggers, what you looking at? dirty motherf*ers. come get me" at some passers-by. They proceed to tear down the store with the help of an angry mob. Should the store not hold you accountable and only "blame the people actually engaged in criminal activity"?
I also think it is very important for their reputation in general so developers and the community feel confident in choosing Sendgrid for future projects. Not always about there here and now...
This is the most reasonable statement I've seen so far in this whole fiasco. It's a shame he took so long to post it; it should have been the first SendGrid comment this morning.
While I agree it's eminently reasonable, it can sometimes take a day or two to work through a thorny issue, regain a sense of calm, and write something reasonable.
In the past, I've tended to follow a '48-hour rule' when it comes to responding to emotionally-heated emails.
Yes, 48 hours can seem like an eternity in the tech world, but it prevents accidentally exacerbating the situation by acting with good intentions yet without a clear head.
This isn't even taking into account how long it takes to check with HR, legal, etc. All of which were probably necessary here.
+1 and well said. When I had legal issues with a client irrationally withholding payment, my lawyer suggested to wait four days to respond. Seems like an eternity, especially considering it's double from what you tend to follow (48 hours), it's amazing how much more reasonable your response can be juxtaposed to responding immediately.
Put yourself in his shoes for a moment though... your developer advocate brought on a DDoS. Whether it was deserved or not is an entirely separate discussion. It comes down to the person who is supposed to be helping get customers and grow your company did something that is bringing lots of harm.
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).
That brings about something interesting. While I completely believe that what SendGrid did was justified, what if it had occurred as a result of some other, more nuanced statement than the accusation in question?
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.
> Is "Developer Evangelist" a 'star-like' job position where I lose my right to privacy as a result of it?
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.
That's a very fair answer, and I thank you for it.
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?
I watch myself whenever I say anything in public. That includes Twitter, as my Twitter feed is publicly accessible and I clearly identify myself as affiliated with my employer. The same goes for my Google+ feed, to which I pretty-much exclusively post public content.
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.
Downvoters, I think the "citation needed" was in reference to SendGrid's firing Adria in response to the DDoS, not to pg's take on the subject.
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.
Well, speaking as a publisher, I would also want to confirm this sort of thing with the company before disseminating it widely. Companies and livelihoods are at stake in situations like this.
I think you could get a reasonable response to an ongoing crisis out in less than a day. They should have discussed this last night, as soon as it broke, with CEO, HR, legal, her, etc.
Being deliberate is fine, but when you make something a priority, you can get to the bottom of it faster and still get the right response.
Until they got DDoSed to hell, this apparently wasn't a serious priority for them.
> Until they got DDoSed to hell, this apparently wasn't a serious priority for them.
That's what makes me think this was just another example of the "heckler's veto". There are no principles here, just giving the mob what it demands. No action until some idiots on the internet started attacking people, and when it happened, they just gave the idiots what they demanded in hopes of shutting them up.
Just reiterating what others have said, its reasonable because he took time to think about it. I know if I was in his position and woke up to find out my servers were being DDoS'd to hell because one of my employees had caused a stir, I may have just stayed in bed.
I think I might agree to some extent. I don't understand what section about "evangelists should be attractive" or whatever is referring to; presumably another incident? I get that it is sarcastic, but I don't understand the motivation behind that sarcasm.
Go read Amanda Blum's piece instead, as it actually has insight and thought behind it. This is just a bit of humour, making egregious errors like "the internet will never forget" (seriously, how many scandals has the internet forgotten?) and "careers are permanently ended" (again, seriously, look at any number of successful public figures and the gaffes they made earlier in life).
I read Amanda's piece and until raganwald's it was indeed the best piece I had read so far.
Amanda however vilifies Aria because she considers her too easily offended and finds her feminist agenda obnoxious.
I don't, because I believe she has the right to be a slightly obnoxious feminist and we should be defending her right to be that, even when we don't personally agree with it.
Raganwald expresses my more deep-seated feelings on the topic much more powerfully in this well crafted piece of satire.
I find it ironic that you think the humour piece is the best summary, given that a significant part of it is about the permanent damage done. So permanent the damage, yet only two days later you can't even get her name right.
The vast bulk of people who have commented in the last couple of days will have forgotten her name in several months.
That was exactly my thoughts. Too bad this wasn't posted instead of the other post announcing they fired Adria. It is clear from this post that she had to go, his reasoning behind the fact that she ne effective in her role are sounds.
"...her actions have strongly divided the same community she was supposed to unite. As a result, she can no longer be effective in her role at SendGrid." Anyone who thinks SendGrid were wrong to let her go should consider that. SendGrid did the right thing, they just took a bit too long to do it.
Really? Taking a few days to decide on a course of action is too long? When you're discussing firing an employee? Who may have performed well in her position before the incident for all we know?
Sorry, I should probably have said took too long to talk about it, rather than do it. I completely agree that they needed to take time over their decision, but they should have posted this along with that initial statement earlier today.
I applaud SendGrid's response to this debacle. It is carefully weighed and expresses the precise reason why action absolutely needed to be taken. It is worthy of praise that they are willing to step into a very controversial issue and do what is best for their employees despite the potential fallout.
I encourage anyone who was considering not using SendGrid's services in light of recent events to reconsider, given their reasoned, rational response to a difficult situation.
I just wish they had started out with this statement instead of abruptly announcing her firing. That just seemed uncharacteristic of SendGrid and rather inappropriate.
However, you're very right in that it was a reasoned, rational response. It's tough to argue what Jim Franklin laid down in that post.
The situation wasn't that difficult, and Sendgrid's response was inappropriate.
Welcome to the Corporate State where every problematic statement you make as an errorful human being prone to making mistakes will be used against you to preserve the corporate bottom line.
An actual appropriate response from SendGrid and Play Haven would have been recognition that its employees are human's first, and all of us are subject to making mistakes of one form or another. That they back their employees, and support them, even as they disagree with their statements or their behaviors.
I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write
It is ironic, it is tragic that SendGrid, an email delivery company, chose to fire an employee expressing speech, as opposed to just offering more speech in rebuttal.
The answer to the ugly free speech of Adria Richards is more speech, not firings.
(Yes, Hacker News, downvote my comment. Make sure a reasonably stated position that disagrees with you is shown its place.)
I am curious what you make of this portion of the response in particular:
"A SendGrid developer evangelist’s responsibility is to build and strengthen our Developer Community across the globe. In light of the events over the last 48+ hours, it has become obvious that her actions have strongly divided the same community she was supposed to unite. As a result, she can no longer be effective in her role at SendGrid."
48 hours is not the right interval to be making that judgment. And firing her in response to correct the situation was about the worse and most extreme of actions.
(And please note, I think Richards made a mistake and showed terrible judgment.)
I can't agree with this. It's not a question of speech, it's a question of responsibility: She was present in a professional capacity and, as stated in the post, behaved in a way that subverted the goal of her position.
That's pretty open and shut. She said what she believed, and did exactly what she wanted to... unfortunately, she did not do so in line with the best interests of the community or her employer, and that's who she was supposed to be representing during this series of events.
You don't have to disagree with freedom of speech to find some speech harmful to your business, and there is no unconditional right to employment without regard to personal conduct.
She acted as a developer evangelist, there is absolutely no way she could do her job. I would go so far as to say no company will EVER employ her for a job with that title ever again.
Re-read the post. The reason she was fired was not because of what she said but because her actions resulted in the shitstorm today when her job is specifically to foster good relationships between sendgrid and the developer community. Basically, she failed at her job, so was fired.
1) free speech is a guarantee that the government will not pass laws preventing you from expressing yourself. it has nothing to do with your private employer.
2) Adria Richards acted in a way contrary to what her employer was paying her to do. If your job is public relations, but you generate animosity instead of good will you are incompetent at your job. That is grounds for termination in the old fashioned sense, having nothing to do with free speech or anything else.
free speech is a guarantee that the government will not pass laws preventing you from expressing yourself. it has nothing to do with your private employer
Yeah, this is a common fallacy.
There is the first amendment which regards the relationship of our government to our free speech, and then there is free speech that we, as humans, intellectuals, give to each other.
Her speech was piffle, and should have been treated as such. A regrettable mistake, but one that humans make, and ultimately of little impact to the company.
"I Joe Bob, CEO of SendGrid disagree completely with Adria Richard's behavior, she made a mistake. But I know her, I respect her, and there is no way I would fire her over these particular comments, over this particular mistake.
I believe that a Hacker Culture is respectful and encouraging of speech and accommodating of the mistakes we all might make.
I encourage Joe Briggs of Play Haven to take a step back and consider this, even as I support his former developers there in their private communications."
free speech is a guarantee that the government will not pass laws preventing you from expressing yourself. it has nothing to do with your private employer
Yeah, this is a common fallacy.
There is the first amendment which regards the relationship of our government to our free speech, and then there is free speech that we, as humans, intellectuals, give to each other.
Her speech was piffle, and should have been treated as such. A regrettable mistake, but one that humans make, and ultimately of little impact to the company.
"I Joe Bob, CEO of SendGrid disagree completely with Adria Richard's behavior, she made a mistake. But I know her, I respect her, and there is no way I would fire her over these particular comments, over this particular mistake.
I believe that a Hacker Culture is respectful and encouraging of speech and accommodating of the mistakes we all might make.
I encourage Joe Briggs of Play Haven to take a step back and consider this, even as I support his former developers there in their private communications."
I think you are overlooking the fact (clearly elucidated by SendGrid) that her position as Developer Evangelist makes her the face of their company at conferences. Reaching out to her hundreds of Twitter followers to bring public shame to decent people runs perpendicular to the ethics of her company, her position, and (I hope) to the tech industry.
It is truly "ironic" - a word I shall borrow from you - that you attack SendGrid on the grounds of Free Speech, when in fact, the men in question in the incident were having a private conversation themselves.
FWIW, while I disagree with your position fairly strongly, I upvoted you. Because I don't believe in the "downvote to show disagreement" idea, and because your position does lead to a potentially interesting discussion about how much "float" an employee should have when making a mistake.
I do believe pretty strongly in the general idea of "stand behind your people", but I also think this situation went far enough that SendGrid was justified.
In my opinion he's a coward that doesn't stand behind his employees and that goes for PlayHaven too. They've set a terrible precedent for the industry.
He is standing behind his employees; by protecting the jobs of those not involved in the drama. Any CEO who would stand behind an employee to the death of their company would not be CEO for very long.
Why did they feel the need to very publicly post this dismissal (and withdraw, and then reissue) in the heat of the moment while under a DDoS attack though, rather than sooner or later?
It very much feels like a cowardly act of throwing someone under a bus.
When your employee is being called nasty things all over the Internet[0] over something that happened while she was doing work you sent her out to do and your solution is to fire said person, then you are a coward. It doesn't matter if what she did was a mistake, if you had to reassign her, even suspend her or let her go eventually. When people are disrespecting your employees, especially employees associated with your good name, any decent leader fights back.
I totally agree. While I agree with the dismissal, it's like they're trying to save themselves by sacrificing an employee to the angry masses. Not a whole lot of tact going on in this entire situation...
Well he didn't agree with what she said or how she handled it, why would he stand behind it? She brought them a lot of bad PR and a lot of trouble, he did what anyone would have.
Perhaps a better solution would have been to ask Ms. Richards to take a different position at the company, perhaps one that was less public? The crux for SendGrid was that Ms. Richards was a developer evangelist, and, as Mr. Franklin pointed out, if a majority of the community which she serves is upset and/or against her, how could she actually do her job?
The whole point of employing her is that she is public. They hired her specifically for her social presence. That lost a lot of value in the last 48 hours.
I had the same thought, but I find it tough to be able to accommodate someone when they've done such damage to a company and its image, especially in the way she did it. It's hard to trust an employee after something this heated. Unfortunately, I think SendGrid made the right decision in the end.
Actions have consequences. That principle is one the few truly fair ways to stand behind your employees, friends and even family. You can try to minimize the damage of said consequences, but hiding or brushing them off is one of the most terrible things you can do to him or her.
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?
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.
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 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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"...we will not comment on all the factors that contributed to our parting ways"
That's what I was referring to. There's so many things that could have been done differently on all sides, but I can't help but wonder the real reason the employee was terminated so quickly. With as much as this has escalated, I think a lot of people are owed at least that.
Even if I agree with the decision, this is incredibly hard to read. I hate to see someone lose their job over something like this. Yet I can't disagree with anything he wrote.
I personally hope she will learn from this and another company will give her a new chance. The odds of that are slim given how big this has become--it's front-paging repeatedly on HN and /r/programming. But I'd hate to see her whole career ruined over a mistake she could learn from. (Though, to be fair, she has not seemed too eager to admit to any mistakes online so far.)
Social media is an incredibly powerful tool - especially when you are good at "it" and you wield influence. Trip up on your own shoelaces and you run tremendous risk of social media backfiring on you.
Wow! What a well-written post. I had no idea that this was a pattern of behavior. It kind of makes sense now. She seems to be extremely touchy and looks for issues where there are none, or simply creates issues out of thin air. Thank you for that link.
An established pattern of action, indeed! That Adria would object publicly[1] to a fun little talk by Danielle Morrill on Getting the Money Shot[2] is what we need to know to understand this case.
At the end of the day no one really cares. They could rehire her once everyone is consumed by the next big distraction. A couple people will make noise but the majority of people won't care. People make mistakes everyday and usually learn from them. Now if you had someone habitually doing this kind of thing then it would create a problem.
Yah. One common factor in everybody involved is that they're incredibly human. Pride, self-righteousness, and immaturity are a few of the qualities on display, but since they're human I accept that a few of these qualities are tolerable, as should we all.
No one committed any action that was overtly horrible on it's own.
In a vacuum: Two guys were making childish jokes, and a woman was offended and told her friends about it, with a picture of who.
The only reason this is on anyone's radar at all is that people made a fuss of the message due to the issues of gender segregation of women, and the feelings of oppression from men. Combined with rash action on the part of one company.
this was a non-event, turned fiasco, turned tragedy.
No one committed any action that was overtly horrible on its own
That's the remarkable thing about this whole mess. Lots of people are making what appear to be bad choices, but only mildly bad choices. Nobody needed to be crucified here.
Until you get into the whole DDOS and threats of violence business, those are truly bad choices.
I think there was a significant bad choice - Playhaven firing the guy instead of retraining him. It says 'make the slightest misstep and we will abandon you'. If they were interested in maintaining developers, the response would instead be 'please do some sensitivity training; we can grow together' - showing the company's interest in developing the developer. Unless of course he was already on notice and this was the last straw, although reading his apologies he seems like he is receptive and willing to respond to constructive criticism.
Besides, without Playhaven's overly-strong response, the hackles of the antifeminists wouldn't have been raised, and we wouldn't be talking about this right now. The keystone of this story is actually Playhaven's response, not Richards'.
I have the pleasure of knowing Adria and she's an awesome person, so sure, in a vacuum these events are super silly. However, in this instance, she is a public figure and used her public forum to promote an issue that was personal to her.
Developers who make business decisions who rely on SendGrid follow her on Twitter and need to work with her.
It's no different than a reporter for the NY Times who covers White House news, and supposed to be unbiased starts, bad mouthing Obama on Twitter. Would you want read NY Times anymore?
Obama makes a bone-headed move, lets say he: "didn't veto a bill that allows companies to enforce locking in cellphones and tablets. It's going to be illegal to jailbreak now."
A reporter from the NY time goes on twitter and badmouths The Obama administration for messing up.
Well, this is the first Hacker News hears about it and goes crazy. Those JERKS! Inexplicably support is catalyzed and Obama gets impeached! Later it comes to light that there was some logistical and communication errors, turns out the administration just ignored it because it couldn't become law anyway on some technicality.
Every democrat on twitter raises a huge fuss about the massively inappropriate and biased slander this reporter has made. It's not her job to make tweets like that. Look at what she's done! The administration didn't really do anything wrong in the first place!
Within a day or two, that reporter gets canned due to the fallout, she's caught up in the center of a big scandal that will taint the public's perspective on her integrity, even though she always had and still has integrity.
Maybe Obama getting impeached is a bit of a stretch. Otherwise, I like this metaphor. :)
I would not call using the reporters public forum that they most likely grew out of their career built because of the association with NY Times as a fair medium for candid discussion. This reporter's duty is to the editors and to the readers of the paper until this reporter is no longer employed by NY Times.
Ethics clauses are signed at date of hire for exactly reasons like this one. Companies want you to be part of their brand when you join their ranks. For positions that require a public forum, that includes off-hours as well.
NY Post will most likely be calling that reporter for a high-level visible position within the hour of the firing. So not all hope is lost, but depends on what kind of brand you want to speak for.
She was vociferously unapologetic. She firmly believed that she was in the right, and even worse, that she was on some sort of gender-equality "crusade". The hubris is palpable when you see the comments she made in her post, where she said things like "Yesterday the future of programming was on the line and I made myself heard.", and even compared herself to Joan of Arc (http://i.imgur.com/JnZLsju.jpg).
Even worse, she went off the deep-end by claiming that people disagreeing with her were all trolling, or worse, somehow being racist. She also posted comments where she discounted other people's opinions simply because of their race.
There was not an ounce of remorse on her part for what she did. She firmly believed that she was some sort of holy warrior for feminism, and that she was standing up for future women programmers, or something like that. It's also odd considering that she doesn't even have a programming background; her background seems to be in HR and marketing. She basically hangs around programmers, but is not really a part of the programming community.
What was also bad is that she implied that SendGrid supported her in all of this (http://i.imgur.com/eHOC3tA.jpg), thereby dragging them into her personal crusade.
As a tech evangelist it is her job to build goodwill and she did anything but that. She took advantage of her huge listener base and used her platform as an evangelist as a personal soapboax for her own holy war.
Hopefully she learns from her mistakes. The best thing she can do at this point is to issue a public apology. Another company may give her a chance then. The problem is HR issues like these are very touchy and toxic and most companies would sooner not deal with it. This is because people who display this kind of attitude can be extremely toxic. I read many comments from women programmers who completely disagreed with what she did, and they said that she completely overreacted. Does any company really want to have a person who will scream "Sexism!" at the drop of a hat? Sure, the guys may have been immature, but nothing they said or did was even remotely sexist. Most of the people who I've seen defending her are either white knights, or other women who share her "brand" of feminism and who also, unsurprisingly, share her lack of technical background or experience with the programming community.
The irony is that one of the guys shamed on twitter, who lost his job, has had a much easier time finding a new job. I don't think Adria will have a same luxury.
The biggest irony in all of this, of course, is that what she perceived to be a morally-righteous stance has completely backfired and bit her in the ass, causing her to lose her job.
The hubris is palpable..
I think you have expressed the core of the problem here. Her tweets and her comments afterwards seem to be so much more about confirming her self image as a hero than about any constructive effort to promote the welfare of women in technology.
I think her odds of getting a new job quickly are good.
There are thousands out there vehemently supporting her. She only needs to find one to offer her a job.
Thought of another way, her name has become a cause. Many love the cause, many hate it. But that cause has enough support that you could run a profitable business just serving a fraction of her devotees.
That's ridiculous. Not only is it completely legal (assuming the people don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy), it's enormously common. Half the photographs on Twitter would violate the social rule you're suggesting.
It'll be interesting to see if the relevant party here is going to seek legal action against SendGrid for the firing. Without commenting about whether there is any legal basis (I have no idea), it seems like doing so would seriously hinder any efforts to find another job in the tech field in the future.
Yet it wouldn't surprise me to see it happen, given this individual's seemingly extreme reactions to perceived slights (themselves minuscule compared to actually being fired, justified or not).
It's kind of a shame that two people got fired - but I did think it was weird when the person having a private convo was fired but not the person who used their corporate position to launch a public attack on the former was not.
But for the record I'd have preferred that no one lose their job.
Just think of all the things you could be doing with your time that don't involve following this stupid Internet drama. Now go do one of those things. Seriously this is such a waste of time.
You know why you should pay attention to this? One day, you may find yourself in the same situation that the SendGrid CEO is in today. At that point, knowing how to react stands between a momentary headache and a multi-million-dollar business-crippling headache.
I know there are a lot of people who think "Obviously this was the right response to the situation..what the heck was she thinking?", but have been silent because of the massively feminist-dominated media these days.
Hypothetically, a female can now overhear a dick joke between two gay men, twitter their photographs, and get them fired from their jobs because the company that employs them does not have their backs.
If you want this situation to improve, and not live in fear any more, there are a few things you should do immediately. Here is the thinking person's guide to how to navigate the murky waters of our industry. I say person because I know both gay and straight women who hate the massively PC dominated atmosphere of most software companies these days:
1) NEVER hire a woman to fill some sort of quota, or because of some abstract objective like "We probably need more women in the company." You will end up attracting this sort of extreme feminist "female evangelist" who runs around with a chip on her shoulder constantly complaining about sexism.
2) NEVER say anything sexual at a conference to anyone. DO NOT speak to females who are attending the conference beyong absolutely professional matters. For heaven's sake, do not ask a female if her boyfriend is the one attending. DO NOT reveal any personal details about yourself.
You probably earn enough as a software developer, so if you want sexual intercourse, get a call girl (just being honest and practical here). It is not that expensive. Remember that prostitution is legal in Canada.
3) Avoid all social contact with women in your company. Date outside the industry if possible.
4) If you are forcefully pulled into a discussion about sexism in the industry, pretend to agree with their points ("Yes, women often face blatant sexism in the industry"), etc. and politely CUT the conversation as fast as possible. NEVER show a men's rights perspective because you will be labeled as weird. Just stop talking to that person. If you want to show your perspective, show it through your vote the next time there is an election.
5) NEVER engage in dialog with male feminists like Matthew Garrett. Follow point 4) if they start talking to you about sexism in the tech industry.
I think Adria could have avoided this if she apologized not for reporting the offenders to pycon, but for publicly identifying them. She was given the perfect opportunity for this when one of the offenders apologized for their own misstep in a hacker news thread that she herself commented in (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5398681).
Most powerful statement I've seen yet about this issue. Literally no one can walk away and claim "victory" on this issue.
The worst part is that 130,000 customers + 2 job holders were impacted by something so insignificant in the whole grand scheme of things. Ah, the power of social media....
So she was actually fired because of the DDoS: “In the end, the consequences that resulted from how she reported the conduct put our business in danger. Our commitment to our 130 employees, their families, our community members and our more than 130,000 valued customers is our primary concern.”
Firing someone because of the criminal activity of someone else seems very weird.
At least he is opening himself up to that interpretation. Maybe the “consequences” are just disgruntled customers deciding to take their business elsewhere or the loss in trust in her, resulting in a reduced ability of her to do her job effectively, but in that context also talking about the “130,000 valued customers” is very weird. I can only assume that he was at least also referring to the DDoS when talking about the consequences.
To me it’s pretty clear that if the DDoS played any role in their decision, then it’s at least partly based on immoral cowardice.
No, she was fired because "she can no longer be effective in her role at SendGrid". Which makes sense, considering her role was to strengthen developer relations...
I do not disagree with you that the statement also named that as a reason for firing her.
All I’m saying that if the DDoS played any part in their decision to fire her, then that part of the justification for their decision represents immoral cowardice to me.
The bit you quoted makes no reference to the DDoS. You decided that the quoted text implied that. You then talk about interpretation, having claimed a specific reference that doesn't exist.
The bit you quoted makes no reference to the DDoS. You decided that the quoted text implied that. You then talk about interpretation, having claimed a specific reference that doesn't exist. You can't have it both ways.
484 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 297 ms ] threadIs he referring to the DDOS there? Or the user exodus?
When their service is down, companies can't send their email, when companies can't send their email using SendGrid they look for alternatives...
That said, they may have had legitimate reasons to fire her, but "people are illegally attacking us in order to get at her" is not one.
To use your metaphor of an author and publisher, if I (as an author) published a reasoned, well argued novella arguing a religion was hateful and bigoted, and my publisher received death threats, would I not be causing the death threats? Regardless of the legitimacy or accuracy of my publication it would still be my actions that caused the effect - in this case death threats.
And does it mean I would support, as an ethical matter, Dawkins's publisher or university choosing to drop him, on the grounds that he has caused them difficulties, and they are therefore right in firing him to solve them? Obviously not: I would blame those making threats, and would consider his publisher and university spineless cowards if they dropped him as an author or fired him as an employee in response to the threats. I would expect them, rather, to expend their efforts tracking down the people who made the threats.
Ethics are tricky, and I don't think there are blanket wrong or right answers here. I agree that simply placating a baying mob by tossing someone (metaphorically) to the wolves is not necessarily ethically right from all perspectives, but therein lies the problem: it's about perspective. Were it about a university defending an author from religious nutjobs then it's ethically right for them to support him. However, when it comes to companies, there are certain other perspectives on ethics that need to be taken into account. For example, ethically a company has to do everything it can for it's shareholders. It's legally required to do this, and has an ethical responsibility to. This might be in contrast to yours or my ethics, but for the company the ethical thing to do would be to fire someone who's losing them money.
Anyway, like I said, it's tricky. Personally I think SendGrid is justified in firing Adria: as a PR employee her job is to promote the company, which is difficult when the community she's trying to promote the product to has taken umbrage with her. If their sole reason was because of the DDoS attack I think that wouldn't be justified, but given the fiasco it's damaging to their reputation to continue to have her on their staff.
As an aside (and to hopefully help explain my viewpoint) in the Dawkins matter: I don't think it would be ethically irresponsible for a publisher to drop him. Publisher's are there to make money, and having that and the lives of employees threatened is a reasonable reason to drop him. I don't think they should drop him, but in my opinion it's ethically reasonable for them to do it. Were it a university, I think they under no circumstance should drop him. The purpose of a university (at least in the UK) is to teach and generate research. By censoring someone at a university you're essentially censoring science and scientific enquiry which holds much greater ethical ramifications than at a publisher.
This is not really the case, either as a matter of ethics or a matter of law. It's a widespread myth that there is an overriding legal responsibility to "maximize shareholder value", but that is not the case, and the myth is based on an over-reading of a century-old Supreme Court case that is no longer valid law. Companies have quite broad discretion to operate how their executives see fit, with expansive authority to take into account ethical or PR/brand considerations in their decisions. In modern caselaw, the shareholders are presumed to agree with their actions by the fact that they continue to keep the executives in place, rather than replacing them, as they have the power to do. Courts refuse to second-guess decisions absent very specific showings of conflict, such as insider dealings; if an executive thinks that a company should pursue a particular ethical strategy, and the shareholders keep him in place, courts are satisfied that they implicitly believe the strategy is in their interests.
As far as publishers go, I do think it would be ethically irresponsible for a publisher to drop Dawkins. A publisher that only wants to make money is a worthless social cancer. They may be legally entitled to do what they do, but nobody should support them.
It's also worth noting that these kinds of decisions can negatively impact reputation as well. I now consider SendGrid to be unethical cowards who I will not do business with, whereas previously they were a company I was strongly interested in using. I will not use them now. I may well be outnumbered by people who think the opposite, but the PR effect is not only in one direction. It's particularly relevant to an email firm, because I now believe they would sell me out as a customer as well, if anything I sent angered anyone. I suspect they would blame me for a DDoS rather than sticking up for their customer.
To try and understand your perspective further though: do you think it was ethically responsible for PlayHaven to fire their guy? Also, were it not for the DDoS, would the posts on twitter and comments have been sufficient to ethically fire her?
I find it difficult to rationalise how firing someone who's views and conduct are in opposition to the company - and who (as a PR employee) is bringing the company into disrepute is unethical.
As the limit's been reached, and I'm not sure of the etiquette on hacker news for longer comments, I'll finish up my end of the discussion here.
I think this is a classic internet situation where everybody's in the wrong, especially the two companies. To sum up my position:
-The developers arguably shouldn't have made the jokes. I don't know if they were actually sexist jokes as (full disclosure) I'm not entirely trusting of everything Adria says, but as other people have mentioned, it was a professional event so they should have been conducting themselves professionally.
-PlayHaven shouldn't have fired the developer. They could perhaps have publicly followed through with some disciplinary action, and issued a statement and apology essentially saying that they didn't support his actions, and it might have ended there.
-SendGrid should have again followed through with disciplinary action in a similar manner. I think that prolonged exposure to Adria would have been harmful to their business, but that's a matter for them to consider and decide on.
In the end though, I think Adria's done the most harm. There were channels available for dealing with sexist comments at the conference, and according to her own blog she used them. It should have ended there, but she unfortunately escalated which started the avalanche after the first firing.
breath
Anyway, I think that's my position summed up really. I would continue this further, but unfortunately I have no more contact info for you than username. As an aside however, I noticed you're a researcher in AI - something I'd like to get into at some point. How did you get into that particular area of research, and what would you say are the main prerequisites to doing research in that area? I'm currently doing a BSc in CS, and I have some space for focus next year, but I'm still a little unsure where to focus at the moment, and what I should be reading and doing at the side.
Thanks for a nice civilised discussion! Have a good day!
I agree that the immediate firings on both sides come off the worst. Announcing some miscellaneous investigation/discipline/etc. is one thing, but going straight to firing comes off, to me anyway, as more impulsive (and worrisome) than reassuring and decisive.
I also agree that Twitter mobs are a bit worrisome. I'm perhaps mostly counter-worried about the principle of posting some words on twitter being seen as problematic. I do it a lot! Of course, I have only ~250 followers, so while technically public, it's only public in the sense that random tumblrs and blogs are public. What crosses the line into the other kind of public? I agree it can happen, I just don't know what to do about it that isn't worse.
As an aside, the comment limit is actually "soft" in that if you click on a comment's own page (the "link" link) you can reply from there even if the reply link isn't showing up on the main page. It's intended to discourage extra-long comment threads, but you can still reply if you really want to, rather than posting a sibling comment.
[contact info removed]
I think this whole debarcle should be noted down in a book entitled "how not to do things". Everything, from the developers conduct, to Adria's reaction, to the internet's counter-reaction to the companies reactions just multiplied the problems further. Essentially the lesson I'm taking away from this is that it's incredibly necessary to think twice or three times before doing anything - especially in this internet connected age.
Anyway - I'm still interested in how you got into AI, but I'll drop you an email to ask to keep the post thread down. I completely understand - it's probably trivial to find out who I am from my HN profile - but it's still better than it being explicit.
Thanks!
Absolutely. Acting too quickly without fully understanding the situation could lead to a lawsuit
Yes, 48 hours can seem like an eternity in the tech world, but it prevents accidentally exacerbating the situation by acting with good intentions yet without a clear head.
This isn't even taking into account how long it takes to check with HR, legal, etc. All of which were probably necessary here.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Being deliberate is fine, but when you make something a priority, you can get to the bottom of it faster and still get the right response.
Until they got DDoSed to hell, this apparently wasn't a serious priority for them.
That's what makes me think this was just another example of the "heckler's veto". There are no principles here, just giving the mob what it demands. No action until some idiots on the internet started attacking people, and when it happened, they just gave the idiots what they demanded in hopes of shutting them up.
Compare: http://braythwayt.com/2013/03/21/evangelism-pr.html
As far as I'm concerned that is the most reasonable response so far, by a long shot.
Amanda however vilifies Aria because she considers her too easily offended and finds her feminist agenda obnoxious.
I don't, because I believe she has the right to be a slightly obnoxious feminist and we should be defending her right to be that, even when we don't personally agree with it.
Raganwald expresses my more deep-seated feelings on the topic much more powerfully in this well crafted piece of satire.
The vast bulk of people who have commented in the last couple of days will have forgotten her name in several months.
She's defeated, annihilated, crushed, destroyed, eliminated, pulverized, eradicated, downed, nullified, smashed, obliterated, felled, wrecked, finished, demolished, suppressed, shattered, exterminated!
AND IN CASE THEY LIKE THAT, MAY THEY GET FORCED TO EAT SHIT FOR ETERNITY!
I encourage anyone who was considering not using SendGrid's services in light of recent events to reconsider, given their reasoned, rational response to a difficult situation.
However, you're very right in that it was a reasoned, rational response. It's tough to argue what Jim Franklin laid down in that post.
Welcome to the Corporate State where every problematic statement you make as an errorful human being prone to making mistakes will be used against you to preserve the corporate bottom line.
An actual appropriate response from SendGrid and Play Haven would have been recognition that its employees are human's first, and all of us are subject to making mistakes of one form or another. That they back their employees, and support them, even as they disagree with their statements or their behaviors.
I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write
It is ironic, it is tragic that SendGrid, an email delivery company, chose to fire an employee expressing speech, as opposed to just offering more speech in rebuttal.
The answer to the ugly free speech of Adria Richards is more speech, not firings.
(Yes, Hacker News, downvote my comment. Make sure a reasonably stated position that disagrees with you is shown its place.)
"A SendGrid developer evangelist’s responsibility is to build and strengthen our Developer Community across the globe. In light of the events over the last 48+ hours, it has become obvious that her actions have strongly divided the same community she was supposed to unite. As a result, she can no longer be effective in her role at SendGrid."
48 hours is not the right interval to be making that judgment. And firing her in response to correct the situation was about the worse and most extreme of actions.
(And please note, I think Richards made a mistake and showed terrible judgment.)
This aspect of the situation seems exceedingly clear to me.
That's pretty open and shut. She said what she believed, and did exactly what she wanted to... unfortunately, she did not do so in line with the best interests of the community or her employer, and that's who she was supposed to be representing during this series of events.
You don't have to disagree with freedom of speech to find some speech harmful to your business, and there is no unconditional right to employment without regard to personal conduct.
2) Adria Richards acted in a way contrary to what her employer was paying her to do. If your job is public relations, but you generate animosity instead of good will you are incompetent at your job. That is grounds for termination in the old fashioned sense, having nothing to do with free speech or anything else.
Yeah, this is a common fallacy.
There is the first amendment which regards the relationship of our government to our free speech, and then there is free speech that we, as humans, intellectuals, give to each other.
Her speech was piffle, and should have been treated as such. A regrettable mistake, but one that humans make, and ultimately of little impact to the company.
"I Joe Bob, CEO of SendGrid disagree completely with Adria Richard's behavior, she made a mistake. But I know her, I respect her, and there is no way I would fire her over these particular comments, over this particular mistake.
I believe that a Hacker Culture is respectful and encouraging of speech and accommodating of the mistakes we all might make.
I encourage Joe Briggs of Play Haven to take a step back and consider this, even as I support his former developers there in their private communications."
Yeah, this is a common fallacy.
There is the first amendment which regards the relationship of our government to our free speech, and then there is free speech that we, as humans, intellectuals, give to each other.
Her speech was piffle, and should have been treated as such. A regrettable mistake, but one that humans make, and ultimately of little impact to the company.
"I Joe Bob, CEO of SendGrid disagree completely with Adria Richard's behavior, she made a mistake. But I know her, I respect her, and there is no way I would fire her over these particular comments, over this particular mistake.
I believe that a Hacker Culture is respectful and encouraging of speech and accommodating of the mistakes we all might make.
I encourage Joe Briggs of Play Haven to take a step back and consider this, even as I support his former developers there in their private communications."
It is truly "ironic" - a word I shall borrow from you - that you attack SendGrid on the grounds of Free Speech, when in fact, the men in question in the incident were having a private conversation themselves.
I do believe pretty strongly in the general idea of "stand behind your people", but I also think this situation went far enough that SendGrid was justified.
It very much feels like a cowardly act of throwing someone under a bus.
[0] https://twitter.com/search/realtime?q=adria+richards+cunt... https://www.facebook.com/adriarichards/posts/633920489967718
This shit was only getting worse by the minute and it wasn't going to stop unless the company did something to show they didn't approve of it.
PlayHaven though? Yeah, I lost a lot of respect for them.
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.
"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.
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.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment#Statutory_ex...
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.
But no smart company would pursue that route, the PR would cost them more.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment and specifically the "Statutory exceptions" section.
I guess I wouldn't be surprised if shitty American employment law permits it, but it's not ethical on the employer's part.
Edit: Especially given my short response, I think it is important to reiterate how much I am not a lawyer.
That's what I was referring to. There's so many things that could have been done differently on all sides, but I can't help but wonder the real reason the employee was terminated so quickly. With as much as this has escalated, I think a lot of people are owed at least that.
I personally hope she will learn from this and another company will give her a new chance. The odds of that are slim given how big this has become--it's front-paging repeatedly on HN and /r/programming. But I'd hate to see her whole career ruined over a mistake she could learn from. (Though, to be fair, she has not seemed too eager to admit to any mistakes online so far.)
Social media is an incredibly powerful tool - especially when you are good at "it" and you wield influence. Trip up on your own shoelaces and you run tremendous risk of social media backfiring on you.
[1] https://amandablumwords.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/3/
[1]http://butyoureagirl.com/5004/wordcamp-boston%E2%80%99s-igni...
[1 cached]http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qahkOwf...
[2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V6vNEDMzgw#t=3m5s
Apparently she does things like this frequently, they just never hit the front pages of news sites before.
No one committed any action that was overtly horrible on it's own.
In a vacuum: Two guys were making childish jokes, and a woman was offended and told her friends about it, with a picture of who.
The only reason this is on anyone's radar at all is that people made a fuss of the message due to the issues of gender segregation of women, and the feelings of oppression from men. Combined with rash action on the part of one company.
this was a non-event, turned fiasco, turned tragedy.
That's the remarkable thing about this whole mess. Lots of people are making what appear to be bad choices, but only mildly bad choices. Nobody needed to be crucified here.
Until you get into the whole DDOS and threats of violence business, those are truly bad choices.
Besides, without Playhaven's overly-strong response, the hackles of the antifeminists wouldn't have been raised, and we wouldn't be talking about this right now. The keystone of this story is actually Playhaven's response, not Richards'.
Developers who make business decisions who rely on SendGrid follow her on Twitter and need to work with her.
It's no different than a reporter for the NY Times who covers White House news, and supposed to be unbiased starts, bad mouthing Obama on Twitter. Would you want read NY Times anymore?
Obama makes a bone-headed move, lets say he: "didn't veto a bill that allows companies to enforce locking in cellphones and tablets. It's going to be illegal to jailbreak now."
A reporter from the NY time goes on twitter and badmouths The Obama administration for messing up.
Well, this is the first Hacker News hears about it and goes crazy. Those JERKS! Inexplicably support is catalyzed and Obama gets impeached! Later it comes to light that there was some logistical and communication errors, turns out the administration just ignored it because it couldn't become law anyway on some technicality.
Every democrat on twitter raises a huge fuss about the massively inappropriate and biased slander this reporter has made. It's not her job to make tweets like that. Look at what she's done! The administration didn't really do anything wrong in the first place!
Within a day or two, that reporter gets canned due to the fallout, she's caught up in the center of a big scandal that will taint the public's perspective on her integrity, even though she always had and still has integrity.
Maybe Obama getting impeached is a bit of a stretch. Otherwise, I like this metaphor. :)
Ethics clauses are signed at date of hire for exactly reasons like this one. Companies want you to be part of their brand when you join their ranks. For positions that require a public forum, that includes off-hours as well.
NY Post will most likely be calling that reporter for a high-level visible position within the hour of the firing. So not all hope is lost, but depends on what kind of brand you want to speak for.
Even worse, she went off the deep-end by claiming that people disagreeing with her were all trolling, or worse, somehow being racist. She also posted comments where she discounted other people's opinions simply because of their race.
There was not an ounce of remorse on her part for what she did. She firmly believed that she was some sort of holy warrior for feminism, and that she was standing up for future women programmers, or something like that. It's also odd considering that she doesn't even have a programming background; her background seems to be in HR and marketing. She basically hangs around programmers, but is not really a part of the programming community.
What was also bad is that she implied that SendGrid supported her in all of this (http://i.imgur.com/eHOC3tA.jpg), thereby dragging them into her personal crusade.
As a tech evangelist it is her job to build goodwill and she did anything but that. She took advantage of her huge listener base and used her platform as an evangelist as a personal soapboax for her own holy war.
Hopefully she learns from her mistakes. The best thing she can do at this point is to issue a public apology. Another company may give her a chance then. The problem is HR issues like these are very touchy and toxic and most companies would sooner not deal with it. This is because people who display this kind of attitude can be extremely toxic. I read many comments from women programmers who completely disagreed with what she did, and they said that she completely overreacted. Does any company really want to have a person who will scream "Sexism!" at the drop of a hat? Sure, the guys may have been immature, but nothing they said or did was even remotely sexist. Most of the people who I've seen defending her are either white knights, or other women who share her "brand" of feminism and who also, unsurprisingly, share her lack of technical background or experience with the programming community.
The irony is that one of the guys shamed on twitter, who lost his job, has had a much easier time finding a new job. I don't think Adria will have a same luxury.
The biggest irony in all of this, of course, is that what she perceived to be a morally-righteous stance has completely backfired and bit her in the ass, causing her to lose her job.
There are thousands out there vehemently supporting her. She only needs to find one to offer her a job.
Thought of another way, her name has become a cause. Many love the cause, many hate it. But that cause has enough support that you could run a profitable business just serving a fraction of her devotees.
Yet it wouldn't surprise me to see it happen, given this individual's seemingly extreme reactions to perceived slights (themselves minuscule compared to actually being fired, justified or not).
But for the record I'd have preferred that no one lose their job.
You know why you should pay attention to this? One day, you may find yourself in the same situation that the SendGrid CEO is in today. At that point, knowing how to react stands between a momentary headache and a multi-million-dollar business-crippling headache.
Hypothetically, a female can now overhear a dick joke between two gay men, twitter their photographs, and get them fired from their jobs because the company that employs them does not have their backs.
If you want this situation to improve, and not live in fear any more, there are a few things you should do immediately. Here is the thinking person's guide to how to navigate the murky waters of our industry. I say person because I know both gay and straight women who hate the massively PC dominated atmosphere of most software companies these days:
1) NEVER hire a woman to fill some sort of quota, or because of some abstract objective like "We probably need more women in the company." You will end up attracting this sort of extreme feminist "female evangelist" who runs around with a chip on her shoulder constantly complaining about sexism.
2) NEVER say anything sexual at a conference to anyone. DO NOT speak to females who are attending the conference beyong absolutely professional matters. For heaven's sake, do not ask a female if her boyfriend is the one attending. DO NOT reveal any personal details about yourself.
You probably earn enough as a software developer, so if you want sexual intercourse, get a call girl (just being honest and practical here). It is not that expensive. Remember that prostitution is legal in Canada.
3) Avoid all social contact with women in your company. Date outside the industry if possible.
4) If you are forcefully pulled into a discussion about sexism in the industry, pretend to agree with their points ("Yes, women often face blatant sexism in the industry"), etc. and politely CUT the conversation as fast as possible. NEVER show a men's rights perspective because you will be labeled as weird. Just stop talking to that person. If you want to show your perspective, show it through your vote the next time there is an election.
5) NEVER engage in dialog with male feminists like Matthew Garrett. Follow point 4) if they start talking to you about sexism in the tech industry.
It is a sad outcome but Adria's position had simply become untenable.
Personally I know who seems the more employable of the two. I do hope Adria gets the time to step back and learn something from this sorry incident.
There are no winners here.
Most powerful statement I've seen yet about this issue. Literally no one can walk away and claim "victory" on this issue.
The worst part is that 130,000 customers + 2 job holders were impacted by something so insignificant in the whole grand scheme of things. Ah, the power of social media....
Firing someone because of the criminal activity of someone else seems very weird.
At least he is opening himself up to that interpretation. Maybe the “consequences” are just disgruntled customers deciding to take their business elsewhere or the loss in trust in her, resulting in a reduced ability of her to do her job effectively, but in that context also talking about the “130,000 valued customers” is very weird. I can only assume that he was at least also referring to the DDoS when talking about the consequences.
To me it’s pretty clear that if the DDoS played any role in their decision, then it’s at least partly based on immoral cowardice.
All I’m saying that if the DDoS played any part in their decision to fire her, then that part of the justification for their decision represents immoral cowardice to me.
It is open to interpretation, but I don’t think it’s an unreasonable interpretation.