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SendGrid Fires Employee After Firestorm Over Inappropriate Jokes
tsamsoniw writes "Hoping to strike a blow against sexism in the tech industry , developer and tech evangelist Adria Richards took to Twitter to complain about two male developers swapping purportedly offensive jokes at PyCon. The decision has set into motion a chain of events that illustrate the impact a tweet or two can make in this age of social networking: One the developers and Richards have since lost their jobs, and even the chair of PyCon has been harassed for his minor role in the incident."
I think we nerds need to get more facetime access to the rest of the world. All these "stranger danger" kids are now stranger danger adults.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
This is what happens in a culture where anything is offensive. Even a silly dick joke will get the hypocritical opportunists to raise a stink, and then everyone loses their jobs, and the companies get to hire younger staff at cheaper wages while hiding behind policies to be "wholesome" and "unoffensive". It's a wonderful game until you're the one who accidentally sneezes something that sounds a little like "penis" and end up on the cutting room floor.
Two men being immature at a conference and they lose their livelihood because someone quasi-famous tweeted about it? I'm sure many people would disagree but the tons of triumph in the reporting that they lost their jobs is very distasteful to me especially in this job market. I don't want to live in a society where everyone is so uptight that they don't say anything without 5 levels of mental filtering because other some random stranger can completely screw them over.
I think that he's right. In the time that it took to turn around and take that picture, she could just as easily have said "Hey, cut it out! Those kinds of comments are inappropriate, and I'm offended, okay?" This is a point where saying "don't make a federal case out of it" may be apropos. Does she want them to walk around wearing big "L" for losers on their foreheads, or "D" for "dicks" for what offensive things they said? Maybe she needs to reread that Scarlet Letter book.
...considered posting a comment in this, then stopped and deleted it just in case *your* employer takes offense?
If sexism were to be defeated, it would mean hearts and minds would change and it would become a non-issue.
This is something very different. This is a chilling effect and a one-way weapon against males. The same would never happen if the roles were opposite. This is no different than the mentality we generally maintain that it's funny for women to hurt men but tragic and horrific for men to hurt women.
This doesn't "fight" sexism, it defines it. The worst thing is all of this harm is done without the benefit of a trial, a warning or any sense of fairness.
IMO she deserved it. This was a matter for reprimands by the conference and if needed by their employers, NOT but the public at large. She breached the two mens privacy in a serious way and if I was her employer I'd be worried about blow back from what she did now and what she'll do in the future.
IMO it's never OK to "twitter shame" someone, it's the pinnacle of passive-aggressive behavior where you take a complaint public and ask for mob justice. What happens next time where she calls for the pitchforks and torches and someone actually is harmed by some mentally ill person that got fired up by her?
Two people at a conference telling jokes you find offensive? Ok, say something to them. Her taking it to Twitter is no different than the faceless drones threatening her via twitter - too coward to confront someone face to face - instead attacking someone via the Internet.
She is a self described activist, who is too afraid to confront two nerds?
A bit of human decency, on both parties (aka: talking to another human being) would have mitigated this entire situation and two people would still have their jobs.
I like how you just take her word and immediately assume she is right. The way you applaud her ability to destroy people lives just on her word.
""Yesterday the future of programming was on the line and I made myself heard.""
I read it and about barfed. How big does ones ego need to be to think that?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'd fire her for being poisonous to the work environment, and hire 10 easy going females who have senses of humor to replace her. This kind of wretch drags an entire organization down.
She overheard someone talking NOT TO HER, and tried to make sure they couldn't feed their families. That makes her a hero? Bullshit.
Anyone else remember when people had thick enough skins they could just roll their eyes, shrug their shoulders, and not give a crap about what other people were doing or saying (provided no one's really getting hurt)?
I am tired of everyone feeling so entitled - the whole world has to conform to their ideals, and if it doesn't then by Gawd they're going to bitch, complain, threaten legal action, and sue until they get what they want.
Shit like this just pisses me off no end and makes me pine for the days when the Internet was an exclusive club for us nerds (and perverts).
Only if she was not sexually harassing the men. That is right. She was sexually harassing the men. She did not complain because the joke was sexual in nature, as those kinds of jokes clearly don't offend her, as she was making sexual jokes at the same event. She made the complain because she didn't feel that "men" should be afforded the same rights as women, and she used her position in the media to harass these men.
Because making sexually charged jokes in public is central to your being a man? That's really sad, if so.
There is *no* right not to be offended. US case law (and the First Amendment) is clear on this.
If the guys are being inappropriate, that is one thing, but no-one ought to claim they have a right to not be offended. What was offensive to Richards was clearly not offensive to many other people. Personally I find hyper-sensitivity to be somewhat offensive, yet I don't feel the need to wage jihad against her. I've seen this behavior before from women (including getting guys chucked out of university for chuckling at inappropriate jokes). If *she* was offended then it is up to *her* to point this out to the culprits - without doing so in an offensive way herself. That's what a mature person would do. She can't claim they were threatening in any way, because their apologetic posture shows they were probably approachable for a mature person to make their point to.
Furthermore, there are a number of troubling aspects to Richards' claim (and those that support her narrow-minded point-of-view):
Who gets to decide what is offensive or not?
Should government, the legal profession, or business decide what is an appropriate joke or not?
There is only one solution, Free Speech. Free Speech is not about stuff you agree with - it is a principle that protected stuff you don't agree with (provided it is not out-and-out hate speech; eg. such as the racist and anti-Semitic core doctrines of the political ideology called Islam).
The solution is for companies to say, "We did not mean to offend you. However, we stand up for Free Speech for all out employees and don't believe we have the right to dictate what they can think or say, provided it is legal.". Too bad the World is full of beta personalities who cower at the thought of causing offense, rather than alpha personalities who may be brusque, but at least they stand up for moral principals (even if this is unpopular).
So grow some 'nads by fellow Slashdotters. You are either for Free Speech, and would not fire these guys (even if you would take them aside in private to tell them to cool it off a bit), or you believe in Political Correctness where someone else may dictate what you can say, hear and think. The real problem with PC is not that it dictates and denies what people can say, it denies that multitude of other people the right to hear (what can often be unpleasant but truthful).
An inappropriate joke about a "big dongle" is not sexual harassment, it is anatomical humour. It was not aimed at her, or her sex. It was certainly not appropriate for that setting, but not worth firing someone over.
She overreacted by publicly shaming them on twitter instead of just confronting them directly or complaining to the conference organizers (as per the code of conduct for the conference).
The employer of one of the developers overreacted by firing him.
There was a backlash against her for her actions, and so her employer felt that she could no longer do her job (developer relations) and fired her.
The conference organizers did the right thing...everyone else screwed up to varying degrees.
In real life the claim only has to be taken seriously if it was filed by a woman.
News flash:
They didn't make a sexist joke
They made a penis joke via "dongle"
Jokes about male genitalia are not inherently sexist. In order to be sexist, the joke would need to directly denigrate women.
Inferring that any joke that referencing male genitalia is sexist on the other hand, is sexist in and of itself.
Let's say I'm a great technologist, awesome project manager and give good client-meeting, but when I hang out with my friends I refer to women as 'bitchez' and my favorite pasttime is thinking of them in the most physical way -- and on occasion penetrating said bitchez.
My general attitude is that if you're offended, then you offend me with your rigid mindset and efforts to control the way I act and think.
The basic problem here is that many feminists simply loathe male sexuality and its outward expression. They believe they have the right to determine what is 'acceptable' and what isn't.
How is that philisophically different from condemning homosexuality?
1. They were sitting right behind her. What, they didn't notice she was there?
2. Look at the expressions on the two men's faces in Richards' picture.
3. The tech industry has a bad rap for promoting or even hiring women. It's easy for developers to denigrate women in stereotypic fashion without being contradicted. I see it here on Slashdot on a regular basis - the attacks on Richards in this thread are representative examples.
4. The SendGrid CEO got it very wrong. I suspect he may be pandering to the majority of males that make up his potential customer base. Looking at this thread (and from reading previous threads on Slashdot having to do with women in the tech industry), he probably realizes that most people he's trying to sell to will agree with him.
I wouldn't want to work in a company run by him.
Richards should not have been fired. The CEO or someone of his designation should have had a long conversation with her first, with the aim of listening more than lecturing.
You know, I try to avoid making comments on things I know are going to be controversial because I'm always going to piss off xx% of people, and I really don't set out to piss off anyone. (Except when I do...) But sometimes, something so heinously, irredeemably, goddamn stupid happens, and I have to vent or I'll simply explode. So here goes all my friggin' karma... PLEASE NOTE: My opinions are simply based on events as they have been described.
While I wish I could be all diplomatic and say that everyone involved shares the blame for this incident, that wouldn't be honest. He's a nerd, making nerd jokes, to another nerd, at a nerd convention. The stuff he supposedly said is just silly. Sure, there's SORT OF innuendo there, but it's like middle school stuff. There was nothing overtly-sexual or graphic about it, and he was having what he thought was an at least semi-private conversation. It was those two computer nerds in WarGames. It wasn't a truck stop on the Jersey turnpike.
I get that she found it offensive, and that's her right. But the fact that she was (supposedly) smiling as she took the damning TwitPic just seems... I don't know. Malicious? What was that supposed to be? "Heh, I'll fix YOU! I'm going to tell the INTERNET!" The whole thing just seems so damned petty.
Replace her phone with a gun, and now we're closer to what happened; *Bang!* There goes your job.
Let's take that analogy and run with it, as one might with a pair of scissors! (Well, as I might, anyway.) If I overhear someone making dumb comments behind me, I'm probably going to just roll my eyes. The most I might do, is tell them to shut up. I'm not going to turn around and SHOOT them. (Probably.)
She defends her actions, saying that in order to make the IT industry safe for women, she HAD to shoot him.
I really don't want to sound biased just because I'm a guy, because on its most fundamental level this has nothing to do with gender. Look at the situation; You have two people carrying on a private conversation, albeit a dumb and juvenile one. A third person overhears them, and instead of asking them to kindly shut the hell up snaps a photograph of them, grabs the internet bullhorn (With which they are apparently quite skilled), and says "Internet, you wouldn't BELIEVE what these two bozos just said!". Then one of those 'bozos' loses his job. Twitter shaming; No less asinine and juvenile than the dongle jokes.
I want to see more women in the tech industries, I want to see more female makers and tinkerers. Why? It's not just because I think we need more beauty to balance out the neckbeards. It's because I think technology and making things are TOTALLY FUCKIN' AWESOME and everyone deserves a turn!
This is not how that happens. This is how the gap gets bigger. Please stop. Sexual harassment is a completely reprehensible thing, and it happens way too often. In the tech industry, in every industry, in society in-general. But every time an incident like this gets ink, it only makes things harder on those experiencing legitimate harassment.
Okay, putting all that aside, so far, this has just been my reaction to what actually happened at PyCon. That was admittedly a very small slice of the pi--incident. (I couldn't go through with it, sorry.) Let's talk about the aftermath.
So, 'Mr-Hank' loses his job... That's really unfortunate... I think his employer overreacted, but the reality is, with the way everything goes viral these days, dropping him like he's radioactive and ON FIRE probably seemed like the best course of action from a PR standpoint, since it was like he was very publicly being accused of sexual harassment, and you don't play around with that. I even feel bad about his apology, because while it was ultimately the right thing to do, it just felt like too much for what he did, like it was just more shaming...
Ms. Richards loses her job, which is also unfortunate, but I can't say that I hold her blameless. Her employer had no choice but to fire her; they're a media
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
Even more so since it seems like it was predicated on what sounded like an explicable, rectifiable employee mistake.
She posted an image of two guys and accused them of misogyny, then compared herself with Joan Of Arc when people started complaining she was out of line. THEN she claimed her company backed her, basically implying her company agreed with all of her actions and subsequent writing.
All of this pubic on the internet. How exactly do you "rectify" all that? You can't un-post everything, it's all way too public and endlessly re-quoted. Not possible.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley