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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
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.
At conferences, most of the moronic, insulting, self-serving and offensive comments I hear are labeled "marketing". However I can't complain about them.
At least justice was served by the firing of Richards.
Two employees, in public, on company time, wearing badges clearly identifying what company they work for, making totally inappropriate comments - they most certainly should be fired.
Firing Richards herself is the moronic thing. You don't fire the messenger. I have zero idea what SendGrid does - but "all publicity is good publicity" is a lie.
So random comments should get you fired because someone somewhere could possibly find them offensive? We don't even know what was really said. It likely, based on the odds, was probably fairly innocuous. Yet two people got fired and have had their lives severely damaged because someone else was slightly offended.
If certain groups are supposed to get special "don't offend" privileges then don't be shocked when other groups view that group as trouble and lawsuit magnets and don't want to associate with that group in any context where a single phrase or word could get them damaged.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
There's no doubt the tech-industry could use a lot less pimply-teenage-boy-ism. But in this case, no: firing Richards is about on par. If you TFA you'll find she made jokes herself, on twitter (not even an overheard private conversation), about stuffing socks down pants in TSA pat-downs. That's pretty much exactly in the same stratum as the jokes she was complaining about---both childish and sex-related, neither sexist. If one is worth firing, then so is the other (although both firings are over-reactions, to put it mildly).
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.
No, no they shouldn't. They're not drones.. They're not slaves. They're employees. There's supposed to be a difference.. Telling jokes should not get you fired. Bad performance at your job should get you fired.
These PC pantywaists are going to be the ruin of us all. Telling a joke based on stereotypes is not 'sexism.' Deciding (not) to hire or fire someone based on gender is sexism. Of course, insecure people like Richards rule the roost now so now suddenly we're all responsible for HER feelings.
Two humans making jokes (a human trait, FYI) about human body parts... and the problem with this is what, exactly?
Just because some people are humorless puritanical douchebags doesn't mean the world should cater to them. If employers want robots intead of humans, they should have hired robots in the first place.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Only one of the two were fired. The person who was offended was also fired.
But really if she had just said something to them quietly no one would have been fired. But she had to take it to crowds of people who weren't even there.
Is it? Richards herself tweeted publicly to a friend about stuffing his pants next time he goes through a TSA check. If the first guy deserved to get fired for making stupid jokes to his friend sitting in the audience at a conference why shouldn't Richards get fired for doing the same thing publicly via Twitter?
You don't have a right to not be offended.
So fuck off.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
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.
Here's some things that get to me.
The tech/geek realm is primarily male to the point it is virtually male. Women join in knowing what it's like before they enter. It's like going to a bar and when you enter, you expect people to immediately put out their smokes and change the way they speak. Sorry miss priss, but this is how men relate to one another. We aren't saying you're not welcome in our world, but I am saying you'd better know what you're getting into and be prepared to accept it. Why do women think the world needs to change when they enter a room? And why do people reinforce this moronic and impractical notion?! It's a damned good thing I've never had this problem at a strip club... somehow a men's club would cease to exist if the women were offended by men acting like men.
But you know? It's just about time men started becoming more vocal about women and their offensive behaviors in the work place. A lot of gossip and rumor milling is rather forbidden and is typically unreported. And when women try to fit in when they make any form of sexual comment, we should discourage that in the same way. I had a female co-worker who made comments about getting wet and getting her juices flowing... and not a week or so later tried to get someone fired for "inappropriate comments" of a sexual nature.
As I read through related chatter about this incident, I read where she even made comments of a sexual nature herself... not at this event but in other places. Pot calling the kettle black much?
Want to end -isms? Want them to be a non-issue? It starts with TOLLERANCE and ends with public disapproval. Getting legal and jobless over it is pretty damned ridiculous when it comes to personalities and moments in time which are subject to interpretation to say the very least.
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).
She is a modern feminist. Men are bad, rules don't apply to her, and if anyone dares disagree, they are WRONG!!!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Why not blame the people actually doing the firing? Some random person posting on twitter does not have the authority to fire anybody. The people who make the decisions (in both companies, in this case) should take responsibility for their actions.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
She's obviously a true geek which means avoid confrontation and resort to passive aggressive behaviour.
Richards, in public, on company time, wearing a profile clearly identifying what company she works for, making inappropriate and factually inaccurate tweets should not be fired?
Double standard much?
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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.
If you bother to have read it, 2 men didn't lose their livelihood. 1 man did, and the person (who is female) who tweeted it did.
Sort of surprised you are +5 insightful when you missed the whole point.
2 people make a joke amongst themselves, loud enough that a person in front of them could hear it. Instead of turning around and asking them to stop, she posts on Twitter about it. She turned something that was private (as in, just a few people around where aware of) into something very very public. Public beyond the event she was at, she brought it out to the real world. On top of it, she included a photo of the guys.
She completely over reacted, and made a big issue out of something that might of been in bad taste, but was in a small way. And she lost her job for it. Which is good. Unfortunately, one of the guys lost his job also, which I don't feel he should of. But thanks to her, what he did became public and his company comes out looking bad.
She went drama queen and it cost her job. Also cost a father of 3 his job also. Her fault for losing her job, and her fault for getting that other person fired.
Be seeing you...
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.
women in the workplace are just as bad, as anyone who passes by their gossip-groups at lunch know
I'm especially amused by all the posts by the outraged saying the guys referenced in the article were "pricks" or "dicks", but they would fire up the holy sexist smokescreen should the woman be referred to as a "cunt" or "twat".
The first thing you see (still, actually) when you look at her Twitter page is that she's an evangelist at SendGrid. So her comments are just as much linked to her company as the two yahoos' behind her were.
Personally, I don't think anyone deserved to get fired, unless there were a lot of other things going on. The two male jokers were being childish, in relative private. Richards was being childish in a very public way. All of them needed to be told to knock it off.
The whole "striking a blow against sexism" is a silly attempt to spin the incident into something it's not. There's nothing in the story that suggests anything sexist, unless Richards did what she did because the jokers were male.
Bullshit! Certainly these guys could be taken aside and counseled for conduct that reflected badly, certainly apologizing could be in order. But firing? No way. In fact the conversation didn't even include her - she eavesdropped on them and when she realized they worked for a sponsoring company she figured out she could make a grand splash. Drama drama drama, she got exactly what she wished for - oodles of attention. What she didn't bargain for was the fact that most of us with common sense see right through her for what she is.
As for firing her? Oh that had to happen. No way should she be considered for a position that requires her to interface with a group of people she just alienated.No way would I send her to talk to programmers as a manager. If I were a developer and she were brought into my workspaces I'd leave. I wouldn't want to be in the same room as this woman. Why would I risk my job around someone who has a proven track record of blowing things out of proportion and casting aspersions?! Forget it, she can stay far far away so far as I'm concerned. When she figures out how to act like an adult and grows a thicker skin then maybe she should be allowed out with the big kids. She can't possibly function in the position she was cast for and shouldn't be employed as such. For that matter I sure hope any future employer figures out Google well enough to see what's in store for them if they hire her...
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Frankly I have no issue with firing her. She has just proven herself to be a hypocritical drama queen (see some of her other posts). She is apparently supposed to be an "evangelist" and yet just screwed over members of the community for which she must interface to do her job. They should have fired her sooner! Sorry miss, you've just become ineffective in your position, there's the door.
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
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.
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
But it wouldn't bother others of us at all. Why are your personal feelings more important than mine? Or why is a single person's feeling more important than the other twenty people they work with?
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
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*
I'm a white male and am in situations where I am not in power all the time. The way the corporate world works puts engineers at the bottom of the org chart.
Except in Harlem at night, particularly if you chose to walk through the grounds of a housing project, you might actually run across persons who not only feel you do not belong in their neighborhood, but are perfectly willing to enforce their preferences with violence. And you will have no one who will back you up, during or after the fact. Comparing geeks to gangbangers is ridiculous.
How they feel is largely up to them. If they're going to feel disrespected because someone somewhere made a dick joke, or unsafe because there's a lot of guys around, that's not something anyone needs to cater to.
You don't see a problem with a person trying to establish a standard and punish another person for violating it, when she herself does not follow said standard? There's a related legal principle called "unclean hands"... sometimes "she did it too" does apply.
Naa, that's BS. Did you read her whole mock-heroic (though I think the 'mock' was unintentional) description of her rationale?