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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."
re: everyone else in the story - Adria, her employers, Mr-Hank, and his employer - all made dick moves,
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You are correct. Despite her gender, Adria was being a dick. I should have thought of that line for my comment below: Twitter-shaming.
Since the jokes were in reference to "big dongles" and forking a man's repo and made no references to women or female anatomy, it seems like Richards is actually being homophobic.
Yes. Political Correctness is the *mortal enemy* of Free Speech.
Come on you puritan sods! Grow a pair of balls.
Now if the developers made a sexual joke about that Adria woman , than I would consider this sexual harassment. But some wordplay? On Forking? And big dongles? What's next; "Oh no's, he said that we should go 'finger' the cullprit who broke into our unix account. Let's put tar and feathers on him and carry him around on a metal bar!"
I am goddamn happy I live on the ole' Continent where you can swear profanely on the workfloor when you break your skull underneath your desk while searching for that loose USB cable or make funny comebacks to loose the tension like that female developer who shouted "that's what he said" after the frantic cry of the assistant server-admin "i can't get it up!".
You are creating a generation of scared, stressed, puritan bastards. One visit to a Scottish , Flemish or Basque pub and they probably faint upon hearing the "feck this pissbeer" or "my, those are big jugs. No offense lady!"
As a owner of a tech company I can say with all honesty that I don't discriminate at all when I hire. All I see when I am hiring is how much money you can make me. That is it. My employees are nothing more then an investment. That being said it is bullshit like this that makes me think twice about hiring women. When I hire a women I have to take into account the risk of a sexual harassment charge that does not really exist if I hire a male.
Hardly. I think this blog post sums it up best. http://amandablumwords.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/3/. She didn't try and work with anyone, she wasn't out to correct anything. She was out use her bully pulpit to 1: make herself more important 2: hurt those that had the audacity to offend her. That said it doesn't excuse by ANY means the attitudes show both for and against her position that went well beyond the pale. What's more sad is at the VERY SAME conference she was offended at she made this jewel: https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425. Reeks of hypocrisy.
Firing Richards herself is the moronic thing.
She was also there on the company dime, wasting her company's resources. Her company doesn't control the PyCon environment. Her company isn't paying her to moderate it. Sometimes being an adult includes tuning out annoyances and getting the job done. If you can't do this, then don't venture outside your company's sphere of control. Maybe the jokes were crass, but they weren't directed at her (or at anyone or any gender in particular).
She got fired for not doing her job.
You are a misandrist. She did not feel that sexual jokes were offensive. The evidence is sitting on her own twitter page where she posted her own sexual jokes from the same event. She was offended by men. By their existence and unwillingness to bow down before her perceived superior gender. This is an ongoing problem, and I know that I am tired of hearing how my son should not have the same rights or future opportunities because someone he has never met treated someone else that he has never met badly. If she wants to be a hero, the fist step is not behaving exactly like the villains.
As a woman, "self-proclaimed nerd", I am highly offended by the actions of Adria Richards. Her offense offends me. Did anyone commit any wrongs towards her? Absolutely not. These men weren't talking to her, or even about her. Now, if one of them had pointed at her and said something like, "I'd like to use my big dongle on her" or something, then perhaps it would make sense to be offended. Even if that were so, who cares? If she wants to label herself with stereotypes, "nerds" are generally classified as socially-awkward and sexually frustrated. Why was she so surprised by their conversation? They weren't even being sexually explicit, they were cracking puns. I wish that I had been at the conference with her and seen her tweet. I would have found her, sat next to her, and whispered to her asking her if she's seen any big dongles recently. It's honestly women like this that make people not want to hire women. I would have been angry with her even if she had tried to settle this woman-to-man, so to say. There was nothing to settle, nothing to fix. No one did anything wrong. Her passive-aggressive attitude led to the firing to people who didn't deserve it.
My boss recently told me that "someone" in the office had overheard me say something to another person and it made her feel "uncomfortable".
And.... I'm supposed to do what with this information? I can't very well avoid saying something again if I don't know what, when, where, or to whom I said it in the first place, where it was apparently overheard by some anonymous 3rd person.
On the other hand, if whoever I offended has just said, "Hey, that's gross you asshole", I would have apologized on the spot and been careful to never have a similar conversation near her again. Problem would have been solved.
Apparently, it's only sexist if done by men (which is a very sexist attitude for her to have).
I hope it's only a small road block on the road to real equality, but right now, yeah, men are often treated as guilty of being sexists, misogynists and chauvinists because they are men, and have to live to higher standards to prove they aren't. And those arseholes who give men a bad name by wholf-whistling at pretty girls, don't help the cause either - it just gives the extremists on the other side more fuel for their bigoted fire.
Until the day it's just as distasteful for women to talk about men's dick size as it is for men to talk about women's cunt size, we have a ways to go.
If a guy finds a girl's sex toys, it shows that he's a pervert.
If a girl finds a guy's sex toys, it shows that he's a pervert.
God forbid anyone TALK about their being differences between men and women. It drives me crazy what people will go through to make themselves feel victimized. If you can't overhear someone near you making a crude joke without feeling uncomfortable, you have a problem and it's not their joke. A persons insecurities are not the rest of the worlds fault.
> The reason why it is a federal case is that she shouldn't have to be the one to stand up and confront them.
That's nanny state nonsense. If someone is doing you wrong then you stand up to yourself. You don't run for help first. You don't get a government bail out first. That is your last resort.
Fend for yourself. Don't be helpless.
A lady can speak up for herself if men aren't acting like proper gentlemen.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Everyone says he shouldn't have been fired, but from what can be implied from the company press release's this may not have been his first incident of this nature.
That may just be them covering their ass, but if not, and he has already had warnings for similar behavior then firing him may well have been the correct response. I tend to think that because both of these developers worked at the same company, and only one has been fired that this is the more likely scenario than them just getting rid of him
Normal people worry me!
here's an open request to geekdom - if this bitch gets a job anywhere, listen carefully to anything she says, and if she says anything that can be interpreted as offensive (like "good morning" - might refer to sex or "what time is the meeting" - might refer to a sexual liason), head to HR immediately and file a complaint about "inappropriate language in the workplace" - be sure to use the phrase "hostile work environment" in your complaint; that phrase is guaranteed to make HR shit bricks and will insure that everyone up to the CEO hears about it. I've seen more than one person fired because of that phrase, and no one should have to put up with that bitch - if you don't do it to her, she damn well will do it to you, and life is tough enough without some miserable cunt like her listening to private conversations and "interpreting" what is said to further her own ambitions.
posted as AC so she doesn't try that shit on me...