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."

Comments

re-enforcing behaviour

[batwingTM]

I cannot believe how many comments here are attacking Adria. Sure, she did an increadibly dumb thing by going straight to Twitter, and I can understand why SendGrid are distancing themselves from her, but I can completely understand why she did what she did.

Women are treated like absolute crap by most of the IT industry, I have worked in the field for years and now work as a IT teacher, most individuals are reasonably respectful, but by-and-large it does become a 'mens club'.

Adria was offended by what was said, whether that was right or wrong is not the issue, the issue was that as an attendee at PyCon and she was exposed to behaviour that had no place at a IT conference. And to be honest, I think people are understating how difficult it can be to confront people who cause offence. The best solution would be to talk to those who caused offence, but in some social situations that isn't the simple task most people here are making it out to be, are you all that socially capable?

The attitudes need to change, and that isn't going to just happen. Hopefully this serves as a example about what behaviour is expected by IT professionals when interacting with people. Given the comments made here I suspect that there is a lot of "But these women make my life less fun, and they souldn't be allowed too" and that only helps fuel this very problem.