Slashdot Mirror
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 am pretty sure being a developer evangelist doesn't involve you alienating more than half of developers with your tweeting.
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.
*Joke about dongle*
*drama*
*Rocks fall, everyone gets fired*
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
...considered posting a comment in this, then stopped and deleted it just in case *your* employer takes offense?
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.
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.
Yes. Political Correctness is the *mortal enemy* of Free Speech.
Good for her. She stood up for herself when she was threatened (triggered). What was the trigger? She saw a photo on main stage of a little girl who had been in the Young Coders workshop. She realized immediately that she had to do something or that little girl would never have the chance to learn and love programming because the ass clowns behind her would make it impossible for the little girl to do so. What did these ass clowns do? They began making sexual forking jokes. What happened after the forking joke? A dongle joke. Incredible. Just like Popeye, she "couldn't stands it no more" and took action.
What did she do? She did what any hero would have done in her situation. She took a photo of the offending hipster males and posted it for the whole world to see. This was an outstanding, very brave effort for a woman who had just been triggered. She was applauded by the feminist blogosphere, and in the end was fired by a man in a position of power. The fucking patriarchy. Fuck them. Don't believe me, read the entire blog entry she wrote. It is all totally supported by the ideology that rules our campuses today. To quote her:
Classic. Who can read that without a tear? Can anyone provide a place that I can donate to her legal defense fund?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
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.
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!"
These guys lost their jobs because of joking about the word dongle, something that every geek on the face of the planet has joked about. Forking and dongle are funny sounding stupid IT words, every profession has stupid words people joke about. If you are a female and you don't get invited to the after hours hang out where people goof around, make jokes, and talk serious business this is the kind of person you have to blame. What a horrible humorless human.
Don't think men with families they struggle to pay to feed their kids, and keep medical insurance don't secretly wonder if the female next to one of these females, and leave them out of the loop because of it. This is what causes the truly nasty life changing, paycheck shrinking discrimination, not stupid jokes.
Congratulations to her on the petty, bitter, shallow victory. and dinner alone. I wouldn't hire this wretch in a million years, I don't care if she is the most brilliant python developer in the world. No organization needs her poison in it.
a) A conference is a public place. Taking photos there is no crime and reporting what you could hear by natural hearing neither.
b) If you have twitter followers for some reason, what you write will be observed
c) If you are somewhere representing a company on social media, and you use this channel for other things, no matter if you did it for the best and the worst, and these other things start to interfere with your capability to efficiently represent the company in a solely positive way, you will be fired. And rightly so. A company does not judge if you are right or wrong in doing something. They see somebody who can create a positive image for them. If you have such a job, then you have to know that creating unwanted attention which prevents you from doing the job gets you fired. Sorry thatâ(TM)s life. If you have a Job behind a desk, programming, you can do whatever you want on twitter.
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.
They got fired to and the jokes were not sexist. If it was jokes about vaginas then you would still say it was sexist against women right? In fact the jokes were sexual in nature but they weren't sexist at all. No one should have been fired and this just makes everyone look bad. The people who made the jokes look bad. The company they work for looks bad. The woman who reported them looks bad. The company she works for looks bad. Everybody looses.
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).
Losing.
I'm not even sure that this should be legally protected speech - but that the firings were unhelpful, I agree.
There is a lot of hugely inappropriate sexually charged behavior at a lot of tech conferences. I mean, this isn't a revelation, right? And at times it makes being female at a tech conference really unpleasant. (And it often feels unsafe. Not in the least because it often is unsafe.) I think calling out the behavior was appropriate. And I'm not particularly worried about the medium being twitter. Seriously - look how quickly this escalated to threats of violence. Now imagine being a woman in a really male dominated environment - would you feel comfortable calling them out in person?
(Note, I might. But I'm a 5' 11" martial arts instructor, and known to be straightforward, possibly to a fault, in personal communication.)
I'm not even sure the jokes count as "sexist". Even taking Adrias blog version of events the jokes were sexual double entendres, not sexist.
Her over the top escalation did cause one of the guys to be fired, apparently, and in addition caused the company she worked for to be severely DDOSed and presumably hit with a mountain of email. From what I can tell most people think she severely overreacted.
FWIW, women do have a right to expect not to be made the target of misogynistic jokes and have a right to be protected in the workplace from inappropriate comments. But that does NOT mean that two people cannot have a semi-private banter even in the workplace or at a conference.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
It seems to me the real problem here is not the purportedly offensive jokes or the public tweet, but that people can actually get fired over a simple joke or tweet (and the law actually allows this).
That's what surprises me most, especially with America's free speech stuff.
Round here, I'm pretty sure the process would be
1. Verbal warning from a manager
2. Written warning, if behaviour doesn't change
3. Final written warning
At each point the employee has to be given a chance to respond to any issues.
You can skip straight to 3 if the situation calls for it, but (from 19, here): "If an employee's first misconduct or unsatisfactory performance is sufficiently serious, it may be appropriate to move directly to a final written warning. This might occur where the employee's actions have had, or are liable to have, a serious or harmful impact on the organisation."
Following:
22. Some acts, termed gross misconduct, are so serious in themselves or have such serious consequences that they may call for dismissal without notice for a first offence. But a fair disciplinary process should always be followed, before dismissing for gross misconduct.
23. Disciplinary rules should give examples of acts which the employer regards as acts of gross misconduct. These may vary according to the nature of the organisation and what it does, but might include things such as theft or fraud, physical violence, gross negligence or serious insubordination.
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).
Already did. She got fired too! She still feels justified in her position which indicates she didn't learn anything through her experience. Meanwhile the guy that got fired? Yeah... apologized publically AFTER getting fired as well as before.
So seriously, if it's a question of conduct, I'd say the score was tied. But when it's a question of character? The lady loses and the man wins.
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.
Relational aggression:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_aggression
Richards didn't confront the people who allegedly offended her. She did nothing in person to convey that she found the comments made inappropriate. What she did was and use her influence to damage the commenters' social status. Basically, this is how females fight. Guys are fucking useless at this shit and don't understand it.
Starting a development company without an evangelist is like going to war without accordions.
That's pretty much the deal here too, in California at least. One of our workers had a reputation for slacking on the job, making the others pick up after him. We spoke with some employment attorneys about it (our annual liability insurance package included free limited access to them for questions like this) and that's almost exactly what they told us. Verbal warning, wait for a repeat, written warning, wait for a repeat, final written warning stating the next time would lead to termination, wait for a repeat, then fire. And all of it had to be documented, preferably with a third person witness (i.e. I couldn't give the warning in a meeting just between me and him).
If you just make a knee-jerk reaction to fire, and/or there's little to no documentation supporting that it's a recurring problem, you (the employer) open yourself up to a potential wrongful termination lawsuit. Unless it's for something absolutely unacceptable (like embezzling) or explained in the employment agreement as something that warrants immediate termination.
Sexual harassment is taken pretty seriously though, so depending on the seriousness of the remark (I don't get the "dongle" reference, and I'm not sure I want to) it could be grounds for immediate termination.
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.
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.
It doesn't matter what syndrome she has, it doesn't matter that she is a women. It doesn't matter that the "offenders" are male, or if they have any syndrome.
What matters is a person, reacting in offense publicly shamed two other people after eavesdropping on a conversation that did not involve said person.
What matters is that said person used a company linked public account to do said shaming, and did not make any attempt to rectify the situation through lesser means, direct or indirect.
Said person could have request the behavior be stopped, or if said person was unable/unwilling/otherwise incapable of of doing so privately contacted staff to rectify the situation.
Instead said person choose to make the affair public, with an audience of thousands and now millions.
Said persons actions cost a supporter of 3 minor dependents their job, over an inappropriate sexual comment that was not directed towards said person, not sexual harassment, nor was sexist in nature.
Said persons actions caused damage to both the commentor's and their own company's image by the public nature and use of company associated social media.
This is what this is about. Both sides acted shamefully, and one side decided to make it a public affair. That is all.
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?
They made comments of a sexual nature, they did not make comments of a sexIST nature - that is 2 entirely different things. Plus the way the woman name and shamed them and how she behaves on her blog? Sounds like justice was served to me.
While reading about all of this, my biggest issue was that I felt like I was lacking perspective. I was seeing a lot of arguments from various people but I didn't understand how anyone's perspective could lead to the given outcomes.
I found this post very helpful: http://griffin.oobleyboo.com/archive/on-pycon2013-and-equality/
It does a good job of moving you into someone else's shoes; some who is very different from you, whoever you might be. It was helpful. Viewing things from another perspective is NOT condoning actions. It's learning. Understanding. It's a step in the direction of addressing long-standing systematic issues. A first step.
Once more, some overly politically correct social justice warrior with a blog and constant craving for attention via playing the victim makes the world a little worse. Racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, and everything else unbefitting a civilized society should be called out and fought against but political correctness is not that; it is just a scourge.
ts sad that someone lost their job because this person (who lets not forget made her own dick jokes, and also said that 'black people can't be racist,' which goes to show you her character) felt the need to take offense at the non-offensive, but at least some justice was done. People like this need to grow up. But you know they won't. She'll find herself the victim her, a noble martyr fighting against the [insert conspiracy here], and other overly PC nutbags will offer support.
People take themselves way too freaking seriously. A joke is a joke. If you take offense at this.. then you got a problem. If I'm fat and I hear a fat joke and it's funny, I will laugh. If I don't like that I'm fat, I can always try and lose weight. But jokes are based on sarcasm, wit and ridicules. Tweak of the extreme so to speak. When a person hearing a sex joke gets offended, that's a PC, "Politically Correct" people and they are the worse hypocrites on the planet. There is a saying, "Don't take life too seriously, you'll die anyways"..
I think people are understating how difficult it can be to confront people who cause offence
So then go to the PyCon organisers in private and raise your complaint with them. They will then go and find the individuals, again in private and inform them of their infraction.
Taking photos and using your position of influence to publicly shame people based on heresay is a severve form of harrasment. It's so severe that it even lost one guy his job over midly innapropriate comments. Dont you get it? The guy has a wife and kids and no income now... it's freaking tragic.
Crusading blowhard deserved what she got, but in the end everyone has lost. It's very sad indeed.
If anything this actually hurts opportunities for females. All this has done was create an environment where females may end up excluded because anything a male says could be used against them to cost them their jobs. I don't think this person even understands the magnitude of what she's done. Job loss is a Big Deal (tm). Immature jokes entirely NOT DIRECTED at you or even your gender from behind you in a crowd is nothing. Unless they were directing these comments at her I don't even see how this got to this level. Is there something I missed here? How is this not misandry?
OMFG where have the times of the 60s and 70s gone?!!! Have the PENCIL-PUSHING PRICKS taken over HR now too? I remember the old days where your boss knew if you did a good job or not, and was able to substantiate that using proze and relevant examples that you didn't even knew (s)he knew about. Nowadays the pencil-pushing pricks have taken over, so they are staring over sheets filled with "metrics", comparing "actuals" to "targets". That's a trend going from the Top down, where the COO used to take over when the CEO stepped down; nowadays you will often see the CFO take over.... that's right, a glorified BOOK KEEPER running the company.
And now it trickled down to the HR department... terminating someone's employment over some innuendo in a JOKE? And firing someone for saying that they didn't think it was funny?
Do yourself a favour and go look at some videos from the late 60s, early 70s. How people rose up against the prude bourgeoisie. And in 2013 we're right back...
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
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*
To Adria Richards,
We all learn as kids how to behave in different situations. For example, we learn to be quiet at the movie theatre but we can be noisy and have fun at camp. Being at a professional conference is no different, everyone is expected to behave in a professional manner. In addition, you represent whoever paid for you to be there. For most people, this is their employer.
In my opinion, the guy's behaviour was crude, inappropiate, and unprofessional and that he should have been called out for it. That being said, it definitely does not rise to the level of sexual harassment, harassment, or any other seriously concerning behaviour as it was a private conversation not directed at anyone in particular. It was simply inappropriate. He basically said the wrong thing, at the wrong place, and the wrong time. We all have done it at one point or another. That doesn't absolve him from responsibility, though.
However, your response was also neither professional, mature, nor appropriate. My sister would have simply turned around, given them a good stare as said "stop acting like a two year old". I understand that you didn't feel comfortable doing this at the time, but there was nothing to stop you from being a professional and going to the back of the room and talking to one of the event personnel. You even had the professional and mature option to simply tweet that you needed to talk to someone from the event.
Instead, what did you do? You took their picture, and publically shamed them, causing one guy to lose his job, however indirectly. Honestly, this is the type of behaviour that I would associate with an immature teenager who is out to get revenge, not a professional.
Again, I agree that the guy's behaviour was inappropriate, but your actions left a lot to be desired as well. My mother always taught me to treat others as I would like to be treated. Is this truely how you would want others to handle your mistakes?
As one professional to another, please take the time to think through your actions and consider that maybe this could have been handled in a more mature and professional manner.
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
Women are treated like absolute crap by most of the IT industry
No they aren't - or not especially. EVERYONE is treated like absolute crap by the IT industry. It's why I (a male) got out.
she was exposed to behaviour that had no place at a IT conference.
If you can't make stupid jokes about dongles or forking in a private conversation (BTW, when did eavesdropping become publicly acceptable?) at a technical conference than we might as well just all get the frontal lobotomies now.
I have had many brilliant female co-workers and managers. I have every wish that more women be involved in the tech industry - and the REALITY is that of all the things you could do at any company, technical work is where a woman is going to most probably be treated as an equal. And yet some people like Adria chose to treat the smallest of bad jokes as a personal affront to all women.
Think of the terrible, terrible message you and her are sending to women not yet in the tech field. You are damning them to even worse areas of employment where they will in fact be less respected simply because they are women, but WHEW they escaped IT! Who cares if the fire is white hot, the frying pan is sometimes overly warm!
Lastly consider there are three ACTUAL young women who are a lot less likely to enter technical work after this - the three daughters of the guy who got fired. That in the end is the very direct result of this madness, three young girls who has a father out of work now. So much for supporting women.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"Not cool. Jokes about forking repo's in a sexual way and "big" dongles. Right behind me"
:) geez] joke.
Well, lots will dismiss me as ehh-another-d*ck, but I have to say, this whole thing seems, looks, smells like one of the top10 stupid things I ever heard. Let me write this down: today you can loose your job for telling a "sexist" joke? Really? For talking about big dongles in the presence of a woman? Really? I'd say this really was a sexist move, but not from the guys. I know some really prude american women, but man, even they wouldn't do such a move over a big dongle joke or a forking [again: really?
And about tweets having power... some people having a large number of followers who pick up every crazy idea, scary stuff.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
There was a much more informative post that got skipped :
http://slashdot.org/submission/2558213/pycon-twitter-callout-incident
A few details you might wish to know about the incident :
0. SendGrid is an email spammer. Yes, they only send legal spam, stuff the direct marketers want you to call bacn, but really most of the emails they send you do not want. Anything bad that happens to SendGrid is a good thing.
1. Apparently mr-hank only made one sexual crack, the dongles one. He apologized for that one quickly. Richards miss-interpreted his "forking" comment as sexual, actually homosexual. If you really believed she took offense to what he actually said, then you'd eventually conclude that she was a homophobe. That isn't correct. She simply miss-heard him.
2. Richards has pissed people off by pulling similar publicity stunts several times before :
http://amandablumwords.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/3/
3. Ms Richards defense of her actions was completely fucking bonkers. Some girl "would never have the chance to learn and love programming because the ass clowns behind me would make it impossible for her to do so." Really? Joan of Arc? Really? Pfff. She's simply grandstanding to her twitter followers.
https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/313442430848487424
4. Richards made a much worse joke about some guys balls much more publicly on twitter earlier in the day.
https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425
5. PlayHaven isn't such a nice company either. In game micro-transactions sounds like your business is built upon ripping off poor people. It doesn't bother me as much as spam since I don't play any games like that, but worth mentioning.
Anyways I hope Mr-Hank and Richards find new jobs quickly and that SendGrid continues to lose business.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
I constantly wonder how these people get any work done given the amount of time they seem to spend on blatant self promotion.
Glad to see it sometimes backfires.
In another life, Mrs Richards would have worked for the Stasi or the local committee of the Communist Party. In bad old times, your neighbor might be secretly spying on you and report any suspicious or deviant activities or conversations. Utterly bad consequences ensued for the "guilty" persons, with or without public shaming.
That people will do this to you with their cell phones is scary.. And in this case, the message with assorted photograph was posted to an actual worldwide audience without a second thought. Not even to "friends" or "friends or friends". I didn't know Twitter messages contained sneaked pictures, nowadays ; that made the story a lot worse.
I'm glad to have no Facebook account yet most every one has one.. In a few years, and years after that there will be a terrifying amount of Facebook and Twitter data for you to datamine and pinpoint what everyone does or think. If dictatorships arise in Europe or Northern America there will then be little hope of putting them down.
One aspect I find troubling about all this is the response of the employers. 2 people were fired. Not just publicly reprimanded, not merely denied a raise, not put on unpaid leave for a week, fired. Guess finding replacements is easy. Must be a lot of skilled people out there who are unemployed. I note also that the employers aren't bothering to explain. They get to fire people without apology or transparency, and no one thinks anything of that. But if a peon makes some sexist crack, it's the firing squad. Sure, we all understand why they were fired, the employers don't have to explain that. What I'd like to hear is why they chose termination rather than some more mild punishment. Or am I out of touch, and being fired is not such a big deal these days? Last I heard, losing your job ranks up there as one of the top traumatic events of life, with the only clearly worse things being the death of a spouse or child, and I think that's still true, though much depends on the circumstances. If it was only some temporary, low paying job, it's not so bad. If it's something more but you didn't mess up, it's bad, but you still have your self-respect. What's horrible is to be judged and found wanting, and to see that they just might have a point or two, because you did screw up badly.
I wonder how significant this black mark is on their records. Will they ever be able to get another job in IT, or will they have to change careers? Ms. Richards is radioactive now. No one is going to want to be within a mile of her, let alone converse with her. Might cost you your job, and we all know how hard it is to get another job. How many men, and perhaps women as well, will feel now that if they see her at some conference, they should be careful not to be anywhere near her, and if she sits near them, they'll get up and move away. Unfair? She deserves some grief, particularly as I understand she even acted a bit smug about having gotten someone else fired. But if she ends up being driven out of IT altogether, then yes, I'd say that's unfair. The extreme reaction of the employers made the stakes way too high, makes being around her too dangerous. What will we have to say for ourselves if the ostracism gets so bad that she exercises the same option Aaron Swartz did?
Pro sports players do worse and get slapped around with a fine, and maybe have to sit out a game or three. Good athletes are valuable. Techies aren't.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"