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Playhaven dev fired for sexual jokes after SendGrid marketer outs him on Twitter

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http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/20/p...ids-developer-evangelist-outs-him-on-twitter/

Playhaven fired a developer after he allegedly made sexual jokes in the audience during a keynote session at PyCon, a conference for Python developers. Now Adria Richards, a developer evangelist for SendGrid, is getting rape and death threats via Twitter.
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Later she finds herself jobless

http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/21/b...y-sendgrid-for-outting-developers-on-twitter/

Email delivery company SendGrid has fired developer evangelist Adria Richards after she outed a developer who was allegedly making sexual jokes during a conference, via Twitter.
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Quite frankly after reading her blog and some of her crazy twitter posts she has no sympathy from me.
 
While I think it's disgusting she's getting rape and death threats over this I'm also somewhat satisfied she's been fired for being a twat.
 
I guess people don't understand that there's a semantic difference between racism and prejudice. I don't proscribe to her view, but her view is being misconstrued when it comes to racism.
 
Obviously I'm not going to condone in the slightest the insane threats from the internet, but I am glad to see she got fired over it. I agree with her ex-employers reasoning for doing so, but there is a lot of poetic justice in that.

She overreacted rather than dealing with the situation like a rational adult, and got a father of three fired because she'd rather warp a private joke that was somewhat out of place and not even aimed at her into a hysterical reaction, and make herself out to be a righteous crusader (while happy to engage in completely hypocritical behaviour of her own, of course).

The entire situation is ridiculous, but at least an element of justice has prevailed.
 
They shouldn't have been fucking dumb out loud during a talk specifically about making the tech sector more welcoming.

She should have been able to turn around and go "hey. BROS. Could you stop making dumb fucking jokes while I'm trying to listen?"

Nobody involved should have been fired for anything that happened.

Nobody should be glad that anyone got fired, either.
 
Before anyone comments on this thread, think twice before you submit the reply.
 
Yes, their jokes (which were technically a private conversation not directed at anyone) were tasteless, but she handled it totally wrong.

She could have turned around told them what she thought, or she could have gone to one of the convention's staff to ask for them to be removed. Instead, she shamed them in front of 10,000 followers on Twitter and started a shitstorm.
 
I don't think she was right to did what she did, but the backlash to it drowns that out.

The entire affair was a pointless, unfortunately lesson in poor communications and unnecessary, misguided one-upmanship.
 
It seems pointless to comment on how she is being treated on twitter as the internet has proven time and again that any open forum will be filled with the worst expressions of humanity. However, the very least that she could have done was speak to the people like an adult and ask them to stop. Instead she immediately made the issue as public as she possibly could - at their expense. I am having a hard time seeing this as any different from a 3 or 4 year old screaming "I'm telling" when something doesn't go their way.

I can appreciate that these guys should have respected the code of conduct but it is sad that we live in a society where people have such thin skin that a few crude jokes and shit talking can offend someone so much and result in a company firing these people for fear of, what, a little bad PR (not even directly impacting the employer)? Pathetic.
 
3 people unemployed because one woman couldnt have bothered to just confront the dudes right then and there.

personally, i feel worse for the guys than this woman. they werent even talking to her and if she was really that offended, she could have brought it up, they would have apologized and then everyone goes about their day. there was no reason to make this public like she did. complete overreaction.

playhaven are idiots for firing their dudes in the first place too.
 
The only other thing I can comment on this story is that "sexual" jokes are not necessarily "sexist" jokes. I don't see what one has to do with the other.
 
As I understand it, the so-called sexual joke was about "dongles" and "scissoring." I've also read some claims that those are also programming terms so.. double entendres(?). Instead of confronting them directly and letting them know she felt uncomfortable or talking to one of the con personnel to get the matter resolved like an adult, she takes a pic of them while smiling making it seem like nothing was wrong then shames them on twitter with their pics.
 
Here's a hypothetical:

If nobody had gotten fired - would the fact these two men were shamed for being dumb out loud at a conference still be a sticking point for you?
 
Why publicly shame those guys on Twitter? Thats a douche move. Find out who those guys work for, and take it to their HR. She went on twitter, posted their pictures and asked the help of her followers to track them dudes? Fucked up.
 
FatboyRoberts said:
Here's a hypothetical:

If nobody had gotten fired - would the fact these two men were shamed for being dumb out loud at a conference still be a sticking point for you?
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To me? Maybe not. In general? Absolutely. They're in the same industry circles and she has lots of followers. In addition, the gender ratio is a massive sore point in the tech/startup industry, which her reasons for doing this is hinged around.
 
to that stupid hypothetical

this wouldn't be a shitty non-news news story and we would never have heard of it if he hadn't been fired
 
tycoonheart said:
Why publicly shame those guys on Twitter? Thats a douche move. Find out who those guys work for, and take it to their HR. She went on twitter, posted their pictures and asked the help of her followers to track them dudes? Fucked up.
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or if she really wanted to be professional as someone said above, take them aside and talk to them. She isn't dumb, she knew exactly what she was doing and it backfired on her
 
FatboyRoberts said:
Here's a hypothetical:

If nobody had gotten fired - would the fact these two men were shamed for being dumb out loud at a conference still be a sticking point for you?
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It would be pretty much the same for me. They definitely look a little old to be doing the old'

"Herpa derp, he said Dongle, huehuehuehuehue"

But from what I understand, they werent shouting it, but exchanging immature and out of place conversation with each other. They should have been kicked from the event as it is against the events rules, but the fact that all 3 of these people were fired over this is just incredibly unfortunate.

They should apologize to her for offending her. And not over any form of fucking social media. Pick up the phone and address the fact that you were acting like a child and offended someone. Apologize and move on (as best as they all can considering they have all been canned).

Ripclawe said:
or if she really wanted to be professional as someone said above, take them aside and talk to them. She isn't dumb, she knew exactly what she was doing and it backfired on her
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Alucrid said:
to that stupid hypothetical

this wouldn't be a shitty non-news news story and we would never have heard of it if he hadn't been fired
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And all of this too. Taking it to Twitter like that... bad move. I can understand what may have been her motive for that, but I don't agree with the action. The guys were behaving like children, the worst way to respond to that is by ALSO acting like a child and rushing off to shame them via social media before trying a more mature approach.
 
Alucrid said:
to that stupid hypothetical

this wouldn't be a shitty non-news news story and we would never have heard of it if he hadn't been fired
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You didn't actually answer my stupid question, though.

Basically, I'm trying to figure out if people are more pissed off that people were fired, or that she shamed a couple guys.
 
Ripclawe said:
or if she really wanted to be professional as someone said above, take them aside and talk to them. She isn't dumb, she knew exactly what she was doing and it backfired on her
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Agreed.

Oh and here's a quote from her blog:

They started talking about “big” dongles. I could feel my face getting flustered.
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So dongle jokes get her flustered. But her making jokes about stuffing socks into your pants to make your dick look bigger is perfectly okay in her book?

This woman is a fucking douchebag.
 
FatboyRoberts said:
Here's a hypothetical:

If nobody had gotten fired - would the fact these two men were shamed for being dumb out loud at a conference still be a sticking point for you?
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Yes, because the reaction would be completely disproportionate.

Do people deserve a public shaming because someone takes it upon themselves to get offended over some out of place jokes? No.


FatboyRoberts said:
Basically, I'm trying to figure out if people are more pissed off that people were fired, or that she shamed a couple guys.
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I'm pissed off that:

She took such great offense to something not threatening/harassing or directed at her in any way rather than brushing it off (even if by the standards the conference providers expected, reporting it was fair game).
She then decided to shame people over Twitter rather than deal with it appropriately, either by asking them to stop or privately getting in touch with the conference staff. While we don't know precisely what happened afterwards that led to the guy losing his job, I'll point out that this shaming is based entirely on her interpretation and word.
Her ridiculous actions led to one of the guys losing his job.
Oh and her self-righteous delusions of grandeur in response. Richards: you're not Joan of Arc, you're an oversensitive, hyperreactive child.
 
Richard's being fired doesn't surprise me in the least after learning this

...her job at SendGrid is developer relations.

Like it or not, reality is that developers are mostly male, often young, and sometimes crude. And they have reacted with startling vigor and venom at one of their own being fired for comments about dongles and forking — some veering way into crazy criminal territory and issuing rape and death threats.

It’s easy to see that the company may believe Richards will have a difficult time doing her job after this. And it’s also easy to see that they may see this as a quick fix for the DDOS’ing attacks on the company’s website and services. But the easiest thing of all to see is that there may be multiple lawsuits about this entire issue before we’re done.​

Her position was untenable
 
What is an appropriate term to replace dongle with? Lucky for me I guess that I'll never be forking something at work :|
 
Another unfortunate side effect is people digging through her social media commentary and finding 'jokes' she has told in the past and using it to label her a hypocrite.

FatboyRoberts said:
You didn't actually answer my stupid question, though.

Basically, I'm trying to figure out if people are more pissed off that people were fired, or that she shamed a couple guys.
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Why exactly?

PseudoKirby said:
Apparently he was fired for more than just those comments..
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Not surprising really. Again, they look a little to old to be doing something so silly in public, wouldn't surprise me if it wasn't the first time.
 
Stet said:
I cannot believe that anyone was fired for anything that had to do with this situation.
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She was an evangelist for the company. I could completely understand why the company would want to let her go in this case. Rather than pull the guys aside, or try to get the organizers to resolve it, she tweeted it out to her over 10k followers. That's not how you want someone who is a representative of your company to other developers to react.
 
scurker said:
She was an evangelist for the company. I could completely understand why the company would want to let her go in this case. Rather than pull the guys aside, or try to get the organizers to resolve it, she tweeted it out to her over 10k followers. That's not how you want someone who is a representative of your company to other developers to react.
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Ugh that's so shitty and passive aggressive. If you're offended, just say something.
 
I think i'm mostly just amazed that anyone, at a tech conference no less, could be that insulted by a Dongles joke... i laugh at the word itself at least twice a day as tech support. It's a fuckin funny word.

Unless they were like "I wanna put my dongle in her rear port and fork it" ... what is her godamn deal?

The whole world needs thicker skin. At least it's "impossible" for her to be racist tho, eh??!! good lord.
 
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