If I understood correctly, Adria is not another employee, but has the role of developer evangelist. In that role, your twitter account is very much an extension of your job.

In that light, I do not understand how this woman is still employed.

https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/6039856858

Who exactly is she "evangelizing" for? All developers? I find that really hard to believe given her extremely public politics.

I can't imagine what an HR department would have to say about the advisability of firing such a person.

Seriously, does she really believe racism is only one sided? I had to read that tweet more than once to be sure I was reading it correctly.

This is actually the academically accepted definition of racism. In that definition, only white people can be racist. This came as a complete shock to me in my race, class, and gender course. Be extension, it also means women cannot be sexist against men, as men are considered in the position of power.

Again, these are the academically accepted definitions.

It isn't "the" academically accepted definition, though. It is one definition that's accepted in some social sciences depts., usually sociology, and usually ones w/ critical theory-oriented faculties. Walk into Georgetown poli sci and tell them white people can't be racist.

Edit: also consider that the way Adria phrased it IS NEVER the academically accepted definition, because black people are fully capable of becoming an oppressive class vis-a-vis white people. It may not be the case at this time where Adria lives, but it certainly can be the case. So the statement that black people can NEVER be racist towards whites is less an elucidation of this definition, and more an expression of Adria's own racism.

This tweet is from November 2009 - over 3 years ago. Adria didn't start working as an 'evangelist' for SendGrid until March of 2012.

I've seen a similar message crop up in EO training lately. But there they differentiate between "Systemic racism" and "Individual racism". I'd guess she's just parroting without understanding... I hope.

I second this. The person is there at the conference as a rep for her company therefore it's speaking for the company.

> In that role, your twitter account is very much an extension of your job.

I'm not sure I agree with you, but I think this is an interesting point in the debate and wanted to acknowledge that even though I don't have a snappy response for you at the present time. Hopefully other people engage this point. It seems worth talking about.

Maybe what you are getting at is "are we okay with jobs where your personal social media account is a job function?". I personally think no, but at this point, we can't put the "social media" genie back into the bottle, and it is only going to get worse with products like Glass.

Many journalists nowadays have a twitter account because of their work, and news websites syndicate from their personal accounts.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is that there's an increasingly blurry line between someone's employment status and someone's personal views and I think that should be extremely uncomfortable for everyone involved and generally means our community will be less likely to engage in honest and forthright dialog as people with personal views.

And I think the extent of this is a whole big can of worms I'm not sure I'm in a great position to address as a researcher at a university with surprising levels of freedom to shoot my mouth off and not care what anyone else thinks.

While I personally know plenty of people in evangelist roles and while I consider them friends, I can't say I'm qualified to really talk about where a line should be wrt separating their personal and professional speech. I hope someone who is qualified to discuss it approaches this point, because I think it is worth discussing and increasingly important.

tl;dr: I really hope this discussion continues but I'm probably not the right person to talk about it down this particular wormhole.

The distinction between "professional life" and "personal life" is artificial anyway. Business connections are regularly between people who are friends outside of business. The way you act at the bar may be seen by business contacts. Reputation gets around. Social media is just making it more apparent.

Some things are different in because of it - but honestly if you care about your public image, you shouldn't share 'private ' jokes on a very public medium.

It's also part of her branding. She consults and her primary web site is "butyoureagirl.com". It's completely appropriate for her to tweet her opinion.

The thing I took from the photo (which I agree was a bit much) was that this woman of color was surrounded by a bunch of white dudes with corrective lenses. There was a man of color farther back, but diversity was not on display.

One of the guys even had a weak smile as if he was thinking,"ohmanagirlislookingatmeandtakingmypictureimayloveher." But I'm assuming he's straight, which is my own lens on the moment.

I hope that her goal was to portray that lack of diversity rather than to shame the two participants in the conversation.

Having finally gotten through the DDOS-filter, I see from her account of the situation that my hopes were not enough to change reality. There is a bit of "here's an opportunity to make my point," that leverages a minor incident to reinforce her larger message about inequality.

>But it's also inappropriate (read: fucking insane) to boycott a company because you don't like what one of their employees posts on their personal twitter account.

What's good for the goose...

I.e. if it's only fair for someone to be canned based on the postings on some random's personal twitter account, it's only fair for it to work in reverse. Employers can people based on their personal lives all the time.

Also, as detailed elsewhere, this goes beyond a mere tweet.

From her employer's site: http://i.imgur.com/uWc8P39.png

She makes penis jokes on twitter, works at a company that makes jokes about photocopying genitals, and she gets offended when someone in the row behind her says 'dongle'. Sounds about right.

What's more, I no longer think that PyCon behaved entirely appropriately either. These things need to be taken in the context of what is clearly acceptable in society at large.

> What's good for the goose...

I think firing either party was a pretty daft idea for all types of poultry, or in this case, human beings.

> Employers can people based on their personal lives all the time.

Yeah, I think I'm saying I'm saying that in a lot of circumstances, that's pretty lame and we actively, as a community, saying that type of reaction is unwise. Instead, you have someone calling for it.

This is only getting to be a bigger problem as everyone's personal lives become more and more broadcasted.

Chalk it up to self-interest if you'd like, I got a bunch of shit on my twitter accounts that could get me in trouble with different types of views and people. Any employer who is interested in hiring me is going to have to be able to deal with that.

> this goes beyond a mere tweet

Her actions were a tweet and a blog post. What someone else did with that is their issue. Go get angry at them if you think those actions were inappropriate.

A tweet and a blog post that named and shamed two people, personally, in what I believe to be the biggest example of blowing something out of proportion in recent memory.

So if I get this right..

Someone says a joke that offends you, in earshot, but not to you, and you take this as your opportunity to photograph them, get them kicked out of a con, fired, pilloried in public? And then you take to your blog to defend yourself (not really) with an incessant repeating of "I'm in the right! I'm in the right!" (paraphrased)

Let me say this as clearly as I can: Anyone who would engage in the behavior described in the previous paragraph is a colossal fucking idiot of the highest caliber, who I would think very long and hard about hiring or retaining employment for any job that required any kind of public interaction.

I am having trouble mustering words for how angry this makes me. Time to get off the internet for a while.

They were not kicked out of the convention.

Hmm, ever hear of slippery slope arguments? Because there's clearly a limit to the situation you're describing and clearly offense is relative. So, since you didn't specify any level of severity, let's assume the joke that offended you was about harming someone or themselves. I mean, people say things like "I want to kill the guy the wrote this" or "oh god, this makes me want to kill myself" jokingly. Would it be okay then or would I still be a colossal fucking idiot? Okay, how about if someone was threatening to harm a political figure as a joke? Or what if the joke insulted people of a different race for their cultural beliefs?

You're generalizing too much.

>Would it be okay then or would I still be a colossal fucking idiot?

If your response to your first example was to do what the person we're talking about did, then yes, you would be an idiot.

>Okay, how about if someone was threatening to harm a political figure as a joke?

Yup.

>Or what if the joke insulted people of a different race for their cultural beliefs?

Yup.

In my arrogant opinion, nothing short of lewd and obscene sexual discussion or threats of bodily harm should have led to the sequence of events we have here in front of us.

Right, you let two guys in private conversation snicker about the word "dongle" and the next thing you know people will be threatening to kill political figures with impunity.

I've got one word for that: Lol.

I see how you got here, but that's not what I'm arguing. The parent's post seems to imply that anyone that would react strongly to a joke is a "colossal fucking idiot." This seems to imply that the joke's content has no relation to the reaction. So I was just wondering if that really holds. As per the parent's reply, it does. I'm not even barely implying that threatening to kill political figures is the next logical step. I'm implying that there definitely is some hard limit being ignored or maybe I'm wrong.

Yeah I dunno. I get your point about relating the offense and the action. Maybe try rephrasing your argument with a less "charged" example?

Aside: Does anybody know the actual joke in question? More than it just referencing a "big dongle".

You're polluting the discussion with all these hypotheticals. Stick to what actually happened.

I'd argue that calling someone a "colossal fucking idiot of the highest caliber" because they did something you don't agree with is hyperbolic and pollutes the discussion. I'm merely teasing that logic so that other people can understand that offense is relative and thus their anecdotes about how they wouldn't be offended or understand anyone for being offended are red herrings.

Unfortunately, it seems to be winning the argument here with several proposing boycotting and swearing against using SendHub in the future if they don't fire her. All the while people seem to think that the problem here is "women are sensitive and don't like dick jokes, we better watch what we say," instead of asking, "how do we fix this?"

> did something you don't agree with

Let's get one thing straight right now, this isn't just "behavior I don't agree with", I think this kind of crap should be a criminal matter with prison time and/or huge compensatory fines involved.

Barring that, if there is any justice in the world whatsoever, Adria will lose her job as well.

Think about it. Some jackass caused someone to lose their job for no good reason.

That's a blow that would put many of us in a very bad place.

>All the while people seem to think that the problem here is "women are sensitive and don't like dick jokes, we better watch what we say," instead of asking, "how do we fix this?"

I've seen very little of the first sentiment and a great deal of "this person overreacted". Yes, by women too. I don't think the average conventiongoer now needs to watch their back to see if any women are around before making a joke in good faith.

How we fix this? How can any person know in advance if something they're talking about is going to offend some random who might take huge and extraordinary steps to ruin your life?

I'd argue we fix this by making an example of anyone who misuses their power like this. Maybe then the people who like to call a mob to pitchforks will think twice if their target is really deserving of mob justice based on the context of a possibly insensitive fucking joke.

here's the point: it's not only fair. in fact, by expecting sendgrid to can adria you're implicitly supporting what the other guy's company did, at which point you really have no complaint.

Ummm, my reading of the thread is that we're not going to do business with Adria's employer because of her actions. That's a different thing.

Indeed. And if her personal actions and the resultant bad press for Sendgrid causes them to ask the person in question to step down, well, going on the logic in this thread, the employer is the bad guy, not the person acting like a jackass in public.

..In which case the decision to stop or not do business with Sendgrid would be all the more justified.

different how? you're holding them responsible for something adria did at pycon.

You don't see a difference between an employee losing her job and a company losing some business? You must be in management.

if the company were pressured into firing adria in order to get their customer base back, would you feel justice had been served?

I prefer mercy to "justice", as if the latter ever happens, as if we'd recognize it if it did. I don't want anyone to be fired for her speech, but I realize that in this world it's going to happen occasionally. I'm sure you'll misunderstand this comment, because you have systematically misunderstood every comment in this thread so far, but I mean it when say that I would have preferred that none of the parties involved be fired as a result of this incident.

you need to read this comment for context if you think i'm systematically misunderstanding the tenor of this thread. i admit it might look that way if you don't start from there.

edit: this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5411071

Get a good night's sleep and re-read that one in the morning. The very first sentence of that is about consequences for the business, and the rest of it is in response to that. Others have suggested that the SendGrid employee should be fired, but that's not what Karunamon is suggesting in the comment you link.

Nono. Please understand, that is exactly what I am suggesting.

Adria's actions unjustly caused another person to lose their employment and very possibly negatively impact their future employment opportunities.

At least in my mind, it's only fair that Sendgrid re-evaluate whether they want their "evangelist" acting in such a manner.

Well I'm a moron.

I guess you got your wish.

So it is now "insane" to hold a company responsible for the actions of someone who was specifically representing that company in an evangelist role at an event? I can't believe this point even passed through your head much less ended up being typed out and passed off as a logical statement, where you are actually, get this, attempting to mock someone else. wtf man...

A major factor you have to always consider when reading HN comments on stories like this -- and I'm not even kidding here -- is that a large percentage of the HN population has no idea how to convince women to have sex with them. I mean, among online forums, I would place good money that HN's readership has one of the highest ratios of adult virgins (non-elective, i.e. not by choice)

Why do I think this? Because I've worked in SV and gone to one of the CS programs which is a major feeder into the SV engineering pool (Cal). And I doubt that the engineering programs at CMU, Stanford and other schools differ so wildly in social aptitude.

These guys are so bent out of shape over simply not understanding how to do it, the frustration and resentment is as thick as concrete. Every time one of these stories pops up, this place becomes indistinguishable from /r/MensRights -- the most entitled victims you've ever heard.

I mean, if you can't understand why someone would get fired for making gross, wildly inappropriate jokes within earshot of other attendees, while wearing their employer's name on their shirt and around their neck -- well, you must have a gigantic axe to grind.

>A major factor you have to always consider when reading HN comments on stories like this -- and I'm not even kidding here -- is that a large percentage of the HN population has no idea how to convince women to have sex with them. I mean, among online forums, I would place good money that HN's readership has one of the highest ratios of adult virgins (non-elective, i.e. not by choice)

And all feminists are just angry because they're ugly and emotionally damaged. How is my statement any different from yours? How is your language somehow not worthy of being terminated while these men are offensive?

Well the most obvious difference would be that I'm describing an objectively verifiable condition whereas you're proposing something between a subjective assessment and a psychological diagnosis.

I'm proposing that there is a willful misunderstanding of a completely reasonable response inline with the HR policies of any established company, and that misunderstanding is pervasive among this crowd. Given my experience with people here, and engineer/hacker types in general who have espoused to me beliefs similar to those expressed here, I'm stating a personal observation/hypothesis:

The reason why so many people here are able to come to the same bizarre conclusion is that they have a shared set of assumptions about the world, what motivates certain people, and what's fair. In this case, the assumption is, essentially, that women are bitches who get everything in the world handed to them and have no reason/right to complain about reasonable behavior by well-intentioned, misunderstood men (with wives and kids, no less!) who were just trying to have a good time.

And this root assumption, in my opinion, is derived from a lifetime of not being able to communicate effectively with women. The culmination of that inability is, of course, sexual frustration.

Woah, woah, woah, woah. No.

I can't understand why they were fired. I think it is a gross overreaction to what is, at worst, a socially correctable situation.

And no, I'm not some non-elective male virgin. I'm a lady, and I find your characterization of people who don't agree with you as somehow socially inept is childish, dismissive, and illogical.

Thanks for your response. I think it's pretty obvious that my comment doesn't, and isn't intended to, apply to 100.000% of the commenting group.

I find your characterization of people who don't agree with you as somehow socially inept is childish, dismissive, and illogical.

Of course you do. This is fucking mob rule -- here's a group which disagrees violently with itself on the minutiae of silicon doping processes and whether or not to put a semicolon after Javascript statements. Yet on a story like this, where the few given facts easily support multiple valid interpretations, a cursory scan of the comments shows near unanimity in the common conclusion. A conclusion which enables the overwhelming majority of HNers to claim victimhood and persecution by outsiders.

So either:

1) a situation which, on the surface, would appear to be nuanced and require calm reasoning to process and fully understand is actually binary and easily decided, or

2) this story hits a pain point common to the psyche of this group of readers, who have common background and experience, work or have worked together, work at similar companies, attend the same events, and in general belong to the milieu.

To me it's rather obvious that #2 is the case, what do you think?

And assuming #2 is the case: given my experience in the past with subsets of this group, and other non-HNers who would nonetheless be described as part of the same culture, I feel that the hypothesis I put forward has the potential to be a theory with significant explanatory power. For some commenters.

Your false dichotomy is unappealing.

A third option (for starters) is that there are so many overreactions and mistakes in this story that there are many parties to be outraged with. The outrage isn't uniformly distributed across parties to blame but everybody feels it. This is how these threads get so long. If the community was not divided, these threads would be short simple affairs.

I don't know if we're reading the same threads then. I see a nearly unambiguous, unidirectional wave of resentment, and the downmodding of anyone expressing anything remotely dissenting. A normal HN dialogue has people showing restraint when downmodding, even on topics where there is heated disagreement and passionate opinion, say something like "Does PHP suck?"

This is a deluge of unanimity, by comparison.

"for making gross, wildly inappropriate jokes within earshot of other attendees"

lol try being in any other industry and going to conferences. Plus try basing your argument on what actually happened. What you wrote above seems completely disconnected from reality.

So, I'm gonna assume that he didn't pay his way to the conference since he was wearing a company badge with the word "sponsor" on it.

If that's the case.. then he's not there in his personal capacity. He is there representing his company, on their dime.

They do, in fact, have something to lose if he cannot conduct himself in a reasonably professional manner.

They taught me this in primary school; when you're in public wearing the school uniform, you are representing the school. As such, any misbehaviour (i.e. smoking in the nearby underpass) will be punished by the school.

I am super thankful I never went to your school and I really wish we didn't inculcate kids with views like that.

Why? As a member of an organisation, you represent it, willingly or not. It's no different in the "real world", as this case highlights. What do you find so repulsive about it?

In this case, the problem is that you don't choose to be a member of a school; your parents make that choice for you. Bad behavior on the part of a child should not reflect badly on the school, because, you should assume, the child does not want to be a part of that school, and is doing anything they can to reject their status as a "member." It isn't the school's fault that there are parents who live in the area, who have a child who must, by law, attend that school, and who does not want to attend.

And, because you can't measure the school by the individual, you can't measure the individual by the school, either. If a school has a reputation for kids behaving badly, that probably just means that a bunch of the kids who go there, who don't want to be there. Whether they wanted to be there when they arrived at the school is a separate issue, amenable to causal analysis.

...Now, similarly, a lot of people are forced to work at jobs they hate for a paycheck...

The simplest way I can explain this to you is that for various reasons some people enjoy conforming, others don't. And, this case highlights different things about the "real world" to different people.

If you don't want to conform, don't wear a uniform identifying you with the group you don't want to conform with.

Sorry for the confusion but was just answering your question, not talking about myself. I don't wear any uniforms. Interesting view though, considering we're talking about primary through high school students. Not sure how many children have the power to choose their own school. I'd imagine most don't have that choice and therefor are identified with groups they had no hand in choosing.

edit: just noticed the another commenter already pointed this out to you.

(I didn't ask you the original question) I was referring back to the original situation, a guy at a conference representing his employer and signifying that by wearing their brand. By 'you' I meant the generic 'you', really.