You mean the actions of the lead developer evangelist, a person who represents the company, on a highly public twitter account?

I think you misread sergiotapia's comment. They were objecting to how Sendgrid was supporting the actions of Richards. The tweet seemed like a poor example.

I also don't see an issue with having non-technical attributes being part of the equation in the criteria for selecting a vendor. Price is clearly important, as can be a business' ethics; both are not technology related but can important depending on the circumstance.

Lastly Mandrill does seem like a slightly better product for the cost, but that of course might vary based on requirements.

Thanks for the heads up on Mandrill, I'll check out their solution for when I launch my project.

Why ridicule someone for making a personal choice to choose who he does business with? Adria is a part of the company's image and just like any other company they will be judged by her public actions.

So. Let me see if I've got this straight:

Posting to HN about how you think people should coordinate and send e-mails to a company's sales department about how they don't want to do business with a company because they're bothering to stand by one of their employees and not fire them. -> A personal choice and any comments disagreeing with it is "ridicule".

Posting a tweet on your twitter account. -> Public actions representing a company.

Those seem like some strange conclusions.

> Posting a tweet on your twitter account. -> Public actions representing a company.

I really don't want to step into this... but just to clarify the tweet did say: "@SendGrid supports me. Stop trolling." so yes, that makes it a position of/by/with-the-permission of the company.

quickly runs out of thread

Perhaps ridicule was the wrong word. My point is she is seen as a face of the company by many in the tech scene, anything she does publicly (yes twitter is public) will be seen by people and they aren't wrong to have this reaction. Nowhere in sergiotapia's post did he argue that they should fire her. Talk about strange conclusions.

I'd like to step through this line of thinking.

First let's agree on three things:

- Recently the gender/sex/sexism issue in software has grown. There are programs to try and get more women involved, which is cool. There's generally a post or two about it on the front page of HN every day. It's a major theme.

- Due to the fact that it's a major recurring theme, I'd wager that it's a big problem in tech and therefore it upsets lots of people.

- Because it's a major recurring theme for many people, any change in either direction (greater or lesser equality) is a pretty big deal.

If you're still with me, then here's where the disagreement arises. If you're of the opinion that this debacle has moved the "get more women in tech" issue backwards, then it's plenty of a reason to be upset. Likewise this works in the other direction.

So if this is an issue that you care about, and the developer evangelist (and I assume that's sort of like PR? Represents the company on a more social than technical level? Correct me if I'm wrong) has moved this movement in the wrong direction I think it's perfectly fair to not give them your money.

Maybe that's reading into it too much, but I would guess that that is the logic behind that sort of decision.

I think that if someone cares about these issues in the way you've outline and wants to operate from that frame, they need to talk about those issues directly. I agree that could be a reasonable discussion to have, but I don't think it's the discussion we're having.

But thanks for elucidating an alternative motive. I agree that you could step through the thinking outlined (though I'm not sure I would agree with some of those pieces) and end up at that position.

But, I do not believe the motive you presented is the simplest explanation for the actual motive that leads most people to that conclusion and the more likely explanation is that this is a repeat of the same dynamic that occurs whenever a woman in tech speaks out about women in tech in a way that seriously perturbs things.

This happens a lot. I think we'd be a lot farther on the issue than we are if we could assume that everyone was viewing these types of things through the lense of "what makes this issue better or worse?"