SendGrid is in an ugly place, probably losing customers by the minute. If I was currently a SendGrid customer, I would be taking my business elsewhere... for a variety of reasons.
As for being a "defender and promoter of women in tech" -- I guess it really depends on if you see her as the victim or the bully in the situation. Being a defender and promoter of bullies in tech is a far less noble badge to wear.
Is that what they would have been though? People are drawing attention to a load of things she's said on twitter and elsewhere that are more than a bit dodgy. A picture begins to form of someone on a mission which may not really be aligned with Sendgrid's requirements for an evangelist.
Sendgrid is in a crowded space... easy enough to switch.
https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425
And Sendgrid has a 'photocopying your genitals' joke on one of their jobs pages.
(And yes, it's pretty easy to photocopy your ass without photocopying the other parts if you sit on the photocopier the right way.)
The point I was trying to make is that every party involved is in definitely in the gray area between offensive and unoffensive. She made sexual humiliation jokes in front of thousands of twitter followers. Her company made scatlogical jokes in a much more professional setting than a conference. Compared to these, muttering 'dongle' in a crowded theater is, you must admit, at least equally as offensiv, if not quite a bit less.
And nobody gave a damn about her twitter jokes or the company jobs page before this.
The choice is pretty obvious here.
She's set back "women in tech" pretty far.
From the same conference:
https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425
The company she is envangelising for thinks that a visual joke about photocopying your genitals is apropriate for their jobs pages.
http://i.imgur.com/uWc8P39.png
Actions must be judged in relation to the society in which they occur.
I guess this is how we iron out what the Code of Conduct stuff really means, hopefully we learn from it.
No it doesn't. It actually reduces it. She is being treated as a complete equal here, in being called out and held accountable for her actions. It would be a setback if she were protected purely because she was "speaking out" about sexism.
I feel like this whole incident did more damage to female right then good by making them appear small and fragile.
I would have preferred if this entire ordeal was sorted out with a game of laser tag, it'd be a fitting conclusion to the level of bizarro-world-absurdity this issue has become.
That sounds like it'd be really awkward for both Adria and the guy and eventually make it worse for SendGrid. If you've followed Adria's comments on her blog post, you'd realize it'd be a serious about-face to back down. The guy would probably have to grovel, and personally, in this case I'd rather be out of a job.
> You could argue that her job is to be an advocate for SendGrid, and this incident has done the opposite. But I assume she was just fired so the ddos would go away.
Why not both? It didn't give me a terribly negative view of SendGrid, but certainly warned me to steer clear of ever working for / with them for fear of stepping on overly-PC toes.
Someone made an inappropriate joke at too high of a volume.
Somebody else felt uncomfortable and made a mistake in their reaction.
People make mistakes. Couldn't SendGrid have offered the guy a job and apologized profusely.
You could argue that her job is to be an advocate for SendGrid, and this incident has done the opposite. But I assume she was just fired so the ddos would go away.
Also announcing it on Facebook is brutal, even though they may have had no other choice.