5 ms·

> But here I was, helpless. The only thing I could do was direct her to BART and join the rest of the class inside ... or pull the class out and refuse to atte

> But here I was, helpless. The only thing I could do was direct her to BART and join the rest of the class inside ... or pull the class out and refuse to attend it out of principle?

SoftwareMaven 14y ago
Yelp wasn't gaining anything by people attending. The attendees were gaining by attending (I would love to hear how Pinterest scaled). Should the whole class be punished for Yelp's stupidity? Now, if Yelp gained anything other than "they gave us a spot to meet", I would agree with you 100%. I would give them no benefit for being moronic.
- antihero 14y ago
  I guess that the silver lining is that a young person starts to be switched on about how humiliating and insulting it is to be screwed by idiotic authorities and their pathetic rules.
  - philwelch 14y ago
    Every young person is switched onto that. It's the only useful thing some schools teach.
- timr 14y ago
  "Yelp wasn't gaining anything by people attending" Yelp doesn't host these events purely out of the goodness of its heart -- these are recruiting events. They also give Yelp employees preferential access to the speakers. If people don't go to events at Yelp, people don't host events at Yelp.
- larsberg 14y ago
  Yes it was; Yelp is recruiting. Yelp's stupidity can teach your whole class about the importance of working for conscientious, thoughtful corporations. Arguably, that's a more valuable lesson than whatever tricks pinterest used to scale (but I'm old, so take that with a grain of salt).
chriszf 14y ago
I had another 9 students inside, and the talk was worthwhile for them. Furthermore, the problem was not with the organizers (who were generous and accommodating) or the speakers (who were similarly generous), but with the venue. Nothing would have been solved by protesting: I'm not important enough that anyone would have noticed.
- mbateman 14y ago
  You would have demonstrated that moral authority is on the side of the student who was wronged. It doesn't matter whether or not they change their policy, what matters is that you went along with excluding a student for no reason. EDIT: Sorry, this came off a bit too personally. I'm a teacher too and I got angry when I read this story. I'll just say more generically that it is easily possible (and justifiable) for a student to feel alienated after a situation like this, especially if they feel like their educator didn't stand up for them. Whether or not "standing up for them" involves canceling the entire trip is a contextual issue, and I really don't know if it would have been a good idea in this case.
  - mnicole 14y ago
    I don't get the teacher-blaming here. Imagine you're a student in that class; you're stoked to see this talk, but one of your classmates can't get in. You feel terrible but you've been looking forward to this. If the teacher decides to "stick it to the man", you and 8 other of your classmates miss out and possibly become bitter towards the excluded one because of Yelp's security measures. His having to direct her to the nearest transit might seem cold, but he was responsible for all of those students, and he was trying to offer them an experience they would grow from. I would have been incredibly bummed if I were her, but it wasn't anyone in her group's fault and they shouldn't have missed an opportunity to learn because the teacher decided he wanted to take some sort of personal, "Yeah, well I'll show you!" stand.
    - morsch 14y ago
      What kind of students are we talking about here? I assume they're not explaining how Pinterest is scaling to eighth-graders. If we're talking about adults here -- and apparently just 10 of them --, why not let them quickly huddle together and figure it out?
dfxm12 14y ago
and how old are these students? Pointing someone in the direction of public transportation and telling them to go sounds irresponsible. I get the author was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Certainly there was a better resolution... Of course, there is no context in the story, so it is hard to say...
- wecohen 14y ago
  As a student in this class I would like to clarify by saying we're all adults, the class is an accelerated software development program. The student who was kept out of yelp is in her 20s, so I think she managed public transportation just fine.
- MortenK 14y ago
  Probably old enough to take public transporation, if they are attending a talk on how Pinterest scales their product :-)

> But here I was, helpless. The only thing I could do was direct her to BART and join the rest of the class inside ... or pull the class out and refuse to attend it out of principle?

SoftwareMaven 14y ago

Yelp wasn't gaining anything by people attending. The attendees were gaining by attending (I would love to hear how Pinterest scaled). Should the whole class be punished for Yelp's stupidity? Now, if Yelp gained anything other than "they gave us a spot to meet", I would agree with you 100%. I would give them no benefit for being moronic.

antihero 14y ago
I guess that the silver lining is that a young person starts to be switched on about how humiliating and insulting it is to be screwed by idiotic authorities and their pathetic rules.
- philwelch 14y ago
  Every young person is switched onto that. It's the only useful thing some schools teach.
timr 14y ago
"Yelp wasn't gaining anything by people attending" Yelp doesn't host these events purely out of the goodness of its heart -- these are recruiting events. They also give Yelp employees preferential access to the speakers. If people don't go to events at Yelp, people don't host events at Yelp.
larsberg 14y ago
Yes it was; Yelp is recruiting. Yelp's stupidity can teach your whole class about the importance of working for conscientious, thoughtful corporations. Arguably, that's a more valuable lesson than whatever tricks pinterest used to scale (but I'm old, so take that with a grain of salt).

chriszf 14y ago

I had another 9 students inside, and the talk was worthwhile for them. Furthermore, the problem was not with the organizers (who were generous and accommodating) or the speakers (who were similarly generous), but with the venue. Nothing would have been solved by protesting: I'm not important enough that anyone would have noticed.

mbateman 14y ago
You would have demonstrated that moral authority is on the side of the student who was wronged. It doesn't matter whether or not they change their policy, what matters is that you went along with excluding a student for no reason. EDIT: Sorry, this came off a bit too personally. I'm a teacher too and I got angry when I read this story. I'll just say more generically that it is easily possible (and justifiable) for a student to feel alienated after a situation like this, especially if they feel like their educator didn't stand up for them. Whether or not "standing up for them" involves canceling the entire trip is a contextual issue, and I really don't know if it would have been a good idea in this case.
- mnicole 14y ago
  I don't get the teacher-blaming here. Imagine you're a student in that class; you're stoked to see this talk, but one of your classmates can't get in. You feel terrible but you've been looking forward to this. If the teacher decides to "stick it to the man", you and 8 other of your classmates miss out and possibly become bitter towards the excluded one because of Yelp's security measures. His having to direct her to the nearest transit might seem cold, but he was responsible for all of those students, and he was trying to offer them an experience they would grow from. I would have been incredibly bummed if I were her, but it wasn't anyone in her group's fault and they shouldn't have missed an opportunity to learn because the teacher decided he wanted to take some sort of personal, "Yeah, well I'll show you!" stand.
  - morsch 14y ago
    What kind of students are we talking about here? I assume they're not explaining how Pinterest is scaling to eighth-graders. If we're talking about adults here -- and apparently just 10 of them --, why not let them quickly huddle together and figure it out?

dfxm12 14y ago

and how old are these students? Pointing someone in the direction of public transportation and telling them to go sounds irresponsible. I get the author was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Certainly there was a better resolution... Of course, there is no context in the story, so it is hard to say...

wecohen 14y ago
As a student in this class I would like to clarify by saying we're all adults, the class is an accelerated software development program. The student who was kept out of yelp is in her 20s, so I think she managed public transportation just fine.
MortenK 14y ago
Probably old enough to take public transporation, if they are attending a talk on how Pinterest scales their product :-)