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> I cannot, in good conscience, ever do business with a company that supports that behavior. I think we need to stop doing this bullshit in general. I'd much

> I cannot, in good conscience, ever do business with a company that supports that behavior. I think we need to stop doing this bullshit in general. I'd much rather have our community check each other and shame each other on Twitter than having employers step in and decide that thing X or thing Y is not okay for their employees to say in their personal capacity at a conference or on Twitter. As far as I've heard, Adria never asked for these guys to be terminated and personally, I think it was probably inappropriate for them to be. 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. Get real.

Karunamon 14y ago
>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.
- zem 14y ago
  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.
  - jessaustin 14y ago
    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.
    - Karunamon 14y ago
      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.
    - zem 14y ago
      different how? you're holding them responsible for something adria did at pycon.
      - jessaustin 14y ago
        You don't see a difference between an employee losing her job and a company losing some business? You must be in management.
        zem 14y ago
        if the company were pressured into firing adria in order to get their customer base back, would you feel justice had been served?
        jessaustin 14y ago
        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.
        zem 14y ago
        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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5411071
        jessaustin 14y ago
        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.
- djcapelis 14y ago
  > 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.
  - Karunamon 14y ago
    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.
    - paranoiacblack 14y ago
      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.
- WalterSear 14y ago
  From her employer's site: http://i.imgur.com/uWc8P39.png 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.
  - WalterSear 14y ago
    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.
numbsafari 14y ago
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.
- lclarkmichalek 14y ago
  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.
  - djcapelis 14y ago
    I am super thankful I never went to your school and I really wish we didn't inculcate kids with views like that.
    - lclarkmichalek 14y ago
      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?
      - jcc80 14y ago
        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.
        jacalata 14y ago
        If you don't want to conform, don't wear a uniform identifying you with the group you don't want to conform with.
revelation 14y ago
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.
- gokulk 14y ago
  I second this. The person is there at the conference as a rep for her company therefore it's speaking for the company.
- djcapelis 14y ago
  > 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.
  - revelation 14y ago
    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.
    - djcapelis 14y ago
      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.
ryguytilidie 14y ago
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...
- jessedhillon 14y ago
  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.
  - s_baby 14y ago
    >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?

Karunamon 14y ago

>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.

zem 14y ago
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.
- jessaustin 14y ago
  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.
  - Karunamon 14y ago
    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.
  - zem 14y ago
    different how? you're holding them responsible for something adria did at pycon.
    - jessaustin 14y ago
      You don't see a difference between an employee losing her job and a company losing some business? You must be in management.
      - zem 14y ago
        if the company were pressured into firing adria in order to get their customer base back, would you feel justice had been served?
        jessaustin 14y ago
        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.
        zem 14y ago
        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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5411071
        jessaustin 14y ago
        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.
djcapelis 14y ago
> 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.
- Karunamon 14y ago
  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.
  - paranoiacblack 14y ago
    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.
WalterSear 14y ago
From her employer's site: http://i.imgur.com/uWc8P39.png 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.
- WalterSear 14y ago
  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.

numbsafari 14y ago

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.

lclarkmichalek 14y ago
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.
- djcapelis 14y ago
  I am super thankful I never went to your school and I really wish we didn't inculcate kids with views like that.
  - lclarkmichalek 14y ago
    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?
    - jcc80 14y ago
      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.
      - jacalata 14y ago
        If you don't want to conform, don't wear a uniform identifying you with the group you don't want to conform with.

revelation 14y ago

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.

gokulk 14y ago
I second this. The person is there at the conference as a rep for her company therefore it's speaking for the company.
djcapelis 14y ago
> 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.
- revelation 14y ago
  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.
  - djcapelis 14y ago
    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.

ryguytilidie 14y ago

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...

jessedhillon 14y ago
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.
- s_baby 14y ago
  >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?