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> (perhaps with Adria apologizing to the devs). What, exactly, has she to apologize for? The people in question were speaking like they were in a frat house i

> (perhaps with Adria apologizing to the devs). What, exactly, has she to apologize for? The people in question were speaking like they were in a frat house in direct contravention of a code of conduct they'd agreed to. They had the right to speak. And Adria had the right to tweet. If they didn't like being publicly outed for saying this stuff, guess what? All they had to do was shut their mouths. > What if I accidentally say something that she finds offensive? Am I next? Really? How does that work? You trip over a garbage can and a lewd joke reflexively pops out? How does accidental immature behavior work?

niggler 14y ago
People want Adria to apologize for actions that were outside of her control (like the guys getting fired). If anything, the overreaction by everyone involved merely proves that the issue of gender in the industry is still significant.
- WalterSear 14y ago
  They want her to apologize for inappropriately publicly shaming them, and the actions that resulted from that.
  - niggler 14y ago
    " the actions that resulted from that." The actions that resulted from that were the employers' fault. If she claimed they molested her (which is illegal and can result in jail time) when they didn't, then you have a point. But the comment they made was uncontested and the employer decided, for a multitude of reasons including the recent matter, to let the guy go. What if the employer was ready to fire him already, and this was the straw that broke the camel's back? Is it her fault that he was on thin ice to begin with?
    - WalterSear 14y ago
      The difference is the one between negligence and manslaughter. If your negligent actions result in something else down the line, you are still, in part, responsible. There can, and usually is, more than 100% blame to go around.
      - niggler 14y ago
        She wrote: "I'm sorry to hear your employer deciding to not to work with you on this and I hope they reconsider, bring you back on and dealing with it constructively." (emphasis mine) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5399047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5399047 I think that's the most we can expect from her regarding the guy getting fired. She didn't fire him, and she clearly expressed that she didn't think he should have been fired over this.
        Dylan16807 14y ago
        I agree entirely that that's the most we can expect regarding the firing. But that post has no apology for the public shaming.
  - rmc 14y ago
    Yeah, it's better if women don't speak up about the sexual jokes at conferences</sarcasm>
    - WalterSear 14y ago
      Tweeted from the same conference: "@skwashd you should put something in your pants next time...like a bunch of socks inside one...large...sock. TSA agent faint" Joking about sexual humiliation is less offensive than whispering 'dongle' in a crowded theater?
fatjokes 14y ago
> And Adria had the right to tweet. Adria as an individual, yes. Adria as a developer evangelist? No. Her role is to speak for the company, and no company should resort to public shaming and cyber bullying.
- niggler 14y ago
  Was she tweeting from a personal or company account?
  - blhack 14y ago
    From her account associated with sendgrid: https://twitter.com/adriarichards https://twitter.com/adriarichards
    - niggler 14y ago
      She says she works for SendGrid but I thought people usually use a separate corporate twitter account (or set up a different one for those issues)
      - jkrems 14y ago
        One of the minor side-problems in this story: social media blurs the line between "personal" and "professional"/"company" communication. If you use your twitter account to network with people working at other companies, in your role as a developer evangelist, your personal account somehow turns partly into a company account. Side note: She also tweeted "SendGrid supports me", which is a direct claim that her behavior is in line with company policy.
  - WalterSear 14y ago
    The same one she sent this joke about sexual humiliation from: https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425 https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425 And the company she was envangelising for on that twitter feed thinks that a visual joke about photocopying your genitals is not inappropriate for their jobs pages: http://i.imgur.com/uWc8P39.png http://i.imgur.com/uWc8P39.png I understand that speaker and context make all the difference, but she made a joke about sexual humiliation, and then, at the same conference, got offended by a joke comparing dongles to genitals.
blhack 14y ago
Do you actually know what the guys said? They made a joke about the word "dong" sounding like the word "dongle". If this is what you think a frat house sounds like, you are very mistaken. That this is considered a faux pas is more politically correct than any office I've ever heard of.
- danilocampos 14y ago
  > Do you actually know what the guys said? I can assure you I know substantially more on this than you do. People have a right to attend a conference without sexual jokes leaking into their ears while they attend a talk. It's as simple as that. Should the guy have been fired? No. Should he have been talking like that? No.
  - blhack 14y ago
    >I can assure you I know substantially more on this than you do. Well then do enlighten the class.
    - danilocampos 14y ago
      If you had the empathy or personal context to understand what happened here, how these situations work, and how disempowering the behavior can feel, we wouldn't be having this conversation in the first place. No amount of my arguing with you on Hacker News will change that.
      - anigbrowl 14y ago
        Danilo, following up an argument from authority with an ad hominem attack is not constructive either.
        danilocampos 14y ago
        It wasn't argument from authority – it was a response to a question as to whether I knew what these people said. I do. And it's not ad hominem to say there's no point to the conversation based on missing context. I'm reminded of when McCoy wanted to discuss death with Spock: "It would be impossible to discuss the subject without a common frame of reference." ... "You mean I have to die in order to discuss your insights on death?" For reasons I won't speculate upon, OP seems to believe it's impossible Adria knows anything about github, for example. I don't think there's anything constructive to be said to that.
str8gk 14y ago
idiot
ajross 14y ago
Sigh. Can't everyone in question here be a jerk? We have two sexist/innapropriate developers; one stressed out evangelist who overreacted and innapropriately tweeted a photo; one employer who (apparently, there is STILL no evidence for this fact beyond the anonymous pastebin!) fired one of the first guys on questionable evidence; uncounted hordes of almost-exclusively-male internet users with crystal clear (yet routinely undersupported and self-contradictory) opinions about it, and another employer who fired the evangelist based on said freakout. Good grief. Can't we all just grow up a little? Without exception, everyone involved (and that includes you, and probably half this thread) needs to apologize to everyone else. I feel sad.
- niggler 14y ago
  "here is STILL no evidence for this fact beyond the anonymous pastebin" Exactly! The employer may have been itching for a reason to fire the guy, and this proved convenient.
- Nrsolis 14y ago
  The sad truth is that grown people acting like children is far more common than you'd expect. This is not a phenomenon exclusive to the technology industry. Whether it's fashionistas, dock-workers, or politicos, people will be people. In short: childish, immature, vindictive, and petty. There was plenty to go around here.
  - incongruity 14y ago
    Indeed. I'm just disappointed, all around. I respect the handling by PyCon staff/volunteers (who didn't kick anyone out, but supported keeping PyCon a welcoming, comfortable environment), but beyond that, I feel like this whole incident has just shown us how bad people can act.
- masklinn 14y ago
  > We have two sexist/innapropriate developers Inappropriate yes, sexist no (a "dongle" private joke can hardly be construed as sexist, seriously). > one employer who (apparently, there is STILL no evidence for this fact beyond the anonymous pastebin!) fired one of the first guys on questionable evidence Apparently? A blog post from their CEO not evidence enough: http://blog.playhaven.com/addressing-pycon/ http://blog.playhaven.com/addressing-pycon/? Also fired developer commented quite extensively on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=mr-hank https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=mr-hank > and another employer who fired the evangelist based on said freakout. Probably less over the freakout and more over the DDOS they've been under since some of the "uncounted hordes" have decided the best response to mob justice was mob justice, SendGrid'd been unavailable for hours.
beachstartup 14y ago
How does accidental immature behavior work? "let's check out this pitch and then grab a beer" at a startup VC pitch event sensitive woman in front of you hears: "let's check out of this bitch and grab a beer" turns around, pics, tweets, gets you fired on the spot. HOW IS THIS OKAY? public shaming is NOT the right response. IT'S JUST NOT. what a stunning lack of imagination.
- danilocampos 14y ago
  So, here's the problem with your little fantasy: These guys were actually making sexual jokes. This wasn't a single mis-heard phrase.
  - derleth 14y ago
    Sexual and sexist are only the same if you believe women are chaste, which is horrendously sexist.
  - blhack 14y ago
    Yes, actually there was. One of the things that she was upset about was what she perceived to be a sexual joke about the word "fork" sounding like "fuck". What she didn't understand (since she's not a developer, and probably isn't exposed to these things) is that "fork" is a reference to "git fork". And if you were to read the follow ups from the guys who were shamed over their oh-so-offensive discussion of dongles and code management, you would see that "fork" was an in joke between them. "Fork" in this context meaning a form of flattery. For instance "Danilo is a good developer; I'd for his repo". There is NOTHING sexual about this, but you might not know that if you're not a person who uses git. Which is exactly what happened.
    - danilocampos 14y ago
      > There is NOTHING sexual about this, but you might not know that if you're not a person who uses git. I think I'm beginning to understand more about the underlying assumptions that form your worldview. https://github.com/adriarichards https://github.com/adriarichards
andrewguenther 14y ago
Adria had no reason to publicly shame these two guys, that behavior is unacceptable. If she had a problem with their behavior, she should have reported it to the Pycon organizers directly and that should have ended it. None of this should have ever left Pycon.
Zikes 14y ago
> speaking like they were in a frat house > How does accidental immature behavior work? Something like that, I suppose.
jedberg 14y ago
Actually, her tweeting was also in violation of the PSF Code of Conduct, so she's equally guilty in that sense.
mtoddh 14y ago
If they didn't like being publicly outed for saying this stuff, guess what? All they had to do was shut their mouths. Well if it makes you feel any better, I'm willing to bet that going forward more male developers will in fact be "shutting their mouths" when there's a female around.
bratsche 14y ago
You're looking at this really single-mindedly though. Yes, there are always repercussions for anything you say depending on who the audience is. The guys who made these jokes within earshot of Adria learned this. Now Adria is learning this after shaming them on the entire Internet. It kind of comes down to what is a reasonable response, and it seems that's what 50% of the Internet disagrees with. If someone makes an offensive joke near you, we hopefully agree that you can't turn around and shoot that person in the face. We hopefully agree that you can't turn around and punch that person in the face. Calling the conference organizers and reporting them and having them kicked out doesn't seem unreasonable, but going out of your way to shame them on Twitter and a blog does. That just seems like overkill to me. That overkill, at least as I see it, is the thing that perhaps she might apologize for.
rdtsc 14y ago
Really Danilo? You don't see anything wrong with what she did? This is OK. Next time you are at PyCon people can take face shots of your, post them online, with stupid childish insults underneath to see like "ass clown". It is really sad that you don't see why that might create a hostile and unwelcome environment. Notice, not as many condemn her for _PRIVATELY_ notifying organizers. That is event #1, event #2 was that she publicly posted her tweet. That is not OK and it is sad to see you condone and defend that. PSF has also been hiding in the weeds with event #2. They issued a neutral statement about #1 and then a surreptitious Github update to their policy to include some of what happened. If this was a groping incident and all they did was made a Github commit, there would be a shitstorm 10x this one. But public face picture posting with insulting tags, for friends, kids, employers, to see, essentially forever is OK. I've said it before and will repeat myself again, unless PyCon organizers issue a condemning statement I will not be coming to PyCon. It is a hostile environment and I don't feel safe.
eropple 14y ago
Danilo, I want to preface this with a note that I respect the hell out of you and I think you're coming at this from a good place, but I think you're mischaracterizing the argument that disagrees with you (at least, for some people, I don't claim to speak for everybody). From where I stand, it appears that very few people are mad that she said "hey, PyCon, these guys are being annoying, can you send somebody over?". (And that the people who are mad at that look like crazy people.) That's a good thing to do. I, at least, am 100% on board with this. Here's my hangup. I will under no circumstances claim that privilege is not a very real thing and it needs to be considered; my posting history here will bear out that I'm usually saying it does and needs to be. And I'm not even against public shaming as a concept - sometimes, it's the only tool left in the box. But I don't think that's the case here, and I read the backlash to this situation as people getting pissed because somebody with a lot of social influence decided to use it like a magnifying glass to burn some ants. She has (had) power and she has (had) standing that they didn't. She was able to--and, I don't think it's unfair to say, did--point at them to many, many people, and attack them in a way that they can't even respond to effectively, let alone defend themselves if she happened to be wrong (and there's sufficient churn among the stories going back and forth that that's a possibility that needs to be considered). That, I do think, deserves an apology. And a real one.
oneweekwonder 14y ago
Can you tell me what they said. All I can find is something about forking and dongle? Because it just seems to me like hearsay.
tzs 14y ago
The dongle remark was less sexual than many jokes on children's cartoons on Nickelodeon or on prime time sitcoms on network television. This is orders of magnitude below "lewd" or "frat house" level. You'd have a hard time getting even far right conservative family groups to get worked up over it.

niggler 14y ago

People want Adria to apologize for actions that were outside of her control (like the guys getting fired). If anything, the overreaction by everyone involved merely proves that the issue of gender in the industry is still significant.

WalterSear 14y ago
They want her to apologize for inappropriately publicly shaming them, and the actions that resulted from that.
- niggler 14y ago
  " the actions that resulted from that." The actions that resulted from that were the employers' fault. If she claimed they molested her (which is illegal and can result in jail time) when they didn't, then you have a point. But the comment they made was uncontested and the employer decided, for a multitude of reasons including the recent matter, to let the guy go. What if the employer was ready to fire him already, and this was the straw that broke the camel's back? Is it her fault that he was on thin ice to begin with?
  - WalterSear 14y ago
    The difference is the one between negligence and manslaughter. If your negligent actions result in something else down the line, you are still, in part, responsible. There can, and usually is, more than 100% blame to go around.
    - niggler 14y ago
      She wrote: "I'm sorry to hear your employer deciding to not to work with you on this and I hope they reconsider, bring you back on and dealing with it constructively." (emphasis mine) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5399047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5399047 I think that's the most we can expect from her regarding the guy getting fired. She didn't fire him, and she clearly expressed that she didn't think he should have been fired over this.
      - Dylan16807 14y ago
        I agree entirely that that's the most we can expect regarding the firing. But that post has no apology for the public shaming.
- rmc 14y ago
  Yeah, it's better if women don't speak up about the sexual jokes at conferences</sarcasm>
  - WalterSear 14y ago
    Tweeted from the same conference: "@skwashd you should put something in your pants next time...like a bunch of socks inside one...large...sock. TSA agent faint" Joking about sexual humiliation is less offensive than whispering 'dongle' in a crowded theater?

fatjokes 14y ago

> And Adria had the right to tweet. Adria as an individual, yes. Adria as a developer evangelist? No. Her role is to speak for the company, and no company should resort to public shaming and cyber bullying.

niggler 14y ago
Was she tweeting from a personal or company account?
- blhack 14y ago
  From her account associated with sendgrid: https://twitter.com/adriarichards https://twitter.com/adriarichards
  - niggler 14y ago
    She says she works for SendGrid but I thought people usually use a separate corporate twitter account (or set up a different one for those issues)
    - jkrems 14y ago
      One of the minor side-problems in this story: social media blurs the line between "personal" and "professional"/"company" communication. If you use your twitter account to network with people working at other companies, in your role as a developer evangelist, your personal account somehow turns partly into a company account. Side note: She also tweeted "SendGrid supports me", which is a direct claim that her behavior is in line with company policy.
- WalterSear 14y ago
  The same one she sent this joke about sexual humiliation from: https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425 https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425 And the company she was envangelising for on that twitter feed thinks that a visual joke about photocopying your genitals is not inappropriate for their jobs pages: http://i.imgur.com/uWc8P39.png http://i.imgur.com/uWc8P39.png I understand that speaker and context make all the difference, but she made a joke about sexual humiliation, and then, at the same conference, got offended by a joke comparing dongles to genitals.

blhack 14y ago

Do you actually know what the guys said? They made a joke about the word "dong" sounding like the word "dongle". If this is what you think a frat house sounds like, you are very mistaken. That this is considered a faux pas is more politically correct than any office I've ever heard of.

danilocampos 14y ago
> Do you actually know what the guys said? I can assure you I know substantially more on this than you do. People have a right to attend a conference without sexual jokes leaking into their ears while they attend a talk. It's as simple as that. Should the guy have been fired? No. Should he have been talking like that? No.
- blhack 14y ago
  >I can assure you I know substantially more on this than you do. Well then do enlighten the class.
  - danilocampos 14y ago
    If you had the empathy or personal context to understand what happened here, how these situations work, and how disempowering the behavior can feel, we wouldn't be having this conversation in the first place. No amount of my arguing with you on Hacker News will change that.
    - anigbrowl 14y ago
      Danilo, following up an argument from authority with an ad hominem attack is not constructive either.
      - danilocampos 14y ago
        It wasn't argument from authority – it was a response to a question as to whether I knew what these people said. I do. And it's not ad hominem to say there's no point to the conversation based on missing context. I'm reminded of when McCoy wanted to discuss death with Spock: "It would be impossible to discuss the subject without a common frame of reference." ... "You mean I have to die in order to discuss your insights on death?" For reasons I won't speculate upon, OP seems to believe it's impossible Adria knows anything about github, for example. I don't think there's anything constructive to be said to that.

str8gk 14y ago

idiot

ajross 14y ago

Sigh. Can't everyone in question here be a jerk? We have two sexist/innapropriate developers; one stressed out evangelist who overreacted and innapropriately tweeted a photo; one employer who (apparently, there is STILL no evidence for this fact beyond the anonymous pastebin!) fired one of the first guys on questionable evidence; uncounted hordes of almost-exclusively-male internet users with crystal clear (yet routinely undersupported and self-contradictory) opinions about it, and another employer who fired the evangelist based on said freakout. Good grief. Can't we all just grow up a little? Without exception, everyone involved (and that includes you, and probably half this thread) needs to apologize to everyone else. I feel sad.

niggler 14y ago
"here is STILL no evidence for this fact beyond the anonymous pastebin" Exactly! The employer may have been itching for a reason to fire the guy, and this proved convenient.
Nrsolis 14y ago
The sad truth is that grown people acting like children is far more common than you'd expect. This is not a phenomenon exclusive to the technology industry. Whether it's fashionistas, dock-workers, or politicos, people will be people. In short: childish, immature, vindictive, and petty. There was plenty to go around here.
- incongruity 14y ago
  Indeed. I'm just disappointed, all around. I respect the handling by PyCon staff/volunteers (who didn't kick anyone out, but supported keeping PyCon a welcoming, comfortable environment), but beyond that, I feel like this whole incident has just shown us how bad people can act.
masklinn 14y ago
> We have two sexist/innapropriate developers Inappropriate yes, sexist no (a "dongle" private joke can hardly be construed as sexist, seriously). > one employer who (apparently, there is STILL no evidence for this fact beyond the anonymous pastebin!) fired one of the first guys on questionable evidence Apparently? A blog post from their CEO not evidence enough: http://blog.playhaven.com/addressing-pycon/ http://blog.playhaven.com/addressing-pycon/? Also fired developer commented quite extensively on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=mr-hank https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=mr-hank > and another employer who fired the evangelist based on said freakout. Probably less over the freakout and more over the DDOS they've been under since some of the "uncounted hordes" have decided the best response to mob justice was mob justice, SendGrid'd been unavailable for hours.

beachstartup 14y ago

How does accidental immature behavior work? "let's check out this pitch and then grab a beer" at a startup VC pitch event sensitive woman in front of you hears: "let's check out of this bitch and grab a beer" turns around, pics, tweets, gets you fired on the spot. HOW IS THIS OKAY? public shaming is NOT the right response. IT'S JUST NOT. what a stunning lack of imagination.

danilocampos 14y ago
So, here's the problem with your little fantasy: These guys were actually making sexual jokes. This wasn't a single mis-heard phrase.
- derleth 14y ago
  Sexual and sexist are only the same if you believe women are chaste, which is horrendously sexist.
- blhack 14y ago
  Yes, actually there was. One of the things that she was upset about was what she perceived to be a sexual joke about the word "fork" sounding like "fuck". What she didn't understand (since she's not a developer, and probably isn't exposed to these things) is that "fork" is a reference to "git fork". And if you were to read the follow ups from the guys who were shamed over their oh-so-offensive discussion of dongles and code management, you would see that "fork" was an in joke between them. "Fork" in this context meaning a form of flattery. For instance "Danilo is a good developer; I'd for his repo". There is NOTHING sexual about this, but you might not know that if you're not a person who uses git. Which is exactly what happened.
  - danilocampos 14y ago
    > There is NOTHING sexual about this, but you might not know that if you're not a person who uses git. I think I'm beginning to understand more about the underlying assumptions that form your worldview. https://github.com/adriarichards https://github.com/adriarichards

andrewguenther 14y ago

Adria had no reason to publicly shame these two guys, that behavior is unacceptable. If she had a problem with their behavior, she should have reported it to the Pycon organizers directly and that should have ended it. None of this should have ever left Pycon.

Zikes 14y ago

> speaking like they were in a frat house > How does accidental immature behavior work? Something like that, I suppose.

jedberg 14y ago

Actually, her tweeting was also in violation of the PSF Code of Conduct, so she's equally guilty in that sense.

mtoddh 14y ago

If they didn't like being publicly outed for saying this stuff, guess what? All they had to do was shut their mouths. Well if it makes you feel any better, I'm willing to bet that going forward more male developers will in fact be "shutting their mouths" when there's a female around.

bratsche 14y ago

You're looking at this really single-mindedly though. Yes, there are always repercussions for anything you say depending on who the audience is. The guys who made these jokes within earshot of Adria learned this. Now Adria is learning this after shaming them on the entire Internet. It kind of comes down to what is a reasonable response, and it seems that's what 50% of the Internet disagrees with. If someone makes an offensive joke near you, we hopefully agree that you can't turn around and shoot that person in the face. We hopefully agree that you can't turn around and punch that person in the face. Calling the conference organizers and reporting them and having them kicked out doesn't seem unreasonable, but going out of your way to shame them on Twitter and a blog does. That just seems like overkill to me. That overkill, at least as I see it, is the thing that perhaps she might apologize for.

rdtsc 14y ago

Really Danilo? You don't see anything wrong with what she did? This is OK. Next time you are at PyCon people can take face shots of your, post them online, with stupid childish insults underneath to see like "ass clown". It is really sad that you don't see why that might create a hostile and unwelcome environment. Notice, not as many condemn her for _PRIVATELY_ notifying organizers. That is event #1, event #2 was that she publicly posted her tweet. That is not OK and it is sad to see you condone and defend that. PSF has also been hiding in the weeds with event #2. They issued a neutral statement about #1 and then a surreptitious Github update to their policy to include some of what happened. If this was a groping incident and all they did was made a Github commit, there would be a shitstorm 10x this one. But public face picture posting with insulting tags, for friends, kids, employers, to see, essentially forever is OK. I've said it before and will repeat myself again, unless PyCon organizers issue a condemning statement I will not be coming to PyCon. It is a hostile environment and I don't feel safe.

eropple 14y ago

Danilo, I want to preface this with a note that I respect the hell out of you and I think you're coming at this from a good place, but I think you're mischaracterizing the argument that disagrees with you (at least, for some people, I don't claim to speak for everybody). From where I stand, it appears that very few people are mad that she said "hey, PyCon, these guys are being annoying, can you send somebody over?". (And that the people who are mad at that look like crazy people.) That's a good thing to do. I, at least, am 100% on board with this. Here's my hangup. I will under no circumstances claim that privilege is not a very real thing and it needs to be considered; my posting history here will bear out that I'm usually saying it does and needs to be. And I'm not even against public shaming as a concept - sometimes, it's the only tool left in the box. But I don't think that's the case here, and I read the backlash to this situation as people getting pissed because somebody with a lot of social influence decided to use it like a magnifying glass to burn some ants. She has (had) power and she has (had) standing that they didn't. She was able to--and, I don't think it's unfair to say, did--point at them to many, many people, and attack them in a way that they can't even respond to effectively, let alone defend themselves if she happened to be wrong (and there's sufficient churn among the stories going back and forth that that's a possibility that needs to be considered). That, I do think, deserves an apology. And a real one.

oneweekwonder 14y ago

Can you tell me what they said. All I can find is something about forking and dongle? Because it just seems to me like hearsay.

tzs 14y ago

The dongle remark was less sexual than many jokes on children's cartoons on Nickelodeon or on prime time sitcoms on network television. This is orders of magnitude below "lewd" or "frat house" level. You'd have a hard time getting even far right conservative family groups to get worked up over it.