A woman who was offended by an exchange between two men at the US PyCon developer conference and tweeted their photo has been fired.
It’s difficult to tell whether the two men were actually guilty of making sexist comments or whether this woman merely assumed that they were. Either way, she has cost one of them his job – an over reaction on the part of his employer to the now ubiquitous fear of any cause of offence to anyone, anywhere, ever…
It has backfired beautifully, though.
“A SendGrid developer evangelist’s responsibility is to build and strengthen our developer community across the globe,” wrote SendGrid chief executive Jim Franklin in a blog post.
“In light of the events over the last 48+ hours, it has become obvious that (Adria’s) actions have strongly divided the same community she was supposed to unite. As a result, she can no longer be effective in her role at SendGrid.”
“Her decision to tweet the comments and photographs of the people who made the comments crossed the line.”
You’d need a heart of stone… I have no sympathy whatsoever. She chose to take offence. She chose to make a big deal of it and cause someone else to lose their livelihood – where a quiet word would probably have sufficed. And she chose to shout it from the rooftops. She reaped the whirlwind and deservedly so. What she happily visited upon another with her vindictiveness, has returned the favour. There is some justice in the world after all. Equilibrium has been satisfied.
Schadenfreude –
“Adria’s” own Tweets – 4 days earlier –
https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425
It’s the States – I expect Adria’s already found a shyster to take her case on… 👿
XX A woman who was offended by an exchange between two men….XX
WHAT Woman? has she got big tits? We need a photo!
Probably as ugly as a piece of earth and concrete designed to hold back sea water from Holland…
Can’t say I’m sorry:- life is painful enough at times, without having to tiptoe over eggshells on account of professional offendees.
What’s the phrase? Hoist with your own petard. What an idiotic action to go public over an allegedly offensive remark. If the remarks she overheard were truly offensive and unprofessional, she should have spoken to the miscreants and if unsatisfied with their response, contacted their employers privately.
The rule I learnt years ago was, if you have to reprove someone for something, never ever used email. Speak to them in person or use the phone if a face to face meeting is simply impossible.
Quite. Although as far as I can see, there was nothing to complain about. There may have been some innuendo gong on, but people who want to try and eliminate that need to get out more…