Fired for Jokes and for Reporting Jokes

What a scary story. Two people got fired because of a company’s hypocrisy and prissiness:

The strange saga began Sunday at the PyCon event in Santa Clara, CA, when Adria Richards, a developer evangelist for e-mail vendor SendGrid, overheard jokes being told by two developers sitting behind her during a session. The jokes were sexual in nature, she said. Richards proceeded to take a picture of the developers, then tweeted the photo and asked PyCon organizers to have a word with them.

The story ended with one of the developers getting fired, Richards getting fired, and an apparent denial of service attack against Richard’s personal blog and against SendGrid.

If anybody mentions the word “feminism” in the comments, they will be banned immediately. I’ve had my fill of arrant idiocy this week. This story is not about feminism and it has zero to do with anybody’s gender. It’s about puritanism and prissiness, qualities that know no gender.

If you read the entire article, you will see that the company fired one of the jokesters (not both, which is very curious) and the person who complained about them. This tells us that the real problem here is a corporation that wants its employees to be mindless, soulless robots who don’t have an existence outside of being productive for the company.

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30 responses to “Fired for Jokes and for Reporting Jokes”

David Bellamy

March 22, 2013

There is, sadly, a long tradition of punishing whistle-blowers as well as punishing those that they report. It seems not to matter whether the situation is major or trivial.

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bloggerclarissa

March 22, 2013

Exactly. The company fired these people just for making themselves noticed. This is a very bad precedent for anybody who uses social networks.

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Stille (@aperfectbalance)

March 22, 2013

The person who complained worked at a different company than the jokesters. So there’s two different companies being completely ridiculous.

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David Gendron

March 22, 2013

Oh, so this is not the same thing, now.

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David Gendron

March 22, 2013

Omertà!

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Pika

March 22, 2013

Sadly, it got worse than that, now it involves threats and worse:
http://femalecomputerscientist.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/terrifying-escalating-sexism.html

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bloggerclarissa

March 22, 2013

This is a bad economy; people are terrified of losing jobs. It is tragic, though , that they can’t direct the anger where it belongs: to the company. All this woman did was send a tweet. We all send tweets. The men did nothing wrong, she did nothing wrong. The company that fires people over this is the idiotic entity that should be shamed and boycotted.

People are so fucking brainless. Stupid fucking brainless shits. Everybody is arguing whether the woman was wrong or the men. Idiots! The companies are in the wrong. Isn’t that obvious? Show some worker solidarity for once. Jeez.

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1. David Gendron
  
  March 22, 2013
  
  AMEN! 🙂
  
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bloggerclarissa

March 22, 2013

I hope it is understood that my rant was not directed at Pika.

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1. Pika
  
  March 22, 2013
  
  Sure, no problem, I totally agree with the rant. 🙂
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    March 22, 2013
    
    I just get so angry when people turn on each other instead of seeing that their rights have been violated. This sets very dangerous precedent for people to be fired for making comments on social networks. Or making comments about people making comments. Or making comments about people making comments about people. . . etc.
    
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2. musteryou
  
  March 22, 2013
  
  “I just get so angry when people turn on each other instead of seeing that their rights have been violated.”
  
  The animal that has attracted parasites cannot think for itself and turns against its own interests. There are insects who travel up leaf, instead of downward, in their normal direction, to give birth to a parasite from their heads.
  
  This is the state of the contemporary person in most advanced industrialized societies. They’ve been played not once, but again and again — and each time, they fall for the tricks anew, because they’ve already accepted the parasite.
  
  Eventually, they will climb up leaf and die and parasites will come pouring out of their heads to start a new parasitical cycle.
  
  Why does USA have no decent health care system to speak of and why do so many of its citizens continue to repulse a system that would take care of their health?
  
  Parasites!
  
  They will climb up the leaf and they will die in due course, but their unfortunate legacy will live on.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    March 22, 2013
    
    “This is the state of the contemporary person in most advanced industrialized societies. They’ve been played not once, but again and again — and each time, they fall for the tricks anew, because they’ve already accepted the parasite.”
    
    – Exactly.
    
    “Why does USA have no decent health care system to speak of and why do so many of its citizens continue to repulse a system that would take care of their health?”
    
    – I can list a hundred more things where people are being stupidly, idiotically, dumb-headedly self-sabotaging. I see this idiotic debacle where people see a very clear case of worker-rights violation and instead of denouncing the company, they go on ranting about feminists who are to blame for whatever. When tomorrow they get fired for saying something on Twitter, they will keep stupidly blaming feminists, immigrants, and little green creatures from the Moon. All just to avoid blaming the actual people who fired them.
    
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    1. musteryou
      
      March 22, 2013
      
      I have also deduced that a lot of MRAs suffer from problems that have their sources in the workplace, rather than in feminism. They don’t want to address these issues, because an authoritarian cannot take on the boss. He can’t go against the grain of his authoritarianism. So, he takes out his anger on ‘feminism’. I’ve even mentioned this on their sites (YouTube is one of their sites). But of course they refuse to see the obvious.
      
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      1. bloggerclarissa
        
        March 22, 2013
        
        You may be absolutely right here. These MRAs feel very dis-empowered and unmanned but their explanation for who or what disempowers them is really idiotic.
        
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        musteryou
        
        March 22, 2013
        
        In the past they had compensation for the humiliations of work, since they were, as it is said, king of their own castles at home. It is instructive to listen to the Goebbels of Men’s Rights — “Girl Writes What”. She tells her listeners that women can’t expect the traditional treats of caring and material support from men because they don’t respect the status of the man as breadwinner. So, no wonder he feels in disarray.
        
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Homple

March 23, 2013

I’ve read quite a bit today about this mess, and Clarissa.s comments are the most intelligent and concisely expressed I’ve run across.

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bloggerclarissa

March 23, 2013

Thank you, Homple!

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Workers’ Rights Lose Out to Gender Wars | Clarissa's Blog

March 23, 2013

[…] is that there are so many people who complain about the patriarchy and then proceed to discuss the story about PyCon, SendGrid and Adria Richards in terms of gender wars (“Men are to blame!” “Women are to blame!” […]

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Gattone

March 23, 2013

The short version:
– a guy tells to his friend a joke about a “big dongle”
– a lynch mob is started on Twitter by Ms Richards to go after both men (skipping the official channels) to teach them a lesson
– the one who told the job (a father of three) apologised and also lost his job
– an even bigger lynch mob is started on 4chan to go after Ms Richards.
– she is fired

The long version:
I’m not so sure about ” a corporation that wants its employees to be mindless”. I am a Python developer myself, and I’ve been following the events closely:

One guy told to another guy a stupid joke about “big dongle”. They both worked at the same company, and were wearing t-shirts with the company logo.

Ms. Richards overheared them, turned around smiling, and took a picture of them. Then she posted it on Twitter, calling these two guys sexist asshats. She also overheared them saying to “fork a repo” and considered this to also be a sexist joke. But this is a real technical term: forking a repo means copying the source code, in order to do your own modifications to improve it or to add new features. (I wonder how can Ms. Richards be a developer evanghelist when she doesn’t even know basic developer terms?). At no time were these guys refering to or speaking to any woman.

Anyway, by posting the picture with her comments on Twitter she pretty much called the mob from her side to attack the two men. She had almost 10,000 Twitter followers, and complaints AGAINST the two and their company started coming in. By doing this she also broke the conference’s code of conduct, which forbids these kind of actions in order to prevent what exactly had happened: mob “justice”.

The man who told the joke publicly apologised. But, trying to minimise the PR damage, the guys’ company fired him (this is why only one man was fired). He is a father of three, and news got out that he was fired for saying “big dongle”.

In turn, a couple of days later, this was the start of an even bigger mob, but this time against Ms. Richards. This bigger mob, mostly formed by Anonymous groups organised on 4chan, started DDoS-ing Sendgrid’s (Ms. Richards’ employer) servers. DDoS means sending so many fake requests to their servers, that it practically becomes impossible to provide any service to the customers. After several hours of downtime, plus the word getting out that a father of three was fired for saying “big dongle”, Sendgrid started losing A LOT of customers. From what I hear they lost about 50% of their paying customers.

She was fired by Sendgrid. Consider that Ms. Richards’ job was to get developers together and to promote the company and, at least in my opinion, she really failed.

Like when any mob is envolved, the situation degenerated really fast, reaching the point of death threats. Now the entire mass-media is printing only Ms Richards’ point of view, basically making her a hero in the fight with some “evil sexist IT men”. Everyone is completely ignoring how all this crazy thing started in the first place.

Also, about the same day she got offended for the big dongle joke she overheared, Ms Richards was posting the same kind of jokes herself (suggesting to another man to stuff some socks in his pants, in order to embarass the airport security staff).

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bloggerclarissa

March 23, 2013

Here is your diagnosis, you brainless twat: https://clarissasblog.com/2013/03/23/workers-rights-lose-out-to-gender-wars/

When tomorrow you get fired because you said something stupid online (like this stupid comment of your, for example) or somebody said something stupid about you online, there will be nobody to defend you.

Unless, of course, you are being paid by Sendgrid to salvage its destroyed reputation, which is more than probable. If so, you are a failure at your job, freak. You only make your company look like an even bigger bunch of freakazoids.

“and, at least in my opinion, she really failed.”

– And in my opinion you are a stupid freakazoid who needs never to have employment for as long as you live. Should you be fired right now on the basis of my opinion? How many times did you get dropped on your head in infancy, you loser?

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1. Gattone
  
  March 23, 2013
  
  No I’m not paid by Sendgrid. I just canceled my account with them BEFORE they fired Ms Richards, for NOT getting rid of her sooner.
  
  Anyway, in my 2nd comment I told you how I see the community’s future. Good or bad, misogynistic or not, that is my dumb oppinion.
  
  Have a nice day.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    March 23, 2013
    
    ‘Good or bad, misogynistic or not, that is my dumb oppinion.”
    
    – It’s neither this nor that. It’s just impotent. Like everything about you.
    
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Gattone

March 23, 2013

The Python community went to great lengths to encourage diversity. I think that it has the highest ratio of women participants (more than 20%) from all the programmer conferences. What will happen in the future?

Like Clarissa, I’m from Eastern Europe. I still remember the pre-1989 times, when I had to watch for EVERY word I was saying. A single neighour telling on you that you didn’t appreciate the “Dear Leader” could have landed you in jail, with your entire family’s life ruined.

When I’ll go to a developer conference in the free USA, will I have to bring a lawyer to do all the talking for me, because “all you say can be and will be used against you”? Will I be considered a racist and lose my job if I am overheared telling to a colleague that I don’t like chocolate icecream? If I look in the direction of another Ms. Richards, will she post online a photo of me, in her fight against “creepy stalkers”? The mass media will take her part anyway, so who will hire me once my face is on all tech sites as a criminal?

And remember that we, software developers, aren’t really known for smooth social skills either. 😀

Getting a job these days isn’t an easy thing, so maybe I should avoid all future official conferences. I shall meet with software developers who look just like me: white (more or less straight) men, in smaller gatherings. Less interaction with women developers, less chance of getting in trouble. Paranoid? Remember that “being paranoid, doesn’t mean that they aren’t there trying to get you”.

I am willing to bet that I’m not the only one who started thinking like this these days. The actions of Ms Richards just made the good old boy networks not only sound good again for a big part of the developer community, but more like the only reasonable solution. And it also proved for the 12392389th time that Anonymous are some really really damaged individuals.

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bloggerclarissa

March 23, 2013

“The Python community went to great lengths to encourage diversity. I think that it has the highest ratio of women participants (more than 20%) from all the programmer conferences. ”

– That’s not diversity, buddy. that’s a meeting of dickless, brainless, stupid losers. Jeez.

” The actions of Ms Richards just made the good old boy networks not only sound good again for a big part of the developer community, but more like the only reasonable solution. ”

– Your mommy issues should be addressed with your psychiatrist on your own dime.

” Less interaction with women developers, less chance of getting in trouble.”

– It’s OK, bud, no woman would touch an ugly impotent fool like you with a ten foot pole. You have zero chance of having any woman but your castrating Mommy in your life, so just unclench.

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bloggerclarissa

March 23, 2013

“Like Clarissa, I’m from Eastern Europe. I still remember the pre-1989 times, when I had to watch for EVERY word I was saying. A single neighour telling on you that you didn’t appreciate the “Dear Leader” could have landed you in jail, with your entire family’s life ruined.”

– Stop lying, you freak. Nothing like that ever took place in the lives of anybody in Eastern Europe since March of 1953. Who on Earth hires such stupid idiots?

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Danny (@dannyscorner)

March 23, 2013

All the back and forth on this was a nightmare.

MRAs blaming the woman. Feminists staying quiet about the entire situation UNTIL the woman got fired (and suddenly it became just another “women can’t do….” story). Sites arguing back and forth. People claiming that they support a woman that went from hearing an offensive joke to bragging about plastering their faces on twitter.

I declare this to be a cluster fuck.

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bloggerclarissa

March 23, 2013

Once again, Americans fail to address employee rights in any productive way. This is how we end up with the poorest record of working conditions in the developed world.

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1. Danny (@dannyscorner)
  
  March 24, 2013
  
  Pretty much. This story has been reduced from what you’re talking about to just becoming more ammunition in the “My side needs help, their side sucks!” arguing that’s been going on.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    March 24, 2013
    
    I find this “whose side suffers worse” idiocy to be beyond frustrating. It consists of stupid reiteration of the same silly commonplaces and never leads anywhere productive.
    
    In the meanwhile, two people – of both genders – are sitting there jobless and we all are still in danger of losing our jobs because of joking / posting stuff online. Idiocy rules.
    
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