Playhaven Developer Fired For Sexual Jokes After Sendgrid Marketer Outs Him On Twitter
Playhaven fired a developer after he allegedly made sexual jokes in the audience during a keynote session at PyCon, a conference for Python developers. Now Adria Richards, a developer evangelist for SendGrid, is getting rape and death threats via Twitter.
Richards was sitting in the audience immediately in front of two developers. After someone made a comment about forking a software repository, the two allegedly began making jokes about forking in a sexual manner and “big dongles.” After listening for some time, Richards got fed up, took a picture of the two, and posted it to Twitter:
Not cool.Jokes about forking repo’s in a sexual way and “big” dongles.Right behind me #pycon
— Adria Richards (@adriarichards) March 17, 2013
One of those two developers is Alex Reid, an engineer at PlayHaven, the mobile gaming monetization and marketing company. The other developer, whose name is not yet known but goes by mr-hank on Hacker News, was fired by PlayHaven for the incident (PlayHaven confirmed this today). He posted about what happened from his perspective on Hacker News and denied that any sexual comments were made about forking:
While I did make a big dongle joke about a fictional piece hardware that identified as male, no sexual jokes were made about forking. My friends and I had decided forking someone’s repo is a new form of flattery, the highest form being implementation, and we were excited about one of the presenters projects; a friend said “I would fork that guys repo.” The sexual context was applied by Adria, and not us.
Adria Richards Fired By Sendgrid For Calling Out Developers On Twitter
Email delivery company SendGrid has fired developer evangelist Adria Richards (pictured above) after she outed a developer who was allegedly making sexual jokes during a conference, via Twitter.
The developer in question was fired by his employer, PlayHaven, after Richards posted his picture and a few details about what he said. VentureBeat broke the story last night.
The company made a statement on its Facebook account:
Effective immediately, SendGrid has terminated the employment of Adria Richards. While we generally are sensitive and confidential with respect to employee matters, the situation has taken on a public nature. We have taken action that we believe is in the overall best interests of SendGrid, its employees, and our customers. As we continue to process the vast amount of information, we will post something more comprehensive.
Please note that, though this is showing up on SendGrid’s Facebook account, I have not been able to confirm with the company that Richards has actually been fired. SendGrid is under DDOS attack right now, which means that some fairly sophisticated hackers are very focused on the company, and it is not beyond the realm of possibility that they have cracked into SendGrid’s social media accounts.
However, SendGrid has also confirmed the firing on Twitter:
Effective immediately, @adriarichards has been terminated from @sendgrid. For more details, please see ow.ly/jhW0y
Sendgrid Under Ddos Attack After Its Developer Evangelist Complains About Sexual Jokes At Pycon
Last night VentureBeat broke the story about a developer who was fired from his job at PlayHaven after being outted on Twitter for allegedly making sexual jokes during a conference. Today, the company where the person who outted him works is under a distributed denial of service attack.
After hearing several jokes about forking software repositories and “big dongles,” SendGrid’s developer evangelist Adria Richards tweeted a picture of the jokesters with the hashtag “pycon.” Conference organizers saw the tweet, ejected the developers, and in short order, PlayHaven fired one of the accused.
Today, SendGrid, the email delivery company where Richards works, is under a DDOS attack.
So are the idiots now DDoS’ing SendGrid because of #pycon? YOU ARE BREAKING THE INTERNET YOU FOOLS
— Tane Piper (@tanepiper) March 21, 2013
A DDOS attack basically shuts down a website or Internet service by flooding it with traffic. Communication requests from a distributed pool of computers — often in a botnet controlled by a hacker — occupy the site’s servers and make it impossible for the site to continue.
So SendGrid.com is currently inaccessible, and that’s not the only problem: At least some developers are cancelling their accounts with the service.
Canceled my accout with @sendgrid today. I cannot do business with someone who supports a woman who gets a father fired over a joke #freedom
— Pj(@pjmprometheus) March 21, 2013
SendGrid posted about the incident — apparently trying to calm the furor — but says that mail is still being sent. I’m trying to contact the company for more information and Adria Richards for her perspective on this entire situation.
We hear you, internet. We’re working to serve our customers at the moment. Further comments, once we’ve done our job of delivering email ^tf
— SendGrid (@SendGrid) March 21, 2013
Adria Richards’ personal site, But You’re A Girl, is also under DDOS attack but is currently being protected by CloudFlare. That’s something her company might want to consider as well.
Interestingly, PlayHaven.com, the company that fired the developer, is working just fine.
Full articles can be seen at:
Playhaven developer fired for sexual jokes after SendGrid marketer outs him on Twitter
Breaking: Adria Richards fired by SendGrid for calling out developers on Twitter
SendGrid under DDOS attack after its developer evangelist complains about sexual jokes at PyCon
Update: SendGrid's Official Response
Wow. This week has been extremely challenging for all. We want to give you our perspective on this complicated situation, so here goes…
On Sunday at PyCon, Adria Richards felt comments made behind her during a conference session were inappropriate and of an offensive, sexual nature. We understand that Adria believed the conduct to be inappropriate and support her right to report the incident to PyCon personnel. To be clear, SendGrid supports the right to report inappropriate behavior, whenever and wherever it occurs.
What we do not support was how she reported the conduct. Her decision to tweet the comments and photographs of the people who made the comments crossed the line. Publicly shaming the offenders – and bystanders – was not the appropriate way to handle the situation. Even PyCon has since updated their Code of Conduct due to this situation. Needless to say, a heated public debate ensued. The discourse, productive at times, quickly spiraled into extreme vitriol.
A SendGrid developer evangelist’s responsibility is to build and strengthen our Developer Community across the globe. In light of the events over the last 48+ hours, it has become obvious that her 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.
In the end, the consequences that resulted from how she reported the conduct put our business in danger. Our commitment to our 130 employees, their families, our community members and our more than 130,000 valued customers is our primary concern.
We will continue listening to the community, addressing this situation constructively, and serving our customers to the best of our ability. I welcome your feedback, and you can email me directly at ceo@sendgrid.com.
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