This is the most reasonable statement I've seen so far in this whole fiasco. It's a shame he took so long to post it; it should have been the first SendGrid comment this morning.
While I agree it's eminently reasonable, it can sometimes take a day or two to work through a thorny issue, regain a sense of calm, and write something reasonable.
In the past, I've tended to follow a '48-hour rule' when it comes to responding to emotionally-heated emails.
Yes, 48 hours can seem like an eternity in the tech world, but it prevents accidentally exacerbating the situation by acting with good intentions yet without a clear head.
This isn't even taking into account how long it takes to check with HR, legal, etc. All of which were probably necessary here.
+1 and well said. When I had legal issues with a client irrationally withholding payment, my lawyer suggested to wait four days to respond. Seems like an eternity, especially considering it's double from what you tend to follow (48 hours), it's amazing how much more reasonable your response can be juxtaposed to responding immediately.
Put yourself in his shoes for a moment though... your developer advocate brought on a DDoS. Whether it was deserved or not is an entirely separate discussion. It comes down to the person who is supposed to be helping get customers and grow your company did something that is bringing lots of harm.
With that said... a "heat of the moment" firing does nobody any good, but I haven't seen evidence of the manner of the firing (perhaps I missed some articles that talked about it).
That brings about something interesting. While I completely believe that what SendGrid did was justified, what if it had occurred as a result of some other, more nuanced statement than the accusation in question?
For example, I believe that the second amendment allows Americans ownership of AR-15s, which some people refer to as 'assault rifles'. This is a hot button issue right now, and there are reasonable arguments on both sides of the debate. If I posted something that somehow offended approximately half of our customers (assuming approximately half of the people fall on either side of the debate) would that be terminable? Where is the threshold? If I post it from a company Twitter feed?
What is the right recourse if I said something that isn't particularly offensive to my employer, but harvests bad will from potential or current customers? Is "Developer Evangelist" a 'star-like' job position where I lose my right to privacy as a result of it?
Note, all these questions are hypothetical, but I'm curious as to exactly what degree of nonsense a company might be expected to put up with.
> Is "Developer Evangelist" a 'star-like' job position where I lose my right to privacy as a result of it?
I don't know what this has to do with privacy. Adria made her comments in the public sphere, seemingly to deliberately solicit attention. If you take on a role in the public sphere, you should expect scrutiny.
I am a public representative of a software company in a similar role to the one Adria had. I regularly refrain from commenting on a range of socio-political issues to avoid alienating my developer community. It just goes with the territory. If you don't like it, don't get into Developer Relations.
That's a very fair answer, and I thank you for it.
I suppose, in regards to 'privacy', I mention it because at least early on, Adria was commenting on her 'personal' Twitter feed. Understandably that Twitter account is public, I'm sure at least in part because of her role, but at the same time, I routinely make comments on socio-political issues on Facebook or Google Plus which thankfully have better privacy filters (to my knowledge at least, I don't use Twitter for much of anything).
Do you consider your role as an 'always-on' sort of position? If you're at a dinner party that consists almost entirely of close personal friends, do you still monitor your actions on the chance that the one person there you don't know might be a potential customer?
I watch myself whenever I say anything in public. That includes Twitter, as my Twitter feed is publicly accessible and I clearly identify myself as affiliated with my employer. The same goes for my Google+ feed, to which I pretty-much exclusively post public content.
If someone were to trawl through my Twitter feed to make light of something offensive I once said, that's fair game. If I didn't want the world to see it, I wouldn't have put it out there.
When communicating in private, personal settings - and this includes IRC channels populated by friends, dinner parties, and so on - I am unrestrained. If someone were to publicly call me out on something I said personally to a friend in a private venue, I would consider that a breach my privacy.
Downvoters, I think the "citation needed" was in reference to SendGrid's firing Adria in response to the DDoS, not to pg's take on the subject.
And he's right; [citation needed] on the DDoS being the motivating factor in her firing, as opposed, say, to her dragging her employer into the internet shitstorm that she started.
Well, speaking as a publisher, I would also want to confirm this sort of thing with the company before disseminating it widely. Companies and livelihoods are at stake in situations like this.
I think you could get a reasonable response to an ongoing crisis out in less than a day. They should have discussed this last night, as soon as it broke, with CEO, HR, legal, her, etc.
Being deliberate is fine, but when you make something a priority, you can get to the bottom of it faster and still get the right response.
Until they got DDoSed to hell, this apparently wasn't a serious priority for them.
> Until they got DDoSed to hell, this apparently wasn't a serious priority for them.
That's what makes me think this was just another example of the "heckler's veto". There are no principles here, just giving the mob what it demands. No action until some idiots on the internet started attacking people, and when it happened, they just gave the idiots what they demanded in hopes of shutting them up.
Just reiterating what others have said, its reasonable because he took time to think about it. I know if I was in his position and woke up to find out my servers were being DDoS'd to hell because one of my employees had caused a stir, I may have just stayed in bed.
I think I might agree to some extent. I don't understand what section about "evangelists should be attractive" or whatever is referring to; presumably another incident? I get that it is sarcastic, but I don't understand the motivation behind that sarcasm.
Go read Amanda Blum's piece instead, as it actually has insight and thought behind it. This is just a bit of humour, making egregious errors like "the internet will never forget" (seriously, how many scandals has the internet forgotten?) and "careers are permanently ended" (again, seriously, look at any number of successful public figures and the gaffes they made earlier in life).
I read Amanda's piece and until raganwald's it was indeed the best piece I had read so far.
Amanda however vilifies Aria because she considers her too easily offended and finds her feminist agenda obnoxious.
I don't, because I believe she has the right to be a slightly obnoxious feminist and we should be defending her right to be that, even when we don't personally agree with it.
Raganwald expresses my more deep-seated feelings on the topic much more powerfully in this well crafted piece of satire.
I find it ironic that you think the humour piece is the best summary, given that a significant part of it is about the permanent damage done. So permanent the damage, yet only two days later you can't even get her name right.
The vast bulk of people who have commented in the last couple of days will have forgotten her name in several months.
That was exactly my thoughts. Too bad this wasn't posted instead of the other post announcing they fired Adria. It is clear from this post that she had to go, his reasoning behind the fact that she ne effective in her role are sounds.
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