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.
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