I have the pleasure of knowing Adria and she's an awesome person, so sure, in a vacuum these events are super silly. However, in this instance, she is a public figure and used her public forum to promote an issue that was personal to her.
Developers who make business decisions who rely on SendGrid follow her on Twitter and need to work with her.
It's no different than a reporter for the NY Times who covers White House news, and supposed to be unbiased starts, bad mouthing Obama on Twitter. Would you want read NY Times anymore?
Obama makes a bone-headed move, lets say he: "didn't veto a bill that allows companies to enforce locking in cellphones and tablets. It's going to be illegal to jailbreak now."
A reporter from the NY time goes on twitter and badmouths The Obama administration for messing up.
Well, this is the first Hacker News hears about it and goes crazy. Those JERKS! Inexplicably support is catalyzed and Obama gets impeached! Later it comes to light that there was some logistical and communication errors, turns out the administration just ignored it because it couldn't become law anyway on some technicality.
Every democrat on twitter raises a huge fuss about the massively inappropriate and biased slander this reporter has made. It's not her job to make tweets like that. Look at what she's done! The administration didn't really do anything wrong in the first place!
Within a day or two, that reporter gets canned due to the fallout, she's caught up in the center of a big scandal that will taint the public's perspective on her integrity, even though she always had and still has integrity.
Maybe Obama getting impeached is a bit of a stretch. Otherwise, I like this metaphor. :)
I would not call using the reporters public forum that they most likely grew out of their career built because of the association with NY Times as a fair medium for candid discussion. This reporter's duty is to the editors and to the readers of the paper until this reporter is no longer employed by NY Times.
Ethics clauses are signed at date of hire for exactly reasons like this one. Companies want you to be part of their brand when you join their ranks. For positions that require a public forum, that includes off-hours as well.
NY Post will most likely be calling that reporter for a high-level visible position within the hour of the firing. So not all hope is lost, but depends on what kind of brand you want to speak for.
Developers who make business decisions who rely on SendGrid follow her on Twitter and need to work with her.
It's no different than a reporter for the NY Times who covers White House news, and supposed to be unbiased starts, bad mouthing Obama on Twitter. Would you want read NY Times anymore?
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