It's obvious that she had to go, because in her primary job -- popularize SendGrid -- she now has negative value.
If you believe she was blamelessly in the right, that's an argument for giving her a massive severance package. Even at that kind of expense, however, the severing was necessary.
"...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." Anyone who thinks SendGrid were wrong to let her go should consider that. SendGrid did the right thing, they just took a bit too long to do it.
It's entirely possible they let her go due to the DDoS, as an attempt to save their company. She shouldn't complain if her presence is fucking the company so much (even if not her fault), especially if given generous severance and/or a promise to rehire later. Even if she's not at fault at all, Sendgrid the company is in mortal peril due to her presence, and it's not fair to customers/coworkers/founders/investors.
I had the same thought, but I find it tough to be able to accommodate someone when they've done such damage to a company and its image, especially in the way she did it. It's hard to trust an employee after something this heated. Unfortunately, I think SendGrid made the right decision in the end.
Maybe not a "good" business decision, but an "understandable" one. If the "errant children" are among the group she was evangelizing to, she clearly could not have been effective in her job, especially since the "errant children's" peers were not coming to her defense - at least not in large numbers, as far as Sendgrid was concerned. I do hate that they caved to bullying/blackmail. I would like to see both fired parties re-hired after the dust settles, but I know that's very unlikely.
All I'll say is this, and really it's what it boils down to. Regardless of if you think she was in the right or the wrong, she is a developer evangelist. That means she goes around and tries to get companies to pick up her product. After all this, I wouldn't get near her with a 40 foot pole. God forbid I slip and say something that get's misconstrued and I or my company gets dragged through the mud. With that being said, I feel like she's lost the ability to do her job. If she's an evangelist and the people she's supposed to be evangelizing don't want to be around her, where does that leave her or Sendgrid?
This was pretty much the only thing SendGrid could have done in this situation. I haven't seen this much stink over a person's actions at a conference in a long time.
I do have to wonder: does this open SendGrid up to litigation by publicly announcing her termination? Affecting future employability, etc (not that she isn't at fault for that here).
She didn't make a mistake, she made a calculated play -- she fancied herself a hero and victim at the same time, the level of self-aggrandizement on display was dizzying, she did it in public to make the mob lash out.
SendGrid is in an ugly place, probably losing customers by the minute. If I was currently a SendGrid customer, I would be taking my business elsewhere... for a variety of reasons.
I posted this in a now dead thread. I'll drop it here if this is the now official discussion thread.
=============================================
Who didn't see this coming?
And when she pulled SendGrid, her employer, publicly into the fray via her twitter feed, who didn't know it was simply a matter of time?
I mean, what else could SendGrid possibly do? She basically forced them to fire her.
Her value to the company is being a public face to developers. She very publicly destroyed that value. Further, she pulled SendGrid in with her tweet about them "supporting" her. Had she not done that, she might have had a fighting chance, but it almost seems like she wanted to get fired.
Not to mention that a company wants to employ people with impeccable judgement, particularly for public facing positions. She showed incredibly horrid judgment in how she initiated the situation and continued to display horrid judgement in her handling of it. Do you want someone with horrible judgement being your public face and voice?
I don't put much stock in the DDoS talk, FYI. No reputable company fires someone b/c they are being blackmailed. Though, perhaps I'm giving too much credit here, I don't know.
Either way, it should not comes as a surprise to anyone that this is the outcome.
It does seem like a knee jerk reaction, but speaking just from an HR perspective she failed quite spectacularly in her own duties and responsibilities to her employer, given that her job description involves public relations.
Clearly, her tweets did not bring about the positive effect for SendGrid PR that she might have expected. Even worse, no matter what happens now there is a smoking crater where all the positive feels about SendGrid used to be, whether they retain her or not, and she's the one who knocked the meteor out of orbit.
The whole situation is bad but I don't see how she'd ever be able to continue in the PR role for SendGrid... so what do they do with her otherwise? And why didn't they convince her to (or allow her to) resign?
wow. She is the political beast! plays the color, minority and gender card, prepares a lawsuit and plants the seed for a next career move.
I don't know anything about sendgrid, but the fact that they put up with someone like this is much more of a turn off for me than the fact they mob fired her
A bit weaselly to say "she can no longer be effective in her role at SendGrid" without saying what it implies, whether her employment at SendGrid is ending.
I would assume it was both. Assuming they were already thinking about the problem, that forced a decision. Either way, when the whole thing came to their attention, they had to have realized that her action, as noted "speaking in her capacity as a SendGrid spokesperson" had made her utterly toxic to the vast majority of developers who are not "black Jewish females". If she displayed any of the attitudes WRT responsibility evident from the Guardian article if and when they talked to her, the decision would not have even been very difficult.
Can someone explain to me why "she can no longer be effective in her role at SendGrid"? She tweeted an inappropriate comment that someone made to her in a public forum. I genuinely don't understand why this would affect anyone's professional relationship with her.
Perhaps a better solution would have been to ask Ms. Richards to take a different position at the company, perhaps one that was less public? The crux for SendGrid was that Ms. Richards was a developer evangelist, and, as Mr. Franklin pointed out, if a majority of the community which she serves is upset and/or against her, how could she actually do her job?
If you believe she was blamelessly in the right, that's an argument for giving her a massive severance package. Even at that kind of expense, however, the severing was necessary.
reply