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Official comment from HN on dead threads
370 points by bryogenic on March 21, 2013 | hide | past | favorite | 184 comments
Please give us an official comment on this...

20 points - Why are all the posts related to Aria [sic] Richards getting deleted? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5416578

45 points - Effective immediately, SendGrid has terminated the employment of Adria Richards - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5416514

81 points - Effective immediately, SendGrid has terminated the employment of Adria Richards - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5416422

48 points - SendGrid has terminated the employment of Adria Richards - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5416312

148 points (not dead, just shadowed) - SendGrid has terminated the employment of Adria Richards? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5416021




We're assuming these are fake, and that someone just got hold of their Facebook and Twitter passwords.

On the other hand, I notice the same statement has appeared on their blog. So maybe it's real. Or maybe their blog was compromised too.

The really suspicious thing is that they don't seem to have confirmed it to a reporter yet, which presumably they'd be willing to do if they were so eager to spread the news that they tweeted about it.


I'm hoping it's a fake, too, but three compromised accounts (Twitter, Facebook, and company blog, all of which are still active) showing the same thing would make this the most well-executed hack I've seen in a while - usually fakes like that are just quick drive-by posts.

The Twitter straw man brigade is already making it into "fired for for speaking out against sexism". I'm really hoping Sendgrid doesn't give them their martyr. And I'm also hoping Sendgrid didn't do that just to surrender to the crazy male attack squad that seems to be so vocal and abusive, not to forget criminal.

On a side note, Twitter has really turned into an absolute sewer, with polemic knee-jerk reactions and utter foolishness ruling supreme. I wish it was the idiots on Twitter who were getting fired - both the threatening jerky men as well as the opportunistic feminist ones.


Twitter has really turned into an absolute sewer

Content-wise, I don't think any service is immune from that - Reddit can be pretty horrible and I was shocked by some of the stuff posted to HN Tuesday & yesterday (though it was quickly cleaned up).

My problem with Twitter is that the brevity and emphasis on the present moment makes for bad social interactions; the faux-urgency of social media in general elevates sensation above substance. It's so easy to get the Internet Hate Machine going, and offers such large ego rewards for people who feel they are able to shape and direct it, that it's become a regular part of discourse. Back in pre-web days when NNTP was in regular use, discussions of contentious subjects were just as vigorous but nowhere near as vicious or reductionist.

Our ability to project our own ideas has significantly outpaced our willingness to consider those of others, it seems.


> I was shocked by some of the stuff posted to HN Tuesday & yesterday

As was I, but it got taken care of. I still wish people wouldn't have downvoted Richards' comments into oblivion though.

However, what's really different on HN is not that sometimes bad things happen, it's that there are a lot of people here capable of considering a balanced opinion and, perhaps most importantly, willing to question the premise of things. Users on HN often did not simply fall in line behind the stereotypical camps that feed on this kind of issue, and I don't see that same capability for actual thought anywhere on Twitter.

By and large we may disagree (hopefully with civility) on conclusions, and those are productive discussions to have, but we're as a community able to examine the issue as a whole. That's a pretty unique and valuable trait.

I'm still marveling at how ridiculously easy it is to create fake wedge issue drama like this, and all of a sudden it's #teamadria on the one side, and creepy macho assholes on the other, without a single neocortical neuron to share between them.


Users on HN often did not simply fall in line behind the stereotypical camps that feed on this kind of issue

Oh god, they do. There are certainly dissenting voices but Hacker News has proven itself time and time again to be unable to examine the issue of gender, or more tellingly, unwilling to. These posts disappearing is not a one-off, there have been numerous instances of people flagging 'difficult' posts on HN, so that we can all continue arguing about semi-colons.


I must confess my knowledge into things that got unfairly flagged away is pretty limited, so you may well be correct. But as I said, the point is not that bad things happen here as well. It's that this is the only place where I actually found worthwhile opinions, whether they may be surrounded by bad ones or not. Maybe the signal-to-noise ratio is still too low, and we need to fix that, but at least it's not quickly approaching zero as is the case on, say, Twitter.


Users on HN often did not simply fall in line behind the stereotypical camps that feed on this kind of issue, and I don't see that same capability for actual thought anywhere on Twitter.

Our definition of "often did not" seems different. And the majority of the response that I saw seemed pretty knee-jerk. (Disclaimer, I actively tried to take a balanced look at the issue, and immediately got downvoted into oblivion for it. But over time people seem to be calming down.)


On the Internet, there is no place to go drink and talk quietly with the reasonable people about complex subjects while the inpatient people, polarized to one side of a multifaceted issue, try to out shout each other. So when I don't say something in a thread that has degenerated, nobody sees me leave.

I do try to leave something in such threads. But nobody is reading them for carefully considered takes on the issue.


I respectfully disagree, but that's because I'm in a couple of communities that are very, very cleverly moderated and have very rigid curation guidelines that the mods are careful about.

You still get people trying to shout at each other, but they usually do so from a distance, and not within the community. I'm perfectly happy with that.

HN has moderation (flags/upvotes etc.) but a much less rigid set of curation guidelines (see "Six Degrees of Hacker News"). This results in a much wider set of "well I think HN should be X", and therefore more meta-arguments about the different Xs rather than staying on topic, whatever "topic" means to each individual.


On reflection, you are right. I am actually in an online community that does do this, and even has a Metatalk section intended for talking about such things. I suppose I was engaging in hyperbole, born out of a sense of frustration. Thank you for pointing that out, and if you want to tell me (perhaps privately) about your communities, I'd be interested.


What startup opportunity lies in channeling discussions in a more productive way? Is there a smart approach to this?


Reddit for adults basically, with ruthless moderation. Attract a good audience, then sell ads to that desirable audience.

Lots of people who are sick of the juvenile content and comments on Reddit would leave, but there's nowhere to go. Build an awesome community by tolerating absolutely no shit.


"with ruthless moderation"

Yea, but that seems to just push the problem one degree away..."Quis custodiet ipsos custodes"-type situation. I've been part of a few niche forums over the years that have ruthless moderation, and it's not a fun place to be a lot of the time.

http://paleoplanet69529.yuku.com/ is a forum for primitive skills discussion, and by far the most civil and "adult" forum I've been a part of...I have no idea how they do it.

I love their rules though: http://paleoplanet69529.yuku.com/topic/16448/Welcome-to-the-...


If it's for adults why not charge to get in? It works for somethingawful.

Their funnel is an absolute scream: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=322...

Note: this is not meant to imply somethingawful is for adults. Just that they charge to get in and moderate ruthlessly.


http://www.well.com/


I ruthlessly moderate a reddit - to the limit of my free time. People that need moderating exceed my ability to read and delete comments. Our ban list is huge. The eternal September is, truly, eternal.


Now there's a nick I haven't seen in a few years. #distributed, right?


Indeed.


If you don't plan to provide significantly different mechanism for discussion, I don't see why you'd want to build completely new site instead of utilizing Reddit by making your own subreddit with the "ruthless moderation" you want. That's the real power of reddit, that it is as much a platform as it is a community.


There are shitloads of other general interest forums on the web that have strong moderation and less juvenile content. They're all just small forums - they don't get the critical mass of Reddit so they stay small. It's far from a wasteland out there.


So, metafilter?


Depends. I closed my account last fall because I got tired of the personal abuse that pervades political threads. I'm pretty argumentative, true, but I found that forum to be increasingly aggressive and negative in tone.


Doesn't ruthless moderation just lead to rebellion? If HN had let this story go instead of censoring it the world wouldn't have ended. But now people are wondering (at least I am) about the mod's motives.

If they're willing to remove stories they don't like do they also promote their friend's projects or squash competitors?

In this case I have some sympathy because they were worried they were spreading false rumors but honestly it does sort of make me think twice about what I read here.


Isn't that Quora?

Which HN hates?


There's four instances of the message now. There's no way it is fake.

http://blog.sendgrid.com/sendgrid-statement/

http://status.sendgrid.com/

https://twitter.com/SendGrid/statuses/314768776577036288

https://www.facebook.com/SendGrid/posts/10151502570463967


What, you think it's physically impossible that someone could reuse a password on more than one service, or register them all with a single Gmail account?


No, it's just incredibly unlikely that someone hijacked four different services and have been able to keep the owners locked out of their accounts.


You only have to hijack one account if the password across all four services isn't unique.


Yes, but the owners have four different support lines to call to get their account back, so the odds of it staying compromised is that much lower.


How do you explain that nobody working there is talking about being hacked? Do you think everybody there was using the same password for their Twitter accounts, Facebook, etc...


Or just automate the reproduction across multiple outlets. I use a FB app that posts tweets to my timeline for example.


That's a really oddly worded statement - we've fired someone, but we're still processing the information over the issue.


I don't believe this is fake, as much as I wish it was. They are still updating their Twitter and status blogs and I'd assume if it was fake, they'd see it and at least delete it. I've attempted calling and speaking with them directly through various direct extensions but no one answers.


Maybe I'm being stereotypical here, but not only is this a well-executed hack, it has well-written copy. Which is not standard for malicious hackers looking to make a point.


The Facebook statement isn't that good. For example, this wording...

While we generally are sensitive and confidential with respect to employee matters, the situation has taken on a public nature.

...is extremely unlike the words usually used by a company dealing with a controversial employment matter. It's more like the puffery used in 419 scams.


Exactly, that's what I was thinking, too. Trolling on a hacked account is almost always clearly distinguishable from the legitimate content there.


Clearly it does.


It might be unlikely if this were over a random [anime,gaming,furry,...] convention, but these are people at the leading edge of web technology. Given the audience, it's entirely possible someone within it could orchestrate such an attack.

That tweet is unsigned, where all others are. They clearly have a well-enforced policy of tweet signing, but the firing tweet has none. FB posts have the same signing--except the post about the firing. The blog and status portal sites have the comment under clear user accounts, so it doesn't look like they're trying to have a unified front on it, as might be implied by unsigned tweets and FB posts.


Because nobody uses the same credentials for all their accounts?

Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's fake, either. But a healthy dose of caution and skepticism doesn't hurt.


Not really. You just have to get access to one of those services the publishes to all your accounts.


I know, but in practice this almost never happens in a typical drive-by trolling.


I think they're dealing with more than trolls at this point. Solid DDoS to sendgrid and to her blog, seems to say a lot more than just threats and images. If this is fake, it's sure clean.


Hi pg, SendGrid just posted a status update to Twitter and another update to their status page on their website (outside their blog) so all signs point to SendGrid accounts _not_ being compromised. Could you reinstate the posts to the front page again?


Why bother? Isn't one thread enough space to discuss this pitiful situation?


All SendGrid/Adria Richards threads have either been deleted or shadowed.


Agreed, but we don't need a front page full of ten threads on the same subject with 10 conversations going on repeating the same arguments.


This hasn't been a problem before. There have been cases where the front page has been all about a single event (Aaron Swartz/Steve Jobs come to mind), and there have been cases where there are multiple stories on the front page that all repeat the same argument (like the 3 anti-EA stories on the front page at the same time last week).

This story is of interest to the community, is directly relevant, and is still being censored. There's not a single post about this on the front page.


I agree that it's a story of interest to the community here. And it should be discussed, I just don't see the need for many threads on the precise same topic.

I think Steve Jobs was totally different given the impact of his life.


Whereas this story is about who we (the tech community) are, how we treat each other, and what our daughters can expect if they join the tech industry.

But yeah, the iPod's important too.


Maybe you can't read, but the previous comment said that ALL Adria Richards threads have been killed, which is true.


There's no need for you to be so rude in claiming that I can't read. I read what he said and all I argued would be that one thread would be enough. There's no need to have a front page full of stories which are all essentially the same (of the TechCrunch/VentureBeat etc. repeating of the same things).


I get the feeling you're fighting a losing battle re. rudeness...


A compromise isn't necessarily an exclusive lock on posting rights, so the existence of other credible-looking non-controversial posts, after the posts-in-doubt, does not verify the provenance of the posts-in-doubt.

I'd wait for a reputable journalist -- someone who actually picks up the phone, or visits SendGrid, and talks to someone there they knew already as a person with corporate authority -- to confirm.


Venturebeat also reports that SendGrid is getting DDOSed.

http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/21/breaking-adria-richards-fi...

A look at Richards' personal page also shows a CloudFlare DDOS splash page before serving up the site.

The assumption that they're under attack is reasonable. What's true today will remain true tomorrow.


They're under a _DDOS_ attack. Assuming that their Facebook account, Twitter account as well as website was compromised just so the hacker could create a post announcing Richards's firing is a bit much, I think.

I wonder if this (the possibility of SendGrid's website and every social media account being compromised) isn't the only motive behind the deletions. Maybe the mods are looking to avoid drama or protect Richards? I don't know. If their stated reason is their only motive, will they bring the posts back to the front page once SendGrid confirms?


> Assuming that their Facebook account, Twitter account as well as website was compromised just so the hacker could create a post announcing Richards's firing is a bit much, I think.

That is what DoS attacks were originally used for. Hose the target, then run your attack. It was more typical for attacking clients trying to use network services. In this case it's a PR blitz meant to look like an authentic message.

Facebook and Twitter taken over takes a while to get back into the hands of the real owners. If someone got a fake message cached by cloudflare and then took down the backend, it could leave a false message hanging around until the target can get the service restored.

Why the hell would someone do this? Who knows. Probably a dejected neckbeard with mental problems who feels like causing a shitstorm.


It's possible that the server that was compromised also held access to their Twitter and Facebook account. Depending on what backend they might be using, they could have it configured to allow posting to social media through a control panel rather than through facebook.com or twitter.com. In this situation, a compromised backend control panel would mean an attacker has access to their social media accounts as well. I've seen similar attacks first hand in the past.


They use HootSuite according to the tweets. I think it has an API that can be tied into anything, including blogs and announcement systems.


See this: http://blog.sendgrid.com/sendgrid-statement/

Check the author, it's posted by the CEO.


Just because a blog post was written on the CEO's account doesn't mean the CEO wrote it. PG has said they think it's a fake, and a blog post on the site is consistent with that.

I'm not sure I agree, but still.


How realistic is it really that Sendgrid's official Facebook, Twitter, blog, and status site were all compromised simultaneously?


If you compromise the Gmail account of the person that controls all of them- quite realistic.


Honestly, if an email service provider gets hacked on all public channels due to an email password being hacked, you should probably factor that into decisions about what email service provider to use.


The weakest link is always the user.

In the event that an account was compromised, I'd put money on it being 100% due to a naive user.


Which makes me wonder why everybody races to sign-up for ancillary services like Mailbox which just open up additional vectors of attack on people's most-sensitive account.


Maybe because they like the app more than they fear identity theft.


But how realistic is it that there would be no statement at all from the company about the accounts being compromised?


Pretty realistic. Compromises tend to be pretty far-reaching because often the weakest points are single points of failure for many system (email accounts especially).


Hmm, given that one of those is compromised, I'd say it's more likely that the rest are as well--Bayesian reasoning and all that. (Yeah, I don't actually know much about probability :P.)

People share passwords all the time. Also, if somebody's computer or email account was compromised, chances are that would also give up the credentials for all of the sites.


Their blog at least is running wordpress, from wordpress.com. It's possible that they did get compromised somewhere since all of the things seem to be external to them that they did get compromised and they weren't entirely aware of it right away because of the DDoSing. I can't imagine though that they can't have heard of this by now and aren't trying to do something about it if it's fake.


It's quite realistic. Or rather, the possibility that SendGrid's official Facebook, Twitter, blog, and status site all use the same password is quite realistic, and if that's the case then you only have to compromise one site to get them all.


They most likely share the same password so that multiple sendgrid employees can post to each of the pages.


No modern legal department would ever let a business make a statement that direct about an employee termination, and certainly not in the active voice. They wouldn't dare; the risk of a lawsuit is much too high. "Adria Richards is no longer working at SendGrid" might be credible, but "SendGrid has terminated the employment of Adria Richards" is not.


There is almost certainly not a legal department at a startup of 60 people. I agree it's a very dumb thing to do legally, but I've seen lots of small companies make lots of legal mistakes, and could easily picture a founder freaking out that he's sheding users left and right and making a rash move.


As a startup lawyer (and a social media lawyer at that) I couldn't agree more. Even big companies make some unbelievably stupid mistakes when rushed to "do something."


considering they were paying her for PR as a "developer evangelist" I think they should be able to make a fair case for her dismissal.


Why?

If they fired her, it's an accurate statement.

What would she sue for?


The most likely angle of attack would be privacy law: public disclosure of private facts.

I don't know if this would stand up in court, but it doesn't have to stand up in court if the lawyers can drag it out long enough. In this particular case, that tips in her favor, because the odds of this case escalating to celebrity status are high. That scenario is every corporate lawyer's nightmare, because with celebrity status comes reliable financial support.


If she really was fired, if I were company counsel, I'd be more concerned about the employment law issues vs. the public statement. They did keep the post brief and factual, and I don't see anything actionable about it.


It would be helpful if there was a way to show the reasoning behind deleted submissions. Like a quick note on [dead] pages that explains why it was killed, just like you did here. That way, people won't keep resubmitting the same story over and over, which makes it easier on everyone.


"if there was a way to show the reasoning behind deleted submissions"

I don't know why they don't do this but I can see why they might not do this.

By stating a reason you then invite questions around the decision and waste time in addressing those questions. By not stating a reason many decisions like this will simply go unquestioned in a "nothing to see here move along" kind of way.


However, as this post illustrates, not posting a reason also invites questions around why the post was deleted.


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.


Regardless of the rest of this nightmarish mess, I find the idea that tech company individual hirings/firings could or should be influenced by the troglodytic dregs of the script kiddie community to be chilling.

If she has been fired because they're being DDoSed, that's a miserable precedent for anyone who works at a tech company.


Her role is Developer Evangelist. I imagine she's being let go because they viewed her behavior as unprofessional for that role. References to 'large dongles' are not inherently sexist, at least in this context. And for her to publicly humiliate a developer for that amounts to SendGrid vouching for her actions, given her role.

Granted you're just saying that _if_ it's because of the DDOS this is inappropriate. I'd agree, but I doubt that's the reason, unless it is just what happened to draw their attention to this.


If her role is 'developer evangelist', then she's doing her role - being an evangelist about the developer culture. Evangelists 'spread the message', which is exactly how she behaved here.

For what it's worth, I think 'evangelist' is a stupid title and 'advocate' is better. Yeah, 'evangelist' sounds cooler, but evangelists get in your face about unprovable stuff and harass you until you comply - not something you want to evoke in your job title. The standard joke about door-to-door evangelists is that you shut the door in their face.


I find the idea that tech company individual hirings/firings could or should be influenced by the troglodytic dregs of the script kiddie community to be chilling

I totally agree. It feels like a sort of toxic leakage of what should be safely contained in disreputable corners of the internet.


Still, doesn't that just feed the mob mentality? And can't Richards' supporters launch a DDoS as well?

So what you say is possible, and a panicked company might throw an employee overboard, but at the moment (11:13am pt) I still wouldn't rule out account-compromise-and-hoax.


>"And can't Richards' supporters launch a DDoS as well?"

The sentiment around places where "DDOSers" might hang out is pretty heavily against her. Remember, a programmer got fired for a harmless joke, at a programming conference, thanks to an over-zealous "evangelist".

This whole situation is ludicrous.


People who oppose her are more likely to DDoS anyway just for lulz, really. I suspect the lulz here are now self-sustaining, rather than an actual attempt at influencing policy.


Someone on their twitter feed mentioned 5 hours of downtime and that it's affecting his business.


I'd have switched already, because I can't see this getting resolved before next week at the earliest. There are just too many ways to continue to disrupt an ESP -- DDoS on the web, DDoS against SMTP, spam against people who fail to do proper DKIM/SPF, etc. Email deliverability isn't exactly the most reliable part of the Internet even normally, and when large numbers of motivated trolls have declared you the enemy, ...

Switching to Mailgun (for high value stuff) or Amazon SES (for low value/cheap) is pretty easy.


Don't negotiate with terrorists.


That only works when you are dramatically more powerful than the terrorists, though.


I'm not sure I agree. As soon as you reveal you're open for business like that, it's an invitation to be shaken down endlessly.


Normally you negotiate with the first one while hardening everything to take them on if it is attempted in the future. That's why the fledgling USN got the Constitution-class, or in this case, harden, develop better HR policies, and get cloudflare or prolexic.


If SendGrid's Twitter account had been compromised, they'd have told someone by now. So I guess this is real after all.


Gah, this is just an absolutely terrible succession of events. These guys definitely did not say anything that was that harmful. Their jokes may have been crude, and they may have been loud, but that only makes them annoying, not sexist. Adria has every right to post about her annoyance, but her claim for it being sexist is exaggeration. The companies reacting to this by firing the two developers is absolutely wrong, and then the community's sexist responses to Adria is just disgusting. And then Sendgrid brings the whole debacle full circle to fire Adria too? What is this, amateur hour?


That's what I don't understand - where the hell did sexism come into this? Telling dirty jokes is not sexist. Women tell dirty jokes too. This whole thing doesn't make any sense at all.


There's a new tweet on their feed which seems to be a legitimate status update and the previous one about the firing has not been deleted. This could be cleverness by someone who compromised the account or it could indicate the announcement was in fact true.


Another point for 'not fake':

http://cl.ly/image/0V2w0s0u0G3z

That's from a conversation on the Live Chat option on their site from a few seconds ago.


Sendgrid seems to be in control of their twitter account. https://twitter.com/SendGrid/status/314794418660065281


Is there a systematic process to follow before being allowed to kill a submission?

The feeling of censorship is real, although unintended.


In this day and age, thats probably because no reporter ever called to ask and verify.


You're assuming a zebra event. But this is looking very much like a horse.


It's not fake. They just confirmed it on their site:

http://blog.sendgrid.com/sendgrid-statement/

My post on this was deleted as well:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5416106


Just because it's written on their blog doesn't make it true

/s


Suppressing what a lot of us consider news based on assumptions seems extremely presumptuous.


I kind of think you're wrong, they've carried on tweeting status updates about the outage after the termination tweet


If it's scheduled from Hootsuite then it doesn't matter; it will still post.


>We're assuming these are fake, and that someone just got hold of their Facebook and Twitter passwords.

I saw threads on /b/ last night where people were rallying the troops to attack her and everyone associated with her. I really wouldn't be surprised if they managed to compromise a few accounts.


Another clue that supports Send Grid has been hacked is that on Adria Richards' twitter she says that Send Grid supports her.

https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/314452708549603328


Note that SendGrid didn't once themselves state that they support her, which could actually support the firing hypothesis more.


That was posted before everything blew up.


It wouldn't be the 1st time her published opinion differed from reality (re the "forking" comments not being said in a sexual context[1]).

But then in this new age of media, it seems sensationalism is more important than facts presented with civility.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5398681


What seems more suspicious is why the termination of an employee would be so public -- on all major social networks -- rather than a formal dismissing on the website or to a reporter.

Perhaps I'm uneducated on the topic, but it still seems suspicious.


I agree. Turning the conspiracy dial up one more notch and assuming that SendGrid is caving to a DDOS attack, a very public dismissal might be a requirement imposed by whoever is behind it.


It's not 'very public' on their behalf, it's just publicly announced, if it's true. They haven't gone into details, they've just said that she's been terminated.


Faster turnaround - the people being angry are going to see it straight away, and aren't going to constantly reload an unrelated website to see if there's been a development.


This is most certainly not fake.


Why would you delete stories that you think are fake, without any facts indicating they are fake?

I can't articulate it well, but for some reason this strikes me as a odd, especially since these stories ended up being true.


Exercising caution and what looks an awful lot like journalistic integrity standards? I don't want this to come across as a back-handed compliment, but I'm impressed.


They have posted new status updates regarding the service to Twitter, and left the message regarding firing Adria, so I am not sure it is a fake.


More suspicious things: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5418204


I would expect denial from one of the founders or Adria if this were the case "hey guys ignore that post, we're hacked!"


Considering a lot of corporate protocol and the pace at which this is happening... 1) I think they're holding off on all comment besides what we're seeing (if it's real), and 2) I agree with the person who says that no legal department would allow this to happen. I've followed SendGrid closely for a few years and this seems very uncharacteristic.


Startups aren't like IBM, they don't often consult a "legal dept" (I doubt one exists at a company of 60 people), and often fly by the seat of the founder's pants. Either way it's really bad for SendGrid.


True, but I do know they have dedicated HR staff and Isaac Saldana et al don't seem to be that loosey-goosey, if you will, about decisions like this.

On the other hand, there seems to be little other than a few messages about status updates. Even if it seems uncharacteristic, it's looking more and more to be true that she was terminated in a very ugly and public manner.


Also, just checked: they do have a General Counsel, Michael Tognetti. Whether he was involved or not, I don't know. It was pretty ballsy to go about this the way they have, if you ask me.


I agree!


PG: has anyone tried reaching out to SendGrid to give a comment? I'm sure if you gave a call they'd say something :)


I tried, and they did respond that it was true:

http://cl.ly/image/0V2w0s0u0G3z


I don't really understand the general surprise here over her dismissal.

1) She was effectively a glorified PR person (Developer Evangelist) who went on to call people asshats on twitter on some personal crusade, whilst bringing massive negative publicity to the company she is supposed to represent:

"Hey @mundanematt, it's clear from the last 24 hours you're a bully. @SendGrid supports me. Stop trolling."

2) She drags the discussion down to one of racism because someone uses the word lynching in a completely different context.

3) She refuses to express any apology or remorse even after it excalates to the firing of people and a sincere apology from the person involved.

I can't really say I'm shocked the company has let go this person they are paying to bridge a positive relationship with developers.


The surprise is that she was fired so quickly and in the middle of a crippling DDOS attack. What startup has the resources to effectively adjudicate a sensitive, sensationalized personnel matter while the goddamn building is on fire? The profanity isn't directed at you: I'm trying to simulate what I think the DEFCON level should be within SendGrid today.

If she was thrown out in hopes of appeasing the DDOSers, that may be a first. And because the nature of the episode involved discrimination, they could have very well opened themselves to a lawsuit if they didn't word their internal communique carefully.

And, as I said, who has the ability to carefully adjudicate matters when the building is on fire?


Because the ops people do HR as well?


Even in large companies, hiring and firing is not solely in the domain of the HR department. Firing decisions usually involve at least the employee's direct superior. Given that SendGrid is a small company, and that this employee was involved in a very public controversy, I imagine that the executive team also had to weigh in on the matter.

Because the controversy involved an allegation of sexism, a prudent company would also bring in a lawyer. Besides the usual covering-the-bases needed when firing anyone, you have an employee who believes she acted to stop sexual harassment. She could very well try to frame the firing as something that stems from gender discrimination.

Oh yeah, you also want to talk to the employee herself.

So, trying to get what is at least 5 to 6 different people on the same page and in meetings takes time, logistically, to schedule. Nevermind the time it takes to investigate the matter and doublecheck the facts and have give-and-take debates about it.

You really think that when a enterprise company like SendGrid goes under attack, only the ops people are the ones up late at night? Don't you think the executives and customer relations have some weight to pull?

All of the above factors make it difficult to believe that the firing took place after a deliberate, thorough process in the span of two days. It's not impossible, but it's unlikely enough that no one can be blamed for being skeptical or surprised.


One thing everyone needs to remember is that this event hasn't occurred in a vacuum. The man who was fired from playhaven may have already been on notice for other actions or poor performance. Similarly Sendgrid may have already had Richards on thin ice before the incident. We can't know for sure, but we can't assume that any of these actions are solely due to the inflamed internet.


> She drags the discussion down to one of racism because someone uses the word lynching in a completely different context.

If you're going to tell me that lynching does not have racist undertones, you need to qualify it.


Microsoft Architect Steve Marx tweeted on the issue with:

This is truly getting out of hand … (I mean the lynching, not the jokes.)

---

To which she bravely responded:

and I'm upset I had to listen to the stuff behind me yesterday. I'm Black. Has anyone in your family been ever encountered lynching?"

And

@smarx Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is


And it reads like Steve Marx was supporting her too. I can't believe her response! I imagine she misunderstood, from reading so many insults on twitter.


That's not bravery. It's just cheap anti-intellectualism.


He cough cough was being sarcastic about the bravery bit.


Thanks. It's been hard to tell sometimes, in this thread.


From the Oxford dictionary website:

Definition of lynch verb [with object] (of a group of people) kill (someone) for an alleged offence without a legal trial, especially by hanging

While I do realize that there are certain connotations in America as it being aimed towards African Americans, as a non American my understanding of it has always been that it is not an act aimed at a specific race. Rather a group enacting their own law without trial usually because standard legal proceedings would be viewed as a forgone failure due to lack of evidence etc. which the group would not find satisfying.


In the US, lynching is heavily linked to racism, so much so that uses of the word are effectively captured by that racist legacy. If you are going to get into a dialog with a black person and you are white or white passing, do not use the word lynch or lynching ever unless you are talking about historical events or a person whose name is Lynch.


There's another moral of the story here: if a woman is anywhere near you, never say something that could possibly be interpreted as sexual.


"Just because you're offended doesn't mean you're right" -Ricky Gervais

This is one of those situations where a word was used with proper english definition and was taken completely out of context for the sake of argument. To trace that to a racist undertone is the fault of the reader and a lack of reading comprehension (taking tone and context is important).


I think it is well beyond the time when we as a society need to understand that certain words (lynching among them) are just words.

If you want to see racial undertones when the word was used in a different context, that's your choice. It's no longer part of the meaning of the word, just like ghetto does not refer to the area of Germany where Jews were forced to live.


It's one thing to delete posts on a certain topic. But deleting posts asking WHY these posts are getting deleted? How can that possibly end well?


Because posting asking why something got deleted is not terribly constructive to the mission of HN. It just adds noise. If you have issues with the way the site is run, making drama on the frontpage is not a great way to settle things.


I don't think anyone had issues; they were just confused and asking for clarification. If it's not constructive to have such things on the homepage, then let it get buried by better subjects. Deleting requests for information is just going to engender more confusion, and thus score more upvotes for the next request for information. Case in point: this thread. Which is currently on the homepage.


It's also on their official status page: http://status.sendgrid.com/


You'd assume that in a worst case scenario where their facebook, twitter e.t.c. had been hacked and had the passwords changed they'd at least be able to change this page... presumably?

If not, things are really not going well for sendgrid at the moment.


It's disappointing to see pg as well as the mods on several pertinent Reddit subreddits censoring discussion of this story. Yes, the resulting discussion is going to be a mess filled with misogyny. So what? There's clearly a great need for discussion of this subject.


As I understand it, he was not censoring, but was concerned that the news was not real. Perhaps he could have posted a bit sooner to that effect but in the end it came out quite quickly.


From the FAQ

If you turn it on, you'll see all the submissions and comments that have been killed by the editors. They're mostly spam and duplicates.

Along with unverified information [Facebook/Twitter are not legitimate sources this early on] I am not surprised at all that these stories were 'deleted'.

I come to Hacker News for the reason that pg and the mods built and maintain it. Your speak of censorship is sensationalism. [which coincides with this whole story] This post is on the front page and I predict will get many points, not deleted and contain valuable discussion.

I am all up for discussion on this story - after reading her blog post [1] and the fact she posted here [2] - [which I wasn't even aware of until I came to this thread - thanks to the user down votes she received] her aim was not to get somebody fired, nor as it appears to me was trying to get herself fired. She was taking a stand - it had unintended consequences.

The key part of her blog:

Have you ever had a group of men sitting right behind you making joke that caused you to feel uncomfortable?

Every single conference I have been to in the 'tech' industry the delegates have been 90%+ males [very often the number of women facilitating was more than the number of men facilitating]

I have rarely felt 'uncomfortable' by a group of men making a joke - if they were drunk would more people have felt uncomfortable? Probably. Is that acceptable at a python conference? No.

Another quote from the blog post:

Jesse was on the main stage with thousands of people sitting in the audience. He was talking about helping the next generation learn to program and how happy PyCon was with the Young Coders workshop (which I volunteered at). He was mentioning that the PyLadies auction had raised $10,000 in a single night and the funds would be used the funds for their initiatives.

I saw a photo on main stage of a little girl who had been in the Young Coders workshop.

I realized I had to do something or she would never have the chance to learn and love programming because the ass clowns behind me would make it impossible for her to do so.

I calculated my next steps. I knew there wasn’t a lot of time and the closing session would be wrapping up. I considered:

    The type of event
    The size of the audience
    How the conference had emphasized their Code of Conduct
    What I knew about the community and their diversity initiatives
    How to address this issue effectively and not disrupt the main stage

To avoid spamming this thread - read the rest of her blog for her reasoning and thinking in using twitter and not the pyCon code of practice route.

Nobody should have been fired for this, these [unamed?] 'guys' should have been told [and hopefully understand] why these sort of 'jokes' are not welcome and make people feel uncomfortable. If they still choose to make people feel uncomfortable they should be asked to leave and not return. [Maybe asking them why they feel the jokes are acceptable]

This could easily derail into a censorship/free speech/sexism flame war - let's not becuase it's not about that - these guys could have easily tweeted their immature discussion on twitter or just kept it between themselves - they didn't and got called out.

1 http://butyoureagirl.com/14015/forking-and-dongle-jokes-dont... 2 https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/comments&q=by%3A...


This entire incident has snowballed from ridiculous to insane.

However, I find it interesting that Playhaven wasn't DDOS'ed for firing the guy. If they had acted rationally and didn't fire him, this wouldn't have been the unmitigated clusterfuck that it has turned into.


I expect this one won't last long either.

Seems like it'd be much easier to make a post explaining the why. We're mostly smart people here; I think people would understand if there were a decent explanation (which there likely is).

edit: thanks; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5416979


Firing her would be such an obviously dumb move that people are thinking it must be fake.

And yet it's probably true....


I assume they asked her apologize and she refused. The only recourse would be to terminate her employment. Apology would have been a logical move because it could have defused the situation.


She apologized on HN two days ago.


Do you have the source?

(I have read comments about the guys apologizing but you are the first I see to mention that she made any kind of apology.)


I think the blog post, twitter post, facebook post, all out push to get this "news" out leans towards the firing being fake. This isn't the sort of thing you'd really want to spam over all your official channels. The people who have a horse in this race are aware of the issue and will know what the outcome is and the rest of their customers don't care.


So, has anyone reputable simply called over to SendGrid and asked them instead of spending time speculating?


I guess everyone reputable knows that they have better things to do right now than satisfying our curiosity, like, for example, dealing with a ddos.


Because it's a distasteful, sensationalist subject that any decent curator of a community would try to marginalize?


"Decent curator" is prejudging your outcome, don't you think?

If your goal for a "community" is something shallow, stage-managed, and beautiful, then sure, you'll want to bury this story. Many communities are run like that, to be sure.

If your goal for a community is to actually discuss the issues that people want to discuss, or to discuss the issues that are important, then in either of those two cases this should be front page news.


I have no qualms with being judgmental. I hate this entire story. It's sad the guy got fired. It's sad this girl may have gotten fired. I would guess that nothing of any lasting value will come from the coming discussion.


We are talking about the future of free speech, intergender relations in the tech world, and hackernews censorship.

I'm /so/ interested.


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.


I'm amazed how a gun was turned into a grenade which was then turned into a nuclear bomb. One overreacting response after the other, each one outdoing the one before. People take themselves way to seriously (all parties involved in this saga).


If SendGrid did not offer to let her resign, shame on them. If she refused, shame on her.


I'd imagine for the firing she's probably getting a sizeable severance pay for this so that she'll sign paperwork agreeing not to sue them.


How could she sue them? She'd have to have been terminated wrongfully. I can't think of a better reason to terminate a PR person than for the type of misconduct she displayed. If anything I'm surprised the company isn't suing her for the damage she's done to their business and their reputation.


That's easy to work out either way.


peeps out into developer land through the window

CLOSES BLINDS QUICKLY

Eesh, same old shit.


Adria's post in the Facebook thread doesn't exactly reinforce that this is fake.

Adria Richards - "It is impossible for me to comprehend the hate generated on the internet towards me for simply doing what any sensible person would have done in that position." 11:51am PDT

https://www.facebook.com/SendGrid/posts/10151502570463967?co...

EDIT: It appears this is not Adria's facebook, but rather a fake profile.


That is a fake profile of Adria. This https://www.facebook.com/adriarichards is hers.


Ahh, good call. Editing my post.


"any sensible person"? I can't comprehend the depths of this person's delusion.


It's interesting seeing this from some new-ish tech companies, because the way this episode played out is quite in keeping with standard, conservative BigCo employment policies. Two employees from different firms got into a public argument without formal authorization, even if not directly about their work? "Fire 'em both" is the traditional BigCo answer: employees are expected not to speak in public without authorization, at least not about anything controversial.


Maybe it is time for Sexual Harassment Prevention Training for all YC startups...? One thing that Aaron Swartz was vehemently opposed to was misogyny in the programming world. I think this is yet another instance where we can honor his memory.

http://feministing.com/2013/01/15/aaron-swartz-on-misogyny-i...


Another dead one that made it to the front page https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5417341 Only one comment though.


They all look like duplicate posts. There was an Aria Richards firing post earlier than these.




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