Playhaven did the cowardly thing by destroying the guy's career as a preemptive measure for any bad PR they may receive over this. It would take a very sure minded employer to hire him now, considering the nasty ways this can be spun by the blogs/media ("Notorious PyCon Attendee Lands A Job With X, Where Sexual Jokes Are Apparently OK").
Sorry but I don't like it one bit. If PH's CEO had any balls at all he'd make this guy publicly apologize. Firing someone like this is the easiest solution.
I'm sure Playhaven employees take note of how one of their own has been had a summary execution. And for the rest of us, Playhaven is now "the company that fired that guy over a joke".
If only there was some way he could have prevented this miscarriage of justice! Hint: Don't make dick jokes in a professional conference when the con has a "code of conduct" saying: "don't make dick jokes".
There are numerous ways this employee could have disciplined without destroying his career, each and every one of them would have made Playhaven actually look good coming out of this incident.
They could have sent that guy to volunteer at a woman's shelter or could have donated a part of his salary for a similar cause (even making a dollar for dollar contribution, it's pittance and excellent PR) or just put up a public apology.
Instead of taking meaningful action, they've distanced themselves as quickly and as crudely from this situation, while destroying this man's career without giving it a second thought.
I'm not defending this man - although I belong to the part of the population that's more likely to make such jokes at a professional convention than to be bothered by them - I am condemning Playhaven.
And you know what, it's not even about Adria. She's taking undue fire here; she's a social person with a job focused around social media, and as such it is understandable why she uploaded this picture in the first place. Some people shoot their food, some others take photos what they deem as bad behavior in public (after all if she pictured someone acting lewdly at Walmart no one would have said a thing). She's not the bad person here, although I don't think I'd get along very well with her.
Nope, the only one I can blame squarely at the unneeded escalation of this story is Playhaven CEO, for choosing the easiest way out. How very corporate America.
They could have sent that guy to volunteer at a woman's shelter
"Hey women who were abused! We'd like this guy who thinks dick jokes are OK in professional contexts to come and help all those rape and violence victims you have. That's cool, right?" Yeah. not going to happen. Think your suggestions through.
We don't know the full situtation, perhaps all these responses have already been done? Maybe there are other reasons at play aswell?
Highly unlikely. You're just saying things without doing any research.
Have you ever read feminist blogs / writings? They'll often prefix text with a "trigger warning" (or TW) to alert readers if this text needs to talk about violence or sexism or racism etc. This is because some people might be "triggered" and have strong negative emotional reactions to some things. (cf. http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Trigger_warning )
Given that, it's highly likely that making dick jokes and especially claiming "It's OK, I'm not as bad as the man who beat you!" to excuse said dick jokes, is a sure fire way to get your head kicked in in some places.
If you go to a battered women's shelter, make lots of demaning-to-women jokes, and then say it's OK because, "hey! at least you didn't beat them!", then yes, you might get some people really annoyed.
I mean, it's like the start of Die Hard, with the "I hate N*s" sign in a black area. What do you think'll happen?! Imagine going into a gay bar and making jokes about gay people. What do you think'll happen?
The guy made a fairly tame dick joke to his mate at a programming conference, it doesn't logically follow that he would walk into a woman's shelter and start making misogynistic remarks.
This is a very silly situation. Someone made a joke about a dongle and got fired. Another person posted that she was offended about the said dongle joke and it's flared up into a massive discussion about gender in tech.
Here's the bottom line - if such a tame joke can have this large an effect and warrant this type of a knee-jerk reaction from the tech community, our conception of gender equality is seriously fragile.
Better discussions about sexism in the workplace could revolve around the lack of female leadership, sexist working environments, an overabundance of male developers, company roles that appear to be gender-specific, etc.
We are so wrong on the major issues that we want to make the full situation as easy to digest as a dongle joke and a tweet.
It's far more complex than that. And this is the only thing I'm going to say about the situation because we all look like children for addressing this.
Many more unreported jokes would only be a problem if said jokes were a problem. So far, I have not seen a conclusive argument why such a joke would be a problem.
Listen to women. Some of them talk about feeling uncomfortable when there are loads of dick jokes.
I mean this isn't the 1960s anymore. The rest of the professional world has moved on and knows that dick jokes are bad for a professional environment. Why is this such a hard thing for people in tech?
I feel uncomfortable around openly religious people. I also tend to feel uncomfortable around people engaging in meaningless chitchat or when people ask meaningless questions (‘How are you?’ being one of my favourites in this regard). I don’t try to get people fired for wearing a crucifix, nor do I burn chatting people at a stake.
> The rest of the professional world has moved on and knows that dick jokes are bad for a professional environment.
You haven't been to many conferences or events for other industries have you? I'm not arguing whether this is right or wrong but it's definitely not isolated to tech.
To be fair, it's right that they keep the public information relatively light. If I was fired by an employer I wouldn't want them writing blog posts about why they did it. Especially when it's just some random dude who got fired.
True, but it's wrong to state that they are open to discussion only amongst people who hold all the facts, which they also state they are not going to give out.
If I'm reading it correctly this is what this statement really says:
"Alex Reid might've been involved, but he's a good guy in general and we're keeping him. The other guy however, it turned out after an internal investigation, wasn't exactly spot clean and for him this was the straw that broke the camel's back."
I know many guys (including me) that could possibly have said the same things joking around.
I also know alot of girls that like to joke around in similar ways about guys.
Is that sexcism ? Should people loose their job about stuff like that ? Absolutely not.
I get that it might be hard to draw the line, but come on, we're all human after all, this clearly didnt overstep the border and the guy apologized.
Exactly...i am german and when i am around my girlfriend and her friends, well if i would shed a tear on every sexcist comment i would be crying all day...
One of the two guys lost his job after an internal investigation. It's hard to say "this wasn't the only thing he did" in more specific terms.
But yes, this shouldn't have been said. If he lost his job for just this that's probably too harsh. Then again there's plenty of Adria's around who've lost their jobs for complaining far more subtly.
"sexism" is an adjective/adverb that means actions & speech that's designed to maintain & reinforce the institutionalised power structure among the sexs/genders and/or that re-enforced gender roles.
> "sexism" is an adjective/adverb that means actions & speech (that's designed to maintain & reinforce the institutionalised power structure among the sexs/genders) and/or (that re-enforced gender roles).
I took the liberty to insert some brackets to transport my understanding of the above, please do correct me if I am wrong. It is easily visible that we cannot fulfil the first, sufficient, but not necessary, requirement for an action to be sexist without knowing the intention of the subject. Hence, I will concentrate on the second condition.
However, I still fail to see how making sexual jokes reinforces gender roles, apart from the, uh, biologically motivated one that, during heterosexual sex, the woman is usually the receiving partner. But by that definition, basically everything remotely related to sex, even the usual bees-and-flowers talk, is sexist, since you will have a hard time finding a discussion of heterosexual sex (especially reproductive sex) that does not involve the female partner being penetrated.
er, maybe I copy/pasted wrong, and misspoke, a better definition is to replace "designed to" with "has the effect of". I don't think intent is magic and makes everything OK. Context can be important.
One of the problems is how often the only type of sex that's discussed us "man does women". You can talk about hetero sex lots by describing lots of different types of sex. It's a problem when the only type of sex is when men are doing the woman. It's wrong to say that men have to be the one 'dominating' and 'doing all the action'. This is harmful to gay men who are receptive in sex, since it's used to justify how "they aren't real men". Likewise it's harmful if women are only seen as sex objects. Things to f*. Rather than people, or even people who can control their own sex lives.
Doesn't the American Constitution have that 'freedom of speech' amendment?
I'm British, so American culture is alien to me, but I've always had the view that you can say whatever you want.
People have shouted how Hitler did no wrong, and people have cried how x, y and z people should be put on a plane to another country, but when someone overhears a private conversation containing technical terms (that if you're pedantic enough to take as a joke) you get persecuted; professionally shot by firing squad at dawn.
This is super surreal, you'd get laughed out of the room if the same events happened in the UK (and probably most of Europe).
Well freedom of speech legislation just guarantees that the government cannot prosecute you as a criminal for saying something. It doesn't mean that a private company cannot fire you or a conference cannot ask you to leave etc.
Ironically in the UK we actually do have laws that can potentially make you a criminal because you insulted someone.
http://reformsection5.org.uk/
>It doesn't mean that a private company cannot fire you or a conference cannot ask you to leave etc.
True, and I can respect how they were representing their company at PyCon, but it just seems silly.
But what's done is done I guess, the only exit strategy for the whole event is to move on and get on with our lives.
And I am well aware of our laws, the chap who was jailed for joking about a bomb plot at Robin Hood Airport, which was heavy-handed, but our archaic laws are catching up with tech eventually!
"I've always had the view that you can say whatever you want."
Not a particularly sensible view given the strength of libel/slander laws in England and Wales (fortunately not quite so bad in Scotland, no idea about NI) and the pretty strong "Hate speech" laws we have throughout the UK:
Being rude as in 'joking during a talk at a conference' and even more being rude while being paid for attending (which seems to be the case) said conference might not enter into 'freedom of speech'. I a more with the 'honorable behaviour' than with the 'sexist' argument.
The fact that you can say whatever you want does not mean you can do so at any time or any place.
You can enter into any (judicial) court and shout "I hate the Queen" but then you will probably be expelled from it, despite your very rightful speech.
I think that it might still be technically treasonous to speak ill of the Queen at all. Though obviously if that is the case it isn't actively enforced.
The United States has a strong legal framework to regulate freedom of speech. But that manly regulates what is a criminal offense (something that is an offence that violates criminal law and can be punished by the state).
However it do not necessarily protect anyone from sanctions from your employer. In this case it is his employer that has acted, not the state.
In other news, productivity begins to pick back up at Playhaven as employees are just about finished scrubbing their social media accounts. Rest assured, all references to forking repo's, dongles and other "gender equality" issues have been removed.
The biggest losers here are Playhaven & SendGrid. The dev who made the silly joke will get another job and Adria successfully raised her profile and will get more speaking gigs.
A great way to destroy company moral. I would never work for a company or ceo like that. Even if this was "the straw that broke the camels back", I don't see how this incident was a straw let alone a feather.
I wish this ceo and the blogger would just admit they overreacted.
> dedicated to gender equality and values honorable behavior
Linking a sexual comment (‘big dongles’, possibly forking) to gender equality implies the assumption of a necessary link between sexuality and different genders since ‘gender equality’ wouldn’t make sense otherwise. You are hence grossly discriminating against homosexuals and dismissing the efforts of the gay community not to be oppressed at the workplace. In other words, you are not only against freedom of speech in private circles, but also utterly homophobic.
If you find slight exaggerations, please feel free to reuse and recycle them :-)
What? No. Treating women as sexual objects rather than sexual actors ("men do the fing, women are fed") is a large attitude problem in tech and many places. This is the attitude that harms women who want to get into tech (or other fields).
Quite often this "women as sexual objects" attitude is actually quite homophobic. It equates men who are fed as women or "not real men". (a la "you're only gay if you take it"). "Men must be the one fing, if you're the one being fed, then you're not a man". Stopping that sort of attitude is actually good* for LGB people in the workplace.
Sorry for the crude language, but I can't think of a good verb that has an active and passive form like that
I also find it very hard to find the link between this and sexism. Nevertheless, the reasoning goes as follows:
If a sexual joke is classified as sexism, it necessarily requires a link between sexuality and gender[1], since otherwise, a joke about sexuality could not have any effect on gender, hence could not be sexist[0]. But by linking sexuality and gender, you imply that there is no sexuality within one gender, since otherwise you could not make the leap from ‘sexual’ to ‘gender’. By assuming that all sexuality is inter-gender, you ignore intra-gender sexuality, i.e. homosexuality.
Yes, this is an exaggeration and I usally don’t care at all what you think/say of/about my sexuality and would furthermore prefer a society where everybody can say whatever the hell they want and if people find that offensive, it would be their own fault rather than the fault of those on whom they eavesdropped. But this whole sexism debate really annoys me, so apologies for that.
[0] Where I use ‘sexist’ in the meaning of ‘generally treating different genders differently and/or specifically dismissive of one gender’.
[1] I hate the word ‘gender’, but saying that you imply a link between sex (the activity) and sex (the property) might be slightly confusing.
I initially thought you were trolling but it's clear that your response, although one I strongly disagree with, does have solid reasoning behind it.
If you're looking for actual counterpoints; I'm an LGBT man and I support Adria for her right to be offended about these statements, which I feel is all that's truly at stake here.
The difference between sarcasm and trolling might sometimes be rather subjective, sorry.
I agree with you that people are allowed to be offended, but I also think that people should be allowed to offend – if we tried to never offend anybody, we wouldn’t get anywhere[0]. I take it it depends on your personal values whether you think that free speech is more important than feeling well, but I hope we can nevertheless agree that it is neither possible to never offend anyone nor is it wise to always offend everybody. Things are unfortunately rarely as black and white as we would like them to be.
I dunno, seems like the firing is more to seem like they are "doing the right thing" I personally don't think someone should be let go over comments that are part of a private conversation. It was fine for Adria Richards to make sexist jokes on Twitter yet SendGrid firmly stand by her as a company.
> We believe in the importance of discussing sensitive topics such as gender and conduct
Is that so? Because judging from your concrete actions, one would be led to presume that the preferred course of action is to do anything to prevent such a discussion.
> as a company that is dedicated to gender equality
So, I noticed your leadership list (10 people) does not mention any females. I don't assume you are sexist; there probably just aren't that many competent ones that are fit for the break-neck business of peddling templated casual games.
> In that spirit, I would personally like to hear your thoughts and concerns.
I, too, like to judge people based on hearsay; fortunately for the general public, I don't have the power to let my fear of public opinion affect the lives of those who depend on my rational judgement of situations. It's too bad that a CEO position does not come with a spine and a pair of testicles.
If you're at a conference, you should behave professionally; you're not down the pub, or out with your friends. It's as simple as that.
Hearing stories like this is both tiresome (what do you mean this is still happening?!) and embarrassing; it makes male IT workers look like a bunch of poorly-socialized teenagers.
That's true, but OTOH I used to work for a very conservative bank with all kinds of policies on diversity, sexual harassment etc but people would still make remarks like "tee hee, he said dongle" without worrying about being fired or posted all over the internet.
I fail to see what "gender equality" has to do with what happened. What I do see however is a company that will fire their own over the slightest chance of not being deemed 'sexist' by the deluded few with a saviour complex in our community.
One problem with many conferences is sexualised content that treats women as passive objects in sex. Only one form of sex is shown, and it's the man conquring the woman. As a result many tech conferences have started out to outright ban sexual content at events like this to counter that.
There's a difference between going on your own, paying for your ticket, and being anonymous... and going on the company's dime, as an ambassador for the company, wearing the company T-shirt.
I saw the photo (as I'm guessing most have), and it was very obvious that they were representing the company. I'd have been pissed too... they shouldn't be sailing so close to the wind that there was even potential for the kind of "he-said, she-heard" that has happened.
I don't fault Playhaven for firing someone who hasn't represented them in the manner they expect when that staff member is on their dime and acting on their behalf.
I think it's relevant that when I examine Playhaven's site, the "Leadership" sidebar features twelve different individuals in various leadership positions, none of whom are women. Balanced recruiting in this industry is difficult of course, but they don't appear to have made much of an effort in this area. They probably know they've allowed themselves to be vulnerable not just to public criticism but also to concentrated advocacy and perhaps even legal action. Their rash actions concerning their former employee don't require any complicated explanation like "what else has this bastard done to deserve getting fired?"; they're probably just praying no one notices what a culture of discrimination they've created.
How many of the mosaic of "United Colors" pictures they imply are employees are actually stock photos? Why has a games company handicapped itself so much in developing products for half of the games-playing population? When will Playhaven promote its first woman to a leadership position? Would a woman have made the same stupid firing decision this sausage-party of an executive team made?
[edit: http://www.playhaven.com/team is the page I'm referencing. In case it changes, I see the following names listed under "Leadership": Andy Yang, Michiel Frishert, Jason Liu, Charles Yim, Ville Heijari, Brian Doxtator, Brian Howell, John P. Joseph, Sutton Trout, Zach Phillips, Thomas Gieselmann, and Hany Nada]
It's not about what I infer. It's about what is inferred by disadvantaged parties and their advocates, especially once the stupid remarks of an employee have focused the attentions of those on the company. Ten different personnel decisions have been made, for a set of mostly-business-oriented executive positions (seriously, VPs of Ad, Mark, Biz Dev, and "Pub" Dev plus a single non-S VP of "Product and Engineering"? what kind of tech company is this?) and in no case could a suitable woman be found? Your Honor, we rest our case.
Besides, this page is the public face of the company, which they choose to show the public. The semiotics of the "United Colors of Benetton" mosaic is clear, but it is undermined by the "Leadership" sidebar, under even the most generous possible reading.
> Ten different personnel decisions have been made, for a set of mostly-business-oriented executive positions (seriously, VPs of Ad, Mark, Biz Dev, and "Pub" Dev plus a single non-S VP of "Product and Engineering"? what kind of tech company is this?) and in no case could a suitable woman be found? Your Honor, we rest our case.
What case? You have zero information about how the personell decisions are being made within that organization. You don't know when those appointments were made, nor do you have any information about the composition of the organization when they were made. All you have is the result which currently includes all men. Is it plausible that a woman was passed over for one of those positions? Sure. It's also entirely plausible that the men holding those positions were the best candidate available to the company at the time the roles were filled.
> The semiotics of the "United Colors of Benetton" mosaic is clear,
You are taking a mosaic and applying what you want want to find in it. It certainly isn't clear to me that their intent was to be associated with the United Colors of Benetton. If anything I looked at it as a weak implementation of a current design trend in use on tech companies about pages.
You have also failed to address how you came to the conclusion that the company has a "culture of discrimination." Did you work there? Have you been to their offices or know someone that worked there? A single page on a web site is not sufficient evidence to understand the "culture" of a company let alone to determine that it is discriminatory.
Sounds like a canned damage limitation quote and not even remotely sincere (and doubt it is really an accurate reflection of reality either).
Anyway, where is the Sendgrid statement ? Their silence seems to be an endorsement of Adria's bad behavior (eavesdropping and then public humiliation via twitter).
I'm astonished that Sendgrid are OK with this.
There are 2 companies here I want to make sure I have no dealings with.
Saw this mentioned in another thread and it's a great point. SendGrid is going to back her 100%. They now realize, if they didn't before, that they have a risky employee on their hands - the type that would sue them and make a huge public spectacle (comparing herself to Joan of Arc, etc). They need to keep that bomb from going off and eventually she'll move on to focus fully on what she's passionate about.
@adriarichards Black people CANNOT be racist against White people. Racism is a position of the oppressor who has the power - http://i.imgur.com/ou8JZVu.jpg
As told in the prophesy, forever more Playhaven became known as the 'Dongle' joke guys rather than whatever they do. And for every conference they attend in the future they shalt be asked by the lowly what was said and if they over reacted.
Sorry but I don't like it one bit. If PH's CEO had any balls at all he'd make this guy publicly apologize. Firing someone like this is the easiest solution. I'm sure Playhaven employees take note of how one of their own has been had a summary execution. And for the rest of us, Playhaven is now "the company that fired that guy over a joke".