skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Is it really so hard to not make sexual jokes and references when in a public business forum that you would honestly stop attending conferences?

What exactly do they add to the discourse on the actual technical issues being discussed?
I am not in a position where I hire or fire people, but if so was the case I would consider her reaction to a private conversation where neither of the participants intended any harm very bad judgement.

Tweeting and blogging about this with images in the manner she did clearly steps over the line where it in my opinion is 'ok'.

I can absolutely guarantee that the people involved in the conversation felt absolutely ambushed by the event, and that is not a very enjoyable work environment.
Well, guess I'm never going to PyCon.
Whether they meant to offend people is irrelevant — its pretty clear that jokes w/ sexual innuendo in a public context isn't okay. Period.

Also, as others have said, this clearly wasn't a private situation. The whole problem with these jokes, even if not told directly to someone's face, is that they create a poisonous atmosphere.
If this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5398681

is indeed a comment by the person who lost his job, then it does not seem to be.
At this point I'm familiar with Ember, but not Backbone. How do their philosophies differ?
Your logic is flawed for bots that parse and render the pages. I have ran a small blog that I hand wrote from scratch and in the process found that around 4 years ago any phishing/spamming/harvesting bot worth it's salt will render the pages leaving these types of clever fix hacks useless.
I use mailinator for pretty much every site that wants an email address. Pick an obscure enough address and your risks are minimized to practically nothing but you get all the convenience of "deleting" your account simply by never thinking about it again.
The hatemail and harassment is awful. However, I do think pycon staff dropped the ball by not making sure photos taken without consent were taken down/deleted when the complaint was being resolved.
> Why didn't she just stand up and say something in a loud and authoritative voice?

Because it usually just leads to stigma against the person who speaks up and rarely yields actual change since most people just ignore it or rapidly justify it and minimize what happened and then immediately move on with their lives. You'd know this if you've ever had to deal with this type of thing in a room full of men.

Turns out, if you make a big deal out of something, people get angry at you for making a bigger deal out of it. If you make a small deal out of something, people ignore you.

There's no good answer. Each person has to decide how they want to address the issue in their own way.

> This was not an eye for an eye.

There's no way to do eye for an eye when you're not on a level playing field and women in tech aren't.
I thought the whole purpose of Twilio was to not use Asterisk. Just saying. Great tech.
As a matter of fact, if you read her blog post about all of this, she recommends the same thing:

What has to change is that everyone must take personal accountability and speak up when they hear something that isn’t ok. It takes three words to make a difference:

“That’s not cool.”

However, she appears to have not followed her own advice. I think it probably would have turned out differently if she had, though.
Isn't the guy getting fired a symmetrical example of failing to take responsibility for one's actions? Presumably (and I'll say again: there remains NO actual evidence about this termination) he was fired for making an offensive joke in public. And he works for an employer that finds that to be a termination-level offense.

Now, presuming he knew that: shouldn't he, too, be "taking responsibility" for his actions instead of blaming some girl with a blog?

I just don't see where that logic goes. Everyone can be at fault here. But it seems like you (and most other men here) only want one person's head. That strikes me as distasteful.
>Manners, common sense and general pleasantness seem to have been completely forgotton.

I would agree with you here. In my idealistic image of the world, she would told them to please shut up because it's not good of a joke, they would say sorry and that'd be all.

Actually I think she advocates this point on her blog, but only in aftermath
Make it harder to use userscripts for custom styling..?
Taking pictures at conferences and posting them on Twitter happens all the time. That's definitely not abuse. Quoting what people say at conferences also happens all the time. So that's not abuse. She was not involved in the firing; if that's abuse, it's not hers.

She explained why she didn't just tell them to be quiet on her blog. But here's my take:

It is not her job to teach people how to behave properly in public. It is their job to behave properly. And it's the conference organizers' job to maintain a safe space, one where everybody is behaving according to conference standards. And when they heard about the problem, they jumped on it.
You're doing a bit of mental gymnastics here, especially with your last example. Obviously, you're concerned with your security and comfortability, but you're taking it out of context.

Indeed, if I tell a hilarious racist joke as you've mentioned around the wrong people, it is very likely there will be a commotion that will get me removed from the setting. Even more so, the same wrong people might post it to their personal feed, announcing that you are, as you portrayed yourself, a xenophobic asshole. Now, if your boss happens to read that stream and hear that codesuela is a xenophobic asshole, they might decide to terminate you.

Your argument is that it wasn't meant to offend anybody. But it did, so that's out of play. You also seem to assume that they weren't talking loudly and somehow Adria was simply eavesdropping on them, which is just speculation on your part. While I agree that how you talk to your buddy is no one's business, that doesn't mean you're now exempt from being called out because it was meant to be private.
I will now patent web pages.... follow by making a bookmark.
"I think all of us would agree that technology has a sexism problem."

I'm working in an office without any African American males or Hispanic American males. Does technology have a racist problem?
This is what's wrong with America today; no one can take a joke. Political correctness, while originated with valid aims, has gotten so out of control.

Was it a mistake to converse like that in mixed company? No doubt.
Was an apology in order? Absolutely.
Is a couple guys being immature going to make sure "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." No, grow up and quit being overdramatic.

I realize that it's not kosher to drop the "drama" bomb in talking about women, but rest assured I have and will continue to use the same language to describe men who are incredibly self-important and turn what should be moderately uncomfortable and inappropriate situations into World War 3.
How were the accusations false? It seems they were making jokes that made another human being uncomfortable and they took action. One of the two men involved even posted in this thread and admitted that they were making the jokes.
Because planned economies worked out so well for soviet bloc. Sorry, the cold war did not create the conditions to 'propose' our capitalism it proved it. Its current form might be flawed (corporate bailouts, uneven distribution of wealth etc) but it's a far better model than planned economies comrade.
> The overcompensation and hypersensitivity to combat sexism in technology is, rather amusingly, making technology even more hostile and demoralizing.

I find this attitude really strange, as if you need to make dick jokes to write code.

Sorry to lose you, but if basic manners are an insufferable encroachment on your style and abilities, maybe we'll just have to find a way to get along without your talent.
Nice to meet a fellow future bait shop owner. I plan to have a mechanical cash register, cash-only. Maybe electric lights.
Bold claims without any evidence backing it up.
Given the fact that they are saying access from the Drive UI is coming soon

Do you have a link for that? I was wondering why it wasn't integrated better with the rest of Drive, and that would make sense.
I would have assumed that a deep conversation on hiring would be part of the YC program, as it is indeed non-trivial yet essential, but from this post and re-reading the "What happens at Y Combinator" page, it appears that YC is mostly geared towards getting founders funding. There just isn't enough time in the day to convey everything.
"the fact that this guy's employer made a kneejerk reaction is no one's fault but the employer."

Exactly. Let's direct our questions first at the employer. What she did wasn't exactly the coolest thing in the world, but she wasn't the one who fired the guy -- his employer did. I also dont get the sense that she wanted to really punish the guy; rather, she wanted to call out the practice.
So, I'm gonna assume that he didn't pay his way to the conference since he was wearing a company badge with the word "sponsor" on it.

If that's the case.. then he's not there in his personal capacity. He is there representing his company, on their dime.

They do, in fact, have something to lose if he cannot conduct himself in a reasonably professional manner.
>poisonous atmosphere

as opposed to publicly shaming someone without prior warning?
I would generally agree with your point. I wouldn't want my company judging me based on photos they find of me on messing around with friends on Facebook. That would be pretty low.

However, these are two different situations. It's different when she is a public face of SendGrid and her Twitter profile states "Developer Evangelist for @SendGrid". I'm not saying that this post merits her being fired for anything. I'm just saying that, in such a position, her twitter posts should not be immune from judgement and action by her company.

Edit: Off track but her Twitter profile also states "YouTube partner and creator" .. what?
Basic Income is a good idea that won't exist until society has no other choice. I like the concept, but I don't see it as getting through, politically, until the options are either that or revolution.

People of means use educational justification for their own private basic income system. An unpaid internship isn't a case of someone relying on the parents. It's "investing in his career". It's a bit hypocritical that people who rely on the government for these services are "moochers" but those who get a parental hand until 22 (or 26, or 30) are not. People should just admit that unpaid internships are a sign of a problem.

I'm in agreement with his argument about the virtue of BI. It will bring the balance of power between employers and workers back to fairness.
Who are you even talking to? The post you replied to just made an argument for why this would be a viable product for some people, which is exactly what the topmost post asked for opinions on.

The only possible phrase that could be construed as needing "data" to back it up is "lots of people" being unsatisfied with evernote's complexity (which is not a statement about that affecting evernote's adoption, incidentally), and it's a statement that could arguably be satisfied with an anecdote in any case.

You pulled the trigger on the negativity gun a little early here, even for you.
which company did the fired guy work for? they, to me, seem worst of all here. and i can't work out who they are.

edit: it seems to be playhaven http://www.playhaven.com/ - info from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5410967

everything else seems to be a mix of stupidity, confusion, frustration, anger and poor communication (some of those on both sides). the kind of thing better worked out with some serious discussion rather than firing people.
If I understood correctly, Adria is not another employee, but has the role of developer evangelist. In that role, your twitter account is very much an extension of your job.
Small Business expanding Globally | Small Business Consulting Group
Yup. Feedback plays an important role in iterating over your designs. You want to get a designer who is open to taking feedback. You also want to make sure that they have a strong vision and are not afraid to put their foot down if needed
Warren Ellis:
Dear Google: why launch Google Keep when you've just proven you'll shut off productivity services when you get bored with maintaining them?

https://twitter.com/warrenellis/status/314493398138630145
Indeed, I am really puzzled as to why these "jokes" are supposed to be offensive to women. They might be offensive to people raised in some cultures / subcultures, and they don't sound like they're great jokes in any culture, but nobody ever told me about the meeting where women decided knob jokes were offensive. In fact a female friend texted me one about an hour ago.
I don't get it. Are there folks amongst us that really so socially inept that they think its ok to make a dick joke at a conference regardless of context? Its a professional conference and that is not professional behavior.
Hi there. Why would you expect 5000+ tests, or anything more than 100? It seems like the number of tests that is the "right" number would be very dependent on the size of the codebase, which wasn't mentioned in the article.

We write tests when new code is added, or a bug is fixed and we want to make sure it doesn't reappear. Hopefully we add new tests without prompting, because that's the right thing to do, but our coverage enforcement will goad us into writing tests if we forget. Ideally, new code should be testable by only a few tests -- if it requires more, then it's probably too complicated and should be refactored.
Look at his shirt in the picture.
No boss. I am talking about India. I am otherwise poor by any world standards but I have to buy gold.
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Curious where the guys worked. (Oh, apparently PlayHaven, some mobile game LTV maximization company, like Zynga with even less emphasis on gaming and more on extracting money from idiots. So, no great loss...)
here's the point: it's not only fair. in fact, by expecting sendgrid to can adria you're implicitly supporting what the other guy's company did, at which point you really have no complaint.
Actually according to Adria's blog post (linked elsewhere in the thread) the jokes were made in response to a comment about "forking" a repo from the person sitting next to them. They were riffing off of a conversation she was part of; assuming you believe her, that's "non-private" regardless of context.

This whole thread is making me sad.
Disagree, but not arguing, because as I said, there's always a precursor.
If you don't understand that there's no expectation of privacy when sitting in a crowded audience at a conference ... then you probably shouldn't be trusted to represent a company at a conference.
There's also a Chrome extension developed by Google that does notekeeping and syncing. Not exactly the same, but along a similar vein is the Todo list functionality in Gmail. Assuming Google is committed to notekeeping, which one of their solutions is the "right one" to use?
> What's good for the goose...

I think firing either party was a pretty daft idea for all types of poultry, or in this case, human beings.

> Employers can people based on their personal lives all the time.

Yeah, I think I'm saying I'm saying that in a lot of circumstances, that's pretty lame and we actively, as a community, saying that type of reaction is unwise. Instead, you have someone calling for it.

This is only getting to be a bigger problem as everyone's personal lives become more and more broadcasted.

Chalk it up to self-interest if you'd like, I got a bunch of shit on my twitter accounts that could get me in trouble with different types of views and people. Any employer who is interested in hiring me is going to have to be able to deal with that.

> this goes beyond a mere tweet

Her actions were a tweet and a blog post. What someone else did with that is their issue. Go get angry at them if you think those actions were inappropriate.
I wasn't arguing against the fact that mental harm exists. I was arguing that harm implies that somebody was injured and a sexual innuendo involving dongles and forks is hardly offensive enough to injure somebody just like looking at someone the wrong way shouldn't harm someone in most situations. In a situation were someone is being harmed by something that is in most situations harmless (because they suffered some sort of trauma or they have a phobia) they should inform someone, not take up vigilante justice.

Also, although these jokes were sexual in nature, they did not have anything to do with sexualizing women, putting down anyone from any sex, or targeting anyone in particular as the butt of the joke. And seeing as how these jokes were not intended to hurt or upset anyone or where in any way threatening or disturbing I don't see how it could constitute harassment.
I really love DMCA. It does not work in cases it should work, it can be abused for basically everything, it's misrepresented as some kind of international law, ... It's so stupid it hurts.
Yeah, I read the notice and was thinking "are they really claiming that reproducing the name of the product is a copyright violation?"
I don't recall exactly, but did she actually claim they said that, or just implicitly link the two guys with "other people" who make forking jokes?
Great link, but it also says this:

"Even in countries that have no law of privacy, there is a moral obligation on us not to upload photographs which infringe the subject's reasonable expectation of privacy."

It was immoral of her to publish that photo, but not illegal.
These guys have asked themselves the same question:
http://www.seniorcreativepeople.com
Use lynx :D
This is a rather bizarre situation. Still, I visited Sendgrid's website to learn more about them. Click on their "We are hiring" link and scrolled down. What did I find? A sexual joke. On their very own company website.

See for yourself: http://i.imgur.com/uWc8P39.png

And before anyone says anything, the image depicts a person photocopying their genitals. It does not show gender, but the act is quite clear. Not something you want to have on your website.
As a SendGrid customer, it concerns me that SendGrid would stand behind the initiation of a public controversy under such questionable circumstances, especially one that resulted in the firing of a developer from his job. SendGrid should be in the business of email deliverability, not public shaming.

Edit: I've tempered my phrasing above quite a bit and removed references to individuals.
I understand this thread is triggering a Reddit mentality in a lot of people due to the overlap, but just for the purpose of clarification: Comment replies that do nothing more than say "Wrong." and leave it at that really don't have a place here.
That doesn't make sense. It was a man making sexual jokes in front of a woman, not a woman making sexual jokes in front of a woman... and probably besides the point in any event.
This was not in private. Their mouths were, what, two feet from the ears in front of them?
The Bizarre History of Insect Head Transplants
I was under the impression that they were talking with her when they made the jokes. As such it is something that shouldn't be assumed to be okay and in fact is often hostile and exclusionary.

The backlash and hatred, death threats and extreme harassment she got from reporting this to the con, as women are often advised to do rather than confront people directly, should be instructive to you all.
I shot a comment over, but the damage has probably been done at this point. I can't see PlayHaven hiring mr_hank back, and to be honest, I would guess it'd be slightly awkward.
I'm tempted to lick that interface, but alas am at work.
We're on ASP.NET MVC4, a stock build.

We've configured route registration a little bit specially* to speed up some common cases and we don't necessarily use every feature in the framework; but we're far from a proper fork.

ASP.NET MVC performs well enough that we get more bang from focusing on our own code basically.

*This amounts to registering our highest traffic routes _first_, and checking left-hand matches before Regex'ing (since we have a ton of "/foo/\d+/bar"-ish routes).
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This is blown way out of proportion.

Adria has the right to post what bothers her on her blog. It is her blog. Read it and get over it.

No one should get fired over this, and Sendgrid does not have to respond to something this trivial. If playhaven really fired Mr-Hank over this, then it's probably a shitty place to work anyways. I work in a place where no matter what mistakes I make, TokBox will always have my back.

This incident should not even be trending on Hacker News. What value do we get out of this other than suppression of free speech and finger pointing?
This sounds like something perhaps the dropbox api would be useful for? The webapp would simply modify files in your dropbox through the api, and changes could then be pushed to your local machine through dropbox's service.
I second this. The person is there at the conference as a rep for her company therefore it's speaking for the company.
It maps multiple emails to the same identity, in that you use the same password to log in with all of them. The end site gets the email you log in to the site with (I can log in to Persona with email A but let all sites know email B every time. If I change that to email C, sites will think I'm a different user).

You can let users change email addresses, and nothing bad will happen. They'll just have to log in with the other address next time.
> The right thing to do is either deal with the person directly or escalate above them, whether you're a woman or not. Going straight to the mob is never the right answer.

Isn't this exactly what happened though? She posted on her feed and asked if someone could speak to them and the Pycon officials saw her post and did exactly that. You're treating this as if she posted on her feed something like, "Can the people who employed these guys please fire them? Also, I want each of my followers to retweet this and make sure they get fired."
Stormpath Python SDK Lands at Pycon
I have no idea who you are or what company you worked for, but a lot of things are blamed on "investors" that are actually management's own detested ideas. It's a somewhat dishonest negotiation tactic: It's Not Up To Me.

It's unfair that YC is being singled out here. These are genuine VC-istan issues, not limited to YC startups.

All of the YC founders I know are great, but sample size is small.
IMO: unless you're in front of a podium with your employers logo on it or representing yourself as speaking for your employer, your words are your own stupid (or hell, maybe sometimes even wise) decisions.