Did I say that I would want that? Also, there was a certain point at which, had she apologized and said something along the lines of "I'm really sorry about the fact that I escalated the whole situation more than was necessary. The thing is that the tech community as a whole still has a somewhat sexist vibe which I, as well as others, have been trying to eradicate. Unfortunately, innocent bystanders were caught in the crossfire, for which I'm truly sorry."
This would have placated the people who think that she went too far without her having to give up her position.
That's on her. What's on us is all of the comments saying things like "you'd be crazy to ever hire her." "SHE'LL never work in this industry again."
Great. Really tolerant.
(And don't get me wrong, i'm one of the folks pissed at the way she conducted herself, but i'm way more pissed off at the mob that's whipped up this incident into something it never should have been)
If I said, "If you let your toddler play in a tiger cage, you are crazy." would you ask me "Why do you want toddlers to get mauled by tigers"? Maybe I wouldn't want it to happen, but it would regardless of my desires. I was just stating a fact about what will happen, whether you or I agree with it or not.
Mm. A lot of these comments preclude the possibility that Adria might grow, change, or rehabilitate herself.
And as such, these come off very much as if they're putting nails into her coffin. There are people who do deserve to be run out of their industries, Stephen Glass, or Jonah Lehrer come to mind immediately. That is not a proportionate or reasonable response to what has happened here, but then, nothing about these circumstances have been proportionate or reasonable.
The question isn't so much "can she grow and change" as "will the wider world let go of her mistake?" People as a group seem prone to not let things go if they get out of hand past a certain point (which this seems far past whatever that point might be).
Is it fair? Not really. Does that change the fact she's potentially damaged her ability to get another job like the one she was just let go from permanently? No it doesn't. Mistakes have consequences whether it is fair or not, and it will likely take a LOT of work to undo what one stupid tweet just did to her life.
You're right, but part of this is our tolerance towards others and how they screw up. And there are definitely unequal amounts of tolerance here directed at the various parties involved.
Some of that probably is due to the fact that the dude who got fired did make a public apology, and Adria didn't. But again, that's on her. That's not about what's ethical about the way we treat others. The way we behave as 3rd parties to all of this i don't think is contingent on whether or not Adria apologizes for something.
Sure, she might. But say you are evaluating Adria and another, equally competent candidate for a position. Why would you pick Adria knowing that if you hire her (despite the fact that she may have changed), you might trigger some 'undesirable reactions'?
Just for the record, I feel like Jonah Lehrer's transgression was much less objectionable than Adria's.
Now, that is especially interesting. Because Jonah Lehrer has proven to be a plagiarist and a fabricator on a large number of occasions. On top of that, he demonstrated that he does not understand that he has a responsibility to the truth and accurately representing the world to others.
That's basically the journalistic death penalty. I don't trust anything he writes, and neither should you.
Adria's behavior was dumb, and egregious in a way, but i doubt she anticipated that it would lead to anybody's firing (let alone her own). She was not acting out of malice (so far as anyone can determine) or in direct contravention to the core tenets of her profession. It was also a single incident.
Ok, I'm not all that familiar with the Jonah Lehrer situation, but from what I understand it was self-plagiarism. If that was really the case, then that's just stupid. If it was not and he plagiarized other people's works or made stuff up, then that's a different story.
The conduct was not comparable. Their conduct was immature, surely, and PyCon had a process in place to deal with it (and they did). Adria did not let it stop there and used her influence and position to publicly bully them under the guise of fighting for gender equality.
I don't think she could've imagined that he would've been fired over something like that. I'm sure that surprised everyone. The "bullying" I referred to was simply exposing those developers' picture to her considerably-sized twitter audience. With her position and the scope of her influence, that alone is bullying. The firing, her followup posts, etc. just make everything worse.
The problem with this line of argument is that she didn't intend to get him fired. The most that should have happened was a larger discussion. The fact that he was fired was an overreaction by the employer, not her.
While that may be strictly true, we've now created an environment where if you don't deal with something as quickly as humanly possible, you get crushed with negative publicity. So the company could either sit back and seem to condone sexism or fire him and hopefully come out the moral victor. Clearly a false dichotomy, but one of our own creation. Twitter is routinely used as a tool for bullying (for good causes or bad) rather than reasonable discourse. The 140 char limit and ease of retweets makes the former trivial and the latter all but impossible. I routinely think we'd all be better off if it just went away.
Where's the understanding and tolerance for questionable conduct that was offered to the two guys making jokes now?