A bunch of sexist loons attack somebody, and the right thing to do is fire her because it proves she isn't a good evangelist anymore? Seems to me that's awarding a really dangerous amount of power to sexist loons on the Internet.
... I suppose I should defend the "sexist loons" label. It would be one thing if people were attacking PlayHaven. They're the ones who made the decision to overreact to Adria's post and fire the guy - a decision she apparently disagreed with. That people got mad at Adria, rather than the folks with hiring & firing power, is, well, weird at best. And if you read the comment threads (like the one on SendGrid's Facebook post), it becomes clear that the explanation for a lot of the weirdness that a bunch of men have deep-seated grievances against "feminists". For people who are saying she deserved to be fired because she linked John Scalzi's post - http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-th... - this is clearly not about free speech or privacy. And the rage level against Adria would be way lower without those people.
While none of us can say for sure what SendGrid's exact reasons were for firing her, I don't think the "sexist loons" are it.
While representing her employer at a conference, she unnecessarily publicly shamed two developers. Like I've said before, none of this should have ever left Pycon.
Then (and what I think was the nail in the coffin) she made her "my employer supports me" tweet. SendGrid had made no comment about the incident, and now she has directly connected them to it.
So now, claiming she has SendGrid's support, in her capacity as a developer evangelist, she has publicly shamed two people in the demographic her position requires her to build relations with.
That is what I think proved she is not a good evangelist anymore.
We don't know what SendGrid told her before she made that Tweet. Absent the firing, I'd have assumed they told her they supported her, and even now I think it's a reasonably likely possibility.
Beyond that, I'm torn between two responses. On the one hand, her post may have been an overreaction, but I don't think its indefensible. If you say something offensive in public, it's not a huge escalation for somebody to post on social media, "hey this guy said something offensive". It's the firing that's the big escalation, and that's all on PlayHaven - it's not like Adria even called for it, let alone had the power to enact it.
On the other hand, I think that's almost irrelevant, because it's naive to believe that SendGrid's firing decision was made on the merits of her actions, absent the context of all the Internet outrage. If they think she can't do her job anymore, it's because a bunch of people "in the demographic her position requires her to build relations with" get really bizarrely enraged when a woman asks them to change their behavior, and SendGrid was feeling the heat. It's not because she demonstrated such bad judgment that a reasonable person couldn't trust her decision-making ever again.
If she was really in a position of power, she wouldn't be fired. Let me be clear: the power to hire & fire is a serious one. The power to call people bad things on the Internet is not, unless people with the first power choose to say "oh, people said bad things about you on the Internet, we have to fire you now regardless of the merits." My argument is that we shouldn't accept that from employers.
... I suppose I should defend the "sexist loons" label. It would be one thing if people were attacking PlayHaven. They're the ones who made the decision to overreact to Adria's post and fire the guy - a decision she apparently disagreed with. That people got mad at Adria, rather than the folks with hiring & firing power, is, well, weird at best. And if you read the comment threads (like the one on SendGrid's Facebook post), it becomes clear that the explanation for a lot of the weirdness that a bunch of men have deep-seated grievances against "feminists". For people who are saying she deserved to be fired because she linked John Scalzi's post - http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-th... - this is clearly not about free speech or privacy. And the rage level against Adria would be way lower without those people.