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Comment by outworlder | Hacker News Reader

I remember this episode well.

Adria is more immature than the jokes that she supposedly got offended by.

Let's ennumerate:

- She overheard a conversation that wasn't directed at her. In the middle of a conference she was hopefully not coerced at attending and should be paying attention to the speaker - She took a picture of two people, without asking for permission - She twitted said picture with negative comments - She followed up(!) the tweet with a blog post - She called one of the guy's employers (!!!)

And that interview, my god. I really have nothing good to say about it.

The reactions afterwards from supporters of both sides aren't an example of maturity either. But that's what you get when you invoke an angry mob to do a job that could be handled in a civil manner.

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> She overheard a conversation that wasn't directed at her. In the middle of a conference she was hopefully not coerced at attending and should be paying attention to the speaker

I don't think you're supposed to ignore what's going on around you just because it wasn't directed at you and you're at a conference. The other reasons are valid, but this one doesn't strike me as such.

On the flip side, you're not supposed to get involved in everything that's going on around you just because it's going on. It's pretty easy to mistakenly thunder in on a half-heard conversation without any context.

Definitely, there's a balance there. That does mean that the GP post of "wasn't supposed to do it" isn't always right.

Uhm actually listening to a clearly private conversation is a breach of manners, if nothing else.

> She took a picture of two people, without asking for permission - She twitted said picture with negative comments

That's the main thing imo. One may not expose normal persons in such a public way without asking for consent. If I attend a conference I have the right to stay anonymous.

> If I attend a conference I have the right to stay anonymous.

Sadly, legally you have no such right. You are in a public space, and anyone can take your picture freely and do pretty much what they want with it. Our society doesn't even have coherent social norms about reasonable rights to privacy in public spaces, much less law.

I agree that it would be reasonable to expect some level of anonymity, though. Hopefully some day it will be.

I do not in any way condone what happened to her (It's sad I even have to say that), that said, I feel equal sympathy for her and she does for Hank which appears to be none. I'm not going to rehash all the reasons that what she did was wrong, I'm just going to call it like I see it: she fucked over Hank and didn't care the price he paid but then felt it was unfair when she was made to pay the same price.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: You have the right to free speech and your employer, peers, friends, etc have the right to react to your use of "free speech" it is not some suit of armor you can protect yourself in. I think (In terms of her losing her job NOT the backlash, death threats, etc) she got exactly what she deserved and her statement "if I had kids, I wouldn't tell jokes" (Really.... WTF) only confirms and cements my opinion. No remorse at all for her actions and "poor old me" routine stinks of BS.

None of this is meant to remove guilt from the company that fired Hank, that was a BS move on their part and they should have stood behind him or at least spent some time looking into it instead of firing him on the spot. That said, SendGrid was well within their rights, and I'd argue morally obligated, to kick her ass to curb. You can't fuck over developers (and don't think that the greater development community didn't see this as a near-personal attack on them as a whole) and expect to keep your job as developer evangelist. I know I'd never want to work with her or watch her speak at a conference.

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