> But critics accused the company of abandoning an employee who had stood for what’s right,<p>Adria Richards was the one who tried to start a witch hunt by talking photos of the two individuals who were just minding their own business joking around.<p>Just imagine this. Think of all the jokes you share with your close ones in your private time, off the record. Say one day, a random person suddenly takes photo of you and declare you a racist, sexist, rapist etc for overhearing what's supposed offensive to them. No matter how harmless the joke is, the damage is done. You'll be branded as whatever the person says you are.<p>Is this the type of behavior we want to promote by saying this is just action? Think really carefully before you defend such action. It can really ruin lives.
ISTM Shauna Hunt, the reporter, handled the situation very well. Unlike other aggrieved parties who have responded to perceived insult with innuendo, passive aggression, etc., she just asked the dude what was up, and let him hang himself. Had she done otherwise, the story we'd be hearing would be about the "backlash" against her, but even internet morons can't fault her behavior here.<p>Friends don't let friends drink and talk to reporters.
> But critics accused the company of abandoning an employee who had stood for what’s right, and the case has come to symbolize the conu<p>That is some disingenuous and biased reporting. Many would say that Adria Richards wasn't fired because she stood up for what's right, but rather because she was defending what was wrong - her interpretation of the guys' joke, that is. (Not to mention the creepshot she took of the developers behind her and the public shaming she engaged in.)
This is sad in many ways.<p>It's sad that people think being vulgar is funny.<p>It's sad that people get carried away with what's funny and feel they need to be cool.<p>It's sad that people are rearing to jump on anyone who is but a symbol of something the masses disprove of, again, mainly not out of being a good citizen, but out of trying to be cool. The defender of the faith.<p>It's sad that people's alcohol fueled idiocy -not crime,but idiocy, becomes public and has repercussions in real life.<p>It's sad these vigilantes one day will also make fools of themselves, this is inevitable, one can hope the pitchforks will not come out for them, but they probably will.<p>It's sad people and companies don't have the wherewithal to separate private from public lives. If I were to become an employer one day, what you say on your time is your province, not mine. When you're representing the company, that's different.
"To short-circuit those scenarios, she notes, many major institutions and companies have introduced annual code-of-conduct courses—mandatory refreshers that include explicit warnings that employees represent the company at all times, and that failure to abide could result in dismissal. A few firms try to head off trouble by performing social media background checks on prospective employees."<p>This is the scary part. Basically Big Brother is your source of income. Most employees are not compensated to be on-guard 24x7 and video edits, twitter size limits, and misreporting make matters worse.<p>"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." - source disputed but very true these days.
In many cases, it's not even about the content of their messages. It's about a total lack of awareness, especially concerning their medium of speech. To me that's far more damning than an off-kilter joke or a moment of drunken stupidity.<p>Why would you say something really stupid like "FHRITP" to a reporter with a microphone? Or defend someone else saying that? Especially to a NEWS reporter?<p>Sure, blah blah blah, alcohol. If you're out of college and can't be drunk without saying some really monumentally stupid shit in a very public manner, that's worrisome. Are you going to act that way in front of a client or business partner if you go out drinking with them one night? Are you also going to say stupid shit like that at the company holiday party?<p>Admittedly some of these are out-of-context tweets or photos. That sucks to have your inside jokes taken out of context, for sure. At first, I think many of us internalize things like Twitter as "public-but-not-really", until things like this happen that remind us: If you don't intentionally make it private, social media like Twitter is VERY public. You probably wouldn't make that joke while giving a public speech - probably shouldn't make it on Twitter, unless you're extremely careful about the context.
Could Gillis, the author of the article, be afraid of the outrage mob himself?<p>Simoes was fired for acting rudely on his personal time in a venue where such behavior is common.<p>Richards was fired for launching an unprovoked public attack against software developers. SendGrid was paying her to be there representing the company.<p>Both of the did act like assholes. He apologized, she refuses to do so.<p>Yet Gillis makes Richards out to be the victim.
Incidentally, whoever is doing PR for Jon Ronson's book is a fucking wizard at their job. I don't think I've ever seen a book promoted so ubiquitously, through so many different channels, hitting so many different audiences over such a sustained period of time.<p>Reading all the different articles, it's possible to see hints of how orchestrated the entire process was and how the same stories get pushed into different contexts to provide relevancy to different audiences.<p>Execution wise, all this took a fuckton of work by absolute professionals and I'd love to read a behind the scenes post-mortem of the work once it's completed. There's sure to be lessons from this campaign that would be valuable to anyone working in or needing PR.<p>PS: Please don't post a link to Paul Graham's submarine piece yet again. It's not a bad piece of writing but it's become the de facto piece on understanding PR which is all kinds of tragic. If the submarine piece is the best piece of writing you know of on PR, then it's likely you know almost nothing about the field and should refrain from commenting as if you do.
The tagline for the article is ridiculous.<p>"Sexist buffoonery cost Shawn Simoes his job. But you could lose yours for a lot less. Welcome to the creeping corporate takeover of our private lives."<p>It's not corporate takeover of our private lives. It's people choosing to make public what should never be public. That woman, Justine Saccos, said something stupid that might have been considered funny amongst a small group of friends. But to the whole world it made her look like a buffoon. (subsequent interviews she comes across as a reasonable person)<p>(the article is all over the place)<p>When I've tried to hire people I've been given summaries of their social media and I think it's a completely valid part of the hiring process. In my experience using things like facebook, twitter, (g+, orkut, friendster, etc), has more potential negatives than positives. People are always looking for negative things about other people on social media, whether it's stalking, hiring, or dating.<p>That said, I have used Facebook in the past as a corporate promotional tool, having interns take care of my personal Facebook page and the company's. I've never actually used Facebook myself though.
I have little against wicked humour, but the audience should be carefully
chosen. If some people are stupid enough to make it public on social media --
well, they deserve their fates.