In the week or so since she tweeted a picture of a joking developer that eventually resulted in his firing, her company SendGrid getting DDOS’d, her getting fired too, and a host of sometimes-scary attacks online, she hasn’t tweeted or blogged or spoken in public. I have been in email communication with her, but she has not wanted to go on the record via an interview.

Today, she released a statement, which All Things D published:

Those who know me well in the developer and tech community recognize that I have always tried to conduct myself in a way that builds bridges for everyone. My central aim is to do everything I can to help create new, inclusive inroads for all, no matter who they are, where they come from or what they believe. Development is about innovation, creativity, and in a grand sense, the betterment of human society through technology. So, it stands to reason that everyone should have a seat at the table, and everyone involved in this vital community should feel welcome, safe and respected. In essence, the worldwide community of developers can and should function as a reflection of what our wider society strives to be.

I cannot comment at this time on the specifics of what occurred at PyCon on March 17, and the subsequent events of the following days, but I can offer some general thoughts. I don’t think anyone who was part of what happened at PyCon that day could possibly have imagined how this issue would have exploded into the public consciousness the way it has. I certainly did not, and now that the severest of consequences have manifested, all I wish to do is find the good in what has been one of the most challenging weeks of my life.

And I do believe there is good to be found in this situation. Debate and recrimination can and must give way to dialog that explores the root causes of these issues in the tech industry. As developers and members of the startup community, we can welcome newcomers, women and people of color who, as of now, are under-represented in our ranks. And, all of us can learn a great deal from those who are well-established in the field. We can solidify the values of our workplaces (yes, conference spaces are workplaces!), and set new, positive and inclusive examples for other professional disciplines.

What happened at PyCon has cast a spotlight on a range of deep issues and problems in the developer world. As ugly as this situation has become, all of these issues have reasonable, and, I think, easily reached solutions that will help us cast conflict aside and construct a more cohesive and welcoming professional environment based on respect, trust and open communication. I do not, at this time, wish to concentrate on the fallout of the last several days. Instead, I want to be an integral part of a diverse, core group of individuals that comes together in a spirit of healing and openness to devise answers to the many questions that have arisen in the last week. Together, we can work to make the tech world a better place to work for everyone, and in doing so, we make the wider world a better place for all.

The conspicuous absences from her statement include any mention of the PlayHaven developer who got fired as a result of her initial tweet. Since Richards has already stated that she had no intention or wish that he lose his job, you might think she would have included some kind of olive branch to that developer. She also leaves out any mention of whether she now feels that what she did — publicly call out private individuals having a private conversation — was the right thing to do.

However, I think one thing we can all agree with her on here is that this has definitely cast a spotlight on gender issues in the developer world.

And hopefully some good can come out of that.

Yes, this is about the Adria Richards/SendGrid/PlayHaven/PyCon thing. And this is about the inevitable clash between a boy’s club locker room culture and women in technology. But much, much, much more than that, it’s about the reaction.

Update: Adria Richards’ statement

Or should I say the reactions. By everyone involved.

I have been in email communication with both the fired Adria Richards and the fired PlayHaven developer for the past two days. They are reasonable, normal, approachable people. And right now they’re both scared and bewildered at all that has happened.

But this morning Adria broke my heart, and the hearts of all those who give a damn about women in technology.

Last night, at about 2 a.m., after a series of emails with her, I said this:

Tell me at least that u will not be the next Kathy Sierra.

Kathy Sierra is a smart, passionate, funny woman in technology who essentially said her goodbyes to the online world after receiving multiple rape and death threats for, essentially, being a woman in technology. Hacker Andrew Auernheimer, who was just sentenced to 41 months in jail for an unrelated (and controversial) crime, was one of those who harassed her. Sierra’s last blog post, from her awesome “Creating Passionate Users” blog, was in 2007.

The worst thing that could happen here in this new situation — along with a developer losing his job and his ability to provide for his children — is that as a result of this incident, we’d lose another smart, passionate, funny, and awesome woman in technology. But that might happen.

Her answer, at 6:05 AM this morning?

I’m staying safe.

And that broke my heart. And that made me get up and write this on my day off. And I hope it breaks yours.

Look, whatever “side” of this you’re on, here’s what happened:

1. Some guys made some guy jokes about guy stuff
2. A woman got offended and did something that was probably an over-reaction
3. Some conference organizers over-reacted
4. A company (PlayHaven) over-reacted
5. The internet (all of us, but especially Anonymous) over-reacted
6. Another company (SendGrid) over-reacted

I’ve been cursed and pilloried and told to go kill myself by people on both sides of the issue just for writing about these events. People from both sides see what they want to see and, like trained attack dogs, go in for the kill with little consideration, no mercy, no nuance, no shades of grey. They are so blinded by their self-righteousness that they’re perfectly OK with perpetrating more metaphorical violence in the service of their almighty god-blessed cause.

It’s been unbelievably worse for Adria.

She’s been extensively hated on. Threatened with rape. Threatened with decapitation — I saw the tweet with a picture of a stripped dead woman, bloody on a bed, head unattached to the torso, myself. (It’s now deleted and the Twitter account has been suspended.)

And yeah, it’s been horrible for the PlayHaven developer who lost his job. Who had his character and reputation assaulted in public. Who now has to find a new job in tech to support his kids. What’s worse, is that he’s not in Silicon Valley, where coders are in crazy urgent over-demand and a job is a cheap commodity to be tossed aside and picked up again whenever you wish. It won’t be easy for him.

So now here we are.

A developer has lost his job for no really good reason (as Richards has also said). The Internet exploded, with a significant chunk of it spewing hate and vitriol, including rape and death threats. A developer evangelist has lost her job too, for no really good reason. And women and men in technology have even more baggage and mistrust to process .

All because a developer and a developer evangelist made a couple of mistakes.

Where’s the forgiveness? Where’s the acceptance? Where’s the ability to not fly off the handle and go apeshit at zero to sixty when we see something we don’t like or we have a problem? Why do we feel we can call people whores, or idiots, or scumbags, or worse, just because there’s a computer and some wires between us and them?

Do we now live in a culture where there are no second chances, where there’s no ability to call a Mulligan, get a do-over, or just have a bad day?

Who can live that like? Who’s the perfect one among us who doesn’t screw up?

I’ve been slandered by both sides for my perceived bias on this, and I agree that no person and no journalist is completely unbiased. I’ve tried to draw a balanced line here, but I figure that if I’m going to be damned, I might as well be damned for what I actually believe.

So here it is:

I think this would never have hit the fan if the PlayHaven developer had just told one or two jokes, then let other people actually listen to the presentation. I think this would never have hit the fan if Adria had just turned in her seat and said, “Hey guys, do you mind?” I think this would never have hit the fan if the conference organizers had just gone up to the developer and said, “Hey, can you tone it down, please?” I think this would never have hit the fan if PlayHaven had not taken this slim pretext to fire a developer for a couple of dongle jokes.

But everyone over-reacted.

Everyone escalated, instead of taking a half a moment to think, relax, chill, give the benefit of the doubt, be a little easy-going, and realize that everyone is bloody well human and we all make mistakes.

Once the PlayHaven developer was fired, that was the tipping point. Then the Internet erupted, as male developers saw one of their own attacked for something that just about every man can envision himself doing. Then hackers targeted SendGrid with a DDOS attack.

Then SendGrid took the next step in escalation. And cowardice. They cut and run, and left their employee hanging in the wind. And made a bad situation even worse.

But SendGrid had another option.

Its leaders could have taken a leadership role. Maybe create a forum to talk about this issue. Bring Richards and the PlayHaven developer together for a public conversation. Ask Richards to extend an olive branch, which she already basically has done, by saying she didn’t intend for him to lose his job and that she feels bad that he did. Offer the dude a job. Ask Richards and him to come to a public understanding. Wrap it up in a bow and turn poisonous lemons into lemonade: a chance for us to advance the conversation between women and men in technology without the yelling, without the threats, without the hate.

And I think they would have come out like heroes.

What does this mean for women in the future who try to take a stand (whether right or not)? What do you do now if you are a woman in technology and you feel harassed or abused and want to shine a light on it, but now see this prominent woman totally abandoned by her company?

I’ll tell you what you do, unless you’re a saint or a hero. You shut up. You put your head down. You grin and bear it, because it’s a man’s world. And you leave, eventually, for a better place.

And we’re all poorer as a result.

Adria Richards’ Twitter account has 32,383 tweets and 12,204 followers. Most days, she would post multiple times, adding her voice to the wider conversation that is technology.

Since March 20, she has not published a single tweet. There have been no new posts on her blog.

She’s been silenced.

Congratulations, Internet.

photo credit: Chuckumentary via photopin cc

“This has really just spiraled out of control on a lot of levels,” a company representative told me over the phone this morning.

Quick history: a PlayHaven developer made jokes of an allegedly sexual nature at PyCon. Adria Richards, an evangelist for SendGrid, tweeted a picture of him and his colleague, calling him out. The developer was fired by PlayHaven, and then SendGrid came under intensive DDOS hack attacks. This morning, Richards herself was fired.

PlayHaven CEO Andy Wang wrote that the company is dedicated to gender equality and honorable behavior, and he hints that the employee was fired for multiple reasons:

PlayHaven had an employee who was identified as making inappropriate comments at PyCon, and as a company that is dedicated to gender equality and values honorable behavior, we conducted a thorough investigation. The result of this investigation led to the unfortunate outcome of having to let this employee go. We value and protect the privacy of our employees, both past and present, and we will not comment on all the factors that contributed to our parting ways.

That’s basically what the company representative who I talked to this morning said as well, adding that there are multiple considerations that factor into decisions like this.

It’s not the story I’m hearing from the developer himself, however.

I have not yet been granted permission to quote the developer, who calls himself Mr Hank on Hacker News and emailed me from what looks like a very recently-created “mr hank” email account. In his email, “Mr Hank” said he just wants the issue to be resolved and over and is looking out for the best interests of his children. I’m still asking him for more details and permission to quote him.

One thing I think everyone could agree on?

“I wish this could just be about the issue,” the PlayHaven representative told me today. “This is an important topic to discuss, but the forum should be a constructive one.”

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Email delivery company SendGrid has fired developer evangelist Adria Richards (pictured above) after she outed a developer who was allegedly making sexual jokes during a conference, via Twitter.

The developer in question was fired by his employer, PlayHaven, after Richards posted his picture and a few details about what he said. VentureBeat broke the story last night.

Full story: PlayHaven developer fired for sexual jokes after SendGrid marketer outs him on Twitter

Follow-up: SendGrid is now under DDOS attack

And the latest: Adria Richards’ statement

The company made a statement on its Facebook account:

Effective immediately, SendGrid has terminated the employment of Adria Richards. While we generally are sensitive and confidential with respect to employee matters, the situation has taken on a public nature. We have taken action that we believe is in the overall best interests of SendGrid, its employees, and our customers. As we continue to process the vast amount of information, we will post something more comprehensive.

At first there was some concern that, although this was showing up on SendGrid’s Facebook account, the company may have had its social media accounts hacked.. SendGrid was under DDOS attack , which means that some fairly sophisticated hackers are focused on the company, and it is not beyond the realm of possibility that they had cracked into SendGrid’s social media accounts.

However, SendGrid has also confirmed the firing on Twitter:

Effective immediately, @adriarichards has been terminated from @sendgrid. For more details, please see ow.ly/jhW0y

— SendGrid (@SendGrid) March 21, 2013

And late on March 21, the company confirmed the termination on its blog:

On Sunday at PyCon, Adria Richards felt comments made behind her during a conference session were inappropriate and of an offensive, sexual nature. We understand that Adria believed the conduct to be inappropriate and support her right to report the incident to PyCon personnel. To be clear, SendGrid supports the right to report inappropriate behavior, whenever and wherever it occurs.

What we do not support was how she reported the conduct. Her decision to tweet the comments and photographs of the people who made the comments crossed the line. Publicly shaming the offenders – and bystanders – was not the appropriate way to handle the situation. Even PyCon has since updated their Code of Conduct due to this situation. Needless to say, a heated public debate ensued. The discourse, productive at times, quickly spiraled into extreme vitriol.

A SendGrid developer evangelist’s responsibility is to build and strengthen our Developer Community across the globe. In light of the events over the last 48+ hours, it has become obvious that her actions have strongly divided the same community she was supposed to unite. As a result, she can no longer be effective in her role at SendGrid.

In the end, the consequences that resulted from how she reported the conduct put our business in danger. Our commitment to our 130 employees, their families, our community members and our more than 130,000 valued customers is our primary concern.

This is a fairly shocking move. While on the one hand there is legitimate concern over the public outing of a developer for what even by Richards’ account are fairly innocuous jokes, there’s also a long-standing boys-club atmosphere around the tech world that lends itself to certain kinds of salty, crude, and sometimes inappropriate behavior, and it’s not hard to imagine that Richards finally felt like she needed to take a stand.

On the other hand, her job at SendGrid is developer relations.

Like it or not, reality is that developers are mostly male, often young, and sometimes crude. And they have reacted with startling vigor and venom at one of their own being fired for comments about dongles and forking — some veering way into crazy criminal territory and issuing rape and death threats.

It’s easy to see that the company may believe Richards will have a difficult time doing her job after this. And it’s also easy to see that they may see this as a quick fix for the DDOS’ing attacks on the company’s website and services. But the easiest thing of all to see is that there may be multiple lawsuits about this entire issue before we’re done.

The Facebook post has some of the best commentary on this issue: everyone’s losing.

From David Doran:

I wonder if this is legit. If so, this is one hell of a mess. Everyone’s going to lose here: SendGrid, Adria, the community, the “jokers”.

And from Jason DePriest:

The dude shouldn’t have been fired and neither should Adria. Thanks American Corporations for shitting all over employees. Maybe the two comapanies should just swap employees instead of putting two people out of work during a recession.

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After hearing several jokes about forking software repositories and “big dongles,” SendGrid’s developer evangelist Adria Richards tweeted a picture of the jokesters with the hashtag “pycon.” Conference organizers saw the tweet, ejected the developers, and in short order, PlayHaven fired one of the accused.

Full story: Playhaven developer fired for sexual jokes after SendGrid marketer outs him on Twitter

Update: Adria Richards’ statement

Then the Internet erupted … or at least some fraction of the male developer portion of it. Richards received rape and death threats on Twitter, the fired developer published about the incident on Hacker News, and at least one Twitter user felt so strongly about the case that he made a 10-minute video explaining his aggressive and potentially abusive tweets aimed at Richards and posted it on Tumblr.

Today, SendGrid, the email delivery company where Richards works, is under a DDOS attack.

So are the idiots now DDoS’ing SendGrid because of #pycon? YOU ARE BREAKING THE INTERNET YOU FOOLS

— Tane Piper (@tanepiper) March 21, 2013

A DDOS attack basically shuts down a website or Internet service by flooding it with traffic. Communication requests from a distributed pool of computers — often in a botnet controlled by a hacker — occupy the site’s servers and make it impossible for the site to continue.

So SendGrid.com is currently inaccessible, and that’s not the only problem: At least some developers are cancelling their accounts with the service.

Canceled my accout with @sendgrid today. I cannot do business with someone who supports a woman who gets a father fired over a joke #freedom

— Pj(@pjmprometheus) March 21, 2013

SendGrid posted about the incident — apparently trying to calm the furor — but says that mail is still being sent. I’m trying to contact the company for more information and Adria Richards for her perspective on this entire situation.

We hear you, internet. We’re working to serve our customers at the moment. Further comments, once we’ve done our job of delivering email ^tf

— SendGrid (@SendGrid) March 21, 2013

Adria Richards’ personal site, But You’re A Girl, is also under DDOS attack but is currently being protected by CloudFlare. That’s something her company might want to consider as well.

Interestingly, PlayHaven.com, the company that fired the developer, is working just fine.

photo credit: mafate69 via photopin cc

Update: SendGrid is now under DDOS attack

BREAKING: SendGrid has now fired Adria Richards

Update Mar 27: Adria Richards’ statement

Richards was sitting in the audience immediately in front of two developers. After someone made a comment about forking a software repository, the two allegedly began making jokes about forking in a sexual manner and “big dongles.” After listening for some time, Richards got fed up, took a picture of the two, and posted it to Twitter:

Not cool.Jokes about forking repo’s in a sexual way and “big” dongles.Right behind me #pycon twitter.com/adriarichards/…

— Adria Richards (@adriarichards) March 17, 2013

One of those two developers is Alex Reid, an engineer at PlayHaven, the mobile gaming monetization and marketing company. The other developer, whose name is not yet known but goes by mr-hank on Hacker News, was fired by PlayHaven for the incident (PlayHaven confirmed this today). He posted about what happened from his perspective on Hacker News and denied that any sexual comments were made about forking:

While I did make a big dongle joke about a fictional piece hardware that identified as male, no sexual jokes were made about forking. My friends and I had decided forking someone’s repo is a new form of flattery, the highest form being implementation, and we were excited about one of the presenters projects; a friend said “I would fork that guys repo.” The sexual context was applied by Adria, and not us.

He added that, in his opinion, this was not a fair fight. And that as a result of Richards’ tweet, he — a father of three — was fired from his job:

My second comment is this, Adria has an audience and is a successful person of the media. Just check out her web page linked in her twitter account, her hard work and social activism speaks for itself. With that great power and reach comes responsibility. As a result of the picture she took I was let go from my job today. Which sucks because I have 3 kids and I really liked that job.

She gave me no warning, she smiled while she snapped the pic and sealed my fate.

Richards explained her perspective on her blog, But You’re a Girl, saying she took the comments for as long as she could, but when she saw a picture of a little girl onstage, she felt she needed to make a stand for her and all the women who have not considered technology as a career path “because the ass clowns behind me would make it impossible for her to do so.”

As the conversation violated PyCon’s rules of conduct, and as she was personally offended, she decided to make the developers’ behavior public. As a result of her tweets, PyCon staff talked to her, identified the men, and escorted them out of the room. Within days, apparently, one of the developers lost his job — although there is now a Care2 online petition asking PlayHaven to give “the mistreated employee their job back.”

The upshot?

A storm of opinion and controversy has erupted on Richards’ blog and Twitter accounts about whether her actions were appropriate or not, and much of it has turned misogynistic and nasty. Developers and others, both male and female, have expressed differing opinions, with some supporting Richards and others condemning her for being too harsh. One has even posted a 10-minute video on Tumblr attacking her. A Pastebin record of the incident from the developers’ perspective is currently a top-four link on Hacker News.

One woman developer, @snipeyhead, went so far as to say that Richards’ actions actually make things worse for women:

@sandys1 Honestly, I feel like this kind of crazy shit makes it harder for women to manage in tech

— snipe ツ (@snipeyhead) March 21, 2013

While standing by her actions, Richards has tweeted that she did not think the developer should lose his job. It’s fairly clear that getting him fired was not her intention. And it’s also pretty obvious that the PyCon code of conduct, which presumably all attendees had the opportunity at least glance at and agree to, prohibits conversations like the one the developers were engaged in:

All communication should be appropriate for a professional audience including people of many different backgrounds. Sexual language and imagery is not appropriate for any conference venue, including talks.

Be kind to others. Do not insult or put down other attendees. Behave professionally. Remember that harassment and sexist, racist, or exclusionary jokes are not appropriate for PyCon.

Attendees violating these rules may be asked to leave the conference without a refund at the sole discretion of the conference organizers.

Still, it’s a tough situation for the developer in question — and perhaps for other developers who must now be concerned about their language and conduct not only in the office but away from the job. Perhaps that’s a good thing, to a certain extent, but it’s also a chilling effect and a limitation on the idea freedom of speech (even though the 1st Amendment only protects against government censorship).

Which freedom, by the way, Richards has used to publicly made sexual references in a joking manner herself, just a few days prior to this incident:

@skwashd you should put something in your pants next time…like a bunch of socks inside one…large…sock.TSA agent faint

— Adria Richards (@adriarichards) March 14, 2013

I’ve tried to reach out to Richards via Twitter but have not heard back. Likely, she’s not checking her Twitter messages, as many of them appear to be insulting … or even criminal, with one going so far as to threaten rape and another so vile that I cannot embed it here that essentially threatens both rape and murder. (I’ve flagged that tweet for Twitter to consider and hopefully remove, by the way, and you might wish to do the same.) A Ruby on Rails developer forwarded it to me, who added a very sad note:

I can’t imagine my daughter wanting to get into an industry that has these sorts of things happen. So evil.

VentureBeat will continue to try to get a comment from Richards.

SendGrid, too, has been drawn into the conversation, with some male developers I’ve spoken to (who do not want to be named) saying that they’re less likely to use SendGrid as a result. Richards tweeted that SendGrid did support her, however.

There’s no neat knot to tie up on this one. Essentially, too many men and women in America — and in technology — have different ideas about what is appropriate and what is not. There’s no question that women face huge challenges in technology, and there’s also no question that the Twitter and blog comment response from the wider community has gone way over the top.

Frankly, it would be great to bring Richards and the now-unemployed developer together to discuss what has happened and how we can move forward from here. If you’re him, please contact me about this issue.

photo credit: Liam Wilde via photopin cc

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He may also take the prize for most F-bombs per sentence of any investor.

I caught up with McClure at the GROW 2012 conference in Vancouver yesterday and spent a few minutes asking him whatever popped into my head. Here’s the interview.

VentureBeat: What’s your favorite startup right now?

Dave McClure: Favorite startup right now that I’m not an investor in … if AngelList is considered a startup, that would be my favorite.

VentureBeat: Gotcha — I know you’ve got a passion for AngelList. I heard that today.

Dave McClure: Totally! Actually, full disclosure, I’m an advisor.

Favorite startup in our portfolio — all my children are beautiful [Laughs] — right now, recent favorite I would say probably Refer.ly. Danielle Morrill — I’m really psyched about what she’s doing. Some older ones that I love: MindSnacks, AppStack, Dulio, SendGrid.

VentureBeat: What’s the hottest space to invest in right now?

Dave McClure: [Laughs] That’s such a lame-ass fucking question.

VentureBeat: Yes, it is! [Laughs] But I’m still asking it.

Dave McClure: Hottest space that I think is interesting would be education, particularly like ages 3-10.

VentureBeat: Most clueless founder question you ever got?

Dave McClure: Oh, that’s like … that could be its own show!

Hmm … most clueless founder question … I don’t want to be too harsh, but understanding basic shit that’s on Venture Hacks or AngelList or something like that. There’s a lot of available information online … basic term sheet stuff or valuation.

VentureBeat: What are the three most important things for startups to get right?

Dave McClure: Customers, problem, and don’t spend too much time on it.

VentureBeat: Best investment ever?

Dave McClure: I think right now that looks like Wildfire, an investment I made when I was at Facebook Fund, and it looks like a 40-times or 50-times return … $350 million exit.

VentureBeat: The biggest cause of startup failure?

Dave McClure: Taking too long to ship or not listening to customers.

VentureBeat: What’s the startup you thought was stupid but ended up rocking?

Dave McClure: Boy, there’s a long list of fuck-ups I’ve made in not investing … stupid is kinda harsh … probably AirBnB, because they had the cereal box thing, and I’m just, like, I’m not getting it.

VentureBeat: You’re in Vancouver quite often. What’s the best thing about Vancouver?

Dave McClure: This view is fucking amazing … we’re looking out at Vancouver harbor right now, which is gorgeous, astonishing.

VentureBeat: What’s the thing that pisses you off most about the recent Twitter API changes?

Dave McClure: Ahh … haven’t been following it too closely and I don’t think it’s necessarily irrational … it’s just like they decided to make some relatively hardcore decisions on how their developer community operates, which is quite different from how it used to operate.

Understandably, I know a lot of people are pissed off, but understandably, I think they need to figure the business model also. Maybe not my choice, but … I get it.

VentureBeat: What’s the most important thing you learned when you were at PayPal?

Dave McClure: Offline anything is expensive. Online is much cheaper usually to do almost anything.

VentureBeat: What’s the one thing you want a do-over on?

Dave McClure: Last 20 years? [Laughs].

Ahh … probably the opportunity to invest in Fab, Uber, LivingSocial, AirBnb … all those I had very significant opportunities with the founders — at least most of those I know personally — and totally fucked that up. [Laughs]

Image credit: John Koetsier