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It definitely sounds like she is either in the early stages of a lawsuit or in the process of bringing one against SendGrid. With her argument being that 'conference spaces are work places' and that she was fired because she reported something that happened while at work.

This statement seems very pruned compared to her previous writing and blog posts.

Although I'm kind of happy that this fiasco has shed some light on sexism in technology, I'm glad to see that it has stopped snowballing into a circus.

4 comments

The conference spaces are work places is an interesting angle, but would it hold in her favor? Had she informed pycon sans tweets and blog posts I think it'd be an easy win in her favor, but unfortunately that's not really all she did.

Consider a workplace scenario:

Employee A is unhappy about coworker B. Instead of discretely talking to management about it, Employee A publicly shames B. B is fired. There's a big hoopla about it outside the company. Employer fires A stating that A can no longer perform their job due to the way A handled B.

I would hope that a wrongful termination suit fails for the reasons you mentioned, that doesn't mean it will though. I also don't think the conference spaces are work places comment holds any water. If tickets to the conference are open to the public then it is a public event. If your employer purchases your ticket to a public event you may still be bound by workplace conduct rules but should also have no expectation that other attendees will.

>she was fired because she reported something that happened while at work

Did she formally report the issue to her employer's HR department, or did she just make a public tweet?

It's not an HR issue. The guy who offended her wasn't an employee of her company.

I don't think that she has grounds for suing SendGrid. It's pretty clear that she was fired for cause. Her job was to be a "developer evangelist" and she was probably paid by SendGrid to be at the conference, representing them in an official capacity. Going out of her way to alienate the very developers that it's her job to sell to indicates very poor judgement about how her actions might affect her employer's reputation.

If there's a lawsuit brewing, it's also possible that she's the one being sued by the developer who got fired due to her actions.

I was just thinking that her language indicates a lawsuit at hand, but I wasn't thinking that she was the one who might bring a lawsuit against SendGrid, though that's obviously been a possibility. Certainly, SendGrid's timing of the dismissal has been criticized:

1. They didn't dismiss her until several days after the incident and at a time when SendGrid was being attacked by a DDoS, an attack that Richards may argue was a misogynistic retaliation.

2. Several days, especially when at least a couple of those days were during a company-wide emergency, is a pretty short time to decide on a public dismissal of an employee. What are the chances that some things were not properly lawyered or that email communications were less than flattering on SendGrid's part during this hectic time?

So, she could try suing SendGrid for some type of wrongful termination and try for punitive damages. SendGrid could sue her for the actual (and potential) losses she caused them by her actions. Again, the only winners in this whole thing is going to be the lawyers.