Really? All it says to me is that people in the tech field are so against a woman standing up for herself that they're actually willing to bring down the company she works for. It's disgusting.
Will you also feel schadenfreude when they hack her bank account?
First, nobody cares whether or not she was a she or a he or an it. Her actions were objectively ridiculous and harmful to both general civility and gender relations in the community. Largely because SHE made it a gender issue (saving future women programmers? joan of arc?)
Second, she wasn't "standing up" for herself because nobody wronged her. Overhearing a third-party say something about a dongle that you construe in a sexual light isn't being wronged, and the world doesn't require you to "stand up" to it.
Is this actually a revenge DDOS attack, or is everyone jumping to conclusions?
I don't dispute for a second that the tech community (and indeed HN) has a huge problem with sexism that manifests itself in very ugly ways, but let's stick with the facts here.
1. The guy who got fired had an overzealous manager who fired with insufficient cause.
2. The guy who got fired had a history that we don't know, but the manager does, and this was the final straw.
Both theories are possible. I personally have known a higher portion of guys fitting #2 than managers who would enable #1. Therefore conditional probability suggests to me that he was fired for more than just this incident. If so then his firing would not be her fault.
(Even in #1 the firing was not her fault - it was the manager's.)
"(Even in #1 the firing was not her fault - it was the manager's.)"
But in this case, it's not a simple binary case of was/was not "her fault". It's at least partly her fault, regardless of the accuracy of scenario #1 or #2. There is a chain of causality here, and it all starts with Adria's tweet/blog post.
I'd also argue that your two theories represent a false dichotomy, and sussing out your conclusion based on the idea that there really are only two possible explanations (throw in some personal anecdotes for good measure!) is, well... lazy.
Fault is a legal concept. There is always a chain of events with many events that were necessary. But who had the power to make the decision? Who made it? That is who is at fault. In this case that wasn't Adria. (Not that her behaviour is anything to be proud about.)
I'd also argue that your two theories represent a false dichotomy...
Actually they don't. Are we agreed that this event is insufficient cause for a firing? If so, then if this event was the real reason for the firing, then the manager fired for insufficient cause, which is my #1. If not, then there is more to the story, which is my #2. Those two possibilities are therefore logically complete.
However they are not mutually exclusive. There might have been more to the story, and yet the manager still fired for insufficient cause.
That said, what's going to happen now? The guy who got fired has just become a cause. If he's got any skills at all, he'll get another job. I'm confident of it.
Adria has become radioactive. She hasn't been fired, but if her employer keeps getting attacked because of outrage over this, that's a possibility. If she does get fired, she's going to be radioactive for a while. Her line of work requires her to be public about where she is. And no sane company wants to be included in the outrage aimed in her general direction.
Will you also feel schadenfreude when they hack her bank account?