I’m not intending to imply that people have to be perfect on social media. That’s an absurd absolute that’s unresponsive to the point. To wit: don’t be openly hostile and derisive to your customers while representing your company. If you can’t manage that (and it’s a pretty low bar), then you shouldn’t be in a customer facing role.
As to the continuation of the conversation, I find the idea that someone should not take an appropriate action because it might encourage bad actors to be wholly unpersuasive.
The problem seems to be that everyone is now in a customer facing role, whether we are good at it or not. It’s a bit scary that something outside of work can have a big impact on your employment status and that if your boss decides enough is enough, if impacts not only your current employment, but likely future employment.
How come? There are thousands upon thousands of devs (and millions upon millions of employees in general) who are not public on twitter or other social networks.
You are not public here on qt3 either, I am not too (public as in under full real name with employer linked). Somehow we live.
Is that really a good thing though? Should I feel worried that everything I say and do can be constantly reviewed and looked at if I decide to be public about who I am?
That can be a problem, but I’m not sure if that was a factor here. It’s not clear if Price would’ve preferred, for example, to have never been involved in an AMA in the first place.
I can easily imagine job roles that didn’t traditionally involve customer interactions being pressured to add some element of that, but I haven’t seen Price or anyone indicate that was part of the problem here.
I do not consider it a good thing, but it has been a thing for a long time. People have been getting fired through twitter for a decade that it exists. It is what it is.
As someone who literally lost a full-ride scholarship to NYU about 14 years ago due to some ill-advised-but-not-actively-seditious “political” ““writing”” on LiveJournal, I can confirm that this has been happening for a long time and also that it is dumb and bad :)
One of my friends works for Arkane and has been getting non-stop harassed about this since it happened. Had a petition go up to fire her, etc. Probably just lucky timing.
Also, the GamerGate reddit has almost 100,000 members. I know folks like to shit on some deleted reddit post as fringe, etc, but 100,000 isn’t that fringe. There’s a lot of discussion about Jessica Price. I bet /v/ over at 4chan is even better!! I wouldn’t know, though, I’m not a racist douchebag manchild.
Yeah, this is the part I think people aren’t grasping. Your Internet Life is your Real Life now. Employers are going to research it just as they would your other background before they hire you. In this case, speaking with a customer of the company the way she did cost her a job. This is 2018. It is no longer the Internet of 1998.
I understand @Jason_McMaster pointing out that there are bad actors out there who want to attack certain people and certain groups of people. That doesn’t change the reality that she attacked a customer who was not being hostile towards her and even that person was, if you want to be professional, you have to walk away.
I’m amazed people are still trying to force this into a misogyny lens. A woman and A man got fired for cause (open hostility to an important customer). Unless there have been instances of male Arenanet devs behaving similarly and getting away with it, I just don’t see how you can possibly generalize this out to ALL women.
She made headlines. The others often don’t. You said yourself it put ArenaNet in the spotlight. Imagine what it might be like if you didn’t have a mob chasing you around trying to get you in the headlines, or don’t. I guess it’s easier if you don’t imagine that.
I agree it made headlines. I don’t agree it made headlines because she’s a woman. Am I wrong on that? I clearly have some blindspots here, so maybe I’m missing something.
You should not use your real name on the Internet.
On the internet somebody can start googling around and find a lot of information about yourself. And you will not know nothing about him. He can exploit that information to attack you, and you can’t defend youself.
The first protection is to use a nickname.
The only place where using your real name is a okay idea is on places where is important your background. Like a place where doctors, journalist, electrical engineers post. If a electrical engineer make a post about engineering, signing with his real name. I know is a informed opinion. Or the doctor talk about health. Then is okay. This is the exception.
He was not fired. He resigned. He has said repeatedly he chose to leave.
I think any misstep a woman who is even remotely associated to gaming is magnified. And again, this is not even close to the rudest thing I’ve seen a dev say when engaging fans. It’s not even in the top quartile.I think any misstep a woman who is even remotely associated to gaming is magnified… but when you have a magnify glass on you like that, you’re not allowed missteps like everyone else… expectation becomes perfection.
To look at it coldbloodedly from the company’s point of view for a moment, it doesn’t really matter whether she got more attention than a man would have. They had an employee behaving badly and creating PR problems, so the employee had to go.
Edit: My point has been for a while is that, if you’re posting as an employee, you should assume you’re under a magnifying glass. Sometimes you can trip up and get away with it (and certainly more so for some people than others), but you ought to act as though everything you say will be examined closely.
End edit.
Maybe a more useful discussion is what can be done to reduce the magnifying glass on women so that they don’t have to be extra cautious. I would suggest that articles like that Polygon one are probably making the situation worse rather than better.
ArenaNet had an option to handle this professionally and relatively quietly, simply telling the community they were looking into it or handling it. They chose not to do that. They reacted to an unprofessional response by being unprofessional themselves and decided to gaslight the situation. All of this was highlighted in the first place because women in this industry aren’t allowed any mistakes; they’re just not. One misword, one misstep, and they’re targeted; and yes, women can loose their cool and should be allowed to do that. And this is after dealing with unpleasant things on a regular basis so they are more prone to make the misstep. And again, we’re talking about a field where the relationships between fans and devs is often described as tense or abusive… and it’s not because everyone is running around being all professional with each other.
It’s just a really shitty situation that could have been deescalated a number of ways but everyone was too busy either trying to score points or accusing others of trying to score points.
