A tweet from the audience of a recent tech conference has resulted in several people losing their jobs and reignited a debate about sexism in the tech industry.

During a Sunday plenary session at the PyCon developer conference, developer evangelist Adria Richards was irked by comments being made by two men sitting behind her. Their discussion was sexual in nature and made mention of "dongles" and "forking," according to Richards.

Ultimately, Richard tweeted a photo of the two men with the message: "Not cool. Jokes about forking repo's in a sexual way and 'big' dongles. Right behind me." In subsequent tweets, she asked PyCon officials to deal with the men, and they escorted them out. "We've dealt with the situation," PyCon tweeted.

In a post on Hacker News, one of the men said the incident resulted in him losing his job. He apologized for his comments; "She had every right to report me to staff, and I defend her position," he wrote. But he denied making sexual jokes about forking, and argued that it could have been handled differently.

"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," he wrote. "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," he continued. "Let this serve as a message to everyone, our actions and words, big or small, can have a serious impact."

In a blog post about the incident, Richards said she was initially going to leave it alone. But when the on-stage discussion turned to a Young Coders workshop and a photo of young girl who participated in that workshop flashed on screen, "I realized I had to do something or she would never have the chance to learn and love programming because the ass clowns behind me would make it impossible for her to do so," Richards wrote.

Unfortunately, Richards's employer - SendGrid - did not agree with her approach. In a terse Thursday statement, the company said it terminated Richards effective immediately.

In a longer follow-up post, SendGrid said it "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," SendGrid said. "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."

That vitriol included threats against Richards and a distributed denial of service attack against SendGrid's website.

In her blog post, Richards said she decided not to address the men directly because she "was a guest in the Python community and as such, I wanted to give PyCon the opportunity to address this."

Ultimately, she acted because "women in technology need consistent messaging from birth through retirement they are welcome, competent and valued in the industry."

"Not all men at tech conferences are like these guys. Not every woman who attends a tech conference is a victim in waiting," she concluded. "We need to build bridges and be aware of our actions and not discount that our words carry weight."

Not surprisingly, the issue has ignited a huge debate on the Internet, with those on Twitter, message boards, and elsewhere voicing support for Richards or the two men - some thoughtful, others not. For more, search @adriarichards on Twitter.