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Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• djohnston 9y ago
  Should I assume that all characters not parenthetically emphasized as male are female?
  • briholt 9y ago
    Are the parenthetical males all cis or do transmen earn that badge as well?
    • djohnston 9y ago
      Depends on the degree to which they angered the author.
    • spraak 9y ago
      You're grossly uninformed about what that means. And if you do know and you're just trolling, you're disgusting
• CJefferson 9y ago
  Obviously this article is a single personal viewpoint, but I have heard similar stories from two other github employees (one of whom still works for github). Their interpretation was that github is upset they are viewed as sexist, so they want to figure out how to change their public reputation, without actually changing anything.
  • Thorazul 9y ago
    This feels like the mostly likely scenario, quickly change your image by hiring a bunch of 'diverse' people and soak up the PR, then quietly let them go over the next few years if they don't conform.
    • rmc 9y ago
      That'll work for a year or so. The problem is that they will write about it afterwards (like this), and then you're reputation (in this area) is even worse, because now people won't be believe you.
  • hypatiadotca 9y ago
    > Their interpretation was that github is upset they are viewed as sexist, so they want to figure out how to change their public reputation, without actually changing anything. Good ol' Diversity Theatre :/
  • blockmeamadeus 9y ago
    Hire more SJWs with a history of publicly calling out their employers, what could possibly go wrong?
• robk 9y ago
  Github has really completed an unusual feat - Hostile to people of color, the entire gender spectrum as well as cisgendered people of no color. All seem to have grievances with this company. Wow.
  • microtherion 9y ago
    "people of no color"? That sounds like a pretty serious medical issue to me.
• sethrin 9y ago
  Am I reading this correctly? Fired for lack of empathetic communication? Is that really a thing?
  • phoe-krk 9y ago
    "Give me a man, I'll find a paragraph for them." Old Polish [0] saying, back from the days when Poland was a communist country. [0] https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dajcie_mi_cz%C5%82owieka,_a_paragraf_si%C4%99_znajdzie https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dajcie_mi_cz%C5%82owieka,_a_pa...
    • MariuszGalus 9y ago
      ja nie rozumiem, please explain the meaning. Dzienkuje
    • kthejoker2 9y ago
      If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him. - Cardinal Richelieu (apoc.)
  • eropple 9y ago
    At-will employment, in the United States. You can be PIPped and then fired (the PIP is optional but it's generally used as a way to protect the company from risk) for just about anything not explicitly carved out as an unacceptable under federal or state law.
  • ivraatiems 9y ago
    What's most interesting is that "empathetic communication" is generally not prioritized in software development environments, in favor of exactly the kind of polite-but-direct communication the author employs. (In fact, many feel that even politeness is unnecessary or harmful. For instance, Linus Torvalds' and other OSS developers are known and regularly praised for their bluntness.) I've spoken out often on HN about the need for more of this kind of communication, but I don't see a problem with the author's tone here, and I don't see Github as a workplace that's much of an advocate for it. I think it is possible that there is some sexism here in that I'm not confident a male employee at Github would ever be challenged over failing this communication standard. That is, I think we implicitly expect women to be more empathetic and polite than men are, and get confused when they are not. Edit: Also, I have never, ever heard of a PIP being used as anything other than a strategy for building a case for firing someone. Does anyone have any counter-examples? Edit 2: Also also, the author says she had to turn down Github's severance package because it included an NDA, so she could write the article. Gross. [1] [1] https://twitter.com/CoralineAda/status/882636914981036032 https://twitter.com/CoralineAda/status/882636914981036032
• tyingq 9y ago
  I've seen this a few times. People with a naturally terse way of communicating eventually end up offending someone with the power to retaliate.
  • puranjay 9y ago
    I know it sounds like a joke, but I've taken to using a lot of exclamation marks in my communication lately for this very reason. It feels dumb to me but I know for a fact that some people who are quick to take offense ease when they see it.
    • tthayer 9y ago
      How I sound when I reply: :D How I look when I reply: :|
    • oblio 9y ago
      I just use smileys. I know that some people see them as childish/immature/unprofessional, but especially in a multi-cultural environment I prefer to be safe. Irony, sarcasm and humor don't scale well.
      • royka118 9y ago
        Me too! Just to keep it good humored. If you put a smiley in an issue or a slack message it helps keep the recipient happy
    • faizmokhtar 9y ago
      Yeah, I always tried to include an emoji at the end of my messages just so that it won't be interpret differently.
  • ivraatiems 9y ago
    The question of "is this person terse, or are they an asshole?" can be very difficult to answer. I think it's interesting how in this thread alone, we can see that people with different views on the core issue are answering it differently. I tend to fall on the author's side on social justice stuff, and I lean "no." Others, who don't (or seem not to), clearly lean "yes." I wonder, if the circumstances were reversed, what I and they would think.
• problems 9y ago
  Isn't this the person who ran a code of conduct that has a website which includes things like "thoughtless use of pronouns" and mentions meritocracy as an evil, not a goal to strive for? Can't really say I'm expecting someone like that to be low friction.
  • Dirlewanger 9y ago
    She went on a tirade against an Opal contributor a couple years back: https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941
    • problems 9y ago
      Didn't know about that, but abrasiveness like that is really unfortunate. It makes real progress harder because it means people dig in on views that maybe they shouldn't.
      • Skywing 9y ago
        Looks like she wasn't even aware of the project, but instead saw it on a person's twitter profile and went to its github repo to get that person fired. In a way, she's doing the exact same thing, to others, that she is claiming github did to her.
        • joatmon-snoo 9y ago
          And she backtracked from the aggressive tone later on: https://medium.com/@coralineada/on-opalgate-2efd0fc1e0fd https://medium.com/@coralineada/on-opalgate-2efd0fc1e0fd
    • azinman2 9y ago
      The maintainers instant reply was super flippant and worthy of retort. Never really wanted to use opal before, but if this is who is behind it...
      • 9y ago
• Dirlewanger 9y ago
  While GitHub seemingly handled her employment poorly, this person sounds horrible to work with: >Was politely calling out a data scientist on a problematic and transphobic survey answer a demonstration of lack of empathy? How presumptuous. Ever thought that maybe the person putting it together didn't know any better? What does framing oneself as the victim accomplish here? In addition, this is hilariously ironic given that GitHub employed (still employs?) people who actively promote racism against white men (and women): http://www.businessinsider.com/github-the-full-inside-story-2016-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/github-the-full-inside-story-...
  • ivraatiems 9y ago
    Do you think this person is unusual in her communication style? She posted the complete text of the "problem" comment. If you got that message from a colleague, would you consider it unacceptable? Why or why not? If yes, what could she have said that would have made it OK? How would you answer her core question of whether or not the comment she made is appropriate?
    • Dirlewanger 9y ago
      I'm disgusted at her reflection that the question was transphobic, not that she commented on the difference. Whether the data scientist overreacted or not is irrelevant.
      • ivraatiems 9y ago
        It's not irrelevant because it's the reason she was fired, and hence the reason the post exists. The fact that you disagree with her assertion about the question seems to be the irrelevant thing to me.
        • Dirlewanger 9y ago
          No, it is irrelevant. The fact that the incident got her fired is a failing with GitHub's management and dearth of communication. Playing the victim card and shitting on the data scientist is misguided.
• thehardsphere 9y ago
  It would be great if we could see the pull requests that were subject to disproportionate scrutiny. It would add a lot of context that is missing from that story.
• giggles_giggles 9y ago
  "I was well aware of GitHub's very problematic past, from its promotion of meritocracy in place of a management system" This person mentions multiple times that meritocracy is a bad idea, that promotion or reward based on merit should be done away with in order to promote diversity, e.g., racial/gender-based quotas. This is a person who does not view competence as the primary trait to select for within a market, and is insisting here that competence be downplayed to make room for people with the correct melanin levels and/or chromosomes. ""What is your gender?" The multiple-choice options were "Male", "Female", and "Transgender". I was very disappointed at this 101 mistake, and sadly opened an issue referencing the question. The body of my issue read: " Uh oh! The data scientist isn't up to date on the trends in gender studies and critical theory, better send her off to sensitivity training! Doesn't the data scientist who wrote the question know that gender is performative? Better get offended and make her apologize. Oh wait, that's exactly what the author does, like the bully she is. I can't take a diary post like this, from someone interested in enforcing equity, littered with ideological axioms, promoting unscientific gender "theory", all the while playing the victim in the classic social justice style, with anything more than a giant boulder of salt.
  • ivraatiems 9y ago
    > This person mentions multiple times that meritocracy is a bad idea, that promotion or reward based on merit should be done away with in order to promote diversity, e.g., racial/gender-based quotas. She wasn't fired for that. > This is a person who does not view competence as the primary trait to select for within a market, and is insisting here that competence be downplayed to make room for people with the correct melanin levels and/or chromosomes. She wasn't fired for that either. > Uh oh! The data scientist isn't up to date on the trends in gender studies and critical theory, better send her off to sensitivity training! She was fired because GitHub alleged she was the insensitive one here. Do you agree?
    • dangerlibrary 9y ago
      > Better get offended and make her apologize. Oh wait, that's exactly what the author does, like the bully she is. I suspect the GP agrees, yes.
• nunobrito 9y ago
  The person in question was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder and considers herself as a social justice warrior. Worse is the antipathy she directs to "white males", which destroys the goal of an inclusive environment. Every story has two sides, would certainly wait for hearing what her team mates would have to say, but I suspect they will say nothing out of fear from the repercussion by SJW when expressing how it was to work with such person.
  • DanBC 9y ago
    > was diagnosed with bi-polar Nice bit of stigma there.
    • nunobrito 9y ago
      Unfortunately one of my little brothers is bipolar and will soon turn 27 years old. It is awful, I love him so much and yet we are unable to help him more. If nobody in our family is there to talk with him immediately when he demands, then something drastic happens such as burning parts of his body (e.g. nipples) or anything that forces our attention to focus on him. Every week is a struggle, he dreams on becoming a world-known DJ and music is all he cares, but he is always on the edge of becoming a homeless because he is simply unable to hold a job (focus) or simply be nice to others, more often than not he becomes arrogant without real reason, which isolates him further. Now that brother of mine is saying that he dreams about committing suicide like Kurt Cobain, because he considers himself a musician of the same level/type and I had to dismiss that thought by telling him that he first needs to have a world-wide hit. It's not good. So, when reading the blog post with that description of the world against her (persecution), the mood swings, the clinical diagnosis of being bipolar. These are things I've had to endure for many years, because this is my brother and I care deeply for him. But I'd certainly not be able to work side-by-side with a bipolar person as it would be affecting me emotionally and then professionally. At least with my brother I just see him on the weekends and through Facebook chat, not every single day and having to ask her things while the mood is not helping one bit. This is why I've mentioned that we should wait to hear what her team mates will say (if saying anything at all).
• rexicus 9y ago
  This guy is a walking stereotype and must be a nightmare to be around.
  • dang 9y ago
    We ban accounts that comment like this. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14704219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14704219 and marked it off-topic.
• draw_down 9y ago
  Many people have seen the Netflix document on company culture. My favorite part is where it points out that company values are not what the founders list in an email, or what gets painted on a wall or put on a plaque. It's what happens every single day, what gets done now and what gets deferred.
• Diamons 9y ago
  I'm surprised she lasted as long as she did and wasn't fired earlier. We even have a diagnosis that she has mental health issues. I'm glad Github fired her. Now the question is, why was this article posted? Why are we giving her her 2 minutes of fame?
• sergiotapia 9y ago
  [trimmed] She sounds like a really toxic person to work with. I would say she sounds "problematic" to work with.
  • dang 9y ago
    Personal attacks are not ok on HN, regardless of whether the person is in the room or how wrong they are about things. We all know how vengeful the culture of online shaming has become, so let's all keep that viciousness away from here.
• tomcam 9y ago
  I fear this blog post was more revealing than its author intended.
  • erikpukinskis 9y ago
    Your comment is too.
• unholywars 9y ago
  mayweather-mcgregor got nothing on the drama the tech industry puts out on a daily basis
• dsr_ 9y ago
  " The next day I got an urgent request for a call with my manager. She told me that the data scientist who had written the survey questions was very upset and had gone to her manager to complain about me. I asked my manager what had happened to upset her and was told that it was the feedback I provided on the gender question. I read back to her the body of the issue that I had opened and asked what I should have done differently. She responded that she didn't know, that my wording seemed direct but non-confrontational, but that I was forbidden to interact any further with the author of the survey." If your company ever communicates this badly to you, it's time to question whether this company can be fixed.
  • specialist 9y ago
    Here's Coraline's feedback, from the article: "'Transgender' is not a gender. Transgender people may be male, female, gender queer, non-binary... If you want to know if a survey respondent is transgender, you need to explicitly ask that question." For contrast, this reminds me of Gene Wilder's feedback about his Willy Wonka costume: https://www.bustle.com/articles/181340-this-letter-gene-wilder-wrote-to-willy-wonka-director-mel-stuart-shows-who-the-actor-truly https://www.bustle.com/articles/181340-this-letter-gene-wild... I now try to emulate this style, in every situation. As for the triggered data scientist... Well. Whaddya gonna do? I guess my skin's thicker than most.
    • cholantesh 9y ago
      Was there really something wrong with that phrasing? How would you improve it? Genuinely curious; I think I'd have phrased it the same way (though at every place I've worked we'd have done a review like this face to face), and I find it pretty non-confrontational. Enjoyed the letter you shared. Gene is truly missed.
      • specialist 9y ago
        "Hi cholantesh! Just saw your new survey. Looks great! Hey, have you seen the HRC's recommendations for surveying gender? I've used their guidelines in the past. Very helpful! http://www.hrc.org/resources/collecting-transgender-inclusive-gender-data-in-workplace-and-other-surveys http://www.hrc.org/resources/collecting-transgender-inclusiv... TLDR: They suggest splitting the gender question into two parts. As you know, this is a super important issue for me. Progress! Exciting! If you're busy, I'll make a pull request. Please let me know if I can help in any way. Thank you, Specialist"
• mattbillenstein 9y ago
  If you're ever put on a PIP, get out -- it's a sign someone in the company doesn't want you there. I've never heard of a PIP working out and both the company and employee being happy -- maybe you only hear about the bad cases, but a PIP often seems to me like a cover your ass plan on the part of the company. They want to get rid of a person, but they're afraid of getting sued, so a PIP is a way to document why a person was fired in the case of litigation. This practice seems pretty common in California, but given California is an at-will employment state, I'm not even sure why.
  • danek 9y ago
    This. I've been "in the loop" on several people getting PIPs. Two were 100% a pretext for firing. One of those two was fired less than a week after going on the PIP, despite it being a six week plan. I thought that was especially shitty as it didn't give the person sufficient time to line up other work. The third instance was "we wanna fire this person but if we see improvement then they can stay". This person stayed for almost a year. In all cases the PIP was to create a paper trail to support an argument of firing for legal cause in a potential lawsuit.
  • dragonwriter 9y ago
    > This practice seems pretty common in California, but given California is an at-will employment state, I'm not even sure why. Because the PIP exists to to support the argument that the firing was not for a prohibited reason in the event that the employee charges that it was. “At-will” doesn't mean there aren't prohibited reasons for firing, and if you don't have any evidence for what the firing reason was, it doesn't take much evidence of an improper purpose to meet the “preponderance of the evidence” standard for civil litigation.
    • mattbillenstein 9y ago
      Ah, okay, make sense -- so the CYA nature of what I've usually seen happen with a PIP make sense.
    • DannyBee 9y ago
• opportune 9y ago
  The main thing I've taken away from the whole github situation is that, as a tech company, you should just entirely stay away from public involvement in the social justice sphere. That doesn't mean exclusively hiring white men and sending out Kalanick-style emails; it means keeping your work environment as professional and politically neutral as possible unless absolutely necessary. My employer does a good job of this. We have a lot of women and transgender (not so many POC) employees, but we don't have any special inclusivity initiatives or outreach programs, nor do we officially inject any related ideology into the businessplace. The expectation is that you conduct yourself professionally, and that you exercise your own discretion; the other side of the coin is that you correct what you might think is morally/terminologically wrong (such as confusing biological sex with gender) as diplomatically and non-confrontationally as possible; assume mistakes are honest and be polite in correcting them. As for Coraline herself, I would be skeptical that we are getting the full story here. In particular, I'm sure there is more to the "non-empathetic communication style" than the data scientist and other related incidents. Not to be a presumptive asshole, but I do get the impression from this kind of expose that she might be difficult to work with.
  • microcolonel 9y ago
    I agree wholeheartedly. As soon as political and emotional appeals overrule standards of professional conduct, everyone is walking on eggshells. > assume mistakes are honest and be polite in correcting them. Especially big on this. Nobody can read minds, so when people make mistakes, there is no winning tactic other than to assume good intent.
    • Thorazul 9y ago
      Especially in a company that seems to communicate through comments/emails etc. and not so much face to face interaction.
  • emodendroket 9y ago
    I don't get it though. Didn't they want to bring her on specifically because her political profile gave them cachet with people they wanted to make overtures to?
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• throw201707 9y ago
  This is not a comment on the experiences described in the article, but it makes me extremely sad that the word "meritocratic/meritocracy" is used pejoratively, almost as if it were damning in itself. To me, meritocracy is something to be cherished, being far preferable to the systems that came before it, and being inherently anti-discriminatory. (Yes, people's hardships which prevent them achieving their full potential should be taken into account, when determining "merit"; anything causing these hardships, including (especially?) past discrimination, should be countered; and people who had been subjected to the hardship should be treated with care and compassion, but that's orthogonal to meritocracy itself. Also, obviously, your skills and abilities (in the context of work and meritocracy) have no bearing on your intrinsic value as a human being (so we need something like guaranteed basic income or progressive taxes to reduce issues like pay inequality).)
  • eropple 9y ago
    "Meritocracy" is regarded with derision in no small part because what is actually meant by it, rather than what you describe, is "this person is similar to me and I like them, so I think they do a better job." It's the ingroup club made manifest. What you describe would be great, but it's not what "meritocracy" actually means in practice.
    • majewsky 9y ago
      Then we need to call out fake meritocracy as such. I'm actually looking at this situation with some sort of confusion, because I've never seen proclaimed meritocracy to actually mean "boy's club". But then again, I'm a white caucasian heterosexual male, so maybe I just don't notice. (Previous sentence is meant literally, not ironically.)
      • eropple 9y ago
        You're right, we do need to call out fake meritocracy that way. And people do call out fake meritocracy as such. Here's a bunch: http://istechameritocracy.com/ http://istechameritocracy.com/ What often happens, though, is that responses to these claims become these backhanded dismissals. "Oh, you're just overreacting." "Well, I don't see it." I'm a straight, white, cis dude, too, so for a long time it was hard for me to notice it. I promise you, there is a point--and maybe it's not one you will ever personally see, but it exists--where it becomes too big, too obvious to ignore.
• twerkmonsta 9y ago
  "The same day that I had this review, I got some devastating personal news. I have bipolar depression and was already in a bad place mentally, so I found myself feeling crushed and hopeless. In an attempt to deal with things I ended up taking a dangerously high dose of my anti-anxiety medication." I'm all for being compassionate and helping people through tough times, but does this sound like a stable person?
  • thehardsphere 9y ago
    Kinda makes you wonder what else is missing from this story, right?
  • majewsky 9y ago
    She does literally say "I have bipolar depression". Assuming that the company knew this when hiring her, it would be very surprising that they would not be compassionate at this point. I don't know if that assumption holds, though.
    • thehardsphere 9y ago
      I think the story was that she learned about the depression on the same day or just after the negative performance review.
  • unclesaamm 9y ago
    Congratulations, I think you managed to set a new record for ableism on Hacker News. I'm actually struggling to formulate a response because disqualifying people from discussing their issues because of mental illness is so extraordinarily low. You literally just said, "I'm all for being compassionate and helping people through tough times," then proceeded to shit on her for undergoing exactly that. For one, I hope you aren't in a management position in a company, because discriminating by mental illness is illegal. Second, I hope you never get mentally ill -- which can happen to anyone -- because you would have to confront people with attitudes like yours and you would realize what garbage this is.
• MichaelBurge 9y ago
  > "'Transgender' is not a gender. Transgender people may be male, female, gender queer, non-binary... If you want to know if a survey respondent is transgender, you need to explicitly ask that question." I Imagine this read to the survey writer like: "Hello, I'd like to complain about your use of the term Linux on the corporate intranet. A page provides instructions for running the data parsing scripts "on Linux". Since we do not do any kernel work, it is improper to refer to them as Linux instructions. Instead, people should be familiar with either POSIX, bash(with extensions), or GNU coreutils."
  • thex10 9y ago
    I mean, I see the point you're trying to make. But that error could be pretty damning in the context of a detailed survey about, like, operating systems and their utilities. In that case, wouldn't you expect to survey writer to know those details, or at least not completely lose their shit when told about them from someone who knows more about the topic?
    • MichaelBurge 9y ago
      We don't know the purpose of the survey, but it's described as an "open source developer survey". I imagine gender was thrown in because, hey maybe the women use vim and the men use emacs for some reason, and that's kind of interesting to know. I briefly checked the Stack Overflow survey as a comparison: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017 https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017
  • s73ver 9y ago
    So on a survey meant to gather data on the participation rates of marginalized people in Open Source communities, you feel it would be appropriate to publish a question which would be deemed as troublesome or even offensive to members of those groups?
  • eropple 9y ago
    Perhaps you should reflect on that we are talking about people, not computer programs, and that the contextual impact of misrepresenting people has a much more marked impact than the contextual impact of misrepresenting computer programs.
• pc86 9y ago
  I am really torn on this one. I want to discuss the article because I think it brings up interesting topics, and for the most part HN folks are good at discussing polarizing things like this without devolving into Reddit-style nonsense. On the other hand, I want to flag it, because the article itself is absolute garbage. EDIT: I see now it is flagged. To be clear, I didn't, because I still think it's worth discussing some of the points made.
  • Shank 9y ago
    Programmers aren't really well known for their inherent skill in writing. It seems like the content, rather than the delivery, is the more important thing here.
    • wutbrodo 9y ago
      I don't think the complaint was stylistic in nature (though I may be mistaken...?). Other than GitHub's puzzlingly callous reaction to her medical emergency, the entire thing reads like a narcissist blaming everyone else for every imagined slight and excusing herself for far worse. It's the Fundamental Attribution Error in article form.
  • yargel 9y ago
    How can it both be absolute garbage and bring up interesting topics? Those seem kind of mutually exclusive.
• tonymke 9y ago
  The impression I have after reading this that Ms. Ehmke had a shit attitude and people got sick of it. And that she hasn't seen that yet. I'm sorry if this seems unempathetic - getting fired sucks, and is extremely painful. But there's no other way I can put it. A long time ago, when my career first started, I also went through the "PIP deathspiral", and it took months... maybe years after my termination to realize I was just fired being a shithead. I see the same "it's not my fault it's theirs" attitude I had at the time in this.
  • danpalmer 9y ago
    What made you get that impression? Obviously the text is going to be somewhat biased, but from what's described I got the impression that she cares about her work, cares about being a good engineer/mentor/manager, has the skills to be good at all of those, and cares about improving even when she doesn't fully agree with the situation.
    • tonymke 9y ago
      > I got the impression that she cares about her work, cares about being a good engineer/mentor/manager, has the skills to be good at all of those, and cares about improving even when she doesn't fully agree with the situation. I agree; she's very passionate about what she's doing. I'm really on about her interactions with the team. The things that really stand out to me: - Regarding the data scientist's gender question: "I was forbidden to interact any further with the author of the survey" - Regarding the mentee situation: "I was told to stop the formal mentoring and allow this person to 'learn at her own pace, without any pressure from you.'" - Regarding asynchronous communication: "Asynchronous communication is definitely not my strongest area. When I see a text box on screen, I tend to be very terse and direct instead of typing out a wall of text." It sounds like there's a lot unsaid in these lines she's getting. As if glaring social cues are being missed, and the managers and teammates are either unable or unwilling to just say "you come across like a jerk a lot. People are scared to say this to you. Please slow down before you type." It could also be my massive amount of privilege talking. Who knows.
  • StrangeOrange 9y ago
• jitl 9y ago
  This should not be flagged.
  • ivraatiems 9y ago
    I agree. There is a lot of heavy downvoting of people for political opinions going on as well.
  • orbitur 9y ago
    How do we vouch for a post to be unflagged?
    • Shank 9y ago
      A post has to be [flagged] and [dead] for the vouch link to appear. The best route, at this point, would be to email the moderation staff.
  • misterbowfinger 9y ago
    I'm sort of confused why this article was flagged as well. There's a highly political article, albeit in the other direction, on the front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14702676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14702676
    • marijn 9y ago
      There's a long-standing tradition of using flagging to suppress unpopular links. Seems like it still works.
  • kaffee 9y ago
    I agree. The article was welcome and well-written. I only found out about this post because the alternative (unofficial) interface https://hckrnews.com/ https://hckrnews.com/ manages to surface this given the number of votes it has received. I appreciate HN's moderation, on average. It's a shame the process of moderation isn't more transparent. I have no idea why this was flagged.
• avenoir 9y ago
  > "What is your gender?" The multiple-choice options were "Male", "Female", and "Transgender". I was very disappointed at this 101 mistake, and sadly opened an issue referencing the question. The body of my issue read: > "'Transgender' is not a gender. Transgender people may be male, female, gender queer, non-binary... If you want to know if a survey respondent is transgender, you need to explicitly ask that question." > The next day I got an urgent request for a call with my manager. She told me that the data scientist who had written the survey questions was very upset and had gone to her manager to complain about me. I can't help but shake my head reading thru the whole piece. It's like a soap opera. Everyone's so caught up in the social issues it's fucking impossible to not offed anyone.
  • ivraatiems 9y ago
    The best (worst) part is that this thread is now repeating that dynamic writ small... I admit I may be somewhat complicit in that, but it's important to be able to take a step back.
  • sgt 9y ago
    Maybe she is right, but I've never in my life seen a form that explicitly asks "Are you transgender". So I don't agree that this is a 101 mistake. Most forms ask "Male" or "Female", and that's it. The fact that Github asked "Transgender" in addition to this shouldn't be seen as offensive, as I am sure they were doing this simply to make sure transgendered people felt included too. Sadly a good deed is not always appreciated.
    • keithpeter 9y ago
      UK perspective: it may depend on why the data is being collected. UK government guidelines [1] for general forms to do with benefits/services &c are fairly thin Organisations that have to maintain equality metrics in some form [2] have a more complex approach. This second approach seems like the nearest to the Github situation. The example I have cited (third or fourth in goog search results) maps directly to 'protected characteristics' in diversity legislation in UK. [1] https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/design/gender-or-sex https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/design/gender-or-sex [2] http://www.ecu.ac.uk/guidance-resources/using-data-and-evidence/monitoring-questions/ http://www.ecu.ac.uk/guidance-resources/using-data-and-evide... Meta comment: Survey questions are tricky to formulate. Kicking ideas round in a group on a whiteboard with reference to external advice/exemplars seems to help get wording sorted and clarify the taxonomy. Genuine question (I don't work in the software world) is it normal for a lone web developer person to be left just making up the questions as they are coding them?
• foota 9y ago
  I get that this post is likely to have a large degree of conflict in the comments, but I think it belongs here.
  • thehardsphere 9y ago
    Ehh... I can see it either way, honestly. I think the issues raised are worth discussing here. I don't know that the post itself is.
    • foota 9y ago
      While it may seem like semantics, I think discussing the issues raised by the post is more or less discussing the post. I would go so far as to say that explicitly discarding the context of the post as many are doing is rude and ironically lacking in empathy. How can we say that the issues raised by something are worth discussing while simultaneously putting down the post?
      • thehardsphere 9y ago
        Because we only have a single perspective on what actually happened in this instance. That perspective is selective and is motivated to tell the story a particular way. It might be right, but we do not have enough facts to know. So it's hard to know what the facts we can actually draw conclusions from. This makes a discussion of issues difficult because more time is spent on the identities of the participants rather than the actual underlying issues. It descends into being merely about GitHub vs. Coraline.
• stefantalpalaru 9y ago
  Hire diversity nutjobs to improve silly stats, win stupid prizes.
• throwaway8800 9y ago
  There's a couple of issues that stand out to me: Github is engaging in risky behaviour by reaching out to individuals (specifically activists) for hire explicitly on the basis of "diversity" and trying to incorporate those individuals in a highly merit-based environment. Secondly, Coraline seems to think that human relationships are a one way street: that she is entitled to be direct and even confrontational or insensitive, especially if she believes she is "right" or in a "mentor" role, and yet her peers are expected to walk on eggshells around her, lest they be accused of attacking her. One part that stood out as particularly odd was her insistence to stay at work while she was suffering with a mental health issue that was clearly affecting her job performance, in spite of her manager's request that she take mental health leave. It sounds like she just flat out ignored her manager under the assumption that her manager just needed to accept whatever her therapist advised her to do, which is kind of ridiculous on the face of it.
  • thehardsphere 9y ago
    This one way street also extends to the way Coraline's accomplishments at GitHub are presented in the article. There's all of this talk about all of the code she pushed and all of the popular features she wrote, but there's no context as to whether or not those things were the metrics by which her performance was being measured, e.g. what her management was expecting her to do. So when the negative review is mentioned, we're supposed to be shocked by it. Certainly she is shocked by it. That doesn't mean she should have been.
    • pyre 9y ago
      You're saying: > no context as to whether or not those things were the metrics by which her performance was being measured But per the blog post: > Based on the positive feedback from my one-on-ones and how well I was tracking against the goals set for the next engineering level, I was hopeful of getting a promotion and a raise. I'm confused as to how one could be "tracking against the goals set for the next engineering level" but not be measured by those metrics.
      • 9y ago
• EddieRingle 9y ago
  > "I was well aware of GitHub's very problematic past, from its promotion of meritocracy in place of a management system" I don't see what's wrong with meritocracy as opposed to an unspecified "management system". -- > Feature releases such as these are frequently promoted on the GitHub blog, and the product manager on my team encouraged me to write a post announcing what I had shipped. Since it was so important to me personally, I wrote an impassioned piece talking about how this feature closed a security gap that had directly affected and provided an abuse vector against me. The post also served as an announcement to the world of the new team and the kinds of problems that we were charged with solving. > > The post was submitted for editorial review. It was decided that the tone of what I had written was too personal and didn't reflect the voice of the company. The reviewer insisted that any mention of the abuse vector that this feature was closing be removed. In the midst of my discussions with the editorial team, trying to reach a compromise, a (male) engineer from another team completely rewrote the blog post and published it without talking to me. GitHub was correct here. Feature announcements on the company blog should remain neutral in tone. In addition, the published feature announcement seems to mention the motivations behind the feature quite well: > Previously, anyone could automatically add other developers to their repositories without explicit permission. This model openly provided some users with opportunities to harass members of our community by inviting them to offensive or attention-seeking repositories. So, it was rewritten to a neutral explanation of why this feature is a benefit to those who have had experiences like that of the author. -- > In addition to my development work, I had started weekly mentoring sessions with one of my teammates (a recent boot camp graduate) on Ruby and Rails fundamentals that she had not been exposed to in her program. When I talked to my manager about how she was progressing, I was told to stop the formal mentoring and allow this person to "learn at her own pace, without any pressure from you." I was mystified: mentoring is an essential part of being a senior engineer, and this teammate seemed to be benefiting from it. No quote was given from the manager telling the author to stop mentoring entirely, just that they wanted the _formal_ mentoring to stop (by formal, I assume it to mean it was initiated by the author, not the student). It's possible the manager's intention was as quoted: to see how this "recent boot camp graduate" was able to grow on her own. -- > I was very disappointed at this 101 mistake, and sadly opened an issue referencing the question. This has a presumptuous tone to it. -- > The same day that I had this review, I got some devastating personal news. I have bipolar depression and was already in a bad place mentally, so I found myself feeling crushed and hopeless. In an attempt to deal with things I ended up taking a dangerously high dose of my anti-anxiety medication. When I reached out to my therapist for help, she recommended that I go to the emergency room. This was the start of an eight day ordeal involving involuntary commitment to a mental health facility. I shared this experience on Twitter and won't rehash it here, but suffice it to say that I was severely traumatized by what happened to me in the hospital. I read the "experience on Twitter". It sounds to me that the author's judgement was impaired (re: the author's self-described overdose of anti-anxiety medication) and the hospital/psychiatrist believed they were enough of a risk to themselves to warrant admitting them as a patient. -- > Thursday and Friday were not good days. I had a lot of trouble focusing. I was making simple mistakes and in some cases doing the wrong work. Friday afternoon I reached out to my boss to tell her that I was having trouble and that I didn't know what to do. She suggested that I take medical leave, but I told her what my therapist had said about the importance of getting back to normal life. My manager was adamant that if I couldn't work at full capacity that I had no choice but to take medical leave. > ... > The following week I had scheduled conferences to attend, so my focus on work was put on hold. > ... > After the meeting I messaged her and shared the more personal aspects of what I was going through, the trauma that I had experienced in the hospital and its lingering effects on my mental health. I was told that I should have accepted the offer of medical leave, and she said she felt like I was trying to manipulate her by sharing my feelings in the hopes of influencing the PIP. I was dismayed. The author "had a lot of trouble focusing". It was recommended multiple times that she take medical leave. Instead, the author's "focus on work was put on hold" in order to attend conferences. I'm as suspicious of PIPs as much as the next person, but this seems pretty cut-and-dry to me as unsatisfactory work performance. -- Regarding the firing on grounds of lack of empathetic communication, perhaps it was related to why this person was hired in the first place? > They wanted to offer me a job. They had just created a team called Community & Safety, charged with making GitHub more safe for marginalized people and creating features for project owners to better manage their communities. -- > I think back on the lack of options I was given in response to my mental health situation and I see a complete lack of empathy. As stated above, they provided the option of medical leave. The author chose not to take it. > In the past several months GitHub has fired at least three transgender engineers and many more cisgender women. Why were they fired? How many others were fired in the past several months? What's the ratio there? > In a return to its meritocratic roots, the company has decided to move forward with a merit-based stock option program despite criticism from employees who tried to point out its inherent unfairness. Again, what's unfair about rewarding based on merit? Should people who contribute relatively little compared to others get just as much reward? Why would the higher-performers bother to burden themselves in that case? > So yes, in looking back over my year at GitHub I see that there was, in fact, a real problem with empathy. > > But that problem wasn't mine. So in the end, the author seems to absolve themselves of responsibility. This shows a lack of growth; in my opinion you should _always_ try to fault yourself if you're going to fault others.
• RangerScience 9y ago
  The experience she relates reminds me a hell of a lot of the way my previous job ended, which amounted to a handful of offended people uninterested in (directly) talking, and (my direct) management largely uninterested in reconciliation / facilitating. All of the problems she relates are with people who are not directly communicating with her, usually after she's directly communicating with them. Whereas, according to the story she relates, everyone who actually engages with her likes the experience. Over all, it paints a picture of GH where the management (and many / some employee) are not fans of directly dealing with problems, which, IMHO, speaks to people who don't do it often enough. Most of the time, when I (or others who've related stories) "turn" to directly deal with a people problem, it turns out not to be much of a problem at all. It's only when you try to deal indirectly, or not all, that things go south and eventually explode. Interestingly, all of the people at my last company that I had this issue with were in the Bay Area, and I didn't have this issue with folks in other remote offices.
  • siliconc0w 9y ago
    Similar. I've kinda learned that some people just have a lot of trouble with direct communication - especially from peers or people they don't report to or don't consider authoritative for whatever reason. They'll come up with all sorts of complaints about diction, tone, format, vocabulary, or medium but the reality is they just don't like to communicate that way. The strategy I use is to qualify and de-personalize everything. This is less persuasive writing, verbose, and slightly annoying but is "safer" if you don't know your audience. "It may be better", "X seems like it could be asked better", "help me understand your thoughts for X over Y", "what if we tried asking X like this? It might have this effect". This is categorically less efficient communication but is arguably more 'effective' if it means people don't get offended. As it's hard to be effective when people are complaining to their managers.
  • kaosjester 9y ago
    To be fair, GitHub is large enough that they'll have a dozen applicants by the time you're out the door. If resolving a problem is harder than firing part of it, well... that's the layer cake.
• johnpython 9y ago
  A key takeaway from this blog post is the important of communication skills. Be a professional in the workplace. Be sincere with your colleagues and avoid passive aggressive behavior. If you have an issue with a colleague, take it to them first before lodging a complaint with their manager.
• kevintb 9y ago
  Why is this article flagged?
  • bdcravens 9y ago
    Because users with high enough karma flagged it. Users with high enough karma can likewise vouch for it to offset that.
    • daxelrod 9y ago
      I'm guessing that, despite the passive voice, kevintb is actually asking why those users flagged it.
• kevintb 9y ago
  > "What is your gender?" The multiple-choice options were "Male", "Female", and "Transgender" I have low expectations for tech companies understanding these kind of issues, but to separate _transgender_ as an option completely misses the point of what "transgender" actually means.
  • chielk 9y ago
    I don't think it would be too bad if they were checkboxes rather than radio buttons.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  • tmnvix 9y ago
    My dictionary's definition: transgender: adjective denoting or relating to a person whose self-identity does not conform unambiguously to conventional notions of male or female gender. Though I agree that it clearly isn't a gender, it does seem like a sensible option to be included in a survey when asking about gender. Maybe they should have kept the options but rephrased the question? Edit: On second thought, I get it; you can be transgender and identify as male or female.
    • kevintb 9y ago
      That... is not the definition of transgender. I'm glad to see your edit.
• mc32 9y ago
  That sucks. When you get off on the wrong foot, there is very little you can do to correct it, beside changing teams. Once a manager thinks they know something about your performance, or perceived lack, it's hard to counter that. No matter what --colleagues, clients, other managers, etc. I've seen this play out a couple of times. There is no stopping the snowball.
• rnprince 9y ago
  How many large tech companies decide to fire programmers because they communicate directly? For male programmers, that's actually a stereotype. The reason they gave for firing her is just bizarre, making me wonder if there was a different reason that they didn't want to admit.
  • blockmeamadeus 9y ago
    I think perhaps GitHub has already hired too many snowflakes who then couldn't handle such a communication style anymore. For example the data scientist from the story who got offended about being lectured about transgender issues. Was it a man? In my mind I picture a sensitive SJW woman on her first job out of university, who was hired to increase diversity at GitHub. Sorry, that is just how it is...
• captainkb 9y ago
  I'd love to hear the other side of the story. The only thing that I could think about was if the author's resume came across my desk one day: Receive resume, Google applicant, See this blog post, toss resume in order to avoid drama and future blog post about me.
• TaizWeb 9y ago
  >tell data scientist their poll is flawed because it only includes "transgender" instead of "transgender female" and that makes them transphobic. >data scientist is upset and tells management. >management tells you to stop being a jerk. >proceed to be toxic in all your PRs and on Slack. >management tells you to stop being a jerk. >they put you under review. >start getting emotional and say you have emotional trauma. >management tells you to stop trying to manipulate them with your sob story. >start making bad code for weeks. >get fired. >write a blog post attacking them. >call people who work at github *holes on their twitters. and she thinks this was all an attack on her because of her gender? hell, they hired her for that.
  • spraak 9y ago
    Besides all that drama, being sensitive to gender is important and awesome.
    • TaizWeb 9y ago
      yes, we should be sensitive to it, but let's say this story came from a straight white man. if you were github, would you want someone toxic working for you? someone who's accused someone of being transphobic over a form they made? someone who's toxic in Slack with all the other members? someone who starts writing bad code (failing at their own job)? no, you wouldn't. just because someone's a minority doesn't give them the right to be treated above others. it's a little something called equality.
  • zimpenfish 9y ago
    Where does it mention transphobic? > "'Transgender' is not a gender. Transgender people may be male, female, gender queer, non-binary... If you want to know if a survey respondent is transgender, you need to explicitly ask that question."
  • fleetingmoments 9y ago
    I don't know, it sounded like improving GH's diversity/inclusivity was exactly the reason she was hired and so that must have seemed like an obvious place where she could contribute. And she didn't call the data scientist transphobic or made any personal remarks, she just corrected her. I'm not saying I agree with everything she did, but based on that incident I'd say the data scientist was the one who handled it poorly.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• trustfundbaby 9y ago
  This gave me flashbacks to my experiences at a couple of places, and I really feel for Coraline. These kinds of experiences seem to happen very disproportionately to minorities with strong opinions (aka folks who aren't just going to grin and take it) so naturally some of the comments here aren't surprising, until you've gone through it, none of it makes sense. So naturally most people will side with the company, thats just what happens. For me, it was these random things that would come up very suddenly seemingly from out of nowhere. Some one would have 'complained' about something. The thing would be completely ridiculous, and my manager could never tell me exactly what I should have done to fix it, but it would be a problem. One time I was told I was "unavailable to my team", even though we had slack and nobody had tried to contact me and failed or had even gotten a delayed response. In another situation I had been having problems with 2 specific team members (couldn't handle any kind of feedback that wasn't completely onboard with their amazing ideas), and in the same exact week, my boss said (and this is a quote) ... "the problem may be that you are TOO good at your job", I got a merit based raise (after just 6 months there), and at the end of the week I was put on a PIP and told I had "no future" at the company. Hows that for consistency and your manager working to help you. lol. The part that is absolutely maddening though? That same communication style that everyone acts like is a huge problem. Some people get to talk like that to anyone at anytime in pretty much the same way in the same company you're at ... direct, pointed and directly opposed to some idea, sometimes even rudely. But when you do it as a minority (sans the rudeness), its a problem. I remember one Engineer, losing his shit because our company had decided to pay for only part of our parking in our new downtown location. He raised his voice, and he cussed in addressing a SENIOR FEMALE HR executive that was seated in the meeting, full of people. Nothing happened to him. If I'd tried something like that, I'd have been out of there in 1 week flat. That's the kind of double standard you have to just accept as a minority in tech, and I think its absolute trash. Long story short, this stuff is real, it happens and its absolutely bullshit. It makes you feel like you are going batshit CRAZY (I'm an athlete, and at one point during one of these being-managed-out episodes, my blood pressure hit 140. thats hypertensive) ... and like I've alluded to before, I wouldn't be shocked if something like this played a role in that Uber engineer's suicide a few months back, because it can really wreak havoc with your mental state and sense of self if you don't have a good support system and/or therapist. The key is to remember, you're not perfect, be humble and fix what you can, but also remember that lots of people and companies are full of shit, and quite often (especially if you're from a minority group in tech), its not you, its them that are fucked up, despite people on HN doubting your every move and intention. Also always find a manager that will take a bullet for you, and if you're put on a PIP and you know its bullshit, just leave, don't suffer the indignity and mental anguish of getting shit on for weeks, all the way to a crappy severance if you can help it. Cheers and Good Luck Coraline!
• LordHumungous 9y ago
  >For my first few pull requests, I was getting feedback from literally dozens of engineers (all of whom were male) on other teams, nitpicking the code I had written. This is common practice for new devs, at least where I work.
  • quanticle 9y ago
    Oh god, that sounds horrible. As a new dev, I already know that I don't know anything. I don't need hundreds of people pointing out every little flaw in my code.
    • LordHumungous 9y ago
      Not hundreds, more like 5-6. It's nothing personal, it's to help the new dev learn the company way of doing things.
• 4421324111 9y ago
  Is it any surprise that she suffered from mental health issues?
• LordHumungous 9y ago
  > My team was 5 women and one man: two of us trans, three women of color Keep in mind that her team helps writes her performance reviews. > For my first few pull requests, I was getting feedback from literally dozens of engineers (all of whom were male) on other teams, nitpicking the code I had written. Oh no people were reviewing a new engineer's code. (male employees. you know what that means) > The post was submitted for editorial review. It was decided that the tone of what I had written was too personal and didn't reflect the voice of the company. Translation: I wrote a ranty screed and my employer, which unlike me understands the importance of polite communication and cares about its public image, declined to publish it verbatim. > But pair programming simply didn't happen at GitHub. I would occasionally get another engineer to share a screen to walk me through a particularly hairy subsystem, but actual pairing was extremely rare and I missed it. Gee I wonder why nobody wanted to pair program with you. > When I talked to my manager about how she was progressing, I was told to stop the formal mentoring and allow this person to "learn at her own pace, without any pressure from you." Translation: Your mentee is complaining about you being a huge asshole. > She told me that the data scientist who had written the survey questions was very upset and had gone to her manager to complain about me. Guessing this wasn't the first incident. > This was the first instance of what came to be referred to as my "non-empathetic communication style". Lol. > My manager accused me of shutting down the conversation by making it personal. You would never do such a thing. > My overall review was a "Does Not Meet Expectations." Surprise! Your coworkers hate you. > The same day that I had this review, I got some devastating personal news. I have bipolar depression and was already in a bad place mentally Aaand here come the excuses. > she said she felt like I was trying to manipulate her by sharing my feelings in the hopes of influencing the PIP. You weren't though, right? Right? > GitHub has made some very public commitments to turning its culture around, but I feel now that these statements are just PR. Yes this has everything to do with Github's culture and nothing to do with your performance as an employee.
  • verinus 9y ago
    And I wonder where the hate in this comment comes from- I can not draw the same conclusions from the blog post and imho your comment tells a lot more about yourself that the case at hand.
• smokedoutraider 9y ago
  All this post really shows is that you shouldn't hire people simply for diversity's sake, especially not when their primary concern is social justice related questions instead of skills and ability. The fact that a post like this, by a writer as delusional and out of touch with reality as this, is being upvoted is an indication that this community has completely lost its mind.
• alexashka 9y ago
  This is an unfortunate smear piece. Not everyone is going to like everyone else, and it has nothing to do with gender. Some people are just not very likeable, others are very likeable. Coraline based on my impression, is just not terribly likeable. Github wants people they like, to be part of Github. How can you blame them? People who don't get that, and go around writing long winded blogs of how they've been mistreated, and claim it has to do with some social justice issue, are unfortunately oblivious to what the real issue is.
• danpalmer 9y ago
  Maybe the UK, or my company, has a different communication style, but from the examples she gave of her communication I think we would have considered her to have very clear, concise and efficient communication, things we look for and value.
  • dustinmoris 9y ago
    I work in the UK in a tech company and I thought the opposite. Here we would definitely have let her go as well for her aggressive communication style. No matter how good you write code, if your everyday attitude is creating a toxic environment around you then you're not welcome, because it drags down everyone else and as an employer it is a responsibility to create a nice environment to which your employees are happy to wake up 5 days a week.
    • porker 9y ago
      Focusing on the one communication we've got (her message to the data scientist) how would you have delivered it within your company? I (UK too) would have used the language she used or softened it slightly, depending on the recipient.
      • dustinmoris 9y ago
        Oh there's loads. First of all her single comment is very short which sets a certain tone itself. There is absolutely 0 effort in her comment to establish a friendly tone. That itself might not necessarily mean that it reads negatively, but it will certainly not ready positively either, which is the first problem. Secondly she says that transgender is not a gender, but she doesn't provide any constructive feedback or improvement with it. She could have explained what transgender means, or linked to a website which explains the topic well, or at least offered something along the lines "hey I happen to know a lot about this topic and would love to help you phrasing this question. Feel free to reach out to me on Slack with any questions or if you need more advice.". "If you want to know if a survey respondent is transgender, you need to explicitly ask that question". That sentence alone comes across very much top-down as in "omg you're so stupid and don't even know what that is and you should do this or that if you want". This is certainly not the message and tone that you want to say to someone the very first time you communicate with someone, unless you obviously don't care about how you come across, how other people feel and how it might affect them, which is fine, but then don't be surprised if people think you are unfriendly, not pleasant to work with and toxic. For instance, if I know a lot about a programming topic and I would review someone's work for the first time I would not just say "Hey dude, what you've done here is wrong. If you want to do it right do it right man." First I would avoid to say wrong at all and say that I think it can be improved, because my goal is to improve things and not tell people if they are right or wrong, I don't gain anything from that. Further I would offer constructive suggestions on how it can be improved and also provide extra material/links for them to educate more on that topic, because I would want them to get better and not just me look superior to them.
• artumi-richard 9y ago
  Back in 2006 I read that people don't understand the intended tone in emails. I'm assuming it applies to most text based communication, and is one of the reasons I have devalued email and comments. The key quote: "According to recent research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, I've only a 50-50 chance of ascertaining the tone of any e-mail message. The study also shows that people think they've correctly interpreted the tone of e-mails they receive 90 percent of the time." I think this means we overlay what we think the intended tone was meant to be on top of the email, and usually it's more to do with us than the content of the email, and I suspect in Coraline's case it was uniformly negative due to unrecognised prejudice. I would suggest that in the corporate setting, if you've not got a relationship with the author of code you shouldn't be able to feedback initially as text, but instead either in person or on the phone. In that way you get the relationship between reporter and coder off to a good start, and follow up text communications will have a better chance of working. I would actually go so far as to say no-one in a corporate setting should be communicating with each other as text without a phone call or a meeting to introduce each other. Here's the article that's stuck with me so long: https://www.wired.com/2006/02/the-secret-cause-of-flame-wars/ https://www.wired.com/2006/02/the-secret-cause-of-flame-wars...
  • jacobr 9y ago
    I have started to use emojis almost excessively in situations where there is risk of misinterpretation due to my terseness. It comes across a bit unprofessional, but I prefer that over being considered rude or lacking empathy. I believe the latter impression is harder to recover from.
    • plopz 9y ago
      So your basically adding a laugh track to an email? I think japanese/korean tv do something similar, where they show people's faces in a corner reacting to whatever is on screen so the audience is encouraged towards a certain reaction.
    • anc84 9y ago
      Careful with that, you might just add more confusion! https://grouplens.org/blog/investigating-the-potential-for-miscommunication-using-emoji/ https://grouplens.org/blog/investigating-the-potential-for-m...
• gerbal 9y ago
  How would HN be reacting if this were written by and about a man? There are a lot of gender expectations that punish assertive and matter of fact women as 'bitchy' and 'insensitive'. If a white guy behaves the same way no one thinks twice about it. To me it sounds like management at Github is uncomfortable with her perspectives. We often see women and minorities censured for not trying to conform to the model of a demure, inoffensive, and compliant minority. Much like the comments here, Github management appears to prefer to focus on the perceived personality flaws of someone who makes others uncomfortable by her presence rather than underlying issues causing their discomfort. The "insensitivity" mentioned in the piece appears to be largely based on the fact that the author behaves much like a white guy would in these situations.
  • hasenj 9y ago
    > How would HN be reacting if this were written by and about a man? There are a lot of gender expectations that punish assertive and matter of fact women as 'bitchy' and 'insensitive'. Did you just assume my reaction? (partly sarcastic). If you know anything about tech and blogging and HN, you should know that most posts get flamed and dissected very quickly. People have very strong opinions and have very low tolerance for BS. The only difference is, people from the "social justice" community always make it personal. "What? You criticize me? It must be because of my race/skin/gender/religion/orientation, you bigoted monster!".
    • hiyou102 9y ago
      This is easily disprovable. See for example this post about being fired from the exact same company: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9158913 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9158913 Despite the post having less details,there is less negativity and uncertainty. For reference as to why that might be, refer to the post you are responding to.
      • hasenj 9y ago
        Really? "Look, someone else wrote a post about leaving github and it wasn't received as negatively! It must because one was a white male and the other was transgender." No. How about, the tone of the post is completely different?
• lz400 9y ago
  To me this sounds too much like one side of the story. There's no proof of anything and there are a few red flags so I don't know if this is all true or it's a hit piece on GH. I've no idea and if anything, I find amusing to read so many comments that are so sure how things went down one or the other way. To quote a guy, whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
• romanovcode 9y ago
  Good tutorial on how to not get hired. Post stuff like this in your blog.
• _nalply 9y ago
  The OP is a part of a marginalised group of people. Marginalisation means that some people who aren't part of that group feel they have to resist. This means that the issues of the marginalised people are perceived as less important or even annoying. Sometimes this effect is subtle but can be severely damaging. One example is that the post needed several attempts here at Hacker News to be not flagged. As a Deaf programmer I also experience this marginalisation. Of course the causes are different. One thing is exactly the same: I need to fight for my own power. And this fighting is sadly already enough to tick people off. Edit: Clarified language.
• dustinmoris 9y ago
  I am not a Ruby developer so I don't really know Coraline, but there were quite a few things in this blog post which I found disturbing: > In the midst of my discussions with the editorial team, trying to reach a compromise, a (male) engineer from another team completely rewrote the blog post and published it without talking to me. The entire paragraph about her writing a blog post has nothing to do with gender, why is it relevant to explicitly try to correlate it with gender in a situation where someone has done something which she wasn't happy about? It reads sexist to me as an outsider. > In addition to my development work, I had started weekly mentoring sessions with one of my teammates... When I talked to my manager about how she was progressing, I was told to stop the formal mentoring and allow this person to "learn at her own pace, without any pressure from you." Yes mentoring is an essential part, but mentorig is not becoming someone's teacher. That is very weird indeed. Here she says that she was additionally mentoring someone on a weekly basis, which implies that she was doing some sort of teaching lessons to another team member outside of regular development work. This is not mentoring AFAIK. Mentoring is something you do along the way as you work with someone together. You offer help when help is needed, you give advice when advice is requested, you keep your ears open and chip in with help or information when you see someone is struggling, you lead and teach by example and not by lessons. I can totally understand if the manager was thinking that his person should not feel the pressure of a more senior developer in such a situation. She thinks the developer was benefitting, but how does she even know that? Perhaps the more junior developer was too shy to speak up or felt intimidated by a senior employee telling him/her what and how to do things. > Discussions were directed to comments on issues and pull requests. I can see how this was in some situations difficult, but I (as someone who thinks of himself as very open minded) can also totally see why it might be beneficial: - A discussion on an open issue or pull request provides automatic documentation - It can be found and read by anyone - It fosters more of a culture where anyone feels invited to contribute if they think they have relevant information - It doesn't get lost among other conversations. In Slack or in real life you might talk about 3 issues at the same time and the history of one issue is totally swamped among the chat of all other issues. In GitHub each issue/PR has it's own discussion. - A discussion is often far more civilised when it is done in an issue or PR than in real life or in Slack, which is a huge benefit to establish a positive work culture IMHO. Again, I can agree that there is also downsides to it, but as someone who prides themselves as an open minded person I would have hoped that she would have looked a bit further than just the downsides and also try to make an effort and understand why it was done like this at GitHub. Being open minded, look at positives and try to foster a positive attitute is one of the most important skills in an employee in my opinion. > I asked my manager what had happened to upset her and was told that it was the feedback I provided on the gender question. I read back to her the body of the issue that I had opened and asked what I should have done differently. She responded that she didn't know, that my wording seemed direct but non-confrontational, but that I was forbidden to interact any further with the author of the survey. I have really no foundation for this assumption, but it really reads that her tone in approaching other co-workers was rather direct and harsh, which from my personal experience is never a good way to get people on your side. Especially with people who you have never met or rarely seen I think it is crucial to put some thoughts into how certain things are phrased. At the end of the day you don't know the other person, don't know how they will read it and react to it. If you have a genuine interest to get the best out of this together, rather than just trying to show off that you are more knowledgable than someone else, then you would certainly phrase things more friendly. Say what you want, but I have 10+ years of experience as well and I know that there was never a situation where I was not able to get my point across in a VERY obvious friendly tone. > Starting in December, in my weekly one-on-one meetings with my manager, we would review all of my written communication (issues, pull requests, code reviews, and Slack messages) to talk about how I could improve. It felt ridiculous but I went along with it, and did my best to address my manager's feedback and concerns. What attitute is that? A good manager will try to get the best of evey reportee and focus on personal strenghts/weaknesses. What is ridiculous about trying to improve communication skills? Honestly that is such a bad attitute, as if anyone would ever be such a communication god that there's nothing to improve anymore. That sentence alone is very negative IMHO. -- Obviously it is very sad and unfortunate that she had to go through mental health issues and the loss of her grandmother, but it really feels like her manager was trying to work with her to go through all these situations and Coraline was doing her own thing. I think it was very responsible of her manager to ask her to take medical leave. Imagine what would have happenend if she didn't? If her manager would have been like "alright, just continue working then", then later she would sue GitHub for not taking her mental health problems seriously and firing her based on that. Her manager was extremely open about her weaknesses, was putting effort into working through them with her and taking the right and responsible steps to get her back on track, but honestly there's only so much you can do before you have to let someone go...
• hasenj 9y ago
  > For my first few pull requests, I was getting feedback from literally dozens of engineers (all of whom were male) on other teams, nitpicking the code I had written. One PR actually had over 200 comments from 24 different individuals. There's no context given here about what the PR is, how big is it, and what's the nature of the comments. It could be a gigantic PR and it could be that most comments are innocuous repetitions such as "add empty line here". or, it could it be that this person's notoriety followed them to their new workplace and many people were genuinely frustrated that they have to work with an unpleasant person. EDIT: > In a return to its meritocratic roots, the company has decided to move forward with a merit-based stock option program Maybe they realized that trying to appease political agitators doesn't work and that having competent people is the only rational business decision?
• Torakfirenze 9y ago
  My brief and only interaction with Coraline entailed me tweeting to her, thanking her for a talk she gave, to which she blocked me, and told me to my face "Straight white cis-hetero males are the enemy". I think, looking back on that interaction with Coraline, there was, in fact, a real problem with empathy. But that problem wasn't mine.
  • sqldba 9y ago
    Wow.
    • Torakfirenze 9y ago
      Yeah and I'm not joking either - I have all of TWO tweets on twitter (https://twitter.com/Stuart_codes https://twitter.com/Stuart_codes) and am most certainly blocked: http://i.imgur.com/EHa3MfQ.png http://i.imgur.com/EHa3MfQ.png
• Torakfirenze 9y ago
  My brief and only interaction with Coraline entailed me tweeting to her, thanking her for a talk she gave at a conference (which, in all fairness was a good talk), to which she blocked me on twitter, and told me to my face "Straight white cis-hetero males are the enemy". I think, looking back on that interaction with Coraline, there was, in fact, a real problem with empathy. But that problem wasn't mine.
• equalunique 9y ago
  I still dont get why merit-based approaches are being so heavily criticized. Coraline herself seems to have demonstrated a great deal of merit in the work she performed. She has all of my sympathies, but how can one pitch themselves by citing the good work they do, and then go on to state that meritocracy is wrong? I appreciate the specific purpose of Coraline's team Community & Safety, but fail to see why their goals and merit are practically incompatible.
• dudul 9y ago
  I feel like a read a blog post by this author describing how they got wrongfully fired every year or two.
• daveheq 9y ago
  I will now review every contributer's social posts to see if they say anything discriminatory and request that they be removed from the project.
• jankedeen 9y ago
  Crybaby and crappy coder.
• archerface 9y ago
  Something that I don't get about this article is why she keeps implying that a merit based system is so bad. It behoves a company to hire and fire based on merit, while also rewarding and encouraging those who are skilled at their job. That is how you create a top notch product.
• mathattack 9y ago
  A lot of folks are kicking the author whenshe's down. Read this as 1st person field notes from an engineer with mental illness and the story makes sense. No need to say "but she is irrational" - of course she is. We shouldn't hold the ill to the same standards.
• intellix 9y ago
  Why can't we just remove the gender field and give people a key/value metadata field for people to identify whatever the hell they want to, be it gay, straight, white, black, paedophile, bestiality enthusiast. I imagine the point of the gender column is to try and identify patterns which can be achieved with key/value. It should satisfy these people who feel the need to have to identify themselves in all ways possible.
• galkk 9y ago
  I remember how I was infuriated by what she called "opalgate". She got what she deserved.
• jkereako 9y ago
  I get the impression Coraline was confrontational. Folks like this are really hard to work with. They're also really easy to dislike. I found this interesting: > I wrote an impassioned piece talking about how this feature closed a security gap that had directly affected and provided an abuse vector against me I see this "impassioned piece" as a public shaming of the company who employs her. Since her team's product manager encouraged her to write this, it makes the product manager look like a fool. She probably caused a lot of friction among several of her co-workers and her manager just couldn't help her anymore.
• Stryder 9y ago
  Some things that stood out to me after reading the whole thing: - Other engineers dog-piling on her first few PRs showed that there was a complete lack of trust in her, and perhaps an active distrust in her abilities. I have no comments regarding whether this was deserved or not, but the known facts point to such a reality. - Writing a feature blog post based on a personal perspective and personal past experience is not something a matured corporation can allow. This should not have been a surprise. - Being the most productive engineer is not the goal of a Principal level engineer. I don't believe any software management would expect their Principal engineers to be sitting at the desk cranking out code all day. Influencing large scale initiatives across the org is more of the job expectation. This means building relationships with lots of people, which means less coding and more guidance of other engineers to do the coding. - By that point, the expectation must have been high for what she can contribute on the diversity front. The terse messaging regarding the survey probably didn't help, but I also don't see it as a big deal. It's probably just piling on past issues. - The rest is standard PIP procedure of managing out someone who isn't working out. I would love to say that I know how better to handle a PIP, but I don't. It seems to me that Github expected a much stronger engineer, but feel like they didn't get one and that she was underperforming. Was that the actual reality? I don't know, and I don't feel qualified to pass judgment. Which leads me to my final thought: it does seem like Github might have an empathy problem. My guess is that Coraline had her own set of insecurities about being at Github going into the job, and the first few encounters with the rest of the org put them into overdrive. It's unfortunate that her manager did not deem it productive to learn what her insecurities were and validate her on those fronts, which I believe might have put her back on the right track towards success. Instead, Coraline hunkered down and started cranking out code, and possibly withdrawing from the org around her? Rather than doing her intended job. But, it is a lot to ask for a manager to do all of that, and she was a Principal engineer after all. Getting a job is like getting married, even if things look all good at the ceremony, there's still years of sustained work/relationship-building to come. This one looks like a case of bad matching. In no way as to diminish Coraline's story, I've seen this happen to a lot of different kinds of people from all walks of life. My 2 pennies.