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I'm a bit surprised that Github would allow one of their employees to behave that way without firing them. Love Zed or hate Zed, he's still a user, and you're s

I'm a bit surprised that Github would allow one of their employees to behave that way without firing them. Love Zed or hate Zed, he's still a user, and you're still a company providing a service; show some professionalism. Zed: I'm on your side here, but please stop rising to these assholes' attacks. You're not going to convince them to change their ways, and getting into a pissing match with them gives them what they're looking for. You won this one, but your time is worth more than this.

eropple 15y ago
He could do a lot worse than provide the rest of us free entertainment. I saw this fifteen minutes ago and I'm still chuckling.
- rimantas 15y ago
  He surely can do a lot worse, I have no doubt he will. Warning to Github, really? The mighty Zed is not going to recommend it to anyone, how scary.
  - gooddelta 15y ago
    rimantas, I think you're missing the point -- Zed knows that his "recommendation" holds relatively little weight; however, sometimes it's good to remind a company that they can still lose customers, and how easy it can be to do so.
    - rimantas 15y ago
      Losing customers is not necessarily a bad thing. Let's say I am having a dinner in a nice quiet restaurant but there is some noisy, aggressive drunk at the table nearby. I'd be more than happy for the restaurant to lose that customer. Was it Sprint who ditched 10% of their customers who used to complain the most so they could spend less time arguing with them and provide better service to the rest instead? Note, this is not to say, that any of these examples applies there but just to illustrate my first sentence.
      - anon_throwaway 15y ago
        Github lost me as a prospective customer (and I currently pay for multi-user accounts at both BeanStalk and Kiln). They had an unhappy customer, and their staff felt the best way to handle it was to mock the customer publicly. That's juvenile bullshit, no matter what you think of the customer.
        gjs278 15y ago
        you're an idiot then because there is no verification that the twitter user is actually a github employee. zed should be the one apologizing here for just making bullshit up. at no point did anyone at github say anything bad about him.
        anon_throwaway 15y ago
        I have reason to believe, aside from Zed's post, that at least one GitHub employee was involved in the harassment. I could be wrong, but my beliefs aren't based on nothing. The startup world is very small. Thank you for the reminder that HN is now reddit. P.S. Nobody's mind was ever changed by a sentence that begins 'you're an idiot'.
      - bigiain 15y ago
        Isn't this more like: I'm having dinner in a nice quiet restaurant, but there's a table of noisy aggressive jerks at a table nearby, who happen to be restaurant staff and their friends, who're causing existing customers to leave and driving away potential customers. ?
  - rdtsc 15y ago
    > scary. Yes. Regardless what you, I, or Github thinks of him, as a company their best move is to issue a public apology over this. Imagine they get into a spat with him -- they start calling him names, he fights back etc. Then some customer has to make a decision on whether they want to pick Github, are they going to like seeing and hearing public spitting matches between them and Zed, is that going to look like mature, reliable company to trust the crown jewels (source code) of one's company to? -- No.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
ericflo 15y ago
I don't think that Nick Martini guy is a GitHub employee.
- zmitri 15y ago
  I believe he's speaking about the curator of HackerNewsTips, who from the last few tweets, sounds like he might be the GitHub employee who had to deal with the wrath of Zed.
  - ryanf 15y ago
    I think that's Zed's assumption, but it also seems to be completely unwarranted. The HackerNewsTips guy was making (funny, accurate) jokes that are in keeping with the tone of the rest of the feed.
- zedshaw 15y ago
  I never said Nick Martini is a github employee, I know who he is and he's definitely not there. I said: 1. I suspect HackerNewsTips is a github employee. I'd also suspect a fellow former PowerSet employee. 2. They are not only in on the joke (from their Ruby connections), but like the joke, and that's why they don't really fix the problem. We'll see what's true.
kenneth_reitz 15y ago
I would be shocked if any GitHub employee is "in" on this.
silencio 15y ago
I wouldn't mind finding out more about the whole story. Did Zed try to contact someone at github to try to get a fix for this problem before writing his little script? To get this person banned? Whatever it takes for him to stop showing up as a collaborator, regardless of what dick obsession github employees might have? Or is the extent of his github contact just passive aggressively trolling a troll and then blaming github for doing nothing when he did nothing to work with them? All I'm reading is assumptions and more assumptions in his post about who might be the author of @HackerNewsTips and github employees liking dicks therefore they won't help him and will just laugh. That's not terribly convincing.
- zedshaw 15y ago
  Yes, one of their employees actually fixed a bug I caused so someone there knows, yet here we are again. Now I know what you're saying, I should go through their bug tracker bureaucracy for a few weeks. File some nice bugs, talk with people, go down to their office, pick up some schwag, and then after they've had about 6 months to fix the problem I'll finally have dongml off my project list. Sorry, but if they don't fix it after it causes a bug in their system, and after other people complain about it, then it probably won't get fixed. Based on that, I'll just write about it and move on to something else (again).
  - silencio 15y ago
    No matter github's priorities or prior knowledge of this issue, there is always the option of manual intervention. That is probably what I would have contacted github for if I found myself in your problem. I was just wondering if you tried to contact someone at github before reaching the conclusion that you needed to take this into your own hands. This is before finding the bug they needed to fix and letting the world know in a super high profile blog post that you had a problem. Even if it wouldn't do anything in the short term other than banning the account in question, github would have documented history of abuse and another big +1 for fixing the way adding collaborators works. I don't mean that you have to spend 6 months and become drinking buddies with everyone at github to get anything done. Even a simple one liner email like "this dick is being a dick with his dicks" to support would be better than assuming they're not going to do anything. Basically, I'm trying to see this from a developer perspective. We expect these kinds of bug reports and emails from users (or, at least, analytics that would correspond with a problem) and we know that we can't read minds (well, I don't know about you, but I know I can't). We also have priorities. Yet we have users and clients and bosses that want to disregard all that :) If you do know that this was a well known problem to github and they didn't want to address your particular issue, then kudos to you for your creative trolling of a troll and deciding to switch to another provider. Otherwise, I don't know, I'm pretty ambivalent on how I feel about people complaining without saying anything to the company/person in question. I can't blame you for being frustrated, but part of your frustration might be self-inflicted.
anon_throwaway 15y ago
On GitHub's side, it's surprising that they don't offer some sort of 'block/reject' option when somebody gets added as a collaborator. I'm disappointed in that, but also in all the companies who have employees who think this is acceptably professional behavior. I'm pretty far from a Zed Shaw fan, but come the fuck on.
zedshaw 15y ago
We'll see if HackerNewsTips is a github employee, or if they've been in on these "Ruby dick jokes". I've got good insider knowledge that some of them are involved, but that's been wrong before. Until then, assume that it's just one guy being a jerk and he's doing it without their knowledge.

eropple 15y ago

He could do a lot worse than provide the rest of us free entertainment. I saw this fifteen minutes ago and I'm still chuckling.

rimantas 15y ago
He surely can do a lot worse, I have no doubt he will. Warning to Github, really? The mighty Zed is not going to recommend it to anyone, how scary.
- gooddelta 15y ago
  rimantas, I think you're missing the point -- Zed knows that his "recommendation" holds relatively little weight; however, sometimes it's good to remind a company that they can still lose customers, and how easy it can be to do so.
  - rimantas 15y ago
    Losing customers is not necessarily a bad thing. Let's say I am having a dinner in a nice quiet restaurant but there is some noisy, aggressive drunk at the table nearby. I'd be more than happy for the restaurant to lose that customer. Was it Sprint who ditched 10% of their customers who used to complain the most so they could spend less time arguing with them and provide better service to the rest instead? Note, this is not to say, that any of these examples applies there but just to illustrate my first sentence.
    - anon_throwaway 15y ago
      Github lost me as a prospective customer (and I currently pay for multi-user accounts at both BeanStalk and Kiln). They had an unhappy customer, and their staff felt the best way to handle it was to mock the customer publicly. That's juvenile bullshit, no matter what you think of the customer.
      - gjs278 15y ago
        you're an idiot then because there is no verification that the twitter user is actually a github employee. zed should be the one apologizing here for just making bullshit up. at no point did anyone at github say anything bad about him.
        anon_throwaway 15y ago
        I have reason to believe, aside from Zed's post, that at least one GitHub employee was involved in the harassment. I could be wrong, but my beliefs aren't based on nothing. The startup world is very small. Thank you for the reminder that HN is now reddit. P.S. Nobody's mind was ever changed by a sentence that begins 'you're an idiot'.
    - bigiain 15y ago
      Isn't this more like: I'm having dinner in a nice quiet restaurant, but there's a table of noisy aggressive jerks at a table nearby, who happen to be restaurant staff and their friends, who're causing existing customers to leave and driving away potential customers. ?
- rdtsc 15y ago
  > scary. Yes. Regardless what you, I, or Github thinks of him, as a company their best move is to issue a public apology over this. Imagine they get into a spat with him -- they start calling him names, he fights back etc. Then some customer has to make a decision on whether they want to pick Github, are they going to like seeing and hearing public spitting matches between them and Zed, is that going to look like mature, reliable company to trust the crown jewels (source code) of one's company to? -- No.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

ericflo 15y ago

I don't think that Nick Martini guy is a GitHub employee.

zmitri 15y ago
I believe he's speaking about the curator of HackerNewsTips, who from the last few tweets, sounds like he might be the GitHub employee who had to deal with the wrath of Zed.
- ryanf 15y ago
  I think that's Zed's assumption, but it also seems to be completely unwarranted. The HackerNewsTips guy was making (funny, accurate) jokes that are in keeping with the tone of the rest of the feed.
zedshaw 15y ago
I never said Nick Martini is a github employee, I know who he is and he's definitely not there. I said: 1. I suspect HackerNewsTips is a github employee. I'd also suspect a fellow former PowerSet employee. 2. They are not only in on the joke (from their Ruby connections), but like the joke, and that's why they don't really fix the problem. We'll see what's true.

kenneth_reitz 15y ago

I would be shocked if any GitHub employee is "in" on this.

silencio 15y ago

I wouldn't mind finding out more about the whole story. Did Zed try to contact someone at github to try to get a fix for this problem before writing his little script? To get this person banned? Whatever it takes for him to stop showing up as a collaborator, regardless of what dick obsession github employees might have? Or is the extent of his github contact just passive aggressively trolling a troll and then blaming github for doing nothing when he did nothing to work with them? All I'm reading is assumptions and more assumptions in his post about who might be the author of @HackerNewsTips and github employees liking dicks therefore they won't help him and will just laugh. That's not terribly convincing.

zedshaw 15y ago
Yes, one of their employees actually fixed a bug I caused so someone there knows, yet here we are again. Now I know what you're saying, I should go through their bug tracker bureaucracy for a few weeks. File some nice bugs, talk with people, go down to their office, pick up some schwag, and then after they've had about 6 months to fix the problem I'll finally have dongml off my project list. Sorry, but if they don't fix it after it causes a bug in their system, and after other people complain about it, then it probably won't get fixed. Based on that, I'll just write about it and move on to something else (again).
- silencio 15y ago
  No matter github's priorities or prior knowledge of this issue, there is always the option of manual intervention. That is probably what I would have contacted github for if I found myself in your problem. I was just wondering if you tried to contact someone at github before reaching the conclusion that you needed to take this into your own hands. This is before finding the bug they needed to fix and letting the world know in a super high profile blog post that you had a problem. Even if it wouldn't do anything in the short term other than banning the account in question, github would have documented history of abuse and another big +1 for fixing the way adding collaborators works. I don't mean that you have to spend 6 months and become drinking buddies with everyone at github to get anything done. Even a simple one liner email like "this dick is being a dick with his dicks" to support would be better than assuming they're not going to do anything. Basically, I'm trying to see this from a developer perspective. We expect these kinds of bug reports and emails from users (or, at least, analytics that would correspond with a problem) and we know that we can't read minds (well, I don't know about you, but I know I can't). We also have priorities. Yet we have users and clients and bosses that want to disregard all that :) If you do know that this was a well known problem to github and they didn't want to address your particular issue, then kudos to you for your creative trolling of a troll and deciding to switch to another provider. Otherwise, I don't know, I'm pretty ambivalent on how I feel about people complaining without saying anything to the company/person in question. I can't blame you for being frustrated, but part of your frustration might be self-inflicted.

anon_throwaway 15y ago

On GitHub's side, it's surprising that they don't offer some sort of 'block/reject' option when somebody gets added as a collaborator. I'm disappointed in that, but also in all the companies who have employees who think this is acceptably professional behavior. I'm pretty far from a Zed Shaw fan, but come the fuck on.

zedshaw 15y ago

We'll see if HackerNewsTips is a github employee, or if they've been in on these "Ruby dick jokes". I've got good insider knowledge that some of them are involved, but that's been wrong before. Until then, assume that it's just one guy being a jerk and he's doing it without their knowledge.