19 ms·

Ouch. What a terrible situation. I'm holding out for the other side of the story, but unless you're willing to assume the entire thing is invented this is a maj

by sgentle 13y ago

Ouch. What a terrible situation. I'm holding out for the other side of the story, but unless you're willing to assume the entire thing is invented this is a major fuckup for GitHub. I think this is a classic problem with companies making the transition from small startup to regular business. Break down the barriers! Flat management! Kill bureaucracy and embrace no-politics DIY organisation! The article reads like an HR air crash investigation. Nebulous semi-employee with unspecified responsibilities related to a founder? Check. Unclear or absent grievance chain? Check. HR alternately over- and under-involved in disputes with no clear policy? Check. Off-the-record disciplinary meetings? Check. Founder adjudicates his own grievances? Check. And it seems like every single one of these problems could have been solved by a halfway competent manager. I mean, someone reverting your code because of a personal vendetta? Is that not like, a 5 minute conversation? "Hey, Jo, Dave's being an asshole and reverting my commits for no reason." "Oh, okay, I'll talk to him and make sure it stops." I read a great article a while back that I unfortunately can't find now, but it talked about a CEO who thought he was having a casual "hey, I'm interested in developing my skills, can you mentor me a bit?" conversation with another exec. A week later the office was ablaze with "so-and-so being groomed as successor" rumours. At a certain point you stop being able to just act like a regular person and have everything turn out fine. Red tape isn't always a straitjacket. Sometimes it's a crash harness.

m_c 13y ago
I think the article you mention is Ben Horowitz's blog on 'How to Minimize Politics in Your Company'[1]. It's a great read and also has advice for CEOs dealing with disputes between executives. [1] http://www.bhorowitz.com/how_to_minimize_politics_in_your_company http://www.bhorowitz.com/how_to_minimize_politics_in_your_co...
buro9 13y ago
> Nebulous semi-employee with unspecified responsibilities related to a founder? This is the point that stands out for me. That the wife is not an employee of Github but claims to be able to access private company chat records, and also is able to "work" from within the office and interact with the staff. Even with allowances that company property remains company property and private chat rooms are in fact non-private to the company... there is no scenario in which a non-employee should have access to those chat rooms. The wife, and the husband (founder), have displayed an incredible lack of professionalism here. There may even be a question about whether those acts are illegal if they are substantiated. And for companies that use Github to host private repositories, the question should be asked very loud and clear... "Who can access private company data, why, and for what reason?". If a non-employee can access information that is presumed (even by their own employees) to be private, then our (external companies) assumptions about what is private and secure at Github are weakened and demand very clear statements backed up with clear processes to reassure.
- keithpeter 13y ago
  "Who can access private company data, why, and for what reason?" This seems to me to be the major takeaway for organisations outside github from this sorry affair. I'm sort of surprised you are the only person to raise this so far. In the UK, the employee who resigned could have a successful day in an employment tribunal. And one aspect of the hearing would be privacy and the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act provisions.
  - wahsd 13y ago
    But you live in the UK, which is still part of Europe, where people are still people that have rights. Your only right in the USA is the right to leave.
    - mwfunk 13y ago
      The fact that you were able to post this means that your statement is false. Using hyperbole to make a point only serves to invalidate your point, unless your audience is composed of complete idiots (not hyperbole, that's actually what I mean). I would hope that the HN readership isn't a bunch of idiots, although you obviously think they are.
      - Chronic26 13y ago
        HN is in fact, full of idiots. Look at the comments below.
    - jrockway 13y ago
      you live in the UK where people are still people that have rights The right to be sued for libel whenever they write something that someone else doesn't like?
      - keithpeter 13y ago
        Actually, we have no written Constitution, and very little in the way of actual rights in the sense that if a Constable asks us to move or go home or to search our bags, we have to let them. Employment rights however are slightly better. The employee interviewed in the OA would have recourse to an employment tribunal for what used to be called 'constructive dismissal' - the terminology may have changed recently. The monetary compensation would be quite basic by Valley standards, but the public exposure of the employers, subject to cross-examination, would be most satisfying I imagine.
megablast 13y ago
> "Oh, okay, I'll talk to him and make sure it stops." Can I come live in your world where everything is solved by a quick talk.
- mbreese 13y ago
  Lots of problems can be stopped from escalating by a quick chat before. The goal is to stop the small problems before they become big ones. No, you're not going to solve completely toxic situations, but you could slow them down so they could be managed. You want to know about issues before they hit the front page of Techcrunch. Regardless of what happened, it is clear that GitHub didn't manage this situation well.
- kansface 13y ago
  Seems straight forward to me: "stop this shit or you're fired".
  - chmike 13y ago
    You should first ask for an explanation and justification of the so far alledged misbehavior. You could accuse and threat someone on false claims. If the person fails to provide a valid explanation and justification the demonstration of the existance of a problem will have been made by itself. No need the explicitly threat anyone. Threatening should be done only in phase 2 after the problem as been acertained by both parties and the person has failed to correct what could have been a simple misunderstanding or an accident.
- bowlofpetunias 13y ago
  A lot of problems can be solved (or prevented) by a talk at the right moment. It's supposed to be part the of the skill set of those people called "managers". You know, the people we don't need. Until we do.
- michaelt 13y ago
  When a line manager decides to make sure an employee stops doing something, it's actually several conversations: 1. A friendly conversation in which the manager points out the problem, establishes that they expect it to stop, but that if it stops immediately it'll all be forgotten. 2. A less friendly conversation in which the manager says I thought we were clear that you aren't supposed to do it. You're still doing it, WTF? Depending on the problem maybe the employee has some reason/excuse and you need to do something to help them with it/remove it as an excuse. If the employee is the cynical type, the aim is to establish that while you have an incentive to keep him (because you want good employees on your team), now you've taken a stance on his behaviour, letting him walk all over you would harm your reputation as a competent manager, so the incentive to keep him isn't the only one. 3. A conversation where you tell them you've started the ball rolling on getting rid of them. It's nothing personal, but the employee's actions mean your hands are tied. You've already cleared it with political allies they have at the company who could stop it. Here are the numbers of some recruiters if they'd prefer to jump before they're pushed. 4. A conversation where they are fired.
crassus 13y ago
> "And it seems like every single one of these problems could have been solved by a halfway competent manager." One of the hazards of un-management
abalone 13y ago
It may well be that the greatest damage to GitHub here is not on the issue of sexism so much as their advocacy of lean management and organizational "freedom". Although it may have sounded like the "cool teacher" way to address things by having your wife take an employee out for drinks to discuss grievances, clearly this should have been handled in a professional setting according to a clear grievance process. That could have led directly to policy changes (e.g. keep pull request comments professional, have management review reverts) and nipped the problem in the bud instead of getting Really Fucking Weird. That goes for any grievances against her as well, instead of being vented on Secret. Even GitHub's VC backer (A16Z) has blogged about the need to have clear process when it comes to HR stuff.
- pron 13y ago
  Apparently, organizational freedom for a bunch of young guys tends to breed sexism and abuse. I've always thought there's trouble ahead for a company whose blog is mostly a drinking journal (although this appears to no longer be the case).
  - Xylakant 13y ago
    I've seen similar fallouts in a strictly hierarchical organization when one of the leading managers started having an affair with one of the lower rank project management trainees. HR was powerless, since the manager outranked them. Project management was powerless since the now-de-facto promoted trainee was backed by their superior. In the end, the developers revolted and threatened to quit, so the owner personally had to resolve the conflict. [1] To me, the story sounds of a critical failure in some decision making positions, something that happens over and over and over again every day, we just don't get to hear it. [1] The trainee was forced to leave, for all that are curious.
    - sillysaurus3 13y ago
      The manager was allowed to stay?
      - 13y ago
shadowmint 13y ago
I've always been broadly under the impression that the HR department was a waste of air, but I suppose conflict resolution is perhaps something they'd be useful for. ...maybe.
- icarus127 13y ago
  At my previous job I thought the same thing. They didn't stop people being bullied by superiors and basically did nothing but exit interviews and layoffs. The entire company was really dysfunctional. At my current job HR is _supremely_ competent. The entire organization is more functional and a joy to work for. I think there are subtle but significant effects when people know that it is not okay to behave in a bullying or discriminatory manner because HR takes those things seriously.
- pjc50 13y ago
  HR, legal, finance and IT are all unpopular for the same reason: it's part of their job to stop you doing things that may get the company in trouble later. Of course, this means they may be at times too conservative in the interests of having an easy life. Doesn't mean they're not useful at all.
  - mrow84 13y ago
    I find myself almost perpetually annoyed by the bureaucratic arms of big organisations, HR and IT in particular, but what you've written is, in my view, a (terrible ;-)) truth. I think a balance of conservative and progressive opinion is required for almost any organisation to operate effectively: (genunie) progressives drive us forward, and (genuine) conservatives stop us going over the cliff - it is pretty much as simple as that. Unfortunately, finding the appropriate balance for any particular situation can be extremely tricky, so largely we get it wrong, and just stumble along, grumbling to ourselves about how stupid and ineffective everything is. On the assumption that there are genuine problems within Github, hopefully this situation will at least give them a chance to engage in a bit of rebalancing, and find a more sustainable path for their future. This is, of course, the problem of solving problems by trial and error - you have to deal with the errors, and in cases like this the errors can be quite painful for the people involved.
psykotic 13y ago
> I mean, someone reverting your code because of a personal vendetta? I laughed out loud when I read this and several other specific details in the story. It sounded very familiar. I have several friends and many acquaintances who work at Valve. One very senior engineer initially worked on Source 2 about three years ago but had to quickly switch projects because another, more tenured engineer was expressing his disagreements by silently reverting some of my friend's check-ins. The founder's wife story also reminds me of episodes I've heard involving the wife cabal. It's nothing as sinister as the GitHub story, but I see a lot of the same structural issues reflected in these telling anecdotes. The lack of an overt chain of command means that power asserts itself covertly. If you are unhappy, you have little recourse but to express your own power by indirect passive-aggressive means. That's bad enough when it happens in any corporate structure, but here it is almost the only possible course of action. Valve might have been a lot like GitHub if it had hired inexperienced, smart, cocky web programmers in their early twenties. In both cases the companies also boast a level of success that makes it hard for them to evaluate whether elements of their company culture is detrimental to their continued development at this stage of their existence. It's probably hardest for Valve because of the inexhaustible money faucet that is Steam. There is so much squandered potential at that company, which is a weird thing to say considering how much they've done and are still doing. I'm waiting for a hip rebranding of the term 'management' once these no-management companies realize they have issues that cannot be resolved by hiring supposedly perfect people.
- logicchains 13y ago
  It really surprises me that somebody can get away with such destructive behaviour as reverting someone else's commits without reasonable cause. What justification is there for not firing on the spot anybody who puts their own personal vendettas over the good of the project?
  - buro9 13y ago
    I once quit a senior dev role as the tech architect at the company had veto power on all code and blocked my work because I'd spelled the word dialog the US way, rather than the UK way (dialogue). This was not in a public interface, this was in variable names. Ignoring that every word in programming is in US English: color, gray, program. We were deadlocked for weeks, with him refusing to ship working code that fulfilled the business goals over this single issue. Quitting resolved the deadlock, and I learned afterwards that he really did go through the work and change it all to "dialogue".
Link- 13y ago
Regarding that article, it's a few entries down on HN's front page (March 16th): http://www.bhorowitz.com/how_to_minimize_politics_in_your_company http://www.bhorowitz.com/how_to_minimize_politics_in_your_co... lol
mattdeboard 13y ago
Those last two sentences are great.
billybones 13y ago
Ben Horowitz "How to Minimize Politics in Your Company" http://www.bhorowitz.com/how_to_minimize_politics_in_your_company http://www.bhorowitz.com/how_to_minimize_politics_in_your_co... Great article and very relevant here.
whiddershins 13y ago
I think, realistically, a spouse of a founder might be very involved in a company and decision making. Depending on the exact nature of the relationship, this is probably inevitable, very common, and not necessarily undesirable. There is a reason we give the president's wife a special title even though technically no one voted for her, many married couples are a team in the professional arena as well.
- ganeumann 13y ago
  Oh no, no no no. Your life partner is there to support you, personally, through the difficulty of starting and growing a business (if you're lucky.) They should listen to you and maybe even give you some gentle advice. But when they show up at work and start meddling, there's no way that will go well. Why would you even want that? It can't be good for the organization--because they are outside the normal chain of command and thus not really accountable for their actions, and because they have power not earned through an objective process--and it can't be good for your relationship. Just don't do it.
- kfcm 13y ago
  Depending upon corporate structure and legal jurisdiction, certain funding streams (loans, lines of credit, guarantees) WILL require both the founder and their spouse to sign on the dotted line. This places the spouse on the financial hook as much as the founder, preventing the squirreling away of assets out of reach of creditors. It also makes the spouse a "silent" investor in the company. I have only seen this a couple times. In both cases, the corporate structures were LLCs, and the amounts were over a million.
Spooky23 13y ago
This is a really weird issue. Why is she making a big public splash without naming names?

by sgentle 13y ago

m_c 13y ago

I think the article you mention is Ben Horowitz's blog on 'How to Minimize Politics in Your Company'[1]. It's a great read and also has advice for CEOs dealing with disputes between executives. [1] http://www.bhorowitz.com/how_to_minimize_politics_in_your_company http://www.bhorowitz.com/how_to_minimize_politics_in_your_co...

buro9 13y ago

> Nebulous semi-employee with unspecified responsibilities related to a founder? This is the point that stands out for me. That the wife is not an employee of Github but claims to be able to access private company chat records, and also is able to "work" from within the office and interact with the staff. Even with allowances that company property remains company property and private chat rooms are in fact non-private to the company... there is no scenario in which a non-employee should have access to those chat rooms. The wife, and the husband (founder), have displayed an incredible lack of professionalism here. There may even be a question about whether those acts are illegal if they are substantiated. And for companies that use Github to host private repositories, the question should be asked very loud and clear... "Who can access private company data, why, and for what reason?". If a non-employee can access information that is presumed (even by their own employees) to be private, then our (external companies) assumptions about what is private and secure at Github are weakened and demand very clear statements backed up with clear processes to reassure.

keithpeter 13y ago
"Who can access private company data, why, and for what reason?" This seems to me to be the major takeaway for organisations outside github from this sorry affair. I'm sort of surprised you are the only person to raise this so far. In the UK, the employee who resigned could have a successful day in an employment tribunal. And one aspect of the hearing would be privacy and the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act provisions.
- wahsd 13y ago
  But you live in the UK, which is still part of Europe, where people are still people that have rights. Your only right in the USA is the right to leave.
  - mwfunk 13y ago
    The fact that you were able to post this means that your statement is false. Using hyperbole to make a point only serves to invalidate your point, unless your audience is composed of complete idiots (not hyperbole, that's actually what I mean). I would hope that the HN readership isn't a bunch of idiots, although you obviously think they are.
    - Chronic26 13y ago
      HN is in fact, full of idiots. Look at the comments below.
  - jrockway 13y ago
    you live in the UK where people are still people that have rights The right to be sued for libel whenever they write something that someone else doesn't like?
    - keithpeter 13y ago
      Actually, we have no written Constitution, and very little in the way of actual rights in the sense that if a Constable asks us to move or go home or to search our bags, we have to let them. Employment rights however are slightly better. The employee interviewed in the OA would have recourse to an employment tribunal for what used to be called 'constructive dismissal' - the terminology may have changed recently. The monetary compensation would be quite basic by Valley standards, but the public exposure of the employers, subject to cross-examination, would be most satisfying I imagine.

megablast 13y ago

> "Oh, okay, I'll talk to him and make sure it stops." Can I come live in your world where everything is solved by a quick talk.

mbreese 13y ago
Lots of problems can be stopped from escalating by a quick chat before. The goal is to stop the small problems before they become big ones. No, you're not going to solve completely toxic situations, but you could slow them down so they could be managed. You want to know about issues before they hit the front page of Techcrunch. Regardless of what happened, it is clear that GitHub didn't manage this situation well.
kansface 13y ago
Seems straight forward to me: "stop this shit or you're fired".
- chmike 13y ago
  You should first ask for an explanation and justification of the so far alledged misbehavior. You could accuse and threat someone on false claims. If the person fails to provide a valid explanation and justification the demonstration of the existance of a problem will have been made by itself. No need the explicitly threat anyone. Threatening should be done only in phase 2 after the problem as been acertained by both parties and the person has failed to correct what could have been a simple misunderstanding or an accident.
bowlofpetunias 13y ago
A lot of problems can be solved (or prevented) by a talk at the right moment. It's supposed to be part the of the skill set of those people called "managers". You know, the people we don't need. Until we do.
michaelt 13y ago
When a line manager decides to make sure an employee stops doing something, it's actually several conversations: 1. A friendly conversation in which the manager points out the problem, establishes that they expect it to stop, but that if it stops immediately it'll all be forgotten. 2. A less friendly conversation in which the manager says I thought we were clear that you aren't supposed to do it. You're still doing it, WTF? Depending on the problem maybe the employee has some reason/excuse and you need to do something to help them with it/remove it as an excuse. If the employee is the cynical type, the aim is to establish that while you have an incentive to keep him (because you want good employees on your team), now you've taken a stance on his behaviour, letting him walk all over you would harm your reputation as a competent manager, so the incentive to keep him isn't the only one. 3. A conversation where you tell them you've started the ball rolling on getting rid of them. It's nothing personal, but the employee's actions mean your hands are tied. You've already cleared it with political allies they have at the company who could stop it. Here are the numbers of some recruiters if they'd prefer to jump before they're pushed. 4. A conversation where they are fired.

crassus 13y ago

> "And it seems like every single one of these problems could have been solved by a halfway competent manager." One of the hazards of un-management

abalone 13y ago

It may well be that the greatest damage to GitHub here is not on the issue of sexism so much as their advocacy of lean management and organizational "freedom". Although it may have sounded like the "cool teacher" way to address things by having your wife take an employee out for drinks to discuss grievances, clearly this should have been handled in a professional setting according to a clear grievance process. That could have led directly to policy changes (e.g. keep pull request comments professional, have management review reverts) and nipped the problem in the bud instead of getting Really Fucking Weird. That goes for any grievances against her as well, instead of being vented on Secret. Even GitHub's VC backer (A16Z) has blogged about the need to have clear process when it comes to HR stuff.

pron 13y ago
Apparently, organizational freedom for a bunch of young guys tends to breed sexism and abuse. I've always thought there's trouble ahead for a company whose blog is mostly a drinking journal (although this appears to no longer be the case).
- Xylakant 13y ago
  I've seen similar fallouts in a strictly hierarchical organization when one of the leading managers started having an affair with one of the lower rank project management trainees. HR was powerless, since the manager outranked them. Project management was powerless since the now-de-facto promoted trainee was backed by their superior. In the end, the developers revolted and threatened to quit, so the owner personally had to resolve the conflict. [1] To me, the story sounds of a critical failure in some decision making positions, something that happens over and over and over again every day, we just don't get to hear it. [1] The trainee was forced to leave, for all that are curious.
  - sillysaurus3 13y ago
    The manager was allowed to stay?
    - 13y ago

shadowmint 13y ago

I've always been broadly under the impression that the HR department was a waste of air, but I suppose conflict resolution is perhaps something they'd be useful for. ...maybe.

icarus127 13y ago
At my previous job I thought the same thing. They didn't stop people being bullied by superiors and basically did nothing but exit interviews and layoffs. The entire company was really dysfunctional. At my current job HR is _supremely_ competent. The entire organization is more functional and a joy to work for. I think there are subtle but significant effects when people know that it is not okay to behave in a bullying or discriminatory manner because HR takes those things seriously.
pjc50 13y ago
HR, legal, finance and IT are all unpopular for the same reason: it's part of their job to stop you doing things that may get the company in trouble later. Of course, this means they may be at times too conservative in the interests of having an easy life. Doesn't mean they're not useful at all.
- mrow84 13y ago
  I find myself almost perpetually annoyed by the bureaucratic arms of big organisations, HR and IT in particular, but what you've written is, in my view, a (terrible ;-)) truth. I think a balance of conservative and progressive opinion is required for almost any organisation to operate effectively: (genunie) progressives drive us forward, and (genuine) conservatives stop us going over the cliff - it is pretty much as simple as that. Unfortunately, finding the appropriate balance for any particular situation can be extremely tricky, so largely we get it wrong, and just stumble along, grumbling to ourselves about how stupid and ineffective everything is. On the assumption that there are genuine problems within Github, hopefully this situation will at least give them a chance to engage in a bit of rebalancing, and find a more sustainable path for their future. This is, of course, the problem of solving problems by trial and error - you have to deal with the errors, and in cases like this the errors can be quite painful for the people involved.

psykotic 13y ago

> I mean, someone reverting your code because of a personal vendetta? I laughed out loud when I read this and several other specific details in the story. It sounded very familiar. I have several friends and many acquaintances who work at Valve. One very senior engineer initially worked on Source 2 about three years ago but had to quickly switch projects because another, more tenured engineer was expressing his disagreements by silently reverting some of my friend's check-ins. The founder's wife story also reminds me of episodes I've heard involving the wife cabal. It's nothing as sinister as the GitHub story, but I see a lot of the same structural issues reflected in these telling anecdotes. The lack of an overt chain of command means that power asserts itself covertly. If you are unhappy, you have little recourse but to express your own power by indirect passive-aggressive means. That's bad enough when it happens in any corporate structure, but here it is almost the only possible course of action. Valve might have been a lot like GitHub if it had hired inexperienced, smart, cocky web programmers in their early twenties. In both cases the companies also boast a level of success that makes it hard for them to evaluate whether elements of their company culture is detrimental to their continued development at this stage of their existence. It's probably hardest for Valve because of the inexhaustible money faucet that is Steam. There is so much squandered potential at that company, which is a weird thing to say considering how much they've done and are still doing. I'm waiting for a hip rebranding of the term 'management' once these no-management companies realize they have issues that cannot be resolved by hiring supposedly perfect people.

logicchains 13y ago
It really surprises me that somebody can get away with such destructive behaviour as reverting someone else's commits without reasonable cause. What justification is there for not firing on the spot anybody who puts their own personal vendettas over the good of the project?
- buro9 13y ago
  I once quit a senior dev role as the tech architect at the company had veto power on all code and blocked my work because I'd spelled the word dialog the US way, rather than the UK way (dialogue). This was not in a public interface, this was in variable names. Ignoring that every word in programming is in US English: color, gray, program. We were deadlocked for weeks, with him refusing to ship working code that fulfilled the business goals over this single issue. Quitting resolved the deadlock, and I learned afterwards that he really did go through the work and change it all to "dialogue".

Link- 13y ago

Regarding that article, it's a few entries down on HN's front page (March 16th): http://www.bhorowitz.com/how_to_minimize_politics_in_your_company http://www.bhorowitz.com/how_to_minimize_politics_in_your_co... lol

mattdeboard 13y ago

Those last two sentences are great.

billybones 13y ago

Ben Horowitz "How to Minimize Politics in Your Company" http://www.bhorowitz.com/how_to_minimize_politics_in_your_company http://www.bhorowitz.com/how_to_minimize_politics_in_your_co... Great article and very relevant here.

whiddershins 13y ago

I think, realistically, a spouse of a founder might be very involved in a company and decision making. Depending on the exact nature of the relationship, this is probably inevitable, very common, and not necessarily undesirable. There is a reason we give the president's wife a special title even though technically no one voted for her, many married couples are a team in the professional arena as well.

ganeumann 13y ago
Oh no, no no no. Your life partner is there to support you, personally, through the difficulty of starting and growing a business (if you're lucky.) They should listen to you and maybe even give you some gentle advice. But when they show up at work and start meddling, there's no way that will go well. Why would you even want that? It can't be good for the organization--because they are outside the normal chain of command and thus not really accountable for their actions, and because they have power not earned through an objective process--and it can't be good for your relationship. Just don't do it.
kfcm 13y ago
Depending upon corporate structure and legal jurisdiction, certain funding streams (loans, lines of credit, guarantees) WILL require both the founder and their spouse to sign on the dotted line. This places the spouse on the financial hook as much as the founder, preventing the squirreling away of assets out of reach of creditors. It also makes the spouse a "silent" investor in the company. I have only seen this a couple times. In both cases, the corporate structures were LLCs, and the amounts were over a million.

Spooky23 13y ago

This is a really weird issue. Why is she making a big public splash without naming names?