16 ms·

When I arrived at this thread, comment two was 'using the information available in the short techcrunch article, I'm now going to PROVE, point by point, how Hor

• ssorallen 13y ago
  Yes. Comments on the original TechCrunch article were equally vindicating even though that article offered no actual evidence. It's unfortunate TechCrunch and Valley Wag posted the story without first corroborating at least some piece of it. GitHub's response neither confirms nor denies any part of the story. It does say the founder's wife will no longer be allowed in the office, but that is not an admission of wrongdoing nor of her ever having been in the office. Edit: The only thing this response proves is that GitHub is taking these allegations seriously, which hopefully means there will be more information after they have time to investigate. Try not to jump to the many other conclusions already posted in HN comments.
  • 001sky 13y ago
    "offered no actual evidence" First hand testimony might be imperfect, but It is evidence. Whether or not its conclusive remains to be seen. That's the larger point. Certainly, the above linked article lends at least some credibility to some claims. The fact that the wife of a founder needed to <even be mentioned> in this type of PR damage controll manouvre...is a huge red flag by itself.
    • throwaway092834 13y ago
      The wife was mentioned because she was called out in the earlier article as a problem. We don't know if she was actually a problem or not. We, and specifically you, don't know enough to make the claims you're making. Please, stop speculating. Have patience, wait for actual information.
    • deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
  • ceol 13y ago
    > GitHub's response neither confirms nor denies any part of the story. Well, they do say: We know we have to take action and have begun a full investigation. While that’s ongoing, and effective immediately, the relevant founder has been put on leave, as has the referenced GitHub engineer. The founder’s wife discussed in the media reports has never had hiring or firing power at GitHub and will no longer be permitted in the office. So it's not like they're completely silent. They said both the referenced founder and employee have been put on leave and the wife, who apparently was allowed in the office before this, is no longer. They didn't flat-out admit to anything, but it's not like they're totally silent.
    • freshfunk 13y ago
      Yup. This, to me, is a partial admission of guilt. Why else would they take such harsh, immediate action to throw him under the bus?
      • brazzy 13y ago
        Because that is what the lynch mob is screaming for and anything else would be labelled as aiding and abetting sexism and discrimination against women by some people?
      • vulf 13y ago
        It's not throwing him under the bus. It's distancing him from the investigation. That's both to protect him, in case things favor his story, and to protect the company, if it turns out he was in the wrong. In both cases, they wouldn't want him having any potential influence on the investigation. To do that, his power within the company needs to be suspended until a conclusion is reached. The parties investigating (likely HR and the other founders) must be able to do their job without fear of retaliation from the accused founder, that would taint the decision.
      • deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
      • vidarh 13y ago
        If I was the person accused, and I was not guilty, I would request to relinquish all responsibility pending investigation to ensure there was no reasonable way anyone could claim I'd interfered with the investigation when it cleared me. Of course it can also mean the opposite - my point is merely that suspending someone pending investigation says nothing at all about guilt.
  • mcv 13y ago
    Founder put on leave, his wife no longer allowed in the office, that's not nothing. It's not a full admission, but it is an apology. While they don't admit anything specific, to me it sounds like an admission that they dropped the ball. Their company didn't work the way it should have and they intend to fix it. They offer a reason why this was the case (their rapid growth) but don't present it as a justification. I'm seeing plenty of mea culpa in this, and that's good. They could have responded far worse, and only slightly better.
  • glesica 13y ago
    > It's unfortunate TechCrunch and Valley Wag posted the story without first corroborating at least some piece of it. I think we have to be careful with statements like this. Yes, they could have tried to find a Github employee who would corroborate part of it, perhaps the assertion that the wife was in the office periodically. But the problem with that is that it is perfectly reasonable to think they would have failed to find anyone willing to talk about it. Then what? Should they not publish? If they hadn't, would Github be investigating now? Would anyone be on leave? Probably not. Asking for corroboration is fine, but we should be mindful that some things that are true can't be corroborated and demanding corroboration just gives the accused party the de facto ability to suppress the information or the debate. Her story passes a basic smell test, it very well could be true, and there is no specific reason to doubt her. While this doesn't mean it is true, it isn't necessarily irresponsible to publish it either.
    • ssorallen 13y ago
      > Would anyone be on leave? Probably not. Again, that is speculation. "What ifs" are not useful here. As "news" outlets, I expect both sites to corroborate stories before posting them. If they don't, they are effectively tabloids. Posting allegations like this is the definition of tabloid journalism. There are too many people involved in this story for me to believe that zero of them were reachable for comment. TechCrunch only vaguely mentions "awaiting comment from GitHub", which could mean anything. I do think it is irresponsible to publish such a story without any corroboration because it implicates several people directly and an entire company's work environment with nothing more than one person's word. The whole story could be true, but the fact is no one knows; TechCrunch and Valley Wag certainly don't.
      • glesica 13y ago
        But again, you are proposing that all power be given to the larger, more powerful entity. And I totally disagree about the usefulness of "what ifs". Without "what ifs" we would all be stuck wandering around waiting for food to fall from a tree in front of us. We only have the luxury of observing one "version" of events (unless you can hop between multiverses). Therefore, the only way we have to evaluate past events is by asking "what if" questions. What if TechCrunch hadn't picked up the story? Basically no one would have heard about it and Github quite possibly wouldn't have felt the need to respond or investigate (maybe they still would have, another "what if", but they wouldn't have been under as much pressure). Something went down. I'm not saying we should just lynch the accused parties and move on. But I am saying that often the only way for a small actor to get attention is for a news outlet to pick up his or her story. And if they refuse to publish without some kind of official confirmation, then very few such stories will be printed, because the larger, more powerful entity will quash them with silence.
• aceperry 13y ago
  "People: when did our brains melt and spill out of our ears?" When the topic is as controversial as sexism in tech and the workplace. Or whatever the flashpoint happens to be at the moment. Like sequoia, I've noticed that controversial topics brings out the most incredible responses from both sides, and often with very little definitive evidence. To me, this is a sign of how deeply felt this topic is, and how much it is just under the surface of our thoughts, ready to explode when an appropriate trigger occurs. I laughed when I read the quote above and thought it was a good comment.
  • Chronic26 13y ago
    Why do people even care when the story isn't fully developed?
  • md224 13y ago
    > Like sequoia, I've noticed that controversial topics brings out the most incredible responses from both sides, and often with very little definitive evidence. To me, this is a sign of how deeply felt this topic is, and how much it is just under the surface of our thoughts, ready to explode when an appropriate trigger occurs. I'm not sure if you were framing this as a net negative or positive, but I actually do appreciate when these controversial debates occur. I like to see all the contrasting world-views brought out into the open and into conflict with each other. I agree that civility is a problem, though. Anyway, I mention this because I worry sometimes that HN's "flamewar detector" (or is it purely flagging?) seems to kill these kinds of threads, ones with a high comment-to-upvote ratio (though some notable recent threads have seemed to escape this). I often wonder if this mechanism is worth the trouble. I suppose if heated debate leads to polarization of opinion, that's an issue, but I don't know if that's necessarily the case.
    • mtrimpe 13y ago
      It seems that the flamewar detector (although I think it actually used to be flagging mostly) has been adjusted somewhat, or at least given a manual override for worthy discussions. I can reassure you that this thread would have quickly been flagged off just a few months ago. I'm guessing it's due to the fair amount of criticism PG received (from myself included) over how the flamewar-filter censored sensitive, yet important, discussions just like the ones this story sparked.
• hrktb 13y ago
  This statement has more meaning that you are willing to concede. If they are starting now to investigate, it means that when troubles were occuring, or even when Julia H. gave her demission, they didn't care enough to investigate thoroughly (perhaps they have other priorities, that's just a fact). This in itself is not good looking, and I feel that from there whatever really happened, they won't have the full version anymore (one of the party is already out) and they will have a huge incentive to go into damage control mode instead of genuinely trying to make the situation better for both parties. Especially, the more they do, the worse their image would be on the PR front ( I hope they do whatever is fair anyway, but the balance is tipped).
  • freshfunk 13y ago
    Hogwash. Companies always say they will open an investigation. In the least, it buys a little time for the story to die down and the next big stories to hit the media cycle.
    • tracker1 13y ago
      The tech industry tends to be a bit more long memory minded than most. I still haven't purchased a Sony product since the CDs with malware incident a long time ago. Though I still work with MS technology, and use their products in the workplace, I've been slowly able to replace their products in my life and this is from decisions they made well over a decade ago. I admit, I do care about things more than most. My workgroup, and much of the company I work for migrated to github enterprise (and a lot in github public) about a year ago. These kinds of things sour opinion. There are differences between a single bad actor/incident and a systemic problem in a toxic workplace. We don't really know what this is, but it was clearly more than at least one person was willing to put up with. It's bound to be difficult working in an environment where 4:5 of your peers are the other gender. I worked in a couple of workplaces when I was younger where I was the only male. It was rather eye opening and sometimes uncomfortable to say the least.
    • hrktb 13y ago
      Well, there is a lot of praise on cleverness of the statement, but I think people are pretty used to PR talk now. If the best they have now is a promise of an investigation, that's not the same as a "we are fully investigating the issue" (which I think is the most standard way to handle this kind of situation. Even if really nothing is done, stating that the investigation is ongoing is an easier stance. Also, people might forget about the issue in 6 months, but the bad taste in the mouth we have now will stay attached to the brand. The best move IMO would be to come 'clean' as soon as possible, and let the hype die down from there, provided they are OK with doing the right thing, whatever it might be.
• lloeki 13y ago
  > People: when did our brains melt and spill out of our ears? Classic case of confirmation bias.
  • Intermernet 13y ago
    Classic case? confirmation bias? I would have called it an opinion, and an emotionally charged appeal to reason, but not any form of confirmation bias. Would you accuse scientists of confirmation bias if they chose to look for more evidence rather than just publish the results of the first experiment?
    • Bluestrike2 13y ago
      Uh, that's not confirmation bias.
• piokoch 13y ago
  I don't know if Horvath is right or not, but this is nice case study how PR works. I would say this statement is a very clever move from GitHub side. I guess they have skilled PR people working on the issue. At first look, the cited article seems to admit to everything. As a result, it will be sort of last news on the topic - if they admitted Horvath is right and they even put on leave a founder and the programmer and founder's wife will not be allowed to enter office, then what's more can be said or written? Github did everything it could to resolve the issue. The point is that they did not admitted anything. The only paragraph that contains actual content is paragraph no 2., the rest is just speaking how Github grows and how they liked Horvath, how sad it is that Horvath is sad, etc. So we have: "We know we have to take action and have begun a full investigation. While that’s ongoing, and effective immediately, the relevant founder has been put on leave, as has the referenced GitHub engineer. The founder’s wife discussed in the media reports has never had hiring or firing power at GitHub and will no longer be permitted in the office." So they have started "full investigation", just that. After two months when everybody will forget about the issue, the founder with his wife and the programmer might be back at Github (who knows what the investigation is going to prove - Horvath will not take part in it - she's no longer an employee). Whatever happens nobody will pay attention. No media will investigate the issue further because "Github admitted Horvath is right", so the topis is closed and no longer "hot". I guess GitHub cannot publicly admit that Horvath is right or not, their lawyers would be mad, it is much better for them to keep all statements fuzzy and sounding good.
  • infinity0 13y ago
    It's possible that things will be brushed under the carpet as you say. But I'm not convinced that this is a "clever PR move" as you suggest. What else can GitHub do at this point? Fire the people involved without even investigating?
    • goldmar 13y ago
      I think that it's the way the PR statement is written that is 'clever'. By putting the founder on leave and banning his wife from the office they haven taken pro-active action (which was not mandatory). As has been noted, it might seem that they have admitted some wrong-doing when in fact they have not. But it's enough food for the media to drop the issue...
• stantona 13y ago
  The entire story in all its objective context will never be known, and those privy to the story, Horvath and those involved at Github carry more context than we will know. For Horvath, you have to give her credit to go public the way she did. That requires a lot of courage that could have negative ramifications on her career, which could indicate that she was strongly upset about the incidents she described. I don't know her or her motivations, but if she would be playing a pretty risky game if she were to lie. What I will say is that I'm tired of the continual denial or downplay of sexism in this industry. I've seen it first hand, some of drink ups I've attended were a disgrace, and the frat house culture that some tech organizations have cultivated not only make women uncomfortable, but men too including myself. This man-child culture is embarrassing and needs to stop and it's a very real problem.