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"We didn't do anything illegal, or that would leave us vulnerable to a lawsuit" is about the only content that this blog post contains. While Horvath character

by ender7 12y ago

"We didn't do anything illegal, or that would leave us vulnerable to a lawsuit" is about the only content that this blog post contains. While Horvath characterized much of her woes as being gender-related [1], the investigation could have classified most of them as either unprovable or terrible-but-not-provably-sexist (in particular, the behavior of the Preston-Werners). I doubt it will ever be clear what actually happened. Theresa Preston-Werner's response [2] spends more time avoiding topics than actually covering them. Tom Preston-Werner likewise [3] makes sure to reinforce the fact that GitHub is immune to lawsuit while providing no real details. I'm sure there are plenty of GitHub employees who have a strong opinion, but enough of them seem to have an ax to grind in one way or another that it's hard to trust that testimony. [1] http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/15/julie-ann-horvath-describes-sexism-and-intimidation-behind-her-github-exit/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/15/julie-ann-horvath-describes... [2] https://medium.com/p/2fe173c44215 https://medium.com/p/2fe173c44215 [3] http://tom.preston-werner.com/2014/04/21/farewell-github-hello-immersive-computing.html http://tom.preston-werner.com/2014/04/21/farewell-github-hel...

tptacek 12y ago
You're right. It will never be clear what actually happened. I think Internet message boards create the perception that outcomes like that are rare. They're not: they're the norm. That's how it's supposed to be. We don't get to know everything and we need to work within the limits of our knowledge.
- ender7 12y ago
  The only problem for GitHub now is finding a way to attract talent. If your best response to "You have a hostile work environment." is "We don't have a provably illegal hostile work environment." then that doesn't inspire great confidence when evaluating it as a place to work.
  - danielweber 12y ago
    I can make that same accusation at any company you can think of, and the best response they could hope to give is "no, we aren't a bad place to work."
  - onewaystreet 12y ago
    But does anyone actually think Github has a hostile work environment? There is a difference between misunderstanding and systemic hostility.
    - CocaKoala 12y ago
      I would submit that at least one person thought it was a hostile work environment.
      - onewaystreet 12y ago
        At every company in the world you can find at least one person who hates their job or has problems with their coworkers. I'm not sure they are the person you go to for a fair opinion.
        sheetjs 12y ago
        > the investigator did find evidence of mistakes and errors of judgment. GitHub isn't denying that there were problems and isn't claiming that her story is a complete fabrication. They merely said they don't believe they will lose a lawsuit over it. If anything, they validated that her opinion was fair
        kelnos 12y ago
        If you read Theresa Preston-Werner's post (linked above), she claims that the "mistakes and errors of judgment" were completely unrelated to the harassment story, but were discovered during the harassment investigation.
        sheetjs 12y ago
        That's Theresa's claim (if we are going to play he-said-she-said we might as well be consistent). The official response does not suggest that the errors of judgment were unrelated to the subject at hand
  - weixiyen 12y ago
    I believe they hired HR and put new policies in place. Chances are this incident will make it a better place to work than before.
    - mtrimpe 12y ago
      True. Chances are also that our collective estimate of how great a place it is to work at are now more accurate. That probably says more about the mythological status they had before than about the reality now, but it of course will have an impact on their ability to hire though. It also should have, and it's normal, and it's how startups turn into big-corps, and that's just the way things are. The sad truth about culture is that a sustainable culture will feel much more like your parents home than your college dorm; and that will never change... because it's a good thing.
      - billiam 12y ago
        "The sad truth about culture is that a sustainable culture will feel much more like your parents home than your college dorm; and that will never change... because it's a good thing." That is the single best line I've read about work culture in software companies in......ever.
        afarrell 12y ago
        This does depend on how dysfunctional your parents' marriage was. Though, I suppose a marriage in which both partners feel trapped is sustainably dysfunctional in that it won't end.
    - jowiar 12y ago
      And this speaks, in many ways, to the purpose of HR. It's not good enough to say "We don't think we have a hostile work environment", or "Asking around seems to show that we don't have a hostile work environment". You need to be able to say: "Here's why there is no way we can have a hostile work environment, and how we're taking action to ensure we don't". Part of it is policies, part of it documentation of events, part of it is ensuring that employees feel they have a way to resolve situations. I read Github's statement as: "We don't really have any evidence of anything, so we're not going to say anything because we might get sued by one of the involved parties." That situation isn't a good one to be in (and letting an organization get into that situation is serious negligence on the part of leadership).
  - joshlegs 12y ago
    news flash: 80% off work environments are hostile. Followup: that statistic is 75% made-up.
  - Bahamut 12y ago
    The best talent probably won't be so quick/shallow/naive to pass judgment so quickly. It probably will challenge their recruitment of women though.
    - astrodust 12y ago
      So "women" and "best talent" are mutually exclusive? Classy.
      - Bahamut 12y ago
        That was absolutely not my implication - that is an incredibly dishonest commentary on my post.
        jacalata 12y ago
        It's probably not what you meant to say, but it is a plausible reading of the actual text - it's just a slightly awkward phrasing that appears to say 'the best talent won't care, but women might' which casts them as disjoint groups.
        jacalata 12y ago
        I cannot believe the over-sensitive linguistically challenged group that must be downvoting that. Boy, doesn't it suck to know that sometimes words join together to have meanings and occasionally it includes one you weren't thinking of? Best approach is to say 'oh oops, I didn't mean that' and learn to construct your sentences better for next time. Worst approach is to deny that it could have meant that and learn nothing.
      - kogf04 12y ago
        Well the most followed projects on Github are led and created by men, so....
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
    - 12y ago
  - opendais 12y ago
    I'd say the fact the offending party no longer works at GitHub is reason enough to give them the benefit of the doubt. Of course if this happens again, I'm willing to revisit that opinion. Shit does happen, regardless of the majority of one's coworkers best intentions.
  - nailer 12y ago
    If you want to know if GitHub is a hostile work environment according to women who work there, take a poll of current and past female employees, including Horvath. I did. So far it's working out in GitHub's favour. But maybe I missed something, so do your own research.
    - kenferry 12y ago
      That's interesting - want to give your numbers? I would think, however, that any sort of reasonable minority calling it a "hostile work environment" would indicate a problem.
    - sneak 12y ago
      https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/458342995469688833 https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/458342995469688833 https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/458347143086870528 https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/458347143086870528 https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/458347574672388096 https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/458347574672388096
      - lawnchair_larry 12y ago
        What a drama queen. Hard to take her seriously with these antics.
        TheRealDunkirk 12y ago
        I love all the random people piling on as though they're intimate with the parties or facts involved, taking 140 characters as a single data point to pair with their prejudices to draw a line to a foregone conclusion. It's a very strange time in the course of human development.
        zorpner 12y ago
        Yes, this is a common rhetorical tactic used to dismiss the opinions of women when they address issues of sexism publicly. Thank you for demonstrating this disingenuous method of discourse so ably.
  - Nelson69 12y ago
    Surely other women work there. Time will tell here, won't it? The story is dramatically more powerful if other women come forward. I don't know that it lessens things if others do not but it does create some interesting questions to those brave enough to ask them.
    - AnthonyMouse 12y ago
      > The story is dramatically more powerful if other women come forward. This is dangerous logic. The court of public opinion is a feedback loop. If an unconfirmed accusation gets no traction then the most hardcore wrongdoers will escape justice because everyone is too afraid to come forward. At the same time, if a confirmed accusation goes unquestioned then someone who has made a false or exaggerated accusation has a huge incentive to cajole friends into making confirmations that are also false or exaggerated, and the more false accusations are made the easier it is for the original accuser (or the likes of Nancy Grace) to convince others to make further false accusations. That's why these issues are so contentious. Getting to the real truth is practically impossible because people form an opinion first and then produce evidence that comports with it, and that misleading evidence influences the opinions of others who do the same thing until the truth and the story have no relation to each other. It's an issue where you have to choose between punishing a lot of innocent people (and increasing the power and thereby occurrence of false accusations) or allowing a lot of guilty people to escape punishment. There isn't a good answer, and that makes people angry -- especially if you're one of the innocent people who was punished or one of the victims of the guilty people who weren't.
    - malandrew 12y ago
      If this is a true systemic problem, the next person better be sure to actually collect evidence/proof of what happened and then clearly present facts instead of resorting to histrionics. If this whole thing were as bad as JAH has made it out to be, I would have imagined we would have already seen damning emails and other written correspondence backing up here allegations. As a company that doesn't most of its work asynchronously through written prose, it's not like github doesn't have oodles and oodles of written correspondence that would support her position better. There's email, pull requests, chat, etc. Given the duration of employment, she must have plenty of things to point at. If she didn't she should have made sure that some of the offending interactions were captured in written form at least once.
  - malandrew 12y ago
    Can you show me a work environment that is not hostile to anyone? Every work environment has hostilities. The only way they each differ is in who is the recipient of the hostilities, the degree of hostility present and if that hostility is illegal or not. In that sense, the statement "We don't have a provably illegal hostile work environment" means exactly nothing, making Github no different than all the other workplaces you are evaluating. There are three sides to every side of a story... TPW's side, JAH's side and the facts. Given that all we really know are TPW's side and JAH's side and that we have no real facts beyond admitted errors in judgement, we really have no more information upon which to base judgement than before. I know of no company in the world provably immune from errors in judgement, do you? In other words, you and everyone else should evaluate github based on everything else you know about github and completely discount this entire debacle, since it has not shed light on anything that isn't as equally possible at every other company you may be considering.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - TheRealDunkirk 12y ago
      > Can you show me a work environment that is not hostile to anyone? That strikes me like saying that all sex is rape, it's just a matter of how violent or unwilling.
      - malandrew 12y ago
        Thank you for contribution. I'm trying to figure out which of the common relevance fallacies it falls under if anyone can help? Here are the possible options as I see it. * reductio ad absurdam * red herring * strawman * non sequiter
        gamed 12y ago
        Reductio ad absurdum is actually a completely legitimate method of argument. There is nothing fallacious about it whatsoever.
- mildtrepidation 12y ago
  I agree, with the exception of "that's how it's supposed to be." As defined by who? Knowing what happened and understanding why makes deciding on a resolution possible. The suggestion that keeping those things vague is somehow desirable is hard to fathom, unless your perspective is that of an abusive employer who doesn't want to have to change his or her practices. Human interaction is not black and white (don't read into that). While this situation will never be totally transparent to the vast majority of us, the necessity of working within our limited knowledge does not imply our knowledge should necessarily be limited.
- strlen 12y ago
  I like to call this outcome a "non-answer answer". Very common in the corporate world.
- kfcm 12y ago
  As a lawyer friend once told me regarding lawsuits: "People who hunger for the truth will go to bed hungry."
lbarrow 12y ago
I think it's more "We didn't do anything illegal, but we're still firing one of our founders, so clearly something was wrong."
- pjscott 12y ago
  A loud public witch-hunt also counts as a Wrong Thing, so this doesn't really tell us much about what happened one way or the other.
funkyy 12y ago
TBH it sounds like nothing serious that was blown up big by certain news channels. Steve Jobs could "fire" employees for "fun" in elevator and people were OK with it. But when it comes to gender/racial issues - there is no coming back even if found free of charge. So the people didnt get along - who cares. The company is great, the work they done is great - why anyone should leave? If Ms Horvath didnt felt good in this company - there were thousands of ways to deal with the issues like talking directly to interested parties. And the last one was going to press with them.
- aaronem 12y ago
  For people to settle their differences like reasonable adults really isn't on the menu in the United States lately.
theorique 12y ago
the investigation could have classified most of them as either unprovable or terrible-but-not-provably-sexist (in particular, the behavior of the Preston-Werners). What would it benefit Github or the P-W husband/wife for the investigation report to have published such a thing? Why air your dirty laundry in public? It's most likely that the company and its co-founder are on the same page, if only for damage control purposes. (Why break ranks and threaten your brand and stock price, after all?) There may have been awkward and/or angry discussions in camera. Non-insiders are very unlikely to ever hear what went on in said discussions.
brown9-2 12y ago
makes sure to reinforce the fact that GitHub is immune to lawsuit while providing no real details Where is this mentioned? This thing where people think that investigators you hired are "independent" and that their conclusions carry something similar to the weight of a court of law is ridiculous.
dreamfactory2 12y ago
Going by the TC account (and taking the account there at face value) it sounds very much like bullying of an individual rather than anything gender-based. What's missing is why they got so paranoid about her as a potential troublemaker in the first place before they (allegedly) started handling it like chumps.
- lexcorvus 12y ago
  This story (unfortunately now dead on Hacker News) claims to fill in what's missing: https://medium.com/p/d96f431f4e8e https://medium.com/p/d96f431f4e8e Money quote: Around the end of 2012, Julie started dating a close male friend of the cofounder’s wife and didn’t like that they were close. She asked them to stop being friends and when they would not end their relationship, Julie started telling coworkers that the wife had affairs and that the cofounder’s newborn child was not his. She told this to multiple coworkers directly and also to the wife through her boyfriend. This is where the wife reached out to her and the rest of her story starts. All of Julie’s story involving the cofounder’s wife occurs only after Julie was spreading vicious rumors about him to even new employees.
  - icelancer 12y ago
    Pretty obviously there was a second side to this story. Not at all surprised to read something like this, but it is sad.
  - wankerrific 12y ago
    I think its pretty telling that this an anonymous account and that no one is will to attach their name to the Medium post.
    - gfodor 12y ago
      Not really. You'd have to be an idiot to attach your name to this given the shitstorm twitter would unleash upon you for questioning the narrative. No idea if it's true but in this environment anonymity is probably the default.
caycep 12y ago
I seem to recall another big fight between Github employees and Zed Shaw of Learn Python the Hard Way fame...perhaps that was a warning sign that HR policies needed to be brought up to snuff or even created in the 1st place...
- nailer 12y ago
  This. Both Zed and JAH are difficult personalities, but a professional structure should be in place to handle matters which can distract people from work. GitHub should have implemented a blocking mechanism to stop people inviting Zed to 'dick' projects, and if the rumour mongering story is true, HR should have stepped in and disciplined Horvath.
  - vulf 12y ago
    > GitHub should have implemented a blocking mechanism to stop people inviting Zed to 'dick' projects They did: https://github.com/blog/862-block-the-bullies https://github.com/blog/862-block-the-bullies They never admitted to it being a response to the incident with Zed, but the timing was too convenient. That blog post was dated 05/31/2011. Zed's commits to the repo in question happened on 05/28/2011: https://github.com/moron5/dongml/commit/f4b8df910e4048202768c4b1a2b167f8d32a6ea9 https://github.com/moron5/dongml/commit/f4b8df910e4048202768...
    - aaronem 12y ago
      I'm still trying to figure out exactly what the sequence of events was there. As best I've been able to work out, whatever juvenile oaf created the "dongml" repo added Shaw to it in order to harass him somehow, and Shaw responded by writing a script to constantly commit changes to the repo which essentially rendered it empty, which seems reasonable both as retaliation in that specific case, and for general reasons of good taste. Then, in response, Github added a feature so that the "dongml" infant could block Shaw. Would anyone with closer to firsthand knowledge of the incident care to let me know whether I'm on the warm side or the cold?
      - 12y ago
lsc 12y ago
well, a co-founder was pressured or embarrassed into resigning, no? that's not a lawsuit, sure, or even a firing, but it's certainly a big deal. Certainly, if it was a case of the guy getting pressured to leave, one could make the case that the company recognized that they had a problem and tried to get rid of said problem in the way that was least likely to get them sued, by asking someone to resign. And really, if you are an executive, and are asked to resign, what are you gonna do? You're gonna resign, and try to make it seem like a voluntary thing. Even if everyone knows you actually got your ass fired, it shows that you are the sort of executive who will play the game and not take down the rest of the company if you get in trouble.
abalone 12y ago
Don't forget this link, the anonymous GitHub employee response to Horvath's claims: "Facts Conveniently Withheld". https://medium.com/p/d96f431f4e8e https://medium.com/p/d96f431f4e8e
- evolve2k 12y ago
  And here's Theresa Preston-Werners side of the story: What every founder fears - https://medium.com/p/2fe173c44215 https://medium.com/p/2fe173c44215
  - 001sky 12y ago
    Despite, being found not guilty of the harassment accusations, questions popped up regarding Tom’s judgment in a separate area. We learned that unnamed employees felt pressured by Tom and me to work pro-bono for my nonprofit. The whole issue wasn't merely (the alleged) harassment as much as it was the appearance of 'undue influence'. The admission that GitHub forced out the co-founder for this very reason--all the while stepping clear of the topic of sexual harassment--is basically the crux of the matter.
  - kungfoo 12y ago
    To be honest, the entire problem IMO was always with the wife, Theresa Preston-Werner. She should have known better and I think it comes from her lack of professional experience in the workforce. FULL explanation: It comes down to the unrestricted access that was granted. It introduces a person with extreme power but carries no responsibility with regards to work or culture. The end result is what we have today. This type of culture is actually very prevalent in asian companies (where families have unrestricted access) and have been demonstrated to be extremely detrimental. Theresa Preston-Werner blog post is extremely telling where she says "I have many close friends at GitHub, and I certainly had reached out to them when I began to build my company". My wife made the same mistake at her first job (trying too hard to be friends), except that she was an individual contributor and not the wife of the CEO. Her co-workers could just tell her off and she quickly learned the balances that were necessary. It's obvious that Theresa had no experience of this kind and had too much power for people to say "no". I want to add, I think there was an overfocus on gender issues by all parties (victims, plantiffs, media & company) in the first place. When I read the original article, I felt that regardless of the incident, Julie Ann Horvath was just pulling out the gender card. This was a mistake since it gave Github an easy way out to simply deny the gender-based accusations without any wrong doing.
jw2013 12y ago
I doubt there will ever be any clear explanation on what happened. Two sides of the story basically tell two different stories. As someone mentioned in the post, Julie posted some tweets in response to Github's announcement today. (https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore) 1. Bullying someone into quitting: Illegal. 2. Asking an employee to relay private conversations between her and her partner: Illegal. 3. Justifying the harassment of an employee because of her personal relationships: Pathetic. 4. How does it feel to make money for liars and cowards? 5. Pushing women with strong opinions out of your company because they disagree with you is wrong. 6. What number am I on? Oh yea, how do you sleep at night? 7. Leaving GitHub was the best decision of my life. 8. There was no investigation. 9. There was a series of conversations with a "mediator" who sought to relieve GitHub of any legal responsibility. 10. Whose reasoning included "would it surprise you to hear that [your harasser] was well-liked?" 11. No, no it would not. 12. Women at GitHub who sprang forward to defend the men who harassed me, it is naive to think the same thing cannot and will not happen to you. 13. Best of luck rolling the dice. 14. A company can never own you. They can't tell you who to fuck or not fuck. And they can't take away your voice. 15. Unless you let them. 16. Hmmm still no mention of the man who bullied me out of our code base because I wouldn't fuck him. Too popular to be accountable, I guess.
- danso 12y ago
  Yeah...sometimes Twitter just isn't the best place to make a cogent argument: > 1. Bullying someone into quitting: Illegal. If that bullying falls under the legal definition of harassment, then yes, it is illegal. But that's kind of begging the question a bit (e.g. Bullying someone is illegal because it is harassment). The thing is, some/much what Horvath described was assuredly captured in electronic records. If she believes something is illegal, and she is not afraid of speaking out, she should take the next step and file a lawsuit. > 2. Asking an employee to relay private conversations between her and her partner: Illegal. OK not sure what that refers to. Again, Twitter is not great for these things. > 3. Justifying the harassment of an employee because of her personal relationships: Pathetic. Who justified what? > 4. How does it feel to make money for liars and cowards? OK and then the rest of this seems like free association. I agree that a third-party investigation instigated by the accused is not automatically the truth, but neither are accusations. The word illegal has real meaning and if Horvath has the proof, then let's see it, rather than have a TechCrunch retelling be the canonical source of facts.
zak_mc_kracken 12y ago
From her blog post: > We learned that unnamed employees felt pressured by Tom and me to work pro-bono for my nonprofit It's really hard to take seriously the claims that "my husband did nothing wrong" when 1. He resigned. 2. She's now being accused of shady practices in her own company as well.
malandrew 12y ago
"While Horvath characterized much of her woes as being gender-related [1], the investigation could have classified most of them as either unprovable or terrible- but-not-provably-sexist." One of JAH's claims of gender bias involved a: "man who bullied [her] out of [github's] code base because [she] wouldn't fuck him. Too popular to be accountable, [she] guess[es]." After reading that I figured it's worth browsing through JAH's github account for recent code involving HTML/CSS (since the reverted commit involved CSS IIRC), and what I found would suggest that it's more likely that she made a poor/careless commit. I posted these findings in a comment way at the end of this thread that people are unlikely to see because the parent comment isn't being voted up on. Here's the link to the comment with links to broken or poor commits by JAH: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7625258 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7625258 In light of this other recent commits (by a longtime githubber who would be expected to exhibit much better git hygiene and committing habits), and lacking the content of the actual reverted commit, I would say that the claims of gender bias in this specific case appear dubious at best. If this other githubber did in fact make such vulgar comments, we still wouldn't have enough information without also knowing if that comment was completely unsolicited and out-of-the-blue, or if it was reactionary to whatever JAH may have said to this person just prior to the comment being made. Context matters. It could have been verbal self defense in response to a verbal attack, which is still unprofessional, but far more excusable especially if the original attack was equally unprofessional and sexually-charged. Given JAH's tact thus far, her character suggests someone who would have started a verbal fight.

by ender7 12y ago

tptacek 12y ago

You're right. It will never be clear what actually happened. I think Internet message boards create the perception that outcomes like that are rare. They're not: they're the norm. That's how it's supposed to be. We don't get to know everything and we need to work within the limits of our knowledge.

ender7 12y ago
The only problem for GitHub now is finding a way to attract talent. If your best response to "You have a hostile work environment." is "We don't have a provably illegal hostile work environment." then that doesn't inspire great confidence when evaluating it as a place to work.
- danielweber 12y ago
  I can make that same accusation at any company you can think of, and the best response they could hope to give is "no, we aren't a bad place to work."
- onewaystreet 12y ago
  But does anyone actually think Github has a hostile work environment? There is a difference between misunderstanding and systemic hostility.
  - CocaKoala 12y ago
    I would submit that at least one person thought it was a hostile work environment.
    - onewaystreet 12y ago
      At every company in the world you can find at least one person who hates their job or has problems with their coworkers. I'm not sure they are the person you go to for a fair opinion.
      - sheetjs 12y ago
        > the investigator did find evidence of mistakes and errors of judgment. GitHub isn't denying that there were problems and isn't claiming that her story is a complete fabrication. They merely said they don't believe they will lose a lawsuit over it. If anything, they validated that her opinion was fair
        kelnos 12y ago
        If you read Theresa Preston-Werner's post (linked above), she claims that the "mistakes and errors of judgment" were completely unrelated to the harassment story, but were discovered during the harassment investigation.
        sheetjs 12y ago
        That's Theresa's claim (if we are going to play he-said-she-said we might as well be consistent). The official response does not suggest that the errors of judgment were unrelated to the subject at hand
- weixiyen 12y ago
  I believe they hired HR and put new policies in place. Chances are this incident will make it a better place to work than before.
  - mtrimpe 12y ago
    True. Chances are also that our collective estimate of how great a place it is to work at are now more accurate. That probably says more about the mythological status they had before than about the reality now, but it of course will have an impact on their ability to hire though. It also should have, and it's normal, and it's how startups turn into big-corps, and that's just the way things are. The sad truth about culture is that a sustainable culture will feel much more like your parents home than your college dorm; and that will never change... because it's a good thing.
    - billiam 12y ago
      "The sad truth about culture is that a sustainable culture will feel much more like your parents home than your college dorm; and that will never change... because it's a good thing." That is the single best line I've read about work culture in software companies in......ever.
      - afarrell 12y ago
        This does depend on how dysfunctional your parents' marriage was. Though, I suppose a marriage in which both partners feel trapped is sustainably dysfunctional in that it won't end.
  - jowiar 12y ago
    And this speaks, in many ways, to the purpose of HR. It's not good enough to say "We don't think we have a hostile work environment", or "Asking around seems to show that we don't have a hostile work environment". You need to be able to say: "Here's why there is no way we can have a hostile work environment, and how we're taking action to ensure we don't". Part of it is policies, part of it documentation of events, part of it is ensuring that employees feel they have a way to resolve situations. I read Github's statement as: "We don't really have any evidence of anything, so we're not going to say anything because we might get sued by one of the involved parties." That situation isn't a good one to be in (and letting an organization get into that situation is serious negligence on the part of leadership).
- joshlegs 12y ago
  news flash: 80% off work environments are hostile. Followup: that statistic is 75% made-up.
- Bahamut 12y ago
  The best talent probably won't be so quick/shallow/naive to pass judgment so quickly. It probably will challenge their recruitment of women though.
  - astrodust 12y ago
    So "women" and "best talent" are mutually exclusive? Classy.
    - Bahamut 12y ago
      That was absolutely not my implication - that is an incredibly dishonest commentary on my post.
      - jacalata 12y ago
        It's probably not what you meant to say, but it is a plausible reading of the actual text - it's just a slightly awkward phrasing that appears to say 'the best talent won't care, but women might' which casts them as disjoint groups.
        jacalata 12y ago
        I cannot believe the over-sensitive linguistically challenged group that must be downvoting that. Boy, doesn't it suck to know that sometimes words join together to have meanings and occasionally it includes one you weren't thinking of? Best approach is to say 'oh oops, I didn't mean that' and learn to construct your sentences better for next time. Worst approach is to deny that it could have meant that and learn nothing.
    - kogf04 12y ago
      Well the most followed projects on Github are led and created by men, so....
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
  - 12y ago
- opendais 12y ago
  I'd say the fact the offending party no longer works at GitHub is reason enough to give them the benefit of the doubt. Of course if this happens again, I'm willing to revisit that opinion. Shit does happen, regardless of the majority of one's coworkers best intentions.
- nailer 12y ago
  If you want to know if GitHub is a hostile work environment according to women who work there, take a poll of current and past female employees, including Horvath. I did. So far it's working out in GitHub's favour. But maybe I missed something, so do your own research.
  - kenferry 12y ago
    That's interesting - want to give your numbers? I would think, however, that any sort of reasonable minority calling it a "hostile work environment" would indicate a problem.
  - sneak 12y ago
    https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/458342995469688833 https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/458342995469688833 https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/458347143086870528 https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/458347143086870528 https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/458347574672388096 https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/458347574672388096
    - lawnchair_larry 12y ago
      What a drama queen. Hard to take her seriously with these antics.
      - TheRealDunkirk 12y ago
        I love all the random people piling on as though they're intimate with the parties or facts involved, taking 140 characters as a single data point to pair with their prejudices to draw a line to a foregone conclusion. It's a very strange time in the course of human development.
      - zorpner 12y ago
        Yes, this is a common rhetorical tactic used to dismiss the opinions of women when they address issues of sexism publicly. Thank you for demonstrating this disingenuous method of discourse so ably.
- Nelson69 12y ago
  Surely other women work there. Time will tell here, won't it? The story is dramatically more powerful if other women come forward. I don't know that it lessens things if others do not but it does create some interesting questions to those brave enough to ask them.
  - AnthonyMouse 12y ago
    > The story is dramatically more powerful if other women come forward. This is dangerous logic. The court of public opinion is a feedback loop. If an unconfirmed accusation gets no traction then the most hardcore wrongdoers will escape justice because everyone is too afraid to come forward. At the same time, if a confirmed accusation goes unquestioned then someone who has made a false or exaggerated accusation has a huge incentive to cajole friends into making confirmations that are also false or exaggerated, and the more false accusations are made the easier it is for the original accuser (or the likes of Nancy Grace) to convince others to make further false accusations. That's why these issues are so contentious. Getting to the real truth is practically impossible because people form an opinion first and then produce evidence that comports with it, and that misleading evidence influences the opinions of others who do the same thing until the truth and the story have no relation to each other. It's an issue where you have to choose between punishing a lot of innocent people (and increasing the power and thereby occurrence of false accusations) or allowing a lot of guilty people to escape punishment. There isn't a good answer, and that makes people angry -- especially if you're one of the innocent people who was punished or one of the victims of the guilty people who weren't.
  - malandrew 12y ago
    If this is a true systemic problem, the next person better be sure to actually collect evidence/proof of what happened and then clearly present facts instead of resorting to histrionics. If this whole thing were as bad as JAH has made it out to be, I would have imagined we would have already seen damning emails and other written correspondence backing up here allegations. As a company that doesn't most of its work asynchronously through written prose, it's not like github doesn't have oodles and oodles of written correspondence that would support her position better. There's email, pull requests, chat, etc. Given the duration of employment, she must have plenty of things to point at. If she didn't she should have made sure that some of the offending interactions were captured in written form at least once.
- malandrew 12y ago
  Can you show me a work environment that is not hostile to anyone? Every work environment has hostilities. The only way they each differ is in who is the recipient of the hostilities, the degree of hostility present and if that hostility is illegal or not. In that sense, the statement "We don't have a provably illegal hostile work environment" means exactly nothing, making Github no different than all the other workplaces you are evaluating. There are three sides to every side of a story... TPW's side, JAH's side and the facts. Given that all we really know are TPW's side and JAH's side and that we have no real facts beyond admitted errors in judgement, we really have no more information upon which to base judgement than before. I know of no company in the world provably immune from errors in judgement, do you? In other words, you and everyone else should evaluate github based on everything else you know about github and completely discount this entire debacle, since it has not shed light on anything that isn't as equally possible at every other company you may be considering.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - TheRealDunkirk 12y ago
    > Can you show me a work environment that is not hostile to anyone? That strikes me like saying that all sex is rape, it's just a matter of how violent or unwilling.
    - malandrew 12y ago
      Thank you for contribution. I'm trying to figure out which of the common relevance fallacies it falls under if anyone can help? Here are the possible options as I see it. * reductio ad absurdam * red herring * strawman * non sequiter
      - gamed 12y ago
        Reductio ad absurdum is actually a completely legitimate method of argument. There is nothing fallacious about it whatsoever.
mildtrepidation 12y ago
I agree, with the exception of "that's how it's supposed to be." As defined by who? Knowing what happened and understanding why makes deciding on a resolution possible. The suggestion that keeping those things vague is somehow desirable is hard to fathom, unless your perspective is that of an abusive employer who doesn't want to have to change his or her practices. Human interaction is not black and white (don't read into that). While this situation will never be totally transparent to the vast majority of us, the necessity of working within our limited knowledge does not imply our knowledge should necessarily be limited.
strlen 12y ago
I like to call this outcome a "non-answer answer". Very common in the corporate world.
kfcm 12y ago
As a lawyer friend once told me regarding lawsuits: "People who hunger for the truth will go to bed hungry."

lbarrow 12y ago

I think it's more "We didn't do anything illegal, but we're still firing one of our founders, so clearly something was wrong."

pjscott 12y ago
A loud public witch-hunt also counts as a Wrong Thing, so this doesn't really tell us much about what happened one way or the other.

funkyy 12y ago

TBH it sounds like nothing serious that was blown up big by certain news channels. Steve Jobs could "fire" employees for "fun" in elevator and people were OK with it. But when it comes to gender/racial issues - there is no coming back even if found free of charge. So the people didnt get along - who cares. The company is great, the work they done is great - why anyone should leave? If Ms Horvath didnt felt good in this company - there were thousands of ways to deal with the issues like talking directly to interested parties. And the last one was going to press with them.

aaronem 12y ago
For people to settle their differences like reasonable adults really isn't on the menu in the United States lately.

theorique 12y ago

the investigation could have classified most of them as either unprovable or terrible-but-not-provably-sexist (in particular, the behavior of the Preston-Werners). What would it benefit Github or the P-W husband/wife for the investigation report to have published such a thing? Why air your dirty laundry in public? It's most likely that the company and its co-founder are on the same page, if only for damage control purposes. (Why break ranks and threaten your brand and stock price, after all?) There may have been awkward and/or angry discussions in camera. Non-insiders are very unlikely to ever hear what went on in said discussions.

brown9-2 12y ago

makes sure to reinforce the fact that GitHub is immune to lawsuit while providing no real details Where is this mentioned? This thing where people think that investigators you hired are "independent" and that their conclusions carry something similar to the weight of a court of law is ridiculous.

dreamfactory2 12y ago

Going by the TC account (and taking the account there at face value) it sounds very much like bullying of an individual rather than anything gender-based. What's missing is why they got so paranoid about her as a potential troublemaker in the first place before they (allegedly) started handling it like chumps.

lexcorvus 12y ago
This story (unfortunately now dead on Hacker News) claims to fill in what's missing: https://medium.com/p/d96f431f4e8e https://medium.com/p/d96f431f4e8e Money quote: Around the end of 2012, Julie started dating a close male friend of the cofounder’s wife and didn’t like that they were close. She asked them to stop being friends and when they would not end their relationship, Julie started telling coworkers that the wife had affairs and that the cofounder’s newborn child was not his. She told this to multiple coworkers directly and also to the wife through her boyfriend. This is where the wife reached out to her and the rest of her story starts. All of Julie’s story involving the cofounder’s wife occurs only after Julie was spreading vicious rumors about him to even new employees.
- icelancer 12y ago
  Pretty obviously there was a second side to this story. Not at all surprised to read something like this, but it is sad.
- wankerrific 12y ago
  I think its pretty telling that this an anonymous account and that no one is will to attach their name to the Medium post.
  - gfodor 12y ago
    Not really. You'd have to be an idiot to attach your name to this given the shitstorm twitter would unleash upon you for questioning the narrative. No idea if it's true but in this environment anonymity is probably the default.

caycep 12y ago

I seem to recall another big fight between Github employees and Zed Shaw of Learn Python the Hard Way fame...perhaps that was a warning sign that HR policies needed to be brought up to snuff or even created in the 1st place...

nailer 12y ago
This. Both Zed and JAH are difficult personalities, but a professional structure should be in place to handle matters which can distract people from work. GitHub should have implemented a blocking mechanism to stop people inviting Zed to 'dick' projects, and if the rumour mongering story is true, HR should have stepped in and disciplined Horvath.
- vulf 12y ago
  > GitHub should have implemented a blocking mechanism to stop people inviting Zed to 'dick' projects They did: https://github.com/blog/862-block-the-bullies https://github.com/blog/862-block-the-bullies They never admitted to it being a response to the incident with Zed, but the timing was too convenient. That blog post was dated 05/31/2011. Zed's commits to the repo in question happened on 05/28/2011: https://github.com/moron5/dongml/commit/f4b8df910e4048202768c4b1a2b167f8d32a6ea9 https://github.com/moron5/dongml/commit/f4b8df910e4048202768...
  - aaronem 12y ago
    I'm still trying to figure out exactly what the sequence of events was there. As best I've been able to work out, whatever juvenile oaf created the "dongml" repo added Shaw to it in order to harass him somehow, and Shaw responded by writing a script to constantly commit changes to the repo which essentially rendered it empty, which seems reasonable both as retaliation in that specific case, and for general reasons of good taste. Then, in response, Github added a feature so that the "dongml" infant could block Shaw. Would anyone with closer to firsthand knowledge of the incident care to let me know whether I'm on the warm side or the cold?
    - 12y ago

lsc 12y ago

well, a co-founder was pressured or embarrassed into resigning, no? that's not a lawsuit, sure, or even a firing, but it's certainly a big deal. Certainly, if it was a case of the guy getting pressured to leave, one could make the case that the company recognized that they had a problem and tried to get rid of said problem in the way that was least likely to get them sued, by asking someone to resign. And really, if you are an executive, and are asked to resign, what are you gonna do? You're gonna resign, and try to make it seem like a voluntary thing. Even if everyone knows you actually got your ass fired, it shows that you are the sort of executive who will play the game and not take down the rest of the company if you get in trouble.

abalone 12y ago

Don't forget this link, the anonymous GitHub employee response to Horvath's claims: "Facts Conveniently Withheld". https://medium.com/p/d96f431f4e8e https://medium.com/p/d96f431f4e8e

evolve2k 12y ago
And here's Theresa Preston-Werners side of the story: What every founder fears - https://medium.com/p/2fe173c44215 https://medium.com/p/2fe173c44215
- 001sky 12y ago
  Despite, being found not guilty of the harassment accusations, questions popped up regarding Tom’s judgment in a separate area. We learned that unnamed employees felt pressured by Tom and me to work pro-bono for my nonprofit. The whole issue wasn't merely (the alleged) harassment as much as it was the appearance of 'undue influence'. The admission that GitHub forced out the co-founder for this very reason--all the while stepping clear of the topic of sexual harassment--is basically the crux of the matter.
- kungfoo 12y ago
  To be honest, the entire problem IMO was always with the wife, Theresa Preston-Werner. She should have known better and I think it comes from her lack of professional experience in the workforce. FULL explanation: It comes down to the unrestricted access that was granted. It introduces a person with extreme power but carries no responsibility with regards to work or culture. The end result is what we have today. This type of culture is actually very prevalent in asian companies (where families have unrestricted access) and have been demonstrated to be extremely detrimental. Theresa Preston-Werner blog post is extremely telling where she says "I have many close friends at GitHub, and I certainly had reached out to them when I began to build my company". My wife made the same mistake at her first job (trying too hard to be friends), except that she was an individual contributor and not the wife of the CEO. Her co-workers could just tell her off and she quickly learned the balances that were necessary. It's obvious that Theresa had no experience of this kind and had too much power for people to say "no". I want to add, I think there was an overfocus on gender issues by all parties (victims, plantiffs, media & company) in the first place. When I read the original article, I felt that regardless of the incident, Julie Ann Horvath was just pulling out the gender card. This was a mistake since it gave Github an easy way out to simply deny the gender-based accusations without any wrong doing.

jw2013 12y ago

I doubt there will ever be any clear explanation on what happened. Two sides of the story basically tell two different stories. As someone mentioned in the post, Julie posted some tweets in response to Github's announcement today. (https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore) 1. Bullying someone into quitting: Illegal. 2. Asking an employee to relay private conversations between her and her partner: Illegal. 3. Justifying the harassment of an employee because of her personal relationships: Pathetic. 4. How does it feel to make money for liars and cowards? 5. Pushing women with strong opinions out of your company because they disagree with you is wrong. 6. What number am I on? Oh yea, how do you sleep at night? 7. Leaving GitHub was the best decision of my life. 8. There was no investigation. 9. There was a series of conversations with a "mediator" who sought to relieve GitHub of any legal responsibility. 10. Whose reasoning included "would it surprise you to hear that [your harasser] was well-liked?" 11. No, no it would not. 12. Women at GitHub who sprang forward to defend the men who harassed me, it is naive to think the same thing cannot and will not happen to you. 13. Best of luck rolling the dice. 14. A company can never own you. They can't tell you who to fuck or not fuck. And they can't take away your voice. 15. Unless you let them. 16. Hmmm still no mention of the man who bullied me out of our code base because I wouldn't fuck him. Too popular to be accountable, I guess.

danso 12y ago
Yeah...sometimes Twitter just isn't the best place to make a cogent argument: > 1. Bullying someone into quitting: Illegal. If that bullying falls under the legal definition of harassment, then yes, it is illegal. But that's kind of begging the question a bit (e.g. Bullying someone is illegal because it is harassment). The thing is, some/much what Horvath described was assuredly captured in electronic records. If she believes something is illegal, and she is not afraid of speaking out, she should take the next step and file a lawsuit. > 2. Asking an employee to relay private conversations between her and her partner: Illegal. OK not sure what that refers to. Again, Twitter is not great for these things. > 3. Justifying the harassment of an employee because of her personal relationships: Pathetic. Who justified what? > 4. How does it feel to make money for liars and cowards? OK and then the rest of this seems like free association. I agree that a third-party investigation instigated by the accused is not automatically the truth, but neither are accusations. The word illegal has real meaning and if Horvath has the proof, then let's see it, rather than have a TechCrunch retelling be the canonical source of facts.

zak_mc_kracken 12y ago

From her blog post: > We learned that unnamed employees felt pressured by Tom and me to work pro-bono for my nonprofit It's really hard to take seriously the claims that "my husband did nothing wrong" when 1. He resigned. 2. She's now being accused of shady practices in her own company as well.

malandrew 12y ago

"While Horvath characterized much of her woes as being gender-related [1], the investigation could have classified most of them as either unprovable or terrible- but-not-provably-sexist." One of JAH's claims of gender bias involved a: "man who bullied [her] out of [github's] code base because [she] wouldn't fuck him. Too popular to be accountable, [she] guess[es]." After reading that I figured it's worth browsing through JAH's github account for recent code involving HTML/CSS (since the reverted commit involved CSS IIRC), and what I found would suggest that it's more likely that she made a poor/careless commit. I posted these findings in a comment way at the end of this thread that people are unlikely to see because the parent comment isn't being voted up on. Here's the link to the comment with links to broken or poor commits by JAH: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7625258 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7625258 In light of this other recent commits (by a longtime githubber who would be expected to exhibit much better git hygiene and committing habits), and lacking the content of the actual reverted commit, I would say that the claims of gender bias in this specific case appear dubious at best. If this other githubber did in fact make such vulgar comments, we still wouldn't have enough information without also knowing if that comment was completely unsolicited and out-of-the-blue, or if it was reactionary to whatever JAH may have said to this person just prior to the comment being made. Context matters. It could have been verbal self defense in response to a verbal attack, which is still unprofessional, but far more excusable especially if the original attack was equally unprofessional and sexually-charged. Given JAH's tact thus far, her character suggests someone who would have started a verbal fight.