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Horvath's response: "[My claims] are now, more or less, substantiated." Is she delusional? The report doesn't substantiate her claim of sexism AT ALL. They cou

by abalone 13y ago

Horvath's response: "[My claims] are now, more or less, substantiated." Is she delusional? The report doesn't substantiate her claim of sexism AT ALL. They couldn't even find the malicious code removals by "the guy who she wouldn't let fuck her" that was one of her central claims. https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/460865208810885120 https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/460865208810885120

gregd 13y ago
The investigation found Tom Preston-Werner in his capacity as GitHub’s CEO acted inappropriately, including confrontational conduct, disregard of workplace complaints, insensitivity to the impact of his spouse's presence in the workplace, and failure to enforce an agreement that his spouse should not work in the office. There were also issues surrounding the solicitation of GitHub employees for non-GitHub business and the inappropriate handling of employee concerns regarding those solicitations. It doesn't insubstantiate them either. TPW acted "inappropriately", which may or may not have been because Julie was a female. I believe that the stress of the CEO (and his wife) on Julie may have contributed to her experience in the workplace overall. I've been under that kind of stress before (not gender-based) and I know that it colored the future dealings I had at that job. Harassment doesn't happen in a vacuum and they shouldn't be considered isolated incidents. Harassment affects us all differently and what some people may be able to brush off, others get affected by, deeply. I almost want to address you calling Julie delusional, but I'm afraid it would only lend credence to you calling her that...
- abalone 13y ago
  You ignored the part about "They couldn't even find the malicious code removals by 'the guy who she wouldn't let fuck her' that was one of her central claims."
  - pyre 13y ago
    Depends on what kind of logs they have. Laying down a couple of assumptions: 1. They only have the git repo history to go on. 2. It's been long enough that errant objects have been garbage collected. It's possible that the code she committed removed via a push that removed it from history entirely (e.g. `git push +old-master:master`). If this push was never reverted, then the commit object would become an orphan that was up for removal at the next garbage collection interval. After that, the incident would absolutely just be 'he said, she said,' and a lack of evidence would not be proof that she was lying.
    - encoderer 13y ago
      Yeah, if they have no backups. Also, they said they looked at both the push log and the commit history.
    - kemayo 13y ago
      Unless the guy was hyper-vigilant about reverting her code (as in, within a few seconds of her pushing her own commit), wouldn't that be a ridiculously noticeable way to do it? Other people would have pulled, and would find themselves inconsistent with the origin repo when they next went to push... Not saying it's impossible, but it seems like it'd have generated some documentation if it happened, probably in the form of people sending out "WTF? Who's pushing history-changes???" emails. Edited to add: Also, the article says they reviewed git push logs, which I imagine would catch this.
      - pyre 13y ago
        > as in, within a few seconds of her pushing her own commit Is it really only possible for a revert to happen 'within a few seconds' to not cause issues? That's a strong statement to make based on little information. It might be true, but the repository in question could also have little traffic, or this could have happened over a weekend. > Also, the article says they reviewed git push logs, which I imagine would catch this. I see. I guess overlooked that (probably just read it as 'commit logs'). In general, I don't understand why they didn't just ask her about the commits in question. If it did happen, she would likely be able to point them in the right direction and at least narrow their search (e.g. 'the revert happened in repository X around these dates'). If she couldn't, then they are no better off, but no worse off either.
        kemayo 13y ago
        > That's a strong statement to make based on little information. That's a fair point. It'd depend a great deal on how github has their repos set up, and I can't remember seeing anyone talk about that.
    - yawboakye 13y ago
- korzun 13y ago
  Sure, but you are aware that Julie called out 5 or so people on twitter with 'Do not do any business with them' and not only ruined their professional image but also caused people to man their pitch forks. I mean if you bought the whole bullshit about a lead reverting code (highly visible thing to do) because she would not put out and not because code was.. gasp broken then you are pretty delusional your self.
glesica 13y ago
So you think the Preston-Werners treated male employees that way? Sexism isn't just boys being mean to girls. It is when women are treated differently or targeted for some sort of special consideration or evaluation, just as appears to have happened in this case based on the findings of the investigator.
- abalone 13y ago
  Actually the investigation found problems with the way they treated a range of other employees. Also, you ignored the part about them not being able to find anything in the commit history to support her most concrete charge of sexism (having her code reverted by a male who wanted to have sex with her).
  - glesica 13y ago
    Where does it say that? It says he and his wife encouraged other employees to work on her startup, but it says nothing about the other findings relating to a "range of other employees".
  - antihero 13y ago
    git push --force Though I'd assume they did more in depth investigations than just looking at the commit history, what with being a company that literally makes a living out of git.
    - kevinchen 13y ago
      That only works if you reverted the commits almost immediately after they are pushed. With a distributed system like Git, Horvath certainly would've noticed, and anyone who pulled before the revert would've known too.
    - vulf 13y ago
      > commit history, push log, and all issues and pull requests A force push will still show up in the log. Issues and PRs aren't deletable, so that lends a bit of credibility to this. Sure, said engineer probably has access to erase the push log and delete the issues or PRs directly from the database, but parties involved would likely still have email notifications related to it.
zorpner 13y ago
Man disagrees with woman that she experienced sexism; calls her delusional. I sincerely hope you see the irony in this.
- tomp 13y ago
  I don't think that your parent poster (who might or might not be male, I haven't checked) is disagreeing with her; s/he's just considering what was written in the blog post. With regards to her claims, taking the blog post at face value, the only one which could be unambiguously dis/proved has turned out to be false.
- abalone 13y ago
  Man assumes hacker news commenter he disagrees with is male. I sincerely hope you see the irony in that. Also you mischaracterized what I said. I asked if she was delusional for claiming the github blog post (which we can all read right in front of us) substantiates her claims. Not the initial claims of sexism themselves.
bwy 13y ago
I have to agree somewhat with this statement. Forget about the whole story for a second, then look again at Horvath's Twitter, and compare it to the stories written on this topic. That's what happened to me. I was super sympathetic, too, and excited that there was such a good example of a woman fighting for her rights, until I saw her complaining about some guy deleting her code because he wanted to f* her. That's not what GH's investigation has found, and it's much more about the Preston-Werner's wrongs now.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- heyheyhey 13y ago
  > I think "the guy who she wouldn't let fuck her" was her previous boyfriend, which was confirmed in one of the chat transcripts she posted? No, those were two different people, @tnm and @Holman. http://valleywag.gawker.com/ims-and-email-support-allegations-about-the-toxic-cultu-1567175545 http://valleywag.gawker.com/ims-and-email-support-allegation...
  - revelation 13y ago
    I stand corrected, thank you. I shall show myself out..
  - nailer 13y ago
    The weird thing is there's no actual denial of anything in the medium post by Horvath: > "That blog post has nothing to do with my job, the quality of my work, or what kind of coworker I was. People reading that should wonder why any of those things are relevant to me being harassed and HR sitting idly by. Would this happen to a man in the same situation? No." Addressing the distraction: if a man said a woman reverted his code because he wouldn't sleep with her, and withheld they were in a relationship, then yes, that would be relevant and should be raised. Unlike what ValleyWag claims though, that's not actually a denial.
    - nymph 13y ago
      The patently evasive language of Horvath's non-denial -- contrasted with the very specific language in the (albeit anonymous, but credible-sounding) medium post -- make it increasingly difficult to take anything else she's saying seriously, moving forward. In particular -- if she's going to level tacit, but just the same highly public and career-damaging accusations of sexual harassment or other misconduct against other GitHub employees -- which, going by the language of her recent j'accuse tweet ("Don't do business with ...") would pretty much have to be what she's implying (even though she won't say it directly)[1,2] -- then she had better be prepared to back up what she's saying with reality-based specifics. Being as, going by her "uneven", to say the least, track record on veracity thus far, we just don't have much reason to give her the benefit of the doubt. [1] https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/459358875213238272 https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/459358875213238272 [2] also http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/24/horvath-names-names/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/24/horvath-names-names/, since deleted.
at-fates-hands 13y ago
This is the double edged sword she was playing with. If her allegations are found to have merit, then a lawsuit is what she would file next with this as the only evidence she needs to confirm what she's been saying. Now that the results are in and they found nothing to support her allegations, it looks like GitHub has a strong defamation case to bring against her. If I was her, I'd be looking for a good attorney to represent me. Since she never filed a lawsuit, this makes her look like what most people on the GitHub side have been saying all along. That she's indignant, bitter and feels entitled. Not to mention the whole time she's been feeding GitHub plenty of ammunition via social media.
- jrochkind1 13y ago
  1. How the heck can you read that and say there was nothing to support her allegations? Did you read the same thing I just read? 2. Github suing her for defamation would be SO counter-productive, as it would make them look awful. Also, did you see the part where they apologized to her? Are you sure you actually read the OP? Clearly, their FIRST public announcement was written on the advice of lawyers or PR people, where they admitted as little as possible, in part not to give her 'ammunition' in court. But it made them look bad and weasely. So this is the one they released _even though_ it gives her some ammunition.
  - Jun8 13y ago
    Please read post again, according to it the investigation found two things (in summary): 1. TPW and her spouse acted inappropriately 2. There was no evidence of sexist behavior at GitHub (related to this instance, at least). Horvath's claims included allegations of both 1 & 2. It's clear that her allegations did irreparable damage to GitHub, since a lot of people won't bother to follow this story in detail and will remember it a "sexist" place where your code may get deleted if you don't put out. As you say GitHub will not be able to bring defamation charges against Horvath due to PR reasons, this is an unfortunate and sad state of affairs (and one of the very few times I long for the strong defamation laws in Europe).
- vellum 13y ago
  it looks like GitHub has a strong defamation case to bring against her Litigation is very slow. They want this to go away, not drag it out for months or years. Also, her lawyers would subpoena Github for years of chat logs, emails, and texts. Even if there is no smoking gun, they could probably dredge up something embarassing and make it public.
duncan_bayne 13y ago
Seems to be. Quite an interesting about-face from her earlier position that there was no investigation, too.
- nymph 13y ago
  "No investigation" was just another instance of manipulative communication tactics on her part. She knew very well that an investigation was being conducted; it just wasn't an investigation to her liking.

by abalone 13y ago

gregd 13y ago

The investigation found Tom Preston-Werner in his capacity as GitHub’s CEO acted inappropriately, including confrontational conduct, disregard of workplace complaints, insensitivity to the impact of his spouse's presence in the workplace, and failure to enforce an agreement that his spouse should not work in the office. There were also issues surrounding the solicitation of GitHub employees for non-GitHub business and the inappropriate handling of employee concerns regarding those solicitations. It doesn't insubstantiate them either. TPW acted "inappropriately", which may or may not have been because Julie was a female. I believe that the stress of the CEO (and his wife) on Julie may have contributed to her experience in the workplace overall. I've been under that kind of stress before (not gender-based) and I know that it colored the future dealings I had at that job. Harassment doesn't happen in a vacuum and they shouldn't be considered isolated incidents. Harassment affects us all differently and what some people may be able to brush off, others get affected by, deeply. I almost want to address you calling Julie delusional, but I'm afraid it would only lend credence to you calling her that...

abalone 13y ago
You ignored the part about "They couldn't even find the malicious code removals by 'the guy who she wouldn't let fuck her' that was one of her central claims."
- pyre 13y ago
  Depends on what kind of logs they have. Laying down a couple of assumptions: 1. They only have the git repo history to go on. 2. It's been long enough that errant objects have been garbage collected. It's possible that the code she committed removed via a push that removed it from history entirely (e.g. `git push +old-master:master`). If this push was never reverted, then the commit object would become an orphan that was up for removal at the next garbage collection interval. After that, the incident would absolutely just be 'he said, she said,' and a lack of evidence would not be proof that she was lying.
  - encoderer 13y ago
    Yeah, if they have no backups. Also, they said they looked at both the push log and the commit history.
  - kemayo 13y ago
    Unless the guy was hyper-vigilant about reverting her code (as in, within a few seconds of her pushing her own commit), wouldn't that be a ridiculously noticeable way to do it? Other people would have pulled, and would find themselves inconsistent with the origin repo when they next went to push... Not saying it's impossible, but it seems like it'd have generated some documentation if it happened, probably in the form of people sending out "WTF? Who's pushing history-changes???" emails. Edited to add: Also, the article says they reviewed git push logs, which I imagine would catch this.
    - pyre 13y ago
      > as in, within a few seconds of her pushing her own commit Is it really only possible for a revert to happen 'within a few seconds' to not cause issues? That's a strong statement to make based on little information. It might be true, but the repository in question could also have little traffic, or this could have happened over a weekend. > Also, the article says they reviewed git push logs, which I imagine would catch this. I see. I guess overlooked that (probably just read it as 'commit logs'). In general, I don't understand why they didn't just ask her about the commits in question. If it did happen, she would likely be able to point them in the right direction and at least narrow their search (e.g. 'the revert happened in repository X around these dates'). If she couldn't, then they are no better off, but no worse off either.
      - kemayo 13y ago
        > That's a strong statement to make based on little information. That's a fair point. It'd depend a great deal on how github has their repos set up, and I can't remember seeing anyone talk about that.
  - yawboakye 13y ago
korzun 13y ago
Sure, but you are aware that Julie called out 5 or so people on twitter with 'Do not do any business with them' and not only ruined their professional image but also caused people to man their pitch forks. I mean if you bought the whole bullshit about a lead reverting code (highly visible thing to do) because she would not put out and not because code was.. gasp broken then you are pretty delusional your self.

glesica 13y ago

So you think the Preston-Werners treated male employees that way? Sexism isn't just boys being mean to girls. It is when women are treated differently or targeted for some sort of special consideration or evaluation, just as appears to have happened in this case based on the findings of the investigator.

abalone 13y ago
Actually the investigation found problems with the way they treated a range of other employees. Also, you ignored the part about them not being able to find anything in the commit history to support her most concrete charge of sexism (having her code reverted by a male who wanted to have sex with her).
- glesica 13y ago
  Where does it say that? It says he and his wife encouraged other employees to work on her startup, but it says nothing about the other findings relating to a "range of other employees".
- antihero 13y ago
  git push --force Though I'd assume they did more in depth investigations than just looking at the commit history, what with being a company that literally makes a living out of git.
  - kevinchen 13y ago
    That only works if you reverted the commits almost immediately after they are pushed. With a distributed system like Git, Horvath certainly would've noticed, and anyone who pulled before the revert would've known too.
  - vulf 13y ago
    > commit history, push log, and all issues and pull requests A force push will still show up in the log. Issues and PRs aren't deletable, so that lends a bit of credibility to this. Sure, said engineer probably has access to erase the push log and delete the issues or PRs directly from the database, but parties involved would likely still have email notifications related to it.

zorpner 13y ago

Man disagrees with woman that she experienced sexism; calls her delusional. I sincerely hope you see the irony in this.

tomp 13y ago
I don't think that your parent poster (who might or might not be male, I haven't checked) is disagreeing with her; s/he's just considering what was written in the blog post. With regards to her claims, taking the blog post at face value, the only one which could be unambiguously dis/proved has turned out to be false.
abalone 13y ago
Man assumes hacker news commenter he disagrees with is male. I sincerely hope you see the irony in that. Also you mischaracterized what I said. I asked if she was delusional for claiming the github blog post (which we can all read right in front of us) substantiates her claims. Not the initial claims of sexism themselves.

bwy 13y ago

I have to agree somewhat with this statement. Forget about the whole story for a second, then look again at Horvath's Twitter, and compare it to the stories written on this topic. That's what happened to me. I was super sympathetic, too, and excited that there was such a good example of a woman fighting for her rights, until I saw her complaining about some guy deleting her code because he wanted to f* her. That's not what GH's investigation has found, and it's much more about the Preston-Werner's wrongs now.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

heyheyhey 13y ago
> I think "the guy who she wouldn't let fuck her" was her previous boyfriend, which was confirmed in one of the chat transcripts she posted? No, those were two different people, @tnm and @Holman. http://valleywag.gawker.com/ims-and-email-support-allegations-about-the-toxic-cultu-1567175545 http://valleywag.gawker.com/ims-and-email-support-allegation...
- revelation 13y ago
  I stand corrected, thank you. I shall show myself out..
- nailer 13y ago
  The weird thing is there's no actual denial of anything in the medium post by Horvath: > "That blog post has nothing to do with my job, the quality of my work, or what kind of coworker I was. People reading that should wonder why any of those things are relevant to me being harassed and HR sitting idly by. Would this happen to a man in the same situation? No." Addressing the distraction: if a man said a woman reverted his code because he wouldn't sleep with her, and withheld they were in a relationship, then yes, that would be relevant and should be raised. Unlike what ValleyWag claims though, that's not actually a denial.
  - nymph 13y ago
    The patently evasive language of Horvath's non-denial -- contrasted with the very specific language in the (albeit anonymous, but credible-sounding) medium post -- make it increasingly difficult to take anything else she's saying seriously, moving forward. In particular -- if she's going to level tacit, but just the same highly public and career-damaging accusations of sexual harassment or other misconduct against other GitHub employees -- which, going by the language of her recent j'accuse tweet ("Don't do business with ...") would pretty much have to be what she's implying (even though she won't say it directly)[1,2] -- then she had better be prepared to back up what she's saying with reality-based specifics. Being as, going by her "uneven", to say the least, track record on veracity thus far, we just don't have much reason to give her the benefit of the doubt. [1] https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/459358875213238272 https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/459358875213238272 [2] also http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/24/horvath-names-names/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/24/horvath-names-names/, since deleted.

at-fates-hands 13y ago

This is the double edged sword she was playing with. If her allegations are found to have merit, then a lawsuit is what she would file next with this as the only evidence she needs to confirm what she's been saying. Now that the results are in and they found nothing to support her allegations, it looks like GitHub has a strong defamation case to bring against her. If I was her, I'd be looking for a good attorney to represent me. Since she never filed a lawsuit, this makes her look like what most people on the GitHub side have been saying all along. That she's indignant, bitter and feels entitled. Not to mention the whole time she's been feeding GitHub plenty of ammunition via social media.

jrochkind1 13y ago
1. How the heck can you read that and say there was nothing to support her allegations? Did you read the same thing I just read? 2. Github suing her for defamation would be SO counter-productive, as it would make them look awful. Also, did you see the part where they apologized to her? Are you sure you actually read the OP? Clearly, their FIRST public announcement was written on the advice of lawyers or PR people, where they admitted as little as possible, in part not to give her 'ammunition' in court. But it made them look bad and weasely. So this is the one they released _even though_ it gives her some ammunition.
- Jun8 13y ago
  Please read post again, according to it the investigation found two things (in summary): 1. TPW and her spouse acted inappropriately 2. There was no evidence of sexist behavior at GitHub (related to this instance, at least). Horvath's claims included allegations of both 1 & 2. It's clear that her allegations did irreparable damage to GitHub, since a lot of people won't bother to follow this story in detail and will remember it a "sexist" place where your code may get deleted if you don't put out. As you say GitHub will not be able to bring defamation charges against Horvath due to PR reasons, this is an unfortunate and sad state of affairs (and one of the very few times I long for the strong defamation laws in Europe).
vellum 13y ago
it looks like GitHub has a strong defamation case to bring against her Litigation is very slow. They want this to go away, not drag it out for months or years. Also, her lawyers would subpoena Github for years of chat logs, emails, and texts. Even if there is no smoking gun, they could probably dredge up something embarassing and make it public.

duncan_bayne 13y ago

Seems to be. Quite an interesting about-face from her earlier position that there was no investigation, too.

nymph 13y ago
"No investigation" was just another instance of manipulative communication tactics on her part. She knew very well that an investigation was being conducted; it just wasn't an investigation to her liking.