8 ms·
Why was he fired?
by simonlc 12y ago
Why was he fired?
- wongarsu 12y agoAnd that's the part of being fired you usually don't discuss publicly. It always makes somebody look bad and nobody wants to burn bridges
- ElComradio 12y agoImage is paramount in this meritocracy.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- MCRed 12y agoBut part of the problem is that in a meritocracy you need people to know who the bad actors are. It seems pretty obvious from outside Github that something has gone rotten in the company over the past couple of years, and the is the latest of the smells. Now any one of us could end up hiring that rotten apple from github in the future, if we don't know who it is. Of course you don't want to slander or libel people, but giving them the cover of complete anonymity is not good.
- rdtsc 12y agoPerhaps meritocracy is a term used by those in power to placate those that don't have power, to give them the illusion that it is all just a objective and clear and if they fail it is all their fault because they didn't merit it.
- paulrademacher 12y agoYou're free to ask people who come in to interview at your company, "why did you leave your last job?" and apply your own judgement. Or if you truly want to help improve Github, you should join them! :-)
- davidw 12y agoIt's pretty rare that someone really gets what's coming to them. This dude created some serious problems where I worked 15 years ago, and yet he still keeps getting hired: http://www.advogato.org/proj/DougNassaurWatch/ http://www.advogato.org/proj/DougNassaurWatch/ http://www.suncapinc.com/Doug_Nassaur.htm http://www.suncapinc.com/Doug_Nassaur.htm
- ceejayoz 12y agoThis seems like a weird way to flog a 15 year old dispute.
- davidw 12y agoLet's put it this way: I've worked with people I disliked and even some I found incompetent. I would never dream of calling them out like this. Putting that page up filled a need in my sense of justice in the world - which probably also motivated the guy who put up the other page, too. To quote the poster above, "But part of the problem is that in a meritocracy you need people to know who the bad actors are".
- davidw 12y agoI'll add: anyone could end up in a job they are not suited for, potentially make mistakes and deserve a second chance, but when there's a pattern like that, it's another matter.
- ceejayoz 12y agoLook, if you want to let people know who the bad actors are, this isn't the way. I looked at your two links - one was just plain baffling and seemed to assume I already knew the whole story, and the other was a collection of links to 404 error pages.
- thieving_magpie 12y agoGood lord you really hate that guy.
- hga 12y agoGitHub is very explicitly no longer a meritocracy: http://www.businessinsider.com/githubs-ceo-ditches-meritocracy-rug-2014-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/githubs-ceo-ditches-meritocra... And per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9158997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9158997 the same Julie Ann Horvath was both his ex and wanted him fired.
- ceejayoz 12y agoGithub has acknowledged that unconscious biases make it nearly impossible to have a true, pure meritocracy. It's a bit like communism - the ideal is wonderful, the actual implementation problematic.
- jotux 12y ago>meritocracy Has anyone ever seen an actual meritocratic work place? Eight years working and I'm convinced that it's nearly impossible for small organizations to implement and outright impossible for large organizations.
- itsdrewmiller 12y agoI'll show you a meritocratic workplace as soon as you show me a way to measure developer productivity.
- brianpgordon 12y agoEvery engineer knows the pecking order of who the top performers are. The trick is not determining merit, it's arriving at a consensus about merit without politics hopelessly skewing the result.
- twic 12y agoI don't think this is true. Programmers' values vary. One person may value the number of features implemented over the maintainability of the code, while another may not. One may value finding creative uses for existing components over integrating new components, while another may not. As a result, programmers' evaluations of their own and each other's performance may not be consistent. I once worked somewhere where there was a guy who went round the company getting involved in projects, pushing radical new approaches, not thinking things through properly, writing mediocre code, then moving on to something else. I thought he was a hazard [1]. I recently learned that he's been promoted to 'principal engineer'. [1] Exaggerating somewhat. I like the guy, i think most of his ideas are great, and i respect him a lot. I just worried about the complexity and speed of change exceeding our ability to execute successfully.
- FireBeyond 12y agoWell, he doesn't detail things, but you can see subtle bitchings about management: "Do you know what happens after you tell them the whole story behind your termination? Virtually everyone I've had drinks with tells a similar story about the time they got fired. Seemingly everyone’s got stories of being stuck under shit managers, or dealing the fallout from things out of their control." You tell them your story, they tell you their similar story about being stuck under shit managers...
- ectopic_cheeto 12y agoHe reversed Julie Ann Horvath's commits because she wouldn't go out with him. And here I thought women were supposed to be the emotional ones and men were the rational ones. Ha!