This is Hackathon Harassment
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code.likeagirl.io
A further example, when she texted one of the mentors, she got back:
I am not trying to be too invasive in the reasons, but would like to know the reasons of the early split.
To which she states:
This mentor said he wasn’t trying to be invasive, but he was.
Then she says that how they really should have responded was (edit: this is another actual response):
Thanks for letting me know, [I’m] sure you had good reasons and I’m glad to hear that you’ll continue on with [Project].
OK, I get why you'd prefer the second response, but considering what happened, it's not rude for them to ask what's up, and they even padded that question so as to not be demanding. It's possible that's an unusual situation for them. I kind of get the feeling that neither person is really fun to work with, but that's based on what's in this blog post.
I don't mean to be a jerk or victim blame or anything like that.
Those aren't mutually exclusive. Harassment is an action, not an intent. You can harass someone because you are socially inept, but that doesn't mean you aren't harassing someone, and it explains the behavior but certainly doesn't excuse it.
> Then she says that how they really should have responded was:
That wasn't text of how she imagined he should have responded, that's a quote from an actual response she got from one of her mentors
Is he a cofounder or an employee? Difficult question, but certainly a legitimate one.
I think there's some confirmation bias going on here
If Mark was an employee who was fired and refused to leave the premises, he'd be escorted off by security. If he promised to show up a few weeks later to talk to the board of directors or investors, they'd similarly bring in security.
That's what happened here (or what he threatened to do, anyway.) After a really bad weekend, he was "fired". Then, over a series of emails with escalating demands he eventually threatened to show up at the project booth falsely representing himself on the project. Yet, he was offered exactly what he'd have gotten if he stayed on the project.
As for the rest, it's probably harder to see this if you've never had to do it before, but it's really exhausting being asked to repeatedly justify your actions in a situation like this.
When you find that one golden person who says, "I trust your judgment", it's honestly shocking. It feels good to have your judgment trusted when you go to someone saying, "Hey, I was in a bad situation and had to make a difficult decision" and they say, "That sounds tough, but I bet you made the right choice," rather than, "Tell me why you did that?"
That's because most people's judgement is not always good. Just see "Mark" as an example.
In addition, they were probably not questioning your judgement, but instead attempting to see if there's anything else they could have done, earlier. It's common practice when a good employee makes or requests a dramatic change - it's a sign of good management that they are trying to identify and fix potentially systematic problems.
As for the rest, I honestly think that any harassment was limited to Mark. It's just not that uncommon for companies to give the squeaky wheel grease to get them to just shut up. On the flip side, the constant references to "subtle threats" reflects a bias at play by the listener, not necessarily the actual intent of the speaker.
It's not clear to me from your post that this was an employer/employee relationship. It seems apparent that Mark felt as if it were an equal partnership.
Was there anything in writing going into Startup Weekend that defined the terms of the relationship?
* If a cofounder, he's probably entitled to shares. As a cofounder, talking to the board or investors would fit the character (he /was/ a cofounder)
* If an employee, as employee was getting paid or equity. Upon termination, he would receive severance. I think the discussion about how many tickets, what percentage of the booth, etc isn't very different from a company firing an employee and discussing how much severance. For a company with no money, how to split the assets.
In general, as investor/board member, I would be shocked to know that an employee - who hasn't signed an IP license agreement - is walking away, without signing an IP license agreement, making the entire IP asset of the company a potential legal liability. As board member, I'd have advised the CEO to QUICKLY settle this IP dispute, to give in on everything requested (booth, tickets, etc) - BUT - to receive a signed paper claiming full ownership of the project. Booth and tickets can easily be replaced. A startup whose IP ownership is unclear will be a dealbreaker for any investments during ANY due diligence process.
Perhaps the tickets could be considered Mark's pay, but how much are the members of other projects who don't win paid?
If nothing, as seems likely, they (and Mark) aren't employees.
I'm not seeing the "you're a woman and I'm threatening you" anywhere. "By the way I designed cool t-shirts, you want one?" and "Lets not have any bad vibes due to this", doesn't sound like "Do what I want or I'll kill you."
Maybe the guy is selfish, and intensely trying to "make it" (sounds like a young over-eager tech guy), but he's not threatening to attack or "victimizing" due to sexist views imo.
If someone disagrees, please provide one shred of evidence. As best I can make out its summarized with the big-text quote midway through:
"He didn’t use all caps. He didn’t swear. He didn’t yell. All he did was calmly… threaten. Subtly… insinuate. And distance himself from reality, little by little."
I'm not impressed, the bar has been raised for claims of harassment and victimization. If you had spent your whole weekend working around the clock on a project that won the prize on your own code, only to be told your dreams were now crushed because you "weren't a good fit", you'd probably be begging to find a way to hold onto the tickets or the project as well, whether your boss was male or female.
[Edit] And also, the mentors, the coordinators, the others in the posts all seem to agree that this isn't harassment. This really points to an issue with hackathons in general. You have people contributing to a "startup", then getting tickets to an expo, all without any contracts, just some verbal agreements -- these type of disagreements are bound to happen.
At what point does the line blur between needing special treatment because you're a different gender and equality?
Edit: after rereading the article I realize my comment might've been a bit knee-jerky. However, I do feel the author puts emphasis on the gender of the people referenced in the story. Above all the line "I considered: what would a male CEO do in this situation?" feels like a forced focus on gender. But I concede; the article focusses on harassment in general, not sexual, mea culpa.
Well, as I read this piece she's describing potentially abusive behavior, but not gender related. I read it as a shitstorm of over-intense personalities with optimistic dreams of being the next big thing creating an awful environment for eachother. Somebody of either gender could have a bitter ex-teammate who wants to undercut them.
So I read this as a criticism of the atmosphere of hackathons rather than a women-in-tech issue.
Now, the philosophical question is whether this distinction means I agree or disagree with the author.
Can you elaborate?
This is a part I'm not sure to understand. You were supposed to hold a booth in a summit, which I assume was in a public setting. Surely, this should have been a serious deterrent on any physical assault. If despite this your partner started threatening you, wouldn't it have been possible to get the security to step in?
> Tech harassment — and harassment in general — isn’t just sexual. Sometimes it’s stalking. Sometimes it’s bullying. Sometimes it’s intimidation. I know too many people who’ve been impacted by workplace harassment related to their gender, sexual orientation, appearance, race, and more. No matter what form harassment takes, and no matter where it happens, we need to do better.
The only time where she's frustrated about sexism taking place is when she brings up how her opinion was discarded by this rude team member:
> As project leader, I worked hard to keep us on track, but he veered off course: obsessing over winning, arguing irrelevant details, and challenging everything. When male mentors stepped in and unknowingly made suggestions identical to mine, Mark instantly flipped to agreement.
This attitude really frustrates me. This isn't a court of law, the man in question isn't accused of a crime, and his name is even withheld so his reputation is not at stake. She is under no obligation to turn over evidence for the public to sift through. And just because she doesn't have some smoking-gun "I'll kill you!" email doesn't mean there wasn't harassment going on. He refused to take "no" for an answer, and she says she felt unsafe being in the same room as him. She's not doing this as revenge against him, or she would have given his name. She's not doing this because she's bitter about losing the competition because she won. Why can't we, even for a moment, believe this woman when she says "I don't feel safe" ?
> If you had spent your whole weekend working around the clock on a project that won the prize on your own code, only to be told your dreams were now crushed because you "weren't a good fit", you'd probably be begging to find a way to hold onto the tickets or the project as well
From the Techstars FAQ: "Whether or not you continue to work on the idea with some or all of your team is completely up to you. Approximately 25% of Techstars Startup Weekend participants continue working on their idea with all of their team". What she did wasn't unusual, in fact it's what the majority of participants do.
If she felt unsafe why didn't she just get a restraining order? Unless, of course, there wasn't adequate evidence to get one in the first place.
So, actual harassment?
> Instead she fired him from her startup, is that so unreasonable?
I think this is where the mentor talked about "karma biting back." She had these facts beforehand:
1) Mark is socially-inept and an asshole
2) Mark invested time and energy into the project
3) there were no legal contracts
Is "firing" Mark (with no "smoking gun" event/email) and expecting him to bend over so reasonable? This really seems like IP theft with the OP hiding behind "harassment."
I would certainly feel uncomfortable receiving those messages in the situation as described in the article.
* Person X is in charge of a group and has an idea for a coding project
* Person Y decides to volunteer some coding time
* Person X, with full authority to do so ends, the purely voluntary relationship
* Person Y now decides that they are a co-founder and has equal rights and starts demanding compensation for the project that doesn't exist but could potentially exist in the future. They also continue to fire off emails becoming more demanding after it's made clear that the relationship has been terminated.
Were this an open source project people would think what the contributor is doing is insane. That's clearly harassment. If I fire someone on a Friday and they show up on a Monday saying that they have a right to the company's future earnings and oh, by the way, do you want this t-shirt I made about the company, I'm going to call the police.
If you and I have started a project together, and I haven't signed an IP ownership transfer (to you, the project, the company) - I am entitled to the full ownership of the intellectual rights of my work. Regardless if I get paid or not (even when I get paid, every company will ask you to sign a separate agreement where you transfer ownership of produced IP). So if I get "fired" - and I haven't signed any agreement - you are in trouble. Because from now on, /your/ project IP will always have the legal liability that at some point I can come back and claim it's mine. See Facebook and many other cases, where they worked on a project without clear initial paperwork - it's a very expensive mistake.
Who is the real victim? Obviously, we want to believe the woman who wrote the article, but bear in mind, her harassment is limited to a few text messages and emails.
On the other hand, our "villain" in this story has lost his coding, opportunities, and ideas that he contributed because he "wasn't a good fit".
One person has "gained" from the situation, although they claim to "feel" threatened, despite dubious proof. The other has had actual physical loss in the situation, and you're asking why can't we just believe her? What if the ideas he contributed turn out to make billions, is she still the victim for putting up with a few emails, and is he still just some victimizer for trying to stay involved?
Another reason we need to raise the bar is that believing these claims "on face" makes it all to easy to steal IP and exploit bosses/employees using harassment claims. I'm not saying that's what the article's author is doing, but it is a good reason to be skeptical (so prove to me you didn't just take this guy's work and claim you're the victim).
> despite dubious proof
Again, this is not a court of law, she isn't obligated to give the public proof that she was being harassed.
> What if the ideas he contributed turn out to make billions
He contributed a mock website and logo: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15587336
1. Be completely skeptical of the author's claims and demand proof.
2. Give the author the benefit of the doubt.
I submit that when we ordinarily read an article, we do the second. We can't know what the other person did that was creepy or intense, but we have (presumably) all been in similar situations. The person snaps, or doesn't respond, or yells, or takes credit or any number of odious habits.
For whatever reason, some people are inclined to not give this author the benefit of the doubt and, without being there, want to give this other person the benefit of the doubt.
To them I would say this: imagine that you have an idea and recruit a technical person to help you with it. After a weekend, you tell them its not going to work for whatever reason.
Maybe you just don't like the way they smell, or they go off on goofy tangents, or you don't like their puns, or they don't laugh at your jokes. I don't care. Its just one weekend and you don't want to work with them.
You have a right to ask them not to work with you and move on. You didn't say this was forever. If the person refused to move one, what would you do?
If you volunteer to fix my yard, and after a weekend, I tell you thanks but please leave, am I suddenly expected to pay for it?
In the absence of a license, I still retain 100% ownership of everything I have produced. There is a reason why every employment agreement requires to sign a special document where the employee transfer IP ownership to the company. In an "informal" setting, Mark is fully entitled to the intellectual ownership of his work (unless he signed a license or a IP transfer). In the current situation - from a pure legal standpoint - Mark could claim ownership of the project.
But none of those things happened!
He said he is going to show up at the booth, and that he will continue working the company.
I'm just not seeing that in the article.
Please look it up:
This was my preconception, based on the hackathons I've attended.
That also doesn't fit well with the article - it seems the author was expecting it to be their company.
In the absence of a prior discussion or agreement, I would expect it to be an equal partnership.
On top of that, I think a lot of HNers see themselves as people who have a good idea and are afraid of being pushed out, rather than as people who push others out. So right off the bat readers from HN may think of the author as an antagonist, rather than someone to sympathize with, regardless of how justified the author is.
"While I understand the original idea was yours, I need you to understand that the prize we won together. […] That exhibition booth […] is as much mine as it is yours."
And of course either of you can choose to leave the team unilaterally, but on a 50/50 team, it seems odd that one person can "fire" the other person and take all the benefits (minus one ticket) that the team won together. If we formed a 50/50 team, and a VC gave us a bunch of funding, and I told you I was firing you and giving you some of the VC money, you would be pretty miffed.
If there's a booth to demonstrate things, then your statement here seems odd:
"The tickets being offered were exactly what he would have gotten as a team member.."
because there's more to the benefits of winning than a ticket to a conference or whatever. Additionally, you paint his email as harassment, but I really don't see it:
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2000/1*DQAH9nLoO8yC4rwtK...
I won't continue from there as hopefully you get the idea. And I'm not blaming you, but it really does not seem like harassment, despite the narrative you're painting. It makes me think you have some angle here, but someone shouldn't be "fired" and told to leave a project that they had a 50/50 stake in because you thought they were a little gruff.
"How do teams address the issue of Intellectual Property/ownership?"
"As with any startup, the team decides. Techstars Startup Weekend doesn’t support or take part in the signing of any legal documents at the events themselves, and while Mentors with legal backgrounds are often present and able to give general advice, they are not permitted to give specific legal counsel. While it doesn’t hurt to be clear about your individual expectations from the start, we’ve found that teams who don’t spend time addressing this issue until it actually matters (i.e., there is a tangible product to have ownership of) are much more productive and successful than those who do."
...
By not addressing the exact nature of the agreement; by not making it clear that the expectation was that Mark was volunteering and thus giving away his talent; by not making it clear that he was expected to simply help and then go away when no longer wanted; by doing not doing these things up front, Mark was left to make his own assumptions. So bad on Mark, and bad on the author, IMHO. No wonder this ended badly.
And more to the point, bad on Techstars for encouraging this.
This was my first hackathon. I was a bit naive and didn't know what conversations to have at the start. I didn't go into the weekend intending to start a startup or win. I also wish the event organizers had at least mentioned expectation-setting, because it was just... BOOM! And we're off!
At the end of the weekend I definitely had a conversation with Mark about needing to determine next steps. I was quite clear that I wasn't sure the project would be continuing.
Math is hard for some people... maybe she has problems with it, too, and thinks that yelling "harassment" will make the math problems go away. Unfortunately, that's not how the world works.
I have no doubt that the "25%" statistic is because most of those are the people who didn't win and everyone abandoned the project.
There were no engineers on this team. I have a CS background but decided that because the project would require significant AI work, the best use of time during the weekend would be user research and wireframing to validate the proof-of-concept. I did program management, UX design, and was "CEO"; Mark did graphic design.
I don't want to get too into the weeds on what the exact breakdown of work was, but it wasn't an equal 50/50.
What I know is this:
- Techstars, the overall organization, doesn't provide guidance re: whether teams are hierarchical or non-hierarchical, or what should happen when and if teams split (which happens to 75% of them)
- Mentors had mixed guidance; however, multiple said that because I pitched the idea, did over half of the work, and was the "project leader" I was effectively "CEO"
- A lawyer I consulted with also said that without any partnership agreements promising a 50/50 split, "ownership" was mine as idea originator, project leader, etc.
But putting all that aside, I think the point most often overlooked is that if this was a company, if Mark was fired and then refused to leave, he'd be escorted away by security. If he threatened to show up later representing himself as an employee and talking to investors, that would be considered a credible threat and they'd take that seriously.
I didn't know if him busting into the project booth was the worst he'd try. I was considering hiring security and cancelled my trip at significant personal expense.
Yeah, I agree it's not a company. I simply find it's the most useful analogy because it was the closest frame of reference I had for making decisions at the time.
Many companies also deal with ex-employees escalating, saying they won't accept the termination, etc. They're treated as security issues and credible threats.
The difference is that companies generally have HR departments and security; I don't. :)
I think the problem you have experienced is that you started a project with someone else in a team of 2. You managed him as an "employee" but he felt (right or wrong) to be a cofounder. It seems you haven't discusses this prior of the project, so somehow you got stuck with a co-founder (and everything else that followed is just that).
I've been in similar situations, where cofounders have to split. It's never easy and there's always intensity involved. I'd not call them harassment though. Following again your company analogy, when you fire an employee, there is (often) drama - especially if you try to fire an employee without severance (well, in that case often there are legal problems).
Anyway, if you point out he was a volunteer at a startup weekend, do not mention the company analogy. In the company analogy - regardless if he was a cofounder or an employee - he would not walk away empty handed.
If she was the CEO / owner of the hypothetical company (this seems to be the point that people disagree on - was she owner or co-founder?), she absolutely has the right to fire an unpaid "employee" whose contributions were two days of work with no expectation of severance.
Now she's taking this dispute public. She hasn't named Mark yet, but people can deduce it. Does Mark want to wind up like any of the dozens of alleged perpetrators of sexual harassment and sexual assault that have been called out of the past two weeks? If not, he should let this thing drop and let her get her way. Kim is the real bully here.
I see his objections to her IP and substantive theft (the code and IP, the booth presence and control over 1/2 of a ticket) as justified. His reaction may not be 100% blameless, either, but she is the original offender here.
The worst part is that she tries to use a "harassment" accusation to justify her theft.
The weekend was used exclusively for user research, concept validation, and some wireframing.
(My partner's work - a mock website and logo - couldn't be used after the weekend.)
Techstars has its own guidance regarding IP, but it's rather hand-wavey. I was surprised by this when I later found out that only 25% of teams continue working together.
> "As with any startup, the team decides. Techstars Startup Weekend doesn’t support or take part in the signing of any legal documents at the events themselves, and while Mentors with legal backgrounds are often present and able to give general advice, they are not permitted to give specific legal counsel. While it doesn’t hurt to be clear about your individual expectations from the start, we’ve found that teams who don’t spend time addressing this issue until it actually matters (i.e., there is a tangible product to have ownership of) are much more productive and successful than those who do."
"the team decides". That is not what happened. You decided.
The booth presence and the tickets are as much his as they are yours. If you decide to take them (and use them, give them away, or anything else) you are taking part of something that he has a right to.
Again, I do not justify his response (as he is not here for me to address), but what should he have done in light of someone denying him access to something that is rightfully his?
Just because you did not do your due diligence (because you didn't know that you should, or were inexperienced in hackathons, or whatever...) and you turned out to not like working with the other person, does not negate the work or award that the team accomplished together. Regret does not change anything.
Makes me wonder how often this happens in other news items.
I do want to know what happened with the tickets and the booth, though.
The author quite thoroughly documented the entire ordeal (with screenshots and everything).
I'm struggling to understand how this comment thread is an example of "the truth of the matter getting lost," when we have all the "evidence" of the "harassment," and are merely pointing out what we see?
Yeah, because someone sending you emails is surely physically dangerous. Spooky men.
Since when did that mean he was going to physically harm her? Sorry, I believe sexual harassment occurs in the tech industry and should be stamped out, but this is not a case of it.
If Mark's behavior made the author feel threatened then she has the right to avoid further interaction with him. But as others have pointed out, the emails sent are not threatening in the way that the author describes them, and there isn't really any evidence of "harassment". The author describes Mark's "intensity" while working with him at the Hackathon. It seems likely that this intensity carries over into the way he writes emails as well, which made the author feel unsafe.
Of course, I don't think the emails here were threatening in any way, and it seems like that the author if inferring a connotation that I don't see.
It also wasn't the first time, I was part of something, putting much work into the project and got fired from it. It's not nice to get fired after you volunteered to help someone with their project. Selfish people seem to think the success is their own and they own the project, because they had the idea, not recognizing that success is a team effort.
Ok, my story: my brother is a lawyer, I'm a software developer. After finishing his degree, he decided to start his own law firm and I helped him to create his website including SEO, etc. He became very successful more or less over night. Before we had lived together in an apartment and there were weeks when we didn't eat much except rice and fishsauce, now he had the money to buy Macs and Porsches.
The website was build with WordPress and several plugins, so I thought my job was it to update it as often as possible in order to not allow hackers to access his clients data or bring the site down. I didn't have any formal contract with my brother. In fact, he didn't really understood what I did - the site was finished as he saw it, why would he need an admin? He gave me gifts, often much bigger ones than I expected, but I didn't have much income. What I wanted was an income I could count on, even when it was a small one.
I made the mistake and told him, I needed a contract to provide the work so nothing would happen to the site. He understood that all wrong and thought I was threatening him and the website. He went into panic mode instantly. In his panic he even changed passwords, including the MySQL password, but didn't know that he needed to change it in the WordPress config too. This brought his website down.
Of course I helped him to recover the website, but we were mad about each other for month and didn't talk. I had a rough time, I was depressive and broke. I couldn't pay my health insurance and the fucking health insurance company was able to suspend my banking account. Not once, but thrice.
The whole fight wasn't worth it.
I know, this story doesn't has much to do with what has happend to OP, except one thing: Please try to talk to each other and understand the reasons why someone does something.
I think the idea of these events is that everyone is volunteering their talent, and that includes the "project leader" and "their" idea.
We hear enough on here about how ideas in themselves are all but worthless, so the result of the hackathon is really jointly owned by those participating, and I think the "volunteer guy" (and it seems that in her mind she could have just "hired" another objectified commodity-person, right?) has every right to be less than impressed at being summarily dismissed from a project he seems to have helped create.
I'm saying the article has no example of actual harassment. There was no name calling, no threats, and no abusive behavior. All I see is a potentially socially-inept guy trying to communicate, and someone reading way too much into his emails (she kept claiming the "threats were insinuated," really?).
I think the commenters who are doubting her interpretation mean well. They want to draw a very clear line around what is gender-related mistreatment, because if that line becomes unclear or logically inconsistent then that undercuts gender equality.
I think this is largely a good thing. It's too easy for people to automatically get swept up in emotions of an "us vs them" rather than analyze an issue the way a juror would.