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>While the founder is right about avoiding dating someone in your own company

This is one of my pet peeves. This is a professional setting and the employees are not 13. They should be mature enough to be able to handle their personal lives without bans or frown upons. Someone can't handle rejection? Who says he/she can handle criticism? What about disagreements?

To me this is a personality problem that should be dealt with accordingly. Company-wide bans or silent rules can hide bigger problems.

Actually people are 13. When it comes to social behavior adults are just tall children.

I tend to favour the term "Savage Infants" personally, but "Tall Children" is a winner too, I shall remember that one.

"Try to act your age, not your shoe size" sometimes works when trying to restore order with a group of 25 rowdy teenagers (I'm a teacher).

Recently, however, the smart ones have been shouting back "British or European?"

Thanks for tall children...

European could either be French or Italian standard. Not sure if it's useful for a comeback though, since they are both in circa the same range.

Relationships breaking down are messy at the best of times, toxic at their worst. More people than not, when faced with the collapse of a relationship, will act like a 13 year old than a rational adult.

If the company is seen to have encouraged or even acknowledged the relationship it can create a huge liability, especially if one of the people involves feels like they got stiffed because of relationship issues (sidelined, transferred, had to resign, etc).

The number of couples who say they met at work suggests that blind eyes are often turned, but a company has those official bans on intra-office dating for good reason.

What you say is true, but I don't believe a contract of employment entitles any company to tell someone who they can or cannot date.

If, for the reasons you describe, they wish to maintain a public position of "we not encourage dating coworkers" that's one thing, so long as they don't actually think they have any say in this matter.

> I don't believe a contract of employment entitles any company to tell someone who they can or cannot date.

Shame that companies believe that just fine. They can and will fire an employee if "no dating coworkers" is a policy that said employee violated. You are welcome to avoid working for these companies, but that's your only recourse unless you have an overwhelmingly string case that discrimination was involved.

Reasonable is "don't date anyone in your line of management". Options in the case that you do start dating including transferring out to a different manager. That's reasonable, because it's a conflict of interest issue rather than a "who you are allowed to date".

Probably also reasonable is "don't date anyone in your building", at least that way you don't have to see them every day if it goes south.

It's a tough scenario. One of the first big managerial problems I had to face was when I was still a snot-nosed twentysomething working at a Fortune 100. I came back from lunch and was pulled into another director's office, who quietly told me that two of my employees had spent the last hour screaming at each other in the hallways and would I make sure they "stopped scaring the goddamned children." Turned out they had been secretly dating for the past six months, something that I was totally ignorant of. The relationship crashed, then burned, and then I had two senior-level sysadmins (each about 10-15 years my elders) who refused to work with each other. Even though we eventually worked through the professional problems (didn't realize that couples' counseling was going to be part of my ambit), they ended up with a lot of bruised feelings and I (for good reason) permanently lost a lot of political capital.

On the other hand, there are plenty of people who can be in a relationship while working with each other. Hard cases make for bad law, and I'm uncomfortable with blanket proclamations against relationships at work, as long as two people at different levels along the same management line aren't seeing each other.

In my observation, when opposite-sex dating occurs between coworkers in all but the largest enterprises where contact cannot be avoided after a breakup, one or the other employee will end up leaving -- usually the person with lower status or value. Even if they tie the knot, you may find one or the other partner wanting to work "somewhere else."

As a manager, you should be prepared for this eventuality once you become aware of the activity. It is unreasonable to forbid all dating since many happy marriages were established between people who met in the workplace. It is reasonable to let people know that they may face dismissal if their dating issues enter the workplace and prove a distraction for themselves or others.

On a practical level managers wish to avoid unnecessary turnover or drama in the workplace. Knowing that employee dating will almost inevitably lead to one or both of these things, I understand the "frown upon" aspect. The employees themselves should be adult enough to know that they are gambling with their jobs.

I, as a male, try to avoid staring at another female because I fear someone like Horvath accuses me of sexism.

This is, sadly, the best thing to do because you don't know who is going to take offense.

PS: To avoid looking one-sided and narrow (which I believe I'm not) I really feel bad about this whole situation and the lady who had to go through that. Personally liked a github as a company.

I try to avoid staring at people because my parents taught me that it's rude to stare.

That's not to say that I don't admire people that I find attractive. I just do it subtly to avoid making people feel uncomfortable.

Somehow, furtive glances doesn't come across much better.

It is possible to check someone out without staring at them and without looking like a creep.

Try getting sternly lectured for 10 minutes because because you held the door open for a stranger to be polite. That's when you know shit gotten real.

For the record, I routinely hold open doors for people that I know are behind me and are leaving/entering a building. It surprised me to know end to get yelled at for it.

I had that happen, so I laughed. Then she got really angry... doesn't stop me, though. I hold the door for everyone, because it's polite, not because someone is whatever gender.

Dudes do it for dudes all the time. Its just one more way to acknowledge others, as is thanking someone that holds the door for you.

> I hold the door for everyone, because it's polite, not because someone is whatever gender.

Exactly why I do it.

I've resigned myself to the fact that some people are just assholes. It's a trait that's not gender specific.

First time I had that happen I quickly shut the door in the young lady’s face. Didn’t hit her, but it fell in place and she had to open it again herself.

She was pretty unhappy about that as well, incidentally.

Woah! Glad to know I'm not alone. I do this all the time. Never had a bad experience yet though.

I'm Canadian too! And been lectured to about it.

Where did this happen? I'm curious.

I'm not Ensorceled, but I'm Canadian and this has happened to me too (in NYC and San Diego).

Nothing too bad, but people have glared at me, asked what I was doing or if they knew me, etc.

I was astonished; it's just something that everybody does where I live so it was weird to have people react like I was doing something outrageous.

This will get me downvoted, but: some women are just crazy. Some men, too, of course.

I know it's shocking if something like the door thing happens to you, but I wouldn't assume it reflects the general attitude of women.

A woman yelled at you for holding the door for her? Really? What were you wearing? Had you been drinking that day? How long were you dating her?

Wearing regular day clothes. I dont drink. No, my current girlfriend (who identifies as a feminist) thinks the idea of yelling at someone for adhering to the social niceties is strange after I told her about the incident.

I learned my response to this from a comment on a BBC article

"I do not offer my seat because you are a lady, but because I was taught to be a gentleman" - works for doors too.

My Dad would have had a fit if I didn't hold the door open for a group. He expected his children to be polite.

And I, as a male, try not to stare at anybody because I'm not a fucking asshole.

'Stare' is not the best word. I have to agree.

We bow to your perfection.

It really isn't that hard not to stare at people. It doesn't take a perfectionist.

If someone is rendering a public performance, aren't you supposed to look at it? When does hula hooping in a public space transfer to a public performance? Is it public immediately because it's in plain sight? Does it only become public after an audience gathers and the hula hooper continues to hula hoop? What if someone sees the gathered audience and joins in so that they won't be considered rude for not taking interest in the public hula hooping performance?

It's not really as clear cut as "staring makes you an asshole." I've found that in a workplace people will have wildly variable interpretations of the same event. The only solution is to work with mature adults who can assume good faith and work out their own issues. This almost never happens, so instead companies create hyper-sanitized environments where everything is against the rules.

I agree with your points, and also I really have a hard time believing that the women hula hooping to music in the middle of the office were not aware of the effect they were having.

While personally I think its creepy to just hang out and leer at them, it's not really against societal norms in any way.

It's not like these guys broke into the girls bathroom to watch this or something.

Well maybe something is wrong with societal norms then? Because honestly if the focus was just watch attractive women hula hoop I would think it's creepy too but I wouldn't just say it's alright because of societal norms.

But I think it's impossible to really judge this situation without the context. Did other people decide to participate or was it really just two girls hula hooping the whole time? It boils down to was the mentality from the males perspective "oh hey, cool, people are hula hooping!" or "oh hey, the two attractive girls are hula hooping and I want to gawk at them!" The first one is fine, the second one is not.

Don't take this the wrong way. I think hula hooping is a fine activity that probably burns a decent amount of calories. However, I've never worked at a job where employees jumps through these kind of hoops. I will probably look. And then look away. Pretty much everyone I know will think hula hooping at work is weird. If people tend to stare at you when you hula hoop, do hand stands, or pick your nose you may just have to stop doing it. Most people do not do these things at work and are happy nonetheless.

Yeah. I think everything up to that point was inexcusable. Horvath wasn't really doing any justice to an already strong case by feeling offense for the sake of others. If it was just basic hula hooping, I'm not quite sure what would be interesting, but both music and movement are distracting. If it wasn't an attempt to perform, it was probably a distracting display. Hell, I'd probably be on the bench too, waiting for my turn! There's no need to assume this was sexual and I think Horvath may have been projecting her horrible experiences onto these new colleagues.

really?

So all people who don't confirm to your social norms are fucking assholes? Btw, did you ever travel to countries like Germany or Czech Republic? People there do stare. A lot. Nations of assholes, I guess.

I wonder what do you think about people who don't speak English or who don't eat their food with a forks but with other ustensils.

I've been to both Germany and the Czech Republic. At no point did I think 'Hmm.. people here appear to be staring at things at an above-average rate'. Maybe where I come from (the UK) we also stare at a particularly high rate (whatever that is) but I'm unaware of this being the case.

What on earth are you talking about?

So I take it you abstain from attending any presentations, talks, or conferences? Or do you just turn your chair around and face the back?

Perhaps they liked it, I would even say it's the most likely variant.

> I'm not a fucking asshole.

The majority of your judgemental and passive/aggressive posts in this thread suggest otherwise.

> This is, sadly, the best thing to do because you don't know who is going to take offense.

Then excessive avoidance gets reinterpreted as snobbishness, sexism, not wanting to be inclusive, and so on. "Men actively avoid me and sit father away during meetings, they don't invite me for beers after works, it is a hostile environment". Anyway it is a fine line. And one can interpret a lot of behaviors as stemming from sexism or misogynism even if they are not.

No, it's not a fine line at all. There is a huge chasm between ogling someone undertaking physical activity and excessively avoiding them. You probably behave toward your male colleagues in a way that would fit neatly somewhere between these two extremes. Is it particularly a US issue, this inability to behave like a grown-up at work? In the UK, in my experience, men and women tend to work together, on an equal footing, with no problem whatsoever.

> There is a huge chasm between ogling someone undertaking physical activity

If anyone -- attractive man, unattractive man, attractive woman, unattractive woman -- started hula-hooping in the middle of the office I would expect people to stare. Not because it's sexual, but because it's peculiar. The gap between "stare" and "ogle" is hardly objective, let alone a "chasm."

Julie described the group of men as 'gawking'; as far as I'm aware, this is more or less interchangeable with the term 'ogling', in common use here in the UK. This is significantly different from just staring - it implies a sexual undercurrent, i.e. paying particular attention to someone's physical characteristics. Maybe this is a cultural thing, but the clear implication in the original report was that the staring/ogling was inappropriate, particularly because it was undertaken by a group solely consisting of men.

Ogling is defined as "stare at in a lecherous manner."

The hard part here is defining "lecherous" but it would seem to imply that he is watching in a way that signals sexual intent. It's worth noting that women are generally much better at interpreting body language than men are, so it's possible that a guy is watching the woman dance and getting some sort of erotic enjoyment from it, tries his best to hide it but some subconscious subtle clue gives him away.

Having said that, hoop dancing would seem like an inappropriate thing to do in most offices to begin with but I would say the same thing about nerf gun fights.

Gawking is not sexual, ogling is. You can gawk at a bus accident, you can't ogle it.

Anyway, another account of the incident paints a very different picture of the scene:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7408466

claiming that the gawking in question was undertaken by all present and not limited to men

What's the difference between "looking" and "ogling"? Whether or not a feminist is standing nearby

So what's gawker.com?

This seems to be asserting some sort of bizarre serf-like hierarchy where men aren't even supposed to look at their superiors

>What I did have a problem with is the line of men sitting on one bench facing the hoopers and gawking at them

Gawking and looking are not the same thing. There are also times where even the most socially incompetent will realise that some girls doing things that might be nice to look at is not an invitation to check them out doing it (this is, of course, excepting people who go the reductionist route of thinking that feminists invent their own problems).

They're not animals at the zoo, they're people.

... doing things that might be nice to look at is not an invitation to check them out doing it

Then why do any of those things in a non-private setting with reasonable expectation of gawkers being present?

because in an office environment you can at least expect your coworkers to show a bit of respect?

'Respect' is a pretty loaded word. Are you saying the guys staring at (fellow employee) girls hula-hooping in the same office should just close their eyes? What if the girls were just sitting, drinking coffee? What about juggling 6 balls on the air? What about picking their noses? What about picking each-others noses?

Where does this nonsense end? If (almost) all my co-workers are staring at me as I adjust my belt, standing in the middle of the lunch room, I will do that activity in the confines of a men's room next time. If the same thing happens as I stretch my leg muscles before a run, I will do that activity outside. Why is it my co-workers' fault if they stare at me if I do something that is not the norm?

If being merely 'looked at' troubles you, then you need to look at yourself before closing others' eyes.

"Why are you uncomfortable?", should not be that hard a question to answer, clearly and succinctly, for something that evokes such a strong response from you.

> What about picking each-others noses?

Impossible. You can pick your friends, you can pick your nose, but you cannot, however, pick your friends' nose.

You do remember they were hula hooping, right?

That is not a typical example of office decorum. If they were spinning plates they'd probably gather a few looks as well.

When your office environment involves hula-hooping but doesn't sell hula-hoops, you've already thrown office decorum in the toilet. I say good luck in getting horrible people to restrain their stupid impulses in an environment like that.

Yup. "Would you please be respectful and not hula hoop in the office? Thanks."

"What a hostile environment that coworkers tell me to not hula hoop in the office!"

You can't win with some people or environments.

I think it's inappropriate to stare at anyone for long, whether male or female. It's normally not considered polite and a bit weird, so I don't get what the issue is?

I get it, you find someone attractive and you want to gawk at them, cool. I learned to control that impulse when when I was hitting puberty. Seriously, there really isn't an excuse and it's inappropriate in most situations.

> This is, sadly, the best thing to do because you don't know who is going to take offense.

I know you mean well, but your sadness to me belies some ignorance about what it's like to be a woman working in a male dominated field. You'd like to live in a world where you can casually watch beautiful people doing beautiful things. I don't begrudge you that, and I wouldn't accuse you of sexism.

That said, I have zero interest in watching women hula hoop at work. None. Not because I am incapable of enjoying a show like that, but because I desire so deeply to work in an environment where woman can just kick ass at their jobs without having to deal with sexual politics. We're nowhere near that point as a culture, but that's where I want to be.

So I'm not sad that I can't watch women hula hoop at work. I'm really excited to have positive, professional interactions with women at work about their actual jobs.

The part that bothers me about this is that we're talking about a one-sided account of events where the terminology being used, "ogling," is entirely subjective.

At my work, there is a woman who brings hula hoops to company events. When there's music, she likes to dance and do tricks with them and she obviously practices a lot. When she's doing it, people (including me) stare. But, at least for me, it has nothing to do with any sexual aspect of what she's doing...I'm watching it because I like appreciating the skill and practice that's gone into her performance. And similar things happen at other company functions. For example, we have an employee who majored in music and is an amazing pianist. There's a bar we go to with a piano that he's played a few times. Guess what...everyone stares at him while he's playing. Hell, we've even got a couple of people who are amazing beer pong players that gather a crowd whenever the ping pong balls come out at events with a keg.

So when does staring and admiring a skill cross the line to ogling? That depends entirely on the person making the determination and often says more about them and their perspective/past experiences than it does about the people doing the staring.

The bottom line is that for those of us who weren't there, nothing in the account we've been provided gives us any information to judge the appropriateness of what went on. We have only one fact: the author of the account, who, rightly or wrongly, has an axe to grind with the company, felt that it crossed some line. It's bad PR, but it's not proof that anything untoward happened.

You're right, it is subjective. But to me there's no real cost to using the broadest possible definition I ogling. And the upside (making a wider range of people comfortable) is huge.

According to this comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7408466

it was at a party, with many non-Githubbers in attendance, and the onlookers were not only guys.

So basically the article's description may be totally inaccurate.

> See this childish engineer who was rejected by Horvath became angry at her and started ripping her code out.

How does not allowing dating between employees solve this situation? Regardless of whether Horvath was seeing anyone or not she could have rejected this person because she wasn't interested and the same things could have happened. If anything her trying to avoid dating anyone in the office would have led to the same result, so how exactly would a rule like that have helped in this situation?

I think the general mentality of don't date anyone from work is silly, you can't just sweep under the rug any emotions or relationships that might happen to develop with people you work with 5 days out of the week. The important thing is to make sure that no conflict of interest issues develop and make sure these relationships are known so HR can handle them properly.

Of course there are a lot of complicated scenarios that can develop, but like someone else said, we're all adults here. People should be able to handle these things in a professional manner and if they can't then really the company needs to question whether they should be working there in the first place.

> The founder accused Horvath for bringing love affair into the company because she was/is dating an employee. The founder has a good point: try to avoid dating someone working with you. It's a beautiful story; but you can cause all sorts of mess.

That's between the two people. Period. If they become problem employees, then they are problem employees, not two people who date. The problem behavior that happens on the clock is HR's only legitimate concern.

Prohibiting dating is like firing women who get pregnant.

Counter example, where I work there are so many married or dating couples within the company that it's almost a thing.

That's the part I don't get. "Don't date coworkers" is a heuristic/warning for self-guidance, not a dogmatic rule for management to impose. Aside from the typical "chain of command," rule it's none of my business. This heuristic is to help people avoid any actual or apparent nepotism while in a relationship and petty jabs afterwards, both of which Horvath ironically faced from people who didn't respect her relationship.

No. There are places that have non-fraternization clauses in employee contracts. Both parties can be fired if there is a relationship and it is not disclosed. In a larger organization (the one i am thinking of is a large bank) they will offer to transfer one person to a different group so that there will not be contact at work.

Didn't the founder bring his love affair into the company? I assume he loves his wife?

but his wife doesn't work there apparently.

That's kind of the point. :) She acted as if she did.

>>The founder has a good point: try to avoid dating someone working with you

Could not disagree more. It's none of the founder's business and the culture in the US that tries to forbid this is sick.

Come let me exploit you and convince the meaningless amount of equity I give you is worth working 80 hours a week.

And, even though you don't have time to meet anyone, you can't form a life bond with the designer that you work with everyday- despite you mutually digg each-other and are best friends.

It's not "sick". It's that it's rife with problems. I don't think companies should ban dating but I think it's very wise for them to be wary of it happening and educate their employees, before they start, to imagine what happens if that person becomes their boss or subordinate or breaks up with them and they have to see them everyday at work and work together. And/or starts dating someone else. Or is their superior and has the ability to influence their career with their decisions etc. Or how it feels to be on the same team as two lovebirds.

15 upvotes disagree with you. It's a denial of life and humanity in the pure interest of the business. It's sick.

Too funny. 15 upvotes carries the day then. It is sick.

Does "life and humanity" include a bad breakup, tons of drama, and pulling the entire office/company into that drama? (not saying it's always the case, or even a lot, but it's very bad in the few cases when it does happen) If people could truly separate their personal lives from their professional ones, this wouldn't ever be an issue.

Of course it does. That's humanity. I understand entirely why a business would want to avoid this stuff, but I also understand why a business might want to not have to pay employees, or might want to work them 24 hours a day if it could. None of these things is healthy.

It's arguable. While it's completely unreasonable for a business to overwork its employees or not pay them, it seems reasonable to me to expect them to not bring their personal issues to the workplace. Also, I imagine their coworkers feel the same; if you're trying to get work done, and your coworkers are fighting because of their relationship, wouldn't you want them to stop/go away?

If your employees are fighting at work because of their relationship you have bad employees. Attempting to forbid all office relationships is not an appropriate response.

This again. Every time someone speaks out about sexism there seems to be a need for some to defend the predators (directly or by declaring that "this is not sexism"). Why do you feel obligated to do so?

Its a double standard. Its allowed to assume the worst motives in male behavior, always gets a pass. Its forbidden to call out despicable behavior in females.

And now, it seems its forbidden to explain male behavior as anything but evil. Because they are 'predators' by default.

Resorting to these "PC rules of engagement" ends rational discussion. Reducing this to the choir preaching to one another.

I don't believe this story is on "male behavior" nor an attack on every male in the world. It's an story on predators that happen to be male (and female for that matter).

Your answer is kind of what I expected: You believe sexism is an attack on men, and therefore need to be on the defense.

> It's an story on predators that happen to be male (and female for that matter).

Don't you think it's then disingenuous to call it sexism?

>> It's an story on predators that happen to be male (and female for that matter).

> Don't you think it's then disingenuous to call it sexism?

Not if each group unfairly characterizes the other based solely on gender traits. Sexism is a two-way street -- if a man says, "All women are dumb", that's very clearly sexist. If a woman says, "All men are rapists," that's equally sexist.

Women can absolutely be sexist towards other women-- as in a jealousy scenario. Sexism is being targeted because of your gender. The fact that this is not obvious explains a lot.

Isn't that a bit reaching, though? Jealousy is a personal feeling, not a reaction based on societal and political frameworks. Anecdote: gay men in long-term relationships are jealous of their partners too, and their reactions to perceived "enemies" are similar to that of people in heterosexual couples.

To be clear, what we're talking about here is not a simple interpersonal issue. It's sexism within a company.

It doesn't matter whether the source of that sexism is the way the men treat women, or whether its the way a high-powered woman treats the other women. (Both are at play in this particular story.) If someone is being discriminated against due to their gender, the company culture has an issue with sexism.

I brought up jealousy as an example, but I didn't mean it to be romantic. It can be an issue of feeling threatened by another woman, as when a woman used to be the only female voice at her company. It's a twisted perspective, but there's data to say it exists.

So when a woman has a problem at work, it is "sexism"?

You're obviously not even trying to understand this.

Let's try this one again, from the start:

It's sexism if a human being[1] is being mistreated, harassed, or "labeled" because of their gender[2].

It's perhaps easier to understand from analogy[3], take a look at racism[4] and see if you can find any similarities.

Feel free to ask any question if something is still unclear.

[1] https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_being

[2] https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender

[3] https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy

[4] https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism

> 2. Founder's wife physically inanimate Horvath, making her unwelcome and scared.

If someone inanimated me, I would quite right then and there. Thats some freaky x-men shit.

I'm not sure if that's meant to be "quit" or "quiet", but either works because upon becoming inanimate you're unlikely to do or say anything. b^)

Trying to correct someone else's grammar error exponentially increases the chances that you'll make your own.

Indeed, it's Muphry's Law.

7. Horvath felt male co-workers gawking/staring/looking at female co-workers hula-hooping while sitting in a couch looked like someone visiting a strip club.

My issue with this is she had no problem with the females doing the hula hooping but had a big problem with the guys who were watching. This is one of the problems with these ongoing debates: Women very often feel it is somehow solely on men to not look (or whatever) while claiming women can do any damn thing they want. Anyone, male or female, who tries to suggest that women bear some responsibility for not shakin it at work get called a victim blamer, rape apologist, etc.

>Regarding the strip-club comment, I don't know the best way to avoid it. I, as a male, try to avoid staring at another female because I fear someone like Horvath accuses me of sexism. Maybe the guy was just bored or thought that female worker was beautiful. Staring at someone shouldn't be counted as sexism. It's hard. Would a female staring at a beautiful male count as sexism?

The problem isn't sexism so much as objectification. It's just shitty to treat someone like meat. It's not going to help people feel like part of a team if they're gawked at. If it's men gawking at women, it's going to alienate the women. Like, seriously, can't people just control themselves and treat other people as people and not sexual objects?

As for the sexism part… historically, you know, men are allowed to stare at women and women aren't really allowed to (their traditional role is to be coy, y'know?). It's an action that is typically masculine, and it's an action that reminds women that they're different. That they don't quite belong. Etc. etc. It's just not positive, it's not helpful, it's just base instinct—and one that should probably be overpowered in the workplace.

It's one of those things that is going to be painfully obvious to someone who has experienced discrimination (eg. sexism, racism, homophobia, whatever) in their life, and not a big deal to those that haven't.

> historically, you know, men are allowed to stare at women and women aren't really allowed to

Really? I've played football with a few women from my office playing but most on the sidelines staring.

>female co-workers hula-hooping while sitting in a couch

That sounds like a spectacle. I'd watch it regardless of male or female doing it.

To clarify for many of you, you don't need someone shouting "I HATE WOMEN" for sexism to be occurring. The sexism in this scenario is subtle and persistent, something that likely tainted all of the workplace interactions at github, allowing a female employee's problems at work to be continually ignored. This eventually built up to the issue most people are focusing on, a founders spouse being allowed to harass an employee, which is not so much the main issue but a major symptom of a larger issue at github and in the tech industry as a whole, that issue being the downplaying of women's concerns, opinions and needs.

The hula hooping moment was important because it visibly demonstrated her male coworkers lack of respect for women as people. They were unabashedly staring at their female coworkers as "eyecandy" in that moment and even defended their doing so.

> The hula hooping moment was important because it visibly demonstrated her male coworkers lack of respect for women as people. They were unabashedly staring at their female coworkers as "eyecandy" in that moment and even defended their doing so.

I have never understood how this argument works, obviously I'm missing something. Because I momentarily focus my attention on someone for their physical attributes, I automatically and necessarily consider them "eyecandy" rather than intelligent people with their own will that are to be respected? Does this work with other attributes - if I appreciate and acknowledge someone for X, does that mean that X is all they ever are to me? If the male employees had put on an impromptu bodybuilding pageant, would that have been the same thing?

Naturally, the fact that the woman in question was actually disturbed by the situation does indicate that there is cause for concern.

It's possible to recognize the attractive features of someone while still being conscious of their humanity. Obviously there are degrees of attention you can give someone based on their looks that goes from socially acceptable to socially unacceptable.

I'm a man so I can't speak for women directly, but what I've gathered from the experiences of others is that women are interacted with on an attraction basis exponentially more than men are, this also constantly ranging from socially acceptable to unacceptable, wanted and unwanted. It manifests in little ways, cat-calling, aggressive or unwanted flirtation, maybe a creepy controlling coworker suddenly confessing his love? My own mom told me about a time when a total stranger grabbed her butt in a store and walked off. It makes sense to me that many women would be extra-sensitive to scenarios like this. Men literally don't have to deal with interactions like this at that level so it's totally different when the gender roles are reversed, and it's rare that they are.

The importance of that scenario was that it was relative to her entire work experience at Github. Even if we assume the intentions of the male workers were totally golden and the hula-hoopers were totally fine with their gawking, to me it makes sense why this scene would be triggering for her.

Thanks, I see your perspective.

> to me it makes sense why this scene would be triggering for her

It makes sense to me as well, but if I were her boss, I would ask her to take a more professional and less emotional perspective of the workplace (of course, after (hopefully having her problems presented in a clear manner and) solving the other issues that were causing her to feel unwelcome).

This is the core problem, though: it's difficult (impossible?) for someone to be professional when everyone around them is so unprofessional. Worse still when none of their claims are fully addressed by management.

There was no resolution here. I don't blame her for taking these steps to out Github.

That only more reason to be extremely professional - noone can blame anything on you. Or maybe it's just my viewpoint of the world, but I would take the most defensive route possible, and use the experience to my advantage (learn as much as possible, gain relevant & valuable experience, eject into another company as high as possible).

A description of the hula hooping from someone else at github:

> Probably worth mentioning that the hula hoop dancing happened at a Github party with a lot of people not from Github. It was also super badass hula hooping, not just regular dancing. Everyone was looking, men and women, because it was pretty awesome.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7408466

You are not alone. I blame PC, overprotective upbringing and "I am offended by that" trend. As soon as some subject becomes taboo to discuss people lose the understanding why something is bad and start to treat everything related as bad and unacceptable. Reminds me of this: http://i.snag.gy/kdu77.jpg (doesn't matter if experiment was real or not). This is very prominent with sexism and racism—these words are losing the meaning really fast. Now merely acknowledging someones race is called racism. Same goes for gender. And god forbid you find someone attractive. I really don't get what kind of society these people want. The one where everybody walks covered in burqas? You are not allowed to look at attractive person—you will offend them. I wonder how soon a simple glance will accepted as a kind of sexual assault. You are not allowed to approach the person you like—it will be "unwanted advances". It's "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. If woman will say that it makes her feel good when she senses attention she will be explained, that's just because patriarchal society made her to feel this way. More often than not those explaining will be males, ironically. What a terrible society to live, luckily it will die out soon for the lack of reproduction.

As for this story: it has nothing to do with sexism. Nothing at all. Actually the real sexists are the ones who think all this happened because of the sexism. Guys (and girls): these issues are much much more complex and deserve to be treated with much more respect instead of rubber stamping like it is common now. Women and non-white people can be assholes too and I would like to retain the right call them as such without being accused of sexism or racism. Though this right might be long gone. Quite often it is a fun mental experiment to reverse the genders or races and think how vastly different reactions would be (if there would be any). Imagine that black person says: "I am proud to be black!". Now imagine that the white person says "I am proud to be white". Now throw away you knee-jercky reaction and think about it.

>Imagine that black person says: "I am proud to be black!". >Now imagine that the white person says "I am proud to be white". >Now throw away you knee-jercky reaction and think about it.

I thought about it, and here's what I found: The different reactions which those two assertions may elicit depend crucially on different shades of meaning of the word "proud" which come into play, depending on the colour of the person who says it. These different meanings come into play because of the history of oppression associated with these colours; we don't (usually) think in a vacuum. To make this clearer, consider the following, slightly modified thought experiment:

Imagine that a black person says: "I am not ashamed to be black!". Now imagine that a white person says "I am not ashamed to be white!". How strong is the knee-jercky reaction now? Think about it.

But that's exactly what the parent was saying - if you perceive the meaning of the words slightly differently based on the skin color of the speaker, it's textbook racism. Some people might call it positive racism/discrimination, but it's still racism.

> if you perceive the meaning of the words slightly differently based on the skin color of the speaker, it's textbook racism.

What textbook would that be? My dictionary defines racism as:

1. the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics, abilities, or qualities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.

2. prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior.

This does not suggest to me that it is racist to acknowledge that a shared history (of oppression, in this case) may have an influence on the language of a people.

(in reply to gphillip)

There's a whole bunch of literature on the topic beyond what's contained in a dictionary definition.

"PC, overprotective upbringing, and I'm offended by that" are not some new horrible plague - they are attempts to let underprivileged voices and opinions survive.

When a black person says that they are proud to be black, they are expressing that they feel a certain pride in their race, which exists in this country thus far as a marginalized and underprivileged set of humanity. Saying you are "Proud to be white" kind of makes you sound like an asshole, because white people have crafted a society to let them have more advantage. True, any given white person might not be some sort of evil society architect, but white people are clearly those who most benefit from this society. Blaming this on political correctness is a cowardly and conservative move that stems from a false sense of equality between people.

As progressive and bottom-up our community can be, we are not a meritocracy, and everyone is not equal.

Judging by your comment history, you do appear to have internalized your ideology very thoroughly.

But, no. First of all, your example is biased towards Western society. Expressing white pride in an Eastern Asian society would be absolutely fine, according to your logic.

Here's the issue, however. Even though black people have been historically marginalized in the USA (as I'm implicitly assuming this is US-centric) and still face disadvantages, despite being largely equal in most facets, this does not make their racial pride any less "asshole"-ish.

Pride is reserved for things once has accomplished, not ones that you're inherently born with. Just by that alone, racial pride is frivolous.

Even further, by setting up this double standard, you are actually contributing to the extension of racism. Why? You're giving people carte blanche to keep focusing more and more on racial characteristics as being essential to them as people.

"It's bad to be racist, but we still must be preoccupied with race and being inoffensive at all costs."

That is only slowing progress down. You go from a society that is maddeningly obsessed with race as a way to persecute people they don't understand to a society that is maddeningly obsessed with a race as a way to kiss ass, idolize and never question those majestic black people who can clearly do no wrong and deserve to have double standards because they have suffered injustices throughout their history.

Yet so have all races and cultures, honestly. Black people do not hold a monopoly on persecution.

You make it sound as though racism against black people is a largely resolved old issue rather than an active and present problem.

I invite you to take a walk around Oakland and SF and see if you think that is still true.

It's not resolved, but it has improved drastically. There's still barriers, primarily in socioeconomic status and tendencies to cluster in ghettos as a result, but it is still far better than one could have ever imagined.

If you want a crippling issue, go for homophobia. Homophobia is still very much rampant in the USA and it is still completely fine for politicians to be openly homophobic for reasons like "preserving family values".

Yet when was the last time you heard a US politician make openly racist and white supremacist statements? When has a white supremacist been elected? David Duke is the most recent example I can name of, and he was reviled.

Racism for US politicians is an instant career killer, no question. Race is a touchy issue and the moment a representative says something unfavorable concerning race, they get annihilated by press and public advocacy. Not the same for homophobia.

It's time people stop with their persecution complexes. The past is the past. No one owes you anything.

> It's time people stop with their persecution complexes. The past is the past. No one owes you anything.

So really you are claiming that racism is over as a problem. Nice.

No, I'm not. You're twisting my words to fit your agenda.

By dividing complex social issues into dichotomies of "oppressor versus oppressed" and allowing double standards as a perverse form of reparation for past injustices that current generations no longer have to suffer from, you are exacerbating the issue of race.

The ultimate goal should be to render race as a non-defining characteristic, one that should not cloud peoples' judgement or fuel their insensitivity. Instead, what's going on is that we're turning race into an emotional circus.

The fact is that being white by itself does not mean your ancestors were involved in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Mine were too busy being under Ottoman rule. Conversely, being black does not make you exempt. Many tribal warlords traded slaves with the Europeans voluntarily. There were some few thousand or so black slave owners in the USA before abolition.

People are not responsible for what their ancestors perpetrated in the past, and the world does not revolve around the West. Yet these ideologies of white guilt and reparation act like it's exactly that way.

What you're doing is turning race into a novelty.

> The ultimate goal should be to render race as a non-defining characteristic

That's a pretty OK goal, although it's unrealistic, because we can only get closer to that by successive approximation.

However your real mistake is trying to use your long term goal (ignoring race) as a short term strategy (ignoring racism). You're correct that racism is a less big deal in many contexts than it used to be. But for the time being, racism is quite a big thing in many other contexts. And ignoring it won't help get us to the place where we can safely ignore it.

Then what do you propose? Exacerbating it?

I would propose learning what you can about what it's like for people different than you so that you have more opportunities to lend help and compassion.

Racism isn't about the past.

Just out of curiosity (not interested in joining the debate)—do you mind if I ask whereabouts do you live? Bay area, east coast, somewhere else?

I'm white and queer and can assure you that racism and sexism are much more serious problems than homophobia in the US.

Right, because gay people have civil rights but black people and women don't...

Then again "queer" these days often means "straight but wants tumblr oppression points," so your perspective might be different from an actual gay person's.

People do say they are proud to be white all the time, just in a different way. I hear "I'm proud to be Irish!" all the time. The thing is "white culture" isn't really a thing, "white culture" is simply the dominant culture in our society that we tell other cultures they should adapt to.

No one is saying white people can't be proud of their heritage. They can be proud, and they do celebrate their heritage all the time. Acknowledging someone's race isn't extending racism, it's embracing them and their culture.

To be honest I used to think similarly, I never got why people had to be proud of their race, or why it was part of their identity. Eventually I realized it's because the dominant culture is white, I don't have to ask myself what it means to be white or what it means to be american. It is part of my identity, I just have the luxury of not having to think about it.

Anyway, I would highly recommend watching "The Color of Fear", it changed my mind on a lot of stuff I'd never thought about critically.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vAbpJW_xEc

Of course there isn't a "white culture" because people are not homogenous in their customs by their skin color alone. Finnish culture is separate from Polish culture is separate from American culture and so on.

Black culture isn't a thing, either. What, you think all people have the same traditions and customs because they have a common skin color? What idiocy. What frivolity. What (inadvertent?) racism.

Being overly attentive to race is not an embracing of their culture. It is a fallacy, a misunderstanding of how the world works under the lens of this Western postmodernist narrative that people as an entire superficial group are responsible for misdeeds of their ancestors, whom they share no relation to whatsoever beyond their whiteness.

You're not embracing culture. You are erasing culture with your narrow, Western-centric guilt narrative where everything works in binaries. That being black dictates a common culture, and that Irish people have no culture, because they're white.

You sound like a racial nationalist.

Ummm, I kinda explicitly pointed to the Irish having a distinct culture that people celebrate.

And where did I say people are responsible for the misdeeds of their ancestors? You definitely aren't responsible, but you do benefit disproportionally from a long history of oppression. You shouldn't feel guilty, but you should be aware of it.

Nor was I saying we should be overly attentive to race, I'm simply saying that acknowledging someone's race isn't racist. And I hate to break it to you, but yes people do have a shared experience based on their skin color. Whether you're black and 8th generation American, or you're from Africa, there is a shared experience in the way you are perceived and treated in a society dominated by "white culture."

You sound like every defensive white dude ever who can't handle the fact that just maybe our society is built around us. You are the one who is erasing culture.

Seriously watch that video I linked (better yet, watch the whole movie).

Everyone benefits from the oppression of others in some way. Everyone who participates in consumer culture: white, black, Hispanic, Asian, etc. are benefiting from it. I'm not a special case.

To say there is a "shared experience" between all people of the same skin color is completely ignoring cultural and socioeconomic rifts that are present in the equation. There is common ground between subgroups, but ultimately, what you're speaking about reeks of an ethnic nationalism.

Is our society built around white people? Western society? Yes, most likely. It's hardly surprising when it has a predominantly white racial makeup.

Good to know I'm a defensive culturally erasing white dude for not buying into a narrow and binary white guilt narrative where some 80% of the world's population is under a homogenous yoke, that is inconsistent with how the world works at large. Some history lessons might do you well, I believe.

I saw the video. All I saw was an emotional man yelling out a black nationalist argument, largely as a reaction to how he may have been personally mistreated.

The modern world was invented in a cosmopolitan Europe. I think we should recognize that and preserve the best parts of that legacy, and yes, even be proud of it.

I don't buy into the whole white-guilt complex

> because white people have crafted a society to let them have more advantage.

Thinking of 'white' as a single group of people who are always middle class is a fantastically ignorant thing to do.

Does the white kid whose parents are Ukrainian janitors deserves a leg up less than the black kid whose parents are an English professor and a photographer?

People frequently confuse class and race. We should really be thinking about the former (though obviously the two are related to a degree).

Full disclosure: my grandfather was an uneducated Ukrainian immigrant (:

>Does the white kid whose parents are Ukrainian janitors deserves a leg up less than the black kid whose parents are an English professor and a photographer?

Nope, but he's going to get one as a white person who lives in America.

In Texas at least the opposite will happen.

>allowing a female employee's problems at work to be continually ignored.

Who is to say that it was only a female employee's problems? It sounds like the wife is a nut case and she could very well have bothered other employees. There is no evidence here that her requests were being ignored because she is a female.

>The hula hooping moment was important because it visibly demonstrated her male coworkers lack of respect for women as people.

Are you serious? Is it really the case that you have no respect for a person if you watch them performing a sporting activity? If I start juggling and someone watches me, I highly doubt that it's because he/she has a lack of respect for me as a person.

Seriously, read what you just said. It implies that you cannot watch people performing an activity while respecting their autonomy.

You're taking what I said a little too literally. Take a look at my response to another commenter where I clarify my hula-hoop statement:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7408735

You're avoiding what I think is the better point, the first one. Her mistreatment by an estranged wife of a founder, in and of itself, doesn't constitute sexism. If her problems with this were ignored because she was a female, that would be sexism. But I didn't see any evidence of that presented and to me it seems more likely they were ignored quite simply because it was the wife of an important person at the company and HR was ineffective at resolving the situation.

Overall the article focuses very little on sexism and more on this really bizarre and inappropriate relationship with the Founder's wife. The section about someone reverting her commits because of being rejection might be a better example, but I don't really even see that as being gender specific either. If a women was rejected by a male coworker and she started reverting commits is that sexism? Jealousy isn't really gender specific and targeted at someone because they are a man or a women. Finally there were some vague mentions of pull request comments that might be sexist, but it's hard to judge without being able to see the comments and she really didn't expand into what about them were sexist.

Overall what I see is a very strange story about incompetence and inappropriate behavior, but very little talk about sexism except in a few random places and at the very end with the hula hoop story. I feel like there is a lot more to this story that has really been told.

I understand what you mean when you say that it "doesn't constitute sexism", and that's true for a definition of sexism as "acts or speech denigrating women on the basis of their gender."

I think what the prior poster is trying to express is that this is a situation, with the founder's wife, that could only occur to a female employee. The covert power of the wife over the complainant is based on gender, and her success in intimidating the complainant with bizarre behaviour -- to which the complainant had an entirely passive response -- is largely due to the social expectations that the complainant perceives, that as a woman she should not be confrontational nor assertive.

Given that I didn't see the hula-hooping incident myself, and only have the complainant's description of it, I cannot adequately address the question of whether or not the men involved were behaving improperly, or aggressively, or in a fashion such that I am sympathetic to the complainant's feeling that their attitude was demeaning to her female colleagues. Personally, I could happily watch attractive young women exercise for hours. But I would also sympathize completely with a young woman whom felt uncomfortable with that. From the complainant's description, it seems that her colleagues were hula-hooping together for fun, and that there was an abnormal number of male engineers sitting and watching them. The hula-hoopers were presumably aware of this. It spoiled the fun for the complainant, but how the hula-hoopers felt about it is still an open question.

I think you are absolutely right that the focus of discussion should be the founder and his wife. The situation sounds completely inappropriate, the HR response seems powerless and ineffectual, and whatever the other side of the story is, her resignation/dismissal occurred under entirely improper circumstances, and she probably deserves compensation for this.

I think, if anything, the incident that triggered her leaving was an indication of how safe other girls at the company felt at the same time when she was bullied by the founders wife till she broke.

> The hula hooping moment was important because it visibly demonstrated her male coworkers lack of respect for women as people.

Maybe hula-hooping is a common occurrence in Silicon Valley offices, but if my co-workers would be hula-hooping I would be looking as well (regardless whether they are male or female). Probably I would be thinking 'why on earth are you hula-hooping in you workplace instead of working'. I guess there is a fine line between gawking and looking.

Don't get me wrong - the entire situation she describes sound horrible but the hula-hooping did not sound very professional in the first place.

Hula-hooping is an especially complex example because it sounds like a strip-club kind of activity, but is also a kind of reclaimed hipster activity like knitting or roller-derby.

The connotations depend a lot on the context.

Why are those mutually exclusive? I get that women don't like being ogled upon, but if you are hula-hooping in the workplace, that's bound to attract some attention and not because you are such a smart person (althou you can certainly have fun and be smart). I wasn't there so I can't tell what the tenor was but I suspect that Horvath's state of mind due to the extreme pressure might have exaggerated that incident. I've seen comments throughout the thread saying she should have gotten help on the dick coworker reverting her code. In that environment it's very easy to become unsure of herself. She wasn't getting help with the founder-wife issue, why would HR respond to this? I've been wondering about Atlassian for a while. Maybe I should take a second look.

Perhaps they liked being stared at as eyecandy.

It's not disrespecting people to consider them attractive.

> The hula hooping moment was important because it visibly demonstrated her male coworkers lack of respect for women as people. They were unabashedly staring at their female coworkers as "eyecandy" in that moment and even defended their doing so.

Totally disagree. If someone is hula hooping in a company that usually builds software to host version control repositories, they are doing something quite out of the ordinary, which is going to lead people to gawk. This does not necessarily imply sexual objectification, though it doesn't preclude it.

> They were unabashedly staring at their female coworkers as "eyecandy" in that moment and even defended their doing so.

Why should someone be "abashed" at staring at someone who is hula hooping in the office? This is slowly starting to lean towards 'thoughtcrime', as long as they don't make overtly sexual or lewd comments, they shouldn't be unnecessarily be accused of a "lack of respect for women as people".

Your only source on this story is Horvath's recounting of it, and she says it was inappropriate. By what means do we have to question her assessment of the events? In questioning her, with no other information, you're saying "I don't believe you, you've irrationally overreacted". And that can only based not on the facts of the situation, but on your personal opinions of what "women" in aggregate are like. In other words, you're explicitly marginalizing Horvath's opinion because she is a woman.

This is how sexism works.

When someone tells a story and there's a gap between the events they relate to you and the conclusion they draw from it, it's natural to criticize their conclusions.

Unless you were there, you can't possible know what happened. We are receiving a third-hand accounting--a TechCrunch journalist relating what Horvath told them--of events we didn't experience. For all we know, the journalist editted out a part where the "gawkers" were wolf-whistling and throwing dollar bills. The point is not that they may or many not have done that, the point is that Horvath's (diluted) account is the only one we have to go by, and to dismiss it is literally nothing but marginalizing her opinion just because she's a woman.

She says it was inappropriate, and more importantly, that it made her feel uncomfortable. You have to either accept that, or you have to call her a liar.

If you choose to call her a liar, your basis for calling her a liar is what defines you as sexist. If it's "my vast and varied dealings with the Github staff at all levels never suggested anything unprofessional ever went on there"[0], then you are not sexist. If it's because "women overreact to stuff like this", you're sexist.

And it's one way or the other. You can't say "I am not calling her a liar, but I don't believe her". That's just mealy-mouth calling her a liar. And you can't say, "I didn't experience any of the involved facts for myself, but I'm not basing it on prejudices", because again, that's just speaking out of both sides of your mouth.

[0] which, given how shitty their code is, I can't see how anyone could ever make such a claim.

No one is dismissing Horvath's account as related by TechCrunch. Critically reading that account and then discussing the gaps in the internal logic of the account itself is the opposite of dismissal.

We're not dealing with a court of law here. "Gaps" in the story do not call into question the integrity of the story.

Don't they? But I'm talking more about gaps between the facts as they are being related to us and the conclusions we are being told to draw from them.

> Your only source on this story is Horvath's recounting of it, and she says it was inappropriate. By what means do we have to question her assessment of the events?

You are using "inappropriate" like it's an objective word. Which is false. If she said something like "they were wolf-whistling and throwing dollar bills", that's an objective statement that we can either think is true or false, and form certain opinions about it. The only objective word we have heard so far is "staring". She is saying, "Ah, they were staring at a bunch of women hula-hooping in the middle of the office at a tech company, how inappropriate!", I am not being sexist when I say, "No, that's not inappropriate, stop with your 1800s attitude."

It is just a difference between Horvath's rather prim definition of "inappropriate" and my more liberal one, and I don't see how that is sexist, or marginalizes her opinion. My grandfather would probably agree with Horvath that staring at a bunch of women hula-hooping in the office is "inappropriate", and I would disagree with him too.

We also have this account of the incident, by somebody who claims they were present, has put their name behind their account, and may or may not be a github employee: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7408466

This particular account isn't even filtered through a journalist!

The sexism in this scenario is subtle and persistent, something that likely tainted all of the workplace interactions at github, allowing a female employee's problems at work to be continually ignored.

Lots of people of both sexes are impotent and disaffected at work, so it's not necessarily proof of anything when someone says "my opinion is not respected" and then finds superficials to explain it. If you can demonstrate a pattern, sure, but simply drawing from personal experience is very close to useless. In this case she is drawing from personal experience.

The hula hooping moment was important because it visibly demonstrated her male coworkers lack of respect for women as people.

What a gigantic jump. I mean, solar system crossing. Two people put on what sounds like a unique, if not artistic demonstration. People watch. It might actually be her own insecurities and hangups that led her to decry this, which is actually a perverse and rather incredible bit of sexism in itself ("women of Github...hide your shame. Don yon burkas and shroud yourself from the lusts of men").

This is not a clear story at all (clearly the founder's wife -- who is a significant owner of the company, fwiw -- got involved for something completely unspoken), and there is no reason for anyone to knee jerk to either side.

Further (and this comment is more general) it is toxic and repressive for the classic "Oh woe am I, look at all of the victim blaming in here! How offensive!". Github, and all of the players involved, are people too. Because one person yells the loudest and earliest doesn't mean that you can grab your torches with legitimacy without being the problem yourself.

Roll eyes. Men get treated as eye candy too. Honestly, if you do that at work, it doesn't matter who you are, you are going to get gawked at.

Most of this seemed like a poor performer who socialized too much at work. The problem was the crazy wife. Two bad drivers meet at an intersection..

And for people saying the guys don't get worked over in pull requests or have their code passively aggressively reverted, all I can say is LOL.