Comment by harshreality | Hacker News Reader

Comment by harshreality | Hacker News Reader

The article quotes JAH's email as saying, "Two women, one of whom I work with and adore, and a friend of hers were hula hooping to some music. I didn’t have a problem with this. What I did have a problem with is the line of men sitting on one bench facing the hoopers and gawking at them. It looked like something out of a strip club. When I brought this up to male coworkers, they didn’t see a problem with it. But for me it felt unsafe and to be honest, really embarrassing. That was the moment I decided to finally leave GitHub."

Certain people are extremely sensitive to what they perceive as improper or demeaning interaction, even when it doesn't directly involve them. JAH wasn't willing to let those women deal with it themselves, and doesn't mention even talking to them about it to see if they felt objectified. Instead, she talked to male coworkers, not specifically HR or a founder, about the wisdom of allowing women to hula hoop in the office? What's that going to accomplish?

I understand her view that sexual undercurrents in an office makes things uncomfortable for some women, and I understand her wanting that toned down. But other women (including some feminists) have no problem with much stronger displays of sexuality, and feel it's an affront to women to suppress that. Both sides can't win.

I think it's really a huge stretch to go from oogling of hula hoopers to "feeling unsafe". What, after watching some women do hoola hoop men suddenly turn into rapists? That's 100% in her head and sounds slightly crazy to me, to be honest. Not even going to strip clubs turns men into rapists on a regular basis...

I think that accusation is completely unwarranted (from the sounds of it).

After reading the article, it became pretty clear to me that whatever manner of "culture" github appears to be permeating internally, she was very far from it. This indicates she was a bad hire from the get-go. Hiring isn't just about talent, it's also about cultural fit, and while it's difficult to know with precision who fits a cultural dynamic, 1) such an issue is bound to arise as a company grows and 2) there had to be indications that she was incredibly sensitive early on.

Apparently they were as excited to have her onboard as with any other new hire at the time: https://github.com/blog/1082-julie-ann-horvath-is-a-githubbe...

What's the point? Presumably they make similar announcements for many new hires, although I have to wonder if those are illustrated by such pore-stretchingly enormous head photos.

Actually, announcements have since become less cliché - or from another perspective they are now based on a IMHO silly we-are-a-happy-company cliché (including GIFs).

Isn't the point she's making that she didn't fit the culture primarily because of her gender? And that any work culture where one's gender matters is a toxic culture in itself?

A workplace just filled with happy young male developers is not necessarily a healthy environment, or one that necessarily has a good culture.

Define good culture. Why would you assume to know what a good culture is? Why would a workplace filled with happy young males be necessarily a bad culture?

> Why would a workplace filled with happy young males be necessarily a bad culture?

That's not what I said.

> Isn't the point she's making that she didn't fit the culture primarily because of her gender?

It is, but the point a lot of people are making here is that maybe she sees the situation in a wrong way, as her perspective is a reflection of her gender, so she cannot really judge if the problems happened primarily because of her gender. Actually, the fact that the other female employees felt secure and relaxed enough that they were hola-hooping in the office suggests otherwise.

> A workplace just filled with happy young male developers is not necessarily a healthy environment, or one that necessarily has a good culture.

It's also not necessarily an unhealthy/toxic environment.

> Actually, the fact that the other female employees felt secure and relaxed enough that they were hola-hooping in the office suggests otherwise.

No it doesn't, really. There can still be a problem, even if it's easier to ignore it than to cause a fuss and risk your career.

> It's also not necessarily an unhealthy/toxic environment

Absolutely agree - but if, when you add a female developer, there is hostility towards her that appears to be motivated in part by her gender, then one should revise one's opinion of the "healthiness" of that environment.

Obviously this is one person's account and, absent a response from GitHub, it will stay that way. Nevertheless, I'm sorry that she felt victimised, and I think her account is a useful vantage point from which to discuss issues of "cultural fit" in all-male teams.

> It's also not necessarily an unhealthy/toxic environment.

Honestly this is very close to gender discrimination, which is clearly illegal. If you created an environment that only young male developers will enjoy how is that much different then explicitly saying you won't hire any female developers?

To me it's in a similar vein of when literacy tests were employed in the South to prevent African Americans from voting. It wasn't saying you couldn't vote if you were black but it had the same effect of denying most blacks suffrage anyway. So you're not saying women can't work here, but we're just going to encourage/promote a culture that isn't one most women would want to be a part of anyway.

A couple hundred mostly-males built a company that was wildly successful where they loved to work. Now it sounds like they have to destroy that, build a culture that is professional and antiseptic, to make feminists feel welcome.

It doesn't have to be "antiseptic" at all - there are plenty of thriving, wildly-successful, mostly-males companies with great cultures where women feel comfortable too.

Also, it wouldn't be changing it "for feminists" - it's changing it to welcome any people, of either sex, who aren't comfortable in that environment. Just because feminists might be the most vocal about it doesn't mean it doesn't affect others too.

They don't even have to change their culture at all; all they need to do is to tone down the more aggressive parts of that culture towards certain people. Which shouldn't be difficult - I'm sure all of them have friends with whom they're more calm and less aggressive, or family members. They just need to transfer a bit of this thoughtfulness to the office.

It's not about changing because feminism, it's just the human decency of being reasonable and respectable to everyone, as far as is possible.

I wanted to make it clear in my writing, but apparently it wasn't: I think their culture is very flawed. Period. However, that's the culture they seem to want, so that said, my judgment was only against such poor hiring decisions, which are apparent in the outcome of this situation.

This bothered me the most:

> Despite its generally female-friendly environment, Horvath claims: “I had a really hard time getting used to the culture, the aggressive communication on pull requests and how little the men I worked with respected and valued my opinion.”

What? Um, you're the new hire. Demonstrating your worth is a standard phase that even men go through. If the pull request communication is too aggressive, tough. The company does not owe you a change of culture.

Overall, the environment strikes me as not terribly friendly. Okay. That's a culture misfit. Big time.

But why would you stay? Why would you recommend this to other women when you were having such a hard time yourself?

Jesus, I won't recommend companies or people unless I've got a really clear idea that there is a really good fit. It's like being a personal matchmaker, there's not a lot of upside and there is a lot of downside.

If her problem with it was that some random other guy openly finding some random other girl attractive in her workplace "makes her feel unsafe", then that would be highly hypocritical, as she admits she was dating a coworker and that other coworkers knew this, which can only encourage others to think it's OK to make romantic advances to coworkers.

I mean, you can't have it both ways. If you think men and women should always without exception be only cold and businesslike towards each other in your workplace, then don't date a coworker. Isn't that obvious?

I believe the article mentions how she started dating the coworker before joining Github.

Even if she started dating him after she joined, you need to take the whole thing in context. The founder's wife is attempting to inject herself into their relationship, and a guy hits on her and punishes her for rejecting him. In context, the hula hooping episode can easily be a trigger for the allegedly sexist culture at GitHub.

By the way they kept saying partner I was under the impression she was dating a woman. In which case she could theoretically hate males looking at women and still date a woman on the team.

That's what I thought too, but there are a couple places where they refer to him as a "he".

"Horvath later learned that the founder had a similar talk with her partner and demanded that he resign."

Okay, I am - for better or worse - not always known for my progressive views. But really, you're pulling the 'man-hating dyke' card here?

Something that has become clear to me fairly late in life is how sensitive many women are to feeling sexually threatened, and I've noticed this even in my wife, who is an incredibly adventurous person (e.g. she has lead multiple months-long geological expeditions in Tibet where she is both the only woman and the only Westerner). I think it's a brain-stem type reaction, not a rational one, but once people begin to feel deep-seated fear, there's not a lot that can make it go away.

Although I agree that in many cases, such as this one by the sounds of it (limited information, though), there may be a very low degree of physical danger, I think it is best just to realize/accept that women have a deep-seated fear of sexual, physical and emotional aggression that many men do not have, and adjust one's behavior and expectations accordingly to try to make women feel a little safer. It's pretty rare that this causes any actual inconvenience, other than like not sharing a hotel room on a business trip.

If it's actually a conditioned response, from experiencing a lot of unwanted attention from men over time, treating it as a 'brain stem' reaction will only prevent society from resolving the problem.

Women will forever be afraid of men, and men will forever be cast as bad.

I don't think it's a "sexual threat." I think it's more that we're only a couple of decades out (less in some places) from office women mostly being for typing and for looking at. Women being watched hula-hooping just feels regressive.

If someone were to hula-hoop to music in my office, male or female, I am pretty sure there would be a lot of people looking on. Not sure where the line of "looking on" and "gawking" is in that situation.

If both are straight and male looking on.

If both are gay and male looking on.

If both are straight and female looking on.

If both are straight and male is hoola hooping with female watching looking on.

If both are straight and female is hoola hooping with male looking on gawking.

Is this not obvious, We are all uncontrollable messes of hormones and the self-control of a 15 year old boy apparently.

If I was at work and women where hoola hooping I'd just go get on with my work (but then I hate goofing off at work, work is work).

I'd probably ask for a go on the hula-hoop.

What is wrong with this culture of suppressing even the most basic sexual ideas to the point of closing eyes when a female starts to hola hoop. This is crazy!

That's why I feel like they should just not allow hula-hooping in the office. As someone who has been to both gay and straight clubs, I know that "grown-ups hula hooping" is a lot less like innocent fun and more like rapid pelvic thrusting with a hoop thrown in.

The problem is that a "no hula-hooping" rule sounds ridiculous, and really even splitting hairs on the topic itself seems tedious. Instead, any disruptive behavior should be off-limits and it should be up to the managers to enforce the rules. There are "fun police" at your place of employment for a reason, because honestly this whole situation could have been avoided if the hula-hoopers had kept their hobbies at home.

The hula hooping event simply took on a symbolic meaning for her, give what she went through. I don't think the act itself was dangerous or so terrible, but through her eyes, at that moment, it was the last straw.

Exactly right.

(see my comment on this very point)

My observation is that it is very easy to misunderstand stories like the hoola hoop example. Imagine 2 scenarios: a) a company where we stipulate that there is no sexism and women feel respected and valued b) a company where to stipulate that there is widespread sexism and women detect a myriad of signs of it every day.

In scenario a) the hoola hoop incident is highly unlikely to spark a reaction from a woman but in scenario b) this may be offensive to her.

The problem for the woman in b) is that it isn't really the hoola hoop 'leering'that offends her so much as it is the culmination of a series of attitudes and slights. But of course, if she complains about the hoola hoop behavior she can easily look petty. Each such incident can seem trivial but the pattern isn't. It is a real dilemma for women how to handle this kind of atmosphere gracefully and it is probably impossible for them to do so without some men tarring them as being nutty oversensitive rad fems.

I think you have to consider the story as a whole. If everything else was great, I'd agree with you that getting upset at this little scene might be over-sensitivity. But from the author's perspective, everything else was not great. Far from it.

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