I think that accusation is completely unwarranted (from the sounds of it).
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?
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.
"Horvath later learned that the founder had a similar talk with her partner and demanded that he resign."
A workplace just filled with happy young male developers is not necessarily a healthy environment, or one that necessarily has a good culture.
That's not what I said.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
Women will forever be afraid of men, and men will forever be cast as bad.