Update on Julie Horvath's Departure
github.com
github.com
Comment three was 'aha they issued a vague apology, this is basically a FULL ADMISSION that everything Horvath said was true!'
People: when did our brains melt and spill out of our ears? There is not enough public information present to reliably prove or disprove anything at this point; Github issued a nonspecific semi-apology (to wit: "It’s certain that there were things we could have done differently" well, yeah this is usually the case) with some promising indications that they are taking the issue seriously & looking into it.
Now we wait. Stop saying github is admitting to every point of Horvath's assertions! Stop saying Horvath is a liar! You don't know these things! Take deep breaths, listen for a bit, and wait for more information to come out.
GitHub's response neither confirms nor denies any part of the story. It does say the founder's wife will no longer be allowed in the office, but that is not an admission of wrongdoing nor of her ever having been in the office.
Edit: The only thing this response proves is that GitHub is taking these allegations seriously, which hopefully means there will be more information after they have time to investigate. Try not to jump to the many other conclusions already posted in HN comments.
First hand testimony might be imperfect, but It is evidence.
Whether or not its conclusive remains to be seen.
That's the larger point.
Certainly, the above linked article lends at least some credibility to some claims.
The fact that the wife of a founder needed to <even be mentioned> in this type of PR damage controll manouvre...is a huge red flag by itself.
Please, stop speculating. Have patience, wait for actual information.
Well, they do say:
We know we have to take action and have begun a full
investigation. While that’s ongoing, and effective
immediately, the relevant founder has been put on leave,
as has the referenced GitHub engineer. The founder’s wife
discussed in the media reports has never had hiring or
firing power at GitHub and will no longer be permitted in
the office.
In both cases, they wouldn't want him having any potential influence on the investigation. To do that, his power within the company needs to be suspended until a conclusion is reached. The parties investigating (likely HR and the other founders) must be able to do their job without fear of retaliation from the accused founder, that would taint the decision.
Of course it can also mean the opposite - my point is merely that suspending someone pending investigation says nothing at all about guilt.
"While that’s ongoing, and effective immediately, the relevant founder has been put on leave, as has the referenced GitHub engineer." == "We don't know what to do yet but we're trying to prevent variables from changing"
"The founder’s wife discussed in the media reports has never had hiring or firing power at GitHub and will no longer be permitted in the office." == "If she said anything along those lines, she had no authority to do so, and misrepresented herself and her role at GitHub"
Yes, it's legalese, but it's not actually saying or admitting anything that anybody didn't already know. It's filling the silence that would otherwise breed directionless slander and conspiracy.
It's manipulative, but arguably well intentioned, and can possibly lead to a more constructive outcome than the free-form slather that would have occurred in a communication vacuum.
I'm seeing plenty of mea culpa in this, and that's good. They could have responded far worse, and only slightly better.
> It's unfortunate TechCrunch and Valley Wag posted the story without first corroborating at least some piece of it.
Asking for corroboration is fine, but we should be mindful that some things that are true can't be corroborated and demanding corroboration just gives the accused party the de facto ability to suppress the information or the debate.
Her story passes a basic smell test, it very well could be true, and there is no specific reason to doubt her. While this doesn't mean it is true, it isn't necessarily irresponsible to publish it either.
Again, that is speculation. "What ifs" are not useful here.
As "news" outlets, I expect both sites to corroborate stories before posting them. If they don't, they are effectively tabloids. Posting allegations like this is the definition of tabloid journalism.
There are too many people involved in this story for me to believe that zero of them were reachable for comment. TechCrunch only vaguely mentions "awaiting comment from GitHub", which could mean anything.
I do think it is irresponsible to publish such a story without any corroboration because it implicates several people directly and an entire company's work environment with nothing more than one person's word.
The whole story could be true, but the fact is no one knows; TechCrunch and Valley Wag certainly don't.
We only have the luxury of observing one "version" of events (unless you can hop between multiverses). Therefore, the only way we have to evaluate past events is by asking "what if" questions.
What if TechCrunch hadn't picked up the story? Basically no one would have heard about it and Github quite possibly wouldn't have felt the need to respond or investigate (maybe they still would have, another "what if", but they wouldn't have been under as much pressure).
Something went down. I'm not saying we should just lynch the accused parties and move on. But I am saying that often the only way for a small actor to get attention is for a news outlet to pick up his or her story. And if they refuse to publish without some kind of official confirmation, then very few such stories will be printed, because the larger, more powerful entity will quash them with silence.
When the topic is as controversial as sexism in tech and the workplace. Or whatever the flashpoint happens to be at the moment. Like sequoia, I've noticed that controversial topics brings out the most incredible responses from both sides, and often with very little definitive evidence. To me, this is a sign of how deeply felt this topic is, and how much it is just under the surface of our thoughts, ready to explode when an appropriate trigger occurs.
I laughed when I read the quote above and thought it was a good comment.
I'm not sure if you were framing this as a net negative or positive, but I actually do appreciate when these controversial debates occur. I like to see all the contrasting world-views brought out into the open and into conflict with each other. I agree that civility is a problem, though.
Anyway, I mention this because I worry sometimes that HN's "flamewar detector" (or is it purely flagging?) seems to kill these kinds of threads, ones with a high comment-to-upvote ratio (though some notable recent threads have seemed to escape this). I often wonder if this mechanism is worth the trouble. I suppose if heated debate leads to polarization of opinion, that's an issue, but I don't know if that's necessarily the case.
I can reassure you that this thread would have quickly been flagged off just a few months ago.
I'm guessing it's due to the fair amount of criticism PG received (from myself included) over how the flamewar-filter censored sensitive, yet important, discussions just like the ones this story sparked.
Or, the complaints including yours probably did have -some- influence, but I think you're overestimating how much because to you, your comments were a heartfelt effort to make a point, whereas to pg they were 'add one to number of complaints of type X'. It's still important, given said number will have been factored into the decision making process, but probably not that important.
Regardless; I can confirm that many people complained about it and roughly a week or two after the whole 'PG is a sexist' kerfluffle sexism related threads stopped being flagged off the frontpage... It seemed like relevant information for the OP.
It definitely leads to my polarization, along with other (seemingly unfair) events in my life. Plus, it is hard to express any other opinion than in favour of the women, which leads to unvoiced discomfort and is clearly not the situation you want in an industry.
I wish women would speak up more often for men's cause. That's also what equality means.
It is telling that the topic of sexism in tech and the workplace is controversial at all.
Yes - it tells use that it's a deeply emotional and often deeply subjective topic where situations can be interpreted very differently depending on your point of view and you do not necessarily have as clear a villain and victim as people like to have.
In the case of GitHub specifically, the issue is even clearer. This is a company that for years had a blog with little else than their drinking escapades. Perhaps that's changed, but the burden of proof is on them.
The only thing that is up for dispute is whether this particular case is an example of sexism in tech or not. We can't be 100% sure, but at this time it's safer to assume that the weaker party is right, if only because the stronger party can handle a quick-to-judge public much more easily than the weaker party. I'm not saying it's boycott time, but it's best to at least open the discussion with that assumption in mind. Again, the burden of proof is on GitHub.
I can see how "to align with the weaker party" can be a sensible goal for a society. However, in this case it directly conflicts with the presumption of innocence principle, which is an even higher goal for a just society.
So no, the burden of proof lies in whoever is making the accusations, whatever the (un)balanced of power between parties is.
What we should do is (1) not judge any party until there are enough facts on the table (of which we don't have many right now); (2) strive for an impartial account of the events; (3) judge only on and after evidence has been collected. If you want to support a cause, pushing for people to follow this recipe would work much better than pushing for "the weaker party is right until the stronger party proves themselves".
Because sexism in tech is a fact, this occasion is an opportunity to discuss it. Debating whether Horvath is right or wrong is not only futile, but is also potentially harmful to her, and that harm is far greater than GitHub's. Presumption of innocence is only a principle in legal disputes, and this, currently, isn't one, nor are we the jury. There will be no great injustice done if the assumption turns out to be false, but there is a lot of harm being inflicted on Horvath right now by people equating her position with that of a rich company and suspending any form of judgment. This does not only harm her personally, but the entire industry by implying that sexism in tech is disputable and pending "further data", which it isn't.
Given that sexism in tech is real and serious, that GitHub has a bit of a spotty background on that issue, and that GitHub does not deny any of the allegations, this is a perfectly good time to assume something bad has happened and discuss measures to correct the situation in the industry. If it turns out GitHub has fallen victim to the very real injustice of sexism in tech, I won't shed a tear for them, but will be excited to see them face the challenge and lead the way forward.
The presumption of innocence doesn't mean that anyone must either think or pretend to think that someone is innocent, any more than freedom of speech means that facebook can't take your youtube link down.
This is a good illustration of the point in the grandparent comment. This is simply not true, and I can't even think of any fallacy/ belief/ blindspot that could be adopted by a somewhat rational listener to make it sound convincing. (just to address the recalcitrant credulous among you: consider whether there is discrimination against Down Syndrome sufferers amongst tenured faculty on math departments)
In topics where people have deep vested personal interest or emotional investment, the quality of arguments that they would view as convincing goes down (often way down). The tragedy here is that the discourse about complicated topics which are important is overrun by people who have either (or, most often both) vested interests in a particular outcome, or little knowledge about the topic.
Saying "period period" at the end, I think, indicates that on some level, the parent commenter knows that s/he is presenting a weak argument. The poster's emotion overpowers this, however.
QED
The reason I put "period" is because many people aren't aware of the current body of research in gender studies and sociology, and modern definitions of sexism (a simple introduction can be found here[1], esp. unintentional sexism: "The tendency to use intent, rather than result, to measure whether something was offensive and inappropriate, and therefore sexist, is tied into male privilege and the way that it enables sexist practices to be seen as normal."). If women are largely absent from a group wielding any social power, then by definition sexism exists (or sex-based discrimination, if you prefer), unless you can prove that being a woman is a relevant debilitating disability, which I don't even think anyone conjectures. Because the data suggests[2] that diversity in Silicon Valley is severely lacking, this is a serious problem in Silicon Valley.
(Any rationalization such as "but what if women don't want to be in tech" is irrelevant. The assumption is that all groups want to take part in powerful institutions, and if they don't, it must be because somewhere along the line society encouraged them not to want that, thus effectively removing them from power.)
[1]: http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2007/10/19/sexism-de...
[2]: http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/17/technology/diversity-silicon...
Another case in point, it was a counterexample, not a comparison.
In your case, I now believe you are primarily just a sloppy/ bad thinker (who is also heavily invested in a certain position), but my original point about emotion clouding judgement still stands.
And, again, I'm sorry for my sloppy thinking, but I believe that "consider whether there is discrimination against Down Syndrome sufferers amongst tenured faculty on math departments" is not a counterexample because pertinent disability most certainly doesn't fall under any definition of sexism/racism and other unfair discrimination (same goes for quadriplegics in the NBA). Pitting disability against sexism as a counterexample appeared to me to be a brow-raising comparison. This fallacy is called reductio ad absurdum or a straw man.
If you'd like, I can come up with a better counterpoint (or so it would seem to my feeble mind, which I actually had to exercise for this): white players in the NBA. However, that, too, would not fall under the modern definition for racism, as racism (like sexism) is "prejudice + power", and I don't think anyone suggests white men lack power or influence in American sports.
And if I was sloppy by not qualifying the term "a well defined group of people" to exclude disability, forgive me, I thought it was patently clear from the context, namely a discussion on women. And please don't try to counter with discrimination against those who don't know programming or village idiots, because the definition excludes that kind of "discrimination", too, and I hope that's clear enough without me quoting vast amounts of research verbatim.
And you are absolutely right. Sex discrimination is systemic, probably starting in kindergarten and even at home. However, it's hard to fix education if young girls don't have lots of positive role-models to look up to, and you can't make those role models unless education is fixed. So fighting sexism has to be systemic as well, and at all levels at once.
You are correct, but only if the term 'discrimation' includes 'discrimination based on skill levels.' If not, then you are assuming that power-relevant skill is distributed evenly, which is baldly false in many real-wrld situations.
3,000 us army deaths in Iraq, and of those, 2,938 were men, 62 were women.
If they are starting now to investigate, it means that when troubles were occuring, or even when Julia H. gave her demission, they didn't care enough to investigate thoroughly (perhaps they have other priorities, that's just a fact).
This in itself is not good looking, and I feel that from there whatever really happened, they won't have the full version anymore (one of the party is already out) and they will have a huge incentive to go into damage control mode instead of genuinely trying to make the situation better for both parties. Especially, the more they do, the worse their image would be on the PR front ( I hope they do whatever is fair anyway, but the balance is tipped).
I admit, I do care about things more than most. My workgroup, and much of the company I work for migrated to github enterprise (and a lot in github public) about a year ago. These kinds of things sour opinion. There are differences between a single bad actor/incident and a systemic problem in a toxic workplace. We don't really know what this is, but it was clearly more than at least one person was willing to put up with.
It's bound to be difficult working in an environment where 4:5 of your peers are the other gender. I worked in a couple of workplaces when I was younger where I was the only male. It was rather eye opening and sometimes uncomfortable to say the least.
Also, people might forget about the issue in 6 months, but the bad taste in the mouth we have now will stay attached to the brand. The best move IMO would be to come 'clean' as soon as possible, and let the hype die down from there, provided they are OK with doing the right thing, whatever it might be.
Classic case of confirmation bias.
Would you accuse scientists of confirmation bias if they chose to look for more evidence rather than just publish the results of the first experiment?
I would say this statement is a very clever move from GitHub side. I guess they have skilled PR people working on the issue.
At first look, the cited article seems to admit to everything. As a result, it will be sort of last news on the topic - if they admitted Horvath is right and they even put on leave a founder and the programmer and founder's wife will not be allowed to enter office, then what's more can be said or written? Github did everything it could to resolve the issue.
The point is that they did not admitted anything. The only paragraph that contains actual content is paragraph no 2., the rest is just speaking how Github grows and how they liked Horvath, how sad it is that Horvath is sad, etc.
So we have:
"We know we have to take action and have begun a full investigation. While that’s ongoing, and effective immediately, the relevant founder has been put on leave, as has the referenced GitHub engineer. The founder’s wife discussed in the media reports has never had hiring or firing power at GitHub and will no longer be permitted in the office."
So they have started "full investigation", just that. After two months when everybody will forget about the issue, the founder with his wife and the programmer might be back at Github (who knows what the investigation is going to prove - Horvath will not take part in it - she's no longer an employee). Whatever happens nobody will pay attention. No media will investigate the issue further because "Github admitted Horvath is right", so the topis is closed and no longer "hot".
I guess GitHub cannot publicly admit that Horvath is right or not, their lawyers would be mad, it is much better for them to keep all statements fuzzy and sounding good.
But I'm not convinced that this is a "clever PR move" as you suggest. What else can GitHub do at this point? Fire the people involved without even investigating?
Yes, perhaps they are bullshitting. But this is also what the PR release would say if they were trying to do the right things by all parties but don't have the information they need or the time they need to figure out exactly what the repercussions should be.
[edit: spelling]
> We still use (and love) Campfire.
[1]: http://zachholman.com/posts/github-communication/ (first screenshot)
It admits no guilt, declares that individuals are the possible cause and that action is being taken to prevent their continued damage, notifies the community that a new HR head started very recently, and attempts to be as graceful as possible in acknowledging the points made by the victim.
If you get a chance, watch 'Wing Chun', an informative documentary on the same topic, and note the effectiveness of 'cotton belly'.
Even if this episode were only hypothetical, this episode reminds me that many people have poor decision-making abilities, even if they are super intelligent. A co-founder of a company like Github would and should have a very good brain and very good decision-making prowess. And yet, here we see instances of him possibly:
1. Not being able to identify boundaries between his personal life and his work life, and allowing factors from his personal life to influence his work life, possibly very negatively (magnified by his position at the company).
2. Not being able to communicate with people and ascertain the truth of the matter. Someone had to lie to cause him to accuse Horvath of lying: either his wife lied or Horvath lied, and he didn't appear to do a good job of getting the truth and resolving the situation.
3. Having perhaps made a poor marriage decision. I would not be surprised if everyone downvotes me for this speculation, and am sorry if this ruffles features. But if this episode is true, there are very few ways that this co-founder's marriage comes out looking good. Either he's absolutely insensitive to the needs of his company or he's completely whipped by a woman who cares more about herself than him. If it's a poor marriage decision, he wouldn't be the first person in history, people from all walks of life seem to make poor marriage decisions all the time.
In the end, I am reminded again that people are messy, and no matter how intelligent they appear to be, they can still have the potential to act stupidly.
> Not being able to communicate with people and ascertain the truth of the matter. Someone had to lie to cause him to accuse Horvath of lying: either his wife lied or Horvath lied, and he didn't appear to do a good job of getting the truth and resolving the situation.
Sure, and a good managers should have no problem figuring out things that can take police and the courts years and years.
> If it's a poor marriage decision, he wouldn't be the first person in history, people from all walks of life seem to make poor marriage decisions all the time.
How is that relevant, and what exactly does that even mean? You don't really know who the person is and will be when you're getting married, you're just making a bet that they really are who you think they are, and that they wouldn't change in the future. If this episode is true, they can either do what married people should do (stick together, learn, communicate, support each other, and resolve the issues), or they can say "fuck it, we're stupid and made a poor marriage decision", and separate.
I think you misread me. I believe I made it pretty clear that I think that people from all walks of life do not find it easy to make good decisions. I don't believe it is so easy. I talk as one who has made many poor decisions myself.
> How is that relevant, and what exactly does that even mean?
I really don't want to get into this, mainly because we don't have enough information. But the gist is what I've stated, that he may have entered into a marriage with a selfish and megalomaniac woman who cares more about herself than him. Again, we don't have enough information to confirm, but the questions are asked because there are allegations of such behaviour.
And for the record, I have seen plenty of good, high-quality marriages where doing what married people should do does not become public incidents (i.e. they are able to work out their issues in the way you describe, but in private so that they don't become public spectacles).
This was my thought as well. I don't know who the founder is, or what is going on here, but I feel like people are going to be quick to villainize that founder over the actions of his wife, as if they function as one unit.
In reality, if a founder's spouse has that kind of power over the founder's employees, that founder is very likely to be in a divorce within 5 years. In healthy marriages, people don't interfere with their spouses' careers. Support is different from meddling. If JAH's allegations are true, I feel pity rather than anger toward that founder, because it means his marriage is on the rocks and he might not even know it yet.
Imagine getting a restraining order from an employee of your husbands company. I suppose they should have made a cut way sooner...
Of course, it would have been better if Julie had felt like she could have taken this up while she still worked there and got something done at the time.
I'm not saying "they should apologize and I know it" because I don't know it, I know practically nothing of the situation, but this is no "straight up apology."
Disagree. The situtation is highly ambiguous. HR is a game of "the best victories are wars not fought". And so in some regards, its too late.
On the other-hand, if HR was on the right...they were "over-ruled" by more than one of CEO/founders/sr execs. This surely means this person has diminished capacity to act. If not due to competence, than due to "lack of formiddableness".
Because it shouldn't take a public PR nightmare to convince (ie, show some leadership) that following HR101 is a good idea.
It is only the rare edge case that this person was in perfect pitch (and ignored) yesterday and will be held in higher regard tomorrow.
So, this is why things are not clear cut here for anyone.
Blame the CEO and the rest of the management team for not hiring a good HR person sooner if you want, but I don't see how you fault the person who just walked into this mess. Unless you're blaming them for not seeing the mess or walking into it with their eyes open. To me, that seems counterproductive. Having people with the appropriate skills take on the difficult work of improving these cultures is part of how things get better.
I wasn't suggesting that HR bring forth radical change, either, merely recognize the problems and work towards finding a solution (even though that would have been extremely difficult in itself, considering how little the executives seemed to help).
It's hard to apologise for something specific before you know what that actually is.
So...doesn't their response then make sense?
Moreover, making mistakes in the context of misusing a privilege can and should carry greater stigma than making those same mistakes in some other contexts.
Allegedly did.
I think people would hate the spouse just the same if it were a man, so I disagree with you on this.
Y'know, I hope I'm wrong, but there's a good chance you're surprised because you don't know what sexism is. An awful lot of men seem to have this notion that "sexism" means "something happened to a woman that she didn't like." It doesn't. Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on a person's sex or gender, if you'll forgive me quoting Wikipedia. Calling out a woman for doing something shitty is not sexist. Saying "well, what can you expect from a woman" would be.
Do I see any sexism against the wife of the co-founder from GitHub's statement? No
If you'd like to continue the discussion then go ahead and provide something of worth.
This comment is ironic I know, but these kind of posts derail the debate.
Nothing to do with sexism, everything to do with a person making decisions for the company who is (1) personally close to an executive and (2) without a formal role at the company.
* General scientific opinion (it's generally roundish).
* Religious doctrine (it's flat, centre of universe, on the back of a turtle).
* And then this person: http://www.timecube.com/
Point is, only one of these sides is reasonable.
The fact that she was married to someone who did have hiring or firing power and WAS permitted in the office means she DID have (defacto) hiring or firing power.
I wonder what the ramifications are, legal-wise? Obviously the founder could be sued, especially if he was allowing someone who wasn't an employee to harass. I suspect A16Z will waste no time putting distance between themselves and the (allegedly) guilty founder. In the end, this wife's jealousy could end up costing her family 10s or 100s of millions of dollars.
Plenty of founder's spouses are allowed in and have been allowed in our offices. None of them had any hiring or firing power.
A smaller family run business, maybe I could see such policies happening (not necessarily right), but a venture backed company with a board and a trio of cofounders? Bad, bad form.
Before we string up the cofounder's wife, let's actually let her and/or the cofounder defend themselves, OK? It's entirely possible Horvath is completely embellishing things and the cofounder's wife didn't do anything terribly out of line.
The key here is that the founder's wife has a regular presence in the office. Plus, a founder is in a vastly higher position of authority than an employee (be it a manager, or else).
So it's not too far to imagine that she could exert some influence towards her husband's decision at work, e.g. hiring and firing of someone.
I hire people, and I talk to my wife all the time about work matters. And if, knowing everything she knows about my team, she told me that I should be looking at cutting someone loose, I would take that advice very seriously. Every good executive has trusted advisors, and for people in serious relationships the partner is very commonly one of those advisors.
The only problem here is the wife's alleged direct meddling with work matters, not that she had a strong influence on her husband's work decisions. For founders, life is totally enmeshed with work and it would actually be weird if his wife DIDN'T have strong opinions on the company he built while she supported him at home.
Almost exactly what I expected. As the startup grows larger (200+ employees now for Github?) it's not uncommon to have some cultural setback. +1 for Github trying to fix it asap, but still Chris Wanstrath did not mention how are they exactly going to fix the culture. Putting founder on leave is by no means panacea. The behavior on that one founder is very likely not the cause for the wrong culture, but just the side effect. So more specific plans INSIDE the company, please? (well, actually I think fixing the culture can't be done by any plan, but it must be done by example of founders/high-level executives.)
Women in software is an important topic. This specific issue on the other hand is just a he-said-she-said soap opera.
Nobody but the folks directly involved here know what really happened. Everything else is useless.
I would maintain, though, that besides the involved parties nobody can possibly know what really happened, and hence everything is just idle speculation.
Resigning and talking about it is actually pretty courageous. She doesn't win, she gets a stigma. Her company doesn't win, it gets a stigma. But the spectators with their mouths agog realize that this kind of mismanagement/harassment is not only happening under noses, but also being noticed externally (it's endemic; while women and minorities likely deal with it a lot more, it's not just gender-based, it often happens to the lawful-good no matter what gender or race in small tech companies) and, for a brief time, these companies pull themselves together and become better places to work, if only because it's expensive and time-consuming and morale-killing to fuck this stuff up.
If you had read the original article [1] you'd have known that she decided to take action after a "Secret post" was publicly published about her departure. (We could comment all day about the bravery of the anonymous GitHub employees who used Secret as a public mean of ridiculing her)
[1] http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/15/julie-ann-horvath-describes...
Not necessarily. It can put pressure on the company to take it seriously and fix it, and make more people aware of these kind of problems. And that seems to be what's happening here. Keeping it under wraps allows the situation to continue as it was.
It is also easier for her to go public than to try to sue a billion dollar company, and have to be involved in a lawsuit for years. Nobody wants that hassle.
Bullies are able to operate because people keep quiet. Going public is often the best way to defeat a bully. The founder, his wife, and the employee who ripped out her code never thought the general public would know about the things they did. If they did, they would never have done them.
Which would have put Github instantly on the defensive, and would have lead to limited and speculative publicity only. As it is, Github is not being sued, and seems to be making a proper effort to address its problems. This sounds better, really.
Is what she described accurate? Maybe so, maybe not. No one fucking knows, and that is the point. Stop being assholes about it until someone, if anyone, has been proven to have done wrong. It's not uncommon for someone to feel sourgrapes about a situation and use "sexism" as a way to manipulate it in their favor. Most of you act like that isn't even a fucking possibility.
If you really want to out him that badly just man up an post his name rather than trying to weasel around with "Easier to put a president on leave than a CEO".
I wasn't outing anyone, the founder who shall not be named is the only married one as plenty of people pointed out from the start.
Also, for context to the original comment, the founder we are discussing here used to be CEO but switched roles a while back.
https://github.com/blog/1761-new-year-new-ceo-for-github
I'm not terribly clear on US company governance and GitHub is atypical, so mojombo's new role is a bit fuzzy to me.
Which is to say, you're fuzzy on it because it's fuzzy. There are no strict rules as to the structure of senior corporate officers.
Most of you probably have no idea how some thoughtless comments on a forum can cause grief, pain and fear to intensify. Making hurtful comments, making assumptions, and taking sides does nothing to help anyone involved. It can only hurt someone, and is completely unnecessary (other than for sating a debased wish to feed on the suffering of others). Whatever happens does not concern you and will not be affected by you in any positive way.
So, pretty please, for the sake of all the people who are directly and indirectly affected by this story, STOP. SPECULATING.
I have (adult) friends who dance for fun, play with hula hoops, play with poi balls and lots of other things. There is nothing wrong with these things.
No clear management of any kind is a big problem, but the rest of what you say is, as you put it, pretty ridiculous.
This pervasive immaturity does tend to result in things going sour, and for some reason it always tends to happen in a very dramatic and public manner.
You contact a full internal investigation, and you do not issue any statements biased either way until you have full information from that investigation. At the end of the investigation, you either bring back the accused employees if they appear innocent, or lay them off if they appear guilty.
This is absolutely the right thing to do. I understand the Internet would like companies to go in with pitchforks before investigating. That is wrong. In the majority of discrimination cases, the accuser is wrong (for example, the accused is an equal-opportunity-asshole, but the accuser feels targeted). When the accuser is right, you want to know the level and details before acting in any irreversible way (and a public statement, aside from potentially being libel, is irreversible).
The Internet's attention span is the Internet's problem -- not github's.
Too many red flags in Julie's version. But I will wait for the complete story.
Having said that, seems that GitHub recognizes that they screwed up. The tone of their response seemed fair and balanced, and they acted fast by removing the folks involved. Too bad it got to this point, but it's a good sign.
Yeah, let's kill all the fun.
> You do not allow strangers to walk around the office
Except that she wasn't a stranger, she was the wife of a founder. Most old employees probably know her.
Not necessarily. I've worked at plenty of offices where spouses occasionally showed up, including mine. The problem is that she acts like she hold a position of authority.
I made a vague statement, but I think "reverting a commit" is definitely minimizing what she claims happened
I don't recall reading about an uninvited advance, so if this is something new you know about could you dump a citation here. I do recall a home visit which was 'awkward' and the offending party 'hesitated' to leave. That stuff happens, in and outside of work. Remember the parties here are emotionally invested and biased. We should not consider such details trivial, but they are considerably emotionally invested in this. The way it was phrased in the original article was he hesitated to leave. That's obviously up to the reader to interpret. Let's not dramatize that into an 'univited advance'.
I can not see it reasonable to fire employee for asking another one on date once, even if it was awkward and unexpected.
Maybe I'm weird, but I do not see it employers business to police relationships of their adult employees, as long as they do not cross the line described above.
No denying or spinning what happened, no victim blaming; just "we fucked up, we're going to do everything we can to fix it, and Julie is great". That's all I expect. Own up, fix the problem, and protect the victim.
Let's look at what Horvath claims:
> character started being discussed in inappropriate places like on pull requests and issues
It's unclear what exactly this means, and in most cases, bringing up someone's character in PRs is certainly inappropriate. Does it happen? Yes, it happens all the time, regardless of gender. A PR comment like "it's a bit naive to assume these conditions will be met in this instruction - please fix" is technically bringing up someone's character inappropriately. She never claimed (at least as quoted by TC) that sexist or intimidating things were brought up in PRs/issues - just that "character started being discussed".
> She calls her colleagues’ response to her own work and the work of other female GitHub employees a “serious problem.”
Again, pretty unclear. The response to her work MAY have had nothing to do with her gender or any kind of personal/social conflict, but rather based solely on performance. If such was the case, then I'd say colleagues tend to "respond" to other people's work all day long. I honestly can't say the "response" in this case was completely benign, but again, the article and direct quotes certainly don't seem to point at anything specific.
> she struggled to feel welcome.
This is a common feeling in pretty much any workplace or environment, regardless of who you are.
> she did her best to distance herself from the founder’s wife, as well as the founder, for fear of being caught up in an unhealthy situation.
This is mentioned before anything else regarding the founder or the founder's wife. It sounds like (at least the way it's presented in the article) some kind of animosity was felt even before any real interaction between the parties. That could be based on anything (including possibly Horvath's own prejudgement). The truth is we don't know because we aren't given any more details.
> almost immediately the conversation that I thought was supposed to be causal turned into something very inappropriate. She began telling me about how she informs her husband’s decision-making at GitHub, how I better not leave GitHub and write something bad about them, and how she had been told by her husband that she should intervene with my relationship to be sure I was ‘made very happy’ so that I wouldn’t quit and say something nasty about her husband’s company because ‘he had worked so hard.’... the wife went on to claim that she was responsible for hires at GitHub, and asked Horvath to explain to her what she was working on.
Just for sake of argument, here's a possible conversation that could be twisted into fitting the above description:
"Glad you could join us for drinks! My husband works hard to create an amazing workplace at GitHub, and even though I'm not a part of the company myself, I enjoy meeting the employees and want to help people feel welcome the best way I can. My husband told me you're fairly new... what is it you do? That's great. I just want to make sure you're very happy at GitHub. In some way, I feel responsible for helping make sure the company treats everyone well. If there's anything that could be better, I might be able to put in a word with him. The last thing they'd want is for you to have a bad experience and leave the company."
That's just an example of something I wouldn't be surprised to hear from a founder's spouse in a startup environment.
> The wife also claimed to employ “spies” inside of GitHub, and claimed to be able to, again according to Horvath, read GitHub employees’ private chat-room logs, which only employees are supposed to have access to
I agree this is definitely crossing a line, but of course the wife only "claimed" to have this access. That doesn't mean she does, and I could easily see it being said in a low voice (trying to win over someone's "exclusive" or "secret" friendly confidence) along the lines of:
"I'm not officially with GitHub, but I have ears. I try to keep close tabs on what employees are saying about the company in the chat rooms and company chit-chat."
The next few events are pretty vague. It includes rumors, a random profession of love (and rejection) outside the workplace (if she had a problem with trespassing, she should have called the cops; the male engineer's reaction at work - if true - should have been corrected by HR, but it sounds like it was never brought up to HR by Horvath as it should have been), Horvath "feeling threatened", and "the founder accus[ing] her of threatening his wife", followed by the wife "sitting close to Horvath". Lots of generalities.
Finally it bubbles to the point of Horvath claiming "The next thing I knew the wife was in my face at my work station verbally attacking me"
From my own experience, perfectly civil conversations can often be turned into "verbal attacks" later if it helps a person's case. I'm not saying that's what happened here, but the details are just so vague. What was the conversation about?
As for the hula hooping... you're telling me that two women hula hooping to music in the workplace is perfectly appropriate, but when the other people nearby (who are going to be mostly males if the majority of employees are male - go figure) suddenly notice, that's the inappropriate part? Really?
I certainly won't say that Horvath is making this stuff up, and it does sound like some inappropriate actions did occur and she should be upset. But I will say that based on the "evidence" presented in the TC article, GitHub is not guilty of all the claims "beyond a shadow of a doubt."
I would hope the men in question have enough self control to ignore women moving their bodies around. You are basically using the same logic as countries that require burqas in public. This has already been covered by feminist movements in this country. It is seriously a sign of how backwards the tech industry is in regards to social equality that this sort of basic stuff is missing from general knowledge.
"What I did have a problem with is the line of men sitting on one bench facing the hoopers and gawking at them"
But it's important to remember these could go the other way as well. Horvath may still feel some loyalty to github and be sugar coating these events. Or you could be right and she is blowing them out of proportion.
Could you elaborate on this? In the work environments I've been in, people go to the gym or outside to work out. I've never been in a work environment where it's acceptable to do your exercising in the office space. What are you talking about -- yoga, bicep curls, jogging, jumping jacks? I've worked at extremely liberal companies but that kind of stuff doesn't happen..
> and they need to feel comfortable to do that without being turned into sex objects
I don't think it's a person's right to hula hoop in an office and then be upset when they attract the attention of the rest of the office, regardless of sex on both sides. It's an unusual thing to do, so it will draw eyes.
I think Julie should have spoken to both groups, telling the guys it's not cool to gawk at women, and tell the women if they want to hula hoop, do it some place more private.
Indeed. And just in case men still gawked at them, she could have brought some free niqab to work for them to wear.
The point of talking to the women isn't to help the men exercise better restraint (which extrapolated to an extreme would require a niqab).
It's that if the women are doing something in the office, out in the open that people stopping to watch would make other people feel uncomfortable, then perhaps it shouldn't be done out in plain view of everyone.
Like, if you are trying to have a private conversation with your Dr on the phone about your recent herpes outbreak, don't talk in the lunchroom and get pissed that I listened in.
We can come up with counter examples, and/or take things to the extreme, however my point is that exercising some restraint and a little professionalism would make situations like this non existent.
> If hula hooping women make you uncomfortable
It wasn't women hula hooping made someone feel uncomfortable.
It was men "gawking" at the women hula hooping, that made Julie Horvath feel uncomfortable.
I hope you understand the difference.
> If hula hooping women make you uncomfortable, that's unfortunate, but also totally your problem. Ditto breastfeeding and suchlike.
Tangentially related--another key point you're missing, this is an office.
No one should have to feel uncomfortable at the workplace, because the office is for people to work and be productive, not hula hoop.
Things like hula hooping (I'm guessing), yoga, tai chi, Zumba, etc, are there to improve worker productivity. If these programs run counter to that and actually hinder productivity by making some employees feel uncomfortable, then those programs may not be the right fit for the workplace.
I think you're wrong about that.
What about religious fundamentalists uncomfortable with gay people?
What about conservatives uncomfortable with breastfeeding?
What about chauvinists uncomfortable with women in leadership positions?
There is no right to 'not feel uncomfortable'. There is no right to 'not to feel offended'.
What you have to do is choose who you are going to offend.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrA5zL9u5NE&feature=player_de...
But the point is that hula-hooping, or shirtless weight-lifting, shouldn't be prohibited just because some people gawk and others are made uncomfortable.
If you want to sexualise hula-hooping or weight-lifting, fine, just don't use that point of view as the basis of a complaint.
* many were; it's just he was the guy I was thinking of for this example
You believe it's okay for people to be at the office without their shirts on?
Where do you draw the line-- what behaviors should be prohibited at the office, simply because they might make others uncomfortable?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzkCA5EyRDQ&feature=player_de...
I've seen yoga, weights, and those things you compress, basically stuff to get the blood flowing again. Hoola hooping is probably a bit more admittedly, but not that extreme. Especially since it sounds like it was happening outside.
> I don't think it's a person's right to hula hoop in an office and then be upset when they attract the attention of the rest of the office, regardless of sex on both sides. It's an unusual thing to do, so it will draw eyes.
You are missing the point. Horvath wasn't the one hoola hooping. She was a bystander, and the gawking was making her feel uncomfortable because it implies a work environment where it is ok to sexually objectify your co-workers (or that seems to be how she took it). But this is an(other) HR failure.
What? This is a case where two people did something unusual in a work environment and garnered the attention of their coworkers. That's expected. It's unexpected that you think it necessarily implies sexual objectification.
Go stand in the middle of your office tomorrow and hoola hoop. Whatever sex you are, and whatever sex your coworkers are, I promise you'll get looks for long enough to be considered gawking :) If you choose to complain to HR that you were sexually objectified, well, that's up to you.
I'm not saying it Wasn't sexual objectification, just that to gawk at something unusual in the office doesn't necessarily imply sexual objectification.
Did this ever say it was in their office? All it said was they were hula-hooping to some music and the response from the bench-full of male employees was embarrassing. If it were outdoors, it wouldn't be unusual.
Either way, in what world do you see something out of the ordinary — but not strange — happening at work and line up to gawk at it?
> It's unexpected that you think it necessarily implies sexual objectification.
It's certainly possible for a bench-full of 20-something programmers to sexually objectify someone. Julie was made to feel uncomfortable, and since she's the best eye witness to the event we've got, there's no reason to doubt her testimony.
Not everything needs to be picked apart. Sometimes, if a bunch of guys are gawking at women, that's what they're doing. You don't need to stick up for them.
Yes, but that testifies only to her personal feelings at that moment, which are not the definitive measure stick for anything.
Congratulations, you've decided to not look at out of the ordinary things for fear of implications of sexual objectification.
But me -- if weird stuff happens in or outside of my office, I'm gonna watch.
> It's certainly possible for a bench-full of 20-something programmers to sexually objectify someone
My last comment said "I'm not saying it Wasn't sexual objectification,"
> Julie was made to feel uncomfortable, and since she's the best eye witness to the event we've got, there's no reason to doubt her testimony
The number of witnesses has no bearing on the truth, validity or bias of the statement given by one witness.
> You don't need to stick up for them
I'm not. I'm saying it's too early for those of you championing Julie to get your pitchforks out.
My workplace has people doing yoga and dance classes in meeting rooms over lunch.
And if you started hanging around the meeting rooms to ogle the people doing it you'd be having some conversations about your workplace behaviour.
There's no way to prove or disprove the fact that they were 'ogling' rather than merely watching though - Horvath's judgement was likely biased by how upset she was with everybody else's (fuck, mine would be if I'd been as epically shat on by an employer as she felt she had been) and we don't have any other data.
I've done some minor (sedentiary) exercises in the office. For something that requires a bit more space, I wouldn't do it next to someone's desk of course. I don't know what Githib's office layout is like, but the way I read the hula hooping, it sounded like it was outside, in a courtyard or roof terrace maybe, or in a recreation area.
> It's an unusual thing to do, so it will draw eyes.
There's still a big difference between attention and gawking.
I've seen plenty of other recreational activities in offices, like playing darts, pool, computer games, etc. I don't see hula hooping as particularly out of the ordinary. And gawking at your co-workers is just rude.
If you are hula hooping out in the open, I don't think it's fair to expect people to look away, no more than it is to expect people to look away if you were playing the hula hoop minigame in Wii Fit.
Gawking and making people feel uncomfortable = bad. Watching coworkers make fools of themselves = priceless.
> You are basically advocating the position of countries that require burqas in public.
Slippery Slope My Friend, Slippery Slope.
But the OP's comment: "As for the hula hooping... you're telling me that two women hula hooping to music in the workplace is perfectly appropriate, but when the other people nearby (who are going to be mostly males if the majority of employees are male - go figure) suddenly notice, that's the inappropriate part? Really?".
Is the part that bothered me, they are implying that the inappropriate part is the women hoola hooping. The logic there that I have a problem with is that it's the women's fault for being attractive, and that the man isn't at as much fault for being attracted to it because the women are doing something attractive.
Which is the same logic used to enforce burqa laws. I'm not saying the OP's thinking will lead to burqas or anything, merely that it's the same axiomatic view of the world. Basically, I never invoked a slippery slope, I was drawing a parallel in axioms.
As an example on an actual slippery slope, to argue against gay marriage and say then people will marry dogs! It's implying that because we are going to change marriages definition it will just change to anything. When in actuality we have a specific argument based off of axioms of equality that lead us to the conclusion that marriage should be between two consenting adults. An argument similar to the one I made would be: "The same logic that lets different races marry also means we should let similar genders marry".
I totally agree with this.
It's akin to people saying things like "...asked to be assaulted because she was at the club/dressed provacatively/is a flirt."
What isn't clear is if the hulahoopers felt uncomfortable, or was it just Horvath. Again speculating wildly, I wonder if she is more sensitive to gender issues (perhaps even classified as overly sensitive)?
How about it's nobody's fault because there is nothing fucking wrong about people doing something in public and others watching them???
However, because Horvath was already in a very upset emotional state about man-woman issues at GitHub and her own situation at the company, she was in a position to read a lot of meaning into this situation that most people wouldn't.
What are you even talking about? People find each other attractive. Most commonly between sexes. It happens in workplaces. Get over it.
> You are basically using the same logic as countries that require burqas in public.
Of course, because saying that "if you do attention-attracting activities in public, people are going to look, deal with it" is the same as saying "women must cover themselves head to toe in public."
If women are doing something that involves a lot of pelvic gyrations, then yes, it is absolutely understandable AND acceptable that men will stare. It's not the men turning them into "sex objects" or whatever, the women already did that. And it's healthy, and normal, and most red-blooded men and women not only find it acceptable, they enjoy it. If you have the mindset that if women are dancing a man may only glance at it for a few seconds, I pity you and whatever caused you to turn out that way.
And this was at a party. If someone is so repressed that watching men stare at dancing women at a party makes them uncomfortable, they should stay home. Or move to a burqa-wearing country.
More to the point:
Yes because women moving their hips means they automatically want to be considered for their sexual characteristics. /sarcasm
Admittedly, if this was at a party and they were hula hooping then sure no problem at all. But just because a person moves their body around in an office doesn't mean they are looking for sexual partners! It's not that "a man may only glance at it for a few seconds". It's that in some environments (like office ones) they should have the self control to not care what other people are doing with their bodies.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7408466
> Yes because women moving their hips means they automatically want to be considered for their sexual characteristics. /sarcasm
Actually, yes, they do. If you don't know this then either you're very inexperienced with women or you're the kind of guy they willingly keep in the dark about what they want.
Your comment reads very, very predatory.
> why is it that women find the need to flaunt their "sexual characteristic" at a workplace party (or any party for that matter)?
Women, men, children - everyone likes attention. The best kind of attention for a sexually mature person is sexual attention from a person that they desire. To display yourself at your best and be appreciated by someone you like is one of the best feelings there is. Not that you would know anything about that, the best feeling you've had was while watching "pron".
> Is this behavior common among women of all cultures?
Yes (duh). In fact, it is also pervasive among animals and even insects. I know, I know, who'd have thought?
> Has it been common throughout the ages?
Yes (duh).
> Is it a result of women's peculiar biology or perhaps of another mysterious dynamics?
Only someone who calls themselves "pron" would think this is in any way peculiar. To not desire attention from the opposite sex (let's leave homosexuals out of this for now) would be extremely peculiar.
> Is this practice commonly regarded as pleasant among human females?
See answer #1. Being appreciated feels good. People like to feel good. You do the math, genius.
> And what is it exactly that they want if they hope to achieve it with this colorful behavior
Anything ranging from the momentary pleasure of being appreciated, to finding somebody to love and spend the rest of their life with.
> I once heard that human females may want a stable male partner to help rear their young;
You haven't heard the half of it, son. What human females ideally want is a man who will provide the best genes for their offspring and be the best provider. Such a combination being rather rare, often females try to secure a gene-donor and provider separately. Typically, maladjusted men like you, who are, to put it kindly, not attractive to women, end up in the role of provider, and the desirable men get to have their offspring raised by the clueless providers.
> is this "hula-hooping at a party" the best evolutionary strategy to obtain that goal?
Replace "hula-hooping at a party" with "showcasing their assets" and even you should be able to figure it out. Push up bras, high heels, corsets, hoop skirts, dancing, anything that tends to attract the attention of the opposite sex, helps to attract the best mate possible.
Any further questions? Although I don't even know why I'm trying at this point. Something about horses and water comes to mind.
EDIT to answer the question you added later:
> Also, males of lesser species often display their buttocks prominently to attract females. Is this accepted behavior among humans, too?
As a matter of fact, women love muscular legs and buttocks on a man. The far more common "massive upper body, scrawny legs" physique isn't nearly as attractive to women. Strong legs are an excellent indicator of overall strength and good genes; in many primitive tribes, people explicitly desire "strong legs" in a mate. Even in older English literature you'll often find statements like "the lines of his/her legs showed good breeding" and so on.
Displaying the bare buttocks would normally get a man put in jail, so not in public, no. However, many men do the second-best thing by wearing form-fitting clothing. And women love it. Not too tight, though, that tends to attract the wrong kind of attention.
> Is it common practice at GitHub?
I seriously doubt whether anyone at GitHub does the kind of training necessary to build strong legs and glutes, so I doubt it. However, you can see this behaviour on display in other environments, like the gym, the beach, etc.
Your answers to the questions are actually quite wrong. Women flaunting sexual characteristics in a professional environment is neither common today, nor has it been common in the West throughout the ages. You clearly confuse sexual desire with when and how people pursue it, you are completely blind to social pressure, and unaware of the nuances of sex (most importantly you're confusing sex with sexuality). I fear that if you don't get that long due spanking soon you have some serious lawsuits awaiting you in the future, and possibly some jail time, especially if you keep taking sexual cues from insects.
Perhaps it may seem baffling to your juvenile mind, but I adopted my screen name over twenty years ago, well before the internet, and back when it was just my acronym and had no other uses whatsoever.
Explain to me what "ages" have had a "professional environment". The "professional environment" you speak of has only arisen in the last century or so, if that.
Why do you think male attention deserves jail time? Did you try to pay a woman a compliment once and did it so clumsily that she called security? Memories like that can be hard to get over, I imagine.
> Women flaunting sexual characteristics in a professional environment is neither common today
Of course not, like hula-hooping at an office party, or wearing a nice suit or dress, or high heels. But again, perhaps you've only ever worked with aforementioned sweatpant- and sneaker-wearers.
> nor has it been common in the West throughout the ages
Right... no man in the West ever seduced (or got seduced by) his secretary or female co-worker. You must live a remarkably sheltered life.
> You clearly confuse sexual desire with when and how people pursue it
You clearly have no clue that people pursue sex whenever they can, as much as they can get away with despite your "social pressures." I wonder why... could it be that you are remarkably unattractive?
> you are completely blind to social pressure
I'm not the "completely blind" one here....
> I fear that if you don't get that long due spanking soon you have some serious lawsuits awaiting you in the future, and possibly some jail time
Don't worry "pron," unlike you, I'm always aware of when my attention and advances are desired or not. Your mother clearly knew you were hopeless and just told you to not even try, ever.
> especially if you keep taking sexual cues from insects.
Really? You're going to just make stuff up now? Saying that insects display sexual behaviour === taking sexual cues from insects?
> Perhaps it may seem baffling to your juvenile mind, but I adopted my screen name over twenty years ago, well before the internet, and back when it was just my acronym and had no other uses whatsoever.
Well, good for you! It's strangely prophetic and very apt, if that's true.
If you're old enough to have chosen your username 20 years ago there's no hope for you and I've really been wasting my time. I did in fact think you were a clueless younger guy. Bye now.
A bystander gets no such luxury, and if the concern is an intrusive thought which makes them feel threatened... then maybe they're not suitably mature to participate in social endeavors.
It seems like a pretty reasonable (albeit one-sided) complaint except for this one point - but the fact that she was threatened by that, casts some small measure of doubt on the plausible sanity of rest of the thing.
Noone is saying that women shouldn't be hula-hooping, we're just saying that it's not wrong for others (men included) to watch them if they do.
You, on the other hand, are saying that men should avert their gazes to avoid making women uncomfortable, which is much closer to the burqa logic, albeit with genders reversed.
Admittedly we only have Horvath's version, and to be fair she was dealing with two (three?) other people who were apparently completely out of line.
I'm saying both genders should be to do some hoola hooping with no one feeling like anyone is being sexually objectified. There are comments in this little subthread about how people think this whole little episode is ridiculous regardless of genders. Those are the people who work in environments where they feel safe to do these things, the fact that Horvath apparently didn't is a problem, whether caused by github in general, or specific people with in it, the jury is still out.
But my point was that this event can not be marginalized due to the logic that it's not the men's fault because the women were being seductive. It can be subject to scrutiny because of the personal feelings involved.
Speculating wildly here: perhaps they were/are swingers?
But in either case she shouldn't have to feel that way about people in the company. The reason she likely feels different is because of her gender, and the way the founder and his wife treated her because of her gender.
But there are potential explanations of situations in which anyone would be uncomfortable and not just Horvath.
It's surprising to me that a lot of comments here are jumping to conclusions that can't be drawn from the lack of facts.
Your example cannot be twisted into a reasonable description of "very inappropriate".
Overall your comment reads like you don't want this story to be true and are trying to minimise every part of it. Which you are free to do, but you could have just said "I don't want this story to be true".
Frankly, my purpose in providing a plausible defense for GitHub is that the TechCrunch story itself only presents a single side of the story, though I understand that sometimes that's necessary for someone to come forward and draw the necessary attention to an injustice like this.
It is, however, easy to read the TechCrunch article and immediately point 100% of the blame on GitHub when we don't know the facts. I think it's helpful to step back and look at the accusations for what they are: accusations.
As others have pointed out, GitHub's response says very little in terms of confirming or denying the accusations, but it does say that they are professional enough to take this seriously.
Horvath may be doing GitHub (or various people at GitHub) a favor by going light on some details - the facts may be far worse than they appear on the surface. She (or the TechCrunch writers) may also be skimping on details in order to paint GitHub with broad strokes. There are numerous plausible motives in either case, but I won't speculate as to the motives here as I've learned it doesn't help to spread false accusations.
It isn't fair to accuse Horvath of being anything less than 100% truthful, and by the same token, it isn't fair to assume everything she said is 100% truthful without GitHub coming forward with their side of the story.
Again, I apologize for my comment earlier leading to speculation where we (as the public) really have no say in the matter since we have so few facts. It's an unfortunate situation for everyone involved and I hope it can be resolved in a positive way for both parties. For me, at least some of the followup comments here have been helpful in better understanding some of the ideas involved in this story - e.g., sexism, appropriate handling of conflicts in the workplace, roles of founders and spouses, etc (in general terms, not necessarily in connection with this story).
The parts that did seem clearly gender-related to me were the coworker who replaced her code after she turned him down, and the thing about hula hooping. Those do indicate a serious failure to make a good workplace culture. But so far, that problem looks separate from her conflict with the founder and his wife.
The founder getting his wife involved made a serious mistake. Agreed with most everyone else here, the CEO made the right call.
I'm now trying to understand though, what precipitated this whole mess. Julie talks about github as a "boys-club" culture and that her character was under attack in pull requests and issues, but doesn't give any more details.
Julie talks about passive aggressive behavior from a coworker, but this was while her ordeal with one of the founders was going on.
So what triggered this collapse?
http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/15/julie-ann-horvath-describes...
First of all, the main theme that resonates with me is that no company is immune to these things no matter how much "special" or "different" they are.
At this point, I don't completely accept everything Horvath is saying nor do I believe what she is saying is all lies. The truth as is always the case is never black and white. What I do accept is that there is definitely serious issues that need to be taken a look at that have been brought up.
Github did not need to respond and I believe they responded quite well. There response cannot be point by point rebuttal or a statement of denial.
It's a measured response stating that they are taking action to look into the issues. Putting a founder on leave is a major decision and sends the message to Github's employees and the rest of the community that they are taking this seriously. My takeaway from the response was recognition that Horvath's assertions are with weight and they will not shy away from investigation.
There is no doubt that Horvath's assertions have made Github deal with this. Having a founder be involved would likely have swept all of this under the rug.
I commend Horath's for speaking out. I am certain it wasn't an easy decision and very painful.
I also commend Github for having the CEO write this response instead of hiding behind a shield of legalese.
I do believe something will come out from this for the positive. There are too many great people within Github that do not need to be there that will now have an opportunity to take a reality check and assess for themselves Horvath's claims and drive for change.
The founder may be the most in the hot seat. Github may use this as the "last straw" of many straws that may have been already bulging at the camel's back to exit the founder.
It's good to see that things are changing in GH.
Github have a very fine line to walk. They don't have traditional shareholders to make happy. At the end of the day, all they have is their brand to protect.
Ask Microsoft how important their brand is after releasing Windows ME. Or Blackberry just after the iPhone came out.
Clearly something has happened, but they have to not only find out what happened, but to also be transparent and show that they are trying to find out what happened.
I think its the best response you can expect given the circumstances.
They also need to protect their company from a potential lawsuit.
I think this whole situation looks like a misunderstanding snowballing into a tsunami. Founder's wife takes her for drinks, gets drunk, talks of her ass and says inappropriate stuff. I would just chalk it to drunkenness and forget the whole episode. It would've ended right there.
On the other hand, if the lawsuit is for enough money, it can bankrupt the company: a huge award to the plaintiff, lawyer fees, executives tied up in court instead of running the company, etc. Their investors may not be interested in covering big losses; they might cut their losses and move on to the next up and coming company.
San Diego Sea World and the killer whale or Blackberry & Palm mobile devices are examples of irreparable brand damage.
What's the going price for a Microsoft Zune player?
Github has substantial cash in the bank; it's not going to be significantly harmed by an employment suit.
I just don't see much good coming from putting this in the open like this. Sue them then do the book deal or tc article
If it was your company, surely you'd want them to try and solve it internally first?
Or conversely, name names, go all in. Put the bad actors on notice and let what happens happen. It's not libel if it's true. Just all the rumors, speculation, etc. doesn't seem good for any thing. Not everyone involved with GitHub is an a-hole, at least I hope not..
All things being equal, I have no idea what the timelines are, I have no idea what reasonable things were done or not, I have no idea who is on leave or not. Yet in this thread strangers are questioning the marriage decisions of other people... It's an ugly story and it brings out ugly in the community. Sue everyone involved and if you win, future companies will certainly be different. My off the cuff immediate take away? Be really careful with the ultra social folks, big blog or big twitter following and they might just blow up in your face in a very public way.
it is relatively easy to apologize, and say "we will investigate". but, how does something like this happen, if it did happen, without people knowing? Ms Horvath stated she raised the issue, yet it took a public scandal to actually issue a "we will investigate" statement?
at the very least, IMO, GitHub must get rid of the problematic co-founder.
Makes perfect sense if you have a public watching that will see anything else as protecting the offenders and tear you to pieces.
This mereley proves that they cannot actually disprove the allegations, since that is the only other course of action that won't make you look bad.
Unless we see confirmation that it has actually happened, I'm not going to believe it. Statements are easy. That's just damage control. We need to see the actual action.
I predict that the founder in question stays away for a month or so, and then is exonerated and let back in.
edit: another thing that would help - it is to have some older, like in the their 40s, people in the workforce. I mean it may be useful to have old farts like us, who've been through sterile no-harassment environment of BigCo's, and who would be able to spot inappropriate behavior even from a couple floors away, and whose mere presence would calm the hormones at least a couple notches down :)
if he had been silent or refuted the statements (maybe on advice from their lawyers), would that undermine Julie's credibility?
if so, why?
But no, your guess makes a lot more sense.
Except for anything regarding any sort of sexism.
The post only states that the founder's wife will no longer be permitted in the office. It neither confirms nor denies anything. This post is cleverly crafted but is not a confirmation of any of Horvath's claims.
Pretty much a full admission that everything that Julie said is true.
This is great news, but putting these people on leave seems to be too nice. It's clear that these two people obey ethics that are in direct oppposition to the healthy growth of the company. Surely they don't want them back?
> The founder’s wife discussed in the media reports has never had hiring or firing power at GitHub and will no longer be permitted in the office.
Why did it take a Techcrunch article to reach this decision? Didn't anyone at Github see anything wrong with that founder's wife doing what she did, according to Julie's statement?
> GitHub has grown incredibly fast over the past two years, bringing a new set of challenges. Nearly a year ago we began a search for an experienced HR Lead and that person came on board in January 2014
Doesn't appear so. They did get an HR person, but an experienced one? Not a chance. No experienced HR person would have let any of that get as far as it got. That HR person should probably be put on leave or be fired as well.
> Chris Wanstrath > > CEO & Co-Founder
This narrows down the choices: the "founder" who is the cause for all this drama is either PJ Hyett or Tom Preston-Werner.
> that person came on board in January 2014
most of the things that had happened predated the HR person coming on, but you do have a point, the wife thing should of stopped since January
should have stopped
> Pretty much a full admission that everything that Julie said is true.
> This is great news, but putting on leave seems to be too nice. It's clear that these two people obey ethics that are in direct oppposition to the healthy growth of the company. Surely they don't want them back?
It's pretty standard practice to place employees on paid leave while serious complaints are investigated. You don't want to fire them until you have a pretty solid case as they might sue, but likewise you don't want them in the office.
The correct answer to every single scenario is "suspend pending investigation."
Employees? Sure. Founders? I've not heard of that before.
Gary Friedman is an excellent example (I'm lazy, so HuffPo: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/17/gary-friedman-resto...) of a pro forma separation of a major shareholder/chairman/CEO from the company.
One of the major ideas behind suspending employees for investigations is to eliminate their ability to influence the investigation. Also, it's a immediate precautionary measure to prevent the behavior from continuing should the complaint be found to be valid. In that sense, it protects the employer by keeping them at a distance in the short-term. They can also point to it in the press and in future legal proceedings (if any) as part of a strategy of showing that they took the complaint seriously from the beginning.
It sounds like GitHub is going to have to become more stale and corporate to survive as a larger company, which is inevitable, but hastened by their own choices.
What point are you trying to make here? Are you a classical music and hefeweizen type of employee typically? Or maybe based out of Seattle, in which case you'd prefer a more grunge/PBR culture?
Come on now...
/s
Now we know what the real problems are in this industry: taste in music and beer!
I have no idea whose side of the story is accurate, but there was really no other way for Github to play this, whether they were in the wrong or Julie was in the wrong.
>Pretty much a full admission that everything that Julie said is true.
Lynch! Lynch! Lynch!
The individuals, while allegedly shitlords in terms of their behaviour, being gone may eliminate 2 problems, but honestly they're products of an overall culture. In a healthy company you wouldn't have a guy (allegedly) reverting commits or shittalking individuals in comments because they wouldn't fuck him for very long after the first few efforts, because their peers or line manager would have said, "dude, not cool".
[Edited for clarity]
People make mistakes; they seem to get a lot of other things right, so maybe the relationship is salvageable - and all he needs is some time off.
>Doesn't appear so. They did get an HR person, but an experienced one? Not a chance. No experienced HR person would have let any of that get as far as it got. That HR person should probably be put on leave or be fired as well.
Jeez. They hired HR in January; the company has 240 employees many of whom remote. Based on her story, Julie Horvath's relationship was already poisoned by the time they hired this HR person.
The screwups were bad but I doubt GH culture is unfixable.
Any guess?
Just last Friday his wife's startup is accepted to Techstars NYC, and she is going to be at NYC. It may be a good timing for Tom to take a leave to be with his wife.
Just guessing here. I could totally be wrong. No offense to Tom; I looked up to him.
> Pretty much a full admission that everything that Julie said is true.
Hardly. It just says they are paying attention to the accusations and taking things seriously. I think they responded in a very positive way, and more transparently than I would have expected. But "we're looking into it" in no way validates or admits any fault on their behalf at this point.
> This is great news, but putting these people on leave seems to be too nice.
So they should just fire them based on one person's complaints? If everything Julie accused them of is true, I think they should be fired, but that doesn't mean they should go off half-cocked, firing everyone involved until they can investigate and determine exactly what happened.
And that doesn't happen over night.
No, it isn't. It's standard operating procedure pretty much everywhere to put employees on leave while an investigation is conducted. It shouldn't be construed as an admission at all.
GitHub is a business and they aren't dumb enough to not consult one or more lawyers before releasing their statement. If they are in the wrong, I would have to imagine their best play would be to compensate Julie behind the scene and have her formally come out and say GitHub is doing everything they can to ensure this doesn't happen again.
And don't lawyers frequently tell their clients not to apologize (even if they feel they ought to), since that may be construed as an admission of wrongdoing in a subsequent legal proceeding?
Maybe he's just sorry because she's obviously hurt and things didn't work out for the best?
In any case, the company did wrong her by allowing an environment to exist in which these kinds of behaviors were tolerated. The actions that the CEO took today should have been taken a long time ago.
The cheapest way to win a lawsuit is for it never to be filed in the first place.
All in all, I'm really saddened.
I'm strongly inclined to believe that what Horvath said is true and that these two people should be laid off, but that shouldn't happen before an investigation. If they're not guilty, they should be exonerated; if they are, they should be dismissed with the full weight of evidence, so they can't paint themselves as innocent martyrs.
The HR person has been on the job for a minimum of 31 business days and a maximum of 53. Horvath joined two years ago. Unless you are a GitHub insider, you currently are working off knowledge from a single source in which the information was provided by a person with a specific agenda. It is malicious to call for the HR person's job given your almost complete dearth of information.
Julie Horvath follows both Chris Wanstrath and PJ Hyett on Twitter, but not Tom Preston-Werner (at least as shown by Twitter's "Followed by people you follow" banner). Of course, this could just be a coincidence.
This is a terrible assumption to make. This line is basically saying "we're taking this seriously", because if they said anything less, then regardless of the truth of the matter, they'd be skinned alive.
Ironically, it's knee-jerk black and white comments like yours that create this kind of press release. You've already convicted them in your mind and are looking for any excuse to execute them. I mean fuck, you expect an HR person to come on board and within a month "not have let any of that get as far as it got"? Are they supposed to have invented a time-machine?
Yet, if such a thing is construed as an admission of guilt in the greater "court of public opinion" then there's an incentive to actively avoid any attempt at transparency.
Life is stickier than tabloids lead you to believe, and in such a case as I've suggested, it's not hard to see the founders talking about how 'bob' should take a brief sabbatical while the Internet Hate Machine looks for another target. The other founders might love 'bob' and want to spare him from internet fury. Or they might loathe him and were looking for a way to put him in his place. Or they might be taking a pragmatic PR-smart move. Or 'bob' might have said "I was looking to take leave and go to Europe for a holiday, this would be a good time, eh?". Or a dozen other situations. We just don't know.
And that's just fire-fighting - if you want Github to do a meaningful investigation, then you need to have the investigators being as dispassionate as possible, rather than doing it while fending off the hordes at the gate. And since a founder is involved, the investigators pretty much have to be the other founders. And that meaningful investigation includes talking to staff outside of the bubble of hysteria that's currently going on. And that meaningful investigation may indeed largely exonerate Github.
The thing is that you don't have enough information to pre-convict the way you have.
And, frankly, on a personal note: fuck this automatic calling for the sacking of someone when thing go awry. It's truly fucked up. Re-evaluate? No. Retrain? No. Reassign? No. "Someone has to suffer" for the mob's one-eyed rage. Fuck that shit. Sometimes a sacking is the appropriate course of action, but that's not for the mob to decide, because the mob doesn't have anything like close access to the story.
I am amazed at how many people don't recognize this. Even if the entire thing were completely made up, this would still be the only acceptable response github could give.
They could have been completely opaque and done nothing but investigate the matter, without any disclosure. It's a brave choice to be open because, even implicitly, admitting a problem can taken as admitting liability.
At the very least, she seems a bit...attention hungry. Knowing nothing about the situation or people involved I am taking her accusations with a huge grain of salt.
Man, talk about CSI justice. Sadly, I think this episode is a two-parter. You'll have to tune in next time, sorry!
It reads more like an admission that at least some of what Julie said is not immediately known to be untrue and that they have to check it out. Hence the, y'know, investigation.
Wow - if anyone wants to see an example of an article being overanalyzed and then terrible conclusions being made out of it, this is a model comment for that.
Each of your supposed inferences is critical and harsh. Stop being so cynical - it will help you. The world is still a nice place..
https://twitter.com/tpdubs2/status/415224900782014464
> TheresaPrestonWerner @tpdubs2
> Found the best, most comfortable chair at GitHub HQ. Office seems pretty empty today.
Among several other tweets here:
https://twitter.com/search?q=github%20from%3Atpdubs2&src=typ...
The company I work for often has spouses and significant others (including the CEO's) around either for drinks in the evening, or just for fun.
They don't have any power or influence in the company beyond the typical role of adviser that all spouses serve.
Hey, this chair seems to be facing that bitch Julie. Imagine that. Now I can give her the evil eye for 8 hours straight!
>Pretty much a full admission that everything that Julie said is true.
Then I dub you Sir Bedemir, Knight of the Round Table.
Bullshit. It just means that they're looking into it.
why is TechCrunch claiming Scott Chacon is a co-founder? He is married also but his wife is friends with Julie on Facebook so I doubt him
I doubt it was PJ's wife - https://twitter.com/kldub
which narrows it down to Theresa Preston-Werner and just for kicks
"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."
For me, two adult individual can do whatever the hack they want to do, if it is legal and they are both consent of doing it. Julie seems like really pissed that other people just can have fun the way she does not like. This sounds like a huge frustration in her towards others with different standards. This last event seems like triggered her outrage, and that is also a sign that she might exaggerate what was really going in Github. Don't get me wrong, as part of a small minority I totally understand what oppression means at a workplace, but these accusations seem a bit irrational.
Exactly - who's she to determine what is 'over the line'? Nobody likes a busybodies .
In a perfectly fair world, men and women would behave differently due to comparative advantage and specialization based on sexual dimorphism. Feminism, in seeking an equal world, denies reality and quite a bit of science. Also, like most Marx-derived groups, feminists are humorless killjoys
First, I would suggest that when you attack feminism in the abstract, you attack views that are actually currently and widely held by feminists. It’s a diverse movement, but there are actual mainstream views. Frequently even that will not be very helpful, so you will have to find out specifically which group of people you are addressing with your criticism.
If feminists can and do frequently criticise feminist views then so can you.
In that regard feminism is kind of like, say, conservatism or liberalism or socialism or nationalism.
Now, I myself do not have a problem with chucking even big and complex concepts like that on the trash heap of history if they actually do have a consistently disastrous history. You won’t find me putting much work into arguing against fascism or royalism or racism or antisemitism. I’m willing to dismiss those wholesale.
Feminism, whatever its faults may be in your view, is about a million miles away from clearing that, however. It’s absurd to even think it could approach that same standard of wholesale dismissal. It has no history of harm at all.
I.e. if feminism were the concept of atheism, the MRM would be the Westboro Baptist Church and not Christianity or belief in some deity as a whole. (That’s a slightly shitty metaphor since the frequent conflict MRM activists dream up between them and feminism is pretty absurd. Men getting harsher prison sentences? Men being disadvantaged during divorces? That’s often based on strict and old-fashioned gender roles, something many feminists abhor.)
As for feminism, what's your definition, and do you think other people are practicing that definition in particular? Look at tumblr posts discussing patriarchy theory sometime; somewhere amidst the paranoid depressed teenagers is a pretty well-defined belief system, and it's not yours anymore.
Beware whenever the term is brought up - it's usually used as an ad hominem.
If you think Marxism considers classes to be evil and good, you have already demonstrated that you don't know Marxism. Marx was very clear that he saw the members of the different classes as effective slaves of circumstance, who acted out their roles in history out of necessity.
The capitalist, to Marx, not only is not evil, but is seen as a historical necessity that drives progress: Only through the development of advanced capitalist economies does production reach sufficient levels to be able to eradicate common wants, thus making socialism possible.
I'll not disagree with you that there are some feminist groups that follow the same twisted idea of what marxism is that you describe above, but they're by no means the only feminists out there, nor does their views have much of anything to do with marxism.
Marx clearly did describe things that way but the movements that called themselves Marxist (particularly Leninism and those Marxist groups influenced by Leninism, which given the influence of the USSR were pretty common among "Marxists") did tend to take the capitalist = evil approach (which fits more in with Leninism than Marxism, since Leninism major point of divergence was adapting Marxism to justify "socialist" revolution in pre-capitalist societies, thus rendering capitalism unnecessary.)
Not at all true in a professional environment. And that statement doesn’t even correspond with the story. The specifics of the hula hooping anecdote are all but immaterial anyway. The men failing to acknowledge how it was problematic was just the point at which she saw the GitHub culture had not really changed. It won’t change without action by the leadership, which was questionable given all the other events.
This response from Chris Wanstrath is a step in the right direction, but, as he acknowledges, they still have work to do.
What is the dangerous thing that Horvath thought would happen?
Do we really consider the suggestion plausible that GitHub's allowance of hula-hooping-watching will result in a gang rape in its offices?
> a coworker hit on you and messed with your work after you shot him down, and
> a founder's wife -- someone with significant power at the company -- attempts to inject herself into your relationship and intimidates you
> you seemingly have nowhere to go to discuss these issues, after speaking with another founder does not change your working atmosphere
Again, as someone who supposedly understands oppression in the workplace, you're not empathizing with someone who claims to have experienced it.
So sure, if people want to watch that at home, then I guess that is their prerogative, but doing so at work doesn't seem productive or healthy for their (or any company's) community and culture.
Now I wasn't there and I have nothing to do with github, but that is just my take on it. It just sounds like Julie has some very strange ideas about sexual harassment. It seems to be her that is causing sexual harassment in the workplace if anything.
The whole thing is very weird, and neither Julie nor the Github management look very good.
Exactly. The intension is very important. Also if the hula hooping girls would of been bothered by the guys watching them I guess they should've let them know.
and what would be an alternative? "A man mustn't look at a hula-hooping woman. " (what would be a punishment for the violation? - something from middle ages Arab world comes to mind, a definite cure for the desire to watch hula-hooping women :)
You may think so, but people are not allowed to have 'fun' however they please in an office environment, nor is 'Is this illegal' the end-all, be-all of being an incredibly toxic work environment.
The fact that she might not be perfect does not therefore invalidate her story about everything else.
She also sounds confused, unless the women doing hula hooping were also taking off their clothes then I fail to see how she thinks this looks like anything at a strip club. If the hula women were stripping then she has a legitimate claim that this is inappropriate in the workplace, otherwise I don't see how this is any different to table tennis or air hockey etc.
Was she asking for it? Was she asking nice? Yeah, she was asking for it Did she ask you twice? - "Asking For It" Courtney Love and Eric Erlandson
"We had just gotten off tour with Mudhoney, and I decided to stage-dive. I was wearing a dress and I didn't realize what I was engendering in the audience. It was a huge audience and they were kind of going ape-shit. So I just dove off the stage, and suddenly, it was like my dress was being torn off of me, my underwear was being torn off of me, people were putting their fingers inside of me and grabbing my breasts really hard, screaming things in my ears like "pussy-whore-cunt". When I got back onstage I was naked. I felt like Karen Finley. But the worst thing of all was that I saw a photograph of it later. Someone took a picture of me right when this was happening, and I had this big smile on my face like I was pretending it wasn't happening. So later I wrote a song called "Asking For It" based on the whole experience. I can't compare it to rape because it's not the same. But in a way it was. I was raped by an audience, figuratively, literally, and yet, was I asking for it?" - Courtney Love
I didn't say she was asking for anything, I said her credibility is weakened by her reaction to this. Try it, get any two people at your workplace to hula hoop and see if people come and watch, gawk or whatever word you want to call it.
And why quote Courtney Love at me, that's about as ridiculous as quoting Germaine Greer in response. What did CL think would happen when she jumped off stage? She of all people understands human sexuality, and was exploiting it. She says the big smile was her pretending it was happening, however, there are a million other interpretations. If I jump into a hungry lion's den do I complain when I get eaten? Ask yourself why CL is says it wasn't rape and then it was, she's a very astute woman and knows exactly how to exploit the attention she garners, because she sure as hell is a lousy singer.
Hula hooping doesn't look like stripping, any which way you want to spin it, so given that she has her normality barometer so poorly calibrated, how can we believe much else she says without applying the same thought process?
I don't think it was expected for CL to be stripped of her clothing for stage diving, even if it maybe wasn't the best idea. However, if her gender wasn't female, she probably would have had no problems stage diving. I was insinuating that blaming the victim was your viewpoint, which it still seems to be.
Or at least, that's how I feel about it, when I try to put myself in the place of someone who saw this happening, and took it as a sexual sort of staring rather than a "what the heck are my silly coworkers doing" kind of staring. It's also possible that Julia misunderstood what was going on, or exaggerated - we don't have enough information to know.
Of course, if they were screaming 'take it off' or similar, I would agree, but supposedly attractive women doing activities that make their bodies 'jiggle' in a public setting and expect men not to look or stare is ridiculous, and going from that to 'not feeling safe' is too much of a stretch. I understand maybe the previous issues colored her understanding of the situation, but it does leave a bad feeling in my gut that she may just be a drama queen which makes me question her reports on the other issues.
I can imagine any amount of ogling would be uncomfortable, regardless of consent of the participants, to an observer.
Not if you want to have an effective workplace. There's a reason this would be called an HR violation at most places.
I don't know the proper way to watch someone hula hoop, but if anyone in my office decided to hula hoop, I would likely watch. Apparently this means I have a terrible attitude towards women, or something.
You take a quote from the end of the original article, some 200 words, and use it as a basis to tear down Julie's character ("seems like..." and "sounds like..."). I mean, seriously, it's marvelous: you jump from hula-hooping to identifying social angst in Julie's life in two sentences. Bravo!
We do not know Julie. Pretending otherwise, and using that as grounds for tearing down her claims, devalues their significance. I'm surprised, given that you understand what oppression means at a workplace, that you readily dismiss her serious claims on such flimsy grounds.
I can't imagine a startup caring unless you actually cause the drama, and this doesn't sound like that case.
Grow up.
The founder's wife definitely seems to have a problem with Julie, but it isn't clear from the tech crunch article why that was originally.
I'm just trying to hold her to the same standards that a male would be held to.
(2) Neither side claims that said drama was related to said "banging"
(3) Grow up
The "banging" was mentioned in the techcrunch article so it's definitely on-topic. How do you know that the other woman's jealousy was not aroused by Julie's projection of sexuality into the workplace via her demonstration of willingness to hook up with employees ?
When Julie hooked up with an employee she was demonstrating that in general she's willing to hook up with employees which put her on the other women's radar as a potential personal/political rival. I seriously doubt the other woman would have felt threatened if Julie's romantic foray hadn't come into play..
Again.. a reasonable guy would never have made a post about this kind of thing on hackernews instead he would have just accepted the drama as the consequence of his risky choice to engage in romance in the workplace. He would have just bit the bullet and moved on. Julie on the other hand is wilding out and she comes off as an unprofessional drama queen.