Hacker News Reader

Comment by sitharus | Hacker News Reader

> > 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.

> 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.

View on HN

There is a trick business schools like to play on students, where you are given a test with 10 - 15 scenarios where an employee has allegedly done something wrong and you need to write the proper response from the company.

The correct answer to every single scenario is "suspend pending investigation."

>It's pretty standard practice to place employees on paid leave while serious complaints are investigated.

Employees? Sure. Founders? I've not heard of that before.

I also have never heard of a founder being put on leave. I wouldn't go quite so far as to say it is an admission that the allegations are true. But it is certainly an admission that they have merit and are not so far from reality as to be easily dismissed. I am pleased that Github is taking this seriously, and very sorry for Julie's experiences. This should never happen to anyone in our industry.

Maybe the founder chose to go on leave to allow for the investigation? Or at least was involved?

Oh, I don't doubt. Probably he saw the wisdom in stepping back while this is investigated, as any rational person would, guilty or not. Nonetheless, I cannot recall a situation where a founder of a company large enough to make the news has put themselves into a position where it would be necessary.

If you see a CEO/Founder/Chairman focusing on a new, spin-off, company, this is generally the American way of handling a volatile situation when the offender is perceived as irreplaceable.

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.

From a legal standpoint, an employee's status as a founder or owner/shareholder is largely irrelevant. There's no basis for special treatment--in fact, depending on how it's handled, such special treatment would, at a minimum, place the company in a potentially perilous legal situation with future cases.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com