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Comment by bdcravens | Hacker News Reader

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.

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.

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By your logic, hiring managers should not be allowed to be married, lest they give a non-employee "defacto" hiring power.

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.

That's quite the straw man.

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.

Yes, she could exert influence. Just like every other SO of every other hiring manager in the world. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

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.

Errr, I don't follow. I'm a co-founder and in an office of 5 people. My wife stops by to visit me at least once a week. The only defacto power she has is to steal my gummy worms off my desk.

The largest issue, for myself, really was the lapse in HR policy specifically around the founder and the wife. It is a huge lapse in common sense on behalf of said founder and should not have come to pass.

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.

Might want to tighten that logic up a bit.

Plenty of founder's spouses are allowed in and have been allowed in our offices. None of them had any hiring or firing power.

Except, if the allegation is true, the wife goes around to employees claiming she can fire people if she wants to.

Let's just make sure not to call the wife bossy.

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