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Comment by vacri | Hacker News Reader

Pretty much a full admission that everything that Julie said is true.

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?

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A "full investigation" is the law in California when sexual harassment claims are made. It's not an admission of anything, it's just literally the law.

There were no sexual harassment claims.

The allegation that a co-worker made a sexual advance and then reverted code and generally created a hostile work environment is most definitely a "sexual harassment" claim.

I'm similarly blown away that this comment is at the top. What a dangerous conclusion to jump to.

It's particularly frightening to me because it appears that GitHub is attempting to do the right thing here -- investigate the allegations without the influence of potentially involved parties.

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.

It can be both true that the situation called for having a co-founder put on leave, and his wife banned from the premises because a first look shows Horvath's claims are likely to be true and that Github's management deserves respect for prompt action, candor, and open communication.

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.

As many others have said in this comment thread, Github's actions do NOT mean any claims are "likely to be true". It just means Github is taking proper steps to investigate the situation. The investigation may lead to them determining that Horvath, and not other employees, was in the wrong.

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.

Fair enough about the HR person (who probably acted in fear for their job), but how often does the co-founder of a very successful start up get put on leave within 24 hours of an article published on Techcrunch?

Have you considered the possibility that both parties are in the wrong? That Horvath does have something of a point, but she's massively overblown her experiences and read the wrong meaning into things?

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.

Spot on sir!

How? Easily. If you're investigating the matter you want to distance all parties involved from the situation, so that they cannot influence the outcome. If Julie was still employed there, she would have certainly been put on leave as well.

Again ... you are jumping to conclusions. The statement did not specify when the person was put on leave.

I think the fact that he went as far as to give a personal shout out to her at the end says that they're doing more than the bare minimum to keep from getting skinned alive, I think they must at least be taking it genuinely seriously.

>because if they said anything less, then regardless of the truth of the matter, they'd be skinned alive.

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.

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