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Comment by sequoia | Hacker News Reader

When I arrived at this thread, comment two was 'using the information available in the short techcrunch article, I'm now going to PROVE, point by point, how Horvath's claims are false.'

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.

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I don't know if Horvath is right or not, but this is nice case study how PR works.

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.

It's possible that things will be brushed under the carpet as you say.

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?

I think that it's the way the PR statement is written that is 'clever'. By putting the founder on leave and banning his wife from the office they haven taken pro-active action (which was not mandatory). As has been noted, it might seem that they have admitted some wrong-doing when in fact they have not. But it's enough food for the media to drop the issue...

But you at least have to allow for the possibility that they are doing the right thing here. Perhaps they respect Julie enough to take her claims seriously and correct the obvious wrongs (gf in the offices) while doing what every other organization does in putting the person under investigation on leave.

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.

They could have done it wrong; denied everything, counter-accused her and kept the flames burning.

Its an established precedent that anyone accused of any sexual impropriety - from harassment to assault and worse, is prima facie guilty, deserves no presumption of innocence, and should be punished immediately.

"People: when did our brains melt and spill out of our ears?"

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.

> 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'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.

It seems that the flamewar detector (although I think it actually used to be flagging mostly) has been adjusted somewhat, or at least given a manual override for worthy discussions.

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.

I would say that it's more likely that the team consistently monitors multiple factors and makes adjustments based on overall input.

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.

I'm curious as to what compelled you to state that my estimate of the impact complaints had on the situation, even though entirely unquantified, was probably still too high?

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.

> I suppose if heated debate leads to polarization of opinion, that's an issue, but...

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.

In an ideal world, this should really be a no-brainer. Gender-background abuse should be an abhorred practice, the way we normally abhor, say, killing people.

It is telling that the topic of sexism in tech and the workplace is controversial at all.

I think a more appropriate analogy is "abortion". Some see it as killing people, others see it as having control over their own lives. Same here - some see it as sexual discrimination, others see it as problems many people have to face at their workplace.

> 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.

It is sad that some people dispute the existence of sexism in tech, but that does not make it controversial in the sense that it is contentious, because it isn't. The facts are simple: 1) technology is a big source of power in our society, and 2) women are underrepresented in tech. Whenever a well defined group of people is absent from (or underrepresented in) a source of power, discrimination is taking place, period. Sexism, like racism, is a loaded word, and people often believe that malice is required for it to exist, but that is not the case. Whether sexism begins in kindergarten or in mens-club startups is, at this point, secondary. It is there and we must address it.

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.

> 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".

I am not in favor of judging them now, only assuming they're in the wrong for the purpose of discussion; if some people happen to jump to conclusions, I'm sure GitHub can take it more than Horvath can.

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.

Why do we have to make an assumption either way? Damage to Github's reputation may not be a "great injustice," but it's not exactly consequence-free. It seems to me that withholding judgment is a far better course of action.

>the presumption of innocence principle, which is an even higher goal for a just society.

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.

>Whenever a well defined group of people is absent from (or underrepresented in) a source of power, discrimination is taking place, period.

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

People with Down Syndrome suffer from a debilitating disability that directly affects their ability to perform the essential functions required from math professors. Unless you suggest that being a woman or a black man is a similar disability, I think the comparison is inappropriate.

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...

>I think the comparison is inappropriate

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.

What is it with the ad-hominem attacks today? I am probably a sloppy thinker and possibly a very bad one, but luckily I've received some very good education, and in this particular case I didn't even need to think at all. I simply informed readers that by modern definitions of sexism, absence of women from places of influence equals sexism (at least somewhere in society if not at a particular workplace). I am certainly not invested in this... oh, wait, actually, you're right, I am – I'm a feminist (or, at least, I'd like to be) and I want to live and work in a more egalitarian society. If you take any issue with this thinking, I'm kindly pointing you to the last 50 years of research in history, sociology and anthropology and the relevant researchers. Take it up with them (but don't tell them they're emotional as they'll take offense because, you know, they're emotional).

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.

Just one quick note on "women are underrepresented in tech". You are absolutely right. What is the solution? You think that Julie's case is going to help that change? Or we should focus on the root of the problem, aka. education. How come in schools (elementary or secondary) nobody tells to young girls that they can become an engineer? Why is the society parents, teachers, media included trying to push those girls to more traditional professions? This is the right topic to bang on if you want to solve gender inequality in tech and not the frustrated and hatred feminist crap what people usually associate the problem with.

Because women, as a group, are much less powerful than men – in tech in particular and in our society in general – blaming "hatred" on the weak party seems a little unfair, even if most men aren't intentionally sexist.

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.

> Whenever a well defined group of people is absent from (or underrepresented in) a source of power, discrimination is taking place, period.

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.

>women are underrepresented in tech. Whenever a well defined group of people is absent from (or underrepresented in) a source of power, discrimination is taking place, period.

3,000 us army deaths in Iraq, and of those, 2,938 were men, 62 were women.

yes, men are less careful ?

no I think this is about how silly it is to try to equalize something artificially. If you try to equalize tech why not equalize military involvement. It's all ridiculous.

People who are working for equality are trying to equalize military involvement.

This statement has more meaning that you are willing to concede.

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).

Hogwash. Companies always say they will open an investigation. In the least, it buys a little time for the story to die down and the next big stories to hit the media cycle.

The tech industry tends to be a bit more long memory minded than most. I still haven't purchased a Sony product since the CDs with malware incident a long time ago. Though I still work with MS technology, and use their products in the workplace, I've been slowly able to replace their products in my life and this is from decisions they made well over a decade ago.

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.

Well, there is a lot of praise on cleverness of the statement, but I think people are pretty used to PR talk now. If the best they have now is a promise of an investigation, that's not the same as a "we are fully investigating the issue" (which I think is the most standard way to handle this kind of situation. Even if really nothing is done, stating that the investigation is ongoing is an easier stance.

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.

Chris took over the role as GitHub's CEO from Tom at the end of January. Given the timeline in the TechCrunch article, these events unfolded under the previous CEO's tenure so it would be appropriate to reinvestigate the claims independently of any previous findings.

Yes. Comments on the original TechCrunch article were equally vindicating even though that article offered no actual evidence. It's unfortunate TechCrunch and Valley Wag posted the story without first corroborating at least some piece of it.

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.

"offered no actual evidence"

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.

The wife was mentioned because she was called out in the earlier article as a problem. We don't know if she was actually a problem or not. We, and specifically you, don't know enough to make the claims you're making.

Please, stop speculating. Have patience, wait for actual information.

> GitHub's response neither confirms nor denies any part of the story.

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.

So it's not like they're completely silent. They said both the referenced founder and employee have been put on leave and the wife, who apparently was allowed in the office before this, is no longer. They didn't flat-out admit to anything, but it's not like they're totally silent.

Yup. This, to me, is a partial admission of guilt. Why else would they take such harsh, immediate action to throw him under the bus?

Because that is what the lynch mob is screaming for and anything else would be labelled as aiding and abetting sexism and discrimination against women by some people?

It's not throwing him under the bus. It's distancing him from the investigation. That's both to protect him, in case things favor his story, and to protect the company, if it turns out he was in the wrong.

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.

If I was the person accused, and I was not guilty, I would request to relinquish all responsibility pending investigation to ensure there was no reasonable way anyone could claim I'd interfered with the investigation when it cleared me.

Of course it can also mean the opposite - my point is merely that suspending someone pending investigation says nothing at all about guilt.

"We know we have to take action and have begun a full investigation." == "We need to do something about this"

"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.

Founder put on leave, his wife no longer allowed in the office, that's not nothing. It's not a full admission, but it is an apology. While they don't admit anything specific, to me it sounds like an admission that they dropped the ball. Their company didn't work the way it should have and they intend to fix it. They offer a reason why this was the case (their rapid growth) but don't present it as a justification.

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.

I think we have to be careful with statements like this. Yes, they could have tried to find a Github employee who would corroborate part of it, perhaps the assertion that the wife was in the office periodically. But the problem with that is that it is perfectly reasonable to think they would have failed to find anyone willing to talk about it. Then what? Should they not publish? If they hadn't, would Github be investigating now? Would anyone be on leave? Probably not.

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.

> Would anyone be on leave? Probably not.

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.

But again, you are proposing that all power be given to the larger, more powerful entity. And I totally disagree about the usefulness of "what ifs". Without "what ifs" we would all be stuck wandering around waiting for food to fall from a tree in front of us.

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.

The entire story in all its objective context will never be known, and those privy to the story, Horvath and those involved at Github carry more context than we will know. For Horvath, you have to give her credit to go public the way she did. That requires a lot of courage that could have negative ramifications on her career, which could indicate that she was strongly upset about the incidents she described. I don't know her or her motivations, but if she would be playing a pretty risky game if she were to lie. What I will say is that I'm tired of the continual denial or downplay of sexism in this industry. I've seen it first hand, some of drink ups I've attended were a disgrace, and the frat house culture that some tech organizations have cultivated not only make women uncomfortable, but men too including myself. This man-child culture is embarrassing and needs to stop and it's a very real problem.

> People: when did our brains melt and spill out of our ears?

Classic case of confirmation bias.

Classic case? confirmation bias? I would have called it an opinion, and an emotionally charged appeal to reason, but not any form 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?

Uh, that's not confirmation bias.

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