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Comment by ssorallen | Hacker News Reader

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.

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"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.

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