GitHub I’m angry because I’m afraid.
blog.ellenchisa.com
blog.ellenchisa.com
I don't really see why people are confused about this. He probably exercised some poor judgement, as they said, but poor judgement and illegalities are often a long ways apart. The best thing for both parties was probably for him to leave. He was a distraction to GitHub, and this whole mess is a distraction for him. Part ways, both parties move on and continue. I don't think it comes across sketchy, personally. There was almost no way he was going to stay on long-term, given this history. It's a liability for the company, and honestly he's probably on eggshells around the company anyways.
Even as the author states, it's hard to PROVE that something was sexist. I imagine he said some inappropriate things, and maybe even did some inappropriate things, but proving that they were illegal is a WHOLE different bag.
>The entire situation reads: A male executive can do something that’s wrong/sexist. The company will want to cover itself legally, so it will discredit the claims.
Let's fix that. "An executive can do something that's wrong/sexist. The company will want to cover itself legally, so it will discredit the claims." Let's not make this about gender. A company has a duty to its shareholders to protect itself.
As you said, people seem to fail to understand the nuances of something like this. It's entirely possible that he meant entirely well, but acted in a manner that was -- as they mentioned to his wife -- terribly naive, at least for a company of the scale of Github.
Just to give an example of such a nuance, in a tiny startup there might be occasions where everyone might have a big drinking and cavorting pool party at the founder's pad. As the company gets bigger, however, such activities become legal liability cesspools, and it would be very poor judgment because everything becomes a perilous he said/she said type situation. That is an extreme example, but it's why senior management often become increasingly insular and detached as the company grows: Because they legally have to. It sounds like Tom failed to do this.
Which is exactly what it sounds like happened here.
I kind of despise this blog entry because while it berates the unfairness of the old boy's club and so on, it seems to argue that any woman who claims anything should be treated as unequivocal truth, punishment meted out to the harshest extent possible. That is scary, but it is sadly where many of these conversations seem to go.
Not all women are honest and truthful. Women are not above pettiness, power plays and self-interests.
'it seems to argue that any woman who claims anything should be treated as unequivocal truth, punishment meted out to the harshest extent possible'
No it doesn't. It doesn't say anything of the kind.If you take that from the article then you are bringing that position to the material.
"Not all women are honest and truthful. Women are not above pettiness, power plays and self-interests."
Very true. But it is hard to see how this relates to the real point of the blog.
All in all, I detect clear evidence of an angry person, ready to project his resentment at what he believes to be inappropriate powerplays by scheming women. Scary powerplays that are too often blindly supported.
Because it is unfair when someone supports someone, and their position, purely because of their gender. It is despicable behaviour. It is absolutely worth strong emotions.
>It doesn't say anything of the kind.
It quite clearly lays out a case that Horvath must be in the right, Tom must be in the wrong (and those supporting him will face the wrath of all women who will now not want to deal with them, because of the above), and Github is merely trying to clean their hands of it. Yes, it absolutely says so. All outcomes are only variations of the preceding.
>All in all, I detect clear evidence of an angry person
Take your white knight act somewhere else. Your particular form of discouraging disagreement is disgusting. No, seriously, it is vile, and is the sort of banal ignorance of people who have nothing interesting to say.
It is actually remarkably paternalistic how many take stories like that: She is a woman, so she simply must be the victim. He is a man, so he simply must be the villain. Yet this base assumption goes unstated and simply assumed, as if we're all in agreement. But we aren't, and stating that women are as great as men in all things, including the negatives, is important, because brave knights such as yourself fail to understand this.
As for your concern about my concern for your anger. I think your last paragraph speaks for itself. Apparently you don't seem to understand that angry statements about the way women (the unfair beneficiaries of being unthinkingly treated as victims) and men (unfairly branded as villains) just reproduces a stereotyped position that is as laughable as your idea that listing the many negatives of women is doing them a favor.
Where they found no evidence or harassment, sexual or not? For those who are sure that Horvath has been wronged, this outcome will never be convincing.
Further it's worth noting that while Horvath can go off slinging whatever accusations she feels like, Github and its employees are all seriously constrained. If they pulled a Tesla and responded openly, they would be attacked for it, guaranteed. This is the best they can do.
listing the many negatives of women is doing them a favor
I listed the negatives of people, of which women are (to, apparently, your surprise).
With regard to the apparent imbalance between Horvath and Github and its employees, such an alleged imbalance is fictional. This kind of situation where there is an employee involved in any kind of war of words with a company is indeed rarely balanced but it is rare for it to be truly in favor of the employee. A company has the resources and many means to make its position clear. This starts with engaging a PR / crisis management firm to craft the strategy to be rolled out. It will typically involve and investigation and two classes of public statements. Statements from the company expressing vague regret and apology for any perceived wrong doing. And orchestrated anonymous statements from employees explaining how the situation was more nuanced and how the employee in question was always difficult etc etc. Just to be clear how typical this pattern is, I predicted precisely this rollout weeks ago and it followed the standard pattern precisely.
Please note that I do not have any knowledge of the situation and assume nothing about what did or didn't happen. I do however recognize that precisely that uncertainty, if not properly handled after the effect can indeed have a chilling effect. It is for that reason that I believe the original post had merit.
Please further note that my concern with your comment is because you mindlessly trot out stereotyped generalities about the unfairness of the ways men and women are treated in the workplace. The same tired old shibboleth's about how women are inevitably considered blameless and right and men villainous perpetrators whatever the facts.
As for me being surprised by your insight that women too can have negative sides to their personalities - grow up.
For those interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stakeholder_theory
As somebody who hadn't heard of her before her allegations, her reputation to me was "person who was offended by a meritocracy rug and people watching hula-hoopers at a party". If anything, I'm more afraid of working with Horvath because any little thing I do could seemingly get me fired.
I think your remark about being afraid of working with her is both understandable and disturbing. And both stem from the same thing - uncertainty. Understandable because if she really is an oversensitive harridan then you might well not want to work with her. But disturbing, because if she isn't then you have judged her unfairly. And the reason this is doubly unfair is that if her case has any merit she can't win in this situation. There will always be people like you who don't want to give her ANY benefit of the doubt. This is a stigma very similar to the one that whistle blowers suffer.
So I understand where you are coming from but it really sucks that the whiff of scandal can result in people not wanting to touch her with a barge pole.
Horvath brought some pretty serious allegations, but never actually sued GitHub. Instead, she wrote about it on Twitter and social media sites, because that's what you do these days when you feel you've been discriminated against and harassed, right? More people jumped into the fray and stated Horvath was acting weird and starting nasty rumors about the founder's wife and their new baby.
GitHub didn't help its cause very much when the owner's wife was banned from the office and the founder stepped down, which seemed to give Horvath's supporters some more fuel to tweet about, even though it was probably more damage control than admitting any wrong doing.
I'm still not sure where I sit on this one. Everybody is accountable, and to some degree it feels like Horvath is milking this for all its worth, for better or worse. In some of the environments I've worked in, women who have "alpha" traits are not looked upon favorably and detested by their male counterparts. It seems like Horvath has some of these traits and was probably part of the problem at GitHub.
I'm in the Midwest, but is this situation pretty rare and we're blowing it out of proportion, or do these situations occur more frequently than I read about?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_%28ethology%29
The way her blog reads and the stories surrounding the GitHub incident indicates to me, she thought she was in charge and pushed people around, which turned a lot of people off. Alpha positions are earned, not given. When people come in and just expect to be the dominant personality, you get the issues she ran into at GitHub.
This doesn't take away from any of her allegations, but it probably was a role in the issues and friction she had with team members.
So when you say "In some of the environments I've worked in, women who have "alpha" traits are not looked upon favorably and detested by their male counterparts." you are saying that women who have traits that are pseudo alpha - in other words behaving as if you have the 'highest rank' when you haven't earned it or got it as a matter of fact, is the kind of behavior that men detest.
I guess my question is, unless there is something distinctively obnoxious about a woman behaving in this way, is this really a gender issue? There are plenty of men who behave like this aren't there? And my experience has been that both men and women don't like men doing it?
So it seems that either a woman doing it is doubly bad (which seems like a form of sexism - you can't even be obnoxious if you're a woman because it's distinctively obnoxious) or it isn't really a gender issue.
I'm not intending to pointlessly nit pick here. I am really interested in whether you feel there is something about a woman doing it that is likely, for whatever reason, to incite a more negative reaction. Could it, for example, be that men are very attuned to alpha dynamics and feel that they are being in some sense 'wronged' when a woman challenges them? etc etc?
I don't even really know what to say to this. Thanks for your honesty, I guess?
> The situation started feeling much worse when Marc Andreesen tweeted his support.. I’ve always looked up to A16Z. I’ve respected the people I’ve met there. Ben Horowitz used female pronouns in his book!
Woah, hey now. Quite the contrast between this paragraph and the other paragraph that I highlighted above. Much like you make sure people that have power over you being wealthy still follow you, A16Z takes care of people that are very likely to result in making A16Z wealth.
He probably means "I know my friends know me better and won't stop following me over a pronoun".
...so what you're saying is you don't really do anything?
While it sounds harsh, it sounds like their claim to fame is being one of the 3 billion or so females on the planet.