Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Zach Holman joins GitLab as advisor

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 79 posts

Re: Zach Holman joins GitLab as advisor

#61

Post by argonaut »

justinlardinois wrote: post #39
argonaut wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His writeup: https://zachholman.com/talk/firing-people We cannot know for sure whether it has anything to do with his firing (and he doesn't mention it in the writeup), but Julie Ann Horvath did accuse Zach of harassing her at GitHub.

The sibling to this comment links to an article about that. This is the first I've heard of the situation, but that article doesn't say anything about her accusing him of harassment. Rather, it says that the two of them were in a relationship at the time, and she accused him of being complicit by sharing information with her harassers and otherwise ignoring the issue. Regardless of what happened or didn't happen, his…

The article (http://www.dailydot.com/business/julie-ann-horvath-names-git...) says:

"complicit in the actions of both Tom and Theresa Preston-Werner and even admitted to plotting with Theresa Preston-Werner to get women at the company fired. He should be let go from GitHub and I regret being kind to him in previous interviews"

Again, unsubstantiated, but if for example he was just mean but not harassing, that could explain the firing (while Github claiming no harassment occurred).

Re: Zach Holman joins GitLab as advisor

#62

Post by duncan_bayne »

ceejayoz wrote: post #54
duncan_bayne wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that in this case, she is being hired in part because of her Social Justice advocacy. At least I assume so, & GitHub hasn't exactly been forthcoming on the matter.

"At least I assume so" Like some might assume a project's core contributor's behavior is known of and condoned by the project, perhaps?

Sure. But in this case, it's highly relevant. She's not being hired _despite_ political activity that's irrelevant to the project, she's being hired _because_ of it.

That makes the hiring itself an endorsement of the behaviour.

Re: Zach Holman joins GitLab as advisor

#63

Post by sytse »

nrclark wrote: post #59

@sytse (and @holman, now!) As of the latest Gitlab (8.8.1), my "this breaks Gitlab" commit of the Linux Kernel sources ( https://gitlab.com/nrclark/dummy_project/commit/81ebdea5df2f... ) still breaks Gitlab. When I first submitted this as a bug in December, the act of clicking on the commit would cause a Gitlab worker crash and the UI would either hang or return a 503 error. Five releases later, my sample commit stil…

Thanks for the example. For me it loads slowly too (probably it has a lot of disk access) but doesn't affect the browser much. What browser are you using? I'm using Chrome on OSX. Consider creating an issue on https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues or adding it to your existing issue and linking that here.

Re: Zach Holman joins GitLab as advisor

#64

Post by nrclark »

sytse wrote: post #63
nrclark wrote: post #59

@sytse (and @holman, now!) As of the latest Gitlab (8.8.1), my "this breaks Gitlab" commit of the Linux Kernel sources ( https://gitlab.com/nrclark/dummy_project/commit/81ebdea5df2f... ) still breaks Gitlab. When I first submitted this as a bug in December, the act of clicking on the commit would cause a Gitlab worker crash and the UI would either hang or return a 503 error. Five releases later, my sample commit stil…

Thanks for the example. For me it loads slowly too (probably it has a lot of disk access) but doesn't affect the browser much. What browser are you using? I'm using Chrome on OSX. Consider creating an issue on https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues or adding it to your existing issue and linking that here.

Here's the issue I made a couple of months ago - https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/14775

As for my browser, I'm on the latest Firefox on Fedora 23. Something interesting - I think it's related to some kind of internal cache on Gitlab's side. Could I maybe get you to try loading the same page in a few hours and see what it does for you then?

Re: Zach Holman joins GitLab as advisor

#65

Post by sytse »

nrclark wrote: post #64
sytse wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the example. For me it loads slowly too (probably it has a lot of disk access) but doesn't affect the browser much. What browser are you using? I'm using Chrome on OSX. Consider creating an issue on https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues or adding it to your existing issue and linking that here.

Here's the issue I made a couple of months ago - https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/14775 As for my browser, I'm on the latest Firefox on Fedora 23. Something interesting - I think it's related to some kind of internal cache on Gitlab's side. Could I maybe get you to try loading the same page in a few hours and see what it does for you then?

Interesting, we do cache things in Redis, not sure if it is relevant here. I mentioned a performance specialist and our frontend lead in the issue.

Re: Zach Holman joins GitLab as advisor

#66

Post by rubyfan »

x0x0 wrote: post #41
muglug wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He discussed the firing here: https://zachholman.com/talk/firing-people

Wow. That really tanked my opinion of github. I had been talking to various officials in leadership for a few months hammering out the details and had been under the impression that we had reached an agreement, but I was surprised to find out that wasn’t the case. I was informed 28 hours before my 90 day window closed that the agreement I had thought I had didn’t exist; it was then that I realized I had 28 hours to e…

People need to realize options are just options and stop treating them like they are money in the bank. The company gives them to you to keep your talented ass there. The thing about options is they are a speculative discount on you buying something of potentially high value from them.

Re: Zach Holman joins GitLab as advisor

#67

Post by jakecodes »

sytse wrote: post #65
nrclark wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the issue I made a couple of months ago - https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/14775 As for my browser, I'm on the latest Firefox on Fedora 23. Something interesting - I think it's related to some kind of internal cache on Gitlab's side. Could I maybe get you to try loading the same page in a few hours and see what it does for you then?

Interesting, we do cache things in Redis, not sure if it is relevant here. I mentioned a performance specialist and our frontend lead in the issue.

On it! Thanks for mentioning.

Re: Zach Holman joins GitLab as advisor

#68

Post by dcposch »

argonaut wrote: post #34
eachro wrote: post #33

I read his Fired post, and still can't really seem to understand why he got fired. Anyone have a better read on his firing situation?

His writeup: https://zachholman.com/talk/firing-people We cannot know for sure whether it has anything to do with his firing (and he doesn't mention it in the writeup), but Julie Ann Horvath did accuse Zach of harassing her at GitHub.

I think the new outrage culture is toxic.

It's a really tight knit subculture with its own rules and a vicious ingroup/outgroup attitude.

Like goths or old school hippies, they have a distinct way of dressing and signalling to each other that they belong: purple or pink hair, Twitter profiles that specify "he/him" or "she/her" even when it's obvious, using words like "mansplaining", etc

--

Outrage culture is a kind of conspiracy theory: people who are into it see oppression and harassment everywhere, and cast themselves as victims.

Here's a great explanation of the history and ideology of outrage culture: https://youtube.com/watch?v=cYpELqKZ02Q

---

Github has been taken over by outrage culture. Check out this insane story from earlier this year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11049067

* Leaked internal HR slides talking about how "white women" are often "part of the problem"

* An employee casually mentioning to BusinessWeek that "it's hard to even interview white people"

* One Github executive sending this flagrantly illegal tweet: http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/56b3d2f12e526555008...

Imagine the instant EEOC investigation if that tweet said "black, male" instead of "white, male".

--

Anyway, Zach Holman is also a white male. I don't want to speculate on exactly what went down, but the circumstantial evidence is pretty strong that he was railroaded out of the company in the wake of the Julie Hovarth scandal.

--

I don't in any way defend the most visible opponents of outrage culture -- rank bigots like r/RedPill, Trump enthusiasts, and so on.

I just want to point out that outrage culture is, itself, bigoted and intolerant, just in a different way.

I really respect Zach. I learned how to give better talks from his amazing ones. He was the face of Github to me and I wish him the best!

Re: Zach Holman joins GitLab as advisor

#69

Post by dang »

duncan_bayne wrote: post #62
ceejayoz wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"At least I assume so" Like some might assume a project's core contributor's behavior is known of and condoned by the project, perhaps?

Sure. But in this case, it's highly relevant. She's not being hired _despite_ political activity that's irrelevant to the project, she's being hired _because_ of it. That makes the hiring itself an endorsement of the behaviour.

Please stop. This is already way off topic, and making it about a specific person takes it into vendetta territory, which is far from the kind of discussion we want here.

Re: Zach Holman joins GitLab as advisor

#70

Post by abalone »

muglug wrote: post #21
Smudge wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zach's advocacy of GitHub was one of the reasons I became such a fan over the years. Ever since they fired him, things haven't quite felt the same... I don't know the exact circumstances around his departure, but I do know that GitHub lost someone who, for me, had become one of the leading faces of the company. Of course, maybe that's exactly why the let him go. Regardless, I'm looking forward to seeing him do the sa…

He discussed the firing here: https://zachholman.com/talk/firing-people

"I had 28 hours to either come up with hundreds of thousands of dollars that I didn’t have to save half of my stock, or I could sign the agreement as-is and avoid losing half of my already-diminished stake"

Can anyone unpack this statement a bit more? What is "already diminished stake" in reference to? Is this saying that Github made some kind of offer that would let him keep half his vested options without putting any money up, like converting them to NSOs or something?

I'd really like to understand how companies handle exits like this. Certainly it's a valid perspective that employees are entitled to 100% of their vested options. But, devil's advocate: There is also the counterpoint that pre-IPO valuations are very high and based on special terms given to private investors, so maybe there is a rationale to negotiating a discount on pre-IPO exits.

I would like to understand if Github acted out of good faith here to any degree, i.e. where they were not contractually obligated to.

I also understand Holman noted he hasn't "made a dime" from the company outside his salary, which would be completely f'd up. But it's unclear to me whether that's merely in reference to liquidity or if he actually walked away with no stock. It sounds like he did walk away with some stock as a result of a negotiated agreement with Github.

Post reply on HN