Probably worth mentioning that the hula hoop dancing happened at a Github party with a lot of people not from Github. It was also super badass hula hooping, not just regular dancing. Everyone was looking, men and women, because it was pretty awesome.
Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit
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Re: Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit
#182I'm not going to get into what is right or wrong. With that being said, in the US HR is not your friend as an employee. Their job is to protect the company. http://abcnews.go.com/Business/20-job-tips-hr-exec/story?id=... Any way you look at it you have a bad situation. This sounds like a clash of personalities. While the behavior is not right, the fact is that a lot of companies will 'manage out' people unfairly etc.…
Nor in Australia, is HR your friend. I had a very similar situation to this, as a male, in a software development environment. Even down to the bullying and the silently deleted files and commits. The thing I learnt about HR is they are not professionals. They do not exist to perform the professional duties associated with Human Resources. They may tell you and themselves that, but they are the formalised face (at an arms length so a claim of 'separation' can be made) of the power in upper management and their wish to do away with people they don't like.
In fact a lot of this story rings true with my past experience. It sounds to me like a toxic workplace with a bad management culture. And it is also sexist to add insult to injury. I would like to say that these people will reap what they sow, but I've found organisations like this tend to protect the sociopaths who abuse their power. A culture like this normally extends all the way to the top. So I agree nothing is likely to happen. In fact quite the opposite. Those bullies will be protected and promoted. Any claims of bullying will be dismissed by HR. The messenger will be shot. The truth tellers will not be greeted with laurels.
I would say the only thing to do, if you are in a situation to do it, is legal action. It's the only thing people like that understand. Power and money. So take their money if you can. And find a better place to contribute your skills. There are better places to work out there. They may not be as glamorous, but they will be much more enjoyable places of employment, and much more appreciative of what you have to offer.
Re: Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit
#183There seems to be several problems. Not entirely sexism.
1. Founder's wife asked Horvath out and gave her a lecture about who is the boss. Probably out of jealousy.
2. Founder's wife physically inanimate Horvath, making her unwelcome and scared.
3. Founder did not stop the wife and protect his wife.
4. Horvath was approached by a male co-worker and according to her her rejection had caused tension between her and that co-worker.
5. Horvath's partner is also a Github employee.
6. Another founder tried to step in but the situation didn't really resolve.
7. Horvath felt male co-workers gawking/staring/looking at female co-workers hula-hooping while sitting in a couch looked like someone visiting a strip club.
This is more like a failed company management than sexism at work.
A partner can help his or her partner looking after/helping/running a company even as a non-employee. He or she could send employees your homemade cookie or send them birthday card. It's okay to share thoughts with partner how to run a company, how to resolve people-people problem.
But the founder should not let his or her partner to intimate anyone: HR, executives, managers, engineers. This type of behavior, I thought I would only see them in drama (well I guess you can say something about WhiteHouse...)
The founder accused Horvath for bringing love affair into the company because she was/is dating an employee. The founder has a good point: try to avoid dating someone working with you. It's a beautiful story; but you can cause all sorts of mess. See this childish engineer who was rejected by Horvath became angry at her and started ripping her code out. I have read about Github's open culture, but hey, how could anyone do that!? And yet no one seen to care internally at all because he's a popular figure in the company. Well, I can't say everyone in that company is shit because there is also a rank in any organization. I wouldn't go against someone senior or more popular unless I have to. This is also a bystander problem: unless we have to deal with it, let other people and the people in the story deal with the situation.
While the founder is right about avoiding dating someone in your own company, he couldn't see that his wife (effectively meaning his own family problem) was also leaking into the company's daily operation.
The other founder tried to help Horvath. The founder apologized and tried to restrain his wife from sitting across Horvath. But the wife continued to "spy" on her. She was welcomed to do whatever she want to do. Horvath tried to ask other executives to help for the very last time and none worked out. Either the founder was scared of his wife (love her so much he didn't want to yell at her) or none of the executives really care. Someone with management skill should have step in and tell the founder "stop letting your wife to come in!"
Apparently, people fear the founder? and the wife??
Regarding the strip-club comment, I don't know the best way to avoid it. I, as a male, try to avoid staring at another female because I fear someone like Horvath accuses me of sexism. Maybe the guy was just bored or thought that female worker was beautiful. Staring at someone shouldn't be counted as sexism. It's hard. Would a female staring at a beautiful male count as sexism?
I am not saying there is no sexism in work place, but I think Horvath's overall sexist experience might have been influenced/augmented based on her treatment in the company (no one stop the founder and his wife abusing power).
But hey, I am just reading off the article. Her experience could be worse! I do feel bad for all the intimations she had to go through. I felt really bad as I was reading the article.
Final point:
Horvath then told her partner, also a GitHub employee, about what was happening. She warned him against being close to the founder and his wife, and asked him not to relay information to them.
I have a mixed feeling. If I were in his situation, I would try to sort out the problem with the founder myself. But now that I read about it, I guess in the future, if I were in a similar situation, I would not talk it out until situation gets worse.
Re: Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit
#184This sounds less like sexism and more just non-sexist batshit crazy people and incompetent HR. Somehow that isn't particularly better.
The only thing that sounds remotely related to sex or gender is the hula hoop incident, which sounds irrelevant to the main story other than providing a final straw for the woman to leave.
Did you read the whole article? It starts out explaining her struggles as a woman with the company. It also addresses her creepy suitor.
Re: Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit
#185I'm not entirely sure the hula-hooping incident - merely observing girls hula hooping is not a crime, is it? - by itself constitutes a hostile atmosphere for women, unless inappropriate comments were being made. What we have here is some completely inappropriate, cloak and dagger, soap opera shit being perpetrated by the wife of the cofounder, who has no business meddling in the affairs of his employees. (If true, th…
I don't think it creates a 'hostile' atmosphere per say. Obviously if both parties are alight with the situation then it's fine for them.
I think it's an inappropriate one for a workplace though. This comes down to company culture. The problem isn't the women hula hooping, a casual environment means such things will happen. People will exercise together, work on hobbies, etc.
The problem is that in a work environment everyone who works there has to be treated with respect, and equally, and that means not cat-calling your co-workers. Even if the women were fine with it (and they probably were since they didn't stop), the large group of men treating them like sexual objects in the workplace is not conducive to an environment where women are respected. If this was a strip club there wouldn't be a problem.
To draw a parallel, if 7 out of 10 people at the office were having nerf gun fights, and it was disrupting other peoples work (because they are reflexively duck, etc) to the point where they can't work when there aren’t big nerf gun fights (but still one or two shots every now and then), then it's a problem, and destructive to a good work environment. This is where management needs to step in and say, "ok guys, I know we are pretty lax around here, but seriously cut this shit out". Obviously it isn't a perfect parallel.
It's also a culture fit thing. This was the thing that broke the camels back. This employee suffered discrimination from executives (and startup founder's significant others are likely going to be part of the executive team one way or another. They certainly have the standing of the executive team in many ways. Legally speaking they are almost the same 'person' in many ways), she suffered discrimination from a single employee, and then she suffered it from a group of employees (a group mentality). And all three of these things feed into each other, and in a work environment (especially a casual one), employees need to be able to move their bodies without worrying about a group of other employees demeaning them.
Re: Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit
#186The wife sounds batshit crazy, but this behaviour is unfortunately pretty normal for some people who feel like they're in some kind of position of power.
She asks a reasonably prolific female developer out to drinks and power trips all over her. It's just disgusting bigoted behaviour, and it happens with males just as often.
I hope that whoever's founders' wife gets smacked in to line here to stay out of company affairs. But in the end, when companies are privately owned, the owners have a certain immunity to this kind of bullshit and get away with it.
The probable outcome is that the wife will get a slap on the wrist while receiving crap-tonnes of likely dividends, which I'm sure will make her feel much better and well vindicated.
Re: Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit
#187Two women are dancing to music at work in a tech company and the author compares this to a scene at a strip club as men are watching this. Unless this was a regular exercise, what was everybody expecting? Nobody taking notice?
It wasn't just people noticing them from their desks (or joining them, for the sake of well-humoured fun). It was, as she says, "line of men sitting on one bench facing the hoopers and gawking at them".
I would find that a bit odd.
Re: Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit
#188Howsoever superman you are, you are powerless in front of your wife.. :)
I would say that these things are unfortunate and can happen to any startup. Being a founder, you need to take action asap before things starts to go beyond control.
Even if some investigation is done into this matter, I don't think anyone will be found guilty as it's a general behavioral/attitude problem and it won't go in matter of days.
Let's stop this discrimination (howsoever minor) against women; we need to stand up and speak openly about this. And it's all the more important when a company is getting formed as culture of the company is defined in that stage.
Re: Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit
#189Some geeky types will be tempted, upon founding a startup, to thus not have ANY women in significant roles in the company, and to keep it as guys-only as possible; outsourcing as needed and doing the other legal legwork as required to stay under the headcount (is it >50 people?) to avoid the EEOC.
I'll be more than tempted. To be 100% honest, I have that thought every single time I read any article or blog post about sexism in tech. If programmers with a Y-chromosome are exponentially less likely to either sue us or get us labelled sexist jerks in the press, then that's who we're hiring.
Re: Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit
#190The article quotes JAH's email as saying, "Two women, one of whom I work with and adore, and a friend of hers were hula hooping to some music. I didn’t have a problem with this. What I did have a problem with is the line of men sitting on one bench facing the hoopers and gawking at them. It looked like something out of a strip club. When I brought this up to male coworkers, they didn’t see a problem with it. But for me it felt unsafe and to be honest, really embarrassing. That was the moment I decided to finally leave GitHub."
Certain people are extremely sensitive to what they perceive as improper or demeaning interaction, even when it doesn't directly involve them. JAH wasn't willing to let those women deal with it themselves, and doesn't mention even talking to them about it to see if they felt objectified. Instead, she talked to male coworkers, not specifically HR or a founder, about the wisdom of allowing women to hula hoop in the office? What's that going to accomplish?
I understand her view that sexual undercurrents in an office makes things uncomfortable for some women, and I understand her wanting that toned down. But other women (including some feminists) have no problem with much stronger displays of sexuality, and feel it's an affront to women to suppress that. Both sides can't win.