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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

#201

Post by nknighthb »

enneff wrote: post #180
zaqokm wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are you making excuses for these people? Probably because there are ample reasons why someone may revert someone's code for legitimate reasons.

Without discussion? No, there is no legitimate reason for that.

You're being ridiculous. Emergency reverts are normal and expected when production systems are down.

I'm willing to stipulate this person's specific actions were probably hostile and unwarranted, but some sort of blanket "no revert without discussion" rule is just a way to cost your employer customers.

Context is important, and we don't have enough of it to be certain of what happened.

Re: Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit

#202

Post by zaqokm »

enneff wrote: post #180
zaqokm wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are you making excuses for these people? Probably because there are ample reasons why someone may revert someone's code for legitimate reasons.

Without discussion? No, there is no legitimate reason for that.

We are only hearing one side of the story, but it may be interesting to note the comment: " I even had to have a few of his commits reverted. ", it seems that there may have been some legitimacy to the other non-few if we are going to take a black and white view of things.

While the details on this matter seem very clear, the statement " I would work on something, go to bed, and wake up to find my work gone without any explanation." does not imply no discussion it implies that when she got up she had no idea of what was going on. It may be a case of a lazy co-worker, and/or a case that the co-worker discussed the issues with her at a latter stage.

She is very succinct in her description of the actions of others, and then describes her response in an emotional unclear way. In her own way in this example, she has used passive aggressiveness to mask the actual event.

TLDR; We do not know if there was no discussion, and we are only hearing one side.

Re: Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit

#203

Post by enupten »

LockeWatts wrote: post #106
omegaworks wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, it's always the women that make things dramatic. Not the power fetish of the founder's wife, the unwanted advances of coworkers, or the reverting of legitimate contributions to the team's project. Can't you see past the fact that she's a woman? Don't you see how demoralizing any of this would be?

Can I ask a question about phrasing for a minute? What's inherently wrong with an unwanted advance? Advances have an unknown state until they're responded to. If she had accepted it, it would've been a welcomed advance. There's no way to know that until you walk up to a woman and say "Hey, I think you're pretty cool. Want to go get a drink sometime?" If she says no, that's unwanted, but I don't see how it's inappropr…

Did you even read the article ? The point was not that someone asked her out (her current partner should've, at some point, for god's sake).

The coworker knew of her relationship, and after the rejection "started passive-aggressively ripping out my code."

That is a terrible thing to happen to anyone.

Re: Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit

#204

Post by [deleted] »

korzun wrote: post #123
potatolicious wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "but isn't it to be expected that employees of a tech company will be somewhat socially awkward?" Reverting people's commits and stripping their code out of vengeance isn't social awkwardness, it's completely unacceptable and unprofessional conduct. It doesn't matter what gender anyone is, or that it's being done out of romantic rejection, it's unacceptable. Full stop. Author's complaint is evidently less about bei…

It's easy to assume things that were said without context. Was her code reverted at 12:00 AM because it broke the site? Or was it for something else? If so what? See how the context changes your opinion? Generic 'they reverted my code!' statement does not tell me anything.

[deleted]

Re: Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit

#205

Post by retrogradeorbit »

barce wrote: post #114

The law is very clear on discriminating against someone by virtue of race, gender and/or age in a work situation. A lawyer could make a very good case just based on her side of the story for the law being broken. Against the coder who undid her work because he was rejected by a woman , that is classic retaliation pure and simple. Most cases like this that don't go to court settle in the Valley for $250k. It's a milli…

Absolutely. What she should have done is not resigned, but lawyered up, and started recording everything. When she resigned she lost her power. She did exactly what they wanted her to do. I know it can be the hardest thing to do in a situation like that. But the only thing people like that understand is power and money. And taking $250k from them in a lawsuit is certainly going to be noticed at the board level and by the investors.

Re: Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit

#206

Post by jd0 »

enneff wrote: post #169

If you are one of the people in this thread jumping to defend GitHub in this situation, ask yourself why. GitHub are perfectly capable of defending themselves. They are the group in power here. Second-guessing the motives and truth of this woman's story does nothing but undermine her, and undermine the confidence of others who may have similar stories (at GitHub or elsewhere).

Well put!

Re: Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit

#207

Post by lgleason »

balladeer wrote: post #178
lgleason wrote: post #92

I'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.…

> Be it right or wrong, that is the question that is going to be asked in the board room I am asking because you have stated this after "..would this cause enough of a legal liability...". So, in the end, does the board room decide what to do with the founder, his wife, and the company, or the court room?

My conjecture is that they (the board) will be trying to determine what the legal, PR and ultimately financial fallout will be from this. These will probably be the things that will drive any decisions on how Github addresses the situation.

Re: Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit

#208

Post by candeira »

jkrems wrote: post #55
patrickg_zill wrote: post #27

Some 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 saw similar things happen with male employees. A spouse of a manager/founder (well, anyone really) having power without any official position is a disaster waiting to happen. The situation I experienced was with an all-male team. The result is people leaving, so having a small team really doesn't fix anything. Quite the opposite.

I've been in this position as a co-founder, having to deal with a contractor who was also the spouse of a co-founder, and who managed to drive everybody crazy, including other contractors and employees, other co-founders, and their own spouse.

Re: Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit

#209

Post by enneff »

csense wrote: post #200
enneff wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you making excuses for these people? What purpose does it serve? I'm especially shocked to see you trivialise the actions of the jilted engineer. Reverting someone else's work without explanation is a blatantly hostile and disrespectful act that should be treated seriously in isolation, and is made more serious still in the context of the inappropriate sexual stuff.

> Why are you making excuses for these people? What purpose does it serve? Because I think people should question whether they're overreacting to the situation. > I'm especially shocked to see you trivialise the actions of the jilted engineer I edited to clarify this. Careful reading shows that: (1) It is possible that there were legitimate technical reasons for the reverted commits. (2) It is possible that Github di…

> I think it is difficult to say that Github is at fault from the information given, and I fear that's the conclusion that many were jumping to.

Don't worry. Read the whole thread on this discussion. The only people who are jumping to conclusions are those assuming there is something wrong with Horvath's story.

I have thought carefully about the article, and this is my conclusion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7408446 Reproduced here:

> GitHub are perfectly capable of defending themselves. They are the group in power here. Second-guessing the motives and truth of this woman's story does nothing but undermine her, and undermine the confidence of others who may have similar stories (at GitHub or elsewhere).

Re: Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit

#210

Post by korzun »

potatolicious wrote: post #134
korzun wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to assume things that were said without context. Was her code reverted at 12:00 AM because it broke the site? Or was it for something else? If so what? See how the context changes your opinion? Generic 'they reverted my code!' statement does not tell me anything.

That's why I qualified it with "out of vengeance". There are many legitimate reasons why you would revert somebody else's code, but doing so out of interpersonal conflict is not one of them. Note that I'm not commenting on the authenticity of the accusations laid out in this specific instance. My point is that messing with people's code because you don't get along with them - whether it happened here or elsewhere, an…

Sure, but reverting code is something that is highly visible and I can't picture an engineer reverting usable code and other engineers/leads not question it.

I'm willing to bet that it was reverted for other reasons.

I reverted code from master before because the guy wanted to play the 'okay but' game when we noticed issues with it.

Sorry but we can chat about issues later, it's not staying in production to be pushed out by a random engineer. Nothing to do with your race, gender, age, etc.

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