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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

#421

Post by chmike »

kansface wrote: post #324
megablast wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Oh, okay, I'll talk to him and make sure it stops." Can I come live in your world where everything is solved by a quick talk.

Seems straight forward to me: "stop this shit or you're fired".

You should first ask for an explanation and justification of the so far alledged misbehavior. You could accuse and threat someone on false claims. If the person fails to provide a valid explanation and justification the demonstration of the existance of a problem will have been made by itself. No need the explicitly threat anyone. Threatening should be done only in phase 2 after the problem as been acertained by both parties and the person has failed to correct what could have been a simple misunderstanding or an accident.

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

#422

Post by amix »

Allegation that a wife of a founder can read private chats at GitHub makes me question GitHub's privacy and security... I would love if we would have a statement of GitHub on this matter since it would be a huge privacy breach (and something that would make us move all of our private repos outside of GitHub). (posted this as a comment on the article as well)

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

#423

Post by RivieraKid »

gamblor956 wrote: post #65
bitops wrote: post #53

As usual, another HN thread that perfectly exemplifies victim blaming and a collective burying of heads in the sand. There's a few people on here who seem to get it, but most don't. I'm sick of it. Goodbye, Hacker News.

This should be the top comment. As long as sexism persists in the tech industry, it's going to drive women out and keep others away.

... and keep the salaries high.

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

#425

Post by Tobu »

iamwil wrote: post #251

Does it seem like it's not the whole story? It seems like there's a piece of the story missing from before the wife's chat over beers. It doesn't seem like the wife of a boss would ask a specific employee to one-on-one beers, unless she had a specific topic in mind. And boasting about pulling strings at Github seems like an unlikely purpose. To me, it sounds like something happened that was unmentioned. And the wife…

The article goes back and forth in the chronology, which makes the story hard to parse. It's Horvath's very personal point of view, but the TC interviewer(s) should have tried to clarify it. Multiple incidents/hostility around pull requests are blurred, but there were a few notches of escalation there.

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

#426

Post by vellum »

drawkbox wrote: post #161

I think that is one benefit remote offices have is there are less chances for events like this to take place. Being confined to one space everyday with people for years will lead to dust ups, cultural clashes, personality clashes etc. How they are handled is important, it doesn't appear it was handled correctly here. High school politics are in effect at every office and I see this as more that than sexism. We live f…

I think that is one benefit remote offices have is there are less chances for events like this to take place.

I take it you've never played WoW? :) I've seen the same high school drama replay over and over, both online and offline. It's more a function of being human, than it is the environment.

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

#427

Post by facepalm »

RodericDay wrote: post #340
theorique wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watching your co-workers as they hula-hoop in the office doesn't sound terribly sexist or out of the ordinary [1]. Hula hooping in the office is offbeat enough that you'd expect people to stop and look And it's certainly not the some kind of 'last straw' sexist incident. Obviously, what happened is that Horvath was already upset from the weirdness that had transpired thus far - and based on the article, it does sound…

It could easily have been there. Stop being condescending. A lot of "normal" interactions between men and women are fraught with creepy weirdness due to the way we're socialized. This is well studied, even if you find the conclusions of those researchers unpalatable.

I think it's a problem if women (or men) start dishing out accusations from projecting something into other people's faces. "They looked leery" - what sort of accusation is that? All bets are off if such a thing is held up as evidence for sexism.

There is a famous early cinema experiment which cuts the same closeup of a face with three different scenes (don't remember, I think a funeral, something to eat, whatever). Each time the viewer interprets a different emotion into the face (sad, or hungry, or yearning, or whatever).

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

#428

Post by Xylakant »

pron wrote: post #395
abalone wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may well be that the greatest damage to GitHub here is not on the issue of sexism so much as their advocacy of lean management and organizational "freedom". Although it may have sounded like the "cool teacher" way to address things by having your wife take an employee out for drinks to discuss grievances, clearly this should have been handled in a professional setting according to a clear grievance process. That c…

Apparently, organizational freedom for a bunch of young guys tends to breed sexism and abuse. I've always thought there's trouble ahead for a company whose blog is mostly a drinking journal (although this appears to no longer be the case).

I've seen similar fallouts in a strictly hierarchical organization when one of the leading managers started having an affair with one of the lower rank project management trainees. HR was powerless, since the manager outranked them. Project management was powerless since the now-de-facto promoted trainee was backed by their superior. In the end, the developers revolted and threatened to quit, so the owner personally had to resolve the conflict. [1]

To me, the story sounds of a critical failure in some decision making positions, something that happens over and over and over again every day, we just don't get to hear it.

[1] The trainee was forced to leave, for all that are curious.

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

#429

Post by michaelochurch »

michaelt wrote: post #404
megablast wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Oh, okay, I'll talk to him and make sure it stops." Can I come live in your world where everything is solved by a quick talk.

When a line manager decides to make sure an employee stops doing something, it's actually several conversations: 1. A friendly conversation in which the manager points out the problem, establishes that they expect it to stop, but that if it stops immediately it'll all be forgotten. 2. A less friendly conversation in which the manager says I thought we were clear that you aren't supposed to do it. You're still doing i…

Most of what you say is good, but...

You've already cleared it with political allies they have at the company who could stop it.

If I found out that a manager was undermining me in this way, I'd strike back and it probably wouldn't be good for me or him. Trying to turn my friends against me? That's war. I'd fuck him up and I'd keep fucking him up after the end of that job.

Letting an employee go isn't personal. Reaching out to his "political allies" to undermine him is personal. If you want me off your team, I'll leave. If you try to stop a transfer by corrupting people who like me, then I'm going to fuck up your shit, and it's totally personal.

All that said, no organization should be in a state where a truly toxic person can be protected by having a political power base. If you can't fire someone who's genuinely causing problems (e.g. harassment) without bringing that person's political power base into the equation, you have a dysfunctional organization.

This sort of thing is why companies should fire fast and be generous with severance instead of writing dishonest "performance improvement plans" that essentially mean an already-fired employee gets a month to come in to the office and still wreak havoc. It's better to err on the side of a bad employee getting an "undeserved" severance package than to have "walking dead" employees pissing all over morale. Once it's clear that the only move is to fire someone, it's best to do it quickly. Severance (enough to cover a typical job search) is actually very cheap when you consider the risk and misery (for the manager and team) involved in a PIP or paper trail.

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

#430

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

Aqueous wrote: post #120

I'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…

Look, I don't know about you. But people can usually tell the difference between someone casually watching another, and someone gawking at them.
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