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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

#431
post #288

While the 'wife' aspect has drawn a lot of attention, it seems that through her marriage she may essentially have a founder's level of equity in the company. I don't know the personalities involved, but she might also have relevant professional experience, and/or have been genuinely helpful in handling thorny issues in the past (even if this case clearly escalated into many kinds of mutual suspicion and recrimination…

> it seems that through her marriage she may essentially have a founder's level of equity in the company

What about the founder's mom? Or the founder's father? Or the founder's children? Or the founder's dear grandma?

There's a reason why equity and investor/adviser roles should be clear and formalized. Bringing cookies at your spouse's work place doesn't entitle you to anything more than polite greetings.

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

#432
post #249
post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, as a male, try to avoid staring at another female because I fear someone like Horvath accuses me of sexism. This is, sadly, the best thing to do because you don't know who is going to take offense. PS: To avoid looking one-sided and narrow (which I believe I'm not) I really feel bad about this whole situation and the lady who had to go through that. Personally liked a github as a company.

And I, as a male, try not to stare at anybody because I'm not a fucking asshole.

> I'm not a fucking asshole.

The majority of your judgemental and passive/aggressive posts in this thread suggest otherwise.

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

#433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean, someone reverting your code because of a personal vendetta? I laughed out loud when I read this and several other specific details in the story. It sounded very familiar. I have several friends and many acquaintances who work at Valve. One very senior engineer initially worked on Source 2 about three years ago but had to quickly switch projects because another, more tenured engineer was expressing his disag…

It really surprises me that somebody can get away with such destructive behaviour as reverting someone else's commits without reasonable cause. What justification is there for not firing on the spot anybody who puts their own personal vendettas over the good of the project?

I once quit a senior dev role as the tech architect at the company had veto power on all code and blocked my work because I'd spelled the word dialog the US way, rather than the UK way (dialogue).

This was not in a public interface, this was in variable names.

Ignoring that every word in programming is in US English: color, gray, program.

We were deadlocked for weeks, with him refusing to ship working code that fulfilled the business goals over this single issue. Quitting resolved the deadlock, and I learned afterwards that he really did go through the work and change it all to "dialogue".

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

#435
post #21

My gut tells me there was probably sexism at GitHub, drama with founder's wife, AND she was probably not blameless either in this whole mess. It was disheartening to me to see people rally to her on Twitter and immediately cry for the sacking of GitHub before any facts or concrete allegations were made by anyone involved, her especially. That's the stuff angry mobs are made of.

True, but you can also witness the opposite on Twitter: Claims of sexism met with a deluge of trolls threatening to rape the claimant.

I feel that these people are nothing more than an entitled group of lazy jerks that use twitter to pressure, blame and get ego boosts. They lean and get the easy way, yet claim they're disenfranchised. I can't help but ramble, but I really worry why people don't scrutinize them more.

I feel they're delusional, entitled, to the point where they think they can be promoted to CTO and programming positions without actually coding.

My issue is, I even see woman this girl knows who are on twitter speaking hate-speach and high-fiving each other over this. They really want to stir up trouble and ruin lives.

I feel they love drama, attention and are cognitively trained by US culture to feel entitled, and use adversity and the crowd sympathy instead of bettering themselves and taking responsibility.

I feel it's boy who cried wolf, they're on twitter, and press the big red misogyny button when things get tough.

The truth is, I don't use twitter, but whenever I see one of these ladies, I associate it to the emotion of a entitled women coasting on the same old trick. It's like a nervous response. That's my honest feeling.

"The boy who cried wolf" can pose a problem one day to minorities who one day learn to actually code, who are honest, and may cause prejudice to them because of these trolls. It also hurts people who have legitimate cases of harassment.

Julia may or may not have been wronged, but the way she handles it on twitter, I feel is childish. I'm disgusted no one calls it out. Sorry for that.

That said, it's never too late to learn to program. No matter who you are. I promise you if you do your job well, the people who matter want your skill and talent and the valley will always be open to you.

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

#436
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the point. From this story alone, it seems the company is run by individuals who never mentally developed out of high school. Those incidents you mentioned are merely a red flag of the immaturity of some of these people. Awkwardly hitting on an employee to a point of discomfort, messing with someone's work cause they turned you down to a date, creepily staring at an employee in the gym; you should at l…

it seems the company is run by individuals who never mentally developed out of high school Github is developed in Ruby. Enough said.

There does seem to be some truth to what you're suggesting.

For whatever reason, there's a propensity for this sort of drama to occur within organizations and at events where Ruby and Ruby on Rails, or users of such technologies, are involved in some way.

Off hand, I can think of that controversial presentation at GoGaRuCo a few years ago, the controversy about the diversity of the presenters at the BritRuby conference a bit later, and this matter here. Then there was that whole "Donglegate" incident, which while it occurred at PyCon, it involved at least one person with some ties to the Ruby community. I'm sure there are other events I'm missing, too.

Maybe it's just the so-called "brogrammer" culture that's so ingrained within the Ruby world that's responsible. Regardless, for a community that's actually quite small, there seems to be a whole lot of this sort of strife.

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

#437
post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I, as a male, try not to stare at anybody because I'm not a fucking asshole.

If someone is rendering a public performance, aren't you supposed to look at it? When does hula hooping in a public space transfer to a public performance? Is it public immediately because it's in plain sight? Does it only become public after an audience gathers and the hula hooper continues to hula hoop? What if someone sees the gathered audience and joins in so that they won't be considered rude for not taking inte…

I agree with your points, and also I really have a hard time believing that the women hula hooping to music in the middle of the office were not aware of the effect they were having.

While personally I think its creepy to just hang out and leer at them, it's not really against societal norms in any way.

It's not like these guys broke into the girls bathroom to watch this or something.

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

#438

> Horvath then told her partner, also a GitHub employee... Protip: don't dip your pen in the company ink.

I was getting really confused by all the uses of "partner". Is she a lesbian is that it? I would they could just say girlfriend so I would know what was going on.

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

#439

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.…

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…

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.

Unfortunately, at least in the US, most employers will not hire someone who sued an ex-employer, even when the suit was clearly justified. It's actually legal (amazingly) to discriminate against people who used legal process.

I don't know who's right and I like Github, but a future employer with moral courage would take a chance on someone like JAH (who hasn't sued to my knowledge, but is still probably blacklisted, to tell the horrible truth) and at least hear her out, and hire her if she seemed well-matched to the role. Unfortunately, moral courage is incredibly thin on the ground. Most people are useless cowards.

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

#440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean, someone reverting your code because of a personal vendetta? I laughed out loud when I read this and several other specific details in the story. It sounded very familiar. I have several friends and many acquaintances who work at Valve. One very senior engineer initially worked on Source 2 about three years ago but had to quickly switch projects because another, more tenured engineer was expressing his disag…

It really surprises me that somebody can get away with such destructive behaviour as reverting someone else's commits without reasonable cause. What justification is there for not firing on the spot anybody who puts their own personal vendettas over the good of the project?

If Evil Coder sends an email to Noble Coder describing the vendetta-motivated reversions, then sure, something might happen. When would it ever be so obvious, however? If this is done quietly, and Noble happens to work in different parts of the codebase every cycle, she might not even realize the reversions have occurred for a few cycles. Even then, many people would assume there was some fair-minded rationale the first few times. After it is clear that something is going on, Noble can make a stink, but she might also just want to cut her losses and make a lateral move.
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