Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit • Hacker News Board

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

#771

Post by grifpete » Sun, Mar 16, 2014, 8:21 PM UTC

shiven wrote: post #394

Can someone please explain to me why-the-f was a non-employee granted full and free access to other company employees, each and every day, on company premises, without mutual consent? What were the other co-founders thinking? This was a darn time-bomb waiting to explode. Just because you are a fancy-pants, hotshot startup and not a bigco, does not mean the same laws and liabilities don't apply to you. Founders, all t…

Completely agree. And it appears that the wife felt completely entitled to behave in this way. Just extraordinary.

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

#772

Post by tw268 » Sun, Mar 16, 2014, 8:25 PM UTC

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #718

jjoonathan wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a huge chasm between ogling someone undertaking physical activity If anyone -- attractive man, unattractive man, attractive woman, unattractive woman -- started hula-hooping in the middle of the office I would expect people to stare. Not because it's sexual, but because it's peculiar. The gap between "stare" and "ogle" is hardly objective, let alone a "chasm."

Julie described the group of men as 'gawking'; as far as I'm aware, this is more or less interchangeable with the term 'ogling', in common use here in the UK. This is significantly different from just staring - it implies a sexual undercurrent, i.e. paying particular attention to someone's physical characteristics. Maybe this is a cultural thing, but the clear implication in the original report was that the staring/o…

What's the difference between "looking" and "ogling"? Whether or not a feminist is standing nearby

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

#773

Post by gvb » Sun, Mar 16, 2014, 8:25 PM UTC

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).

GitHub cannot defend itself in public. It is a multimillion dollar company with a very disgruntled ex-employee charging them of sexual discrimination.

You can bet their lawyers are saying in tones that cannot be ignored to not say anything until and unless it goes to trial.

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

#774

Post by bsder » Sun, Mar 16, 2014, 8:26 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #656

logicchains wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

At Sun, where there was a structured management chain, there was a time when one of the folks in my group reverted a big chunk of changes I had committed, and I went to our common manager and demanded satisfaction. The response was 'if we left them in he threatened to quit, there isn't anything we can do', and the only conclusion from that statement was that if one of us quit, the manager would rather it were me than…

Well, why was someone willing to quit over changes you made? And why was the manager willing to side with him over you?

Those are pretty big flags that you screwed up.

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

#775

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Mar 16, 2014, 8:29 PM UTC

[deleted]

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

#776

Post by tw268 » Sun, Mar 16, 2014, 8:30 PM UTC

stephp wrote: post #699

tomp wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's an story on predators that happen to be male (and female for that matter). Don't you think it's then disingenuous to call it sexism?

Women can absolutely be sexist towards other women-- as in a jealousy scenario. Sexism is being targeted because of your gender. The fact that this is not obvious explains a lot.

So when a woman has a problem at work, it is "sexism"?

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

#777

Post by facepalm » Sun, Mar 16, 2014, 8:31 PM UTC

ilovecomputers wrote: post #108

csense wrote: post #64

I don't think this was an instance of institutionalized sexism. Rather, the founder's wife seems like an unbalanced individual, and nobody effectively set any boundaries. The other founders and HR seemed unaware or unable to set the situation to right. As for her romantically inclined co-worker -- I don't see how his behavior qualifies as sexist or hostile. Merely a bit clueless, but isn't it to be expected that empl…

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…

"individuals who never mentally developed out of high school"

Luckily that isn't a crime... (not saying that I agree with that assessment either, just saying).

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

#778

Post by tw268 » Sun, Mar 16, 2014, 8:33 PM UTC

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #689

rdtsc wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is, sadly, the best thing to do because you don't know who is going to take offense. Then excessive avoidance gets reinterpreted as snobbishness, sexism, not wanting to be inclusive, and so on. "Men actively avoid me and sit father away during meetings, they don't invite me for beers after works, it is a hostile environment". Anyway it is a fine line. And one can interpret a lot of behaviors as stemming from s…

No, it's not a fine line at all. There is a huge chasm between ogling someone undertaking physical activity and excessively avoiding them. You probably behave toward your male colleagues in a way that would fit neatly somewhere between these two extremes. Is it particularly a US issue, this inability to behave like a grown-up at work? In the UK, in my experience, men and women tend to work together, on an equal footi…

This seems to be asserting some sort of bizarre serf-like hierarchy where men aren't even supposed to look at their superiors

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

#779

Post by gaius » Sun, Mar 16, 2014, 8:40 PM UTC

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #718

jjoonathan wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a huge chasm between ogling someone undertaking physical activity If anyone -- attractive man, unattractive man, attractive woman, unattractive woman -- started hula-hooping in the middle of the office I would expect people to stare. Not because it's sexual, but because it's peculiar. The gap between "stare" and "ogle" is hardly objective, let alone a "chasm."

Julie described the group of men as 'gawking'; as far as I'm aware, this is more or less interchangeable with the term 'ogling', in common use here in the UK. This is significantly different from just staring - it implies a sexual undercurrent, i.e. paying particular attention to someone's physical characteristics. Maybe this is a cultural thing, but the clear implication in the original report was that the staring/o…

So what's gawker.com?

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

#780

Post by tw268 » Sun, Mar 16, 2014, 8:42 PM UTC

efuquen wrote: post #669

tomp wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't the point she's making that she didn't fit the culture primarily because of her gender? It is, but the point a lot of people are making here is that maybe she sees the situation in a wrong way, as her perspective is a reflection of her gender, so she cannot really judge if the problems happened primarily because of her gender. Actually, the fact that the other female employees felt secure and relaxed enough t…

> It's also not necessarily an unhealthy/toxic environment. Honestly this is very close to gender discrimination, which is clearly illegal. If you created an environment that only young male developers will enjoy how is that much different then explicitly saying you won't hire any female developers? To me it's in a similar vein of when literacy tests were employed in the South to prevent African Americans from voting…

A couple hundred mostly-males built a company that was wildly successful where they loved to work. Now it sounds like they have to destroy that, build a culture that is professional and antiseptic, to make feminists feel welcome.