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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

#841

Post by HillRat »

yawz wrote: post #254
yeukhon wrote: post #183

There 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 tha…

>While the founder is right about avoiding dating someone in your own company This is one of my pet peeves. This is a professional setting and the employees are not 13. They should be mature enough to be able to handle their personal lives without bans or frown upons. Someone can't handle rejection? Who says he/she can handle criticism? What about disagreements? To me this is a personality problem that should be deal…

It's a tough scenario. One of the first big managerial problems I had to face was when I was still a snot-nosed twentysomething working at a Fortune 100. I came back from lunch and was pulled into another director's office, who quietly told me that two of my employees had spent the last hour screaming at each other in the hallways and would I make sure they "stopped scaring the goddamned children." Turned out they had been secretly dating for the past six months, something that I was totally ignorant of. The relationship crashed, then burned, and then I had two senior-level sysadmins (each about 10-15 years my elders) who refused to work with each other. Even though we eventually worked through the professional problems (didn't realize that couples' counseling was going to be part of my ambit), they ended up with a lot of bruised feelings and I (for good reason) permanently lost a lot of political capital.

On the other hand, there are plenty of people who can be in a relationship while working with each other. Hard cases make for bad law, and I'm uncomfortable with blanket proclamations against relationships at work, as long as two people at different levels along the same management line aren't seeing each other.

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

#842

Post by espadrine »

nailer wrote: post #553
ZoF wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post really bothers me somehow. Edit: Figured out why. I don't understand why saying, "people will call me sexist for this" immediately validates your statement as "not intended to be sexist". >"If you are male and a founder, one of your most valuable business resources is your wife. People will call me sexist for saying this, I expect, but women think socially with a level of complexity that I think most men ne…

> Does that entire paragraph not just objectify the wife and establish differences between the sexes based on anecdotal experience? Re objectification: couples get advice from their life partners. That doesn't mean this is their life partners only goal. Re: 'establish differences between the sexes based on anecdotal experience' is there anything ethically wrong with this? Would you prefer a citation be added, eg, 'ne…

> Re objectification: couples get advice from their life partners. That doesn't mean this is their life partners only goal.

Women objectification is about treating a woman like an object, a belonging, a resource.

As it turns out, the person writing the parent comment defined a founder's wife as "one of your most valuable business resources". That person should have said, "some of your most valuable business insights will come from your wife". It wouldn't be objectification, but it would still establish differences between the sexes based on anecdotal experience.

Assuming unproven differences between the sexes to be true has always been ethically borderline from a scientific perspective. From a social perspective, it artificially deters persons of each sex from doing something which is then implicitly considered "unnatural" for them.

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

#843

Post by danbmil99 »

gojomo wrote: 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…

> genuinely helpful

As in, sit across from someone you don't like and glare at them all day?

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

#844

Post by evilduck »

ebfe wrote: post #660
cossatot wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seriously hope you consider rethinking this position. There are a tremendous number of incredible women in the world, and most of them are not looking for a sugar daddy. Many women also work hard for their careers, passions, or some combination of both, and understand that both success and failure happen. I will also say that in many instances, if you have this opinion about women (or any group of persons), it's pr…

What advantages would marriage provide over a non-legal partnership? The latter seems to carry all of the benefits of marriage without any of the risks.

It provides a different social perception too.

In your 20s its fine, put off getting married, but the 40 something guy who introduces you to his girlfriend sends a totally different signal than someone who introduces you to his wife (and vice versa if the genders are swapped). It says you're noncommittal, bad at relationships, maybe previously divorced, constantly shopping around, maybe breached partners trust repeatedly, whatever, take your pick. What it never says when someone is judging your book by its cover though is "this is just some guy who's been hedging against marital risk for a couple decades", any other snap judgement requires the person know you better.

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

#845

Post by grifpete »

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…

I have a hypothesis but it's probably bullshit.

If a) Horvath had felt for some time that she was in a hostile work environment and that she was being subjected to pressures that a male employee would not have to endure (ie sexist discrimination, and b) the company senior management / founder(s) felt that there was a risk that she was going to leave and go public with her allegations of sexism, then c) it makes a twisted kind of sense that the founder would send his wife to go talk to Horvath to try to negotiate some kind of truce, make her happy. The (unfortunate) logic being that a woman to woman communication might be better for defusing Horvath's concerns. d) unfortunately the wife, whilst female, handled it clumsily and make matters worse...and as the situation deteriorated she played an increasingly crazy and (apparently) unmanaged role. For all we know she had represented to her founder husband that she could handle it and panicked when things started going downhill. e) etc etc

Like I said, it's probably bullshit...

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

#846

Post by gruntmaster9000 »

ebfe wrote: post #646
gruntmaster9000 wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not “get rid of meritocracy” but rather “recognize that it isn’t really meritocracy and it’s preserving problems”.

"X isn't perfectly Y, so let's stop working towards it in favor of working towards something that's even farther from Y!" is equally absurd.

No, it’s “X isn’t really Y, despite what we say, and it’s actually harmful, so let’s stop reinforcing problems by pretending that it is Y”. As being discussed elsewhere in this thread, the problem with meritocracy is that it’s dependent on value judgements by those already in power. Simply, it is a fine ideal, but in practice it is unachievable, utopic. Establishing an organization or community as “meritocratic” means ignoring the role of existing dynamics.

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

#847

Post by johnbm »

jessedhillon wrote: post #587
ZoF wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post really bothers me somehow. Edit: Figured out why. I don't understand why saying, "people will call me sexist for this" immediately validates your statement as "not intended to be sexist". >"If you are male and a founder, one of your most valuable business resources is your wife. People will call me sexist for saying this, I expect, but women think socially with a level of complexity that I think most men ne…

I think it might bother you because the author assumes that's his own inability to navigate complex social relationships is innate to his maleness. In fact, many men are adept at understanding social and emotional subtexts very well. There's no magnitude-order difference in innate ability as described, or if there is, it's not a permanent, unlearnable gulf. This comment bothered me because OP is fetishizing and token…

See, the problem is that the people who complain about this are also the ones who say it's valuable to add women to a group of men (or indeed the reverse), because it results in more balanced decision making.

It can't be both. Either men or women are (as groups, i.e. averages) innately differ on the social vs analytical axis, and diversity is a net plus, or gender is entirely socially constructed, and adding women to a group shouldn't do anything in aggregate.

Studies point to the former rather than the latter.

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

#848

Post by mwhite »

froxle wrote: post #588
mwhite wrote: post #34

Well, there are only three Github founders, and a quick search seems to indicate that Tom Preston-Werner is the only one with a wife, Theresa: http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/27/omakase-charity-tech-indust...

> Tom Preston-Werner is the only one with a wife This is not true.

My apologies, I clearly didn't search well enough, and in retrospect it probably wasn't even worth saying anyway.

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

#849

Post by phillmv »

belorn wrote: post #147

A founders wife felt that a female employee puts the company at risk, so she try to control the employee to avoid harm to the company. This then turned into bullying, stalking, and unhealthy work environment. This is why affirmative action and other "let treat women specially" crap is bad. It makes for a self-fulfilling prophesy of more sexism. The more we focus on "balancing the scales" rather than eliminating speci…

>This is why affirmative action and other "let treat women specially" crap is bad.

This does not follow from your premise.

The founder's wife's relationship to the company is inappropriate. That is also not what affirmative action is about.

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

#850

Post by Chronic26 »

mwfunk wrote: post #661
wahsd wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you live in the UK, which is still part of Europe, where people are still people that have rights. Your only right in the USA is the right to leave.

The fact that you were able to post this means that your statement is false. Using hyperbole to make a point only serves to invalidate your point, unless your audience is composed of complete idiots (not hyperbole, that's actually what I mean). I would hope that the HN readership isn't a bunch of idiots, although you obviously think they are.

HN is in fact, full of idiots. Look at the comments below.
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