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Update on Julie Horvath's Departure

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Re: Update on Julie Horvath's Departure

#11

Post by macspoofing »

Usually there are two sides of the story, but the fact that a non-employee (wife of co-founder) exercised so much power and meddled in internal office politics in the way that she did, it was hard to see how GitHub could even claim a reasonable stance. They screwed this up big time. This is a good response.

Re: Update on Julie Horvath's Departure

#12

Post by Bahamut »

_delirium wrote: post #6
minimaxir wrote: post #2

This is the best possible response GitHub could have done given the circumstances.

That was also my first reaction. I don't know enough about crisis-management-style PR to second-guess their response. I often have the suspicion that founders are not taking the best course of action, but this response seems to avoid the obvious pitfalls.

This was also my first reaction as well - the real question is how they followup this response, but this is the only correct move at this juncture.

Re: Update on Julie Horvath's Departure

#13

Post by leccine »

Well Julie's story stinks. Let me just quote the last thigs she wrote and work backwards from that.

"Two women, one of whom I work with and adore, and a friend of hers were hula hooping to some music. I didn’t have a problem with this. What I did have a problem with is the line of men sitting on one bench facing the hoopers and gawking at them. It looked like something out of a strip club. When I brought this up to male coworkers, they didn’t see a problem with it. But for me it felt unsafe and to be honest, really embarrassing. That was the moment I decided to finally leave GitHub."

For me, two adult individual can do whatever the hack they want to do, if it is legal and they are both consent of doing it. Julie seems like really pissed that other people just can have fun the way she does not like. This sounds like a huge frustration in her towards others with different standards. This last event seems like triggered her outrage, and that is also a sign that she might exaggerate what was really going in Github. Don't get me wrong, as part of a small minority I totally understand what oppression means at a workplace, but these accusations seem a bit irrational.

Re: Update on Julie Horvath's Departure

#16

Post by jw2013 »

"the relevant founder has been put on leave... The founder’s wife... will no longer be permitted in the office."

Almost exactly what I expected. As the startup grows larger (200+ employees now for Github?) it's not uncommon to have some cultural setback. +1 for Github trying to fix it asap, but still Chris Wanstrath did not mention how are they exactly going to fix the culture. Putting founder on leave is by no means panacea. The behavior on that one founder is very likely not the cause for the wrong culture, but just the side effect. So more specific plans INSIDE the company, please? (well, actually I think fixing the culture can't be done by any plan, but it must be done by example of founders/high-level executives.)

Re: Update on Julie Horvath's Departure

#19

Post by sergiotapia »

leccine wrote: post #13

Well Julie's story stinks. Let me just quote the last thigs she wrote and work backwards from that. "Two women, one of whom I work with and adore, and a friend of hers were hula hooping to some music. I didn’t have a problem with this. What I did have a problem with is the line of men sitting on one bench facing the hoopers and gawking at them. It looked like something out of a strip club. When I brought this up to m…

>Julie seems like really pissed that other people just can have fun the way she does not like.

Exactly - who's she to determine what is 'over the line'? Nobody likes a busybodies .

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