Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This narrows down the choices: the "founder" who is the cause for all this drama is either PJ Hyett or Tom Preston-Werner. Julie Horvath follows both Chris Wanstrath and PJ Hyett on Twitter, but not Tom Preston-Werner (at least as shown by Twitter's "Followed by people you follow" banner). Of course, this could just be a coincidence.
I can't find anything on PJ Hyett's family but Tom Preston-Werner is married.
Update on Julie Horvath's Departure
211–220 of 473 posts
Re: Update on Julie Horvath's Departure
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
GitHub is known to have a dubstep and IPA culture. If they want to be a standard bearer for feminism in tech, the transition is going to be difficult and they are going to take some hits. The two cultures don't mix well. It sounds like GitHub is going to have to become more stale and corporate to survive as a larger company, which is inevitable, but hastened by their own choices.
> GitHub is known to have a dubstep and IPA culture. What point are you trying to make here? Are you a classical music and hefeweizen type of employee typically? Or maybe based out of Seattle, in which case you'd prefer a more grunge/PBR culture?
Look on the bright side, at least it's not brostep culture.
Re: Update on Julie Horvath's Departure
#213That non-employee spouses are allowed on company property to the extent that the CEO has to acknowledge it (and put an end to it) smacks of an unprofessional environment. Ugh.
This is an extremely odd sentiment. Now, if said spouse is causing issues that interfere with work then by all means ban this person. But as a blanket rule that seems absurd.
I think "causing issues" was implied by "to the extent that the CEO has to acknowledge it".
Re: Update on Julie Horvath's Departure
#214Well 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…
It's pretty odd for women to be hula hooping, I've never seen that, but Julia's reaction to is is bananas. How does that make her feel threatened? Can't she just ignore it, of course men are going to look, did the women think nobody would notice? To me this belittles any legitimate claim she might have, if she's this irrational about this event, then it clouds my view of other things she says. She also sounds confuse…
So, if you hula hoop in public you are asking to be ogled?
Was she asking for it? Was she asking nice? Yeah, she was asking for it Did she ask you twice? - "Asking For It" Courtney Love and Eric Erlandson
"We had just gotten off tour with Mudhoney, and I decided to stage-dive. I was wearing a dress and I didn't realize what I was engendering in the audience. It was a huge audience and they were kind of going ape-shit. So I just dove off the stage, and suddenly, it was like my dress was being torn off of me, my underwear was being torn off of me, people were putting their fingers inside of me and grabbing my breasts really hard, screaming things in my ears like "pussy-whore-cunt". When I got back onstage I was naked. I felt like Karen Finley. But the worst thing of all was that I saw a photograph of it later. Someone took a picture of me right when this was happening, and I had this big smile on my face like I was pretending it wasn't happening. So later I wrote a song called "Asking For It" based on the whole experience. I can't compare it to rape because it's not the same. But in a way it was. I was raped by an audience, figuratively, literally, and yet, was I asking for it?" - Courtney Love
Re: Update on Julie Horvath's Departure
#215> We know we have to take action and have begun a full investigation. While that’s ongoing, and effective immediately, the relevant founder has been put on leave, as has the referenced GitHub engineer. Pretty much a full admission that everything that Julie said is true. This is great news, but putting these people on leave seems to be too nice. It's clear that these two people obey ethics that are in direct oppposit…
> This narrows down the choices: the "founder" who is the cause for all this drama is either PJ Hyett or Tom Preston-Werner. https://twitter.com/tpdubs2/status/415224900782014464 > TheresaPrestonWerner @tpdubs2 > Found the best, most comfortable chair at GitHub HQ. Office seems pretty empty today. Among several other tweets here: https://twitter.com/search?q=github%20from%3Atpdubs2&src=typ...
> Found the best, most comfortable chair at GitHub HQ. Office seems pretty empty today.
Hey, this chair seems to be facing that bitch Julie. Imagine that. Now I can give her the evil eye for 8 hours straight!
Re: Update on Julie Horvath's Departure
#216Ms. Horvath's act of taking this directly to the press was obviously intended to inflict the maximum possible harm on Github and is, in itself, unprofessional and harms her credibility. The right way for her to have handled this would have been to document everything , and then resign and sue them without fanfare. Nobody wins when dirty laundry is aired.
Most women (and men--Julie's story rang true to me--and also reminded me of persecution some guys I've worked with have endured) protest and, when nothing changes, quit to preserve their health and sanity. They don't sue. They don't get fanfare for it. They quietly resign and move to other pastures. And nothing changes for their coworkers (and other women and men in the industry) who are also harassed.
Resigning and talking about it is actually pretty courageous. She doesn't win, she gets a stigma. Her company doesn't win, it gets a stigma. But the spectators with their mouths agog realize that this kind of mismanagement/harassment is not only happening under noses, but also being noticed externally (it's endemic; while women and minorities likely deal with it a lot more, it's not just gender-based, it often happens to the lawful-good no matter what gender or race in small tech companies) and, for a brief time, these companies pull themselves together and become better places to work, if only because it's expensive and time-consuming and morale-killing to fuck this stuff up.
Re: Update on Julie Horvath's Departure
#217Female developers are not special.
Well they kinda are. Because we have a lack of them.
Re: Update on Julie Horvath's Departure
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
Off topic, but there is not always "two sides". There is a tendency to try to frame and reduce everything to binary questions... but the world is just not binary.
To put it another way, there may be two sides (or N sides), but some sides' perspective are often more worthy than others. Not to Godwin the thread, but, yeah. Both sides' perspectives are not always equally valid. (I dutifully acknowledge that the offenses are not the same magnitude, and all the caveats that go with referencing The Big G.)
Like the nature of earth:
* General scientific opinion (it's generally roundish).
* Religious doctrine (it's flat, centre of universe, on the back of a turtle).
* And then this person: http://www.timecube.com/
Point is, only one of these sides is reasonable.
Re: Update on Julie Horvath's Departure
#219Julie was banging a co-worker so why is she acting surprised when drama happened ? I don't get it.
I work for a large, bureaucratic company. The only restrictions on dating (and we have a ton of HR rules) is about reports. As long as you neither of you report to each other or have any influence on position etc., corporate has no problem with dating. I can't imagine a startup caring unless you actually cause the drama, and this doesn't sound like that case. Grow up.
well, the founder's wife has some issue with Julia. The story sounds like a fight for a position of an alpha-female. That gives non-zero probability to the idea that either Julia's partner may have been of some interest to the wife, or Julia's behavior toward the founder looked like a challenge to the wife.
Re: Update on Julie Horvath's Departure
#220I do not consider the article in TechCrunch to have presented a balanced description of the matter. I will withhold any judgment until Github have carried out an investigation. I will not presume the founder in question, his wife or the other employee to be guilty of the allegations against them until we have more information. I hope Github will be fair and impartial in their investigation.
Just the fact that the wife of an employee was consistently allowed in the building, is already a serious matter. GitHub is not a scrappy startup anymore; it's a 1 billion dollar company. You do not allow strangers to walk around the office, and much less let them invite employees to dinners to discuss internal matters.
Having said that, seems that GitHub recognizes that they screwed up. The tone of their response seemed fair and balanced, and they acted fast by removing the folks involved. Too bad it got to this point, but it's a good sign.