Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Results of the GitHub Investigation

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 514 posts

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#121

Post by [deleted] »

hntaway wrote: post #96
cjbprime wrote: post #14

There appear to have been weirdnesses around the investigation, such as Julie Ann Horvath (and other ex-employees) remaining uncontacted until it was wrapping up: https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/453298152569720832 So I don't know how much stock you can place behind the idea that the investigators GH hired, who did not contact ex-employees competently, found them blameless. The resignation probably speaks for mor…

An anonymous post on medium by github insiders: https://medium.com/p/d96f431f4e8e Unfortunate that it is anonymous, but it is still worth reading in my opinion.

[deleted]

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#122

Post by epochwolf »

onotarti wrote: post #89
awnird wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is incredibly troubling. How can anyone trust GitHub, knowing that non-employees regularly had access to private information?

In my experience it is pretty common for people who bring work home with them not to be super-meticulous about preventing access to the content of the work by their families. How many people do you know who sound-proof their home office so their wife can't eavesdrop on their business calls?

I think I should point out this is a fireable offense in a number of companies. I work with sensitive information every day. I'm pretty sure if allowed someone outside the company to use my machine for anything, I would be fired.

My dad works for IBM doing mainframe repair and installation. He's seen his coworkers fired for allowing unauthorized individuals to use their company laptops. They've gone even further in the last few years in making unauthorized software a fireable offense.

Granted, two data points isn't a lot but there are companies that have enforced policies to prevent sensitive information from leaking.

I should also point out both my dad and I do significant amounts of work from home and we are both required by our companies to use full disk encryption.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#123

Post by ChuckMcM »

When these things conclude, as this one has, it is useful to check your own response emotion (happiness? sadness? outrage? bitterness?). One of the harder things for me to learn has been to critically evaluate my own judgement. Generally I'm a very rational guy and can give you my reasoning from first principles right up to the claim in question, when its wrong (the claim), I find my tendency is not to listen. My rational brain is invested in learning, my emotional brain is invested in being "right."

At the end of the day, neither Tom or Julie work at GitHub any more and what ever they brought to the mix has been lost. They have both made statements of pain and hurt, and their pain has been a burden on their friends as well. Will GitHub be stronger or weaker after this event? Will Julie and Tom? Only time will tell. Perhaps the best that can be said of this affair is that its publicity might help others to recognize the dangers of their behavior earlier before it becomes a problem.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#124

Post by sergiotapia »

dragonwriter wrote: post #114
sergiotapia wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What an embarrassment if you ask me. Why should he leave if he's been found of no legal wrong-doing by a third party? These tumblr-twats warriors only break communities.

> What an embarrassment if you ask me. Why should he leave if he's been found of no legal wrong-doing by a third party? Because you can do your job badly and be unsuitable to continue in it by exhibiting poor judgement without breaking the law.

You're assuming he did his job badly. All I'm seeing is the investigation showing NO EVIDENCE OF WRONG DOING. You're taking her word over an investigations result.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#125

Post by kybernetyk »

brandon272 wrote: post #29

It sounds like Mrs. Preston-Werner was a regular presence at the GitHub office and, according to Horvath, had extensive access to private information throughout GitHub's systems despite the fact that she wasn't an employee. If true, that should certainly be a privacy and security concern to any GitHub customer or user.

> If true, that should certainly be a privacy and security concern to any GitHub customer or user.

We left github private repo hosting when they got VC funding. Because of such a scenario where we could be competing with a company that was funded by the same VC that gave GH money.

Now in a perfect world that shouldn't be a problem because the VC should never access private user data. But well ... as you see it's not a perfect world and if a wife of an employee can browse through customer data than why shouldn't this be true for the guy who gave GH a few million dollars?

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#126

Post by calibraxis »

tptacek wrote: post #53
falcolas wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that the denial is couched in the terminology "there was no legal wrongdoing". Not that there was no wrongdoing, just nothing blatant enough (or which left evidence) that it broke laws.

No, the denial says "no evidence exists to support the claim". That's a direct and testable assertion, not weasel words.

I'd like to see how you (or anyone here) propose to test it. This isn't science; it's a corporate press release.

Do we know the name of the "full, independent, third-party" investigator(s)? Do we know who paid for them, their methodology, and whether they reported to Horvath, giving her oversight?

Or are investigators the same, like software contractors?

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#127

Post by danielweber »

ender7 wrote: post #112
tptacek wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. It will never be clear what actually happened. I think Internet message boards create the perception that outcomes like that are rare. They're not: they're the norm. That's how it's supposed to be. We don't get to know everything and we need to work within the limits of our knowledge.

The only problem for GitHub now is finding a way to attract talent. If your best response to "You have a hostile work environment." is "We don't have a provably illegal hostile work environment." then that doesn't inspire great confidence when evaluating it as a place to work.

I can make that same accusation at any company you can think of, and the best response they could hope to give is "no, we aren't a bad place to work."

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#128

Post by hntaway »

courtneypowell wrote: post #60
danso wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's possible that Horvath was right about the poor actions of management, and at the same time, very little of what she alleged seemed to fall into the bounds of gender-based discrimination. A colleague who reverts your commits because you wouldn't date him...that's not gender-based, that's office-romance strife (though obviously, such strife can be exacerbated with a gender imbalance at the company). I'm ki…

How is a woman who refuses to date another employee considered an "office-romance?" Retaliation as a result of unwanted advances is considered harassment. sexual harassment definition: http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/sexual_harassment.cfm

There is a claim that the engineer in question was an ex-boyfriend, which would put this under office romance.

https://medium.com/p/d96f431f4e8e

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#129

Post by rhizome »

onotarti wrote: post #89
awnird wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is incredibly troubling. How can anyone trust GitHub, knowing that non-employees regularly had access to private information?

In my experience it is pretty common for people who bring work home with them not to be super-meticulous about preventing access to the content of the work by their families. How many people do you know who sound-proof their home office so their wife can't eavesdrop on their business calls?

My girlfriend works on disclosure projects at a company you've heard of and who regularly has highly-anticipated announcements. I have no idea what she works on, even when she's working from home in the same room as me[1].

1. http://www.officedepot.com/a/browse/laptop-privacy-filters/N...

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#130

Post by parfe »

tptacek wrote: post #55
[deleted] wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

No, that's saying that Tom Preston-Werner was exonerated, and that a different problem surfaced during the investigation. It is not necessary for Horvath to have lied for that to be the conclusion reached. Misunderstandings happen.

>The investigation found no evidence to support the claims against Tom and his wife of sexual or gender-based harassment or retaliation, or of a sexist or hostile work environment. However, while there may have been no legal wrongdoing, the investigator did find evidence of mistakes and errors of judgment.

Using the word "exonerated" outright ignores the conclusion of the report. The github hired investigator reported no evidence of legal wrong-doing. Then the company fired/accepted the resignation of Preston-Werner for his "other" mistakes.

I think it's safe to say Github would not admit to legal wrong doing publicly as that just opens them up to legal liability. But to then say "no legal wrongdoing" translates into Preston-Werner being exonerated has to be some sort of joke.

Post reply on HN