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Results of the GitHub Investigation

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Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#361

Post by sheetjs »

lobotryas wrote: post #345
sheetjs wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's Theresa's claim (if we are going to play he-said-she-said we might as well be consistent). The official response does not suggest that the errors of judgment were unrelated to the subject at hand

What makes Horvath's claim have any more bearing than Theresa's? What happened to "innocent until proven guilty"?

A priori, Horvath's claim has no more bearing than Theresa's. That part is very clear and it takes a very strained interpretation of my words to conclude I automatically assumed Horvath was correct.

My first comment was in response to onewaystreet's comment "At every company in the world you can find at least one person who hates their job or has problems with their coworkers. I'm not sure they are the person you go to for a fair opinion." The statement seems to imply that it was sour grapes and not an actual systemic problem that led to this situation. My response was that Github's official response admitted that there were problems (explicitly, mind you) but they believed they would win a legal case if it came to it.

My second comment was in response to kelnos's comment 'If you read Theresa Preston-Werner's post (linked above), she claims that the "mistakes and errors of judgment" were completely unrelated to the harassment story, but were discovered during the harassment investigation.' That comment gave Theresa's story much more credibility than Horvath's. Now, this would be a standard he-said-she-said were it not for the fact that Github's reply doesn't refute Horvath's allegations. In fact, Github's reply implicitly refutes Theresa's claim: after all, if what she were saying is true, the official response would have made it clear that the investigation uncovered issues unrelated to the situation at hand.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#362

Post by boklm »

bitlord_219 wrote: post #228
hntaway wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's telling that nobody would attach their name to the article. Horvath's already publicly laughed it off.

It's not telling. Whether what you say is true or not, in either case it would be risky to attach your name to something like this.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#363

Post by kybernetyk »

atmosx wrote: post #207
kybernetyk wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You moved into a direct competitor or you rolled up your own infrastructure? I'm curious because if the company is not large , doesn't seem like much of a hassle having your own depository server.

We rolled our own. Git hosting is pretty straight forward. And Gitlab makes it even simpler.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#365

Post by danso »

jw2013 wrote: post #313
ender7 wrote: post #81

"We didn't do anything illegal, or that would leave us vulnerable to a lawsuit" is about the only content that this blog post contains. While Horvath characterized much of her woes as being gender-related [1], the investigation could have classified most of them as either unprovable or terrible-but-not-provably-sexist (in particular, the behavior of the Preston-Werners). I doubt it will ever be clear what actually ha…

I doubt there will ever be any clear explanation on what happened. Two sides of the story basically tell two different stories. As someone mentioned in the post, Julie posted some tweets in response to Github's announcement today. ( https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore ) 1. Bullying someone into quitting: Illegal. 2. Asking an employee to relay private conversations between her and her partner: Illegal. 3. Justifying the ha…

Yeah...sometimes Twitter just isn't the best place to make a cogent argument:

> 1. Bullying someone into quitting: Illegal.

If that bullying falls under the legal definition of harassment, then yes, it is illegal. But that's kind of begging the question a bit (e.g. Bullying someone is illegal because it is harassment). The thing is, some/much what Horvath described was assuredly captured in electronic records. If she believes something is illegal, and she is not afraid of speaking out, she should take the next step and file a lawsuit.

> 2. Asking an employee to relay private conversations between her and her partner: Illegal.

OK not sure what that refers to. Again, Twitter is not great for these things.

> 3. Justifying the harassment of an employee because of her personal relationships: Pathetic.

Who justified what?

> 4. How does it feel to make money for liars and cowards?

OK and then the rest of this seems like free association. I agree that a third-party investigation instigated by the accused is not automatically the truth, but neither are accusations. The word illegal has real meaning and if Horvath has the proof, then let's see it, rather than have a TechCrunch retelling be the canonical source of facts.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#366

Post by omarhegazy »

This fucking sucks, man. Tom's always seemed like an awesome guy.

As always, absolutely overblown PR messes like this are a result of faulty communication.

Without proper context or research done about it by Internet warriors frothing at the mouth, a one-off donation ruins Brendan Eich's once rich and successful career. Partly because Internet warriors tend to make emotional judgments before they properly study the evidence and contex and before they think through things, but also because Eich ... never responded. He never let the facts through, never let out an, "Oh, sorry guys. This donation was done because of X and Y and Z (don't support marriage as a whole/don't want government getting it's hands in things/etc.,etc.) and it doesn't reflect my current views on sexual orientation or that people with certain sexual orientations deserve less opportunities.", he never gave proper context and evidence to suggest that he wasn't a bad character.

Similarly with this. People are (conveniently?) keeping facts back, giving very vague stories, saying very little with a lot of words, etc., etc. If we are to believe that this thing was a huge misunderstanding and GitHub doesn't employ a bunch of mysognisitic, immature people, why hasn't Tom spoke up? I'm sure that GitHub is internally a lot better than it's image on the Internet right now is -- why doesn't anyone speak up?

Or is it really as bad as the Internet's image of it is?

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#367

Post by return0 »

jw2013 wrote: post #313
ender7 wrote: post #81

"We didn't do anything illegal, or that would leave us vulnerable to a lawsuit" is about the only content that this blog post contains. While Horvath characterized much of her woes as being gender-related [1], the investigation could have classified most of them as either unprovable or terrible-but-not-provably-sexist (in particular, the behavior of the Preston-Werners). I doubt it will ever be clear what actually ha…

I doubt there will ever be any clear explanation on what happened. Two sides of the story basically tell two different stories. As someone mentioned in the post, Julie posted some tweets in response to Github's announcement today. ( https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore ) 1. Bullying someone into quitting: Illegal. 2. Asking an employee to relay private conversations between her and her partner: Illegal. 3. Justifying the ha…

Some of it is contradictory [7,5 vs 1], and some sounds like outright crazy emotional, attention-seeking drivel [16]. Definitely not helping make her case.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#368

Post by 001sky »

evolve2k wrote: post #306
abalone wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget this link, the anonymous GitHub employee response to Horvath's claims: "Facts Conveniently Withheld". https://medium.com/p/d96f431f4e8e

And here's Theresa Preston-Werners side of the story: What every founder fears - https://medium.com/p/2fe173c44215

Despite, being found not guilty of the harassment accusations, questions popped up regarding Tom’s judgment in a separate area. We learned that unnamed employees felt pressured by Tom and me to work pro-bono for my nonprofit.

The whole issue wasn't merely (the alleged) harassment as much as it was the appearance of 'undue influence'. The admission that GitHub forced out the co-founder for this very reason--all the while stepping clear of the topic of sexual harassment--is basically the crux of the matter.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#369

Post by cpncrunch »

apercu wrote: post #356
abalone wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget this link, the anonymous GitHub employee response to Horvath's claims: "Facts Conveniently Withheld". https://medium.com/p/d96f431f4e8e

I sort of feel that if this anonymous posting was 100% accurate, then the cofounder wouldn't have resigned. Better if the people involved came out and told the truth.

If his statement is to be believed then his resignation did actually have nothing to do with JAH's allegations. I'm not saying that anyone is lying here, just that the anon posting is plausible. I agree with you that it would be better if everyone just told the truth.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#370

Post by cynicalkane »

jw2013 wrote: post #313
ender7 wrote: post #81

"We didn't do anything illegal, or that would leave us vulnerable to a lawsuit" is about the only content that this blog post contains. While Horvath characterized much of her woes as being gender-related [1], the investigation could have classified most of them as either unprovable or terrible-but-not-provably-sexist (in particular, the behavior of the Preston-Werners). I doubt it will ever be clear what actually ha…

I doubt there will ever be any clear explanation on what happened. Two sides of the story basically tell two different stories. As someone mentioned in the post, Julie posted some tweets in response to Github's announcement today. ( https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore ) 1. Bullying someone into quitting: Illegal. 2. Asking an employee to relay private conversations between her and her partner: Illegal. 3. Justifying the ha…

You can never know which side of the story is true, but it's worth noting that one side of the story looks crazy and the other does not.

It's hard to quantify the smell of crazy, but we can start with an overwhelming interest in insulting the other party, and the claims stretch credibility. For example, consider the claim that a man "bullied [her] out of our code base because I wouldn't fuck him". This is a very strong statement and it seems unrealistic that investigators, lawyers, and other people within Github would come forward with "no evidence" of such things happening. On the other hand, it's the sort of thing you would say to appeal to the Internet social-justice-warrior crowd. Even the phrasing smells like something you'd read on Tumblr or a r/shitredditsays comment thread.

I don't think I can make a strong inference about what actually happened, but I would not treat this whole kerfuffle as a useful source of information about gender issues in technology--except that this is another example how powerful accusations concerning touchy issues can be, even when there is "no evidence" for them.

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