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Results of the GitHub Investigation

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Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#421

Post by aaronem »

vulf wrote: post #382
nailer wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Both Zed and JAH are difficult personalities, but a professional structure should be in place to handle matters which can distract people from work. GitHub should have implemented a blocking mechanism to stop people inviting Zed to 'dick' projects, and if the rumour mongering story is true, HR should have stepped in and disciplined Horvath.

> GitHub should have implemented a blocking mechanism to stop people inviting Zed to 'dick' projects They did: https://github.com/blog/862-block-the-bullies They never admitted to it being a response to the incident with Zed, but the timing was too convenient. That blog post was dated 05/31/2011. Zed's commits to the repo in question happened on 05/28/2011: https://github.com/moron5/dongml/commit/f4b8df910e4048202768…

I'm still trying to figure out exactly what the sequence of events was there.

As best I've been able to work out, whatever juvenile oaf created the "dongml" repo added Shaw to it in order to harass him somehow, and Shaw responded by writing a script to constantly commit changes to the repo which essentially rendered it empty, which seems reasonable both as retaliation in that specific case, and for general reasons of good taste. Then, in response, Github added a feature so that the "dongml" infant could block Shaw.

Would anyone with closer to firsthand knowledge of the incident care to let me know whether I'm on the warm side or the cold?

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#422

Post by apalmer »

Blahah wrote: post #404
caf wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. A named or pseudonymous source necessarily has an associated reputation, but an anonymous source has no reputation at all.

A reputation for lying is stronger evidence that the information might be false than is no reputation at all.

Not really...

Even taking all emotion out of it, a story from a source that is probably a lie convey s more emotion than a story from a completely unknown source.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#423

Post by aaronem »

funkyy wrote: post #150
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…

TBH it sounds like nothing serious that was blown up big by certain news channels. Steve Jobs could "fire" employees for "fun" in elevator and people were OK with it. But when it comes to gender/racial issues - there is no coming back even if found free of charge. So the people didnt get along - who cares. The company is great, the work they done is great - why anyone should leave? If Ms Horvath didnt felt good in th…

For people to settle their differences like reasonable adults really isn't on the menu in the United States lately.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#424

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#425

Post by fphhotchips »

Blahah wrote: post #404
caf wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. A named or pseudonymous source necessarily has an associated reputation, but an anonymous source has no reputation at all.

A reputation for lying is stronger evidence that the information might be false than is no reputation at all.

I disagree. We must treat every anonymous source as if it has that reputation for lying, as otherwise a source can simply become anonymous to improve the credibility of their lies.

Until, of course, a source presents evidence, at which point we evaluate the credibility of the evidence instead of the source.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#426

Post by kfcm »

dfc wrote: post #105
onotarti wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 that people that can and do bring work home are employed in fields where one does not need to be super meticulous about preventing access to the work.

You would think wrong.

Very wrong.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#427

Post by kmonsen »

hackaflocka wrote: post #358

3 recent tweets from the wife that indicate that she might be batshit crazy: TheresaPrestonWerner ‏@tpdubs2 Apr 10 Best meal I've ever had. @ The Meatball Shop http://instagram.com/p/moWCO4njNA/ TheresaPrestonWerner ‏@tpdubs2 Apr 10 Building out a team and getting to work with insanely great people makes me the happiest founder ever. TheresaPrestonWerner ‏@tpdubs2 Mar 27 First time in 2 weeks that I feel like I'm not…

The meatball show is legendary, can't blame her for that one.

Many people talk about their coworkers as insanely great, I think that is common tech language.

I don't think this is extreme language.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#428

Post by malandrew »

sytelus wrote: post #65

Can anyone tell what exact discrimination Horvath faced? I went through her long interview and I can only read how she "felt" to be in "boys club" as opposed to specific events that can be qualified as discrimination. For example, she says her code was reverted and was apparently blaming that event on her being a women. I can't imagine someone throwing good code away because it was written by a women rather it seems…

It would be fascinating to see the commit in question.

If the commit has technical merit and should not have been reverted, why would you not focus on demonstrating why the technical merit of the commit in question? Claiming that a commit was reverted for personal reasons instead of defending the technical merits of the commit strikes me as naïve.

A highly competent person who has produced some work product that was challenged would typically either defend it on merit or assume they might have produced a lesser work and seek to understand why.

My experience in all areas of competence I'm familiar with is that histrionics like those observed thus far are often comorbid with demonstration of the Dunning-Kruger effect in inexperienced individuals.

Zed Shaw is one of the few people I can think of that would be a counterpoint to this observation, demonstrating high competence when acting histrionically. You can just look at his contributions to open-source to see how good he is at what he does.

JAH's github profile (for an engineer that worked there for a long time) seems conspicuously sparse to me. There really aren't many projects there to demonstrate superior mastery of HTML, CSS or git.

https://github.com/nrrrdcore?tab=repositories

Looking further, like at her blog repo. There are .DS_Store files committed (which would normally be in a local .gitignore or in your home folder .gitignore file) and the first file I clicked on the in CSS folder has Jekyll ruby errors printed to it:

https://github.com/nrrrdcore/nrrrdcore.github.com/tree/maste... (DS_Store file from 2 years ago still there)

https://github.com/nrrrdcore/nrrrdcore.github.com/blob/maste... (broken blog post is 6 months old)

Assuming this is representative of the quality of her commits, Occam's Razor suggest competence may be the reason for reverting the that css commit.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#429

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #417
sneak wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/458342995469688833 https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/458347143086870528 https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/458347574672388096

What a drama queen. Hard to take her seriously with these antics.

I love all the random people piling on as though they're intimate with the parties or facts involved, taking 140 characters as a single data point to pair with their prejudices to draw a line to a foregone conclusion. It's a very strange time in the course of human development.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#430

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

malandrew wrote: post #384
ender7 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can you show me a work environment that is not hostile to anyone? Every work environment has hostilities. The only way they each differ is in who is the recipient of the hostilities, the degree of hostility present and if that hostility is illegal or not. In that sense, the statement "We don't have a provably illegal hostile work environment" means exactly nothing, making Github no different than all the other workpl…

> Can you show me a work environment that is not hostile to anyone?

That strikes me like saying that all sex is rape, it's just a matter of how violent or unwilling.

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