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Results of the GitHub Investigation

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Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#431

Post by kungfoo »

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

To be honest, the entire problem IMO was always with the wife, Theresa Preston-Werner. She should have known better and I think it comes from her lack of professional experience in the workforce.

FULL explanation: It comes down to the unrestricted access that was granted. It introduces a person with extreme power but carries no responsibility with regards to work or culture. The end result is what we have today. This type of culture is actually very prevalent in asian companies (where families have unrestricted access) and have been demonstrated to be extremely detrimental. Theresa Preston-Werner blog post is extremely telling where she says "I have many close friends at GitHub, and I certainly had reached out to them when I began to build my company". My wife made the same mistake at her first job (trying too hard to be friends), except that she was an individual contributor and not the wife of the CEO. Her co-workers could just tell her off and she quickly learned the balances that were necessary. It's obvious that Theresa had no experience of this kind and had too much power for people to say "no".

I want to add, I think there was an overfocus on gender issues by all parties (victims, plantiffs, media & company) in the first place. When I read the original article, I felt that regardless of the incident, Julie Ann Horvath was just pulling out the gender card. This was a mistake since it gave Github an easy way out to simply deny the gender-based accusations without any wrong doing.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#432

Post by kfcm »

smrtinsert wrote: post #220

I wonder why his wife had to be at Github at all. I've worked at half a dozen startups now. Never would a spouse of either gender be in the office, and if they happened to maybe communicate with anyone, it was only a quick introduction and then they got out of your way. I would consider it highly inappropriate.

I've been in a couple Midwestern start-ups, and founder's spouses (wives, in both cases) often did come into the office. Generally they were going somewhere together, or whatever. Chatted several times, and it was no big thing.

When they did ask how things were going business-wise, I got the nod from their husband. Turns out, they were also on the hook (co-signatories) for much of the start-up capital vehicles/loans/lines of credit.

Their money on the line, they own the company, IMHO.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#433

Post by alelefant »

abalone wrote: post #275

This anonymous post from an alleged GitHub employee adds some interesting perspective.[1] It alleges Julie Ann Horvath was actually spreading rumors of a personal nature about the founder's wife before any of this. In other words, Horvath was the bully, and she really didn't like having the tables turned on her. If true, this would be a very difficult employee to keep at the company. She should have been fired for in…

This anonymous post is no better than the unsupported claims by Julie. Unsupported claims on top of unsupported claims.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#434

Post by mindslight »

marshray wrote: post #190
mindslight wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does anyone trust _______, knowing that employees regularly have access to your private information?

That's the $BB++ cloud question, isn't it? In short, many vendors go to great expense to vet, audit, and limit the number of employees who could potentially access customer data. Some will geo-locate physically separate systems under separate administration according to regional necessity. Disclosure: works for such a vendor.

Sure, but this can only be appreciated if the relationship is large enough to have an explicit non-changeable contract and routine auditing. From any lone consumer's point of view, "cloud" providers are black boxes that will probably try to limit the damage a rogue employee can do, but any methods or promises can change overnight based on business needs.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#435

Post by zorpner »

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.

Yes, this is a common rhetorical tactic used to dismiss the opinions of women when they address issues of sexism publicly. Thank you for demonstrating this disingenuous method of discourse so ably.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#436

Post by carterehsmith »

abalone wrote: post #275

This anonymous post from an alleged GitHub employee adds some interesting perspective.[1] It alleges Julie Ann Horvath was actually spreading rumors of a personal nature about the founder's wife before any of this. In other words, Horvath was the bully, and she really didn't like having the tables turned on her. If true, this would be a very difficult employee to keep at the company. She should have been fired for in…

Popcorn time! Seriously.

So, she thinks someone undid her commits because… something. Is it possible that her code was… inadequate? Obsolete? Had bugs? Because, guess what, no line of code could ever be changed without someone calling names. Consider this:

- OMG I am Mexican and this Asian guy undid my commits. He did it because he is racist! Call Techcrunch.

- OMG I am 23 and this 45-year old guy undid my changes. Guess I should call the papers and complain!!!

- OMG I am 45 and this 23-year old guy undid my changes. Guess I should call the papers and complain!!!

- OMG I am gay and this coworker undid my changes. He did it because I am gay and he is straight and he is intolerant!!!

- So I am Armenian and this Turkish guy undid my changes. WHAT THE HELL he did it just because I am Armenian! He hates me!

- OMG I am a woman and this guy undid my changes. He did it because he hates women! Call the police!!!

- OMG I am a man and this woman undid my changes. She did it just to because she is feminist bi0tch!!!

- OMG I prefer functional programming, but this imperative-programming guy undid my changes! WTF what a horrible workplace can I sue someone about this?

Guess what. On a large project, any piece of code may be changed by any number of people. Usually because someone found a bug, or improvement is needed. If you claim that someone changed your code _because_ you belong to some minority or whatever group, you better have some proof. In this case, if I was Ms Horvat’s employer, I would ask her to either prove her allegations, beyond reasonable doubt, in a court of law, or shut up and apologize. Maybe I would sue her for libel, too.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#437

Post by mundanevoice »

If you haven't read already, check this: https://medium.com/p/d96f431f4e8e She did a lot of wrong things: - Dating a coworker is not one of the best practise. - gossiping around about your co-workers/founders character is the also not the best thing to do. - If you write shit code, your code will be removed. She is definitely not known for her coding abilities. She is just a melodrama queen who is bad at heart, opportunist, blackmailed founder to poison the company atmosphere. - You can create a healthy workspace shouting "Women Women" every time. We work with women too. Our behaviour and respect is based on compassion and professionalism. They are just like any other person in the company. - The real story must have been that she is a bad/mediocre developer who was being reviewed which didn't turned out pretty well (Obv since she was busy bitching against coworkers). The only good way she had to abuse and insult the company publically , get sympathy and then a Job. She seems to have good PR skills. (Pun intended) Again, here are some of her recent tweets: https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/458347574672388096 https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/458345005866696704

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#438

Post by [deleted] »

kungfoo wrote: post #431
evolve2k wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

To be honest, the entire problem IMO was always with the wife, Theresa Preston-Werner. She should have known better and I think it comes from her lack of professional experience in the workforce. FULL explanation: It comes down to the unrestricted access that was granted. It introduces a person with extreme power but carries no responsibility with regards to work or culture. The end result is what we have today. This…

[deleted]

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#439

Post by mundanevoice »

mtrimpe wrote: post #312
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

Let's not go there. Incorporating random anonymous posts will only make things worse. For all we know Julie-Ann started dating someone close to Theresa Preston-Werner who shared that he, and several others, slept with her and could even be the father of Tom's child and then refused to distance himself from Theresa. When she shared this sad state of affairs in her private love life with some colleagues she was suddenl…

How about it being true? You still want to ignore that? Or are you too biased?

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#440

Post by jowiar »

weixiyen wrote: post #132
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.

I believe they hired HR and put new policies in place. Chances are this incident will make it a better place to work than before.

And this speaks, in many ways, to the purpose of HR. It's not good enough to say "We don't think we have a hostile work environment", or "Asking around seems to show that we don't have a hostile work environment". You need to be able to say: "Here's why there is no way we can have a hostile work environment, and how we're taking action to ensure we don't". Part of it is policies, part of it documentation of events, part of it is ensuring that employees feel they have a way to resolve situations.

I read Github's statement as: "We don't really have any evidence of anything, so we're not going to say anything because we might get sued by one of the involved parties." That situation isn't a good one to be in (and letting an organization get into that situation is serious negligence on the part of leadership).

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