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Results of the GitHub Investigation

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Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#491

Post by nailer »

masklinn wrote: post #476
hamburglar wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're close. Someone added Zed to the dongml repo just to be annoying, and Zed removed himself. But the inviter just added him again, and Zed complained that there isn't any sort of confirmation to indicate, "yes, I'd like to be part of this project," so people can add you against your will, which happened repeatedly to Zed with dongml. Eventually, Zed retaliated with his commit bot, and github apparently looked at…

> Zed wrote up a long blog post telling the whole story but I think it's been deleted since. The internet has a way of unshutting the whole thing up: https://web.archive.org/web/20130117043748/http://sheddingbi... and the followup https://web.archive.org/web/20120619005253/http://sheddingbi...

Ah. Judging from the followup, and Zed seemed to be satisfied, I think I was wrong about GutHub: they handled this very well.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#492

Post by malandrew »

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…

    "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."
One of JAH's claims of gender bias involved a:

    "man who bullied [her] out of [github's] code base because 
    [she] wouldn't fuck him. Too popular to be accountable, 
    [she] guess[es]."
After reading that I figured it's worth browsing through JAH's github account for recent code involving HTML/CSS (since the reverted commit involved CSS IIRC), and what I found would suggest that it's more likely that she made a poor/careless commit. I posted these findings in a comment way at the end of this thread that people are unlikely to see because the parent comment isn't being voted up on. Here's the link to the comment with links to broken or poor commits by JAH:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7625258

In light of this other recent commits (by a longtime githubber who would be expected to exhibit much better git hygiene and committing habits), and lacking the content of the actual reverted commit, I would say that the claims of gender bias in this specific case appear dubious at best.

If this other githubber did in fact make such vulgar comments, we still wouldn't have enough information without also knowing if that comment was completely unsolicited and out-of-the-blue, or if it was reactionary to whatever JAH may have said to this person just prior to the comment being made. Context matters. It could have been verbal self defense in response to a verbal attack, which is still unprofessional, but far more excusable especially if the original attack was equally unprofessional and sexually-charged. Given JAH's tact thus far, her character suggests someone who would have started a verbal fight.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#493

Post by malandrew »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #486
malandrew wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Access to emails is one thing. Access to the internal public banter and coordination of work hardly strikes me as worrying based on all the discussions I've seen at my current place of work and past places of work. Any information sensitive enough to keep from your significant other is probably too sensitive for a shared internal conversation system available to all employees. Yeah, there's stuff that you wouldn't wa…

HuBot let's githubbers deploy code to production, amongst lots of other things. In other words, access to internal chat is a much bigger deal at GitHub than it is at your workplace.

I would certainly hope that you can only tell hubot to do something like that if you have the correct permissions. Hubot should not be accepting deploy code commands from anyone except those with the sufficient privileges. If that isn't the case, that needs to be fixed asap.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#494

Post by jacalata »

jacalata wrote: post #290
Bahamut wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was absolutely not my implication - that is an incredibly dishonest commentary on my post.

It's probably not what you meant to say, but it is a plausible reading of the actual text - it's just a slightly awkward phrasing that appears to say 'the best talent won't care, but women might' which casts them as disjoint groups.

I cannot believe the over-sensitive linguistically challenged group that must be downvoting that. Boy, doesn't it suck to know that sometimes words join together to have meanings and occasionally it includes one you weren't thinking of? Best approach is to say 'oh oops, I didn't mean that' and learn to construct your sentences better for next time. Worst approach is to deny that it could have meant that and learn nothing.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#495

Post by neilk »

SEMW wrote: post #392
kelnos wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? You'd still have the same sense of doubt as to whether or not the non-anonymous person is telling the truth. The only extra information you'd have is a) you'd know it was coming from another GitHubber who could conceivably know these details, and b) if you know the person, you can weigh the words against his/her reputation and past action. Not saying those two things aren't useful, but I would certainly not char…

> Why? You'd still have the same sense of doubt as to whether or not the non-anonymous person is telling the truth. The senses of doubt will only be ~the same if your prior for the probability of " someone out of ~200 github employees would lie about this and attach their name to it " is about the same as your prior for " someone out of the other ~3,000,000,000 people on the internet would pretend to be a github empl…

Adding to what SEMW said: for all we know, this story could be pure fiction, written by the Preston-Warners themselves, or someone else with a strong incentive to do so.

The fact that this story helps everything "make sense" is not a useful heuristic. Anybody can craft this kind of tale, and it might also be playing on our prejudices - the spurned, jealous, bitchy lover narrative.

But, as for myself, I don't have to make any judgment, nor do I want to. I don't want to do is pick a side based on my prejudices and a few blog posts.

By now we all should know that women are routinely harassed in tech companies to a preposterous degree. On the other hand, I've seen cases where mentally disturbed people invent (or self-delude) incredibly detailed narratives of persecution. We could be dealing with a situation where one, the other, both, or neither is happening. If you have evidence that settles the case, by all means please post it.

Something that is clear is that Github's investigation was flawed. And if Horvath really wasn't contacted until late in the process, it certainly makes it look like Github was more interested in a coverup than the truth.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#496

Post by sliverstorm »

dfc wrote: post #488
sliverstorm wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, people bring work home because they need to put in some extra hours, but do not wish to stay at the office until 9PM.

So you know a lot of people that take things out of the SCIF because they do not want to stay late?

Depends on what you mean by SCIF. Coworkers bring confidential paperwork/documents home, and remote access over remote desktop software is blessed. However you might get a phonecall from security if you started downloading lots of confidential data directly to your home computer.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#497

Post by afarrell »

billiam wrote: post #272
mtrimpe wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. Chances are also that our collective estimate of how great a place it is to work at are now more accurate. That probably says more about the mythological status they had before than about the reality now, but it of course will have an impact on their ability to hire though. It also should have, and it's normal, and it's how startups turn into big-corps, and that's just the way things are. The sad truth about cu…

"The sad truth about culture is that a sustainable culture will feel much more like your parents home than your college dorm; and that will never change... because it's a good thing." That is the single best line I've read about work culture in software companies in......ever.

This does depend on how dysfunctional your parents' marriage was. Though, I suppose a marriage in which both partners feel trapped is sustainably dysfunctional in that it won't end.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#498

Post by gfodor »

dasil003 wrote: post #473
gfodor wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, reverting someone's commits out of spite because they rejected you is not sexual harassment "plain and simple." Words have meanings. Furthermore it is not "pointless hair-splitting" to say it is not gender discrimination. You clearly have no understanding of what these terms mean and why it's important to not let this type of drama bleed into the wider discussion about systemic gender discrimination in tech. h…

Okay, good point, I stand corrected.

major props, a response like this doesn't happen often on the internet

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#499

Post by dang »

morenoh149 wrote: post #475
dang wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure we haven't touched any of the several posts of that article. Users flagged them. Edit: I checked. It was posted three times. First was deleted by the poster. Second was flag-killed by users. Third is still up but heavily flagged. No moderator touched any of them.

so the hn crowd is mostly pc. no surprises.

Actually the HN community is politically deeply divided. Complaints about its bias thus tend to contradict one another. For example, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7630388 says much the opposite.

Many flags on political stories and flamewars come not from users with opposing politics but from users who, regardless of their politics, don't think HN is the place for them. It's a "pox on both their houses" thing.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#500

Post by kelnos »

neilk wrote: post #495
SEMW wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why? You'd still have the same sense of doubt as to whether or not the non-anonymous person is telling the truth. The senses of doubt will only be ~the same if your prior for the probability of " someone out of ~200 github employees would lie about this and attach their name to it " is about the same as your prior for " someone out of the other ~3,000,000,000 people on the internet would pretend to be a github empl…

Adding to what SEMW said: for all we know, this story could be pure fiction, written by the Preston-Warners themselves, or someone else with a strong incentive to do so. The fact that this story helps everything "make sense" is not a useful heuristic. Anybody can craft this kind of tale, and it might also be playing on our prejudices - the spurned, jealous, bitchy lover narrative. But, as for myself, I don't have to…

Very good points.

By now we all should know that women are routinely harassed in tech companies to a preposterous degree. On the other hand, I've seen cases where mentally disturbed people invent (or self-delude) incredibly detailed narratives of persecution. We could be dealing with a situation where one, the other, both, or neither is happening.

The thing that irks me about all this is that murky incidents like this, where the alleged victim is (to many) not a very sympathetic character, and possibly acted improperly herself and instigated the whole situation (if the anon blog post is to be believed), does little to help set an example for why the real instances of harassment are so wrong and terrible.

After this, I'm left with a very poor taste in my mouth. GH's investigation was likely somewhat flawed, though it's unclear to what degree. Horvath almost certainly wasn't telling the full story about what happened, and may even have instigated the entire thing, and is using the prevalence of sexism in tech (and the expected knee-jerk community outcry) to attack someone she's (unjustifiably?) angry with. Or maybe everything she's said is true, and the Preston-Werners are terrible people, and GH has/had a serious discrimination problem coming from the top. We'll probably never know.

The whole situation just stinks.

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