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Results of the GitHub Investigation

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Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#131

Post by onewaystreet »

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.

But does anyone actually think Github has a hostile work environment? There is a difference between misunderstanding and systemic hostility.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#132

Post by weixiyen »

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

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#134

Post by jmelloy »

chrismonsanto wrote: post #8

> The investigation found no evidence to support the claims [...] of a sexist or hostile work environment. So, are they saying that Horvath was lying? I mean, there was a lot of specific stuff she mentioned that seemed inappropriate. I don't want to get into whether the behavior was "sexist" or not, but I think we can all agree that if what she said was true, the work environment was hostile and unprofessional.

They're saying that the investigative team brought in to determine if there was anything they could be sued over found no evidence/email trail for the specific things that they could get sued over.

"We didn't find an email trail that could lead to a lawsuit, and the co-founder in question immediately resigned" is a very far cry from "Everything she said was a lie."

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#135

Post by michaelt »

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…

Hiring outsiders to investigate your management team for wrongdoing is like hiring outsiders to evaluate your environmental performance or to make recommendations on executive pay - possibly useful if you genuinely want to act on their findings, but equally often used to add a sheen of 'independent' legitimacy to whatever result you want.

Outsiders know what answer you want, and know it's unprofitable to have a reputation for biting the hand that feeds them.

To take a british example, back in 2006 the news of the world hired harbottle & lewis to do an internal investigation of phone hacking. Guess what, they didn't find anything.

Edit: Clarified that if the person paying for the investigation doesn't have a conflict of interest or plans to act on the recommendations, independent (or even non-independent) investigations can produce results.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#136

Post by tqi »

Slightly off topic:

Is there anywhere that offers(for lack of a better term) open source HR policy for small companies to copy? Seems to me writing something like this can be fairly onerous for a small company, especially in terms of legal overhead, but is clearly important. Having a starting point would be very helpful...

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#137

Post by TodPunk »

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.

This is probably the most relevant article of the 6 or so I've read in the comments. It shows both sides as human and lacking good social management constructs for the situation.

Reading several weeks of Horvath's twitter feed and several articles where she's quoted, it's apparent to me that regardless of what happened at Github, she is a bitter and dramatic individual. That's NOT the kind of person that backs down to the adult-talk at the table.

Again, I don't know what happened at github, and I honestly don't care. What I do know is that I would never hire Horvath regardless of what she could do for the company. Far too much risk, and exemplified with a terribly immature response even if everything she says is true.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#138

Post by lbarrow »

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 think it's more "We didn't do anything illegal, but we're still firing one of our founders, so clearly something was wrong."

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#139

Post by nfoz »

awnird wrote: post #56
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.

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

How can you "trust" GitHub knowing that employees regularly have access to private information?

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#140

Post by leccine »

GitHub did the right thing and it turns out that Ms. Horvath accusations were without any basis. She not just damaged the gender equality efforts harder for everybody but raised visibility about how hiring females can damage your company's reputation. This is not the right way of fighting for the good case. A good example how to challenge the status quo: http://qz.com/192071/how-one-college-went-from-10-female-com...

I hope more people realize that we need more results and less artificially buffed scandals.

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