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Results of the GitHub Investigation

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Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#171

Post by johansch »

leccine wrote: post #144
michaelt wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 reput…

Or hiring an outsider to perform a security audit. It never works. Right.

How is that even remotely similar in terms of conflict of interest on the part of the buyer?

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#172

Post by theorique »

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…

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).

What would it benefit Github or the P-W husband/wife for the investigation report to have published such a thing? Why air your dirty laundry in public?

It's most likely that the company and its co-founder are on the same page, if only for damage control purposes. (Why break ranks and threaten your brand and stock price, after all?)

There may have been awkward and/or angry discussions in camera. Non-insiders are very unlikely to ever hear what went on in said discussions.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#173

Post by GauntletWizard »

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?

What about de-facto board members? Tom was on GitHub's board, it was/is a small company, I don't get how "founder's wife" is not a suitably trusted position. I mean, clearly a bad call in this case, but hindsight is 20/20, and in my small business the husbands of my co-founders are de-facto employees (And in fact board members with significant proxy voting power, simply by state law of common property).

Edit: I looked it up; California, too, is a community property state. Theresa was absolutely an effective board member.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#174

Post by danielweber »

gjvc wrote: post #118

github is not seeing another penny of my money.

Because Tom didn't demand they go balls-to-the-wall fighting what may be an inevitably losing battle to disprove something that isn't disprovable?

I don't know what happened, but this outcome might be very much in Tom's well-considered best interests. You are making a no-win situation.

EDIT: Heck, I don't even know if you are mad at GitHub for insufficiently defending Tom or insufficiently crucifying him

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#175

Post by caio1982 »

I really don't care about how it's published in the media, I mean, this last episode at least. It was clear since the very beginning when it broke out that it would be dirty, really dirty. It's a shame not only for the people involved but more specially for Github as an ecosystem. Such incredible company bleeding in the media... sad times... and when I say incredible company I don't mean incredibly owned or well run company, you know what I mean. I lost a bit of faith in them today anyway. Sad times...

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#176

Post by astrodust »

Bahamut wrote: post #157
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.

The best talent probably won't be so quick/shallow/naive to pass judgment so quickly. It probably will challenge their recruitment of women though.

So "women" and "best talent" are mutually exclusive? Classy.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#177

Post by jrochkind1 »

mtrimpe wrote: post #153
voidlogic wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is all conjecture, but this series of events got me thinking about what to learn from this. I have a feeling Ms. Horvath and Mrs. Preston-Werner completely believe their own interpretations of what happened. This is a good reminder of how subtle and ambiguous our and others views of the same reality is. In her post Theresa mentions having a blind spot for the obligations that github employees felt for helping he…

In my mind this is the key sentence in her response: "I was the wife of the CEO, but that never entered my mind when I hung out with any GitHubbers." That is just not acceptable; it's the equivalent of walking around with a machine gun in your hands and saying that you never considered it might have any impact. As much as she might have liked it to, you can't wield considerable power over people's lives and have them…

Your comment about ignoring the considerable power you wield over other people and expecting them to hits home for me.

I'm not sure exactly how to phrase it, but I think there's something there in general applicable to the current round of companies which have 'flat' organizational structures, but still aren't hardly employee-owned democratically-managed enterprises. [1] There are owners and bosses, there are people with ultimate decision-making powers (including hiring and firing) and those without, some who have a heck of a lot more salary/equity than others -- but at the same time, the 'flat structure' somehow seems as if everyone's expected to ignore that and act like it's not true.

It's of course not a coincidence that Github is one of the most famous examples of such a 'flat structured' (not not actually democratically-managed) companies.

And I think it's a shame that people will use this as an example of why hieararchy and authority is neccessary. I think it's more about the dangers of trying to make hieararchy and authority invisible when it actually still exists.

Thanks for your comment which helped me start thinking about this, sorry my response is much less coherent. :)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#178

Post by theorique »

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?

This is incredibly troubling. How can anyone trust ${CLOUD_OR_HOSTING_COMPANY}, knowing that ${PERSONS_OR_SOFTWARE} regularly had access to private information?

Be paranoid. Encrypt it if you don't want people to snoop.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#179

Post by leccine »

johansch wrote: post #171
leccine wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or hiring an outsider to perform a security audit. It never works. Right.

How is that even remotely similar in terms of conflict of interest on the part of the buyer?

You know a company hire another companies to perform a check. They usually expect everything ok. Audit comes, it turns out there is a security hole in the software, or your books are off or you threat employees badly. Nobody wants these, yet everybody hires external companies. You think that you can bribe a legal firm to give you a green flag on harassing employees and they gonna risk their reputation on 50K USD? I don't think so...

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#180

Post by ProAm »

onewaystreet wrote: post #131
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.

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

I think a lot of people do.
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