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GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

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Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#181
post #15

> "We’re trying to build a new kind of enterprise company where the playbooks of old won’t always work" By replacing flat meritocracy and remote work with traditional top-down management? > "don't think we'll succeed teaching white, male middle managers empathy and compassion anytime soon, so let's limit their scope of damage" So the technical director and member of the social-impact team is a blatant racist.

This makes me sad. I thought you were being over the top about the racism but then I saw the slides in the article: http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/56b3d2462e526543008... My first reaction is that the language of "us" vs "them", victims vs oppressors, reeks of hatred. Hatred undermines productive conversation, which undermines any attempt at building a good culture. I would have to listen to the whole presen…

Still trying to parse that slide and I am mostly baffled by the line where "(6) Some of the biggest barriers to progress are white women."

I know the slide needs more context, but even so, it is a very disturbing statement to make.

Something is amiss and lots of explanations are needed.

PS: now I am more than happy with my choice of keeping my repos on Bitbucket.

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#182
post #157
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And don't forget that killer quote from their internal presentation: "Some of the biggest barriers to progress are white women" When diversity initiatives become an "us vs them" discourse, everyone loses. Except for the fat cats with full wallets at the top, who have no issue with the plebe infighting as long as it's between themselves (see the not so subtly placed "this is not about socio economic class").

I've been seeing this discussion a lot lately, particularly in the publishing world. 79% of editors are white and 78% are women [1], so the statement has validity at least when talking about the gatekeepers of what stories get to be told. Marlon James recently posted about his experiences with it [2] and many writers of color have since shared similar experiences. My take is that it's not "us vs them", but a need to…

OK, but like 63% of the U.S consists of whites. If it were an even distribution it would be disproportionate. Whites are somewhat over represented based on your numbers, but not as much as you seem to imply.

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes me sad. I thought you were being over the top about the racism but then I saw the slides in the article: http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/56b3d2462e526543008... My first reaction is that the language of "us" vs "them", victims vs oppressors, reeks of hatred. Hatred undermines productive conversation, which undermines any attempt at building a good culture. I would have to listen to the whole presen…

I don't know if you even need to see the whole presentation. A few of the full sentences on that one slide are more than enough to project a strong us vs them attitude of hatred and victim versus oppressor, especially the following bullets: - "This is not work for white folks to lead" - "Some of the biggest barriers to progress are white women" - "we need solidarity with our Asian friends and colleagues" This is blat…

- "This is not work for white folks to lead"

Well, it's not. It's kind of missing the point if your diversity initiative is being run by white people.

- "Some of the biggest barriers to progress are white women"

Second wave feminism, largely led by white women, often leaves out women of color. I mentioned this below, but the publishing industry is 79% white and 78% female. This has a huge impact on the types of stories that get to be published, which subsequently has real results on culture and society.

- "we need solidarity with our Asian friends and colleagues"

I mean yeah, sure, nothing super deep on that one. There should also be solidarity with white friends and colleagues, preferably ones that do a lot of listening and understand how not to take up all the space.

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#184

"top lawyer, Julio Avalos, 'has amassed great power' in the company" It's often not a good sign when the top engineers or star salesmen aren't running a tech company.

Great power != running the company. It specifically mentions he's taken over corpdev and some other functions Also note that Julio is a very technical guy. Note that what you have seen here is nearly identical to what david drummond did at Google (start as legal, take over some other functions like corpdev) in the early years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Drummond_(Google) It's hard to say this didn't work out…

Interesting perspective but a lawyer heading corporate development can make sense, having a lawyer with no accounting or finance training or experience is reckless at best but very scary to any potential shareholder. How on earth is Avalos making investment decisions? Avalos is not technical at all, he knows markdown, yoga and how to spin records. The company is falling apart under his watch, case closed. His purview is HR and Social Impact, he is calling the shots.

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#185
post #15

> "We’re trying to build a new kind of enterprise company where the playbooks of old won’t always work" By replacing flat meritocracy and remote work with traditional top-down management? > "don't think we'll succeed teaching white, male middle managers empathy and compassion anytime soon, so let's limit their scope of damage" So the technical director and member of the social-impact team is a blatant racist.

It is interesting and sad how quick these kinds of racists are to shut down any kind of discussion that does not align with their racist ideology.

I tweeted a response stating this was racism and was blocked within 20 seconds.

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#186
post #102

> Some of the biggest barriers to progress are white women. Can someone explain this ?

Feminism wasn't always as intersectional as it is now. For a long time it was dominated by white women who wanted more equality ignoring and sometimes even opposing equality for people and women of color. Suffragettes are a very good example of this problem. There are a few people now that feel a similar thing is happening in the tech industry right now as well. In that diversity is promoted only in so far as it help…

To further extend from the suffrage movement, it is important to note that minorities (men & women) didn't legally have the right to vote until the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

So Sanchez has a point in claiming that historical precedence has shown that "discrimination" was thought to have ended after the suffrage movement when it wasn't until many years later that minorities were legally secured the right to vote. Hence the hierarchy is that white women are the "next-in-line" when it comes to diversity before any other type of minority group.

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#187

This is just gross. I've spent the last 10 years of my life listening to various minority leaders discriminate against whites with no consequence. I hope someone stands up for themselves and sues GitHub for this type of behavior. First off, this is very irrational and not based in any facts. Second off, it's blatant racism and sexism. I will probably migrate my repos to GitLab or even BitBucket shiver . We need to vo…

If you can, avoid Bitbucket. We used them for a few years and it just wasn't good, through and through. I've been really impressed with Gitlab and we use that as a backup right now but I really think I'll be moving all of our repos over to them. Plus, you can even host your own Gitlab server.

[deleted]

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#188

Serious question: why can't someone make a good Github replacement that is anywhere near feature parity? I've tried both Bitbucket and GitLab, but their UIs continue to be leagues behind Github. It takes twice as long to do something in them (ex. find and blame a file) than it does with Github. If they could just get the UI right, I'd migrate in a second. Hosting providers should enforce political opinions (beyond de…

The 'gogs' project [1] is decent and could use some support.

[1] https://gogs.io/

(not affiliated with gogs, just started toying with it recently)

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#189
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

Ideological intolerance is part of it, but it's clearly not the only part, given that the very first point in her slide is "this is not work for white folks to lead", i.e. she doesn't want white allies. I don't see how much more explicit this lady can make the fact that she hates white people as such. As for German or Russian philosophers - that seems far fetched. This is an American phenomenon, and in its explicit a…

What, you can't even picture a white person being an ally if it's not as the leader of the group?

Re: GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes me sad. I thought you were being over the top about the racism but then I saw the slides in the article: http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/56b3d2462e526543008... My first reaction is that the language of "us" vs "them", victims vs oppressors, reeks of hatred. Hatred undermines productive conversation, which undermines any attempt at building a good culture. I would have to listen to the whole presen…

I don't know if you even need to see the whole presentation. A few of the full sentences on that one slide are more than enough to project a strong us vs them attitude of hatred and victim versus oppressor, especially the following bullets: - "This is not work for white folks to lead" - "Some of the biggest barriers to progress are white women" - "we need solidarity with our Asian friends and colleagues" This is blat…

It's actually written into GitHub's Open Code of conduct. (The 'Open' Code has not accepted any changes for quite some time even though this particular issue was under discussion [1].) The Open Code expressly excuses discrimination against some races and genders, specifically by explicitly ignoring any critique which might fall under a 'reverse'-ism; 'reverse-racism' or 'reverse-sexism' [2]. This line in the Open Code was previously discussed here [3].

[1] https://github.com/todogroup/opencodeofconduct/issues/82

[2] https://github.com/todogroup/opencodeofconduct/blob/gh-pages...

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10043668

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