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Results of the GitHub Investigation

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Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#201
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.

The "best talent" would probably rather work at a company without these kinds of allegations than at one with them. They might be unfounded, but why take the risk? If you're the "best talent," you've got a lot of other options.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#202

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...…

"it turns out"? Are you f'ing serious? You read that legalistic statement and take that to be the whole truth and final word a priori? This is just too naive for words.

Alright, so I guess her accusations are true. We can't prove it, the auditor says it is not the case, anonymous post says that too. Yet, we need to take her words against many. Simply because she said so.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#203
post #165

These memos are often more about what isn't said: > The investigation found no evidence... This doesn't mean there isn't any evidence--it just means that their internal investigation didn't find any. If read carefully, this statement tells us nothing about the universe of evidence that exists, but only about what GitHub didn't find. A different investigator might come to a completely different conclusion, or find oth…

> the investigator did find evidence of mistakes and errors of judgment.

Seems conclusive enough enough to me.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#205
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow, I don't think she's doing what is in her best interest right now. The guy has resigned and the tech media is totally on this story right now. Any small _preceived_ misstep and she could end up being labeled another "Adria Richards". Also, the question[1] in her current github background appears to represent a suggestive joke that I would have never guessed she'd be comfortable with. Not saying this is any ki…

All of these tweets I see from her account from the last ~45 minutes or so don't help her case at all. Taking these types of things public especially before any formal investigation occurs (which kicked off this whole scenario) usually does more harm than good.

Did you not read the article? They claim to have finished a formal, third party lead, investigation.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#206
post #162

Maybe it's just me, but I don't really think speculating on fights like this from the outside without full and complete information is beneficial, or even sane and rational. Can we just all agree that we don't know the full story here, and that any and all players might be misleading or not telling the whole story publicly? This is an internal issue. The only opinions I am interested in are internal opinions of other…

This is the internet. There is no place here for your logic and reason.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#207

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.

> If true, that should certainly be a privacy and security concern to any GitHub customer or user. We left github private repo hosting when they got VC funding. Because of such a scenario where we could be competing with a company that was funded by the same VC that gave GH money. Now in a perfect world that shouldn't be a problem because the VC should never access private user data. But well ... as you see it's not…

You moved into a direct competitor or you rolled up your own infrastructure?

I'm curious because if the company is not large, doesn't seem like much of a hassle having your own depository server.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of these tweets I see from her account from the last ~45 minutes or so don't help her case at all. Taking these types of things public especially before any formal investigation occurs (which kicked off this whole scenario) usually does more harm than good.

Did you not read the article? They claim to have finished a formal, third party lead, investigation.

I did and understand everything that is going on, but reading her Twitter feed the last hour shitting on everyone and everything at Github (since they didn't find any criminal wrongdoing) doesn't make you look good or more believable, it actually does the opposite.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#209
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…

makes sure to reinforce the fact that GitHub is immune to lawsuit while providing no real details

Where is this mentioned?

This thing where people think that investigators you hired are "independent" and that their conclusions carry something similar to the weight of a court of law is ridiculous.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#210
post #165

These memos are often more about what isn't said: > The investigation found no evidence... This doesn't mean there isn't any evidence--it just means that their internal investigation didn't find any. If read carefully, this statement tells us nothing about the universe of evidence that exists, but only about what GitHub didn't find. A different investigator might come to a completely different conclusion, or find oth…

From what I see, it was an investigation into gender-based discrimination/harassment claims, and the result of the investigation was that, well, no evidence of gender-based discrimination was found. Does that not provide very useful information to the reader? It would be irresponsible for the report to claim that no harassment of any form exists at GitHub, and irresponsible of us to accuse (or "wonder", which is just a wiggly way of accusing) the worst given its omission.

> This doesn't mean there isn't any evidence--it just means that their internal investigation didn't find any.

Of course the results of the investigation tells us nothing about things outside the investigation. Is that not assumed? How many 3rd parties does it take before this is not true?

Apologies if I sound irate, it's just disappointing that accusations that seem to have little basis (huge disclaimer, purely based on news coverage and this published report) can cause a founder to leave his company.

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