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Update on Julie Horvath's Departure

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Re: Update on Julie Horvath's Departure

#341

Post by brazzy »

joyeuse6701 wrote: post #315

This validates a lot of things without explicitly doing so. Why put the engineer in question on leave, and the wife and the founder and mentioning it in this apology? Makes no sense unless it was because of what happened. That isn't to say that what Julie said happened did, but there is an ounce of credibility there. Depending on how this resolves, I may (likely) take my business elsewhere.

> Makes no sense unless it was because of what happened.

Makes perfect sense if you have a public watching that will see anything else as protecting the offenders and tear you to pieces.

This mereley proves that they cannot actually disprove the allegations, since that is the only other course of action that won't make you look bad.

Re: Update on Julie Horvath's Departure

#342

Post by SolarNet »

brazzy wrote: post #327
SolarNet wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first point is valid. It depends on what actually happened. But the OP's comment: "As for the hula hooping... you're telling me that two women hula hooping to music in the workplace is perfectly appropriate, but when the other people nearby (who are going to be mostly males if the majority of employees are male - go figure) suddenly notice, that's the inappropriate part? Really?". Is the part that bothered me, t…

> The logic there that I have a problem with is that it's the women's fault for being attractive, and that the man isn't at as much fault for being attracted to it because the women are doing something attractive. How about it's nobody's fault because there is nothing fucking wrong about people doing something in public and others watching them???

That's fine, but that's not the logic the OP used to counter Horvath's feelings of a problem. The OP instead seemed to imply that the women were more at fault for causing the men to gawk (not just watch). However emotionally charged the event may have been for Horvath due to the situation other Github employees (and their significant others) placed her in to make it feel to her that it was gawking, the logic the OP was using was flawed.

Re: Update on Julie Horvath's Departure

#343

Post by SolarNet »

chris_wot wrote: post #290
balls187 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely. I think Julie should have spoken to both groups, telling the guys it's not cool to gawk at women, and tell the women if they want to hula hoop, do it some place more private.

Surely that is the job of HR?

I think the point here is that they failed at their job so many times that Horvath gave up on it.

Re: Update on Julie Horvath's Departure

#344

Post by mareofnight »

hnriot wrote: post #147
leccine wrote: post #13

Well Julie's story stinks. Let me just quote the last thigs she wrote and work backwards from that. "Two women, one of whom I work with and adore, and a friend of hers were hula hooping to some music. I didn’t have a problem with this. What I did have a problem with is the line of men sitting on one bench facing the hoopers and gawking at them. It looked like something out of a strip club. When I brought this up to m…

It's pretty odd for women to be hula hooping, I've never seen that, but Julia's reaction to is is bananas. How does that make her feel threatened? Can't she just ignore it, of course men are going to look, did the women think nobody would notice? To me this belittles any legitimate claim she might have, if she's this irrational about this event, then it clouds my view of other things she says. She also sounds confuse…

It makes a person feel threatened because it implies that your co-workers think of /you/ as eye candy too. And if that's all you are, then you can't trust others to take you and your needs seriously. You can't deal with it by ignoring it, because it's not the staring that's the problem, it's what it indicates about how the gawkers view their female coworkers. (How you're viewed matters because that affects whether anyone will listen and help you when you have a problem, and if they'll expect unreasonable things from you - like the coworker who removed a bunch of Julia's code after she turned him down for a date.)

Or at least, that's how I feel about it, when I try to put myself in the place of someone who saw this happening, and took it as a sexual sort of staring rather than a "what the heck are my silly coworkers doing" kind of staring. It's also possible that Julia misunderstood what was going on, or exaggerated - we don't have enough information to know.

Re: Update on Julie Horvath's Departure

#345

Post by SolarNet »

Karn wrote: post #285
SolarNet wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that people were looking, it was that they were gawking. It's not that they glanced at it, or watched for a few seconds. It's that they spent a prolonged time watching it.

And I'm saying it's perfectly OK to "spend a prolonged time watching it". If women are doing something that involves a lot of pelvic gyrations, then yes, it is absolutely understandable AND acceptable that men will stare. It's not the men turning them into "sex objects" or whatever, the women already did that. And it's healthy, and normal, and most red-blooded men and women not only find it acceptable, they enjoy it.…

Do you have a source for the "at a party" part? The majority of my comments have been predicated that this was in a work environment. The Horvath techcrunch article states "at the office".

More to the point:

Yes because women moving their hips means they automatically want to be considered for their sexual characteristics. /sarcasm

Admittedly, if this was at a party and they were hula hooping then sure no problem at all. But just because a person moves their body around in an office doesn't mean they are looking for sexual partners! It's not that "a man may only glance at it for a few seconds". It's that in some environments (like office ones) they should have the self control to not care what other people are doing with their bodies.

Re: Update on Julie Horvath's Departure

#346

Post by SolarNet »

mapt wrote: post #299
SolarNet wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that people were looking, it was that they were gawking. It's not that they glanced at it, or watched for a few seconds. It's that they spent a prolonged time watching it.

You get to feel mildly uncomfortable about people staring at a moving body, if you are the hoola-hooper. The most extreme acceptable course of corrective action is to stop hoola-hooping. A bystander gets no such luxury, and if the concern is an intrusive thought which makes them feel threatened... then maybe they're not suitably mature to participate in social endeavors. It seems like a pretty reasonable (albeit one-…

Or perhaps it's the rest of the thing that colored her view of this perhaps harmless event. It could go both ways. Prolonged sexual harassment by two (three?) people at a company where HR does nothing effective and your perceptions of the rest of the company are bound to become warped.

Re: Update on Julie Horvath's Departure

#347

Post by curiousgeorgio »

cmsj wrote: post #318
curiousgeorgio wrote: post #208

Of course we may never know for sure exactly what was said (unless everything was secretly recorded somehow... NSA - data, please), but my initial reaction is that this story sounds a bit... exaggerated. Were things said that shouldn't have been said? Probably so. But here's the way I read it from TC: Let's look at what Horvath claims: > character started being discussed in inappropriate places like on pull requests…

"Just for sake of argument, here's a possible conversation that could be twisted into fitting the above description:" Your example cannot be twisted into a reasonable description of "very inappropriate". Overall your comment reads like you don't want this story to be true and are trying to minimise every part of it. Which you are free to do, but you could have just said "I don't want this story to be true".

I realize now that my comment may have sounded like someone trying to prove all of Horvath's claims to be false. That was sincerely not intended. I apologize for that.

Frankly, my purpose in providing a plausible defense for GitHub is that the TechCrunch story itself only presents a single side of the story, though I understand that sometimes that's necessary for someone to come forward and draw the necessary attention to an injustice like this.

It is, however, easy to read the TechCrunch article and immediately point 100% of the blame on GitHub when we don't know the facts. I think it's helpful to step back and look at the accusations for what they are: accusations.

As others have pointed out, GitHub's response says very little in terms of confirming or denying the accusations, but it does say that they are professional enough to take this seriously.

Horvath may be doing GitHub (or various people at GitHub) a favor by going light on some details - the facts may be far worse than they appear on the surface. She (or the TechCrunch writers) may also be skimping on details in order to paint GitHub with broad strokes. There are numerous plausible motives in either case, but I won't speculate as to the motives here as I've learned it doesn't help to spread false accusations.

It isn't fair to accuse Horvath of being anything less than 100% truthful, and by the same token, it isn't fair to assume everything she said is 100% truthful without GitHub coming forward with their side of the story.

Again, I apologize for my comment earlier leading to speculation where we (as the public) really have no say in the matter since we have so few facts. It's an unfortunate situation for everyone involved and I hope it can be resolved in a positive way for both parties. For me, at least some of the followup comments here have been helpful in better understanding some of the ideas involved in this story - e.g., sexism, appropriate handling of conflicts in the workplace, roles of founders and spouses, etc (in general terms, not necessarily in connection with this story).

Re: Update on Julie Horvath's Departure

#348

Post by mcv »

This is a great apology, and goes a long way to restore my shattered faith in github.

No denying or spinning what happened, no victim blaming; just "we fucked up, we're going to do everything we can to fix it, and Julie is great". That's all I expect. Own up, fix the problem, and protect the victim.

Re: Update on Julie Horvath's Departure

#349

Post by lloeki »

sequoia wrote: post #248

When I arrived at this thread, comment two was 'using the information available in the short techcrunch article, I'm now going to PROVE, point by point, how Horvath's claims are false.' Comment three was 'aha they issued a vague apology, this is basically a FULL ADMISSION that everything Horvath said was true!' People: when did our brains melt and spill out of our ears? There is not enough public information present…

> People: when did our brains melt and spill out of our ears?

Classic case of confirmation bias.

Re: Update on Julie Horvath's Departure

#350

Post by piokoch »

sequoia wrote: post #248

When I arrived at this thread, comment two was 'using the information available in the short techcrunch article, I'm now going to PROVE, point by point, how Horvath's claims are false.' Comment three was 'aha they issued a vague apology, this is basically a FULL ADMISSION that everything Horvath said was true!' People: when did our brains melt and spill out of our ears? There is not enough public information present…

I don't know if Horvath is right or not, but this is nice case study how PR works.

I would say this statement is a very clever move from GitHub side. I guess they have skilled PR people working on the issue.

At first look, the cited article seems to admit to everything. As a result, it will be sort of last news on the topic - if they admitted Horvath is right and they even put on leave a founder and the programmer and founder's wife will not be allowed to enter office, then what's more can be said or written? Github did everything it could to resolve the issue.

The point is that they did not admitted anything. The only paragraph that contains actual content is paragraph no 2., the rest is just speaking how Github grows and how they liked Horvath, how sad it is that Horvath is sad, etc.

So we have:

"We know we have to take action and have begun a full investigation. While that’s ongoing, and effective immediately, the relevant founder has been put on leave, as has the referenced GitHub engineer. The founder’s wife discussed in the media reports has never had hiring or firing power at GitHub and will no longer be permitted in the office."

So they have started "full investigation", just that. After two months when everybody will forget about the issue, the founder with his wife and the programmer might be back at Github (who knows what the investigation is going to prove - Horvath will not take part in it - she's no longer an employee). Whatever happens nobody will pay attention. No media will investigate the issue further because "Github admitted Horvath is right", so the topis is closed and no longer "hot".

I guess GitHub cannot publicly admit that Horvath is right or not, their lawyers would be mad, it is much better for them to keep all statements fuzzy and sounding good.

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