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Results of the GitHub Investigation

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Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#341

Post by kenferry »

nailer wrote: post #250
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.

If you want to know if GitHub is a hostile work environment according to women who work there, take a poll of current and past female employees, including Horvath. I did. So far it's working out in GitHub's favour. But maybe I missed something, so do your own research.

That's interesting - want to give your numbers?

I would think, however, that any sort of reasonable minority calling it a "hostile work environment" would indicate a problem.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#342

Post by wpietri »

leccine wrote: post #232
jessaustin wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accounting firms provide a pretty good counter-example here. Everyone thinks of Andersen, who actually had to close as a result of their "customer-focused" service at Enron, but actually all the "big" firms were implicated to varying degrees in the subsequent unpleasant business with CDOs. Any service business will hesitate to piss off the guy who hires them every year.

This is an exception and a single case does not prove that all of the companies are like that. There is enough money to bribe anybody. As i said, 50K (or so) is not enough for that.

Does two prove it? Here's another fine example: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/06/how-to-choose-a...

It's a well-known problem with auditor/audited relationships. What the customer wants is a clean bill of health after an easy audit. The auditor needs to be tough enough to maintain a good reputation, but beyond that they are looking to maximize volume. The Economist mentions this every year or two [1], and they're especially concerned when auditing firms do a lot of financial consulting for the audited firms. Then there's an even stronger incentive to make the audit generous.

Another good analogy is medical marijuana cards in states where marijuana is supposedly only for medical purposes. In theory, doctors are careful gatekeepers. In practice, the doctors doing those certifications have a strong financial incentive to certify as many people as quickly as possible. I've lived in San Francisco, and I've never heard of anybody getting turned down for one of those cards.

[1] e.g.: http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2014/03/dewey-lebo... or http://www.economist.com/node/954033

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#343

Post by pjscott »

lbarrow wrote: post #138
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 ."

A loud public witch-hunt also counts as a Wrong Thing, so this doesn't really tell us much about what happened one way or the other.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#344

Post by chippy »

kelnos wrote: post #333
jfc wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, in my comment I mention that this memo is no different than other corporate statements. My point is that some comments on here say "there is no evidence", which is not what the memo says. Saying you didn't find something isn't the same as saying that something doesn't exist.

Right, but there is no actual way that you can say that something doesn't exist; you can't prove a negative. There is absolutely no other wording you can ever use. Pointing that out as some sort of indicator that it's possible that there is some evidence is a little silly, because... well, duh. Ultimately it depends on whether or not you trust the investigator to be thorough, and to be able to ferret out the truth wh…

The investigator in this case is not about uncovering the truth of everything - it's about investigating this specific case. They do not have an obligation, for example, to mention that they found taxation irregularities during their work.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#345

Post by lobotryas »

sheetjs wrote: post #279
kelnos wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read Theresa Preston-Werner's post (linked above), she claims that the "mistakes and errors of judgment" were completely unrelated to the harassment story, but were discovered during the harassment investigation.

That's Theresa's claim (if we are going to play he-said-she-said we might as well be consistent). The official response does not suggest that the errors of judgment were unrelated to the subject at hand

What makes Horvath's claim have any more bearing than Theresa's? What happened to "innocent until proven guilty"?

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#346

Post by jfc »

chippy wrote: post #335
jfc wrote: 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…

This is a great example of the type of critical looking at the evidence. The words that are used should be examined closely - especially official / legal words. There should be no reading between the lines if written properly. Here we have "no gender based..." of Tom and his wife. Nothing mentioned about whether there was other people who did were involved in that type of activity, nor whether the two individuals wer…

> Here we have "no gender based..." of Tom and his wife. Nothing mentioned about whether there was other people who did were involved in that type of activity, nor whether the two individuals were involved in other types of activity.

Great point. I didn't notice that phrase, but now that I think about it, you're right.

Re: Results of the GitHub Investigation

#350

Post by hackaflocka »

emocakes wrote: post #316
nhangen wrote: post #49

Silly thing these gender based politics and acts of political correctness. I can guarandamntee you that if I was Tom and was innocent, mistakes in judgment aside, I would not be resigning from MY COMPANY. Is this the result of new board members coming in post-investment? If so, it's more reason to stay bootstrapped and free. If not, who is there to pressure him other than Chris? Edit: 4 downvotes without a single com…

in regards to misplaced frustration and angst, pretty much, tech is mostly filled with frustrated, unattractive (physical and personality wise) middle aged men, who believe that the only way to find a mate is to swallow this liberal agenda so as to make themselves appear as more of a 'nice guy', and thus in their twisted little heads, becoming more attractive to members of the opposite sex. Typical beta mentality. ed…

Agree 100%. There are a couple of Betas tweeting her offering to employ her.
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