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Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit

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Re: Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit

#741

Post by sseveran »

a3n wrote: post #643
yeukhon wrote: post #183

There seems to be several problems. Not entirely sexism. 1. Founder's wife asked Horvath out and gave her a lecture about who is the boss. Probably out of jealousy. 2. Founder's wife physically inanimate Horvath, making her unwelcome and scared. 3. Founder did not stop the wife and protect his wife. 4. Horvath was approached by a male co-worker and according to her her rejection had caused tension between her and tha…

> The founder accused Horvath for bringing love affair into the company because she was/is dating an employee. The founder has a good point: try to avoid dating someone working with you. It's a beautiful story; but you can cause all sorts of mess. That's between the two people. Period. If they become problem employees, then they are problem employees, not two people who date. The problem behavior that happens on the…

No. There are places that have non-fraternization clauses in employee contracts. Both parties can be fired if there is a relationship and it is not disclosed. In a larger organization (the one i am thinking of is a large bank) they will offer to transfer one person to a different group so that there will not be contact at work.

Re: Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit

#742

Post by jd0 »

corresation wrote: post #484
jd0 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To clarify for many of you, you don't need someone shouting "I HATE WOMEN" for sexism to be occurring. The sexism in this scenario is subtle and persistent, something that likely tainted all of the workplace interactions at github, allowing a female employee's problems at work to be continually ignored. This eventually built up to the issue most people are focusing on, a founders spouse being allowed to harass an emp…

The sexism in this scenario is subtle and persistent, something that likely tainted all of the workplace interactions at github, allowing a female employee's problems at work to be continually ignored. Lots of people of both sexes are impotent and disaffected at work, so it's not necessarily proof of anything when someone says "my opinion is not respected" and then finds superficials to explain it. If you can demonst…

What a gigantic jump. I mean, solar system crossing.

edit: male coworkers lack of respect for women as people from her perspective

Re: Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit

#743

Post by protomyth »

froo wrote: post #369
kansface wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow, furtive glances doesn't come across much better.

Try getting sternly lectured for 10 minutes because because you held the door open for a stranger to be polite. That's when you know shit gotten real. For the record, I routinely hold open doors for people that I know are behind me and are leaving/entering a building. It surprised me to know end to get yelled at for it.

I learned my response to this from a comment on a BBC article

"I do not offer my seat because you are a lady, but because I was taught to be a gentleman" - works for doors too.

My Dad would have had a fit if I didn't hold the door open for a group. He expected his children to be polite.

Re: Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit

#744

Post by lancewiggs »

glitchdout wrote: post #583
lancewiggs wrote: post #250

What should Github do? My take: The founder leaves, at least for six months, and his wife has no further involvement ever. The clueless spurned programmer leaves, at very least works from home for six months or more but is preferably publicly fired. His behaviour is unacceptably unprofessional and as good as he might be it's not good enough to destroy a culture. The entire team (and many commenters here need this too…

> The entire team (and many commenters here need this too) get coached on why its rude to stare at people, even if they are hula hooping or different. You can't possibly be serious.

Not really - but the fact we have to even point this out means that some intervention is required.

Re: Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit

#745

Post by officemonkey »

wahsd wrote: post #652
keithpeter wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Who can access private company data, why, and for what reason?" This seems to me to be the major takeaway for organisations outside github from this sorry affair. I'm sort of surprised you are the only person to raise this so far. In the UK, the employee who resigned could have a successful day in an employment tribunal. And one aspect of the hearing would be privacy and the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act pr…

But you live in the UK, which is still part of Europe, where people are still people that have rights. Your only right in the USA is the right to leave.

It seems to me she has made a pretty good case for sex discrimination, harassment, and hostile work environment.

If this happened in my company, lawyers would be crafting a settlement right now.

Re: Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit

#746

Post by hyperpape »

Xylakant wrote: post #428
pron wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently, organizational freedom for a bunch of young guys tends to breed sexism and abuse. I've always thought there's trouble ahead for a company whose blog is mostly a drinking journal (although this appears to no longer be the case).

I've seen similar fallouts in a strictly hierarchical organization when one of the leading managers started having an affair with one of the lower rank project management trainees. HR was powerless, since the manager outranked them. Project management was powerless since the now-de-facto promoted trainee was backed by their superior. In the end, the developers revolted and threatened to quit, so the owner personally…

"HR was powerless, since the manager outranked them."

That right there is a scary sentence. Sure, HR shouldn't dictate everything (hiring developers, for example) but No one should be exempt from rules about how to treat other employees.

Re: Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit

#747

Post by erikpukinskis »

facepalm wrote: post #396
enneff wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. But when an individual claims to have been wronged by a large organization they should receive the benefit of the doubt.

Seems to me the issues are less with her stories than with her interpretation of sexism. I haven't seen anybody claim "she's lying" yet.

A lot of people are saying "we have zero evidence, so we must assume that both outcomes are equally likely" which I think is equivalent. It's saying that her words don't carry any weight as evidence unless there are also words from the other parties that confirm.

Re: Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit

#748

Post by [deleted] »

d4nt wrote: post #547
asdkl234890 wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good thing for hackers/programmers/engineers to be stubborn.... up to a point, but the one thing an architect should not be is stubborn. And yet architects usually originate from promoted engineers. And that means they are stubborn, and the result is all kinds pointless conflicts with all the other developers.

The fact that the tech architect spent any time at all contemplating this issue is a massive red flag to me. Technical Architecture should be about making the right set of trade offs given the business goals of the system being developed. That involves spending a lot of time talking to people both inside and outside of dev team about what the goals are and how the decisions that devs are making are impacting everyone…

[deleted]

Re: Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit

#749

Post by tsigo »

prezjordan wrote: post #571
AgathaTheWitch wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet that rug really tied together the room too... All joking aside, that rug thing is pretty silly. "Meritocracy" is not code for "Straight White Males only." Nevertheless Horvath being feminist does not invalidate any unfair treatment she may have experienced should her claims be substantiated.

Let's go ahead and assume GitHub is a meritocracy. If you "succeed" and do "well" on GitHub (what metric can we use? Lots of a stars? Getting your name out there?), what does that actually prove? If GitHub is a meritocracy, what have the "winners" done to set them apart from the rest, and how does that translate into the professional world?

Hadn't even heard of the rug incident until I read about it in this thread, but I'm pretty sure their idea of meritocracy here only applied to GitHub the company, not GitHub the website, and came out of their culture of "Managers and chain-of-command? Not here. You can work on whatever you want at any time and at any location, as long as good work comes out of it."

Re: Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit

#750

Post by jiggy2011 »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #718
jjoonathan wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a huge chasm between ogling someone undertaking physical activity If anyone -- attractive man, unattractive man, attractive woman, unattractive woman -- started hula-hooping in the middle of the office I would expect people to stare. Not because it's sexual, but because it's peculiar. The gap between "stare" and "ogle" is hardly objective, let alone a "chasm."

Julie described the group of men as 'gawking'; as far as I'm aware, this is more or less interchangeable with the term 'ogling', in common use here in the UK. This is significantly different from just staring - it implies a sexual undercurrent, i.e. paying particular attention to someone's physical characteristics. Maybe this is a cultural thing, but the clear implication in the original report was that the staring/o…

Ogling is defined as "stare at in a lecherous manner."

The hard part here is defining "lecherous" but it would seem to imply that he is watching in a way that signals sexual intent. It's worth noting that women are generally much better at interpreting body language than men are, so it's possible that a guy is watching the woman dance and getting some sort of erotic enjoyment from it, tries his best to hide it but some subconscious subtle clue gives him away.

Having said that, hoop dancing would seem like an inappropriate thing to do in most offices to begin with but I would say the same thing about nerf gun fights.

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