Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit • Hacker News Board

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

#801

Post by ChuckMcM » Sun, Mar 16, 2014, 9:34 PM UTC

bsder wrote: post #774

ChuckMcM wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At Sun, where there was a structured management chain, there was a time when one of the folks in my group reverted a big chunk of changes I had committed, and I went to our common manager and demanded satisfaction. The response was 'if we left them in he threatened to quit, there isn't anything we can do', and the only conclusion from that statement was that if one of us quit, the manager would rather it were me than…

Well, why was someone willing to quit over changes you made? And why was the manager willing to side with him over you? Those are pretty big flags that you screwed up.

Well in this particular case it was pretty much all politics. Had it been about the code it would have had a different outcome.

The person making the threat felt they were immune from backlash, but they were threatened by where I was working in the code base because they lacked the expertise to compete on a technical level. What I found even more interesting was that our mutual manager felt that his position was an even more tenuous political position so he wasn't going to do anything he wasn't told to do by someone above him in the chain of command.

If someone working for me threatens to quit, I first ask them if their issue can be resolved rationally, and if it can't I ask them when will their last day be. But that is because even if my boss then comes to me and says "You told this guy who is friends with to quit? Your fired!" I am totally ok with that. Not everyone is.

To look at the flip side though as to whether I screwed up or not, I'm reasonably self aware enough to know when I do. And prior to this incident going 'nuclear', as it did, I had come at it from several different directions to try to eliminate bias. Every third party consulted felt my reasoning was pretty sound. But we all know that being "right" doesn't mean you get what you want in a politicized environment. Just ask the Ukrainians living in Crimea, life is what it is. We move past it.

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

#802

Post by lobotryas » Sun, Mar 16, 2014, 9:37 PM UTC

d4nt wrote: post #572

garethsprice wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relationships breaking down are messy at the best of times, toxic at their worst. More people than not, when faced with the collapse of a relationship, will act like a 13 year old than a rational adult. If the company is seen to have encouraged or even acknowledged the relationship it can create a huge liability, especially if one of the people involves feels like they got stiffed because of relationship issues (side…

What you say is true, but I don't believe a contract of employment entitles any company to tell someone who they can or cannot date. If, for the reasons you describe, they wish to maintain a public position of "we not encourage dating coworkers" that's one thing, so long as they don't actually think they have any say in this matter.

> I don't believe a contract of employment entitles any company to tell someone who they can or cannot date.

Shame that companies believe that just fine. They can and will fire an employee if "no dating coworkers" is a policy that said employee violated. You are welcome to avoid working for these companies, but that's your only recourse unless you have an overwhelmingly string case that discrimination was involved.

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

#803

Post by curun1r » Sun, Mar 16, 2014, 9:37 PM UTC

erikpukinskis wrote: post #729

chanux wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, as a male, try to avoid staring at another female because I fear someone like Horvath accuses me of sexism. This is, sadly, the best thing to do because you don't know who is going to take offense. PS: To avoid looking one-sided and narrow (which I believe I'm not) I really feel bad about this whole situation and the lady who had to go through that. Personally liked a github as a company.

> This is, sadly, the best thing to do because you don't know who is going to take offense. I know you mean well, but your sadness to me belies some ignorance about what it's like to be a woman working in a male dominated field. You'd like to live in a world where you can casually watch beautiful people doing beautiful things. I don't begrudge you that, and I wouldn't accuse you of sexism. That said, I have zero inte…

The part that bothers me about this is that we're talking about a one-sided account of events where the terminology being used, "ogling," is entirely subjective.

At my work, there is a woman who brings hula hoops to company events. When there's music, she likes to dance and do tricks with them and she obviously practices a lot. When she's doing it, people (including me) stare. But, at least for me, it has nothing to do with any sexual aspect of what she's doing...I'm watching it because I like appreciating the skill and practice that's gone into her performance. And similar things happen at other company functions. For example, we have an employee who majored in music and is an amazing pianist. There's a bar we go to with a piano that he's played a few times. Guess what...everyone stares at him while he's playing. Hell, we've even got a couple of people who are amazing beer pong players that gather a crowd whenever the ping pong balls come out at events with a keg.

So when does staring and admiring a skill cross the line to ogling? That depends entirely on the person making the determination and often says more about them and their perspective/past experiences than it does about the people doing the staring.

The bottom line is that for those of us who weren't there, nothing in the account we've been provided gives us any information to judge the appropriateness of what went on. We have only one fact: the author of the account, who, rightly or wrongly, has an axe to grind with the company, felt that it crossed some line. It's bad PR, but it's not proof that anything untoward happened.

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

#804

Post by vellum » Sun, Mar 16, 2014, 9:38 PM UTC

ebfe wrote: post #660

cossatot wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seriously hope you consider rethinking this position. There are a tremendous number of incredible women in the world, and most of them are not looking for a sugar daddy. Many women also work hard for their careers, passions, or some combination of both, and understand that both success and failure happen. I will also say that in many instances, if you have this opinion about women (or any group of persons), it's pr…

What advantages would marriage provide over a non-legal partnership? The latter seems to carry all of the benefits of marriage without any of the risks.

To name a few: Joint filing of tax returns, Medicare, Social Security, immigration and residency for partners from other countries, sick leave to care for partner.

You can find more here:

http://lesbianlife.about.com/od/wedding/f/MarriageBenefit.ht...

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

#805

Post by derefr » Sun, Mar 16, 2014, 9:41 PM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #465

derefr wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hackers, in my experience, have more shared experience in being naive enough socially to allow themselves to be baited into making statements which are later used against them, than in actually saying things (or even associating with others who would say things) which are intentionally malicious. We all understand fixing someone's computer and then being blamed for any problems it has from then on; or for making a so…

> This can look like "victim-blaming", but it's really more-than-anything a yearning for people to keep their standards of evidence high, and to avoid jumping to conclusions. That really depends, now, doesn't it, on what the subject is? :) HackerNews seems, in general, to have a very low standard of evidence for things like "the NSA is doing something evil", and tends to be quite credulous on such things. It seems to…

That's certainly one way to frame the reference classes involved. Let me try an alternate one:

> HackerNews seems, in general, to have a very low standard of evidence for "[large organizational structure] is doing something evil", and tends to be quite credulous on such things. It seems to have a very, very, _very_ high standard of evidence for "[individual] is doing something evil" though.

I think this succinctly predicts more of HN's behavior, personally. HN is just generally afraid to condemn individuals for much at all.

That doesn't exclude your conclusion from also being true, though: HN can be both resistant to condemning individuals, while also being biased against believing that bigotry is a thing that exists. But assuming that either one is the "whole cause" of any particular effect, will cause effects to seem weirdly large, because of the confounding effect of the other.

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

#806

Post by gametheoretic » Sun, Mar 16, 2014, 9:46 PM UTC

devnonymous wrote: post #569

gametheoretic wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because I read 1000x times more of the one than of the other, and I personally see and experience one and not the other. That you'd even bring up the comparison makes me think you're not taking this seriously, as a reality to deal with and not an internet crusade. Read the statement again. I'm not laying blame on any party. I am only taking the position that whatever the cause is , I don't know any better than an…

I guess the point I was trying to make was lost on you somehow. I wasn't trying to say this is the exact same thing and that racism is something you'd hear about as frequently as sexism these days ! I was trying to make the parallel that just a few decades ago it would've been a perfectly acceptable thing to play it safe and say ".. than that's who we're hirig." based purely on this kind of skewed reasoning about rac…

Your point was not lost on anyone over the age of 12.

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

#807

Post by dobbsbob » Sun, Mar 16, 2014, 9:47 PM UTC

Sounds like github needs a de facto employee grievance officer like a union shop steward who can sit in on HR meetings and advocate for the employee, or mediate petty personal disputes without involving the heavy and often unfair hand of management and go to the founder about issues with his batshit crazy wife.

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

#808

Post by Crito » Sun, Mar 16, 2014, 9:48 PM UTC

moron4hire wrote: post #579

parennoob wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The hula hooping moment was important because it visibly demonstrated her male coworkers lack of respect for women as people. They were unabashedly staring at their female coworkers as "eyecandy" in that moment and even defended their doing so. Totally disagree. If someone is hula hooping in a company that usually builds software to host version control repositories, they are doing something quite out of the ordina…

Your only source on this story is Horvath's recounting of it, and she says it was inappropriate. By what means do we have to question her assessment of the events? In questioning her, with no other information, you're saying "I don't believe you, you've irrationally overreacted". And that can only based not on the facts of the situation, but on your personal opinions of what "women" in aggregate are like. In other wo…

We also have this account of the incident, by somebody who claims they were present, has put their name behind their account, and may or may not be a github employee: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7408466

This particular account isn't even filtered through a journalist!

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

#809

Post by gametheoretic » Sun, Mar 16, 2014, 9:52 PM UTC

erikpukinskis wrote: post #761

gametheoretic wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll be more than tempted. To be 100% honest, I have that thought every single time I read any article or blog post about sexism in tech. If programmers with a Y-chromosome are exponentially less likely to either sue us or get us labelled sexist jerks in the press, then that's who we're hiring.

That you would even think this says to me that you have zero appreciation for the unique capabilities women bring to the workforce. In my mind it's so obviously worth the risk.

The risk of potentially ending your company? Not unless you view those unique capabilities as being a 10x force multiplier.

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

#810

Post by dobbsbob » Sun, Mar 16, 2014, 9:52 PM UTC

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #682

couchand wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't that apply equally to any shared hosting?

It applies to any shared hosting with servers in in the US that operates above a certain scale; yes. What that certain scale is who knows, but github the most visible hosting service so is certain to be above it. Github is great for my open source work. Everyone's allowed to see that code, even the NSA. However you can find source to LOIC on github. I'm sure that who put that there and who worked on it when would be…

That's why evil github exists, GitTor where all your low orbit ion cannon dev trees can be uploaded without metadata.

You can also use Tor to sync small github projects through ssh. Employee internal communications should all be done away from Github and encrypted if you're working on something like p2p software and worried your flippant piracy jokes might be held up in a court room one day as "proof" your project is criminal. I would always assume all comms are stored forever and available to anybody who requests them, like lawyers looking to sue you and would like all your HipChat logs.