Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

851–860 of 1001 posts

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

#851

Post by brongondwana »

enneff wrote: post #214
nknighthb wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being ridiculous. Emergency reverts are normal and expected when production systems are down. I'm willing to stipulate this person's specific actions were probably hostile and unwarranted, but some sort of blanket "no revert without discussion" rule is just a way to cost your employer customers. Context is important, and we don't have enough of it to be certain of what happened.

You're right, context is important. But where I work we provide an explanation when a commit is reverted, emergency or not.

This. In one week I had to rip out two different things in the middle of the night. One was a simple revert, one was dropping an entire system which had taken months of work and reverting back to the old system.

In both cases, I wrote a detailed technical explanation of why I had taken the action, and an apology for having to do it so suddenly, and I sent to to the entire group (a requirement anyway - if you make an on-the-fly ops change, you need to write up a full incident report so everyone knows what went wrong)

Reverting always needs to come with a "this is what was wrong".

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

#852

Post by lucisferre »

cossatot wrote: post #589
marincounty wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I'm too jaded, but I question getting married. If you hit the lottery and you become a successful Founder, your wife will own 1/2 of all those aching hours sitting in front of that screen. If she's the type of chick that will stick with you when you loose everything and work the paint booth at HD, by all means marry her, but those women just don't exist anymore. Women look at men so differently than we judge…

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…

I seriously hope, for the sake of those "types of chicks", he doesn't.

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

#853

Post by brongondwana »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #149
jsmthrowaway wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> keeping his wife in line. I have never cringed so hard in my life.

Please, just delete this comment. Yeah oh my god that sentence could be interpreted wrong. We don't need a tangent about it. The real meaning has absolutely nothing to do with subordination. It's a simple matter of keeping your friends/relatives/partners out of your job. They don't work there, they shouldn't be interfering. Also, shame on anyone that upvotes such a derail just because they agree with the words.

You fucked up, you got called on it. Stop blaming the person who pointed out your mistake.

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

#854

Post by Dylan16807 »

johnbm wrote: post #847
jessedhillon wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it might bother you because the author assumes that's his own inability to navigate complex social relationships is innate to his maleness. In fact, many men are adept at understanding social and emotional subtexts very well. There's no magnitude-order difference in innate ability as described, or if there is, it's not a permanent, unlearnable gulf. This comment bothered me because OP is fetishizing and token…

See, the problem is that the people who complain about this are also the ones who say it's valuable to add women to a group of men (or indeed the reverse), because it results in more balanced decision making. It can't be both. Either men or women are (as groups, i.e. averages) innately differ on the social vs analytical axis, and diversity is a net plus, or gender is entirely socially constructed, and adding women to…

You have a weird definition of 'innate'. Socially constructed effects are still effects. You still want a mix of people that have different traits and skills, even if they have nothing to do with biology.

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

#855

Post by brongondwana »

grifpete wrote: post #837
gvb wrote: post #773

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GitHub cannot defend itself in public. It is a multimillion dollar company with a very disgruntled ex-employee charging them of sexual discrimination. You can bet their lawyers are saying in tones that cannot be ignored to not say anything until and unless it goes to trial.

Of course they can defend themselves in public. Corporations engage PR firms to manage that expertly for them all the time. And ironically, whether this goes to trial or not, the worse the objective case for Github the more confident you can be that their lawyers will be telling them to say little or nothing. Expect a very bland statement to appear shortly about how much they love and value their female employees. We…

(aka: why are there sockpuppets in here defending github?)

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

#856

Post by makomk »

MarkTee wrote: post #821
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #818

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, the guy who declared his love for her despite knowing that she had a boyfriend, and then started sabotaging all her code when she shot him down, is very much sexist bullshit.

That's not sexism; he was acting maliciously because she turned down his advances, not because she was a woman.

The fact he expected to get away with it and thought it was a reasonable thing to do has, alas, quite a lot to do with both his gender and her gender.

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

#857

Post by gojomo »

grifpete wrote: post #833
gojomo wrote: post #288

While the 'wife' aspect has drawn a lot of attention, it seems that through her marriage she may essentially have a founder's level of equity in the company. I don't know the personalities involved, but she might also have relevant professional experience, and/or have been genuinely helpful in handling thorny issues in the past (even if this case clearly escalated into many kinds of mutual suspicion and recrimination…

It doesn't matter how much equity she has. Or how much professional experience she has. She is not an employee and hence is not entitled to interfere in the internal affairs of the company without management oversight. If an appropriately senior office of the company invites someone (equity holder or not) to observe or participate in the internal affairs of the company then it is that officer's responsibility to make…

Again, try substituting "early investor and trusted advisor of" the founder for "wife of" the founder. Such people play important roles in startups all the time. It's not a matter of "entitlements", startups regularly accept help, and deep involvement from, interested associates of their founders and executives. In some suitably-informal workplaces, any employee could invite a trusted friend in for meetings, offer guest access to internal systems, and then take definitive action on any recommendations received - no employment-relationship or contract or exchange-of-consideration required.

It's not the government. It's not the military. Organizations aren't all titles and reporting-diagrams, and especially not in small/private/fast-moving/crisis-handling enterprises.

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

#858

Post by MartinCron »

MarkTee wrote: post #821
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #818

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, the guy who declared his love for her despite knowing that she had a boyfriend, and then started sabotaging all her code when she shot him down, is very much sexist bullshit.

That's not sexism; he was acting maliciously because she turned down his advances, not because she was a woman.

It's de-facto sexist not to be aware that sexual harassment is wrong.

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

#859

Post by djKianoosh »

sizzle wrote: post #830
MarkTee wrote: post #821

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not sexism; he was acting maliciously because she turned down his advances, not because she was a woman.

I've worked with brilliant engineers that lack a lot of real world social skills and this doesn't surprise me one bit. A pretty girl really can mess with the logical types of people that have little experience with the opposite sex.

your comment is also dripping with stereotypes unfortunately

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

#860

Post by ZoF »

tomp wrote: post #598
ZoF wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post really bothers me somehow. Edit: Figured out why. I don't understand why saying, "people will call me sexist for this" immediately validates your statement as "not intended to be sexist". >"If you are male and a founder, one of your most valuable business resources is your wife. People will call me sexist for saying this, I expect, but women think socially with a level of complexity that I think most men ne…

> Does that entire paragraph not just objectify the wife Objectify is a really overused term that has lost all relevant meaning. How can saying that someone is better than you at something possibly objectify that person? Maybe I'm overly sensible as well, but it's really sad that this is where PC has led us.

"...one of your most valuable business resources is your wife."

That's the objectifying part imo.... Would you disagree?

Post reply on HN