Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

Obviously this article is a single personal viewpoint, but I have heard similar stories from two other github employees (one of whom still works for github).

Their interpretation was that github is upset they are viewed as sexist, so they want to figure out how to change their public reputation, without actually changing anything.

Am I reading this correctly? Fired for lack of empathetic communication? Is that really a thing?

I've seen this a few times. People with a naturally terse way of communicating eventually end up offending someone with the power to retaliate.

What's most interesting is that "empathetic communication" is generally not prioritized in software development environments, in favor of exactly the kind of polite-but-direct communication the author employs. (In fact, many feel that even politeness is unnecessary or harmful. For instance, Linus Torvalds' and other OSS developers are known and regularly praised for their bluntness.) I've spoken out often on HN about the need for more of this kind of communication, but I don't see a problem with the author's tone here, and I don't see Github as a workplace that's much of an advocate for it.

I think it is possible that there is some sexism here in that I'm not confident a male employee at Github would ever be challenged over failing this communication standard. That is, I think we implicitly expect women to be more empathetic and polite than men are, and get confused when they are not.

Edit: Also, I have never, ever heard of a PIP being used as anything other than a strategy for building a case for firing someone. Does anyone have any counter-examples?

Edit 2: Also also, the author says she had to turn down Github's severance package because it included an NDA, so she could write the article. Gross. [1]

[1] https://twitter.com/CoralineAda/status/882636914981036032