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Prominent GitHub Engineer Julie Ann Horvath Quits Citing Harrassment
First time accepted submitter PvtVoid writes in with the story of Julie Ann Horvath alleging a culture of sexism at GitHub. "The exit of engineer Julie Ann Horvath from programming network GitHub has sparked yet another conversation concerning women in technology and startups. Her claims that she faced a sexist internal culture at GitHub came as a surprise to some, given her former defense of the startup and her internal work at the company to promote women in technology."
I'm a guy and after reading her story I would feel the same if I were in her shoes. This is not a gender problem, this is a people problem. A lot of people simply don't know how to behave civilized with other people.
So we know one side of the story. But what about the other side? Maybe she was really bad worker and used 'discrimination' card each time to defend her work? "You are saying that this code is bad not because of the code, but just because I'm a woman". It would be nice if somebody could anonymously 'leak' some of her pull requests plus entire conversation around it - and then we could see how much harrasment was from reviewer and how much unfair pushing from her side.
Problem is that GitHub is at lost position. However bad she was, they will be always painted bad boys for throwing dirt on her, so they will probably keep silent...
Git doesn't rely on github, at all. It is also completely open source (GPL) so if you wanted to fork it for some reason, you could.
What would make a lot more sense would be creating a community run alternative to github itself. Something without a business behind it.
Her problem wasn't sexism, it was with the founder's wife (so she says). 75% of the article talks about her problems with the founder's wife.
So it's just a tale of one woman being bitchy to another.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
The article details some serious allegations, and is worth reading in it's entirety. I'm eager to read github's side of the story as well. Some of the claims ought to give users pause about trusting their private data with github. That's hugely problematic. Other claims show an unprofessional and hostile environment, and a company whose HR department (if they have one) is screwing up very badly. I hope they are able to resolve all of this, as I am a very big fan of git, and of github. But at the moment the claims sound plausible and distressing.
There's already an update to this story here: Update on Julie Horvarth's Departure
There was a party at Github headquarters attended by employees and their friends. There was music and probably alcohol. Also, hula hoops.
Yes, those MEN had the GALL to WATCH two women hula hooping. Which made her feel unsafe. In other words, she's a lunatic and you can safely ignore anything she says.
Aaaand the Millennium Technology Prize goes to Anonymous Coward.
Having read all of that, it seems like maybe 10% sexism and 90% people just being horrible in a completely gender-neutral fashion. Inexcusable either way, but pitching this as a "culture of sexism" seems a bit over-the-top given that most of the negative interactions mentioned in the article are between two women.
Unfortunately we don't have enough information to know if it is a gender discrimination issue or not. If she had to deal with this because she is female, if people treated her differently and if there are persistent problems for women then it is sexism. If not it's just a crappy place to work full stop.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
"I had a really hard time getting used to the culture, the aggressive communication on pull requests and how little the men I worked with respected and valued my opinion"
, I wonder how many men, if going away with perceptions like these, would be ready to ascribe it to some "them vs. me" issue. I mean, one can't conclude on basis of statements like these that some sort of improper discrimination wasn't going on, but neither can one conclude that it was.
Ezekiel 23:20
After reading the referenced article, and the github response, I am still finding myself pretty meh.
The actual sexism in it seems overblown at best. They had a party, girls were hulu-hooping, guys stared. She seems to somehow have been shocked and perturbed by this, which makes me wonder about her. Is she shocked and perturbed by the affects of gravity or the inverse square law as well? Yet this completely unremarkable scene is cited as the 'last straw' before she left.
For the most part the real problem appears to have been a founders wife. FTFA: "In her email to TechCrunch, Horvath says she felt "confused and insulted to think that a woman who was not employed by my company was pulling the strings." She also said she felt bullied by someone with perceived power and influence over her personal relationship and her career at GitHub."
Now I dont know about where Julia is from, but here on Earth a founders spouse having what might be technically inappropriate involvement in the company business is not exactly unheard of. It's also typical for that spouse to have what we gamers would describe as a great intrigue score - a manipulative deceitful personality that will bluff or lie about her current position in order to improve her position 10 moves later in her game, and who will use you up and throw you away without a hint of remorse if she sees a gain in it. This sort of woman is always scheming, and employees that just want to keep punching their clock and spending their paycheck have to be vigilant to avoid getting involved in her schemes, usually to their detriment.
Now I dont blame our heroine for being uncomfortable in that spot, Everyone is. I am just saying it's odd that she would actually be surprised by something so common, and odder still that she would attribute it to sexism.
Github indicates the spouse in question has been dealt with, so frankly it sounds like they may have won on both ends of the deal. Seems an easy bet that at least some of the employees are breathing much more easily in the office today with both of these ladies gone from it.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
That's the whole point. There is no "male culture." There's a number of "cultures" and men are not an homogeneous group that can be classified under just one of them. We're all mixed between different "cultures," spanning both genders.
It seems the lion's share of the problem was a founder's psychotic wife, who basically stalked her - which doesn't seem to have anything to do with gender discrimination, and all to do with one person being a nut-job.
Of the other issues she raised:
* Another engineer made a pass at her, got rejected, and didn't handle the rejection will.
* Some girls were hula-hoop dancing, and guys were watching them
The first issue might have been a problem, but if it was at all proportionate to the page-space dedicated to discussing it, it sounds like a fairly minor issue, and one that should really be able to be solved by HR. The second is just, well, petty. Sounds like she'd made up her mind to hate the place by that stage, and was finding fault with every little thing.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
I could be mistaken, but it sounds an awful lot like this is just a bad attempt to blame the big bad men for what the founder's wife did. She sounds like a bitch on wheels with a jetpack strapped to her for good measure. Sure, the one engineer was a problem, but if the wife wasn't involved and out to get her HR would probably have put him in his place if she asked.
GitHub relies on Git, not the other way around. There is nothing stopping you (apart from technical expertise) from starting your own GitHub clone.
after reading the story it seemed to be almost nothing to do with sexism, and everything to do with the wife not liking the woman. women not liking women, news at 10.
Which is why in civilised countries we have unions and employment law. If I have a grievance like she did with my employer, I go to my union, I don't resign. They understand employment law, contract law, case law, and I have a right to a union rep at meetings with management. Why resign? Does she have a legal case for suing the company? Because I know that's how you leftpondians prefer to do it.
Of course it's in men's interest to keep women subordinate so they can be more easily exploited (and it would be in women's interest to do the same to men (...)).
I fail to see why - what has this to do with gender? Does your statement still make sense if we replace "men" or "women" with "people"? Do you believe that men are women are natural enemies?
Since I do not recall seeing articles about her citing harassment, I don't understand why it is such a big deal that she isn't doing so any longer.
OK, I read the summary and realize the headline is inaccurate. What they meant to write was, " Prominent GitHub Engineer Julie Ann Horvath Quits, Citing Harassment" rather than the headline they did write. All I have to say is, "Commas, learn to use them."
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Which is why in civilised countries we have unions and employment law.
I was a bit sad when I read that she had to request HR to be present at a meeting with the boss, you need a union on your side when you have those conversations.
Don't forget that the founder's wife treated her the way she did, precisely because she couldn't see Horvath as an engineer, but only as a potential lust object for the founder. And the founder let her. And then there's the atrocious meeting incident, where HR also proved to be totally useless.
By themselves the points may not seem all that bad, but together they're more fishy, and when you put them in a context of a company with gender issues they're quite damning. This is one of the problems with cases like this: gender discrimination usually pervades the atmosphere of a company and provides the context in which events happen. (I've seen this myself at a Dutch IT service company. I'm a man and even I could see it, so I'm pretty sure the women must have felt it too.) The events themselves aren't that bad by themselves:
* A competent woman doesn't get promoted. So what, you cannot promote everyone. But the guy who didn't promote her, always promoted only men, and some of them were incompetent.
* A junior colleague jokes that rape is just a case of economics. The colleague was a guy who regularly mistreated women. Not so funny now, eh?
* There were no women in management. Okay, that happens sometimes, women like management less anyway, and some women preferred to promote out of the company. But when you know that management consisted of a bunch of sex-obsessed baboons who did nothing but continually laugh at each other's misogynistic ‘jokes’ the picture changes.
That IT company was sort of an extreme case, but I've since seen more subtle variants elsewhere. These things aren't always that easy to put in words, and every example you might cite will be wiped off the table by someone who doesn't want to understand that there is a problem, but they create an incredibly sickening atmosphere.
It's hard enough to take for a man; if I were a woman, I would have permanently left IT ages ago.
Even the first lady and will tell the president where and when to shove it in and he will listen so whats different about the founder (sounds like DS9 a bit)
Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
This is a tough one. I had the privilege to work for exceptional men and women in male-dominated industries, such as finance. Yes, there is sexism. Women are propositioned, stared at, condescended to, recipients of sexist comments and so on. I have seen some women capitalize on this and turn it to their advantage. I also observe other women who obsess over the power dynamic to the point where they are always checking, verifying and asserting their power. This usually causes resentment. A leader is not effective if s/he keeps asserting 'I am in charge'. Then there are some women who 'just get on with it'. They are there to do business and get the job done effectively. Politics, stares, sexism are like water off a duck's back. They are focussed on their work and getting the job done. Now this is in an arena among the 'captains of industry' types. Imagine an arena of shy and awkward geek boys who obsess on code? No everyone has the strength to get past such environs and 'just get on with the job'. Horvath tweeting about office politics is a bad move. You cannot express much in a tweet. It is a poor way to explain situations. I feel bad for the next woman, who will probably be treated like a vial of nytroglycerine.
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
This is not a gender problem, this is a people problem.
Quite.
THIS, as in this particular case, it is primarily obvious mobbing performed on her by the WIFE of one of the founders of GitHub.
Sure, there are other issues, like the other employee who came out of nowhere professing his love and then started to bully her passive aggressively for "rejecting him".
Though she was already in "a committed relationship" with another employee of GitHub.
But this is primarily mobbing, plain and simple. Done by the proverbial "bosses wife".
FFS - founder who's wife had issues with Horvath demanded her boyfriend to resign cause it was ",bad judgement' to date coworkers".
I.e. She was pressured by "the wife", while her boyfriend was pressured by "the husband".
That's NOT SEXISM. They clearly took precautions so it would not be seen as sexism.
Founder and his wife were MOBBING their employees.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
So it's either sexual harrassment OR just a crappy place to work???
Not a chance, AmiMoJo...both go hand in hand...sexism in the workplace is a **symptom** of a greater problem...it's **one way** unprofessionalism can be expressed. These things do not happen in compartmentalized little spaces...it's a sign of institutional rot.
This woman was an **engineer** she's one of us. She obviously is trying to use careful language to not seem inflamitory...if anything, she is ***downplaying*** the level of sexism in her workplace...like a humble geek/engineer would!
from TFA:
Horvath told us that she “participated in the boys’ club upon joining,” but when her “character started being discussed in inappropriate places like on pull requests and issues,” the situation changed.
I object to the notion that because she sent tweets, when she *first started working* about how she liked her job, that means we should some how be critical of what she is saying now...things change at a job after the first few months, everyone knows this.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Gender problems are people problems you fool!
This false dichotomy you purvey, that this social situation is "either A or B" is reductive and shows how far our industry has sunk.
So, is murder not a violence problem, but just a people problem? Rape...by your logic not sexual in nature...just a people problem!
Racism? Naw...that's just a people problem...by your logic.
Your reductive contextualization **insures** that you will misidentify the cause of the problem and whatever you do as a fix *will not work*
Until *men* in the tech industry mature beyond adolesence we will have this problem. It's **our fault** and we must be **proactive** to fix the problem.
Thank you Dave Raggett
That's just a variation of the "no true Scotsman" argument. Of course there is variation, but there are a lot of common problems too.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I guess you are referring to the recent call not to label girls who take charge as "bossy". IMHO they have a point - men who take charge as seen as leaders, women are often derided as bossy for doing exactly the same thing. It's not just men saying it either, women call each other bossy just as much if not more.
But hay, a feminist said it so there must be some underlying man-hatred motive, right?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
the wife went on to claim that she was responsible for hires at GitHub, and asked Horvath to explain to her what she was working on. The wife also claimed to employ “spies” inside of GitHub, and claimed to be able to, again according to Horvath, read GitHub employees’ private chat-room logs, which only employees are supposed to have access to.
This sounds like the founder's wife is a loose cannon with a her own little unofficial organization within the company. I have seen this before. This seems like the founder's wife was trying to recruit her into her network of spies.
Horvath called the situation, aptly, “bananas.”
Yeah, I can guess who the head banana is, the founder's wife
In her email to TechCrunch, Horvath says she felt “confused and insulted to think that a woman who was not employed by my company was pulling the strings.” She also said she felt bullied by someone with perceived power and influence over her personal relationship and her career at GitHub.
As anyone would be.
Horvath then told her partner, also a GitHub employee, about what was happening. She warned him against being close to the founder and his wife, and asked him not to relay information to them.
This was good idea.
According to Horvath, her partner “agreed this was best.” He had talked with the founder’s wife, who agreed to give Horvath space.
This is where things are going sideways and neither she nor her partner see what is going on. By Horvath's partner talking to the founder's wife, they both made it onto her enemy list and became targets.
Instead of the issue blowing over, Horvath received a meeting request from HR at GitHub, and was asked to “relay the details of that personal conversation that took place out of the office.” Horvath recalls that she was “uncomfortable with this but complied to the best of my ability.” Her partner was also asked to relay past events.
This is an indication that HR has been made aware of a situation and is investigating it. This was probably initiated by the founder's wife via the founder because of Horvath's partner.
Radio silence ensued for a month, according to Horvath, while rumors cropped up that the founder was asking other employees about her, as well as her relationship with her partner. To Horvath, the silence made her think that she was “being bullied into leaving.”
This is the investigation.
At this point, Horvath said she began to feel threatened.
Why exactly? Was it
She said that having her personal relationship dragged into her work life and put on show for her coworkers didn’t sit well with her.
That is always a danger when one dates or is married to a coworker. Or was it
The aforementioned wife began a pattern of passive-aggressive behavior that included sitting close to Horvath to, as she told TechCrunch, “make a point of intimidating” her.
Or was it something else? The fact that the founder's wife is sittng close to her raises the question of whether the founder's wife has an official capacity in the organization which would partially contradict what Horvath has said thus far.
This stalemate ended when the founder asked to see her. Horvath said that she “wasn’t going to put myself in a position like that, so I required HR be present if we were to meet.” The meeting did not go well.
If she thought it would, she was a fool
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Oh bull, quit sucking down the kool-aid
I've worked under the leadership of both women and men, good and bad. The only women I've seen labeled as "bossy" are the same kinds as men who would be labeled "bossy" - Middle management pointy haired people who feel they need to inject themselves into your work to validate their jobs instead of actually LEADING.
Good leadership is universal, regardless of gender.
This social engineering campaign doesn't serve women at all well and instead enforces the stereotype that women need to be coddled to be considered as equals.
And the founder let her.
Isn't that statement a little sexist?
No. As an executive of a company, the founder has the responsibility to act to prevent anyone interfering with the company, either taking action himself or hiring someone to do it within legal means.
As his wife is doing the interfering, he himself is the most appropriate person to put a stop to it. By taking no action, he is "letting" it happen. "Let" not as "giving permission", but as "not taking action against", i.e. "let it happen".
How is this person an engineer?
Her linkedin profile shows a degree in marketing and job titles in design and marketing. Not any engineering background to be seen.
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/ju...
Sorry, but no.
"Bossy" is probably less offensive than anything I've ever called a male boss that behaved like a dick. If a word like "bossy" is preventing you from being a leader then you just aren't leadership material. If you try to ban words as a means to assert your dominance- you aren't leadership material. But that does make you bossy.
By themselves the points may not seem all that bad, but together they're more fishy, and when you put them in a context of a company with gender issues they're quite damning.
What if, and I'm just posing a scenario here, the entirety of the gender issues consists of those points, and those points only? Are those points, themselves, enough to provide a damning context of gender issues?
I'm not denying that there are companies out there that are just horrible to women; usually they're just as horrible to men, but we're bred to take it with a grin and keep on going. What I'm asking is... Have we all become oversensitive?
Were they calling out *her* character on pull requests, or was it more widespread? Was it done in seriousness, or in jest? The answer to the first question should lead to the answer to the second; if it was widespread, it was also likely in jest, and sometimes it's difficult to pick up on that if you haven't been around long enough to know all of the inside info, things that have happened in the past that people are poking fun at, and whatnot. If it was just her, just women, or just a handful of the team who had to deal with it, then there certainly was a problem and nobody can deny that.
The thing is, we don't know. None of us are there. Well, I'm sure a few of us actually are there, but they can't speak up because, no matter what the situation is, we, as a group will tear them apart; either they'll admit it's true and we'll hate them for it, or they'll deny it and we'll decry them as a liar, whether they are or not. Even if they didn't participate. Because, clearly, they didn't do enough to prevent it or put a stop to it. Like anyone here could possibly know that; perhaps they did and it was those in power who didn't act. Or, perhaps, there was actually no problem. We don't now, and will never, know.
If this was a "just her" issue, then it wasn't sexism; if it was an "everyone" issue, it probably wasn't even negative or malicious. Only if it was a "just women" and, at that, an "all women" issue; only then was it sexist. After all, it is possible that a woman, or a group of women, may be disliked and people may wish to drive her, or them, away, without sexism being the driving force. To put that another way, a sexist man will never respect a woman; so if it wasn't happening to all women within the organization, if any of them were respected, it wasn't sexism.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Careful with that talk, you may be decried as a sexist for it. After all, it's not natural that men and women may have different biologically predetermined roles. It's not like one of us was built to reproduce and wired to care and nurture, while the other was built to work and wired to gather and provide. We don't see this anywhere else in the animal kingdom, either; certainly not in other mammals.
Wait. We do?
That said, there really and truly is nothing preventing us all from working together. Those willing to give it a go just need to be aware of, and willing to deal with, the reality of the situation, which is that a mixed workplace differs from a nightclub only in the lighting, volume level, and amount of booze and dancing. Hell, drug use is similar at both. Am I saying that's right? No. Fuck, I can't stand the club scene. Would I rather work just with men? I'm sure my wife would rather I did.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Or, you'd treat your wife or girlfriend with respect. Of course, the knife cuts both ways; I was removed from my position at a company because I turned my *female* manager down for a date, because I was already in a relationship. She was absolutely stunning and, were the situation different, I would have been all over her, but that doesn't change the fact that I was already taken.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
No false dichotomy there. Gender problems are people problems, but people problems are *not* gender problems. This was not a gender problem, but it was, and is, a people problem.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
And you're a gal seeking to make men look universally bad by your generalized, sexist comment. See how that works?
(Should be "casual".) These things seem like a reasonable opinion:
1) A lot happened that Julie Ann Horvath is not mentioning. It is impossible to judge the situation with the small amount of information, especially since it comes from only one person.
2) The major incident mentioned in the TechCrunch story involves 2 women.
3) TechCrunch damaged its reputation by acting as though the story is extremely important when clearly the TechCrunch writer knows only one side. That story calls into question whether TechCrunch is adequately edited. Can we trust TechCrunch to be sure stories are reported accurately? Or is TechCrunch the Fox News of technology?
4) Many companies have a somewhat unhealthy social environment. Most men would just get a job elsewhere. At present, a woman can claim that there was discrimination against her, and people will say that the problems can be understood as men against women.
5) A book about feminism a woman friend gave me many years ago said, "In Italy feminism is pro-female. In the U.S. feminism is anti-male." The way the story in reported seems to indicate that Julie Ann Horvath was using the company as a target for her anger, anger that was there long before she joined the company.
That is classic Slashdot. Oversimplification and grand declarations regarding the behavior of others at the helm of businesses.
How about this: Social interactions, personal conflicts, and politics are all part of business (and, really, any team environment), and you'd better be ready for it or be ready to get out.
It is completely unrealistic to expect business to somehow be an antiseptic environment, like some ideal altar of pure motivation. When people hide behind claims of protecting shareholder interest, it's the same shit.
It's still a group of people, behaving like, shocker, people...
Men can be very rough to their coworkers and subordinates.
This doesn't say a hell of a lot for the traditional male dominant corporate culture, Even in professional sports there has been a push-back against this kind of adolescent behavior.
Right. Github is located in a civilized country that also has unions and employment law. Unions aren't active in every company, and not active in most for that matter. Gender discrimination and harassment is illegal pretty much everywhere if not everywhere in the US. IANAL and I'm not going to go check all of the jurisdictions to confirm.
Everyone who has an opinion about unions seems to have a strong one. My own was formed at my first job where I made around $4/hour and got 1.5x overtime over 40 hours. The union guys got a lot more than that, though in fairness they were experienced and I was a kid, so "more" was quite reasonable. They got overtime and double overtime (3x base rate, or what they called "golden time") if they worked something like > 12 hours in a day, which happened from time to time. None of that really bothered me. Obviously, they just negotiated from a stronger position.
What bothered me was that they could spend a significant amount of that time just sitting on their butts and no one could do a thing about it. They had a "supervisor" who literally sat in a car all day long "supervising". Eventually, the company managed to get rid of that particular leech and just made one of the regular guys a shift lead or some such, and we got along just fine. The leech's parting words of advice to me were to find a job that paid a lot where I didn't have to do anything. In other words, do exactly what he had done. And then there's seniority. With a union, it doesn't matter if you're any good at your job or not, the only question is how long you've been there. Unions, in my experience, promote mediocrity. Oh, and then there's double dipping. Our work was primarily moving freight from one mode of transport to another. Typically from a ship to a train or truck. One of the enterprising union guys figured out how to sign up to work two ships at a time and only show up for one. He got paid for both. It was widely known that he was doing this, but no one could fire him for what amounted to blatant fraud. Maybe it's more precise to say it wasn't worth the fight with the union to get rid of the guy. Those instances of brazen exploitation turned me off unions.
Unions do have their place. When employers are abusing the workers, unions can back them off. Unions have enough power, though, that they can also screw over the employers AND the employees, and unchecked, they do.
Horvath has a background in marketing and virtually no examples of code to be found anywhere. Being able to sprinkle a little script onto some markup does not make you an engineer.
And keep in mind that this is not the first time she's played the sexism card. Horvath led a 'geek feminism' campaign to get rid of a rug (yes, a rug) because she objected to the word 'meritocracy'. Because we all know that meritocracy is a myth and that everyone's contribution to Open Source is equally important. Focusing on the people who actually write code is just sexism. *Gag*
What is it with Women who work in Software Dev? They seem to think that men just sit around making generalizations about them...... oh wait
Swapped X and Y by mistake.
Then you're a pretty drama queen kind of douche bag guy then.
I read her story and I see someone who can't accept the reality of working at most small companies - nepotism. Not exactly whats going on here, but close enough. Could be worse really, they could have just put her on the payroll, then Julie would have nothing at all to bitch about other than being naive.
She's pissed off because some women respected did some hula hooping and some guys watched them ... in public ... Jealous much? Thats what this is, she's jealous that those women are getting the attention, that then gets twisted into OMG GUYS ARE SCUM FOR WATCHING ... you know WHY those women used the hula hoop AT A PARTY? TO GET FUCKING ATTENTION AND GUYS TO LOOK AT THEM. ... So she's pissed off because those women got EXACTLY what they wanted ... and she didn't.
And she can't deal with the fact that the bosses wife has a great deal of influence of the boss ...
I'm sorry, if you can't deal with that last one, you are well and truly FUCKED in this world because that is a reality of EVERY BUSINESS ON THE PLANET.
The bosses wife (or husband) IS ALWAYS GOING TO HAVE MORE SAY THAN YOU DO. Perhaps one day get in a relationship and you'll understand the dynamics and you'll understand why the significant other carries so much weight.
If you continue you ignore it and pretend like it doesn't happen, you'll simply never get anywhere ... and you'll probably remain single as well.
Hope she likes being a figure head for feminism (I did not say women's rights), because thats all anyone is going to think of her for the rest of her life. She had something[ to bitch about and turned it into a men vs women thing. She's more sexist than anyone she's bitching about.
You don't scream sexism and then exclusively talk about how a member of the same sex harassed you, and then casually mention something SOME ONE ELSE DID AND SOMEONE ELSE LOOKED AT ... which Julie had ABSOLUTELY NO INVOLVEMENT WHAT SO EVER with ... as your reason for leaving. She's a worthless trouble maker doing nothing other than making women look bad.
If the bosses wife did try to job assassinate her, which is more or less what she's claiming, then leaving is the right thing to do. Ranting and raving about it on some sensationalizing blog so you get some attention? That just makes you look like you're causing problems.
If you feel the same as her, you are part of the problem and need help. You guys are truly fucked up and WAY to sensitive about shit that has nothing at all to do with you. Get help, the problem is yours, not ours.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
If calling you bossy makes you not a leader, you aren't a leader in the first place.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
You're a troll, and/or a moron, but I'll bite anyway.
one can see it could be eliminated if; we went back to older standards where men worked and women stayed home to nurture family
Your solution to women not being empowered to pursue personal achievement and happiness is to... revert to a culture which prohibited women from even getting to the first rung of the ladder? Right.
For some, the urge to attempt mating is periodically overwhelming and unwelcome sex talk happens.
You use for some as if there are unfortunate individuals out there who simply can't be blamed for behaving inappropriately in the workplace. Other than in the case of genuine disorders such as Tourettes, this is just nonsense - most people manage it perfectly fine.
it solves economics problems
You think sweeping aside half the workforce of a country will benefit its economy?
You may think that cutting a family back to one income wouldnt be helpful, but, you must also consider that we live far above our means as it is and getting back to some basics would be mentally helpful and free up enough stress
A family bringing in half the money it usually would, causes a reduction in stress? I had no idea.
She was wrong to ask you on a date as a subordinate. Your position was removed because the whole relationship became really awkward.
I could just as easily have been transferred to another location; she didn't have to go up the chain and have me removed at the district level. In retrospect, it was a shit retail job, so I'm better off for it; and she did admit what happened several months later and was let go, as well. As far as I know, she still hasn't recovered from the 9 year gap the incident left in her employment history. That's not the kind of incident that results in keeping an employer on your resume.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I know someone who went to the union for help with a problem with a boss. The union did nothing.
In America, unions are too focused on political issues to worry about the little guy. That's why their membership is falling.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
It's not about people who behave like dicks, it's about a normal and generally good manager being called bossy because they are female. You have to remember that in the 50s the ideal woman was subservient to her husband and not too strong willed. We are well past that now, fortunately, but there are still some underlying issues around particular words.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
There was no sexism at all, what my reading of the Techcrunch article which only presented Horvath's side of events. Her allegations of sexism are ridiculous and completely unfounded.
Mind you, I completely believe her version of the events as presented here. It's just that they're not "sexism", and I resent that card being thrown for things where it's not appropriate. It's just like how certain people will scream "racism!!!" for things which aren't racism, such as disliking Obama: "If you don't love Obama, you must be a racist!"
The real situation is that GitHub is simply a horrible place to work, and one of its founders has an evil and manipulative wife who clearly doesn't want any other women working there. This is the real problem with women in the workforce. Men aren't the problem, it's other women who are jealous and controlling. They don't want other women working with them, and when they do, these women want to be the ones in control of things, and direct all their energy to building alliances and backstabbing potential rivals. Not all women are like this; I don't think Horvath is, however, a certain percentage of women are, and it ruins it for everyone. It only takes 10% of female workers to be this poisonous to give them all a horrible reputation. Just ask any normal, non-backstabbing working woman you know: does she have more problems with the men at her workplace, or the women?
The only remotely "sexist" thing presented here was men gawking at a couple of female employees using hula hoops. That's not sexist, that's human nature. Geeky guys who don't get any action are naturally going to gawk at women who display themselves like that. Did the man say inappropriate things? Touch or grope them? Harass them by asking them out and not taking no for an answer? Or did they just look at them? Staring at someone isn't wrong when they're intentionally putting themselves on display. Did the men gawk at these women when they were just sitting in their cubicles, or only when they were making a spectacle of themselves? I don't see the problem here. We have a workplace that has very few female employees and a bunch of socially-awkward men who don't get out much and probably don't get laid much; WTF do you expect when some girls gyrate in front of these men? Did these women even complain about the gawking? Did they gawk at Horvath? I suspect the answer to that is "no", since she wasn't doing hula hoops in front of them.
This all sounds like typical small-company bullshit, with an evil boss's wife thrown in, and a completely incompetent HR department. The problem with this last part is that I don't think there's any small company in America with a competent HR department.
This story is a good illustration, IMO, of the idea that you shouldn't get too emotionally tied to any job, especially at small companies. Small companies, in my experience, are a total mixed bag; some can be OK, others are just a horror show, with harassment and other bad behavior the norm. There aren't many consequences for harassment at small companies (it's hard to prove, and they don't have deep pockets to sue for), so you should be ready to pack up and switch jobs at a moment's notice. Big companies are much better in this regard; you probably won't have anyone hula-hooping at them, harassment is usually dealt with far more strictly, etc., but the work quality usually sucks compared to small places so that's the trade-off.
From the book : The No Assholer Rule
Their (assholes) unpleasant behaviours were catalogued by Sutton as The Dirty Dozen:[6]
Insults
Violation of personal space
Unsolicited touching
Threats
Sarcasm
Flames
Humiliation
Shaming
Interruption
Backbiting
Glaring
looks like she pretty much got a clean sweep of all available asshole behaviors. That deserves some kind of award.
Sorry but her story has the ring of truth for anyone in the industry more than a five years. Companies are by and large run the way a pirate ship is run and guess what, they're happily populated by would-be buccaneers who have a pirate's lawless and coersive mentality. Arbitrary authority, nepotism, verbal abuse, threats, intimiddation, you know, the above list.
What's REALLY enlightening here its to filter slashdot comments by their ratings. Filtering for "5" comments yields not the usual collection of insightful or funny stuff you want to read and reflect on because it's obviously drawn from personal experience, but rather abusive and or jocularly dismissive "rebuttals" to her story, myopically focused on some detail (hula hoops !) many of them authored by Anonymous Cowards who, presumably, started with scores of zero and "earned" their way to the top, despite the self imposed filter bubble of most readers.
I take this to mean one of a number of things. Github aficionados friends and supporters know how to jack the ratings system of Slashdot when the cause suits them. Slashdot is primarily populated by just the kind of knuckleheads the article's author is complaining about or the article itself did not attract the attention of people who accepted the headline as truthfuil and accurate, as if the headline had been: "Politicians are liars" claims small time campaign donor !
At any rate, as it stands, it's an interesting glimpse into Slashdot "culture" as it presents itself in reaction to this particular article at least. Not my tribe, that's for sure.
This. And it's damaging the the valid points of the movement.
Honestly, if equality movements, be they gender, racial, or whatever else, want to be taken seriously, they need to crack down on this behavior. You can't have every Tom, Dick, and Harry, and their sisters, Tammy, Dottie, and Harriet, speaking in the name of your movement, saying things your movement doesn't actually stand for; and there needs to be some standard punishment for doing it, as well.
Women have every right to the same rights I have as a man; if they choose to reject the responsibilities that come with those rights, society has the same right to deal with them they way they'd deal with me if I did the same. If a woman can't deal with that, then she can't handle those rights; just like a man who can't come to terms with their own personal responsibility. That's what equality is, and that's what I'm a huge proponent of; gender/race/status equality, across the board. If you can't get behind that, then I would ask you to either explain why I'm wrong (I'm open to hearing it, but nobody has ever tried -- not that they've tried and failed, but nobody has ever stood up and told me that across-the-board class equality is wrong) or spend some time considering your perspective on the topic.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I'd like to clarify on this point. I know several feminists and none of them are whiny little bitches. Weak women (and men) are whiny little bitches; feminists are, by and far, stronger than that. And they hate the whiny "I'm a feminist, I'm powerful, but I'm going to whine about you not recognizing that" girls (I won't degrade women by calling these girls women) with a passion.
Feminism is real. Feminism is powerful. Feminism is something men can and should support. Feminism is also invoked by girls who have no real self-image, to the detriment of real women everywhere, feminist or not; and I just can't support that.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
You're still not getting it. Consider the original statement: Her problem wasn't sexism, it was with the founder's wife (so she says). 75% of the article talks about her problems with the founder's wife. So it's just a tale of one woman being bitchy to another. First of all, if 75% of the article is about her problems with the founder's wife, 25% is about the other problem. So turning the narrative to a stereotype about how some women behave toward other women would be bogus even if the 75% part was truly just "one woman being bitchy."
But the bottom line is that the behavior of the founder's wife, if it was as described, is behavior that we've seen both men and women can exhibit. Labeling the founder's wife's behavior as "one woman being bitchy to another" takes a very specific dynamic between two individuals and generalizes it into a stereotype that isn't actually true, and then dismisses it on that basis. If a man had done the exact same thing, it would neither have been generalized in this way, nor dismissed because of the stereotype. We would think of it differently because the bad actor was a man. That's sexist.