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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.
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.
They haven't kept entirely silent. They put a post on the issue up here: https://github.com/blog/1800-u...
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.
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
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.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
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
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.
Their response (linked by others) is probably the best they could do. But also it looks like they are taking her allegations seriously themselves.
This is my point. Even if she is wrong, they would have to pretend she is right. There is no way of them saying "She overreacted and tried to play 'harrassed woman' card when in reality she was just bad'.
And regarding 'influential developer'... "influential developer known for helping make GitHub a more attractive place for women programmers to work". Sounds like she was known for being women activist and influencing the view of the company in female circles, rather than influencing the code base/architecture/whatever. She _might_ be a very good developer - I just don't see it claimed anywhere yet.
Issue is that it is not any longer possible to say "this particular woman is horrible and crap programmer" without being understood as "all women are horrible programmers and I'm chauvinist pig". And while I agree that industry is quite sexist and in many cases attacks are underserved, I refuse to give special handling to a worker doing bad job just because he/she comes from some opressed minority.
To be honest, I would find it a lot more sexist to give the hell to the guy producing bad code routinely, while being all time calm, smiling and forgiving to woman doing same thing. I'm probably 'chauvinist' enough to put a line at physical violence (like effectively defending myself against physical assault of man versus assult of women), but I'm not going to hold back on opinions just because of gender (or color of skin, disability or sexual orientation).
Again - not saying she is bad. I'm just stressing that in current PR climate, we will probably never learn, because it will be always better for company to sacrifice a good male programmer than try to fight to expose bad female programmer publicly.
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.
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.
And regarding 'influential developer'... "influential developer known for helping make GitHub a more attractive place for women programmers to work". Sounds like she was known for being women activist and influencing the view of the company in female circles, rather than influencing the code base/architecture/whatever. She _might_ be a very good developer - I just don't see it claimed anywhere yet.
Issue is that it is not any longer possible to say "this particular woman is horrible and crap programmer" without being understood as "all women are horrible programmers and I'm chauvinist pig". And while I agree that industry is quite sexist and in many cases attacks are underserved, I refuse to give special handling to a worker doing bad job just because he/she comes from some opressed minority.
Sorry, but that is complete bollocks.
Firstly she says that her code was deleted/reverted without explanation, or with hostile comments left. It doesn't matter how terrible a programmer she might be, that kind of thing is unacceptable. Criticism and reverts are fine, as long as they are constructive and don't amount to bullying.
You can freely criticise women as long as it is constructive, and the rule is the same for men and gay people and black people and every other minority. You don't have to treat women differently, just fairly as you would any other human being. Giving someone "hell" for writing bad code is rarely appropriate and unlikely to create a good, productive work environment compared to, you know, helping them improve. Arguably men are more likely to put up with it but that doesn't make it right.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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
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.
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.
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...
Seems like they don't dispute any of her accusations, and readily endorse them.
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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*
I would not hire her now for the sole reason that she seems to believe discretion and loyalty to a company becomes optional after you leave.
Pro tip: your company will never be loyal to you even while you are working there. They will fire you as soon as it matches their profit/cost equations. Don't expect to get anything from your loyalty.
Be loyal and cultivate relationships with people, not companies.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."