Slashdot Mirror
GitHub Founder Resigns Following Harassment Investigation
An anonymous reader writes "Late Yesterday, GitHub concluded its investigation regarding sexual harassment within its work force, and although it found no evidence of 'legal wrongdoing,' Tom Preston-Werner, one of its founding members implicated in the investigation resigned. In its statement, GitHub vows to implement 'a number of new HR and employee-led initiatives as well as training opportunities to make sure employee concerns and conflicts are taken seriously and dealt with appropriately.' Julie Ann Horvath, the former GitHub employee whose public resignation last month inspired the sexual harassment investigation, found the company's findings to be gratuitous and just plain wrong."
You're probably right that in general such phrases have been subject to so much inflation so as to be almost meaningless by now.
In this specific case though, Ms Horvath claimed that a male co-worker showed up at her house with romantic ideas. And that he subsequently reverted some of her patches, presumably because she didn't go along. I think that qualifies as sexual harassment, even in the pre-inflation sense of the word?
Incidentally, some of the press reports have been getting it wrong; the harassment accusations were NOT about this founder, or his wife, but another guy at GH (who has apparently been promoted since).
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
The "other guy" being an ex boyfriend
What part of ex is hard to understand?
the claim is from a woman who got upset over their use of "meritocracy", because judging on merit alone is wrong. you should give bonus points for race, gender identity, and financial background.
seriously, the only problem I saw was the not-employed-by-the-company wife thinking she was in charge when the CEO wasn't around. I have worked for a few small businesses where it's like that. the wife/mom just walks in and starts bossing people around, sometimes even using employees to do personal errands.
What part of ex is hard to understand?
The fact that it could have been written just "x" and still be pronounced the same. The extra "e" at the beginning is not only baffling, but outright infuriating!
I mostly agree with you, on this occasion. Except one detail: this founder nor his wife were part of the harassment accusations. I suppose it's just a bit unfortunate, if understandable, that the victim combined all her grievances in a single blog post. But the sexual harassment bit was about someone else. So an example has not been made actually, because that guy was apparently promoted!
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
... and mod me down into the dirt, even though deep down you know I'm right.
More likely, because they get this weird impression that you might be a misogynous reactionary.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
No idea as to the credibility of this blog, but worth a read anyway:
https://medium.com/p/d96f431f4...
What part of ex is hard to understand?
Indeed. I'd add that part is the same part creepy sociopaths do not get when they "misunderstand" a "no" for a "yes".
Anyone who says this:
The "other guy" being an ex boyfriend
is the type of person I would not want near me, friends, co-workers or relavites.
Or, you know, just anyone who gives half a shit would do.
Tom Preston-Werner, one of its founding members implicated in the investigation a... resigned
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
You also cannot verify the credibility of the original accusation, so where does that leave us?
Translation of GitHub's weasel words: "Our lawyers told us not to admit to anything or we could be liable in a lawsuit. The company we hired to tell us we aren't liable in a lawsuit told us we aren't liable in a lawsuit."
Maybe Horvath isn't entirely in the right here but it is clear that the co-founder must have intimidated her as she claimed and/or let his wife (a non-employee) run amok. GitHub even admitted as much when the original story broke and re-banned his wife from the building. GitHub's legaleze non-statement doesn't address this at all.
The anonymous medium post is being given far more credence than it deserves because it fits the narrative people want to have about the story. Just be honest... You want the truth to be that Horvath somehow did wrong and brought this on herself because the alternative is that a fun cool company that has good technology also did a bad thing.
Let us not forget that Horvath did not bring any of this up in the first place - she simply quit. It was an anonymous person (that was suspected of being the founder's wife at the time) who posted about it, thus eliciting a reply from Horvath.
Again, according to Horvath, the supposed "investigators" never bothered to contact her until a day or two before wrapping up the "investigation". It seems very clear GitHub hired them to obtain a foregone conclusion.
I don't see how any of this is shocking. It is 100% believable (and by Occam's razor probably true) that the founder's wife was allowed to run around like she owned the place, got into a conflict with Horvath, then when it blew up Preston-Werner jumped to his wife's defense (understandable) without thinking about the implications of allowing your non-employee relative to even put you in that kind of situation to begin with; he certainly didn't consider what it would be like for an employee to be cornered by a co-founder over it. Then when it became public, they called the lawyers, circled the wagons, etc. I also would be shocked if some of the anonymous stories are by GitHubbers who are just repeating internal rumors and rising to defend the company they like, without any actual direct knowledge of what happened.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Except that, we have no idea what happened. The problem with harassment is that it's a he said/she said thing. There is one allegation, from one person and we have no idea about either persons integrity. He quit but it may very well just been out of disgust. Or maybe they were having an affair and it got out of hand. We have no idea. Judging either of them based on no other evidence than what they've both said would be wrong. If there were more allegations, if the guy hadn't been working there for years without incident, I might have another opinion. Yes, men do say things to women they shouldn't. But there are also plenty of women out there that will use harassment as a revenge tactic against men they dislike. I have no idea which happened here, so I reserve judgement until there is more evidence.
and airing out personal and professional problems to the world, is the allowance of mob justice. Even though they found no wrongdoing or harassment after a legitimate investigation, it didn't matter; Preston and his wife had already undergone trial by media.
From the previous article where Horvath aired out her grievances with the company, I was disappointed to realize accusations of company-wide sexual harassment were misleading and that 95% of her problems were with Preston's wife. I don't know why that was a problem that needed to be dealt with publicly. It was dramatic.
No beer and no TV make Homer something something
It's interesting reading the opposite side of this story. However, this has pretty low credibility to me. We're dealing with one story which is being publicly told by an individual who is putting her name out there, and standing behind her words. This rebuttal consists of a few loose allegations with no facts to back them up, posted by a generic anonymous coward. It reads more like office gossip than a factual rebuttal.
However, I have a few thoughts on it.
- It's insinuated that Julie is being deceitful by hiding the fact that the engineer is an ex-boyfriend. If it is, in fact, true that it was an ex-boyfriend, it's equally reasonable that Julie excluded that part of the story from her public side of the tale in order to protect his identity and not publicly call him out. Keep in mind Julie didn't even mention the founder or his wife by name.
- It's insinuated that the engineer's advances were "OK" because he was an "ex". This is simply false. Just because you had a relationship with someone doesn't make it OK to harass you.
- It's insinuated that Julie didn't have any issues with the retaliation that the engineer used against her. However if you read Julie's story, she obviously did. She may just not have come forward about it immediately, which is what happens in MANY cases of retaliation and harassment. It's easier and more comfortable to deal with the issue on your own, hope it blows over by itself, etc.
- The back-and-forth regarding the wife just sounds like meaningless he-said she-said. I'll believe it if the wife comes forward publicly and says something about it, but this just sounds like 3rd person rumor mongering to me.
- The insinuation that the "Passion Projects" at GitHub was somehow a bribe to get Julie to stop "threatening" the founder's family is a pretty serious allegation to make without any factual information to back it up, and posted anonymously.
"ex boyfriend" is relevant in this context. She's claiming she was bullied by a coworker at GitHub. If fact she's having relationship issues with an ex-boyfriend who also also worked at GitHub, and has caused additional problems for herself by dating the friend of a GitHub manager and getting into a pissing contest with the manager's wife over that relationship.
That said, GitHub management should have sat everyone down and told them to act like adults or find somewhere else to work, her included.
The term "Sexual Harassment", - with the word "Sex" followed by another word "Harass", - sounds awfully serious.
But, like all other liberal creation (social welfare, for example) "Sexual Harassment" itself has been abused.
Fortunately no conservative constructs have ever been abused... couldn't resist - back to the topic
Nowadays you can be slapped with a "Sexual Harassment" lawsuit if you comment on the way someone dress herself or "itself".
In some cases, it was much worse before. In the 1980's, at the place where I worked, we had our first gender harassment seminars.
It quickly turned surreal. Your example of how the woman dresses was spot-on. The gender harassment rep told us that it was very dangerous to compliment a woman regarding any physical matter. That telling her "Those earrings are nice" was okay, but saying you look great in those earrings was skirting the edges of harassment.
Then when a man asked what the definition of sexual harassment was, she said "Sexual harassment is whatever a woman says it is". You could have heard the proverbial pin drop.
This draconian interpretation started a years long mess, where the men actively avoided all the women. Male supervisors would not engage 1 on 1 with female staff - there would always be at least one other person. Men quit talking to or socializing with women.
And the women absolutely hated it. Some of the ladies I worked with were dirty minded and flirtacious enough to make me blush some times, and the men were avoiding them like the plague.
One of the machinists had a nice photo of a young lady in a cheerleader outfit on his toolbox. A woman took offense to it, and he was told to take it down. It was his daughter. The pathetic part was this estrangement only alienated normal guys. The men who were actually harassing women still did all the same things, blocking doorways so the woman had to brush up against them, "accidentally" touching them in the places you might expect, they just kept on keepin' on.
Fortunately, calmer, more rational heads saw what had been created, and modified the rules. Instead of treating all men as rapists who just hadn't been caught yet, they focused on the guys - and women who were the real problem.
In the end, it did help, although a lot of the older guys were pretty set in their ways, and never did socilize much with the female staff.
In fact, I can be charged for "Sexual Harassment" right now, because of the term "itself" that I've used to describe people whom I do not know how to describe (they are not male, nor female).
I brought up the question one time, if a man avoids all contact with women in the workplace - except for the minimum to get work done - in order to not be accused of harassment, and the women know he avoids them because of that, is his avoidance sexual harassment?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The original accusation has a human being who's come forward and publicly attached her name and career prospects to it, and is accepting significant personal costs to do so. The anonymous blog post is 100% consequence free for the author. That does imply a relative difference in credibility.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
If you mean "the official story from the people hired by github to investigate github's wrongdoing, who found that their employer github did nothing wrong, but for totally unrelated reasons one of our founders is going to spend more time with his other interests," then I agree.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Some of her patches were reverted by a co-worker? How traumatic for her.
Tell you what, if I reverted changes that my co-workers did, I would have a hell of a lot of explaining to do.