
GitHub I’m angry because I’m afraid. - evolve2k
http://blog.ellenchisa.com/2014/04/22/im-angry-because-im-afraid/
======
JonFish85
> It said “he messed up enough to need to leave, but it’s not a technical
> legal claim.” That’s.. ambiguous. It comes across as “something bad
> happened, but we’re going to pretend it didn’t to protect ourselves
> legally.”

I don't really see why people are confused about this. He probably exercised
some poor judgement, as they said, but poor judgement and illegalities are
often a long ways apart. The best thing for _both_ parties was probably for
him to leave. He was a distraction to GitHub, and this whole mess is a
distraction for him. Part ways, both parties move on and continue. I don't
think it comes across sketchy, personally. There was almost no way he was
going to stay on long-term, given this history. It's a liability for the
company, and honestly he's probably on eggshells around the company anyways.

Even as the author states, it's hard to PROVE that something was sexist. I
imagine he said some inappropriate things, and maybe even did some
inappropriate things, but proving that they were illegal is a WHOLE different
bag.

>The entire situation reads: A male executive can do something that’s
wrong/sexist. The company will want to cover itself legally, so it will
discredit the claims.

Let's fix that. "An executive can do something that's wrong/sexist. The
company will want to cover itself legally, so it will discredit the claims."
Let's not make this about gender. A company has a _duty_ to its shareholders
to protect itself.

~~~
personZ
"He probably exercised some poor judgement"

As you said, people seem to fail to understand the nuances of something like
this. It's entirely possible that he meant entirely well, but acted in a
manner that was -- as they mentioned to his wife -- terribly naive, at least
for a company of the scale of Github.

Just to give an example of such a nuance, in a tiny startup there might be
occasions where everyone might have a big drinking and cavorting pool party at
the founder's pad. As the company gets bigger, however, such activities become
legal liability cesspools, and it would be very poor judgment because
everything becomes a perilous he said/she said type situation. That is an
extreme example, but it's why senior management often become increasingly
insular and detached as the company grows: Because they legally have to. It
sounds like Tom failed to do this.

Which is exactly what it sounds like happened here.

I kind of despise this blog entry because while it berates the unfairness of
the old boy's club and so on, it seems to argue that any woman who claims
anything should be treated as unequivocal truth, punishment meted out to the
harshest extent possible. _That_ is scary, but it is sadly where many of these
conversations seem to go.

Not all women are honest and truthful. Women are not above pettiness, power
plays and self-interests.

~~~
grifpete
'despise' is a very strong term. It implies a much much stronger reaction to
the material than just disagreeing with it. Why is that?

'it seems to argue that any woman who claims anything should be treated as
unequivocal truth, punishment meted out to the harshest extent possible'

No it doesn't. It doesn't say anything of the kind.If you take that from the
article then you are bringing that position to the material.

"Not all women are honest and truthful. Women are not above pettiness, power
plays and self-interests."

Very true. But it is hard to see how this relates to the real point of the
blog.

All in all, I detect clear evidence of an angry person, ready to project his
resentment at what he believes to be inappropriate powerplays by scheming
women. Scary powerplays that are too often blindly supported.

~~~
personZ
>Why is that?

Because it is unfair when someone supports someone, and their position,
_purely because of their gender_. It is despicable behaviour. It is absolutely
worth strong emotions.

>It doesn't say anything of the kind.

It quite clearly lays out a case that Horvath must be in the right, Tom must
be in the wrong (and those supporting him will face the wrath of all women who
will now not want to deal with them, because of the above), and Github is
merely trying to clean their hands of it. Yes, it absolutely says so. All
outcomes are only variations of the preceding.

>All in all, I detect clear evidence of an angry person

Take your white knight act somewhere else. Your particular form of
discouraging disagreement is _disgusting_. No, seriously, it is vile, and is
the sort of banal ignorance of people who have nothing interesting to say.

It is actually remarkably paternalistic how many take stories like that: She
is a woman, so she simply must be the victim. He is a man, so he simply must
be the villain. Yet this base assumption goes unstated and simply assumed, as
if we're all in agreement. But we aren't, and stating that women are as great
as men in all things, including the negatives, is important, because brave
knights such as yourself fail to understand this.

~~~
grifpete
The post does not do that. In fact it doesn't lay out a case that Horvath must
be in the right at all. What the post actually does, for those who took the
time to read it, is point out that a distressing takeaway from the whole messy
affair is that without a convincing post mortem (legal or not) that is has a
chilling effect on the way women feel about the tech workplace. In other
words, the key point is about how such messy events are handled and the impact
ths 'handling' has.

As for your concern about my concern for your anger. I think your last
paragraph speaks for itself. Apparently you don't seem to understand that
angry statements about the way women (the unfair beneficiaries of being
unthinkingly treated as victims) and men (unfairly branded as villains) just
reproduces a stereotyped position that is as laughable as your idea that
listing the many negatives of women is doing them a favor.

~~~
personZ
_without a convincing post mortem_

Where they found no evidence or harassment, sexual or not? For those who are
sure that Horvath has been wronged, this outcome will _never_ be convincing.

Further it's worth noting that while Horvath can go off slinging whatever
accusations she feels like, Github and its employees are all seriously
constrained. If they pulled a Tesla and responded openly, they would be
attacked for it, guaranteed. This is the best they can do.

 _listing the many negatives of women is doing them a favor_

I listed the negatives of __people __, of which women are (to, apparently,
your surprise).

~~~
grifpete
Once again I refer you to the actual blog post. The concern about the post
mortem she actually voiced was that the investigation was by an agency paid
for by the company. The well known problem with such investigations is that
they are rarely seen as being independent and hence, sadly irrespective of
their merits of lack of them, they rarely solve the problem because their
reports are seen as being tainted. Hence such investigations do not serve to
remove the chill she was trying to explain and which you evidently failed to
understand.

With regard to the apparent imbalance between Horvath and Github and its
employees, such an alleged imbalance is fictional. This kind of situation
where there is an employee involved in any kind of war of words with a company
is indeed rarely balanced but it is rare for it to be truly in favor of the
employee. A company has the resources and many means to make its position
clear. This starts with engaging a PR / crisis management firm to craft the
strategy to be rolled out. It will typically involve and investigation and two
classes of public statements. Statements from the company expressing vague
regret and apology for any perceived wrong doing. And orchestrated anonymous
statements from employees explaining how the situation was more nuanced and
how the employee in question was always difficult etc etc. Just to be clear
how typical this pattern is, I predicted precisely this rollout weeks ago and
it followed the standard pattern precisely.

Please note that I do not have any knowledge of the situation and assume
nothing about what did or didn't happen. I do however recognize that precisely
that uncertainty, if not properly handled after the effect can indeed have a
chilling effect. It is for that reason that I believe the original post had
merit.

Please further note that my concern with your comment is because you
mindlessly trot out stereotyped generalities about the unfairness of the ways
men and women are treated in the workplace. The same tired old shibboleth's
about how women are inevitably considered blameless and right and men
villainous perpetrators whatever the facts.

As for me being surprised by your insight that women too can have negative
sides to their personalities - grow up.

------
renata
> Julie Ann saying what she did was credible because of the reputation she’d
> built.

As somebody who hadn't heard of her before her allegations, her reputation to
me was "person who was offended by a meritocracy rug and people watching hula-
hoopers at a party". If anything, I'm more afraid of working with Horvath
because any little thing I do could seemingly get me fired.

~~~
grifpete
I think this is a very unfair characterization of her statements. The
substance of her concerns was not a rug or people watching hula hoopers.

I think your remark about being afraid of working with her is both
understandable and disturbing. And both stem from the same thing -
uncertainty. Understandable because if she really is an oversensitive harridan
then you might well not want to work with her. But disturbing, because if she
isn't then you have judged her unfairly. And the reason this is doubly unfair
is that if her case has any merit she can't win in this situation. There will
always be people like you who don't want to give her ANY benefit of the doubt.
This is a stigma very similar to the one that whistle blowers suffer.

So I understand where you are coming from but it really sucks that the whiff
of scandal can result in people not wanting to touch her with a barge pole.

------
at-fates-hands
This whole situation is really sketchy for me.

Horvath brought some pretty serious allegations, but never actually sued
GitHub. Instead, she wrote about it on Twitter and social media sites, because
that's what you do these days when you feel you've been discriminated against
and harassed, right? More people jumped into the fray and stated Horvath was
acting weird and starting nasty rumors about the founder's wife and their new
baby.

GitHub didn't help its cause very much when the owner's wife was banned from
the office and the founder stepped down, which seemed to give Horvath's
supporters some more fuel to tweet about, even though it was probably more
damage control than admitting any wrong doing.

I'm still not sure where I sit on this one. Everybody is accountable, and to
some degree it feels like Horvath is milking this for all its worth, for
better or worse. In some of the environments I've worked in, women who have
"alpha" traits are not looked upon favorably and detested by their male
counterparts. It seems like Horvath has some of these traits and was probably
part of the problem at GitHub.

I'm in the Midwest, but is this situation pretty rare and we're blowing it out
of proportion, or do these situations occur more frequently than I read about?

~~~
grifpete
What are 'alpha' traits please?

~~~
at-fates-hands
"In social animals, the alpha is the individual in the community with the
highest rank. Male or female individuals or both can be alphas, depending on
their species. Where one male and one female fulfill this role, they are
referred to as the alpha pair. Other animals in the same social group may
exhibit deference or other symbolic signs of respect particular to their
species towards the alpha or alphas."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_%28ethology%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_%28ethology%29)

The way her blog reads and the stories surrounding the GitHub incident
indicates to me, she thought she was in charge and pushed people around, which
turned a lot of people off. Alpha positions are earned, not given. When people
come in and just expect to be the dominant personality, you get the issues she
ran into at GitHub.

This doesn't take away from any of her allegations, but it probably was a role
in the issues and friction she had with team members.

~~~
grifpete
Thanks for the clarification. I thought you had something like this in mind
but wanted to be sure.

So when you say "In some of the environments I've worked in, women who have
"alpha" traits are not looked upon favorably and detested by their male
counterparts." you are saying that women who have traits that are pseudo alpha
- in other words behaving as if you have the 'highest rank' when you haven't
earned it or got it as a matter of fact, is the kind of behavior that men
detest.

I guess my question is, unless there is something distinctively obnoxious
about a woman behaving in this way, is this really a gender issue? There are
plenty of men who behave like this aren't there? And my experience has been
that both men and women don't like men doing it?

So it seems that either a woman doing it is doubly bad (which seems like a
form of sexism - you can't even be obnoxious if you're a woman because it's
distinctively obnoxious) or it isn't really a gender issue.

I'm not intending to pointlessly nit pick here. I am really interested in
whether you feel there is something about a woman doing it that is likely, for
whatever reason, to incite a more negative reaction. Could it, for example, be
that men are very attuned to alpha dynamics and feel that they are being in
some sense 'wronged' when a woman challenges them? etc etc?

------
louhike
The cached version, as the website seems down now:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:HmMy-
es...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:HmMy-
esKPN8J:blog.ellenchisa.com/2014/04/22/im-angry-because-im-
afraid/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&lr=lang_en%7Clang_fr)

------
rubiquity
> _Every time I tweet gender, I go back through to make sure all the people
> who are “important” to me still follow me. (Hint: people with power over me.
> Heads of Product at interesting companies. VCs. I’m not too afraid that my
> friends are going to stop following me.)_

I don't even really know what to say to this. Thanks for your honesty, I
guess?

> _The situation started feeling much worse when Marc Andreesen tweeted his
> support.. I’ve always looked up to A16Z. I’ve respected the people I’ve met
> there. Ben Horowitz used female pronouns in his book!_

Woah, hey now. Quite the contrast between this paragraph and the other
paragraph that I highlighted above. Much like you make sure people that have
power over you being wealthy still follow you, A16Z takes care of people that
are very likely to result in making A16Z wealth.

~~~
StavrosK
> I’m not too afraid that my friends are going to stop following me.

He probably means "I know my friends know me better and won't stop following
me over a pronoun".

------
lolwutf
'I want to spend it doing Product Management and founding companies.'

...so what you're saying is you don't really do anything?

~~~
personZ
Everyone has a right to be heard, but I confess that I was searching around on
the site wondering "who is this person?"

While it sounds harsh, it sounds like their claim to fame is being one of the
3 billion or so females on the planet.

~~~
jwarren
You don't need to have fame to have feeling and worth.

