
Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub - speaktochris
http://where.coraline.codes/blog/my-year-at-github/
======
throwaway8800
There's a couple of issues that stand out to me: Github is engaging in risky
behaviour by reaching out to individuals (specifically activists) for hire
explicitly on the basis of "diversity" and trying to incorporate those
individuals in a highly merit-based environment.

Secondly, Coraline seems to think that human relationships are a one way
street: that she is entitled to be direct and even confrontational or
insensitive, especially if she believes she is "right" or in a "mentor" role,
and yet her peers are expected to walk on eggshells around her, lest they be
accused of attacking her.

One part that stood out as particularly odd was her insistence to stay at work
while she was suffering with a mental health issue that was clearly affecting
her job performance, in spite of her manager's request that she take mental
health leave. It sounds like she just flat out ignored her manager under the
assumption that her manager just needed to accept whatever her therapist
advised her to do, which is kind of ridiculous on the face of it.

~~~
acobster
She was right, and as a senior engineer she was in a mentor role.

I don't think that directly communicating a relevant fact - that trans is not
a gender - to someone contributing to a survey intended to collect data about
marginalized people is the same as expecting her peers to walk on egg shells.
That's just asking them to get their facts straight.

Where you see an instance of her co-workers being accused of attacking her, I
see her lines of communication being shut down from above. A simple one-on-one
conversation probably could have resolved that situation very easily, but GH
management seems in this case to have insulated that person from learning from
their mistake. Not the kind of effort I would expect from an organization
that's truly trying to be "inclusive.

~~~
ninjaboy2
To play devil's advocate:

\------------------------------

> As a senior engineer she was in a mentor role.

Being in a mentor role does not mean you have to _right_ to mentor. Assuming
you have a superior position, and deciding to use it to explain something
obvious to someone else as "educating" them is not a good social interaction
for the other person, and may make them feel trapped and uncomfortable. The
author never said the junior developer expressed interest in mentorship,
merely that "this teammate seemed to be benefiting from it." Not willing
engaged, but "benefiting." Without context, it is imaginable that said
mentoree didn't want these interactions or this relationship and the author
never identified this social cue.

> I don't think that directly communicating a relevant fact - that trans is
> not a gender - to someone contributing to a survey intended to collect data
> about marginalized people is the same as expecting her peers to walk on egg
> shells. That's just asking them to get their facts straight.

The article starts by complaining about "drive-by issue comments", then
described opening what might be considered a drive-by issue. That could be
construed as contradictory. Moreover, said issue may be construed as a
(company-)public dressing-down. A developer came though and, in a public
manner observable by all their peers, informed another that they were not
being sensitive enough. It's reasonable, I think, to be upset in that context.

> A simple one-on-one conversation probably could have resolved that situation
> very easily, but GH management seems in this case to have insulated that
> person from learning from their mistake

The author could have initiated such a conversation herself in lieu of the
issue.

\------------------------------

My point is that a lot of things are a matter of perception, and one person's
is seldom the whole story. Caroline clearly had a bad go of it at GitHub, that
isn't deniable. But individuals' perceptions are fickle things, and it is
seldom the case that any one tells the whole story.

~~~
garethadams
> The article starts by complaining about "drive-by issue comments", then
> described opening what might be considered a drive-by issue. That could be
> construed as contradictory.

The article is reasonably clear that "drive-by issues" are ones where people
leave comments uninvited, and it's also explicit that Caroline was
specifically asked to review the survey in question. So it's hard to read that
as contradictory.

~~~
ninjaboy2
> Caroline was specifically asked to review the survey in question.

Yes and no. From the article:

> One day a notification came to me that a repo for the open source developer
> survey had been created and that the survey questions were in progress. My
> director followed up with me to make sure that I was aware of the survey and
> asked me to review the questions. I worked my way through, and stopped short
> at one particular question...

She got a notification of the repository, was asked by someone (not the person
working on it) to review the questions, and decided that these two
interactions separately constituted an invitation to give public feedback.

Then, her primary feedback was in the form of creating an issue about a
specific question, with a terse description. (If you look at the repository in
question [0], it appears her feedback came in the form of opening two
similarly-terse issues about back-to-back questions with no further comments
on the survey for 10 days.)

It's easy to imagine viewing that as a negative interaction from the other
side.

I'm not saying it was handled well, or that it wasn't possible to resolve it
in another way, but, yeah, I can imagine getting a little upset about that
sort of thing happening in the author's shoes.

0\. [https://github.com/github/open-source-
survey/](https://github.com/github/open-source-survey/)

~~~
jubalfh
oh for fuck's sake, these were factual corrections

------
tonymke
The impression I have after reading this that Ms. Ehmke had a shit attitude
and people got sick of it. And that she hasn't seen that yet.

I'm sorry if this seems unempathetic - getting fired sucks, and is extremely
painful. But there's no other way I can put it.

A long time ago, when my career first started, I also went through the "PIP
deathspiral", and it took months... maybe years after my termination to
realize I was just fired being a shithead.

I see the same "it's not my fault it's theirs" attitude I had at the time in
this.

~~~
StrangeOrange
Yeeeeeaahhh... maybe.

But it's not exactly the first time GitHub has had issues with this kind of
thing.

The impression I get from this whole debacle is that GitHub has a shit
attitude, and there's more of them than there is of her, so they did what any
company does in a similar situation.

But hey! It's just a "culture issue" right. Except, the culture issue is that
the whole effing Silicon Valley culture is pure poison.

~~~
tonymke
> But hey! It's just a "culture issue" right. Except, the culture issue is
> that the whole effing Silicon Valley culture is pure poison.

I don't disagree. I probably should have taken the greater SV problem into
consideration in my knee jerk OP :-|

------
RangerScience
The experience she relates reminds me a hell of a lot of the way my previous
job ended, which amounted to a handful of offended people uninterested in
(directly) talking, and (my direct) management largely uninterested in
reconciliation / facilitating. All of the problems she relates are with people
who are not directly communicating with her, usually after she's directly
communicating with them. Whereas, according to the story she relates, everyone
who _actually_ engages with her likes the experience.

Over all, it paints a picture of GH where the management (and many / some
employee) are not fans of directly dealing with problems, which, IMHO, speaks
to people who don't do it often enough. Most of the time, when I (or others
who've related stories) "turn" to directly deal with a people problem, it
turns out not to be much of a problem at all. It's only when you try to deal
indirectly, or not all, that things go south and eventually explode.

Interestingly, all of the people at my last company that I had this issue with
were in the Bay Area, and I didn't have this issue with folks in other remote
offices.

~~~
kaosjester
To be fair, GitHub is large enough that they'll have a dozen applicants by the
time you're out the door. If resolving a problem is harder than firing part of
it, well... that's the layer cake.

------
problems
Isn't this the person who ran a code of conduct that has a website which
includes things like "thoughtless use of pronouns" and mentions meritocracy as
an evil, not a goal to strive for?

Can't really say I'm expecting someone like that to be low friction.

~~~
ohthehugemanate
Meritocracy is actually a very damaging thing, the way we tend to implement it
in tech. Without concrete and public metrics of "merit", it becomes a buzzword
for reinforcing the biases (conscious or not) of the evaluators. Particularly
in tech, those biases tend to favor white, upper middle class, males.

This kind of bias is demonstrated over and over in studies, even (and in some
cases, especially) among people who are highly educated and even forewarned
about the study objectives.

~~~
eqdw
> Without concrete and public metrics of "merit", it becomes a buzzword for
> reinforcing the biases (conscious or not) of the evaluators.

I wish we could have discussions like this in the wider community without
people going knee-jerk against the idea of it, itself.

I'd be willing to accept that a lot of companies here are nepotistic. I'd even
be willing to accept that they cloak their nepotism in the rhetoric of
meritocracy. But I have to draw the line at people opposing the idea itself. I
have a hard time understanding how anyone could even hold that position. Don't
you want the best people, at least in principle?

If people were more nuanced in these things we could hold discussions like
"yes, this is a great ideal, but it gets corrupted. The problem is the
corruption, not the ideal"

~~~
kybernetikos
> Don't you want the best people, at least in principle?

Maybe not. In many situations you want the best team, and the best team is not
necessarily the team that has the most top flight individual contributors.

The best teams I've been on seem stronger than the sum of their individual
members, and I've definitely been on teams I rate less highly that had some
very strong individual contributors.

Along these lines, I found this article interesting:
[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity-
mak...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity-makes-us-
smarter/)

~~~
eqdw
Word games. "Best people" can mean the best team.

I mean like honestly, if you don't care _in principle_ about the quality of
your staff, how are you deciding who to hire?

~~~
s73ver
Then define "Best". The problem is, you can't come up with an objective metric
for it.

~~~
HelloWorldInWS
Defining "best" need not imply an objective definition in the same way that
describing the "best" database architecture for a given set of requirements
isn't entirely objective: "our programmers like to work with SQL more than
MongoDB" is a subjective but sufficient argument to tip the scales.

Defining the "best people" is _obviously_ subjective. _People_ are subjective.
There isn't just one "best"\-- there is a set of "bests" that you can strive
for. Just like the above example, it depends on your requirements, your
priorities, etc.-- but most importantly, it doesn't need to be objective to
work well, which brings us full circle to:

> "Best people" can mean the best team.

If you prioritize teamwork among individual contributors, this is what best
people would imply.

The awesome part about a capitalist system is that companies have the freedom
to experiment with these configurations of how they define "best". GitHub may
define it differently from you, but that doesn't make their definition less
valid.

Meritocracy is an idea, not a specification-- there is no one true meritocracy
implementation. The discussion needs to start from there.

~~~
s73ver
If you want a Meritocracy, then Best does need an objective definition.
Otherwise it's just a popularity contest.

------
avenoir
> "What is your gender?" The multiple-choice options were "Male", "Female",
> and "Transgender". I was very disappointed at this 101 mistake, and sadly
> opened an issue referencing the question. The body of my issue read:

> "'Transgender' is not a gender. Transgender people may be male, female,
> gender queer, non-binary... If you want to know if a survey respondent is
> transgender, you need to explicitly ask that question."

> The next day I got an urgent request for a call with my manager. She told me
> that the data scientist who had written the survey questions was very upset
> and had gone to her manager to complain about me.

I can't help but shake my head reading thru the whole piece. It's like a soap
opera. Everyone's so caught up in the social issues it's fucking impossible to
not offed anyone.

~~~
sgt
Maybe she is right, but I've never in my life seen a form that explicitly asks
"Are you transgender". So I don't agree that this is a 101 mistake. Most forms
ask "Male" or "Female", and that's it.

The fact that Github asked "Transgender" in addition to this shouldn't be seen
as offensive, as I am sure they were doing this simply to make sure
transgendered people felt included too. Sadly a good deed is not always
appreciated.

~~~
keithpeter
UK perspective: it may depend on why the data is being collected.

UK government guidelines [1] for general forms to do with benefits/services &c
are fairly thin

Organisations that have to maintain equality metrics in some form [2] have a
more complex approach. This second approach seems like the nearest to the
Github situation. The example I have cited (third or fourth in goog search
results) maps directly to 'protected characteristics' in diversity legislation
in UK.

[1] [https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/design/gender-or-
sex](https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/design/gender-or-sex)

[2] [http://www.ecu.ac.uk/guidance-resources/using-data-and-
evide...](http://www.ecu.ac.uk/guidance-resources/using-data-and-
evidence/monitoring-questions/)

Meta comment: Survey questions are tricky to formulate. Kicking ideas round in
a group on a whiteboard with reference to external advice/exemplars seems to
help get wording sorted and clarify the taxonomy. Genuine question (I don't
work in the software world) is it normal for a lone web developer person to be
left just making up the questions as they are coding them?

------
mattbillenstein
If you're ever put on a PIP, get out -- it's a sign someone in the company
doesn't want you there.

I've never heard of a PIP working out and both the company and employee being
happy -- maybe you only hear about the bad cases, but a PIP often seems to me
like a cover your ass plan on the part of the company. They want to get rid of
a person, but they're afraid of getting sued, so a PIP is a way to document
why a person was fired in the case of litigation.

This practice seems pretty common in California, but given California is an
at-will employment state, I'm not even sure why.

~~~
rjbwork
Guy on my team at my last company was - he was non-technical, but was in
charge of looking at raw data and finding discrepancies and things we could
write code to fix on an ongoing basis as he was a domain expert. He had a
rough time with technical topics, and so part of his PIP, as I understand it,
was to become basically proficient in using SQL to query, and understand the
basics of RDBMS. He did so, and was removed from PIP and went on to be a key
contributor on the team, and had some light technical duties assigned to him,
which he performed competently.

~~~
HelloNurse
This was a valuable employee that the company actually wanted to improve,
which is unrelated to the PIP as excuse to fire people discussed here. There's
a world of difference between a review that says "he's weak at technical
tasks: inferior and unfit" and a review that says "he's weak at technical
tasks, it would be nice if he learned to do them"

~~~
rjbwork
That's actually a good point. Hence, the problem with such blanket statements
I guess. But perhaps one can figure it out from the context in which it's
happening.

------
artumi-richard
Back in 2006 I read that people don't understand the intended tone in emails.
I'm assuming it applies to most text based communication, and is one of the
reasons I have devalued email and comments.

The key quote:

"According to recent research published in the Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, I've only a 50-50 chance of ascertaining the tone of any
e-mail message. The study also shows that people think they've correctly
interpreted the tone of e-mails they receive 90 percent of the time."

I think this means we overlay what we think the intended tone was meant to be
on top of the email, and usually it's more to do with us than the content of
the email, and I suspect in Coraline's case it was uniformly negative due to
unrecognised prejudice. I would suggest that in the corporate setting, if
you've not got a relationship with the author of code you shouldn't be able to
feedback initially as text, but instead either in person or on the phone. In
that way you get the relationship between reporter and coder off to a good
start, and follow up text communications will have a better chance of working.

I would actually go so far as to say no-one in a corporate setting should be
communicating with each other as text without a phone call or a meeting to
introduce each other.

Here's the article that's stuck with me so long:

[https://www.wired.com/2006/02/the-secret-cause-of-flame-
wars...](https://www.wired.com/2006/02/the-secret-cause-of-flame-wars/)

~~~
jacobr
I have started to use emojis almost excessively in situations where there is
risk of misinterpretation due to my terseness. It comes across a bit
unprofessional, but I prefer that over being considered rude or lacking
empathy. I believe the latter impression is harder to recover from.

~~~
raesene6
I do the same thing. I wouldn't do it in early interactions with someone or
with customers, but with colleagues and friends in conversations I often think
that terse factual statements can be mis-interpreted, and I'd rather be
thought of as unprofessional/frivilous rather than rude.

Also re-reading e-mails whilst mentally putting myself in the shoes of the
recipient to see if I think it could be mis-intepreted helps avoid potential
issues, I find.

~~~
aws_ls
Its a wise thing to do. I use it to simulate, how I would do in a face to face
communication. So a smiley, where you would actually smile, to soften the
blow, or to add humility when pointing somebody's wrong could be useful. Of
course its use has to be limited, else it will look like a typical WhatsApp
message emoticon train. :)

There are lots of small things, which if more people do, would lead to
friendlier communications. E.g. replying with a greeting, to a mail which has
greeting.

------
throw201707
This is not a comment on the experiences described in the article, but it
makes me extremely sad that the word "meritocratic/meritocracy" is used
pejoratively, almost as if it were damning in itself. To me, meritocracy is
something to be cherished, being far preferable to the systems that came
before it, and being inherently _anti_ -discriminatory.

(Yes, people's hardships which prevent them achieving their full potential
should be taken into account, when determining "merit"; anything causing these
hardships, including (especially?) past discrimination, should be countered;
and people who had been subjected to the hardship should be treated with care
and compassion, but that's orthogonal to meritocracy itself.

Also, obviously, your skills and abilities (in the context of work and
meritocracy) have no bearing on your intrinsic value as a human being (so we
need something like guaranteed basic income or progressive taxes to reduce
issues like pay inequality).)

~~~
microtherion
Whenever I hear appeals to "meritocracy", I'm reminded of this anecdote
([http://www.bradford-delong.com/2009/09/republicans-to-the-
ma...](http://www.bradford-delong.com/2009/09/republicans-to-the-manor-
born.html)):

    
    
      I remember back in the late 1990s, when Ira Katznelson, an   
      eminent political scientist at Columbia, came to deliver a 
      guest lecture. Prof. Katznelson described a lunch he had with 
      Irving Kristol during the first Bush administration.
    
      The talk turned to William Kristol, then Dan Quayle's chief 
      of staff, and how he got his start in politics. Irving 
      recalled how he talked to his friend Harvey Mansfield at 
      Harvard, who secured William a place there as both an 
      undergrad and graduate student; how he talked to Pat 
      Moynihan, then Nixon's domestic policy adviser, and got 
      William an internship at the White House; how he talked to 
      friends at the RNC [Republican National Committee] and  
      secured a job for William after he got his Harvard Ph.D.; and  
      how he arranged with still more friends for William to teach 
      at Penn and the Kennedy School of Government.
    
      With that, Prof. Katznelson recalled, he then asked Irving 
      what he thought of affirmative action. 'I oppose it,' Irving 
      replied. 'It subverts meritocracy.'

~~~
wutbrodo
I'm sorry, but this is just stupid. You can take literally anyone who
hypocritically asserts a belief in an ideal and use it to huffily dismiss the
concept overall. And you can find such a person for literally any ideal.

For example, I could say: whenever I think of anti-racism, I think of [insert
quote about someone who claims to be anti-racist and then says/does something
racist]. Does that say anything about the concept of anti-racism itself? Or is
it just irrelevant commentary about the fact that there are dishonest people
claiming the mantle of every ideal while not living up to it?

Just because Irving Kristol is too dumb to understand the concept of
meritocracy doesn't mean the concept is without merit.

~~~
microtherion
I assume you would agree with me, though, that it makes little sense in the
present discussion to talk about "meritocracy" without taking into account how
_Github_ implemented the concept.

------
dsr_
" The next day I got an urgent request for a call with my manager. She told me
that the data scientist who had written the survey questions was very upset
and had gone to her manager to complain about me. I asked my manager what had
happened to upset her and was told that it was the feedback I provided on the
gender question. I read back to her the body of the issue that I had opened
and asked what I should have done differently. She responded that she didn't
know, that my wording seemed direct but non-confrontational, but that I was
forbidden to interact any further with the author of the survey."

If your company ever communicates this badly to you, it's time to question
whether this company can be fixed.

~~~
specialist
Here's Coraline's feedback, from the article:

 _" 'Transgender' is not a gender. Transgender people may be male, female,
gender queer, non-binary... If you want to know if a survey respondent is
transgender, you need to explicitly ask that question."_

For contrast, this reminds me of Gene Wilder's feedback about his Willy Wonka
costume:

[https://www.bustle.com/articles/181340-this-letter-gene-
wild...](https://www.bustle.com/articles/181340-this-letter-gene-wilder-wrote-
to-willy-wonka-director-mel-stuart-shows-who-the-actor-truly)

I now try to emulate this style, in every situation.

As for the triggered data scientist... Well. Whaddya gonna do? I guess my
skin's thicker than most.

~~~
cholantesh
Was there really something wrong with that phrasing? How would you improve it?
Genuinely curious; I think I'd have phrased it the same way (though at every
place I've worked we'd have done a review like this face to face), and I find
it pretty non-confrontational.

Enjoyed the letter you shared. Gene is truly missed.

~~~
specialist
"Hi cholantesh! Just saw your new survey. Looks great!

Hey, have you seen the HRC's recommendations for surveying gender? I've used
their guidelines in the past. Very helpful!
[http://www.hrc.org/resources/collecting-transgender-
inclusiv...](http://www.hrc.org/resources/collecting-transgender-inclusive-
gender-data-in-workplace-and-other-surveys)

TLDR: They suggest splitting the gender question into two parts.

As you know, this is a super important issue for me. Progress! Exciting! If
you're busy, I'll make a pull request. Please let me know if I can help in any
way. Thank you, Specialist"

~~~
nojvek
Why so much sugarcoating? Feedback was straightforward. I didn't see any
aggressive words. Most of out PRs are to the point.

Sometimes the big problem I find is that in some companies people are just
scared of each other that they fail to communicate.

Best places where I worked: people were to the point, they had healthy debates
even with strong opinions.

~~~
HelloWorldInWS
> Why so much sugarcoating?

Because empathy is important to communicating effectively. You're looking at
the words, but you're not looking at phrasing and tone, which are just as
important.

Try this exercise: read the sentence out loud to yourself. Taking a line out
of Myers-Briggs, does it sound more perceptive or judging, to you, when read
aloud?

To me it sounds judging, as if Coraline already has pre-conceived notions
about the person she is communicating with. At the very least, it sounds
unnecessarily defensive. The wording is definite, with no room for discussion.
In fact, all I see in that wording is a mini "well, actually" lecture.

The reality is that she doesn't know if this was an intentional or
unintentional oversight. People leave things out, forget to finish sentences,
paint in broad strokes and fine-tune later. From the description, this likely
wasn't in its final stages. Maybe it was going to get changed, or maybe it
wasn't, but you need to start from the idea that the person on the other end
of the sentence also wants the best results.

It's a nice idea to think that people should say whatever they want as long as
it's the objective truth, but humans are humans, which means they are
subjective and have feelings. I find that people are much more effective
workers when they are attentive to the feelings of others.

Another phrasing which is probably just as effective, much less aggressive,
and only slightly more wordy:

"Have you considered how people of different gender identities might engage
with this question? Transgender people might be confused if they identify as
both male (or female) and trans. Perhaps we can find a way to make this
question a little less ambiguous for this class of people?"

Sure, the proposed solution is not directly in that sentence-- but that's kind
of the point. You have to get on the same page before you start throwing out
answers at people. Maybe the data scientist already knows this but just didn't
communicate effectively-- otherwise you end up dangerously close to "well
actually"ing someone who already knows the thing you're telling them.

In fact, to me, the weirdest part of the article is how ironic it is to see
Coraline be so obtusely unaware of how unempathetic this kind of phrasing is,
since she is so vocal about it on Twitter. It definitely strikes me as
slightly hypocritical to see people arguing that we should be allowed to get
straight to the point of a technical argument without any fluff or nicety. I
believe this was the exact opposite argument being made from the same camp
when Code of Conduct discussions were being had.

~~~
pdonis
_> empathy is important to communicating effectively._

Yes, but that applies just as well to the data scientist--who, when she saw
this comment, didn't do what any reasonable person would do and call
up/message/whatever the coworker who made the comment and straighten out any
confusion/misunderstanding, but instead went right to her boss and complained.
That should not be the first resort--it should be the last resort. A little
empathy on the data scientist's part would have led to: "Hm, that seemed
abrasive at first glance, but she does have a valid point..."

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

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

~~~
Thorazul
This feels like the mostly likely scenario, quickly change your image by
hiring a bunch of 'diverse' people and soak up the PR, then quietly let them
go over the next few years if they don't conform.

~~~
rmc
That'll work for a year or so. The problem is that they will write about it
afterwards (like this), and then you're reputation (in this area) is even
worse, because now people won't be believe you.

------
opportune
The main thing I've taken away from the whole github situation is that, as a
tech company, you should just entirely stay away from public involvement in
the social justice sphere. That doesn't mean exclusively hiring white men and
sending out Kalanick-style emails; it means keeping your work environment as
professional and politically neutral as possible unless absolutely necessary.

My employer does a good job of this. We have a lot of women and transgender
(not so many POC) employees, but we don't have any special inclusivity
initiatives or outreach programs, nor do we officially inject any related
ideology into the businessplace. The expectation is that you conduct yourself
professionally, and that you exercise your own discretion; the other side of
the coin is that you correct what you might think is morally/terminologically
wrong (such as confusing biological sex with gender) as diplomatically and
non-confrontationally as possible; assume mistakes are honest and be polite in
correcting them.

As for Coraline herself, I would be skeptical that we are getting the full
story here. In particular, I'm sure there is more to the "non-empathetic
communication style" than the data scientist and other related incidents. Not
to be a presumptive asshole, but I do get the impression from this kind of
expose that she might be difficult to work with.

~~~
openmosix
Reading the full article, it strikes me how you can be "inclusive" if you are
constantly highlighting the differences. The fact, for example, she dismisses
PRs or code reviews because made by white males. Or the blog post on her first
deliverable, rewritten by a white male. I don't see what could be the benefit
to point that out in every sentence: that all of that is made in malice
because of gender and race?

If I had a white male colleague who would constantly point out - in a work
environment - that a PR should be dismissed because made by a woman or that a
deliverable sucks because made by a black guy, I would not tolerate that
behavior for a second. I don't get why the opposite should be considered
"inclusion and safety".

~~~
RangerScience
> she dismisses PRs or code reviews because made by white males.

I didn't see this and can't find it. Can you point me at where this happens?

~~~
openmosix
[...] For my first few pull requests, I was getting feedback from literally
dozens of engineers (all of whom were male) on other teams, nitpicking the
code I had written. [...] Shortly after this happened to me, the code review
feature was prioritized. This functionality was rolled out internally pretty
quickly. From that point on I didn't get dogpiled anymore [...]

Re: who cares if they were all male? If I open a PR and I get dozens of
feedback, either they are legit feedback or not. Or maybe they are all sexist
comments, that you should absolutely report. But it sounds like the "all of
who were male" wants to imply a specific subtext, but the accusation is
neither explicit nor provides any justifications. Saying it in other words: if
a colleague would say "I am getting feedback from literally dozens of
engineers (all of who were black women)", wouldn't that raise an eyebrow or
more?

~~~
kybernetikos
I took it to indicate that she believes that she is getting so much 'feedback'
specifically because of what she is and what she's trying to do.

The fact that all of the people offering feedback were male is weak evidence
in favour of this (consider that much of her immediate team is female). She
offers as another piece of evidence that she compared notes with a colleague
with a similar background who was male and who wasn't getting the same level
of attention.

> Re: who cares if they were all male? If I open a PR and I get dozens of
> feedback, either they are legit feedback or not.

If you're working somewhere where you and people like you are getting 20
people peering over your shoulder uninvited and criticizing your every move
and people of a different group only have 2 people reviewing their code then
you can legitimately claim to be working in a hostile environment.

Code reviews are always a mixture of objective and subjective feedback, and
having to consider detailed comments (objective, subjective, substantive,
trivial) from a large number of people not directly involved and without
appropriate context would be a stress on anyone (not to mention is a simple
drain on productivity).

On a purely technical note, she says nowhere that the PRs should be dismissed
because they were from men. I think that was something you read into it. At
issue was the unusual quantity of the feedback.

> if a colleague would say "I am getting feedback from literally dozens of
> engineers (all of who were black women)", wouldn't that raise an eyebrow or
> more?

If it were fact, then I would assume that there was some way in which this
colleague had upset a group of black women. I think a similar conclusion is
being offered here (although given the likely employment ratios the black
women theory would have a whole lot more evidence).

~~~
true_religion
For purposes of neutrality, she shouldn't mention the gender or race of the
reviewers. In many places that I have worked, I do not even know the ethnicity
of my coworkers. As an aside, I am not white and honestly believe there is
more to ethnicity than skin color.

~~~
kybernetikos
She doesn't mention the race of the reviewers. That so many commenters seem to
think she did probably indicates something but I'm not sure what.

------
LordHumungous
> My team was 5 women and one man: two of us trans, three women of color

Keep in mind that her team helps writes her performance reviews.

> For my first few pull requests, I was getting feedback from literally dozens
> of engineers (all of whom were male) on other teams, nitpicking the code I
> had written.

Oh no people were reviewing a new engineer's code. (male employees. you know
what that means)

> The post was submitted for editorial review. It was decided that the tone of
> what I had written was too personal and didn't reflect the voice of the
> company.

Translation: I wrote a ranty screed and my employer, which unlike me
understands the importance of polite communication and cares about its public
image, declined to publish it verbatim.

> But pair programming simply didn't happen at GitHub. I would occasionally
> get another engineer to share a screen to walk me through a particularly
> hairy subsystem, but actual pairing was extremely rare and I missed it.

Gee I wonder why nobody wanted to pair program with you.

> When I talked to my manager about how she was progressing, I was told to
> stop the formal mentoring and allow this person to "learn at her own pace,
> without any pressure from you."

Translation: Your mentee is complaining about you being a huge asshole.

> She told me that the data scientist who had written the survey questions was
> very upset and had gone to her manager to complain about me.

Guessing this wasn't the first incident.

> This was the first instance of what came to be referred to as my "non-
> empathetic communication style".

Lol.

> My manager accused me of shutting down the conversation by making it
> personal.

You would never do such a thing.

> My overall review was a "Does Not Meet Expectations."

Surprise! Your coworkers hate you.

> The same day that I had this review, I got some devastating personal news. I
> have bipolar depression and was already in a bad place mentally

Aaand here come the excuses.

> she said she felt like I was trying to manipulate her by sharing my feelings
> in the hopes of influencing the PIP.

You weren't though, right? Right?

> GitHub has made some very public commitments to turning its culture around,
> but I feel now that these statements are just PR.

Yes this has everything to do with Github's culture and nothing to do with
your performance as an employee.

~~~
verinus
And I wonder where the hate in this comment comes from- I can not draw the
same conclusions from the blog post and imho your comment tells a lot more
about yourself that the case at hand.

~~~
LordHumungous
No hate. I see a self-absorbed person who is unable to see their own flaws and
who blames everyone but themselves for their own failings. It's sad actually.

~~~
sqldba
I think you're onto something. This is a valid way of interpreting what
happened.

I can't help but feel though that the OP is... not very good, and they haven't
had very good interactions on some other posts, but also I get the feeling
that GH handled everything incredibly badly all along as well.

~~~
LordHumungous
The saying seems to apply: "if everyone around you is an asshole, maybe you
are the asshole"

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

~~~
puranjay
I know it sounds like a joke, but I've taken to using a lot of exclamation
marks in my communication lately for this very reason.

It feels dumb to me but I know for a fact that some people who are quick to
take offense ease when they see it.

~~~
oblio
I just use smileys. I know that some people see them as
childish/immature/unprofessional, but especially in a multi-cultural
environment I prefer to be safe.

Irony, sarcasm and humor don't scale well.

~~~
royka118
Me too! Just to keep it good humored. If you put a smiley in an issue or a
slack message it helps keep the recipient happy

------
Torakfirenze
My brief and only interaction with Coraline entailed me tweeting to her,
thanking her for a talk she gave, to which she blocked me, and told me to my
face "Straight white cis-hetero males are the enemy".

I think, looking back on that interaction with Coraline, there was, in fact, a
real problem with empathy.

But that problem wasn't mine.

~~~
sqldba
Wow.

~~~
Torakfirenze
Yeah and I'm not joking either - I have all of TWO tweets on twitter
([https://twitter.com/Stuart_codes](https://twitter.com/Stuart_codes)) and am
most certainly blocked:

[http://i.imgur.com/EHa3MfQ.png](http://i.imgur.com/EHa3MfQ.png)

------
captainkb
I'd love to hear the other side of the story. The only thing that I could
think about was if the author's resume came across my desk one day: Receive
resume, Google applicant, See this blog post, toss resume in order to avoid
drama and future blog post about me.

------
gerbal
How would HN be reacting if this were written by and about a man?

There are a lot of gender expectations that punish assertive and matter of
fact women as 'bitchy' and 'insensitive'. If a white guy behaves the same way
no one thinks twice about it. To me it sounds like management at Github is
uncomfortable with her perspectives. We often see women and minorities
censured for not trying to conform to the model of a demure, inoffensive, and
compliant minority.

Much like the comments here, Github management appears to prefer to focus on
the perceived personality flaws of someone who makes others uncomfortable by
her presence rather than underlying issues causing their discomfort.

The "insensitivity" mentioned in the piece appears to be largely based on the
fact that the author behaves much like a white guy would in these situations.

~~~
thehardsphere
I think if this were a man, the HN reaction would actually be far more
negative.

As it stands right now, the discussion here is basically a debate over whether
or not Coraline was discriminated against in some way, or if she was fired for
some legitimate reason. Even if you dispute the facts of this case, there's a
potential larger issue about inclusivity and discrimination in tech there that
is worth talking about at least somewhat, regardless of what you think of it.

If Coraline were a man, then all that entire larger issue goes away and this
post would be nothing more than _a man whining about being fired._ There's
nothing much worth discussing about a man being fired. If anything, I'd expect
that they would be censured for acting in an unseemly way for a man.

~~~
empthought
This is a presentation by Coraline given in 2013 at Ruby Midwest:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2TOY4lufIM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2TOY4lufIM)

~~~
thehardsphere
I'm not going to watch the entire 30 minute video on my phone.

Is the point you're not actually making that Coraline previously was known as
Corey and appeared to be a man?

~~~
empthought
My point is that approaching this with a "I think if this were a man..."
hypothetical is doomed to end in confusion.

1\. Some people will think Coraline is a man.

1a. Those people might well discriminate against Coraline for failing to live
up to gender stereotypes expected of a man ("deal with it!")

2\. Some people will think Coraline is a woman.

2a. Those people might well discriminate against Coraline for failing to live
up to gender stereotypes expected of a woman ("more empathetic
communication!")

~~~
thehardsphere
It's not doomed to end in confusion at all. Discussing Coraline might end in
confusion, but that's the whole reason for creating an abstract hypothetical
to talk about in the first place.

The point of creating such a hypothetical is to imagine what sort of
discussion we would be having if the subject is not Coraline. So, it doesn't
matter if Coraline is a man or is a woman or a transgender woman or a
transgender man or a unisexual space alien from the other side of the galaxy.
We can reason about how "a man" would be treated without getting stuck on
ambiguities about Coraline.

Now, what could be confusing about the hypothetical is if we're not in
agreement about what "a man" means. So let me be more explicit: I'm using the
default understanding of what that means, which in the tedious language of
modernity means a cisgender male. For simplicity, let's assume it's a white,
heteronormative male, even though I don't think the reaction would be
different for non-white not-hetero cisgender males.

~~~
empthought
There's no such thing as a hypothetical or an abstract man.

------
_nalply
The OP is a part of a marginalised group of people. Marginalisation means that
some people who aren't part of that group feel they have to resist. This means
that the issues of the marginalised people are perceived as less important or
even annoying. Sometimes this effect is subtle but can be severely damaging.

One example is that the post needed several attempts here at Hacker News to be
not flagged.

As a Deaf programmer I also experience this marginalisation. Of course the
causes are different. One thing is exactly the same: I need to fight for my
own power. And this fighting is sadly already enough to tick people off.

Edit: Clarified language.

------
kevintb
> "What is your gender?" The multiple-choice options were "Male", "Female",
> and "Transgender"

I have low expectations for tech companies understanding these kind of issues,
but to separate _transgender_ as an option completely misses the point of what
"transgender" actually means.

~~~
tmnvix
My dictionary's definition:

transgender: adjective denoting or relating to a person whose self-identity
does not conform unambiguously to conventional notions of male or female
gender.

Though I agree that it clearly isn't a gender, it does seem like a sensible
option to be included in a survey when asking about gender. Maybe they should
have kept the options but rephrased the question?

Edit: On second thought, I get it; you can be transgender and identify as male
or female.

~~~
kevintb
That... is not the definition of transgender. I'm glad to see your edit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

~~~
faizmokhtar
How is it sexism when the one who reported her and the manager herself is a
female employee?

~~~
ivraatiems
It's completely possible for a woman to behave in a sexist way towards another
woman. There's an argument about whether one can be sexist against men (or
racist against white people, etc.) that has to do with how the terms are
defined, but I don't think that applies here.

~~~
faizmokhtar
I see, I didn't know that. Thanks for the clarification.

------
TaizWeb
>tell data scientist their poll is flawed because it only includes
"transgender" instead of "transgender female" and that makes them transphobic.
>data scientist is upset and tells management. >management tells you to stop
being a jerk. >proceed to be toxic in all your PRs and on Slack. >management
tells you to stop being a jerk. >they put you under review. >start getting
emotional and say you have emotional trauma. >management tells you to stop
trying to manipulate them with your sob story. >start making bad code for
weeks. >get fired. >write a blog post attacking them. >call people who work at
github __*holes on their twitters. and she thinks this was all an attack on
her because of her gender? hell, they hired her for that.

~~~
spraak
Besides all that drama, being sensitive to gender is important and awesome.

~~~
TaizWeb
yes, we should be sensitive to it, but let's say this story came from a
straight white man. if you were github, would you want someone toxic working
for you? someone who's accused someone of being transphobic over a form they
made? someone who's toxic in Slack with all the other members? someone who
starts writing bad code (failing at their own job)? no, you wouldn't. just
because someone's a minority doesn't give them the right to be treated above
others. it's a little something called equality.

------
jitl
This should not be flagged.

~~~
kaffee
I agree. The article was welcome and well-written.

I only found out about this post because the alternative (unofficial)
interface [https://hckrnews.com/](https://hckrnews.com/) manages to surface
this given the number of votes it has received.

I appreciate HN's moderation, on average. It's a shame the process of
moderation isn't more transparent. I have no idea why this was flagged.

~~~
dang
[flagged] means users flagged it.

Since a lot of people are disagreeing about that and we always try to take
guidance from the community, I've turned the flags off on this submission and
reduced the software penalty formerly known as the flamewar detector. But FWIW
this goes against my better judgment—this thread isn't as civil or substantive
as several of the recent ones on related issues have been (I mean in relative
terms—they still weren't that great overall) and I super don't like the
negative focus on one individual. That's not what substantive discussions are
made of.

~~~
Sone7
It mightn't be as substantive or civil, but I've learned more from this HN
thread than most.

Reading some of the comments here confirmed for me that this woman is on to
something. People are claiming that there's more to the story, or that she
must be a bitch/bad at social interactions (with no evidence worth mentioning
and despite a respectful and genuinely empathetic writing style).

In fairness to GitHub, there may indeed be more to the story. However, I think
if the tech community didn't have the issues she's talking about, the comment
section here would be very different. Nothing she said sounds remotely
unbelievable, nor is she selling us something, but people here read that she
was forced into a mental health institution and felt free to jump to wild
conclusions and publicly speculate on her job performance.

I'd have liked to see more discussion of BI, merit strategies, ideas on
humanising large organisations, commiseration, maybe job offers and
suggestions. And in fairness to this thread, there is a bit of that too. But
experience has shown me that when people react this defensively to polite and
well though out criticism, there is a measure of projection / delusion going
on.

Now, I'm not saying that all non-substantive discussions should always be
deemed kosher, but I feel like it's worth pointing out the irony here - the
poor quality discussion has verified the quality of the OP.

~~~
dang
For me this reasoning is shaky. When I see people drawing conclusions from one
data point and I know they could just as easily draw the opposite from a
different data point, I start to feel queasy. What I've learned from working
on HN is these phenomena are complex, with many counterintuitive effects, and
people are much too quick to make statements that fit a narrative.

It's not that your observations are wrong, it's that there are many other
observations you'd also need to account for before drawing a conclusion about
"the comment section here". Few people have the patience to do this,
especially not when the data start to go outside a narrative that seems to
make sense. (Where by few I mean statistically no one, including me.) Actually
it's the other way around: nearly all of us start with a narrative and then
see the community through it. This feels obviously right and there's plenty of
data you can point to to support (a.k.a. 'prove') it; the trouble is that
there's also plenty of data you can point to to 'prove' the opposite—and
people do. What's really going on is that the community is large and complex
enough to 'prove' any view you bring to it, and so everyone is simply reading
back out what they just encoded in, by weighting some things differently than
others. (Given enough things to weight you can encode anything.) This is why
people so adamantly say such contradictory things about HN, and I'm sure that
happens even more with still larger systems.

IMO this is also why there's a large measure of what you call
'projection/delusion' going on on every side of the internet wars. I'm not
sure how to fix that but I'm pretty sure it can't be fixed by the triumph of
the good side over the bad side, however you draw that line. The most
interesting thing that has happened on HN recently has been the appearance of
new forms of dialogue across those lines. Those threads still aren't great but
at least it's a sign of something new that isn't just predestined
conflagration. Another welcome sign is that in some of these contexts, many
more women have been commenting than usually do. Those are the kind of
developments we're looking to support on HN, in the hope that more interesting
and substantive forms of discourse can emerge here. (If there's one thing
flamewars aren't, it's that.) When we make moderation calls that don't seem to
make sense, that's probably why—we're trying to optimize for something long-
term (intellectual curiosity and substantive online discussion), a problem
that turns out to have many counterintuitive aspects. But we're not trying to
impose a regime that the community doesn't want and are happy to reverse
decisions we get wrong along the way.

------
djohnston
Should I assume that all characters not parenthetically emphasized as male are
female?

~~~
briholt
Are the parenthetical males all cis or do transmen earn that badge as well?

~~~
spraak
You're grossly uninformed about what that means. And if you do know and you're
just trolling, you're disgusting

------
lz400
To me this sounds too much like one side of the story. There's no proof of
anything and there are a few red flags so I don't know if this is all true or
it's a hit piece on GH. I've no idea and if anything, I find amusing to read
so many comments that are so sure how things went down one or the other way.
To quote a guy, whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

------
rnprince
How many large tech companies decide to fire programmers because they
communicate directly? For male programmers, that's actually a stereotype.

The reason they gave for firing her is just bizarre, making me wonder if there
was a different reason that they didn't want to admit.

------
Dirlewanger
While GitHub seemingly handled her employment poorly, this person sounds
horrible to work with:

>Was politely calling out a data scientist on a problematic and transphobic
survey answer a demonstration of lack of empathy?

How presumptuous. Ever thought that maybe the person putting it together
didn't know any better? What does framing oneself as the victim accomplish
here?

In addition, this is hilariously ironic given that GitHub employed (still
employs?) people who actively promote racism against white men (and women):
[http://www.businessinsider.com/github-the-full-inside-
story-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/github-the-full-inside-story-2016-2)

~~~
roywiggins
> I was very disappointed at this 101 mistake, and sadly opened an issue
> referencing the question. The body of my issue read:

> "'Transgender' is not a gender. Transgender people may be male, female,
> gender queer, non-binary... If you want to know if a survey respondent is
> transgender, you need to explicitly ask that question."

She was disappointed. She explained her problem with the survey in a non-
judgmental way- "This question is based on a false premise, the correct way to
ask this question is X". I don't see how she could have handled this
particular interaction any better.

~~~
invalidfunction
Sure, we just have to reword it - something like this may be less
confrontational:

> "Hi! I have a suggestion on question #14. I think we can improve this to be
> more inclusive by replacing the options w ith "male", "female", "gender
> queer" "non-binary", (...) Since transgender people may or may not associate
> with a gender, we have be a little careful when asking for a gender. Hope
> this helps!"

When I write emails, I always pretend to "YELL" the email in the most dramatic
way possible. If it sounds potentially confrontational yelling what I am
saying, it could be intimidating for some people.

By defusing the way you talk to others, you make them feel more comfortable
around you. The more comfortable people feel around you, the more they trust
you and listen to what you say. It's a win-win :)

~~~
Sorreah
That's actually great advice.

------
foota
I get that this post is likely to have a large degree of conflict in the
comments, but I think it belongs here.

~~~
thehardsphere
Ehh...

I can see it either way, honestly. I think the issues raised are worth
discussing here. I don't know that the post itself is.

~~~
foota
While it may seem like semantics, I think discussing the issues raised by the
post is more or less discussing the post.

I would go so far as to say that explicitly discarding the context of the post
as many are doing is rude and ironically lacking in empathy. How can we say
that the issues raised by something are worth discussing while simultaneously
putting down the post?

~~~
thehardsphere
Because we only have a single perspective on what actually happened in this
instance. That perspective is selective and is motivated to tell the story a
particular way. It might be right, but we do not have enough facts to know. So
it's hard to know what the facts we can actually draw conclusions from. This
makes a discussion of issues difficult because more time is spent on the
identities of the participants rather than the actual underlying issues. It
descends into being merely about GitHub vs. Coraline.

------
danpalmer
Maybe the UK, or my company, has a different communication style, but from the
examples she gave of her communication I think we would have considered her to
have very clear, concise and efficient communication, things we look for and
value.

~~~
dustinmoris
I work in the UK in a tech company and I thought the opposite. Here we would
definitely have let her go as well for her aggressive communication style. No
matter how good you write code, if your everyday attitude is creating a toxic
environment around you then you're not welcome, because it drags down everyone
else and as an employer it is a responsibility to create a nice environment to
which your employees are happy to wake up 5 days a week.

~~~
porker
Focusing on the one communication we've got (her message to the data
scientist) how would you have delivered it within your company? I (UK too)
would have used the language she used or softened it slightly, depending on
the recipient.

~~~
dustinmoris
Oh there's loads. First of all her single comment is very short which sets a
certain tone itself. There is absolutely 0 effort in her comment to establish
a friendly tone. That itself might not necessarily mean that it reads
negatively, but it will certainly not ready positively either, which is the
first problem.

Secondly she says that transgender is not a gender, but she doesn't provide
any constructive feedback or improvement with it. She could have explained
what transgender means, or linked to a website which explains the topic well,
or at least offered something along the lines "hey I happen to know a lot
about this topic and would love to help you phrasing this question. Feel free
to reach out to me on Slack with any questions or if you need more advice.".

"If you want to know if a survey respondent is transgender, you need to
explicitly ask that question". That sentence alone comes across very much top-
down as in "omg you're so stupid and don't even know what that is and you
should do this or that if you want".

This is certainly not the message and tone that you want to say to someone the
very first time you communicate with someone, unless you obviously don't care
about how you come across, how other people feel and how it might affect them,
which is fine, but then don't be surprised if people think you are unfriendly,
not pleasant to work with and toxic.

For instance, if I know a lot about a programming topic and I would review
someone's work for the first time I would not just say "Hey dude, what you've
done here is wrong. If you want to do it right do it right man."

First I would avoid to say wrong at all and say that I think it can be
improved, because my goal is to improve things and not tell people if they are
right or wrong, I don't gain anything from that. Further I would offer
constructive suggestions on how it can be improved and also provide extra
material/links for them to educate more on that topic, because I would want
them to get better and not just me look superior to them.

------
thehardsphere
It would be great if we could see the pull requests that were subject to
disproportionate scrutiny. It would add a lot of context that is missing from
that story.

------
tomcam
I fear this blog post was more revealing than its author intended.

~~~
erikpukinskis
Your comment is too.

------
robk
Github has really completed an unusual feat - Hostile to people of color, the
entire gender spectrum as well as cisgendered people of no color. All seem to
have grievances with this company. Wow.

~~~
microtherion
"people of no color"? That sounds like a pretty serious medical issue to me.

------
alexashka
This is an unfortunate smear piece.

Not everyone is going to like everyone else, and it has nothing to do with
gender.

Some people are just not very likeable, others are very likeable.

Coraline based on my impression, is just not terribly likeable.

Github wants people they like, to be part of Github. How can you blame them?

People who don't get that, and go around writing long winded blogs of how
they've been mistreated, and claim it has to do with some social justice
issue, are unfortunately oblivious to what the real issue is.

------
daveheq
I will now review every contributer's social posts to see if they say anything
discriminatory and request that they be removed from the project.

------
jkereako
I get the impression Coraline was confrontational. Folks like this are really
hard to work with. They're also really easy to dislike.

I found this interesting:

> I wrote an impassioned piece talking about how this feature closed a
> security gap that had directly affected and provided an abuse vector against
> me

I see this "impassioned piece" as a public shaming of the company who employs
her. Since her team's product manager encouraged her to write this, it makes
the product manager look like a fool.

She probably caused a lot of friction among several of her co-workers and her
manager just couldn't help her anymore.

------
pc86
I am really torn on this one. I want to discuss the article because I think it
brings up interesting topics, and for the most part HN folks are good at
discussing polarizing things like this without devolving into Reddit-style
nonsense. On the other hand, I want to flag it, because the article itself is
absolute garbage.

EDIT: I see now it _is_ flagged. To be clear, I didn't, because I still think
it's worth discussing some of the points made.

~~~
Shank
Programmers aren't really well known for their inherent skill in writing. It
seems like the content, rather than the delivery, is the more important thing
here.

~~~
wutbrodo
I don't think the complaint was stylistic in nature (though I may be
mistaken...?). Other than GitHub's puzzlingly callous reaction to her medical
emergency, the entire thing reads like a narcissist blaming everyone else for
every imagined slight and excusing herself for far worse. It's the Fundamental
Attribution Error in article form.

------
mc32
That sucks.

When you get off on the wrong foot, there is very little you can do to correct
it, beside changing teams. Once a manager thinks they know something about
your performance, or perceived lack, it's hard to counter that. No matter what
--colleagues, clients, other managers, etc. I've seen this play out a couple
of times.

There is no stopping the snowball.

------
johnpython
A key takeaway from this blog post is the important of communication skills.
Be a professional in the workplace. Be sincere with your colleagues and avoid
passive aggressive behavior. If you have an issue with a colleague, take it to
them first before lodging a complaint with their manager.

------
kevintb
Why is this article flagged?

~~~
bdcravens
Because users with high enough karma flagged it. Users with high enough karma
can likewise vouch for it to offset that.

~~~
daxelrod
I'm guessing that, despite the passive voice, kevintb is actually asking why
those users flagged it.

------
romanovcode
Good tutorial on how to not get hired. Post stuff like this in your blog.

------
trustfundbaby
This gave me flashbacks to my experiences at a couple of places, and I really
feel for Coraline. These kinds of experiences seem to happen very
disproportionately to minorities with strong opinions (aka folks who aren't
just going to grin and take it) so naturally some of the comments here aren't
surprising, until you've gone through it, none of it makes sense. So naturally
most people will side with the company, thats just what happens.

For me, it was these random things that would come up very suddenly seemingly
from out of nowhere. Some one would have 'complained' about something. The
thing would be completely ridiculous, and my manager could never tell me
exactly what I _should_ have done to fix it, but it would be a problem. One
time I was told I was "unavailable to my team", even though we had slack and
nobody had tried to contact me and failed or had even gotten a delayed
response.

In another situation I had been having problems with 2 specific team members
(couldn't handle any kind of feedback that wasn't completely onboard with
their amazing ideas), and in the same exact week, my boss said (and this is a
quote) ... "the problem may be that you are TOO good at your job", I got a
merit based raise (after just 6 months there), and at the end of the week I
was put on a PIP and told I had "no future" at the company. Hows that for
consistency and your manager working to help you. lol.

The part that is absolutely maddening though?

That same communication style that everyone acts like is a huge problem. Some
people get to talk like that to anyone at anytime in pretty much the same way
in the same company you're at ... direct, pointed and directly opposed to some
idea, sometimes even rudely. But when you do it as a minority (sans the
rudeness), its a problem. I remember one Engineer, losing his shit because our
company had decided to pay for only part of our parking in our new downtown
location. He raised his voice, and he cussed in addressing a SENIOR FEMALE HR
executive that was seated in the meeting, full of people. Nothing happened to
him. If I'd tried something like that, I'd have been out of there in 1 week
flat. That's the kind of double standard you have to just accept as a minority
in tech, and I think its absolute trash.

Long story short, this stuff is real, it happens and its absolutely bullshit.
It makes you feel like you are going batshit CRAZY (I'm an athlete, and at one
point during one of these being-managed-out episodes, my blood pressure hit
140. thats hypertensive) ... and like I've alluded to before, I wouldn't be
shocked if something like this played a role in that Uber engineer's suicide a
few months back, because it can really wreak havoc with your mental state and
sense of self if you don't have a good support system and/or therapist.

The key is to remember, you're not perfect, be humble and fix what you can,
but also remember that lots of people and companies are full of shit, and
quite often (especially if you're from a minority group in tech), its not you,
its them that are fucked up, despite people on HN doubting your every move and
intention.

Also always find a manager that will take a bullet for you, and if you're put
on a PIP and you _know_ its bullshit, just leave, don't suffer the indignity
and mental anguish of getting shit on for weeks, all the way to a crappy
severance if you can help it.

Cheers and Good Luck Coraline!

------
equalunique
I still dont get why merit-based approaches are being so heavily criticized.
Coraline herself seems to have demonstrated a great deal of merit in the work
she performed. She has all of my sympathies, but how can one pitch themselves
by citing the good work they do, and then go on to state that meritocracy is
wrong? I appreciate the specific purpose of Coraline's team Community &
Safety, but fail to see why their goals and merit are practically
incompatible.

------
archerface
Something that I don't get about this article is why she keeps implying that a
merit based system is so bad. It behoves a company to hire and fire based on
merit, while also rewarding and encouraging those who are skilled at their
job. That is how you create a top notch product.

------
mathattack
A lot of folks are kicking the author whenshe's down. Read this as 1st person
field notes from an engineer with mental illness and the story makes sense. No
need to say "but she is irrational" \- of course she is. We shouldn't hold the
ill to the same standards.

------
dudul
I feel like a read a blog post by this author describing how they got
wrongfully fired every year or two.

------
galkk
I remember how I was infuriated by what she called "opalgate".

She got what she deserved.

------
LordHumungous
>For my first few pull requests, I was getting feedback from literally dozens
of engineers (all of whom were male) on other teams, nitpicking the code I had
written.

This is common practice for new devs, at least where I work.

~~~
quanticle
Oh god, that sounds horrible. As a new dev, I already _know_ that I don't know
anything. I don't need hundreds of people pointing out every little flaw in my
code.

~~~
LordHumungous
Not hundreds, more like 5-6. It's nothing personal, it's to help the new dev
learn the company way of doing things.

------
EddieRingle
> "I was well aware of GitHub's very problematic past, from its promotion of
> meritocracy in place of a management system"

I don't see what's wrong with meritocracy as opposed to an unspecified
"management system".

\--

> Feature releases such as these are frequently promoted on the GitHub blog,
> and the product manager on my team encouraged me to write a post announcing
> what I had shipped. Since it was so important to me personally, I wrote an
> impassioned piece talking about how this feature closed a security gap that
> had directly affected and provided an abuse vector against me. The post also
> served as an announcement to the world of the new team and the kinds of
> problems that we were charged with solving.

>

> The post was submitted for editorial review. It was decided that the tone of
> what I had written was too personal and didn't reflect the voice of the
> company. The reviewer insisted that any mention of the abuse vector that
> this feature was closing be removed. In the midst of my discussions with the
> editorial team, trying to reach a compromise, a (male) engineer from another
> team completely rewrote the blog post and published it without talking to
> me.

GitHub was correct here. Feature announcements on the company blog should
remain neutral in tone. In addition, the published feature announcement seems
to mention the motivations behind the feature quite well:

> Previously, anyone could automatically add other developers to their
> repositories without explicit permission. This model openly provided some
> users with opportunities to harass members of our community by inviting them
> to offensive or attention-seeking repositories.

So, it was rewritten to a neutral explanation of why this feature is a benefit
to those who have had experiences like that of the author.

\--

> In addition to my development work, I had started weekly mentoring sessions
> with one of my teammates (a recent boot camp graduate) on Ruby and Rails
> fundamentals that she had not been exposed to in her program. When I talked
> to my manager about how she was progressing, I was told to stop the formal
> mentoring and allow this person to "learn at her own pace, without any
> pressure from you." I was mystified: mentoring is an essential part of being
> a senior engineer, and this teammate seemed to be benefiting from it.

No quote was given from the manager telling the author to stop mentoring
entirely, just that they wanted the _formal_ mentoring to stop (by formal, I
assume it to mean it was initiated by the author, not the student). It's
possible the manager's intention was as quoted: to see how this "recent boot
camp graduate" was able to grow on her own.

\--

> I was very disappointed at this 101 mistake, and sadly opened an issue
> referencing the question.

This has a presumptuous tone to it.

\--

> The same day that I had this review, I got some devastating personal news. I
> have bipolar depression and was already in a bad place mentally, so I found
> myself feeling crushed and hopeless. In an attempt to deal with things I
> ended up taking a dangerously high dose of my anti-anxiety medication. When
> I reached out to my therapist for help, she recommended that I go to the
> emergency room. This was the start of an eight day ordeal involving
> involuntary commitment to a mental health facility. I shared this experience
> on Twitter and won't rehash it here, but suffice it to say that I was
> severely traumatized by what happened to me in the hospital.

I read the "experience on Twitter". It sounds to me that the author's
judgement was impaired (re: the author's self-described overdose of anti-
anxiety medication) and the hospital/psychiatrist believed they were enough of
a risk to themselves to warrant admitting them as a patient.

\--

> Thursday and Friday were not good days. I had a lot of trouble focusing. I
> was making simple mistakes and in some cases doing the wrong work. Friday
> afternoon I reached out to my boss to tell her that I was having trouble and
> that I didn't know what to do. She suggested that I take medical leave, but
> I told her what my therapist had said about the importance of getting back
> to normal life. My manager was adamant that if I couldn't work at full
> capacity that I had no choice but to take medical leave.

> ...

> The following week I had scheduled conferences to attend, so my focus on
> work was put on hold.

> ...

> After the meeting I messaged her and shared the more personal aspects of
> what I was going through, the trauma that I had experienced in the hospital
> and its lingering effects on my mental health. I was told that I should have
> accepted the offer of medical leave, and she said she felt like I was trying
> to manipulate her by sharing my feelings in the hopes of influencing the
> PIP. I was dismayed.

The author "had a lot of trouble focusing". It was recommended multiple times
that she take medical leave. Instead, the author's "focus on work was put on
hold" in order to attend conferences. I'm as suspicious of PIPs as much as the
next person, but this seems pretty cut-and-dry to me as unsatisfactory work
performance.

\--

Regarding the firing on grounds of lack of empathetic communication, perhaps
it was related to why this person was hired in the first place?

> They wanted to offer me a job. They had just created a team called Community
> & Safety, charged with making GitHub more safe for marginalized people and
> creating features for project owners to better manage their communities.

\--

> I think back on the lack of options I was given in response to my mental
> health situation and I see a complete lack of empathy.

As stated above, they provided the option of medical leave. The author chose
not to take it.

> In the past several months GitHub has fired at least three transgender
> engineers and many more cisgender women.

Why were they fired? How many others were fired in the past several months?
What's the ratio there?

> In a return to its meritocratic roots, the company has decided to move
> forward with a merit-based stock option program despite criticism from
> employees who tried to point out its inherent unfairness.

Again, what's unfair about rewarding based on merit? Should people who
contribute relatively little compared to others get just as much reward? Why
would the higher-performers bother to burden themselves in that case?

> So yes, in looking back over my year at GitHub I see that there was, in
> fact, a real problem with empathy.

>

> But that problem wasn't mine.

So in the end, the author seems to absolve themselves of responsibility. This
shows a lack of growth; in my opinion you should _always_ try to fault
yourself if you're going to fault others.

------
Stryder
Some things that stood out to me after reading the whole thing:

\- Other engineers dog-piling on her first few PRs showed that there was a
complete lack of trust in her, and perhaps an active distrust in her
abilities. I have no comments regarding whether this was deserved or not, but
the known facts point to such a reality.

\- Writing a feature blog post based on a personal perspective and personal
past experience is not something a matured corporation can allow. This should
not have been a surprise.

\- Being the most productive engineer is not the goal of a Principal level
engineer. I don't believe any software management would expect their Principal
engineers to be sitting at the desk cranking out code all day. Influencing
large scale initiatives across the org is more of the job expectation. This
means building relationships with lots of people, which means less coding and
more guidance of other engineers to do the coding.

\- By that point, the expectation must have been high for what she can
contribute on the diversity front. The terse messaging regarding the survey
probably didn't help, but I also don't see it as a big deal. It's probably
just piling on past issues.

\- The rest is standard PIP procedure of managing out someone who isn't
working out. I would love to say that I know how better to handle a PIP, but I
don't.

It seems to me that Github expected a much stronger engineer, but feel like
they didn't get one and that she was underperforming. Was that the actual
reality? I don't know, and I don't feel qualified to pass judgment.

Which leads me to my final thought: it does seem like Github might have an
empathy problem. My guess is that Coraline had her own set of insecurities
about being at Github going into the job, and the first few encounters with
the rest of the org put them into overdrive. It's unfortunate that her manager
did not deem it productive to learn what her insecurities were and validate
her on those fronts, which I believe might have put her back on the right
track towards success. Instead, Coraline hunkered down and started cranking
out code, and possibly withdrawing from the org around her? Rather than doing
her intended job.

But, it is a lot to ask for a manager to do all of that, and she was a
Principal engineer after all.

Getting a job is like getting married, even if things look all good at the
ceremony, there's still years of sustained work/relationship-building to come.
This one looks like a case of bad matching. In no way as to diminish
Coraline's story, I've seen this happen to a lot of different kinds of people
from all walks of life.

My 2 pennies.

------
dustinmoris
I am not a Ruby developer so I don't really know Coraline, but there were
quite a few things in this blog post which I found disturbing:

> In the midst of my discussions with the editorial team, trying to reach a
> compromise, a (male) engineer from another team completely rewrote the blog
> post and published it without talking to me.

The entire paragraph about her writing a blog post has nothing to do with
gender, why is it relevant to explicitly try to correlate it with gender in a
situation where someone has done something which she wasn't happy about? It
reads sexist to me as an outsider.

> In addition to my development work, I had started weekly mentoring sessions
> with one of my teammates... When I talked to my manager about how she was
> progressing, I was told to stop the formal mentoring and allow this person
> to "learn at her own pace, without any pressure from you."

Yes mentoring is an essential part, but mentorig is not becoming someone's
teacher. That is very weird indeed. Here she says that she was additionally
mentoring someone on a weekly basis, which implies that she was doing some
sort of teaching lessons to another team member outside of regular development
work. This is not mentoring AFAIK. Mentoring is something you do along the way
as you work with someone together. You offer help when help is needed, you
give advice when advice is requested, you keep your ears open and chip in with
help or information when you see someone is struggling, you lead and teach by
example and not by lessons.

I can totally understand if the manager was thinking that his person should
not feel the pressure of a more senior developer in such a situation. She
thinks the developer was benefitting, but how does she even know that? Perhaps
the more junior developer was too shy to speak up or felt intimidated by a
senior employee telling him/her what and how to do things.

> Discussions were directed to comments on issues and pull requests.

I can see how this was in some situations difficult, but I (as someone who
thinks of himself as very open minded) can also totally see why it might be
beneficial:

\- A discussion on an open issue or pull request provides automatic
documentation \- It can be found and read by anyone \- It fosters more of a
culture where anyone feels invited to contribute if they think they have
relevant information \- It doesn't get lost among other conversations. In
Slack or in real life you might talk about 3 issues at the same time and the
history of one issue is totally swamped among the chat of all other issues. In
GitHub each issue/PR has it's own discussion. \- A discussion is often far
more civilised when it is done in an issue or PR than in real life or in
Slack, which is a huge benefit to establish a positive work culture IMHO.

Again, I can agree that there is also downsides to it, but as someone who
prides themselves as an open minded person I would have hoped that she would
have looked a bit further than just the downsides and also try to make an
effort and understand why it was done like this at GitHub. Being open minded,
look at positives and try to foster a positive attitute is one of the most
important skills in an employee in my opinion.

> I asked my manager what had happened to upset her and was told that it was
> the feedback I provided on the gender question. I read back to her the body
> of the issue that I had opened and asked what I should have done
> differently. She responded that she didn't know, that my wording seemed
> direct but non-confrontational, but that I was forbidden to interact any
> further with the author of the survey.

I have really no foundation for this assumption, but it really reads that her
tone in approaching other co-workers was rather direct and harsh, which from
my personal experience is never a good way to get people on your side.
Especially with people who you have never met or rarely seen I think it is
crucial to put some thoughts into how certain things are phrased. At the end
of the day you don't know the other person, don't know how they will read it
and react to it. If you have a genuine interest to get the best out of this
together, rather than just trying to show off that you are more knowledgable
than someone else, then you would certainly phrase things more friendly.

Say what you want, but I have 10+ years of experience as well and I know that
there was never a situation where I was not able to get my point across in a
VERY obvious friendly tone.

> Starting in December, in my weekly one-on-one meetings with my manager, we
> would review all of my written communication (issues, pull requests, code
> reviews, and Slack messages) to talk about how I could improve. It felt
> ridiculous but I went along with it, and did my best to address my manager's
> feedback and concerns.

What attitute is that? A good manager will try to get the best of evey
reportee and focus on personal strenghts/weaknesses. What is ridiculous about
trying to improve communication skills? Honestly that is such a bad attitute,
as if anyone would ever be such a communication god that there's nothing to
improve anymore. That sentence alone is very negative IMHO.

\--

Obviously it is very sad and unfortunate that she had to go through mental
health issues and the loss of her grandmother, but it really feels like her
manager was trying to work with her to go through all these situations and
Coraline was doing her own thing. I think it was very responsible of her
manager to ask her to take medical leave. Imagine what would have happenend if
she didn't? If her manager would have been like "alright, just continue
working then", then later she would sue GitHub for not taking her mental
health problems seriously and firing her based on that. Her manager was
extremely open about her weaknesses, was putting effort into working through
them with her and taking the right and responsible steps to get her back on
track, but honestly there's only so much you can do before you have to let
someone go...

------
hasenj
> For my first few pull requests, I was getting feedback from literally dozens
> of engineers (all of whom were male) on other teams, nitpicking the code I
> had written. One PR actually had over 200 comments from 24 different
> individuals.

There's no context given here about what the PR is, how big is it, and what's
the nature of the comments. It could be a gigantic PR and it could be that
most comments are innocuous repetitions such as "add empty line here".

or, it could it be that this person's notoriety followed them to their new
workplace and many people were genuinely frustrated that they have to work
with an unpleasant person.

EDIT:

> In a return to its meritocratic roots, the company has decided to move
> forward with a merit-based stock option program

Maybe they realized that trying to appease political agitators doesn't work
and that having competent people is the only rational business decision?

------
draw_down
Many people have seen the Netflix document on company culture. My favorite
part is where it points out that company values are not what the founders list
in an email, or what gets painted on a wall or put on a plaque. It's what
happens every single day, what gets done now and what gets deferred.

------
MichaelBurge
> "'Transgender' is not a gender. Transgender people may be male, female,
> gender queer, non-binary... If you want to know if a survey respondent is
> transgender, you need to explicitly ask that question."

I Imagine this read to the survey writer like:

"Hello, I'd like to complain about your use of the term Linux on the corporate
intranet. A page provides instructions for running the data parsing scripts
"on Linux". Since we do not do any kernel work, it is improper to refer to
them as Linux instructions. Instead, people should be familiar with either
POSIX, bash(with extensions), or GNU coreutils."

~~~
thex10
I mean, I see the point you're trying to make. But that error could be pretty
damning in the context of a detailed survey about, like, operating systems and
their utilities. In that case, wouldn't you expect to survey writer to know
those details, or at least not completely lose their shit when told about them
from someone who knows more about the topic?

~~~
MichaelBurge
We don't know the purpose of the survey, but it's described as an "open source
developer survey". I imagine gender was thrown in because, hey maybe the women
use vim and the men use emacs for some reason, and that's kind of interesting
to know.

I briefly checked the Stack Overflow survey as a comparison:
[https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017](https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017)

