
Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit - dkasper
http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/15/julie-ann-horvath-describes-sexism-and-intimidation-behind-her-github-exit/
======
sgentle
Ouch. What a terrible situation. I'm holding out for the other side of the
story, but unless you're willing to assume the entire thing is invented this
is a major fuckup for GitHub.

I think this is a classic problem with companies making the transition from
small startup to regular business. Break down the barriers! Flat management!
Kill bureaucracy and embrace no-politics DIY organisation!

The article reads like an HR air crash investigation. Nebulous semi-employee
with unspecified responsibilities related to a founder? Check. Unclear or
absent grievance chain? Check. HR alternately over- and under-involved in
disputes with no clear policy? Check. Off-the-record disciplinary meetings?
Check. Founder adjudicates his own grievances? Check.

And it seems like every single one of these problems could have been solved by
a halfway competent manager. I mean, someone reverting your code because of a
personal vendetta? Is that not like, a 5 minute conversation? "Hey, Jo, Dave's
being an asshole and reverting my commits for no reason." "Oh, okay, I'll talk
to him and make sure it stops."

I read a great article a while back that I unfortunately can't find now, but
it talked about a CEO who thought he was having a casual "hey, I'm interested
in developing my skills, can you mentor me a bit?" conversation with another
exec. A week later the office was ablaze with "so-and-so being groomed as
successor" rumours. At a certain point you stop being able to just act like a
regular person and have everything turn out fine. Red tape isn't always a
straitjacket. Sometimes it's a crash harness.

~~~
buro9
> Nebulous semi-employee with unspecified responsibilities related to a
> founder?

This is the point that stands out for me. That the wife is not an employee of
Github but claims to be able to access private company chat records, and also
is able to "work" from within the office and interact with the staff.

Even with allowances that company property remains company property and
private chat rooms are in fact non-private to the company... there is no
scenario in which a non-employee should have access to those chat rooms.

The wife, and the husband (founder), have displayed an incredible lack of
professionalism here. There may even be a question about whether those acts
are illegal if they are substantiated.

And for companies that use Github to host private repositories, the question
should be asked very loud and clear... "Who can access private company data,
why, and for what reason?".

If a non-employee can access information that is presumed (even by their own
employees) to be private, then our (external companies) assumptions about what
is private and secure at Github are weakened and demand very clear statements
backed up with clear processes to reassure.

~~~
glibgil
I love github, but toxic cultures can happen anywhere. Github employees have
been involved in commit abuse since the beginning
[https://web.archive.org/web/20130117043748/http://sheddingbi...](https://web.archive.org/web/20130117043748/http://sheddingbikes.com/posts/1306816425.html)

~~~
quotemstr
Yet people wonder, mouth agape, why I prefer staying up in Seattle.

~~~
aspleenic
Location really has little to do with. While SF is a bit of a hipster enclave,
so are a lot of places with plenty of tech companies.

------
harshreality
The article quotes JAH's email as saying, _" Two women, one of whom I work
with and adore, and a friend of hers were hula hooping to some music. I didn’t
have a problem with this. What I did have a problem with is the line of men
sitting on one bench facing the hoopers and gawking at them. It looked like
something out of a strip club. When I brought this up to male coworkers, they
didn’t see a problem with it. But for me it felt unsafe and to be honest,
really embarrassing. That was the moment I decided to finally leave GitHub."_

Certain people are extremely sensitive to what they perceive as improper or
demeaning interaction, even when it doesn't directly involve them. JAH wasn't
willing to let those women deal with it themselves, and doesn't mention even
talking to them about it to see if _they_ felt objectified. Instead, she
talked to male coworkers, not specifically HR or a founder, about the wisdom
of allowing women to hula hoop in the office? What's _that_ going to
accomplish?

I understand her view that sexual undercurrents in an office makes things
uncomfortable for some women, and I understand her wanting that toned down.
But other women (including some feminists) have no problem with much stronger
displays of sexuality, and feel it's an affront to women to suppress that.
Both sides can't win.

~~~
facepalm
I think it's really a huge stretch to go from oogling of hula hoopers to
"feeling unsafe". What, after watching some women do hoola hoop men suddenly
turn into rapists? That's 100% in her head and sounds slightly crazy to me, to
be honest. Not even going to strip clubs turns men into rapists on a regular
basis...

I think that accusation is completely unwarranted (from the sounds of it).

~~~
dclowd9901
After reading the article, it became pretty clear to me that whatever manner
of "culture" github appears to be permeating internally, she was very far from
it. This indicates she was a bad hire from the get-go. Hiring isn't just about
talent, it's also about cultural fit, and while it's difficult to know with
precision who fits a cultural dynamic, 1) such an issue is bound to arise as a
company grows and 2) there had to be indications that she was incredibly
sensitive early on.

~~~
muglug
Isn't the point she's making that she didn't fit the culture primarily because
of her gender? And that any work culture where one's gender matters is a toxic
culture in itself?

A workplace just filled with happy young male developers is not necessarily a
_healthy_ environment, or one that necessarily has a good culture.

~~~
tomp
> Isn't the point she's making that she didn't fit the culture primarily
> because of her gender?

It is, but the point a lot of people are making here is that maybe she sees
the situation in a wrong way, as her perspective is a reflection of her
gender, so she cannot really judge if the problems happened _primarily_
because of her gender. Actually, the fact that the other female employees felt
secure and relaxed enough that they were hola-hooping in the office suggests
otherwise.

> A workplace just filled with happy young male developers is not necessarily
> a healthy environment, or one that necessarily has a good culture.

It's also not necessarily an unhealthy/toxic environment.

~~~
efuquen
> It's also not necessarily an unhealthy/toxic environment.

Honestly this is very close to gender discrimination, which is clearly
illegal. If you created an environment that only young male developers will
enjoy how is that much different then explicitly saying you won't hire any
female developers?

To me it's in a similar vein of when literacy tests were employed in the South
to prevent African Americans from voting. It wasn't saying you couldn't vote
if you were black but it had the same effect of denying most blacks suffrage
anyway. So you're not saying women can't work here, but we're just going to
encourage/promote a culture that isn't one most women would want to be a part
of anyway.

~~~
tw268
A couple hundred mostly-males built a company that was wildly successful where
they loved to work. Now it sounds like they have to destroy that, build a
culture that is professional and antiseptic, to make feminists feel welcome.

~~~
aurumpotest
It doesn't have to be "antiseptic" at all - there are _plenty_ of thriving,
wildly-successful, mostly-males companies with great cultures where women feel
comfortable too.

Also, it wouldn't be changing it "for feminists" \- it's changing it to
welcome any people, of either sex, who aren't comfortable in that environment.
Just because feminists might be the most vocal about it doesn't mean it
doesn't affect others too.

They don't even have to change their culture at all; all they need to do is to
tone down the more aggressive parts of that culture towards certain people.
Which shouldn't be difficult - I'm sure all of them have friends with whom
they're more calm and less aggressive, or family members. They just need to
transfer a bit of this thoughtfulness to the office.

It's not about changing because feminism, it's just the human decency of being
reasonable and respectable to everyone, as far as is possible.

------
csense
I don't think this was an instance of institutionalized sexism. Rather, the
founder's wife seems like an unbalanced individual, and nobody effectively set
any boundaries. The other founders and HR seemed unaware or unable to set the
situation to right.

As for her romantically inclined co-worker -- I don't see how his behavior
qualifies as sexist or hostile. Merely a bit clueless, but isn't it to be
expected that employees of a tech company will be somewhat socially awkward?

EDIT: As multiple commenters have noted, ripping out someone's code commits
because they rejected your romantic advances is unacceptable and
unprofessional. The ripper-outer should be roasted by the project manager if
there's no technical justification. Since the two employees no longer get
along, one or both should be re-assigned to different projects if possible.
And the offender should be disciplined (up to and including dismissal from the
company) if he makes life difficult for her in the future. But his actions
reflect on _him_ , not Github as a whole. The article includes no information
about whether any of his actions were reported to his supervisor or anyone
else, and no information about Github's response to the incident. Without
those crucial details, I think it's premature to point a finger at Github.

As for the hula hoop incident -- if the girls doing the hooping and the guys
doing the watching were okay with it, and everybody kept their clothes on,
that seems pretty innocent to me.

~~~
ilovecomputers
You're missing the point. From this story alone, it seems the company is run
by individuals who never mentally developed out of high school. Those
incidents you mentioned are merely a red flag of the immaturity of some of
these people. Awkwardly hitting on an employee to a point of discomfort,
messing with someone's work cause they turned you down to a date, creepily
staring at an employee in the gym; you should at least know well into your 20s
and 30s that is inappropriate behavior at a workplace.

I would agree in that I wouldn't call this an instance of industry-wide
sexism. The root of the problem is the immaturity at the leadership level of
this company. If the leadership is as immature as this story is making it out
to be, than these sexist incidents wouldn't have happened. Still, I shall
reserve my judgment on GitHub until I hear more sides to this story.

~~~
mercurial
> creepily staring at an employee in the gym

That's not what the article says:

> The final straw for Horvath came when she saw men gawking at women who were
> hula-hooping at the office. [...] Two women, one of whom I work with and
> adore, and a friend of hers were hula hooping to some music.

Emphasis on _at the office_. It sounds like they were making some kind of
show. While I agree that the rest of the story sounds like a massive
clusterfuck, I can't understand what is supposed to be wrong in this episode.

~~~
Crito
If this commentor is to be believed:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7408466](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7408466)

Then it was not only in the office, but in the office _during a party_ to
boot.

~~~
mercurial
Right. It sounds like Horvath completely misinterpreted it, then. That said,
the rest of her points look solid enough that it doesn't detract from the
overall issue of mismanagement.

------
lgleason
I'm not going to get into what is right or wrong.

With that being said, in the US HR is not your friend as an employee. Their
job is to protect the company. [http://abcnews.go.com/Business/20-job-tips-hr-
exec/story?id=...](http://abcnews.go.com/Business/20-job-tips-hr-
exec/story?id=16203991#11)

Any way you look at it you have a bad situation. This sounds like a clash of
personalities. While the behavior is not right, the fact is that a lot of
companies will 'manage out' people unfairly etc.. Politics and personality
clashes are never fair. In a capitalistic society money tends to trump social
justice. It sucks, but it would take some pretty large structural changes to
the economy to really fix that.

If the founders wife is causing issues with other employees then that could be
an issue. The question is would this cause enough of a legal liability for the
company to do something? Will edging out the founder be beneficial to the
company, the investors and the profit of the company or not? Be it right or
wrong, that is the question that is going to be asked in the board room if
that option is even on the table with Github.

While I like to see justice and fairness in these situations something tells
me that it is probably not likely to happen any time soon. Similar scenarios
to this have been playing out in many different industries and many different
countries for years.....and unfortunately will continue to.

~~~
retrogradeorbit
Nor in Australia, is HR your friend. I had a very similar situation to this,
as a male, in a software development environment. Even down to the bullying
and the silently deleted files and commits. The thing I learnt about HR is
they are not professionals. They do not exist to perform the professional
duties associated with Human Resources. They may tell you and themselves that,
but they are the formalised face (at an arms length so a claim of 'separation'
can be made) of the power in upper management and their wish to do away with
people they don't like.

In fact a lot of this story rings true with my past experience. It sounds to
me like a toxic workplace with a bad management culture. And it is also sexist
to add insult to injury. I would like to say that these people will reap what
they sow, but I've found organisations like this tend to protect the
sociopaths who abuse their power. A culture like this normally extends all the
way to the top. So I agree nothing is likely to happen. In fact quite the
opposite. Those bullies will be protected and promoted. Any claims of bullying
will be dismissed by HR. The messenger will be shot. The truth tellers will
not be greeted with laurels.

I would say the only thing to do, if you are in a situation to do it, is legal
action. It's the only thing people like that understand. Power and money. So
take their money if you can. And find a better place to contribute your
skills. There are better places to work out there. They may not be as
glamorous, but they will be much more enjoyable places of employment, and much
more appreciative of what you have to offer.

~~~
lgleason
I do agree that the bullies will be protected and promoted.

Unfortunately the legal action doesn't really solve the problem. Usually the
companies just find loopholes around whatever they were sued for an it is
business as usual.

For most companies once you get large enough the question is not if you will
be sued, but when you will be sued. The incentives need to be changed to
change the system.....which would mean a shift away from the winner takes all
capitalism that we are in.

~~~
kansface
Your comment makes no sense to me. How would throwing out capitalism take
sexual harassment with it?

~~~
lgleason
It doesn't take it with it directly, but it dismantles some of the extreme
power differential.

------
theorique
The bad actor in this version of the story seems to be the founder's wife. And
the founder certainly dropped the ball by not keeping his wife in line.

For whatever reason, the wife acted crazy, intimidating, and creepy toward
Horvath. Why? Who knows? Maybe because of jealousy or concern that her husband
was interested in this (admittedly reasonably attractive) female employee?

The founder needed to do the professional thing and keep his wife in check,
separating business and personal affairs, and not allowing this weird behavior
to continue. He needed to act like a leader, taking charge in both his
workplace and his home when it looked like things were getting out of hand.

And the romantically inclined co-worker is guilty of two things: (1) slightly
clueless behavior toward a person who was already involved in a relationship
with someone else (2) extremely bad timing. He's not the worst offender in
this whole drama. (Edit: I forgot (3) taking revenge by reverting code
commits. That is far worse than (1) or (2) - it is unprofessional behavior and
calls for some form of workplace discipline.)

(Disclaimer: everything I wrote assumes that the article is telling the
complete truth)

~~~
jsmthrowaway
> keeping his wife in line.

I have never cringed so hard in my life.

~~~
Dylan16807
Please, just delete this comment. Yeah oh my god that sentence could be
interpreted wrong. We don't need a tangent about it. The real meaning has
absolutely nothing to do with subordination. It's a simple matter of keeping
your friends/relatives/partners out of _your_ job. They don't work there, they
shouldn't be interfering.

Also, shame on anyone that upvotes such a derail just because they agree with
the words.

~~~
phazmatis
What do we have, if not words, to convey complex meanings? We can't all be
telepaths like you.

His wife doesn't need to be kept in line... his wife needs to be kept _out_ of
company business unless she's an employee.

~~~
Dylan16807
The 'line' seems clear to me, the company/not-company boundary.

And I wasn't disparaging words. But if I pick some post and comment 'freedom
is good!' I'm not contributing to productive discussion no matter how many
people agree.

------
Aqueous
I'm not entirely sure the hula-hooping incident - merely observing girls hula
hooping is not a crime, is it? - by itself constitutes a hostile atmosphere
for women, unless inappropriate comments were being made.

What we have here is some completely inappropriate, cloak and dagger, soap
opera shit being perpetrated by the wife of the cofounder, who has no business
meddling in the affairs of his employees. (If true, this is completely bizarre
behavior.) But I'm not entirely sure this hostility was directed at her simply
because she was a woman.

She is absolutely justified in getting the fuck out of dodge, either way.

~~~
SolarNet
I don't think it creates a 'hostile' atmosphere per say. Obviously if both
parties are alight with the situation then it's fine for them.

I think it's an inappropriate one for a workplace though. This comes down to
company culture. The problem isn't the women hula hooping, a casual
environment means such things will happen. People will exercise together, work
on hobbies, etc.

The problem is that in a work environment everyone who works there has to be
treated with respect, and equally, and that means not cat-calling your co-
workers. Even if the women were fine with it (and they probably were since
they didn't stop), the large group of men treating them like sexual objects in
the workplace is not conducive to an environment where women are respected. If
this was a strip club there wouldn't be a problem.

To draw a parallel, if 7 out of 10 people at the office were having nerf gun
fights, and it was disrupting other peoples work (because they are reflexively
duck, etc) to the point where they can't work when there aren’t big nerf gun
fights (but still one or two shots every now and then), then it's a problem,
and destructive to a good work environment. This is where management needs to
step in and say, "ok guys, I know we are pretty lax around here, but seriously
cut this shit out". Obviously it isn't a perfect parallel.

It's also a culture fit thing. This was the thing that broke the camels back.
This employee suffered discrimination from executives (and startup founder's
significant others are likely going to be part of the executive team one way
or another. They certainly have the standing of the executive team in many
ways. Legally speaking they are almost the same 'person' in many ways), she
suffered discrimination from a single employee, and then she suffered it from
a group of employees (a group mentality). And all three of these things feed
into each other, and in a work environment (especially a casual one),
employees need to be able to move their bodies without worrying about a group
of other employees demeaning them.

~~~
hueving
>and that means not cat-calling your co-workers.

There was no cat-calling in this case, so why bring that up? I suppose you
could mention also that it's not okay to rape your co-workers too. Kinda
disingenuous though, isn't it? Bringing it up in the context of this story
implies that it happened.

~~~
SolarNet
My mistake (noticed when I went back to quote the article), I misread:

> What I did have a problem with is the line of men sitting on one bench
> facing the hoopers and gawking at them

as

> What I did have a problem with is the line of men sitting on one bench
> facing them, hollering and gawking at them

But the point remains. Although it's a bit less in severity than I first
realized.

------
shiven
Can someone please explain to me why-the-f was a non-employee granted full and
free access to other company employees, each and every day, on company
premises, without mutual consent?

What were the other co-founders thinking? This was a darn time-bomb waiting to
explode. Just because you are a fancy-pants, hotshot startup and not a bigco,
does not mean the same laws and liabilities don't apply to you.

Founders, all that blood, sweat and tears _will_ go down the drain if you
ignore the stodgy, boring, beuraucratic 'nonsense' that was designed to
protect humans from other humans, as soon as you have more than one human in
your beloved startup.

Humans will be humans, sooner or later; so you need to cover the proverbial
mattress in waterproof covering, for _there will be piss,_ eventually.

~~~
mattdeboard
"Red tape isn't always a straitjacket. Sometimes it's a crash harness."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7408600](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7408600)

------
asimov42
That hula hoops bit was a bit... strange. If it were a couple of attractive
girls I probably would also find myself staring. I mean, its just not
something you see everyday working at an office. I understand being stared at
is uncomfortable too, and they should feel free to do whatever they want of
course. It just sounds like how unattractive people "stare creepily" while
attractive people "look."

~~~
theorique
Watching your co-workers as they hula-hoop in the office doesn't sound
terribly sexist or out of the ordinary [1]. Hula hooping in the office is
offbeat enough that you'd _expect_ people to stop and look And it's certainly
not the some kind of 'last straw' sexist incident.

Obviously, what happened is that Horvath was already upset from the weirdness
that had transpired thus far - and based on the article, it _does_ sound
pretty weird.

Because of this she read a lot of 'meaning' into the hula-hooping that just
wasn't there. It's hard to see how this situation could be a last straw
otherwise.

[1] i.e. "hula hooping in the office" is out of the ordinary ... _watching_
something out of the ordinary is _normal_

~~~
RodericDay
It could easily have been there. Stop being condescending.

A lot of "normal" interactions between men and women are fraught with creepy
weirdness due to the way we're socialized. This is well studied, even if you
find the conclusions of those researchers unpalatable.

~~~
facepalm
I think it's a problem if women (or men) start dishing out accusations from
projecting something into other people's faces. "They looked leery" \- what
sort of accusation is that? All bets are off if such a thing is held up as
evidence for sexism.

There is a famous early cinema experiment which cuts the same closeup of a
face with three different scenes (don't remember, I think a funeral, something
to eat, whatever). Each time the viewer interprets a different emotion into
the face (sad, or hungry, or yearning, or whatever).

------
mynameisasdf
I can't believe that no one has spotted that she is exactly the same annoying
feminist that forced the company to get rid of a rug because it used the term
"meritocracy". [http://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-
rug#awesm...](http://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-
rug#awesm=~oyFXbQA3ijTg0q) Tbfh, she sounds like Adria Richards v2.0

~~~
wyclif
I found that episode terribly confused, and I never understood the rationale
behind it. Isn't "meritocracy" a value and environment that feminists have
told us over and over again is a positive development for women? Don't women
want to work in a "meritocracy" precisely because their work will be valued
and appreciated not because they are women but because excellence at work
knows no sex, colour, or creed?

~~~
chippy
The reasoning goes like this:

"Meritocracy is all well and good as a theory. It's all about who decides what
merit is. If it's a privileged group of people who decide the merit, then it's
going to be biased. Thus championing meritocracy in this organisation means
upholding a hierarchy which is unfair, biased and oppressive to those outside
of the people at the top".

In other words, meritocracy = an aristocracy of white males, where if you do
good according to white male values you progress. Therefore meritocracy is not
progression based on good work.

In a less gender explanation - removing the rug equated to a statement of a
lack of trust in the employers. The employers agreed to it being removed in an
attempt to gather back some of that trust.

What the whole issue ignores is that the rug was about the platform -
meritocracy - because all people see is code, where the better projects get
the more stars. Now there is a valid argument here that popularity doesn't
equal merit - but it does not negate the concept of meritocracy.

Anyhow, I'm just the messenger - I think that there are some serious problems
with this reasoning. It's horrible to twist something good to something bad.

~~~
voidlogic
When I look for libraries to use on github I don't know or care about the
race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs of the person
who wrote the code...

I'm amazed the company wouldn't respond to her by saying: while the tech
industry is a very imperfect meritocracy, and our company is still an
imperfect one, the service we provide attempts to be a true meritocracy. The
rug is about the goal, not the status quo.

------
mwhite
Well, there are only three Github founders, and a quick search seems to
indicate that Tom Preston-Werner is the only one with a wife, Theresa:
[http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/27/omakase-charity-tech-
indust...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/27/omakase-charity-tech-industry/)

~~~
jaydz
Any guess who this is? “well-liked at GitHub” and “popular in the community.”

~~~
eropple
This is super screwed up enough, I think we can do without the random guesses,
yeah?

~~~
zobzu
not sure whats wrong with guesses specially if there's a disclaimer saying
it's his guess, actually...

otherwise, might as well not think of comment at all, since there would be
nothing to say. (that goes for many, many other topics)

~~~
LockeWatts
Guessing could get a random employee at GitHub who is completely innocent
targeted with a lot of hatemail he didn't deserve.

Just because someone says "I'm guessing", doesn't mean people wouldn't roll
with it.

------
rdl
This sounds less like sexism and more just non-sexist batshit crazy people and
incompetent HR. Somehow that isn't particularly better.

~~~
agf
I think the implication is that none of this would have happened, or at least
would not have been tolerated, if she was male. And it sound like the basis of
her relationship with the founder's wife being "crazy" was that she was a
female employee. So I'd say sexism played a significant role here.

~~~
eruditely
Uhm, it was female on female. Is male on male intimidation, sexism? Because
men are the primary victims of violence, and their sex being highly relevant
to that, is that sexist? I don't think you would say that in this case it is.

Not to say there can't be girl/women on girl/women sexism.

~~~
ZoF
What? The sexist part of this isn't the Founder's Wife's behavior(that sounds
standard crazy), it's everyone at Github's behavior.

/* Let me preface this by saying we have only seen half the story at this
point, so I wouldn't make absolute judgements yet and the below is based on
the hypothetical situation in which the linked article is 100% factual. */

If my founder was female and her husband was coming into work regularly to
harass employees(or even at work at all...?)he would be dealt with _fast_. It
seems that in this case(if the situation was anything close to as described)
the founders wife was sitting next to a programmer for long periods of time
and it wasn't dealt with.

So yeah, while this does appear to be more of a, "damn that founder and his
wife be crazy" situation, we shouldn't forget that societal perceptions of
gender are always influencing how these situations are handled. Creating an
environment where situations like this are handled differently between genders
is definitely to be avoided.

~~~
XorNot
It's also worth considering that we have no idea if the founder's wife was
also doing this to other male employees. She may have been - and gender
perceptions being what they are, we're even _less_ likely to hear about it.

~~~
ZoF
Yep, honestly I just hope GitHub makes a response sooner rather than later.
The longer this festers before we get a counterpoint the worse it will be.

Also hope it doesn't turn into the mud-slinging it seems to be headed towards.

------
curiousDog
To me, it seems like this sort of problem occurs more in start-ups because the
boundaries between professional and personal lives are blurred.

I've heard similar stories from people working at Facebook as well. This sort
of forced camaraderie to fit into the clique isn't healthy at all. When I
worked at Microsoft, we had quite a few talented female engineers on our team.
I don't think at any point their gender was brought into question or
discussion. We'd just solve problems, write code and have the occasional team
lunch where we'd talk about the latest software paradigms, competition etc and
go home.

~~~
noir_lord
I completely agree.

I don't have any insights into start up culture (the only one I've actually
been involved in is mine, There are two of us.) but I have worked for massive
companies where management was pretty evenly divided by gender and have
_never_ personally witnessed anything untoward (or actually heard about and
that place was a gossip mill).

------
droopyEyelids
Earlier I thought I wanted to know more about the situation. That was wrong.

~~~
mantrax
Exactly.

------
iamwil
Does it seem like it's not the whole story? It seems like there's a piece of
the story missing from before the wife's chat over beers.

It doesn't seem like the wife of a boss would ask a specific employee to one-
on-one beers, unless she had a specific topic in mind. And boasting about
pulling strings at Github seems like an unlikely purpose.

To me, it sounds like something happened that was unmentioned. And the wife
was asked to talk to her, in order to help settle the aftermath, and make sure
she was happy there. (I'm not sure why the wife was deployed instead of HR)
Seen another way, it sounds like the wife was trying to help make her happy at
work, and not trying to boast.

However, something went awry at the chat, and they seemed to end up not liking
each other.

Anyone else feel like the whole story's not being told here?

~~~
grifpete
I have a hypothesis but it's probably bullshit.

If a) Horvath had felt for some time that she was in a hostile work
environment and that she was being subjected to pressures that a male employee
would not have to endure (ie sexist discrimination, and b) the company senior
management / founder(s) felt that there was a risk that she was going to leave
and go public with her allegations of sexism, then c) it makes a twisted kind
of sense that the founder would send his wife to go talk to Horvath to try to
negotiate some kind of truce, make her happy. The (unfortunate) logic being
that a woman to woman communication might be better for defusing Horvath's
concerns. d) unfortunately the wife, whilst female, handled it clumsily and
make matters worse...and as the situation deteriorated she played an
increasingly crazy and (apparently) unmanaged role. For all we know she had
represented to her founder husband that she could handle it and panicked when
things started going downhill. e) etc etc

Like I said, it's probably bullshit...

~~~
iamwil
Your hypothesis was what I was thinking, and that a) was the part of the story
that wasn't being told.

Like you, I have no idea what's actually going on, but the way the story was
told, either by Horvath or the TC writer, the details didn't quite add up. I
guess we wait until Github comes out with a statement.

------
xrctl
The problem with the founder's wife sounds like a very one sided account of
your standard interpersonal conflict. Everyone who has ever been in one of
those has at some point claimed themselves to be a saint and their opponent a
demon.

The alleged sexism seems to be primarily imaginary.

The anonymous posting that so upset her and precipitated all of this said:

> has a history of RAGINING against any professional criticism. Leadership has
> stood idly by while she lied about contributions and threw hardworking
> coworkers under the bus (again and again)[1]

To be honest, it seems to me that such could very well be true.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/444646082857820160/phot...](https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/444646082857820160/photo/1/large)

~~~
devnonymous
A good thumb rule to apply to verify whether something is about sexism is to
think whether things would have played out differently if the sex of the
victim was different. Do you still think in this case the alleged sexism is
imaginary ? Hard to say but I'd lean towards thinking that is Julie was a guy
the problem with the founder's wife wouldn't get this bad - so, IMHO, yes,
this is about sexism.

------
lindig
Two women are dancing to music at work in a tech company and the author
compares this to a scene at a strip club as men are watching this. Unless this
was a regular exercise, what was everybody expecting? Nobody taking notice?

~~~
dangero
Yeah this section really damaged her credibility for me. She says the guys
were "gawking", so they were not saying anything inappropriate, just "staring
openly and stupidly". I can picture a professional business environment where
gawking would be inappropriate, but I have a hard time picturing that
environment with women hula hooping to music. Plus is gawking a crime? Yes,
those random employees were being unprofessional, but worth writing about in
an email to Tech Crunch?

~~~
freshfunk
Same. This just makes it look like she's overly sensitive and perceiving
things in a very skewed and unfair light.

~~~
Spearchucker
Given what she's gone through and experienced until that point, over-
sensitivity might be expected, if not justifiable.

I'd caution against taking any single event in isolation and without context.

------
anthonyshort
Probably worth mentioning that the hula hoop dancing happened at a Github
party with a lot of people not from Github. It was also super badass hula
hooping, not just regular dancing. Everyone was looking, men and women,
because it was pretty awesome.

~~~
Udo
This info makes the last item of the article even _more_ bizarre. I'm starting
to think this was reported inaccurately by TC. Maybe she was really referring
to a separate incident that happened at the hula dancing event, an incident we
don't have any information about. Otherwise, this makes no sense.

~~~
kyberias
It makes all the sense when you consider the possibility that she might be a
person that specifically collects even the smallest pieces of evidence to
support her theories of sexism and bigotry in the workplace.

~~~
pron
Sexism in tech companies is a fact whether this "smallest piece of evidence"
supports it or not.

~~~
kyberias
Of course. It is also a fact in every single community of a certain size
because there's always a number of that have sexist behavior.

------
belorn
A founders wife felt that a female employee puts the company at risk, so she
try to control the employee to avoid harm to the company. This then turned
into bullying, stalking, and unhealthy work environment.

This is why affirmative action and other "let treat women specially" crap is
bad. It makes for a self-fulfilling prophesy of more sexism. The more we focus
on "balancing the scales" rather than eliminating special treatment of women,
the faster we can reach a place where everyone is treated the same regardless
of gender.

The rest of the story is not about sexism. The guy who got rejected is the
prime example why some companies (and government, and armies) have anti-
fraternization policies. The positive and negative aspects of office romances
are old, well established and equal by both genders. At best, it is gender
equal sexism.

The dancing event however sound purely made up in her mind. As a species, we a
interested in what others are interested in, and when people laugh or is
having fun, it attracts attention. It has nothing to do with sexism.

~~~
phillmv
>This is why affirmative action and other "let treat women specially" crap is
bad.

This does not follow from your premise.

The founder's wife's relationship to the company is inappropriate. That is
also not what affirmative action is about.

------
Myrmornis
_Two women [...] were hula hooping to some music. [...] What I did have a
problem with is the line of men sitting on one bench facing the hoopers and
gawking at them. It looked like something out of a strip club. When I brought
this up to male coworkers, they didn’t see a problem with it._

I don't see a problem with it. One does not "hula hoop" in a place of work if
one does not want to be looked at.

------
ryan-allen
The wife sounds batshit crazy, but this behaviour is unfortunately pretty
normal for some people who feel like they're in some kind of position of
power.

She asks a reasonably prolific female developer out to drinks and power trips
all over her. It's just disgusting bigoted behaviour, and it happens with
males just as often.

I hope that whoever's founders' wife gets smacked in to line here to stay out
of company affairs. But in the end, when companies are privately owned, the
owners have a certain immunity to this kind of bullshit and get away with it.

The probable outcome is that the wife will get a slap on the wrist while
receiving crap-tonnes of likely dividends, which I'm sure will make her feel
much better and well vindicated.

------
eruditely
This just sounds like plain old drama of the old fashioned sort, and not
especially one that relies on sexism, but crazy people.

The difference being that sexism would be something ordinary citizens do
naturally that is intolerable and is putting up with a discriminatory past or
status quo and they are not being cognizant of what they are doing. This is
just straight drama.

So far at least.

------
gojomo
While the 'wife' aspect has drawn a lot of attention, it seems that through
her marriage she may essentially have a founder's level of equity in the
company. I don't know the personalities involved, but she might also have
relevant professional experience, and/or have been genuinely helpful in
handling thorny issues in the past (even if this case clearly escalated into
many kinds of mutual suspicion and recriminations).

So it seems you could replace 'wife' in the retelling with 'early investor and
advisor', and be equally accurate, but _without_ the extra (gender-loaded)
implication of improper influence being exercised by some meddling consort.

~~~
stefantalpalaru
> it seems that through her marriage she may essentially have a founder's
> level of equity in the company

What about the founder's mom? Or the founder's father? Or the founder's
children? Or the founder's dear grandma?

There's a reason why equity and investor/adviser roles should be clear and
formalized. Bringing cookies at your spouse's work place doesn't entitle you
to anything more than polite greetings.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_property](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_property)

~~~
stefantalpalaru
I don't think that property acquired during the marriage extends to jobs.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
No but it does to stock.

------
jmspring
If allegations of non-employee/founder wife scenario is true, I would hope the
board shows said founder the door. Beyond being in bad taste, it's exposing
the company to some serious liabilities...

~~~
greenrd
What's the big deal? I am not a lawyer and I have no idea of the issues
involved here, but surely if she was now made an employee and given a salary
of $0, the fact that she was a significant investor (via her husband's shares)
would make her relatively high-ranking within the company. So yes legally the
fact that she didn't have that piece of paper (an employment contract) might
matter, but why should it matter morally?

~~~
grifpete
a) you can't fix the problems of the past by giving her a job now b) being a
significant investor doesn't make you 'relatively high-ranking in the
company.' You are either an employee with a high ranking job, or an investor.
If you have no executive functions and are just an investor you are not
entitled to intervene in day to day affairs unbidden. c) It matters morally
because even if she had the paper that would not entitle her to talk and
harass an employee with the tacit support and protection of a senior member of
the company.

------
patrickg_zill
Some geeky types will be tempted, upon founding a startup, to thus not have
ANY women in significant roles in the company, and to keep it as guys-only as
possible; outsourcing as needed and doing the other legal legwork as required
to stay under the headcount (is it >50 people?) to avoid the EEOC.

~~~
gametheoretic
I'll be more than tempted. To be 100% honest, I have that thought every single
time I read any article or blog post about sexism in tech. If programmers with
a Y-chromosome are exponentially less likely to either sue us or get us
labelled sexist jerks in the press, then that's who we're hiring.

~~~
devnonymous
"To be 100% honest, I have that thought every single time I read any article
or newspaper report about a shootout or burglary in the community. If people
with a white bloodline are statistically less likely to either rob us or get
us labelled racists jerks in the press, than that's who we're hirig." \-- do
you now see what's wrong with this kind of thinking ?

~~~
gametheoretic
No, because I read 1000x times more of the one than of the other, and I
personally see and experience one and not the other. That you'd even bring up
the comparison makes me think you're not taking this seriously, as a reality
to deal with and not an internet crusade.

Read the statement again. I'm not laying blame on any party. I am only taking
the position that _whatever the cause is_ , I don't know any better than
anyone else how to avoid it.

~~~
devnonymous
I guess the point I was trying to make was lost on you somehow.

I wasn't trying to say this is the exact same thing and that racism is
something you'd hear about as frequently as sexism these days ! I was trying
to make the parallel that just a few decades ago it would've been a perfectly
acceptable thing to play it safe and say ".. than that's who we're hirig."
based purely on this kind of skewed reasoning about races.

The reason you hear more about women bringing up these issues is because more
women _are_ bringing up these issues, which until recently were either non-
existent (because there weren't as many women in tech), or were ignored/hushed
or 'dealt with quietly' \-- much like race issues ...or for that matter
general quality issues between the sexes. The reason you "...personally see
and experience one and not the other." is precisely because the other (ie:
racism) was brought up ...repeatedly ...dirt was kicked up ...fingers pointed
...positions defended ...often under the guise of 'ah well, this issue isn't
about being racists as much as it is about the individuals'. In the end
though, most people 'got it'. Hopefully you now see the parallel I was trying
to make.

About your statement " That you'd even bring up the comparison makes me think
you're not taking this seriously, as a reality to deal with and not an
internet crusade." ..well, I personally feel this is a very serious matter and
if you got any other impression from what I said, it possibly is due to my
inability to get the point across.

About your statement "Read the statement again. I'm not laying blame on any
party. I am only taking the position that whatever the cause is, I don't know
any better than anyone else how to avoid it." ...I'm sorry, I really don't see
how the 'I don't know any better than anyone else how to avoid it.' bit is
supposed to be implied by " then that's who we're hiring." bit ...maybe my
comprehension skills are lacking although I suspect they aren't and you're
just trying to somehow deflect your earlier statement by misdirection.

~~~
gametheoretic
Your point was not lost on anyone over the age of 12.

------
ohsnapman
My gut tells me there was probably sexism at GitHub, drama with founder's
wife, AND she was probably not blameless either in this whole mess. It was
disheartening to me to see people rally to her on Twitter and immediately cry
for the sacking of GitHub before any facts or concrete allegations were made
by anyone involved, her especially. That's the stuff angry mobs are made of.

~~~
pyre
True, but you can also witness the opposite on Twitter: Claims of sexism met
with a deluge of trolls threatening to rape the claimant.

~~~
ohsnapman
That's worse than disheartening to me. That's straight up disgusting. I
haven't seen the threats yet but it doesn't surprise me.

------
amix
Allegation that a wife of a founder can read private chats at GitHub makes me
question GitHub's privacy and security... I would love if we would have a
statement of GitHub on this matter since it would be a huge privacy breach
(and something that would make us move all of our private repos outside of
GitHub). (posted this as a comment on the article as well)

~~~
joshbert
That is largely the stand out of the article for me. I know this story will be
forgotten and buried in no more than a week, but until they address this, I'm
going to use BitBucket instead.

------
iancarroll
Until there's a second side to this my GitHub use is not going to continue.
Sad to see this happen, but it's not hard to change origins on my repos to
BitBucket or Gitlab.

edit: and again, it's two commands to push my repo back. but i have no
interest in being with github at this time

~~~
sudhirj
But why? Despite it's dubious origins, Github remains an excellent / superior
product. One may not agree with the way they do things (and even that seems to
be some, not everyone in the organization), but is that really a reason to
stop using the product?

[https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/genetic](https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/genetic)

~~~
kaoD
He's not judging the product good or bad. He's just "voting" the company with
his actions, as we all should.

~~~
Crito
Well that doesn't make sense. Unless he's randomly voting without
consideration, then of course he evaluated the various options and "judged"
them. That's rather the point of voting, isn't it?

------
watwut
The story is confirming my long held prejudice/bias. If a company/organization
organizes women only activities, then there is something profoundly wrong in
their relationship towards women.

~~~
MarkTee
The Passion Projects site says that attendance is usually 50% male/50% female.

[http://passion-projects.github.com/](http://passion-projects.github.com/)

~~~
claudius
‘Talks From Incredible Women In Tech, Every Month’ does not sound like 50/50\.
That said, even a 50/50 ratio is lopsided given the ratios of graduating
students in the relevant fields.

------
AgathaTheWitch
I'm not the first to mention it but for me the big issue is the wife having
access to private company information. That type of thing really does make me
start thinking about Bitbucket (any other good alternatives dudes?).

I don't see a ton of sexism here though. A developer removing her code because
she didn't want to date him isn't sexism. It's unprofessional as hell and
possibly a fireable offense depending on the circumstances, but it's not about
a generalized animosity toward women.

The hula hoop thing too seems dumb. Maybe you had to be there? Were the male
developers' tongues out? Were they making obscene comments? Two ladies hula
hooping in the middle of an office is likely to attract attention. Are men
supposed to immediately duck and cover and avert their eyes? Seems like she's
over-reacting.

Still, assuming everything stated in the article is true, it does raise
questions about the founders' judgment. I really like Github and this
situation certainly is disappointing.

~~~
krallja
> any other good alternatives dudes?

Come try Fog Creek Software's Kiln!

------
bowlofpetunias
I wondered how long it would take for one of these "no management" cults to
unravel.

Put people in charge (call them managers or not, whatever), and you may get
the wrong people in charge.

Put no one in charge, and the douchebags, manipulators and sociopaths will end
up domination the culture.

I prefer box #1, thankyouverymuch. At least those can be easily identified and
removed before the whole thing has rotten to the core. And if I was part of a
minority in such a company, like women generally are in tech startups, I would
avoid #2 like the plague.

Also, this is just begging for a culture were the founders will remain the
only authority. And founders are generally not known for being very good at
the actual day to day running of a company.

The sexism is a red herring here btw. Could have been any form of bullying and
manipulation.

------
barce
The law is very clear on discriminating against someone by virtue of race,
gender and/or age in a work situation.

A lawyer could make a very good case just based on her side of the story for
the law being broken.

Against the coder who undid her work because he was rejected by _a woman_ ,
that is classic retaliation pure and simple. Most cases like this that don't
go to court settle in the Valley for $250k. It's a million at a minimum in the
Valley if it does go to court.

As far as the wife goes, there was so much innuendo in the article that I
wasn't sure what to conclude. Was the wife suggesting she hook up with her
husband because a happy husband would make the former employee's situation
better? If so, another classic open and shut case.

~~~
retrogradeorbit
Absolutely. What she should have done is not resigned, but lawyered up, and
started recording everything. When she resigned she lost her power. She did
exactly what they wanted her to do. I know it can be the hardest thing to do
in a situation like that. But the only thing people like that understand is
power and money. And taking $250k from them in a lawsuit is certainly going to
be noticed at the board level and by the investors.

------
Eliezer
Ooh! The media! We're supposed to blindly trust their reporting even though
they get wrong everything we know about personally, right?

Clarification from Julie Ann Horvath describing everything TechCrunch
misrepresented in 3... 2... 1...

(The real situation may be better or worse. TechCrunch may have left out info
that helps or damns GitHub. But you're naive if you think a journalist would
report on a story like this accurately.)

~~~
droopybuns
It would be enlightening to see case studies of instances where anyone in tech
tried leveraging journalists to solve career problems.

Over the long term, I am suspicious that volunteering yourself as a subject in
someone else's narrative does not do you any favors. It'd be nice to see an
analysis on how this kind of response benefits or hurts the subject
personally, professionally or emotionally.

~~~
eruditely
That may be the case, but they may perceive otherwise, at least initially.

------
einhverfr
Hmmm..... I read this slowly and I see intimidation, but it is a little short
on evidence of sexism. The evidence was a perception of sexism, but very
little evidence of it. How much of that was in her mind vs in actual
interactions with others (unless aggressive communication regarding pull
requests applied evenly to both genders is inherently sexist).

What I do see is something else though. I see a nebulous, bossless
organization where the founder's wife is effectively running the political
show. Call me old fashioned but that seems totally at odds with allegations of
sexism.

Reading between the lines I see something else going on. "I thought I could
fix X" (where X is either an organization or a person) is something that never
ends well.

I hate to say this but the article did not make me sympathetic to Horvath. I
have seen even in myself the tendency to try to fix an organization which was
working (just in ways I didn't understand) and causing issues in the process.

~~~
joshlegs
I think you have a lot of good points. Let me just point out that
aggressiveness in management is present IN EVERY INDUSTRY KNOWN TO MAN. I
faced it pretty hard in the news business. Just because your boss is
aggressive, and he's a man, AND you're a woman, doesnt mean shit for
evidencing sexist behavior. People need to realize that aggressive management
!= sexism.

------
discardorama
I'm curious about the "hula hoop" issue that Julie is referring to. As a male
nerd, I will admit that my social skills are a bit lacking. However: I don't
see the problem with staring at women who are putting on a show which is
clearly unrelated to their work.

If 2 women started making out in the break room, I'm ashamed to say that I
might just linger longer than usual.

~~~
heynk
It helps to focus on empathy in these situations. You may view their
activities or two lesbians as making a 'show', but perhaps to them it is a
personal matter which they would prefer to enjoy to themselves. Sometimes hula
hooping is just embarrassing and it's usually awkward to have a bunch of
members of the opposite sex staring at you while you do anything.

I don't blame you at all for having those natural reactions. I do too.

~~~
philwelch
If you don't want people to watch you snogging, you shouldn't be snogging in
public.

------
jroseattle
The impression this story leaves me with:

\- Github leadership is run by adolescents who behave as one might in high
school situations.

\- Good luck to whomever says they worked in Github HR at this point in time.
Your professional embarrassment is about to go off the charts.

\- Andreessen Horowitz gave these guys US $100MM. Yes, it reflects upon them
too.

But...I'd like to hear the other side of the story. As a manager for years,
I've seen situations like this before (although not this sensational.) While
the sexism word has been thrown out here, it's never anything as _simple_ as
gender. There are team dynamics at work, and those dynamics matter in context.

------
programminggeek
I would just like to say that this is not a "women in tech" problem. It's
basically that the same dynamics that exist in high school often exist in
business, especially small businesses. Replace the location: github with the
high school cafeteria and it sounds like not unexpected behavior.

I'm not exactly sure why women in tech think this is about being a woman or
being in tech or working at a tech company. The same behavior exists in non
tech companies and you can have equally screwed up relationships with
coworkers and their spouses as a man.

These problems are basic problems with people interacting with other people.

------
yeukhon
There seems to be several problems. Not entirely sexism.

1\. Founder's wife asked Horvath out and gave her a lecture about who is the
boss. Probably out of jealousy.

2\. Founder's wife physically inanimate Horvath, making her unwelcome and
scared.

3\. Founder did not stop the wife and protect his wife.

4\. Horvath was approached by a male co-worker and according to her her
rejection had caused tension between her and that co-worker.

5\. Horvath's partner is also a Github employee.

6\. Another founder tried to step in but the situation didn't really resolve.

7\. Horvath felt male co-workers gawking/staring/looking at female co-workers
hula-hooping while sitting in a couch looked like someone visiting a strip
club.

This is more like a failed company management than sexism _at work_.

A partner can help his or her partner looking after/helping/running a company
even as a non-employee. He or she could send employees your homemade cookie or
send them birthday card. It's okay to share thoughts with partner how to run a
company, how to resolve people-people problem.

But the founder should not let his or her partner to intimate anyone: HR,
executives, managers, engineers. This type of behavior, I thought I would only
see them in drama (well I guess you can say something about WhiteHouse...)

The founder accused Horvath for bringing love affair into the company because
she was/is dating an employee. The founder has a good point: try to avoid
dating someone working with you. It's a beautiful story; but you can cause all
sorts of mess. See this childish engineer who was rejected by Horvath became
angry at her and started ripping her code out. I have read about Github's open
culture, but hey, how could anyone do that!? And yet no one seen to care
internally at all because _he 's a popular figure_ in the company. Well, I
can't say everyone in that company is shit because there is also a rank in any
organization. I wouldn't go against someone senior or more popular unless I
have to. This is also a bystander problem: unless we have to deal with it, let
other people and the people in the story deal with the situation.

While the founder is right about avoiding dating someone in your own company,
he couldn't see that his wife (effectively meaning his own family problem) was
also leaking into the company's daily operation.

The other founder tried to help Horvath. The founder apologized and tried to
restrain his wife from sitting across Horvath. But the wife continued to "spy"
on her. She was welcomed to do whatever she want to do. Horvath tried to ask
other executives to help for the very last time and none worked out. Either
the founder was scared of his wife (love her so much he didn't want to yell at
her) or none of the executives really care. Someone with management skill
should have step in and tell the founder "stop letting your wife to come in!"

Apparently, people fear the founder? and the wife??

Regarding the strip-club comment, I don't know the best way to avoid it. I, as
a male, try to avoid staring at another female because I fear someone like
Horvath accuses me of sexism. Maybe the guy was just bored or thought that
female worker was beautiful. Staring at someone shouldn't be counted as
sexism. It's hard. Would a female staring at a beautiful male count as sexism?

I am not saying there is no sexism in work place, but I think Horvath's
overall sexist experience might have been influenced/augmented based on her
treatment in the company (no one stop the founder and his wife abusing power).

But hey, I am just reading off the article. Her experience could be worse! I
do feel bad for all the intimations she had to go through. I felt really bad
as I was reading the article.

Final point:

 _Horvath then told her partner, also a GitHub employee, about what was
happening. She warned him against being close to the founder and his wife, and
asked him not to relay information to them._

I have a mixed feeling. If I were in his situation, I would try to sort out
the problem with the founder myself. But now that I read about it, I guess in
the future, if I were in a similar situation, I would not talk it out until
situation gets worse.

~~~
jd0
To clarify for many of you, you don't need someone shouting "I HATE WOMEN" for
sexism to be occurring. The sexism in this scenario is subtle and persistent,
something that likely tainted all of the workplace interactions at github,
allowing a female employee's problems at work to be continually ignored. This
eventually built up to the issue most people are focusing on, a founders
spouse being allowed to harass an employee, which is not so much the main
issue but a major symptom of a larger issue at github and in the tech industry
as a whole, that issue being the downplaying of women's concerns, opinions and
needs.

The hula hooping moment was important because it visibly demonstrated her male
coworkers lack of respect for women as people. They were unabashedly staring
at their female coworkers as "eyecandy" in that moment and even defended their
doing so.

~~~
Cederfjard
> The hula hooping moment was important because it visibly demonstrated her
> male coworkers lack of respect for women as people. They were unabashedly
> staring at their female coworkers as "eyecandy" in that moment and even
> defended their doing so.

I have never understood how this argument works, obviously I'm missing
something. Because I momentarily focus my attention on someone for their
physical attributes, I automatically and necessarily consider them "eyecandy"
rather than intelligent people with their own will that are to be respected?
Does this work with other attributes - if I appreciate and acknowledge someone
for X, does that mean that X is all they ever are to me? If the male employees
had put on an impromptu bodybuilding pageant, would that have been the same
thing?

Naturally, the fact that the woman in question was actually disturbed by the
situation does indicate that there is cause for concern.

~~~
jd0
It's possible to recognize the attractive features of someone while still
being conscious of their humanity. Obviously there are degrees of attention
you can give someone based on their looks that goes from socially acceptable
to socially unacceptable.

I'm a man so I can't speak for women directly, but what I've gathered from the
experiences of others is that women are interacted with on an attraction basis
exponentially more than men are, this also constantly ranging from socially
acceptable to unacceptable, wanted and unwanted. It manifests in little ways,
cat-calling, aggressive or unwanted flirtation, maybe a creepy controlling
coworker suddenly confessing his love? My own mom told me about a time when a
total stranger grabbed her butt in a store and walked off. It makes sense to
me that many women would be extra-sensitive to scenarios like this. Men
literally don't have to deal with interactions like this at that level so it's
totally different when the gender roles are reversed, and it's rare that they
are.

The importance of that scenario was that it was relative to her entire work
experience at Github. Even if we assume the intentions of the male workers
were totally golden and the hula-hoopers were totally fine with their gawking,
to me it makes sense why this scene would be triggering for her.

~~~
tomp
> to me it makes sense why this scene would be triggering for her

It makes sense to me as well, but if I were her boss, I would ask _her_ to
take a more professional and less emotional perspective of the workplace (of
course, after (hopefully having her problems presented in a clear manner and)
solving the other issues that were causing her to feel unwelcome).

~~~
achompas
This is the core problem, though: it's difficult (impossible?) for someone to
be professional when everyone around them is so unprofessional. Worse still
when none of their claims are fully addressed by management.

There was no resolution here. I don't blame her for taking these steps to out
Github.

~~~
tomp
That only more reason to be extremely professional - noone can blame anything
on you. Or maybe it's just my viewpoint of the world, but I would take the
most defensive route possible, and use the experience to my advantage (learn
as much as possible, gain relevant & valuable experience, eject into another
company as high as possible).

------
trustfundbaby
This is just really really messy and could have all could have been handled
differently.

Also, not so much sexism here as drama, a lot of which, it seemed, Ms Horvath
herself participated in :\

------
lancewiggs
What should Github do?

My take: The founder leaves, at least for six months, and his wife has no
further involvement ever. The clueless spurned programmer leaves, at very
least works from home for six months or more but is preferably publicly fired.
His behaviour is unacceptably unprofessional and as good as he might be it's
not good enough to destroy a culture. The entire team (and many commenters
here need this too) get coached on why its rude to stare at people, even if
they are hula hooping or different. And of course a public apology (and
hurry), financial support for an appropriate cause and make Ms Horvath
financially happy.

It will be interesting to see the actual response. The immediate one should be
to stand all the protagonists down.

~~~
glitchdout
> The entire team (and many commenters here need this too) get coached on why
> its rude to stare at people, even if they are hula hooping or different.

You can't possibly be serious.

~~~
lancewiggs
Not really - but the fact we have to even point this out means that some
intervention is required.

------
bello
While I see how she had quite a few valid reasons for leaving, where exactly
was the sexism described? Sure, some of those people clearly have issues, but
I don't think it's reasonable to generalize that to a "sexist internal
culture" of an entire company.

I do feel bad that she had to go through all of that though.

------
iwasphone
> Horvath then told her partner, also a GitHub employee...

Protip: don't dip your pen in the company ink.

~~~
rdl
At big paranoid organizations (CIA, NSA, etc.), they _actively encourage_
internal relationships and marriages, as it simplifies security modeling. But
not really in the same group.

~~~
gaius
Actively encourage how? Genuinely curious, do you get a joint bonus if you
marry a cow-orker or something?

~~~
rdl
Social events, peer pressure.

------
graycat
Looks to me that the wife of the founder was doing something that is common,
'protecting her man'. She was getting a bit carried away and using poor
judgment and was apparently quite naive about business, but such things are
not rare.

So, it was two women fighting, very emotionally, and that's not rare either.

The founder needed to keep his wife 'at home' or some such, but these days
women resent such 'controls'. So, the wife was a loose cannon on the deck of
GitHub.

Maybe actually the wife was not a big problem except for the one woman in the
OP. So, the situation was allowed to continue too far.

And the woman in the story may have been a bit overly emotional about some
parts of the story.

Did the founder, the rest of management, HR, etc. do well? Nope. But who other
than the founder was going to apply 'discipline' to the wife of the founder?
Likely no one.

So, there was some office politics, some clashes of personalities, some social
discord, etc. Expect something else? Usually don't expect anything that looks,
so far, this bad.

But GitHub apparently has decided not to say anything until they have
developed some good plans and a careful statement, and that might take a
while. And in the meanwhile, the case will likely leave the headlines.

I expect that the case will 'blow over' with relatively little long term harm
to GitHub.

~~~
Fuxy
It may hurt githubs reputation a bit.

I'm quite certain some women in technology will avoid them now but the reality
is this has nothing to do with sexism.

No guy would ever bother to create this much drama. This is clearly a girl
problem.

I got one thing to say to that github founder man up and keep your wife in
check. What is she doing there to begin with anyway?

Doesn't she have anything better to do then attempt to look important while
harassing your employees?

~~~
graycat
> What is she doing there to begin with anyway?

Commonly wives help their husbands with the career or company of the husband
with a lot of help for the husband and nothing wrong.

Of course, in this case the wife blew it, but maybe she was a pest mostly just
for the woman of the OP so that others in the company didn't much care.

~~~
Fuxy
I honestly hope you are right and she was honestly trying to help however my
gut tells me it's all about appearances with this one.

Just the fact that she was told to leave her alone and she completely ignored
that request leads me to believe her husband has no control over her and she's
just a loose cannon.

Worse still he might actually back her up when people complain which is just
encouraging this bad behavior.

I looks to me that she is sabotaging the company and bringing a lot of drama
to the office instead of helping him.

------
tiler
"I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning,
confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild
and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous
something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to
be.” --Isaac Asimov

------
hrktb
There seem to be a lot of "it's not the organization, just some bad apples",
but if individuals do shitty things and the organization (HR, the other
founders, colleagues) can't do much about it, it's a company culture problem.

The simple fact that a non employee (founder's wife) can boast influence on
the decisions, stay at will on the work floor and just gets moved to another
floor after proven problematic behavior feels horribly fucked up from an
organizational perspective.

And then every other aspects of this story are so shitty, and these happen so
much in companies where indivuals wield so much more power that what their job
title says.

Of course, it's assuming the fact of the article are true.

------
xacaxulu
It's a shame that crying sexism is beginning to take on the trappings of Salem
Witch Trials. Simply implying that what happened was the result of sexism
seems to be enough proof that sexism was the cause. This is a nuanced case
that probably has much more to do with managerial mistakes. The sexism angle
in this story seems very forced and sort of used as a last minute boost to an
otherwise boring story of bad management.

~~~
erikpukinskis
How is the current situation like the Salem Witch Trials?

My memory is that in that situation people were burned at the stake for
allegedly doing things that are actually physically impossible to do. Like
casting spells on children.

In this case, an employee has accused other employees of several fireable, if
not illegal, actions. No one has been burned, or is in danger of being burned.
Possibly some people will be fired, but no one has even been named yet, and
ostensibly it will be left up to Github itself, and the courts.

What am I missing?

~~~
Crito
During the 20th century, references to the Salem witch trials were used
extensively to refer to hunts for people accused of doing things that _were_
possible. Namely being a communist.^ Unlike witches, it actually is possible
to be a communist, and it actually is plausible that there were communists in
the Federal government.

Comparing such communist hunts to witch hunts is not about comparing the
nature of the accused crime, _but rather_ about comparing the nature of the so
called investigation.

I have seen this explained _numerous_ times on HN in discussions similar to
this one. Several times I have explained it myself. I don't know if it is
feigned ignorance and purposeful obtuseness/offense seeking, or if people are
genuinely unfamiliar with the history of the term "witch hunt", but either way
this is getting rather tiring.

^ The most prominent example of this is Arthur Miller's _The Crucible_.

~~~
erikpukinskis
I would object less to the term "witch hunt" which you're right has become
idiomatic. But that's not the term that was used. The term used was "Salem
Witch Trials".

Additionally, I still think there is a qualitative difference between "this
person is bad because they're a member of a group we don't like" and "this
person is bad because they did a real destructive thing."

------
rdtsc
Well here we go Github-gate. Sigh...

Regardless of the truth, just based on allegations, and what they'll stir,
this will probably create a big mess.

I can't see who can possibly win in this case.

~~~
jkrems
If the situation with the one founder who is injecting outside people into
power is resolved, I would say everyone in the company wins (assuming the
picture painted in the article is accurate).

~~~
greenrd
If she is his wife then she co-owns part of the company with him (assuming
they do the "everything that is mine is yours" thing). So she is not an
uninvolved outsider, she is an investor.

------
teyc
Everybody should just back off and let Julie chill out before she damages
herself further. This is not a general complaint against company culture, but
a one that libels a lot of individuals.

------
Grue3
Wait, how is the wife of the founder pulling the strings "sexism"? It's the
opposite if anything.

~~~
mcv
It's not sexism. It's a different kind of wrong.

------
romanovcode
Can someone explain how does one gets a job after inflicting so much public
damage on his previous workplace?

~~~
michaelochurch
Before I answer this, let me state that I'm a tactician, not a judge or a god.
I don't know who's right and wrong in this mess, nor who's good and who's bad.

 _Can someone explain how does one gets a job after inflicting so much public
damage on his previous workplace?_

It's hard. She may need a professional to rework her public image (even if her
account is 100% accurate) and she'll want to settle for positive reference
(i.e. not sue Github, agree to a non-disparagement contract in which they
publicly state that she was an excellent employee, and that they've terminated
all responsible parties-- if the truth is that no one did anything wrong, then
they don't terminate anyone and that statement's vacuously true). She might
want to brand herself as an authority on workplace harassment and on what
light-management cultures need to do to protect themselves from bullying, and
maybe consult for a little while on how to make tech companies more accepting
of women. All the while, she'll have to paint a positive image of Github, even
if she dislikes the place (and may have a reason to). It'll probably be 4-5
years before she can get conventional employment at an appropriate
professional level.

At this point, she's made some serious tactical mistakes. For example,
mentioning the hula nonincident dilutes/weakens her case dramatically. The bit
about the founder's wife (if true) is utterly damning. The hula hoop? People
stare at anything out of the ordinary. If it were men flying quadcopters,
there'd be a group of people hanging to watch. Not sexist. When you take a
story of someone (or a company) doing bad and flower it with irrelevant petty
insults (they employ guys who stare at women!) it actually undermines the case
that one is trying to make.

If she can get Github to come out with a public story that makes her look good
but also saves its face, that's what she wants. She shouldn't play for cash
IMO. Considering taxes, attorney contingency, and the high risk that she
doesn't get anything, she's better off putting her energy into getting her
reputation fixed. Reputation repair and lawsuits are both exhausting processes
that may conflict and certainly compete for one's time and energy, and so it's
hard to do both.

~~~
greenrd
She claims she already has a new job to go to. I have to wonder, though,
whether that is still the case after she talked to TechCrunch.

~~~
gruntmaster9000
Horvath mentioned on Twitter they supported her coming forward about her
experience:

    
    
      nrrrdcore: I'm thrilled to be joining a new team in just
      a few weeks and they completely support me coming forward.
    

[https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/444881221865054208](https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/444881221865054208)

------
waylandsmithers
Wow, what an absolute train wreck. I've only worked for medium and large
companies with a borderline fantasy of hacking on a startup at some point.
Seeing the dark side of what happens when you rip out the bigco controls that
people tend to dislike really makes me think twice though. Sounds like you
just wind up with an out of control frat house.

------
LeicaLatte
Given her history of leaking company matters and trivia in such a detailed way
to a public blog like tech crunch, any company hiring her next is taking a big
chance.

The things that seem to have happened in this case happen all the time,
everywhere.

------
zby
What a mess!

But it looks like sexism was not the number one problem.

~~~
btilly
The coworker who thought she was an opportunity, and the failure to discipline
that coworker, definitely is sexism.

~~~
LockeWatts
The coworker should have been disciplined for mucking with the code out of
anger, but as far as being super uncomfortable around her I feel like a
healthy warning from his boss saying 'Hey, you're being inappropriate around
her' would probably be better in the long run than firing him.

------
seth1010
I'm interested in why so many people on that anonymous social network didn't
like her so much.

'Made our jobs infinitely harder. Good fucking riddance.'

------
jv22222
Without being there it's hard to discern the full facts from either side and
has the potential to be "he said she said" type of situation.

------
chris_wot
The thing I'm most concerned about is that a non-employee has access to
private records. Will GitHub confirm that the founders wife didn't have access
to information that is restricted?

This sounds awful!

------
_pmf_
To me, spreading this out in public is a nice way to tag onself as
unemployable / HR-risk.

------
chris_mahan
The company just seems to have immature leadership.

------
LeicaLatte
What is the tech angle to this? Basically people fighting with other people
over personal issues. Don't understand why techcrunch is covering this.

------
Nelson69
This sounds terrible, I'm sorry what happened and I'm sorry it's all out in
the open like that. While github may have some bad actors, I'm sure there are
some decent hard working folks there and in the leadership team there as well.

At risk of sounding like an a-hole, what has she done and why does she have a
gigantic twitter following? Just out of curiosity. As with Adria Richards I
can't help but think the social media power of the victim and then the public
nature of the story has a radical impact. One or both parties is likely to
receive some hate from the wild internet and that just doesn't seem useful or
good at all.

Not to condone or downplay or silence a victim, she could have just as well
hired a lawyer, spoke with HR and followed the same channels that are followed
at the IBM's and MS's and other big companies, all of which have had far more
torrid things happening. If there is anything I can take away, it is that I'd
be very careful with the kinds of social media I allow at my company.

------
sunseb
BTW, it's not sexism at all, the main issue here is between two girls...

~~~
dwb
The word is "women". Would you call their male co-workers "boys" in the same
context?

~~~
igravious
Oh give us a break, my Mum 60+ calls her friends 'girls'. The word hasn't been
'women' in ages. You people, sheesh.

~~~
dwb
(Late I know but) I said "in the same context". "Woman", "women" are very
common words, but men revert to "girl", "girls" when they (usually
unconsciously) are looking down on the woman in question. It should stop. As a
term of endearment used by another woman it is clearly not the same thing.

------
oh_sigh
Is there anything to comment on? the allegations should be looked in to, but
right now, it is the word of a single disgruntled employee.

------
UK-AL
Work culture at lot of startups is toxic regardless of sexism or not.

Very inexperienced manager/founders running a company tends to be the cause,
sometimes on powertrips.

Its ok if your in the inner circle, a world of hell if your not.

------
soheil
"The aforementioned wife began a pattern of passive aggressive behavior that
included sitting close to Horvath, to, as she told TechCrunch, “make a point
of intimidating” her."

Get a freaking life, go sit somewhere else if you see her sitting close to
you. And are you a mind-reader? What if she wasn't being "passive aggressive"
and just wanted to sit there! Unbelievable how as soon as a woman is involved
in tech industry everything blows out of proportion.

Again no one is winning, when a woman "stands for her rights", because when
you stand up for your rights that means you have to be standing up against
someone, that is a male or a female. If you're standing up against a female
well you're not helping the women cause. If it's a male you make the industry
look even worse than it is by portraying men as monster bullies who will do
and say anything to destroy a "woman". The argument against men can only win
if we keep repeating the same fairytales that we keep hearing from the likes
of her.

Geeks building an amazing platform like Github are different than the sexy
attractive guys that you see on TV. Their passion lies with technology they
are not here to gossip or put anyone down intentionally. We simply have better
things to focus on than caring about your petty feelings. We're men building
shit! Unless what women see men as changes drastically I don't see how men in
positions like this would take women as seriously as other men. And by that I
mean you can't think the guy must have a six-pack, not be nerdy, talk to you
about your feelings when you're down. This is not reality but this is what
women are brainwashed to expect from men in order to even truly respect them
as human beings. This is mainly the effects of watching TV and other media,
etc.

Change your perspective about your enemy (stop calling men your enemies) and
see if there is still such huge gender imbalance in tech.

~~~
kaoD
> What if she wasn't being "passive aggressive" and just wanted to sit there!

...day after day, staring at her, after a weird out of office interaction
where she was openly aggressive?

The wife was obviously trying to intimidate her and you seem to be the only
individual trying to deny it.

> If you're standing up against a female well you're not helping the women
> cause.

Women can be sexist bigots just like men.

> Geeks [...] are different than the sexy attractive guys that you see on TV.

Geeks can be sexy and attractive too.

Also: unsexy and unattractive guys can be sexist bigots too. Perhaps even
more, since they might subconsciously want to backlash for their lack of
sexual attention.

> We're men building shit!

You're exactly everything that's wrong with this industry.

We're not men building shit. We're people building shit. You even
intentionally left the girls out of the geek category!

How do you think a woman will feel welcome when you tell her to shut up her
concerns since "we're men building shit" and she's pretty much disturbing your
work? How do you want her to feel she belongs with us? Let me guess that: you
don't _want_ to!

You say they keep repeating the same fairy tales, but you seem like no fairy
to me.

-

PS: I actually think this whole fiasco is not about sexism and she has
disproportionately overblown the issue as gender warfare while it's just
corporate politics. I just had to point out _you_ are being sexist.

~~~
soheil
Why expect people to behave the way you want them to? If you don't like where
you're sitting move, other people are not responsible for how you feel. Again
are you a mind-reader how do you know what her intention was?

"Geeks might subconsciously want to backlash for their lack of sexual
attention" wow, you have it backwards, not seeking sex by geeks does not mean
they're secretly seeking it! Reason you're a geek is because you're dedicated
to one thing and spend lots of time doing it and ignoring other things,
because everything else has a lower priority. Many "outraged" women in tech
and people like you don't seem to get that, it's not a reflection on those
women it's a reflection on us.

We are men building shit. I am a male I am in tech if I could've make that
more specific I would have. You have no right to impose on me what specificity
level I wish to use in my speech or writings. You are right I am not a fairy I
am real and I will stand up to this non-sense every time I see it. And hope
others here are not intimidated by people like you or outraged women in tech
or New York Times articles or complete crap pieces on Tech Crunch.

------
joyeuse6701
Talk about double standards. Get chastised for relationship with co-worker,
When other co-worker impedes company growth (reverting commits) out of spite
for rejection, they do nothing? Holy crap.

It's hard to imagine this level of social dysfunction. Doesn't help for the
reputation of engineers and technology being socially inept.

------
dylanrw
Based on this article I see a few things, and some alarming ones that make me
question the source. Also, hopefully to prevent me from sounding like too much
of an ass, I'll use the following as the definition of sexism: "Sexism or
gender discrimination is prejudice or discrimination based on a person's sex
or gender."

\- The wife situation: Awkward/horrible. Either the wife is crazy with
jealousy issues or we're missing a portion of the story. Presuming this is the
entirety of the facts, I think it's plain that the woman isn't going around
approaching male colleagues of the founder and harassing them. So I guess
she's acting this way due to the JAH's sex, but it just sounds like a boundary
issue to me rather than rote sexism. I'm surprised policy doesn't exist to
prevent this sort of thing inside GH.

\- Rebuffed advances being handled poorly. I'm surprised that she's surprised
by this, she's dating a coworker, she's introduced the concept of coworkers
being viable dating options. Yes I'm sure she was approached because she's
female, heterosexual males will do this. Male or female. Of course the person
was disrespectful for approaching even if she was in a relationship, people
will be clueless/rude, whether they work with you or not. The passive
aggressive reverts, and the lack of power to abate them sounds like a lack of
leverage on her part, and while she may chalk the entire thing up to her lack
of pull due to being female, I see this as a symptom of the cabal syndrome you
often see in self managed companies.

\- I think it's obvious that she's sensitive to sexist issues, even on the
side of seeing it in places where it may not exist. There are even a few cases
where she could even be exhibiting the behavior herself ie: Not talking to the
hula-hoopers themselves (why are not capable of defending themselves?),
claiming the men present were gawking (but not mentioning any other
spectators), "always looking to meet women I can look up to." (I'd be seen as
an ass by many if I looked for "men to look up to"), "confused and insulted to
think that a woman who was not employed by my company was pulling the strings"
what does the fact that she's a woman have to do with it? (This is a stretch I
know but every time someone is mentioned their sex is brought up, why?)

\- The real major theme I see is, "I was treated poorly." Yes this happens,
just not always to a highly public, touchy social subject-matter expert in
this field, who then releases the story to the press (vendetta much?).

It's a shame that theres dirt in the garden of Github, shockingly it's a real
company run by real people. I'd carry on with making great software; always
try and make sure I'm not putting up barriers (intentional or otherwise) to
the entry of the just as capable minorities in this field; always strive to
see the difference between true injustice and someone's poor decisions, their
sensitivities, and a really messed up corporate experience.

~~~
3minus1
> The real major theme I see is, "I was treated poorly." Yes this happens

I agree absolutely, This article reads like gossip shrouded in the guise of an
earnest discussion of gender issues.

------
mattdeboard
Let's not be too quick to make this an indictment of no-management businesses.

Even if you dismiss the hula-hoop stuff, the involvement of the wife, the lack
of grievance resolution, & the under-involvement of HR all point to a serious
lack of _leadership_. It doesn't take a management structure to have good
leadership at an organization. It takes leaders.

I have seen the "wife wearing the husband's rank" so much in my life. I spent
a decade+ in the Marines, it's very common. I extrapolate from that that it's
common in the world. The fact this was allowed does point to an environment
where HR was either ignorant, complicit or complacent, otherwise they would
have stopped this shit cold.

------
pekk
So she and another woman at work develop a bitter feud in which the other
woman has the upper hand. Horvath reinterprets it as sexism and takes it to
the press to hurt GitHub. If Horvath were a man, there is no way that HN would
show this kind of support.

------
drawkbox
I think that is one benefit remote offices have is there are less chances for
events like this to take place.

Being confined to one space everyday with people for years will lead to dust
ups, cultural clashes, personality clashes etc. How they are handled is
important, it doesn't appear it was handled correctly here.

High school politics are in effect at every office and I see this as more that
than sexism. We live free but the office can turn into a strange authoritarian
empire with banana republic like alliances. Growth at companies can also cause
cultural clashes and problems similar to this with people getting wronged.
Disappointed to hear it also goes on in github.

~~~
vellum
_I think that is one benefit remote offices have is there are less chances for
events like this to take place._

I take it you've never played WoW? :) I've seen the same high school drama
replay over and over, both online and offline. It's more a function of being
human, than it is the environment.

------
thelastpizza
The hula hooping probably wasn't particularly sexual - I would be impressed if
any of my coworkers could hula hoop.

I can't. I suck at it. :(

------
joshlegs
I'm so fucking tired of this so-called "more opportunities to succeed" thing i
keep hearing about. such a load of crap. you make your own opportunities.
Period. That's been true of my life and everyone i know.

------
ww520
God. What an awful situation. WTF is the founder's wife meddling into the
company's business? She is not even an employee. Githud is not a mom-and-pop
shop. It's an corporation. This is just toxic.

------
scotty79
Awesome piece of office drama. Github is a true corporation now.

It would be good base for a movie script. I wouldn't watch because I don't
like seeing people hurt eachother in believable ways.

~~~
atomical
That's good of you.

------
tsax
In Pakistan, personal vendettas are sometimes carried out by accusing people
of blasphemy, thus deputizing the state apparatus in your service.
[http://www.fides.org/en/news/32696?idnews=32696&lan=eng#.UyY...](http://www.fides.org/en/news/32696?idnews=32696&lan=eng#.UyYpD-
ddXSI)

Thus, we now see the use of 'sexism' as simply a masquerade for bad shit that
goes on, to deputize the internet hordes to serve your cause.

------
sizzle
A coworker told me of his nightmare story from his previous job, where he was
accused of sexual harassment by a fellow female co-worker. The crazy part was
the HR process, where he was not told who made the complaint, or what was
specifically said- so he could not defend/explain himself, let alone know if
it was a lie. They did an internal investigation, sided with the female and he
was fired. Is this a common HR process?!

------
lnanek2
I don't understand why she didn't see the founder's wife asking her out to a
drink and saying she would work to make her very happy not as an opportunity.
She could have asked for her own office at that point, or asked to not have to
commit code anymore if the pull request feedback was too harsh and just run
the pro-women project she was running, etc.. I would have loved that
opportunity.

------
jdefarge
"Julie Ann, Adria Richards and Shanley enter a bar: the bar just explodes
because it's a symbol of the patriarchy."

But, seriously, I know various female programmers that I could trust not only
my project, but my LIFE to. And as in the case of men, those are usually the
low profile, highly productive, people. I doubt any "famous" developer this
days in spite of gender/race/whatever. As with any hyped profession, there are
a LOT of impostors trying to succeed without basic qualifications in
computing. Hint: those are the ones who shout the loudest, have the highest
number of followers on Twitter, but have very little, if any, REAL code on
Github or any other public repositories. So... when the masks start to fell
off they usually bail out their jobs loudly and pointing fingers to preserve
their public personas. I doubt this is not the case of Julie Ann.

"You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the
time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.", Abraham Lincoln﻿

------
jw2013
I alway love Github as a company because Tom Preston-werner's storytelling of
how Github is a company that optimize for employees' happniess. I hope Github
can state something positive for this issue, otherwise it is a big hit to the
company not only because of sexism, but also more importantly the losing of
the culture of optimizing for happiness.

------
nnq
I propose to show our sympathy towards the nice people at github by just
forgetting this non-story ever existed. Or, it existed, but it was a whole
different story, that had nothing to do with sexism and more to do with
another woman being in a position of power and maybe using that for a non
obvious purpose.

...witch hunts are cool and all, and they are even cooler when they are done
"to save"/"for the rights of" women/children/etc., but you're only giving more
power to the "troll" that started this in the first place, either her or
someone using her, for god knows what agenda (I bet it's just part of power
fight inside the company, and somebody tries to redirect some discrimination
related anger collected from the interwebs against his/her opponent ...we
really shouldn't let ourselves manipulated into joining this fight we know
nothing about).

------
Fuxy
Now that's a lot of drama but it has nothing to do with sexism or any abuse
towards women in technology.

For one thing as far as i can tell we're dealing with the wife of a founder
that has delusions of grandeur and a founder who is easily manipulated.

The very few allegations of sexism like some employee asking her out and the
passive aggressively harassing her will happen in any environment not just in
technology it's just the guy not being a man and facing the rejection. All you
can say to him is grow up.

I also don't see anything wrong in the guys looking a the girls playing with
the hula hoops If the girls minded the wouldn't have done it what right does
she have to judge them.

------
xcrunner529
I see 2 issues here:

1\. HR seems powerless and there seems to be a very immature culture,
inapproriate non-employee influence, and communication at Github and given
that it is mostly young-males, may have a (perhaps inadvertent) gender bias
that they do not see motivated to fix. This is a big problem and I think there
can be a balance between not being stuck up and removing the "fun," while also
being decent, well-meaning human beings. I admit it's a very hard balance that
I think everyone is still trying to figure out in this rebellious stage of the
stodgy era.

2\. While I believe Julie's basic observations are valid, I agree based solely
on her account so far that she was being treated differently and that there
were inappropriate behaviors going on, especially with the wife – I do get the
sense that Julie was considering a lot of normal societal behavior with
gender-specific contexts. "Oogling" people isn't good, but it's a fine line.
People are going to find each other attractive. And I don't think it's wrong,
either. As mentioned here, finding someone attractive doesn't mean you discard
everything else about them as a person. These things can work both ways, she
just may see it from a different perspective because she's outnumbered. But
this supposedly was at a party and so I'd expect looser rules there as it's
not in a professional setting. There's a difference between inappropriate and
just being human.

All of this is a fine line and is why being human is hard and trying to manage
people and create a positive, but also fun work environment is hard and we
still have a lot to learn during these experimental phases. The issue really
needs to be helping eliminate different treatment based on gender and
sexuality rather than creating a specific type of culture. I do not
necessarily believe we need to eliminate all sexuality or all fun or all
emotions from a particular work environment. There can be different places and
different people with different preferences can gravitate between them. I
don't think going back to all stodgy, emotionless, and overtly-bureaucratic
environments is a good thing.

Like everything in life it seems, there really is a balance.

------
bayesianhorse
The first reaction to sexism and racism in well-educated male circles seems to
be "Well, there has to be SOME rational and objective reason for these
opinions, so stop complaining!"

The story certainly contains some element of "female politics" (which is
neither good nor bad, just different).

My theory is that these problems come from a lack of empathy, and that the use
of technical skills does not improve the empathy skill. In order to
effortlessly switch between empathy and technical thinking, some effort is
required. For example meditation has been shown to increase empathy and
improve social behavior in school classes and executives...

------
jaydz
A really bizarre story.

~~~
gcoguiec
yep...

------
allochthon
Without saying anything about the question of sexism at Github (which I know
nothing about), I get the sense that Horvath is a complex character. It is
difficult to know what is fact and what is spin.

------
spikels
Well that was disappointing. I was expecting more sexism and less crazy
founder wife.

~~~
ScottBurson
There seems to have been easily enough sexism to have been a problem, but yes,
it did sound like the founder's wife was the bigger problem.

------
digita88
This is a really important issue to talk about, not so much because of the
sexism/female engineers angle, but because it deals with how start-ups are
managed.

TL;DR 1\. Have legacy documents, guidelines and policies in place 2\. GitHub
needs to have a look within its management team and decide if they want to
continue eating themselves to oblivion. 3\. Similar to the hacker code of
ethics, we need to work on getting MORE people into technology. We should not
be excluding people out of technology!

------
AnonJ
Indeed the unauthorized access to office sucks. But what strikes me the most
is the totally nonsensical(to me) sensational emotional reactions of each
person. How can trivial, pointless things be blown out of proportion as to
incite "crying"/"shaking" reactions, passive-aggressive behaviors, and even
code-deleting? Are they really grown-ups, 30s & 40s, or just 3-year-olds? This
is insane.

------
patcon
I hate not understanding the politics of an organization and community I
depend on so much. I dislike not knowing how to feel about all this.

I can't help but be exasperated that the concept of an "open company" is not
more common for such critical infrastructure as GitHub. I'm frustrated that I
can't simply peer into all these private interactions and social exchanges and
chat logs and make my own judgment

------
jongraehl
Awful intimidation, my sympathies if true. But why is sexism even in the
headline? As far as I can tell, 1. a coworker made advances outside work and
acted weird/hostile when rejected, and 2. impromptu sexy hula hoop revue.
Incidents 1. and 2. did warrant correction. If HR/founder wouldn't help when
asked then I guess you could win a hostile work env. claim w/ a sexist flavor.

------
bitops
As usual, another HN thread that perfectly exemplifies victim blaming and a
collective burying of heads in the sand. There's a few people on here who seem
to get it, but most don't. I'm sick of it. Goodbye, Hacker News.

~~~
gamblor956
This should be the top comment.

As long as sexism persists in the tech industry, it's going to drive women out
and keep others away.

~~~
Dylan16807
No way in hell should it be the top comment. I can't find any victim blaming
at all in a quick skim, so if it's here it's not by any means a plurality
opinion. bitops is being even worse and reactionary than they claim HN to be.

~~~
kybernetikos
There was quite a lot of what I would consider to be victim blaming in the
previous thread where it was less clear what the allegations were. Or at
least, my impression of the thread was that there were a very high proportion
of commenters saying we should reserve judgement and at the same time
hypothesizing about all the ways that the woman might be at fault.

While this is all true (on the information we had in that thread, it was
possible that the woman was the one at fault, and it's good to reserve
judgement until more information arrives), it was really weird how many people
felt the need to point these things out.

I do agree that this thread seems more balanced, although even in this thread
people are surprisingly quick to point out that these problems are not
'sexism' (despite the fact that the situations described would have been an
order of magnitude less likely to arise if she were a man).

~~~
tomp
> (despite the fact that the situations described would have been an order of
> magnitude less likely to arise if she were a man).

How and why is this a fact? Could really none of this happen to a male
employee?

Crazy boss? Check. Workplace relationship? Check. "Enemies" reverting your
code? Check. Management non-reactive to complaints? Check. I think a lot of
this goes on regularly on many companies, an concerns many employees. In
particular, what seems sexist here is trying to make this a _women_ 's
problem, not an _employee_ 's problem.

------
runewell
LOL, lots of founders will be sleeping on the sofa tonight after telling their
spouse to stay the hell away from the office from now on.

------
dcope
GitHub employs a handful of women.[1] Have any others ever spoken out about
sexism internally? Out of all these women why was Horvath singled out? Maybe
I'm missing something but it really seems that this isn't adding up...

[1] [https://github.com/about/team](https://github.com/about/team)

------
kenster07
I'm glad that at least some of the commenters try to wait for both sides of
the story before grabbing a pitchfork.

~~~
ivanca
Upvoting by itself is handing pitchforks. It's an article in techcrunch whom
only care about heating things up just to get as much page views as possible,
and they'll write many more articles about the subject until HN and other
social outlets stop upvoting and sharing.

------
dobbsbob
Sounds like github needs a de facto employee grievance officer like a union
shop steward who can sit in on HR meetings and advocate for the employee, or
mediate petty personal disputes without involving the heavy and often unfair
hand of management and go to the founder about issues with his batshit crazy
wife.

------
aashishkoirala
I know this is beside the point, but I'm just curious. What did Horvath do at
GitHub? Design UI or write code?

~~~
greenrd
Both. Her career has taken her from cleaning, via marketing, to design and
then front-end development. Quite a trajectory. (Not all at GitHub.)

~~~
aashishkoirala
Cleaning?

------
dengnan
OK. I thought I could know what was inside her PR. but no, it's kind of like a
TV show' story line now.

------
debacle
I don't really believe that this can all be true, if only because I find it
very unlikely that GitHub screwed up that badly from an HR perspective,
especially one involving the founder.

There is probably some measure of truth to it, but for it to be totally true
would be a massive failure on GitHub's part.

------
mark_l_watson
I believe JAH's story. I hope she gets another great job and puts this behind
her.

On a related issue, github plays a central role in the software development
world, and possible signs of internal problems is troubling. It would be a
good idea for the github management to properly address this story.

------
h1karu
It sounds like Julie decided to start banging a coworker and then suddenly
became surprised when drama arises in the workplace ?! Isn't she the one who
obviously crossed the line first ? It would be one thing if she was with the
guy before she got hired, but she met him at work.

------
sizzle
From reading the article, I got the vibe that the wife may have felt innately
(territorially?) threatened by the thought of a (pretty) female in the company
getting close with her founder husband in a more intimate, rather than
professional, type of way. Thoughts?

------
ChristianMarks
If the allegations are true, I'd like to see a Kickstarter project to fund her
litigation.

------
tzakrajs
The sad thing is that this story didn't surprise me. Small to mid size
startups are sometimes run by psychopaths. This is because their business
scales faster than their fitness for running a business can be tested.

------
enneff
If you are one of the people in this thread jumping to defend GitHub in this
situation, ask yourself why.

GitHub are perfectly capable of defending themselves. They are the group in
power here. Second-guessing the motives and truth of this woman's story does
nothing but undermine her, and undermine the confidence of others who may have
similar stories (at GitHub or elsewhere).

~~~
gvb
GitHub cannot defend itself in public. It is a multimillion dollar company
with a very disgruntled ex-employee charging them of sexual discrimination.

You can bet their lawyers are saying in tones that cannot be ignored to not
say anything until and unless it goes to trial.

~~~
grifpete
Of course they can defend themselves in public. Corporations engage PR firms
to manage that expertly for them all the time. And ironically, whether this
goes to trial or not, the worse the objective case for Github the more
confident you can be that their lawyers will be telling them to say little or
nothing. Expect a very bland statement to appear shortly about how much they
love and value their female employees. We may well also have statements from
other female employees about how happy they are at Github - these may well be
given 'off the record' without attribution as in "A female employee who did
not want to be identified told me she has never been happier than she is at
Github, surrounded as she is by sensitive colleagues and a supportive
management." :)

~~~
grifpete
Haha. It happened already. [http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/19/5526574/github-
sexism-scan...](http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/19/5526574/github-sexism-
scandal-julie-ann-horvath) "Several female GitHub employees, who spoke with
The Verge on condition of anonymity, said they’ve never felt gender
discrimination at the company. "I don’t feel isolated or alone," one female
developer says. "I have never personally experienced anything like that and
I’ve never witnessed it.""

------
danbmil99
Sounds more like a whole bunch of crazy than anything specifically related to
gender. I could rewrite this drama with everyone being the same sex and gay
and it would read almost identically.

------
INTPenis
What is this, big brother?

------
hooda
Howsoever superman you are, you are powerless in front of your wife.. :) I
would say that these things are unfortunate and can happen to any startup.
Being a founder, you need to take action asap before things starts to go
beyond control. Even if some investigation is done into this matter, I don't
think anyone will be found guilty as it's a general behavioral/attitude
problem and it won't go in matter of days. Let's stop this discrimination
(howsoever minor) against women; we need to stand up and speak openly about
this. And it's all the more important when a company is getting formed as
culture of the company is defined in that stage.

------
rch
Maybe we need a new term for 'unacceptable workplace situation exacerbated by
gender issues'. This story is more complex than what I expected from the
title.

------
AnonJ
I just don't understand. From this report, all persons involved look like
kindergarten kids, herself inclusive. What's wrong with this world.

------
robobro
Hmmm. Here's my 2 cents.

Every office has "that person" who causes/gets involved in drama, starts
pointless arguments, or refuses to cooperate. Let's assume, just for
entertainment' sake, that she got bored of working there, and asked herself,
what looks better on my resume? Worked at GitHub, got bored/wanted a higher
salary/wanted to do less work, left... or worked at GitHub and got bullied out
of the marketplace for being a woman in tech, but is an honest and good person
nonetheless? This is one of the few fields left in tech where men outnumber /
outperform women, and I hope that changes, both because I believe in gender
equality, and issues like this will be better handled internally (and someone
looking to improve her resume can't pull this sort of act). And, well, after
she makes these accusations, what are her former coworkers supposed to say?
She's kind of poisoned the well, so to speak.

Again, the way I see it, she's either tired of working there and this is her
way of finding new work, or there really was an office full of awful bigoted
men who all hated her because she was interrupting their boy's club. It'd
actually work against her best interests if the latter were true. If she
scared women away from working at GitHub and made them even more of a
minority, then the few women remaining may be discriminated against further if
gender discrimination's really a big issue. The worst case about the former
being true (rather than the latter) is that women who actually are unethical,
assuming she isn't, may find themselves able to play the gender card and find
success in her same fashion. Either way, she getting big publicity for this is
a "win" for her and a "lose-lose" for GitHub and the women who work there,
unless they get a female-majority PR staff.

How are we supposed to respond to this sort of problem? How are we supposed to
assess the validity of this woman's claims? What are we supposed to do about
it? This could serve as a good reminder to companies to have their HR's doors
open or something, but for all we know she could be lying out of her teeth.
From a philosophical (logical/rational/skeptical) perspective, this article is
just editorialized, meaningless garbage. It's kind of sad, really... does
anyone share my perspective? I'm just sharing because I hate bandwagons, I
hate people jumping to blind conclusions, and I hate people burning witches
(in this case, GitHub / anyone who defends GitHub, depending on the crowd).
What I do know for certain is that GitHub provides a great service and I'll
continue to use it until I can be shown that GitHub systematically and
indiscriminately works against its female employees' best interests in an
objective manner, and that they choose to ignore the problem in the face of
overwhelming evidence and social uproar.

As someone involved academically with philosophy, I am from a field also with
notable under-representation / under-performance from women, for whatever
reason. Maybe as a member of a "boy's club," I'm speaking out of ignorance or
delusion. If I am speaking out of turn, I'd love to hear your rational
response so I can correct it, and I'm sure anyone who holds a similar view
would appreciate hearing what you have to say as well. (Shouting "Victim
blamer!" or "Misogynist!" at me is not a rational response. It only makes you
look like a fool. Personally, I'm most interested in seeing how enneff, who is
definitely not a sockpuppet of the involved woman, replies.)

~~~
watwut
"what looks better on my resume? Worked at GitHub, got bored/wanted a higher
salary/wanted to do less work, left... or worked at GitHub and got bullied out
of the marketplace for being a woman in tech, but is an honest and good person
nonetheless?"

Left to pursue new opportunities is better for her. Generally speaking,
employers are less likely to hire someone who got into public fights, whether
by his own fault or not. And they especially do not want to hire people who
talk bad about previous workplaces. They do not want to risk it will happen
again.

Leaving company for usual unspecified reasons is normal, everybody do that
regularly.

If she is "tired of working there and this is her way of finding new work',
then she would be exceptionally dumb.

------
blablabla123
Interesting how many aggressive comments there are on the TC article page...

------
bsder
Maybe she was a victim, but the credibility of her position is heavily
undermined _because she is dating a coworker_ <facepalm>

With that simple revelation, this isn't even worth following anymore.

------
yawboakye
"On no one's word."

------
fmax30
This sounds really bad . I am crossing out Github from the list of companies
that i'd wish to work for.

------
puppetmaster3
Sf is not a good place to be a n00b manager

------
mynameishere
Crazy how women can turn even canonically geeky/boring things like Github into
soap operas like "General Hospital". You've got to wonder what kind of drama
occurs in actual hospitals, with alpha-doctors and nurses side-by-side. I've
heard stories.

~~~
omegaworks
Of course, it's always the women that make things dramatic. Not the power
fetish of the founder's wife, the unwanted advances of coworkers, or the
reverting of legitimate contributions to the team's project.

Can't you see past the fact that she's a woman? Don't you see how demoralizing
any of this would be?

~~~
LockeWatts
Can I ask a question about phrasing for a minute? What's inherently wrong with
an unwanted advance?

Advances have an unknown state until they're responded to. If she had accepted
it, it would've been a welcomed advance. There's no way to know that until you
walk up to a woman and say "Hey, I think you're pretty cool. Want to go get a
drink sometime?"

If she says no, that's unwanted, but I don't see how it's inappropriate.

~~~
enneff
> What's inherently wrong with an unwanted advance?

I don't want to be hit on at work. It is totally inappropriate and
unprofessional. And if I were a minority in my office I would find it very
hard to deal with.

From the article, he did not say "Want to get a drink some time?"

> [He] asked himself over to “talk,” and then professed his love, and
> “hesitated” when asked to leave.

~~~
not_paul_graham
> I don't want to be hit on at work.

But she did get hit on at work and started dating a co-worker (I'm assuming
the guy she's dating initiated contact). If that was acceptable by her, then
this logic about it being "totally inappropriate and unprofessional" is moot.

I do not agree with what the co-worker did in terms of reverting commits and
all that, but his initial behavior can be chalked up to all these romantic
comedies where the protagonist professes his love for the cute girl and it all
ends happily ever after.

All I'm saying is that you can't demonize his initial approach.

~~~
omegaworks
>If that was acceptable by her, then this logic about it being "totally
inappropriate and unprofessional" is moot.

It's inappropriate for your other coworkers to hit on you if they know you are
in a relationship, regardless of whether that relationship happens to be with
a coworker. Where her and her partner actually hit on each other may not have
been at work.

------
cwaniak
\--- ATTENTION: THERE IS NO SEXISM AT GITHUB!!! ---

Proof #1: Do I read it correctly that a woman got into fights with another
woman -- and that is termed as "sexism" now? Give me a break…

Proof @2: how came "sexist" is an organization that is under influence and
control of the boss wife? Who doesn't even officially work there!!! Like,
really? This is sexism now??? WOW!!! So, again: give me a break with this
nonsense!!!

Some old good venting: And finally, is this a forum for morons now who can't
see through once they see a PC piece in the news? Because it seems to me so.
HN is full of intelligent people but once PC piece is involved they all act
like a band of brainless morons mumbling all marxist buzz-words from
"equality" to "social justice". Give me a break again. And go back to coding.

~~~
slowmotiony
HN seems to me like the biggest pool of white knights on the internet.

------
enupten
It's very sad that she had to struggle through this sort of mental anguish.
May you find brighter shores, Julie.

------
notastartup
okay so from a quick scan of that article, it appears that

a) she was not made welcome for whatever reasons

b) founder's wife appears to wear the pants in the relationship

c) founder's wife saw her as a potential sexual partner for her husband and
wanted to do a preemptive strike.

This incident does damage Github's street cred (if true), it actually sickens
me that this engineer was bullied out of her job (if true), and this just is
the final cherry on top of Homakov's discoveries of security vulnerabilities
in github.

------
Karn
The founder's wife sounds like she was threatened by JAH being an attractive
and presumably smart woman being around her husband. The founder sounds like a
pussy-whipped loser who doesn't know how to set boundaries for his wife. Most
of what JAH describes is unfortunately very believable. I've had resentful
coworkers delete/overwrite my work in the past.

That said, complaining about men staring at hula hoop dancers just sounds
really odd to me. If someone is hula hooping in a non-private space, _of
course_ people are going to stare. Being geeks/nerds/people who generally tend
not to have the most highly developed social skills, some of those stares may
be awkward. Get over it. She wasn't even the one being stared at.

------
rds2000
1\. What part of the article above would be considered hearsay? Aside from the
screenshots, it feels the least bit gossipy.

2\. Right to confront accusers? This seems extremely one-sided. No one she
blames gets to defend themselves, where are the witnesses on either side?

~~~
aiiane
Er, it's not like she's anonymously accusing them. They can confront her any
time they want.

~~~
rds2000
Carried forward, in a court-like environment, or throwing salvos over PR
mediums?

I take it as a bad smell someone goes the PR route over a lawyer (perhaps a
confidential legal threat?) to discuss things privately and settle thing
amicably.

~~~
pyre
Depends on what the aim is. There are some considerations here:

1\. People tend to view going for the lawyers as going for the 'big guns,' and
can be reluctant to do so.

2\. Companies can become less cooperative very quickly once it's a matter
being decided by lawyers and/or in a court.

3\. She may not have consulted a lawyer because she doesn't think that
anything which transpired qualifies as 'illegal,' rather than unprofessional,
rude, mean, etc.

From the story presented to us, it sounds like she wants to leverage bad PR to
get Github's HR / board to hold the people she views as having wronged her
accountable.

------
marincounty
Github has designers? I guess I've been going to the wrong site? I see
absolutely no design. It's all business look has always depressed me.

