
Sexist culture and harassment drives GitHub's first female developer to quit - anu_gupta
http://www.dailydot.com/technology/julie-ann-horvath-quits-github-sexism-harassment/
======
Tohhou
She is a person who thinks that Adria Richards of donglegate did nothing
wrong.

She is public friends with a group of high functioning SJWs (and for this
reason stay the fuck away from them unless you want to be character
assassinated - they are throwing that around a lot right now) who think GitHub
of all places is the pinnacle of misogynistic, explicitly female hating
culture. If that's GitHub then truly tech is doomed, but then again this is
SJW world where any mostly male environment is a hostile work environment,
where things like libertarianism is hated because they don't value equality of
opportunity and instead demand equality of outcome irregardless of merit. They
think that feelings, that status matters more than results... you know,
building things, making the world a better place one little thing at a time
instead of always being on complaining.

Internet trolls being assholes has nothing to do with sexism. People who feed
the trolls, who are male and female, get burned. Let the idiots burn. And yeah
I've been called a gender traitor by the SJW idiots because I don't agree with
their idea that feminism = females.

~~~
dominotw
What is SJW?

~~~
noxryan
I believe it stands for Social Justice Warrior

------
strict9
For so long I tried to convince others (even females) that sexism and casual
sexism wasn't a thing in software development.

I tried to project an image of guys who were introverted and shy around women,
and that so called "brogrammers" were in the extreme minority.

But those same women I tried to convince gave me concrete examples, sometimes
even in the companies I worked for. Things I might have ignored or looked past
were seen in a different light from their perspective.

When you are in the minority somewhere, even small things are personal and cut
deeper. A fact that many in the tech industry seemed to have forgotten from
high school, if they were there in the time before being a computer geek was
considered cool.

As I said in the related thread on this event, let's stop with the victim
blaming and personal insults when someone makes claims of being harassed. We
pride ourselves on being intelligent and tolerant. Let's act like it and put
down those who don't live by it.

~~~
johnbm
"Victim blaming" implies you know for sure who the victim is. Given that this
is nothing but one big he-said-she-said, I will instead reserve judgement.

We have someone who's been accused of being unable to take criticism and being
vindictive. She responds by throwing a public tantrum and blaming all of
Github for it. If the shoe fits... Why is she so convinced that post is about
her anyway? Unless there was some truth to it.

The tech feminists never seem interested in taking the high road, and instead
optimize for maximum drama. Don't complain about being a public figure when
you broadcast your life on Twitter.

~~~
marcusestes
It doesn't sound like you've reserved judgement at all.

~~~
johnbm
I can criticize the way she's handling this without having to believe she's
guilty.

------
lettergram
I am against harassment of any kind (race, sex, looks, etc), however as far as
I can see, there has been no harassment...

All I ask for is evidence.

If there was some evidence I could believe it, all we have is someones
(clearly hot headed) claims. I have worked with many women programmers in
school and on the job and have never seen sexism. I have however heard
multiple woman complain about not having enough women in tech, as well as
complain about sexism.

Yet, they always seem to be treated fairly. If women did not complete her job
on time she was forced to stay after, same with the men. If a woman didn't
know how to answer a question she missed the points, same with a man.

Further, I fail to see any justification for sexism. Not only is there no
evidence, but there is no reasoning as to WHY they were sexist (besides giving
her bad performance reviews, which may or may not be deserved).

~~~
dominotw
>All I ask for is evidence.

Maybe she is withholding it because she might want to take github to court?

~~~
nailer
This twitter account does not seem like the account of someone who has sought
legal advice.

------
Mz
I just tried to submit this. Too slow, as usual.

Excerpt:

 _She 's not alone in her frustration. Last fall, a community member of
GitHub's code base, Ruby on Rails, blogged about being sexually harassed by
her own boss while attending a Ruby conference. She later deleted her post due
to receiving an onslaught of victim-blaming, rape, and death threats._

Yeah, there's a lot that needs to change. Sigh. A lot.

~~~
nailer
_She volunteered to do body shots with her own boss._ Is it 'victim blaming'
to suggest that creating a sexual environment in your workplace is a dumb
idea?

~~~
Mz
You are barking up the wrong tree. I am mostly commenting on the death threats
and rape threats and general hostility. I routinely advocate that women take
responsibility for their half of the equation, but in light of how ugly it
apparently got, your remark is just part of creating a hostile atmosphere for
women.

Here is something I wrote that made the front page not terribly long ago (like
February, I think):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7203401](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7203401)
I am a woman and I get accused all the time of victim blaming for talking
about what women can and should do differently if they really want things to
change, but, seriously, your remark just sounds really misogynistic and ugly
to me.

~~~
nailer
> your remark is just part of creating a hostile atmosphere for women

> your remark just sounds really misogynistic and ugly to me.

Pointing out that creating a sexual situation in the workplace is a dumb idea
does not mean I hate women, and not does it create a hostile environment for
anyone.

You are accusing people of offending you because you want attention.

------
lexcorvus
I see two basic solutions to these issues:

    
    
        1. Purge every company of assholes
        
        2. Allow complete freedom of association
    

#1 is hard to implement because assholes are everywhere. #2 is the obvious
solution, and in fact it is so obvious that Julie Ann Horvath's actions
implicitly endorse it—don't work for companies filled with assholes.

Alas, the obvious solution is illegal under US federal law. Asshole-filled
companies are required by law to hire the kind of people assholes love to
harass. In other words, the very laws designed to promote the interests of
asshole-targets guarantee that they will come into contact with assholes.
(Medical geeks might recognize this as _iatrogenesis_.)

Of course, there's always:

    
    
        3. Convert all assholes to non-assholes
    

This can be considered a special case of #1, and would be the best of all
possible worlds. Indeed, a great deal of energy goes into achieving it. But it
essentially reduces to "eliminate the existence of assholes". It doesn't take
a particularly subtle grasp of human nature to understand why this doesn't
appear to be working.

In sum, the obvious solution is illegal and the desirable solution doesn't
work. Is it any wonder this conflict seems never-ending?

------
WizzleKake
Typically one would take harassment issues in the workplace to HR. Is there a
stigma attached to this?

~~~
dragonwriter
> Typically one would take harassment issues in the workplace to HR.

HR exists to protect the _company_. In a large company, where both the victim
and the harasser are relatively small in the overall scheme of things, HR is
(assuming the department is somewhat competent at its job) likely to be
somewhat useful to a victim, simply because the downside risk to the company
of not dealing with harassment is probably much greater than the value of even
a supervisory employee. Even with a higher-level harasser, in a large company
the firm is more likely to have established protocols, the violation of which
would increase the risk to the company, which might make HR more useful to
victims.

At smaller companies, its less likely that HR will be useful, and, at any
company, its a given that HR's primary interest isn't protecting the victim
its protecting the company (including, especially, against a potential lawsuit
_by_ the victim).

And, all that aside, yes, there is often a stigma attached to reporting the
kind of things which constitute sexual harassment (a stigma which is
reinforced by a society which engages in victim-blaming and slut-shaming),
and, despite the laws against such, a very common fear of retaliation.

------
krick
Obviously I don't know what happened there, but after scrolling through her
twitter, well… My imagination shows me somebody, be it male or female, I
cannot really like or sympathize. Maybe it's more about personality than
"sexism" sometimes?

------
greenyoda
Prior discussion (129 points, 130 comments):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7405325](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7405325)

------
emonk59
is there any proof other than an anon Secret post? also, if the secret post is
true... julie is a pretty terrible coworker.

------
NathanKP
It makes me sad that a community that I'm part of and am passionate about has
such negative behavior towards female members. I think it would be extremely
positive for the developer community as a whole if there were more female
developers, but I'm not sure how we go from the male centric community that
exists today to one that accepts female members as equal peers. I'd like to
think that the dev team at my startup would be welcoming and accepting of a
female dev, but the truth is I have no idea, because we only ever had one
female developer interview, and she had only a rudimentary understanding of
HTML and JS, so we did not hire her.

Does anyone out there in the startup community have a more integrated dev
team? And if so how did you attract female devs and guide the team culture to
make them feel welcome and accepted?

~~~
lettergram
"It makes me sad that a community that I'm part of and am passionate about has
such negative behavior towards female members"

I haven't seen any actual evidence of this in the link, so where are you
getting it from?

~~~
NathanKP
If you are interested in investigating there has been quite a few articles
I've seen over the past few years on Hacker News and Reddit by female devs
highlighting their experiences with how they have been treated by the dev
community. Here are a few interesting articles to get you started:

[https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/6efcedf483bd](https://medium.com/i-m-
h-o/6efcedf483bd)

[http://www.dailydot.com/business/hacker-news-justine-
sexual-...](http://www.dailydot.com/business/hacker-news-justine-sexual-
assault/)

[http://articles.latimes.com/2013/oct/24/business/la-fi-
tech-...](http://articles.latimes.com/2013/oct/24/business/la-fi-tech-
sexism-20131024)

~~~
lettergram
We are talking about this case, not other cases. Each case is unique, you
cannot assume sexism because you have seen it before.

~~~
NathanKP
First of all my original post was not focused on this case alone. I'm
interested in the general pattern of the problem, of which this appears to be
just one instance. I'm also interested in how it can be solved to increase the
participation of females in the development community.

But with regard to this specific case, since you say that you see no evidence
at the original link, I would urge you to think about the fact that you
evidently do not consider Julie's own words that she has been harassed to be
evidence enough. Denying that there is an issue, or that the complaints of
women like Julie are legitimate is part of the problem in the first place.

Personally I see a consistent pattern of low participation of women in the
industry, and regular instances of women complaining about sexist treatment
and not being taken seriously. I therefore see no issue with taking Julie's
words at face value because I see plenty of evidence that this is a legitimate
problem.

~~~
camelite
>But with regard to this specific case, since you say that you see no evidence
at the original link, I would urge you to think about the fact that you
evidently do not consider Julie's own words that she has been harassed to be
evidence enough.

That's a bit rich, coming from rapist like you.

------
nso95
Why is no example of the actual sexism provided? I would like to know, what
specifically makes them sexist.

------
rchiba
I hope GitHub issues a public apology and a statement that can help frame her
accusations and bring more light to what actually occurred. The article
unfortunately did not offer the specifics of what happened, but it is
unfortunate and unacceptable that gender continues to cause conflicts in
workplaces for our industry.

~~~
nailer
> The article unfortunately did not offer the specifics of what happened

Yes, we don't know who is right or wrong right now.

> I hope GitHub issues a public apology

How do you know they are in the wrong?

------
jrochkind1
This article is leaving me really confused if she is/was an employee of
Github, and if it/she is talking about sexism at Github the company -- or in
the "Github community" (meaning the collection of people using github I
guess?)

------
smegel
Was she claiming sexual harassment or just harassment and bullying in general?

~~~
emonk59
from what i can tell.. just harassment. she tweeted the following:
[https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/444902730629271552](https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/444902730629271552)

------
booruguru
That article was really vague. Can someone provide some specifics on this
story...especially the part about "aggressive criticism"?

------
ryan-allen
Whoops, gonna need to get a new rug again.

