Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/15/julie-ann-horvath-describes-sexism-and-intimidation-behind-her-github-exit/ <comment><USER2> 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.

<comment><USER3> > 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.

<comment><USER4> 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)

<comment><USER5> Yet people wonder, mouth agape, why I prefer staying up in Seattle.

<comment><USER6> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 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.

<comment><USER8> 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).

<comment><USER9> 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.

<comment><USER10> 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.

<comment><USER11> > 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.

<comment><USER12> > 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.

<comment><USER13> 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.

<comment><USER14> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> 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.

<comment><USER16> 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.

<comment><USER17> > 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.

<comment><USER18> 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.

<comment><USER17> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> 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.

<comment><USER20> 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.

<comment><USER19> 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.

<comment><USER21> Your comment makes no sense to me. How would throwing out capitalism take sexual harassment with it?

<comment><USER19> It doesn't take it with it directly, but it dismantles some of the extreme power differential.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> 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)

<comment><USER23> > keeping his wife in line.

I have never cringed so hard in my life.

<comment><USER24> 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.

<comment><USER25> 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.

<comment><USER24> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> 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.

<comment><USER27> 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.

<comment><USER28> >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.

<comment><USER27> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> 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.

<comment><USER30> "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)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> 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."

<comment><USER22> 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_

<comment><USER32> 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.

<comment><USER8> 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).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> 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

<comment><USER34> 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?

<comment><USER35> 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.

<comment><USER36> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> 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/)

<comment><USER38> Any guess who this is? "well-liked at GitHub" and "popular in the community."

<comment><USER39> This is super screwed up enough, I think we can do without the random guesses, yeah?

<comment><USER40> 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)

<comment><USER41> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> This sounds less like sexism and more just non-sexist batshit crazy people and incompetent HR. Somehow that isn't particularly better.

<comment><USER43> 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.

<comment><USER44> 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.

<comment><USER45> 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.

<comment><USER46> 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.

<comment><USER45> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> 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.

<comment><USER48> 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).

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Earlier I thought I wanted to know more about the situation. That was wrong.

<comment><USER50> Exactly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> 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?

<comment><USER52> 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...

<comment><USER51> 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> 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)

<comment><USER54> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> 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?

<comment><USER56> 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?

<comment><USER57> Same. This just makes it look like she's overly sensitive and perceiving things in a very skewed and unfair light.

<comment><USER58> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> 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.

<comment><USER60> 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.

<comment><USER61> 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.

<comment><USER62> Sexism in tech companies is a fact whether this "smallest piece of evidence" supports it or not.

<comment><USER61> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> 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.

<comment><USER64> >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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> _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.

</comment><comment> 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.

</comment><comment><USER44> 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.

</comment><comment><USER66> 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.

<comment><USER67> > 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.

<comment><USER68> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_property](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_property)

<comment><USER67> I don't think that property acquired during the marriage extends to jobs.

<comment><USER68> No but it does to stock.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> 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...

<comment><USER70> 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?

<comment><USER52> 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> 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.

<comment><USER72> 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.

<comment><USER54> "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 ?

<comment><USER72> 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.

<comment><USER54> 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.

<comment><USER72> Your point was not lost on anyone over the age of 12.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> 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.

<comment><USER74> True, but you can also witness the opposite on Twitter: Claims of sexism met with a deluge of trolls threatening to rape the claimant.

<comment><USER73> 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> 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)

<comment><USER76> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> 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

<comment><USER78> 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)

<comment><USER79> He's not judging the product good or bad. He's just "voting" the company with his actions, as we all should.

<comment><USER18> 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?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> 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.

<comment><USER81> The Passion Projects site says that attendance is usually 50% male/50% female.

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

<comment><USER82> '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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> 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.

<comment><USER84> > any other good alternatives dudes?

Come try Fog Creek Software's Kiln!

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> 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.

</comment><comment><USER86> 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.

<comment><USER20> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> 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.)

<comment><USER88> 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.

<comment><USER44> That may be the case, but they may perceive otherwise, at least initially.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> 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.

<comment><USER90> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> 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.

<comment><USER92> 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.

<comment><USER93> If you don't want people to watch you snogging, you shouldn't be snogging in public.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER94> 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.

</comment><comment><USER95> 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.

</comment><comment><USER96> 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.

<comment><USER97> 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.

<comment><USER98> > 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.

<comment><USER97> 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.

<comment><USER11> > 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).

<comment><USER99> 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.

<comment><USER11> 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).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER100> 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 :\

</comment><comment><USER101> 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.

<comment><USER102> > 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.

<comment><USER101> Not really - but the fact we have to even point this out means that some intervention is required.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER103> 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.

</comment><comment><USER104> > Horvath then told her partner, also a GitHub employee...

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

<comment><USER42> 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.

<comment><USER105> Actively encourage how? Genuinely curious, do you get a joint bonus if you marry a cow-orker or something?

<comment><USER42> Social events, peer pressure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER106> 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.

<comment><USER107> 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?

<comment><USER106> > 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.

<comment><USER107> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER108> "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

</comment><comment><USER109> 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.

</comment><comment><USER110> 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.

<comment><USER111> 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?

<comment><USER18> 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_.

<comment><USER111> 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."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER112> 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.

<comment><USER113> 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).

<comment><USER70> 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER114> 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.

</comment><comment><USER115> Wait, how is the wife of the founder pulling the strings "sexism"? It's the opposite if anything.

<comment><USER116> It's not sexism. It's a different kind of wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER117> Can someone explain how does one gets a job after inflicting so much public damage on his previous workplace?

<comment><USER118> 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.

<comment><USER70> 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.

<comment><USER119> 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)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER120> 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.

</comment><comment><USER121> 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.

</comment><comment><USER122> What a mess!

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

<comment><USER123> The coworker who thought she was an opportunity, and the failure to discipline that coworker, definitely is sexism.

<comment><USER41> 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER124> 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.'

</comment><comment><USER125> 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.

</comment><comment><USER126> 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!

</comment><comment><USER127> To me, spreading this out in public is a nice way to tag onself as unemployable / HR-risk.

</comment><comment><USER128> The company just seems to have immature leadership.

</comment><comment><USER121> What is the tech angle to this? Basically people fighting with other people over personal issues. Don't understand why techcrunch is covering this.

</comment><comment><USER129> 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.

</comment><comment><USER130> BTW, it's not sexism at all, the main issue here is between two girls...

<comment><USER131> The word is "women". Would you call their male co-workers "boys" in the same context?

<comment><USER132> Oh give us a break, my Mum 60+ calls her friends 'girls'. The word hasn't been 'women' in ages. You people, sheesh.

<comment><USER131> (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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER133> 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.

</comment><comment> 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.

</comment><comment><USER134> "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.

<comment><USER79> > 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.

<comment><USER134> 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER135> 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.

</comment><comment><USER136> 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.

<comment><USER137> > 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> 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.

</comment><comment><USER138> 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.

</comment><comment><USER139> 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.

<comment><USER140> _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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER141> 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. :(

</comment><comment><USER90> 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.

</comment><comment><USER142> 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.

</comment><comment><USER143> 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.

<comment><USER144> That's good of you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER145> 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.

</comment><comment><USER146> 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?!

</comment><comment><USER147> 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.

</comment><comment><USER148> "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

</comment><comment><USER149> 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.

</comment><comment><USER150> 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).

</comment><comment><USER107> 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.

</comment><comment><USER151> 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.

</comment><comment><USER152> 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...

</comment><comment><USER38> A really bizarre story.

<comment><USER153> yep...

</comment></comment><comment><USER154> 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.

</comment><comment><USER155> Well that was disappointing. I was expecting more sexism and less crazy founder wife.

<comment><USER156> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER157> 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!

</comment><comment><USER158> 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.

</comment><comment><USER159> 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

</comment><comment><USER160> 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.

</comment><comment><USER161> 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.

<comment><USER162> 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.

<comment><USER24> 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.

<comment><USER163> 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).

<comment><USER11> > (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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER164> 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.

</comment><comment><USER165> 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)

</comment><comment><USER166> I'm glad that at least some of the commenters try to wait for both sides of the story before grabbing a pitchfork.

<comment><USER167> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER168> 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.

</comment><comment><USER169> I know this is beside the point, but I'm just curious. What did Horvath do at GitHub? Design UI or write code?

<comment><USER70> Both. Her career has taken her from cleaning, via marketing, to design and then front-end development. Quite a trajectory. (Not all at GitHub.)

<comment><USER169> Cleaning?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER170> OK. I thought I could know what was inside her PR. but no, it's kind of like a TV show' story line now.

</comment><comment><USER171> 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.

</comment><comment><USER172> 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.

</comment><comment><USER173> 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.

</comment><comment><USER146> 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?

</comment><comment><USER174> If the allegations are true, I'd like to see a Kickstarter project to fund her litigation.

</comment><comment><USER175> 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.

</comment><comment><USER176> 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).

<comment><USER177> 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.

<comment><USER52> 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." :)

<comment><USER52> 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.""

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER178> 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.

</comment><comment><USER179> What is this, big brother?

</comment><comment><USER180> 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.

</comment><comment><USER181> 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.

</comment><comment><USER158> I just don't understand. From this report, all persons involved look like kindergarten kids, herself inclusive. What's wrong with this world.

</comment><comment><USER182> 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.)

<comment><USER80> "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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER183> Interesting how many aggressive comments there are on the TC article page...

</comment><comment><USER184> 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.

</comment><comment><USER185> "On no one's word."

</comment><comment><USER186> This sounds really bad . I am crossing out Github from the list of companies that i'd wish to work for.

</comment><comment><USER187> Sf is not a good place to be a n00b manager

</comment><comment><USER188> 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.

<comment><USER189> 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?

<comment><USER41> 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.

<comment><USER176> > 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.

<comment><USER190> > 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.

<comment><USER189> >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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER191> \--- 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.

<comment><USER192> HN seems to me like the biggest pool of white knights on the internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER193> It's very sad that she had to struggle through this sort of mental anguish. May you find brighter shores, Julie.

</comment><comment><USER194> 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.

</comment><comment><USER195> 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.

</comment><comment><USER196> 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?

<comment><USER197> Er, it's not like she's anonymously accusing them. They can confront her any time they want.

<comment><USER196> 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.

<comment><USER74> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER198> 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.</comment>