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.
> "but isn't it to be expected that employees of a tech company will be somewhat socially awkward?"
Reverting people's commits and stripping their code out of vengeance isn't social awkwardness, it's completely unacceptable and unprofessional conduct. It doesn't matter what gender anyone is, or that it's being done out of romantic rejection, it's unacceptable. Full stop.
Author's complaint is evidently less about being hit on inappropriately (something that we could charitably attribute to "social awkwardness", maybe) and more about how the rejection was allegedly handled (read: by professional retribution). You don't get to hand-wave the latter allegation as some sort of social incompetence.
This borders on the "boys will be boys" argument. No, we don't get to excuse deplorably unprofessional behavior because someone is awkward. It's an injustice to those of us who are actually socially awkward but still know how to behave like decent fucking humans at work.
That's why I qualified it with "out of vengeance". There are many legitimate reasons why you would revert somebody else's code, but doing so out of interpersonal conflict is not one of them.
Note that I'm not commenting on the authenticity of the accusations laid out in this specific instance. My point is that messing with people's code because you don't get along with them - whether it happened here or elsewhere, and whether the perpetrator is male or female - is entirely unprofessional and unacceptable. It cannot be attributed to social awkwardness.
Beyond the specifics of this complaint, we cannot keep falling back on the "hurr we're all aspies" excuse to explain away our shitty conduct. It is not only inaccurate, it is damaging and infantilizing to tech workers in general.
Sure, but reverting code is something that is highly visible and I can't picture an engineer reverting usable code and other engineers/leads not question it.
I'm willing to bet that it was reverted for other reasons.
I reverted code from master before because the guy wanted to play the 'okay but' game when we noticed issues with it.
Sorry but we can chat about issues later, it's not staying in production to be pushed out by a random engineer. Nothing to do with your race, gender, age, etc.
My normal rule is 'talk then revert', normally making sure that someone knows and agrees with the revert, to avoid a commit war. If everything's on fire and you can't talk, then you can skip talking.
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.
> 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.
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.
There does seem to be some truth to what you're suggesting.
For whatever reason, there's a propensity for this sort of drama to occur within organizations and at events where Ruby and Ruby on Rails, or users of such technologies, are involved in some way.
Off hand, I can think of that controversial presentation at GoGaRuCo a few years ago, the controversy about the diversity of the presenters at the BritRuby conference a bit later, and this matter here. Then there was that whole "Donglegate" incident, which while it occurred at PyCon, it involved at least one person with some ties to the Ruby community. I'm sure there are other events I'm missing, too.
Maybe it's just the so-called "brogrammer" culture that's so ingrained within the Ruby world that's responsible. Regardless, for a community that's actually quite small, there seems to be a whole lot of this sort of strife.
On the other hand, the ruby community just seems to have more women in it than a lot of other programming communities. Many technical communities simply don't have as many opportunities for these sorts of situations to arise.
Other communities may also have less opportunities for truly great pro-women-in-coding projects to emerge. Last year the 3 people who started Rails Girls were honoured with Ruby Hero awards at Railsconf. There was near-universal support and genuinely excitement that something like this emerged within the community and had made such a strong impact in bringing women into the field.
Exactly my theory. You don't hear many stories about sexism in the Perl community because your standard Perl meetup probably consists of all of the people who also meet up monthly for their LUG meetups.
For those of you who have never been to either, picture a room full of people who remind you of people like Alan Cox, RMS, or ESR.
There's socially awkward and there's openly hitting on a co-worker who is known to date another co-worker. And then not exiting as quickly as humanly possible. That's beyond "a little awkward". Saying this as a guy who is somewhat socially awkward.
He responded poorly (understatement) to the rejection of someone who he knew was in a relationship at the time. This is why I have a rule of never dating anyone who works where I work, not even in other departments. It just creates too much trouble. Once it's known that you date people in the office, others who are interested in you (but you may not be interested in them) may pursue you. Once you start rejecting them you can't give a blanket response of: I don't date people from work. Feelings get hurt, and people do stupid things once that happens.
> 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?
Oh please, that's about as sexist and as hostile as it gets between programmers.
I agree it should be expected that some employees of a tech company will be somewhat socially awkward --just as much as it should be expected that employees will be told that this kind of behaviour is totally unacceptable, and that companies ensure it doesn't happen.
It's hard to judge without all sides of the story, but the one side does not paint a pretty picture of Github.
What probably needed to happen was whoever was in charge of that project should have recognized these two employees now didn't get along, and reassigned one or both of them away from the project.
If it is true and clear that the developer tampered with the codebase because of a personal issue with another developer, I am not even sure that is an issue to let HR resolve; I would want that developer fired immediately. Intentionally fucking with the product, or any other sort of company property, is inexcusable in my mind. Tanking the reputation of that developer is putting it nicely.
I was trying to be measured in the language because I don't consider the TechCrunch article to be completely unbiased on the man, but yes, in general I agree. Intentionally sabotaging code should have you out the door on your ass.
Retaliation in response to rejected sexual overtures is one of the basic forms of sexual harassment. It's arguably a quid pro quo situation and absolutely qualifies as the kind of conduct that can lead to a hostile work environment.
If I ever saw this happen, I would reprimand the developer in the parking lot while the HR people were bringing his personal belongings down in cardboard boxes so he could go away and never ever come back.
no. what needed to happen was that the guy should have been fired for deleting someone's code over a personal issue. "these two employees now didn't get along" makes it sound like there was fault on both sides, which is emphatically not the case.
That's actually impossible at GitHub (as far as I understand their working practices) because they are not a traditional company. They use Open Allocation, which means that employees decide which projects to work on, and specifically, project leads cannot veto that.
its super hostile. i would hope there are logs for this - but i wouldn't be surprised if there were none.
as said higher it seems highly possible that she has no proof of anything - which means, if she's actually honest, she can't do much (except contacting a bunch of news sites and trying to make a big story out of it)
imagine this "i did all this work but someone deleted it! worked 2 weeks on it!" while in fact you were eating donuts ;-)
the problem is proof, when you have these allegations. if she has proof, then, she should sue them.
How common is it to have your significant other hanging around at your workplace for no apparent reason[1], harmful or not, because you're the founder ? I'm still trying to process that.
[1] IIUC github founder's wife had no role in his company right ?
Why are you making excuses for these people? What purpose does it serve?
I'm especially shocked to see you trivialise the actions of the jilted engineer. Reverting someone else's work without explanation is a blatantly hostile and disrespectful act that should be treated seriously in isolation, and is made more serious still in the context of the inappropriate sexual stuff.
> Why are you making excuses for these people? What purpose does it serve?
Because I think people should question whether they're overreacting to the situation.
> I'm especially shocked to see you trivialise the actions of the jilted engineer
I edited to clarify this. Careful reading shows that:
(1) It is possible that there were legitimate technical reasons for the reverted commits.
(2) It is possible that Github did not respond to this part of the situation because they were unaware of the reversion or the context behind it.
(3) It is possible that Github took some action against the engineer in question.
(4) I'm not entirely sure that confessing romantic feelings for a co-worker is, by itself, inappropriate. Provided everyone stays cool and professional if the feelings aren't mutual (or just avoid each other if the org chart makes that possible).
(5) Reverting commits because someone rejected your romantic advances is unacceptable and unprofessional, and I edited my post to say so.
I think it is difficult to say that Github is at fault from the information given, and I fear that's the conclusion that many were jumping to. If you're such a person, you should think carefully about what the article actually said, what you are assuming, and whether those assumptions might be false.
> I think it is difficult to say that Github is at fault from the information given, and I fear that's the conclusion that many were jumping to.
Don't worry. Read the whole thread on this discussion. The only people who are jumping to conclusions are those assuming there is something wrong with Horvath's story.
> 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).
> 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).
What the heck are you talking about? The story is hearsay at this point and armchair warriors are jumping to conclusions behind the anonymity of the internet.
Second-guessing the motives and truth? Do you work at Github? Is this person your co-worker?
The story is, by definition, not hearsay, since the woman is alleging that the events took place with her present.
Key point: she alleges that everyone was not calm and cool regarding hitting on a coworker. You miss the part where he didn't leave when asked, and never justified reverting her commits (to the point where she had to revert the revert).
Two things, being in power makes you more vulnerable to these things and secondly, you should second guess everyone, people look after their own interests and no one is completely reliable.
You're being ridiculous. Emergency reverts are normal and expected when production systems are down.
I'm willing to stipulate this person's specific actions were probably hostile and unwarranted, but some sort of blanket "no revert without discussion" rule is just a way to cost your employer customers.
Context is important, and we don't have enough of it to be certain of what happened.
There may be legit reasons, but we have no indication that the reasons were legit. We do have someone involved who says they weren't. We should assume she is being truthful and accurate unless there is a reason to doubt her.
If github says the reverts were legit, then that's different, but you should go with the best information we have, instead of trying to find an excuse not to believe her based on no evidence.
> We should assume she is being truthful and accurate unless there is a reason to doubt her.
I come from a different school of thought. Firstly she only mentions a few people but the entire company and an entire industry are being brought into question.
Generally I have found what has been echoed by TechCrunch to be lacking in details and specifically from one persons point of view which shows a very self indulged narrative.
My response is not to suggest it did not happen, but given what has been said, how it has been said, and whom it is being said about, I suggest that before we tar people in such a way that more evidence should be presented.
I'm quite certain you've either mistaken me for someone else, or are looking for an excuse to argue with me based on a willful misinterpretation of my comment.
I'm even more certain that going through life believing everything you hear is not going to get you the results you want.
Isn't the Secret post screenshotted in the article itself one reason to doubt her character? Of course it may be all lies... it's just an anonymous comment and anyone could have written it, including the guy whose advances she spurned.
This. In one week I had to rip out two different things in the middle of the night. One was a simple revert, one was dropping an entire system which had taken months of work and reverting back to the old system.
In both cases, I wrote a detailed technical explanation of why I had taken the action, and an apology for having to do it so suddenly, and I sent to to the entire group (a requirement anyway - if you make an on-the-fly ops change, you need to write up a full incident report so everyone knows what went wrong)
Reverting always needs to come with a "this is what was wrong".
We are only hearing one side of the story, but it may be interesting to note the comment: " I even had to have a few of his commits reverted. ", it seems that there may have been some legitimacy to the other non-few if we are going to take a black and white view of things.
While the details on this matter seem very clear, the statement " I would work on something, go to bed, and wake up to find my work gone without any explanation." does not imply no discussion it implies that when she got up she had no idea of what was going on. It may be a case of a lazy co-worker, and/or a case that the co-worker discussed the issues with her at a latter stage.
She is very succinct in her description of the actions of others, and then describes her response in an emotional unclear way. In her own way in this example, she has used passive aggressiveness to mask the actual event.
TLDR; We do not know if there was no discussion, and we are only hearing one side.
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.