Results of the GitHub Investigation
"We didn't do anything illegal, or that would leave us vulnerable to a lawsuit" is about the only content that this blog post contains.
While Horvath characterized much of her woes as being gender-related [1], the investigation could have classified most of them as either unprovable or terrible-but-not-provably-sexist (in particular, the behavior of the Preston-Werners).
I doubt it will ever be clear what actually happened. Theresa Preston-Werner's response [2] spends more time avoiding topics than actually covering them. Tom Preston-Werner likewise [3] makes sure to reinforce the fact that GitHub is immune to lawsuit while providing no real details. I'm sure there are plenty of GitHub employees who have a strong opinion, but enough of them seem to have an ax to grind in one way or another that it's hard to trust that testimony.
[1] http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/15/julie-ann-horvath-describes...
[2] https://medium.com/p/2fe173c44215
[3] http://tom.preston-werner.com/2014/04/21/farewell-github-hel...
This anonymous post from an alleged GitHub employee adds some interesting perspective.[1] It alleges Julie Ann Horvath was actually spreading rumors of a personal nature about the founder's wife before any of this. In other words, Horvath was the bully, and she really didn't like having the tables turned on her.
If true, this would be a very difficult employee to keep at the company. She should have been fired for inappropriate behavior rather than given an elevated role (which she can now use to bolster her case). Very poor handling and it does suggest a degree of naivety on the part of management.
Having said that, the founder's wife also admits that her actions were a role in his departure.[2] It sounds like she had way too much free reign at the company and was making people uncomfortable with her activism around her startup. The fact that she presented herself to Horvath as having a lot of influence and power within the company reflects that. Plus it's a fertile ground for more serious transgressions into company privacy and so forth. Also should've been nipped in the bud early on.
There appear to have been weirdnesses around the investigation, such as Julie Ann Horvath (and other ex-employees) remaining uncontacted until it was wrapping up: https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/453298152569720832
So I don't know how much stock you can place behind the idea that the investigators GH hired, who did not contact ex-employees competently, found them blameless. The resignation probably speaks for more than the investigation does.
It sounds like Mrs. Preston-Werner was a regular presence at the GitHub office and, according to Horvath, had extensive access to private information throughout GitHub's systems despite the fact that she wasn't an employee. If true, that should certainly be a privacy and security concern to any GitHub customer or user.
These memos are often more about what isn't said:
> The investigation found no evidence...
This doesn't mean there isn't any evidence--it just means that their internal investigation didn't find any. If read carefully, this statement tells us nothing about the universe of evidence that exists, but only about what GitHub didn't find. A different investigator might come to a completely different conclusion, or find other evidence (this is where the comment about the investigators possibly not contacting key people could become important).
> ...found no evidence to support the claims against Tom and his wife of sexual or gender-based harassment or retaliation
So their internal investigation didn't find sexual or gender-based harassment or retaliation. But did that investigation find other types of harassment or retaliation?
> However, while there may have been no legal wrongdoing
"May have been none" or "there definitely wasn't any"? And then legal wrongdoing vs. just plain wrongdoing? Disclaimers/"wiggle words" everywhere.
> As to the remaining allegations, the investigation found no evidence of gender-based discrimination, harassment, retaliation, or abuse.
Again, we're seeing the term "gender-based" used as a modifier (also done in P-W's response). This makes it appear as if their attorneys primarily want to remove this controversy from the ambit of gender-based discrimination claims.
I'm not saying this memo is worse than any other corporate public statement. But reading carefully, you often find that the statements don't tell you very much, if anything.
When these things conclude, as this one has, it is useful to check your own response emotion (happiness? sadness? outrage? bitterness?). One of the harder things for me to learn has been to critically evaluate my own judgement. Generally I'm a very rational guy and can give you my reasoning from first principles right up to the claim in question, when its wrong (the claim), I find my tendency is not to listen. My rational brain is invested in learning, my emotional brain is invested in being "right."
At the end of the day, neither Tom or Julie work at GitHub any more and what ever they brought to the mix has been lost. They have both made statements of pain and hurt, and their pain has been a burden on their friends as well. Will GitHub be stronger or weaker after this event? Will Julie and Tom? Only time will tell. Perhaps the best that can be said of this affair is that its publicity might help others to recognize the dangers of their behavior earlier before it becomes a problem.
This has to be an incredibly difficult moment in Tom Preston-Werner's life. Regardless of what may have happened. To build a company from the ground up and then have to walk away from it. I'm sure we all remember GitHub during its infancy and the enthusiasm with which founders worked on it. A hugely successful bootstrapped company.
> The investigation found no evidence to support the claims [...] of a sexist or hostile work environment.
So, are they saying that Horvath was lying? I mean, there was a lot of specific stuff she mentioned that seemed inappropriate. I don't want to get into whether the behavior was "sexist" or not, but I think we can all agree that if what she said was true, the work environment was hostile and unprofessional.
I have a question/observation that may be offensive, and it is not meant to be - so pardon my ignorance if this is a misguided perception:
When this story first ran and I was reading JA Horvaths tweets in the surrounding days - and reading whatever other articles related to this story were - I got the impression that she didn't necessarily seem like the most easy-going-innocent victim, and I wondered; what if she was actually a difficult to work-with person?
This is in no way a defense of any actions of any party, it was just a perception of the language, tone and content of the messages that Mrs. Horvath used gave me the perception that she wouldn't be the most desirable co-worker....
Now, I have nothing to substantiate such an opinion other than the tweets and stories I read just left me with this impression....
So, could it be that while her allegations are true, she is also a participant in the situation whereby she could have been acting poorly/using poor judgement?
Finally, I recognize that the actions of the wife of the founder are the most insidious, and a clear cause of concern, assuming they are in fact true...
This statement is pretty terrible.
The line "sexual or gender-based harassment" looks like it's been specifically written to exclude other kinds of harassment, especially given that term is used multiple times.
Employee harassment of any kind is unacceptable and if they're not willing to admit that it's a problem and act as if it's something that should be brushed under the carpet then it will continue to be a problem.
I appreciate that this might turn into a legal case so they're acting to protect themselves, but it would be better if they hadn't put out any statement rather than this weasel worded one.
We have a process for all this. It's called the legal system.
It's not perfect but it mostly gets the job done.
Has Julie Ann Horvath formally sued Github? It's not clear to me that she has.
It seems that she may have grounds for some kind of lawsuit. Why hasn't she sued the company (if in fact there is no lawsuit)?
This to me is the most important question. At the moment, it seems this is becoming a matter of public opinion.
I would rather it be moved over to the legal system where the rules of engagement are much less malleable.
Maybe it's just me, but I don't really think speculating on fights like this from the outside without full and complete information is beneficial, or even sane and rational. Can we just all agree that we don't know the full story here, and that any and all players might be misleading or not telling the whole story publicly? This is an internal issue. The only opinions I am interested in are internal opinions of other github co-workers, and that only if I was interviewing for a position at the company.
Tom Preston-Werner's response: http://tom.preston-werner.com/2014/04/21/farewell-github-hel...
Can anyone tell what exact discrimination Horvath faced? I went through her long interview and I can only read how she "felt" to be in "boys club" as opposed to specific events that can be qualified as discrimination. For example, she says her code was reverted and was apparently blaming that event on her being a women. I can't imagine someone throwing good code away because it was written by a women rather it seems much more likely that her code had issues. Then there is series of rambling for founders wife sitting in front of her every day. That doesn't feel like discrimination either but rather feels like she was not looked upon as desirable employee there at higher level. Overall I got an impression that she was turning whatever bad performance on her part in to case of discrimination. May be I'm missing details but it is very hard to identify events that can actually be qualified as "discrimination" in her long rambling interview.
http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/19/5526574/github-sexism-scan... for a bit of backstory.
His wife says she didn't realize that soliciting contributions from her husband's employees may not be appropriate.
She pretty plainly states that it never even entered her mind. That tells me more about the atmosphere there than anything.
I have not followed this case. However, this just rolled across my FB feed :
http://www.businessinsider.com/julie-ann-horvath-github-hara...
Maybe I'm being uncharitable, but based on her [JAH] public statements I have a hard time taking her version of events 100% at face value. The drama to fact ratio feels high.
> "Company perks : witch hunts, snow cones and silencing"
> "I am not a victim. I'm someone that a company's negligence pushed too far, for too long. I am living, breathing consequence"
> "Leaving GitHub was the best decision of my life"
> "Hmm still no mention of the man who bullied me out of our code base because I _wouldn't_ fuck him. Too popular to be accountable, I guess"
Is Github that awful? I'm not seeing it.
I wonder why his wife had to be at Github at all. I've worked at half a dozen startups now. Never would a spouse of either gender be in the office, and if they happened to maybe communicate with anyone, it was only a quick introduction and then they got out of your way.
I would consider it highly inappropriate.
Julie Ann Horvath has posted a bunch of interesting tweets about it starting here https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/458340919721197568
Mrs. Preston-Werner says here (https://medium.com/p/2fe173c44215 ) that the accusation and reason is that: "We learned that unnamed employees felt pressured by Tom and me to work pro-bono for my nonprofit."
I don't even know what to make of this. They say there was no evidence but he is still resigning.
It doesn't really matter what actually happened. The well has been poisoned so just fire someone and get it over with.
Now Github can get back to business.
What a crock of shit. People don't typically quit companies they built from the ground up when they have "done nothing wrong".
:( this sucks. Github would not even exist without Tom Preston-Werner and I am really scared to see how it will exist without him. Tragic for all his users.
To me this is lawyer speak for, yes it is true but if we admit, we would be liable. I would expect something like this from Bank of America or some other mega-corp, not github.
Only good thing about this is that it is not happening on the front pages of TechCrunch and whatever else blog might be following events like this.
And this is why you need strong/clear HR policies.
>>the investigator did find evidence of mistakes and errors of judgment
Isn't that like saying, well the hard proof isn't there but its clear you did do something wrong?
If you haven't read already, check this: https://medium.com/p/d96f431f4e8e She did a lot of wrong things: - Dating a coworker is not one of the best practise. - gossiping around about your co-workers/founders character is the also not the best thing to do. - If you write shit code, your code will be removed. She is definitely not known for her coding abilities. She is just a melodrama queen who is bad at heart, opportunist, blackmailed founder to poison the company atmosphere. - You can create a healthy workspace shouting "Women Women" every time. We work with women too. Our behaviour and respect is based on compassion and professionalism. They are just like any other person in the company. - The real story must have been that she is a bad/mediocre developer who was being reviewed which didn't turned out pretty well (Obv since she was busy bitching against coworkers). The only good way she had to abuse and insult the company publically , get sympathy and then a Job. She seems to have good PR skills. (Pun intended) Again, here are some of her recent tweets: https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/458347574672388096 https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/458345005866696704
This is turning into a Soap-Opera-via-Social-Media... What happened to the good old days of people suing for damages in a court of law and moving on?
Public name-and-shame has its place in the grand picture of such incidents, but the longer it stretches, relative to time on social media, the more sudsy it turns.
This fucking sucks, man. Tom's always seemed like an awesome guy.
As always, absolutely overblown PR messes like this are a result of faulty communication.
Without proper context or research done about it by Internet warriors frothing at the mouth, a one-off donation ruins Brendan Eich's once rich and successful career. Partly because Internet warriors tend to make emotional judgments before they properly study the evidence and contex and before they think through things, but also because Eich ... never responded. He never let the facts through, never let out an, "Oh, sorry guys. This donation was done because of X and Y and Z (don't support marriage as a whole/don't want government getting it's hands in things/etc.,etc.) and it doesn't reflect my current views on sexual orientation or that people with certain sexual orientations deserve less opportunities.", he never gave proper context and evidence to suggest that he wasn't a bad character.
Similarly with this. People are (conveniently?) keeping facts back, giving very vague stories, saying very little with a lot of words, etc., etc. If we are to believe that this thing was a huge misunderstanding and GitHub doesn't employ a bunch of mysognisitic, immature people, why hasn't Tom spoke up? I'm sure that GitHub is internally a lot better than it's image on the Internet right now is -- why doesn't anyone speak up?
Or is it really as bad as the Internet's image of it is?
we have one side of the story, for fuck's sake. the other side--the github side? it's lawyer-speak and completely devoid of anything that addresses the specific accusations.
how so many ostensibly smart people can simultaneously lose their ability to think critically is incredible. add the word "gender" to anything and people lose their minds.
To me it sounds more like...
We dont have enough evidence to take legal action in this case, but our investigation found out something worse so we would like Tom to resign before it comes out publicly.
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Slightly off topic:
Is there anywhere that offers(for lack of a better term) open source HR policy for small companies to copy? Seems to me writing something like this can be fairly onerous for a small company, especially in terms of legal overhead, but is clearly important. Having a starting point would be very helpful...
To me it seems Github fired him but allow him to "save face" with the resignation story.
It feels unconvincing, and unapologetic.
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I really don't care about how it's published in the media, I mean, this last episode at least. It was clear since the very beginning when it broke out that it would be dirty, really dirty. It's a shame not only for the people involved but more specially for Github as an ecosystem. Such incredible company bleeding in the media... sad times... and when I say incredible company I don't mean incredibly owned or well run company, you know what I mean. I lost a bit of faith in them today anyway. Sad times...
It is shortsighted to think there is nothing we can learn from this. There are certainly things we can learn.
1) A good lawyer is worth a 1000 tweets.
2) Getting deeply romantically involved with coworkers carries serious risks, whether or not you believe a company has the right to restrict office romances or not.
3) The fetishization of "we don't have any process!" is a mark of immaturity, not Zen. One would think engineers of all people would understand the importance of formalized process.
I don't think anyone walks away a winner here.
"This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper"
I think with the amount of coverage this story has gotten, everyone wanted something big to happen. Instead, we just get something mundane in some carefully crafted words that seem designed to give no information whatsoever, while still ensuring nobody can be sued any further. I kind of get the feeling that they are all trying to say "Nothing to see here....move along....cows turn themselves inside out all the time".
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Best of luck to everyone involved. Before casting judgement, please remember that everybody makes mistakes. The process of healing involves accepting this reality and recognizing everybody's humanity.
In light of this, I would personally be honored to work with someone of Tom Preston-Werner's caliber.
I hope he & his wife learn from this experience & grow as people.
So what happens when a founder leaves like this, do they give up their % ownership and the other founders gain what was lost?
Also, can they get rid of Gravatar now?
"The investigation found no evidence to support the claims against Tom and his wife of sexual or gender-based harassment or retaliation, or of a sexist or hostile work environment."
"We still have work to do"
Which is it? A non acknowledgement acknowledgement?
The best thing about this article is that it hopefully signals that we will no longer have to here about this anymore. As much as I love using GitHub, I hate hearing about the internal politics of their executives and engineers.
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This is a misleading title and not the actual title on the page.
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Think this might make those "Fork me on GitHub" badges a little less popular? I sincerely hope so.
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it's not idea Sunday but: a wearable video recording device that documents everything.
It may sound crazy but it would be interesting to me to find out how much of my rather boring life is actionable / illegal or distasteful
Im over using anything with this much drama, I want features, not headline news.
Weird that just a few months ago, Tom became the first President of Github.
What a load. Good luck with your hiring goals for 2014...
Hope that Julie publishes a detailed account. Sources I've read so far are vague and subjective as to what actually happened.
github is not seeing another penny of my money.
"Because I would hear ‘We should hire more women!’ on almost a daily basis from the same people who kind of refused to respect me as a peer."
I don't know what went on here, but I have heard these words before. And most of the time it has nothing to do with gender.
(As to hn deleting comments--I don't understand the moderators. I posted something earlier about the divide between the rich/poor--and claimed something about the lack of modern Horatio Algiers. I guess it really bothers some of the fancy boys? I come back to this site and comments are magically removed. I commented in the article on Lenin. Yes--this is off topic; I'm just curious why whenever I bring up money, and how many rich boys fathers helped them out graetly; I am edited?)
Kicked out of his own company - ouch. Taking VC and giving control to outsiders is Russian roulette.
Writing and adhering to HR/conflict-of-interest policy is a no-brainer. A board who cared for the interests of its founder would not leave this as a trap for the founder to step in.
I note with interest that the other accused was given a promotion.
"There was no investigation." - Julie Ann Horvath
Theresa Preston-Werner's twitter bio reads:
"Obsessed with inspiring the tech community to support underfunded nonprofits."
Mostly, her own nonprofit, I imagine.
3 recent tweets from the wife that indicate that she might be batshit crazy:
TheresaPrestonWerner @tpdubs2 Apr 10 Best meal I've ever had. @ The Meatball Shop http://instagram.com/p/moWCO4njNA/
TheresaPrestonWerner @tpdubs2 Apr 10 Building out a team and getting to work with insanely great people makes me the happiest founder ever.
TheresaPrestonWerner @tpdubs2 Mar 27 First time in 2 weeks that I feel like I'm not just performing being excited, but I really am insanely excited to change the world!
(people who express themselves with such extreme language, usually are batshit crazy. not taking sides here, the Horvath lady also seems to be batshit crazy from a reading of her tweet stream.)
What a surprise. Who thought that there is zero legal ground for her accusations...
github raped me! now lets start the misandric shitstorm.
This is what happens when you hire people for their gender (Horvath) or race. Injudiciously applied 'Liberalism' is the core problem here.
Are we still on this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR-Gw4bVcho
please check this out...share this movement
GitHub did the right thing and it turns out that Ms. Horvath accusations were without any basis. She not just damaged the gender equality efforts harder for everybody but raised visibility about how hiring females can damage your company's reputation. This is not the right way of fighting for the good case. A good example how to challenge the status quo: http://qz.com/192071/how-one-college-went-from-10-female-com...
I hope more people realize that we need more results and less artificially buffed scandals.
Silly thing these gender based politics and acts of political correctness. I can guarandamntee you that if I was Tom and was innocent, mistakes in judgment aside, I would not be resigning from MY COMPANY.
Is this the result of new board members coming in post-investment? If so, it's more reason to stay bootstrapped and free. If not, who is there to pressure him other than Chris?
Edit: 4 downvotes without a single comment. Tech is really becoming a soup sandwich of misplaced frustration and angst.
So, guy who wrote GitHub and a ton of open source stuff is ousted from his own company and sacrificed for a person whos biggest accomplishment in open source is JavaScript for Cats? https://github.com/nrrrdcore/javascript-for-cats
It's interesting how many would still remember the incident in question, if it wasn't brought up like this again. My personal attention span must be pretty short, it took a couple of days for me to stop associating Github with that incident.
What an ugly mess!
Somewhat related: I am amazed now much gossiping goes on in an entirely male work group behind other people's backs. Males are definitely worse than females in that regard. I would not be surpised if allegations were true. A bunch if primadonna devs can be nasty to work with. Just stay away and separate work and life.
Kicked out of his own company? Reminds me of Apple and SJ... Hopefully Tom will see a great future and make some out of the blue return.
I doubt they are publishing the real story, there. What is a fact is that Mr. Preston-Werner is resigning. From there, we may only speculate.
If I may speculate, I'd guess that there was some truth to the story told by "the other side", that there was some kind of harassment on the part of this man's wife (who was not employed there). That is all I can really guess. And the only real way to publicly resolve this would be for this man to resign - while he perhaps didn't personally do anything wrong, maybe his wife did, so he was in a sense the fall guy for that.
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This makes me sad. My interpretation of these events was that a toxic employee instigated a witch hunt and was successful. By simple observation of numbers here, you probably disagree with this. But for the few of you that do agree with this point of view, take it as a reminder of the crucial role of hiring. You can easily hire the person who ruins your company's culture and causes your downfall.
Irrationality is sweeping the Tech world. I shudder to think where this will end.
This is scary. I was just checking out Jekyll and stumbled upon his blog. Then I came here and saw this.