This is a terrible assumption to make. This line is basically saying "we're taking this seriously", because if they said anything less, then regardless of the truth of the matter, they'd be skinned alive.
Ironically, it's knee-jerk black and white comments like yours that create this kind of press release. You've already convicted them in your mind and are looking for any excuse to execute them. I mean fuck, you expect an HR person to come on board and within a month "not have let any of that get as far as it got"? Are they supposed to have invented a time-machine?
Yet, if such a thing is construed as an admission of guilt in the greater "court of public opinion" then there's an incentive to actively avoid any attempt at transparency.
They could have been completely opaque and done nothing but investigate the matter, without any disclosure. It's a brave choice to be open because, even implicitly, admitting a problem can taken as admitting liability.
At the very least, she seems a bit...attention hungry. Knowing nothing about the situation or people involved I am taking her accusations with a huge grain of salt.
Life is stickier than tabloids lead you to believe, and in such a case as I've suggested, it's not hard to see the founders talking about how 'bob' should take a brief sabbatical while the Internet Hate Machine looks for another target. The other founders might love 'bob' and want to spare him from internet fury. Or they might loathe him and were looking for a way to put him in his place. Or they might be taking a pragmatic PR-smart move. Or 'bob' might have said "I was looking to take leave and go to Europe for a holiday, this would be a good time, eh?". Or a dozen other situations. We just don't know.
And that's just fire-fighting - if you want Github to do a meaningful investigation, then you need to have the investigators being as dispassionate as possible, rather than doing it while fending off the hordes at the gate. And since a founder is involved, the investigators pretty much have to be the other founders. And that meaningful investigation includes talking to staff outside of the bubble of hysteria that's currently going on. And that meaningful investigation may indeed largely exonerate Github.
The thing is that you don't have enough information to pre-convict the way you have.
And, frankly, on a personal note: fuck this automatic calling for the sacking of someone when thing go awry. It's truly fucked up. Re-evaluate? No. Retrain? No. Reassign? No. "Someone has to suffer" for the mob's one-eyed rage. Fuck that shit. Sometimes a sacking is the appropriate course of action, but that's not for the mob to decide, because the mob doesn't have anything like close access to the story.
I am amazed at how many people don't recognize this. Even if the entire thing were completely made up, this would still be the only acceptable response github could give.
> Pretty much a full admission that everything that Julie said is true.
> This is great news, but putting on leave seems to be too nice. It's clear that these two people obey ethics that are in direct oppposition to the healthy growth of the company. Surely they don't want them back?
It's pretty standard practice to place employees on paid leave while serious complaints are investigated. You don't want to fire them until you have a pretty solid case as they might sue, but likewise you don't want them in the office.
The correct answer to every single scenario is "suspend pending investigation."
Employees? Sure. Founders? I've not heard of that before.
One of the major ideas behind suspending employees for investigations is to eliminate their ability to influence the investigation. Also, it's a immediate precautionary measure to prevent the behavior from continuing should the complaint be found to be valid. In that sense, it protects the employer by keeping them at a distance in the short-term. They can also point to it in the press and in future legal proceedings (if any) as part of a strategy of showing that they took the complaint seriously from the beginning.
Gary Friedman is an excellent example (I'm lazy, so HuffPo: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/17/gary-friedman-resto...) of a pro forma separation of a major shareholder/chairman/CEO from the company.
> Pretty much a full admission that everything that Julie said is true.
Hardly. It just says they are paying attention to the accusations and taking things seriously. I think they responded in a very positive way, and more transparently than I would have expected. But "we're looking into it" in no way validates or admits any fault on their behalf at this point.
> This is great news, but putting these people on leave seems to be too nice.
So they should just fire them based on one person's complaints? If everything Julie accused them of is true, I think they should be fired, but that doesn't mean they should go off half-cocked, firing everyone involved until they can investigate and determine exactly what happened.
And that doesn't happen over night.
No, it isn't. It's standard operating procedure pretty much everywhere to put employees on leave while an investigation is conducted. It shouldn't be construed as an admission at all.
And don't lawyers frequently tell their clients not to apologize (even if they feel they ought to), since that may be construed as an admission of wrongdoing in a subsequent legal proceeding?
The cheapest way to win a lawsuit is for it never to be filed in the first place.
Maybe he's just sorry because she's obviously hurt and things didn't work out for the best?
In any case, the company did wrong her by allowing an environment to exist in which these kinds of behaviors were tolerated. The actions that the CEO took today should have been taken a long time ago.
GitHub is a business and they aren't dumb enough to not consult one or more lawyers before releasing their statement. If they are in the wrong, I would have to imagine their best play would be to compensate Julie behind the scene and have her formally come out and say GitHub is doing everything they can to ensure this doesn't happen again.
People make mistakes; they seem to get a lot of other things right, so maybe the relationship is salvageable - and all he needs is some time off.
>Doesn't appear so. They did get an HR person, but an experienced one? Not a chance. No experienced HR person would have let any of that get as far as it got. That HR person should probably be put on leave or be fired as well.
Jeez. They hired HR in January; the company has 240 employees many of whom remote. Based on her story, Julie Horvath's relationship was already poisoned by the time they hired this HR person.
The screwups were bad but I doubt GH culture is unfixable.
I have no idea whose side of the story is accurate, but there was really no other way for Github to play this, whether they were in the wrong or Julie was in the wrong.
The individuals, while allegedly shitlords in terms of their behaviour, being gone may eliminate 2 problems, but honestly they're products of an overall culture. In a healthy company you wouldn't have a guy (allegedly) reverting commits or shittalking individuals in comments because they wouldn't fuck him for very long after the first few efforts, because their peers or line manager would have said, "dude, not cool".
[Edited for clarity]
https://twitter.com/tpdubs2/status/415224900782014464
> TheresaPrestonWerner @tpdubs2
> Found the best, most comfortable chair at GitHub HQ. Office seems pretty empty today.
Among several other tweets here:
https://twitter.com/search?q=github%20from%3Atpdubs2&src=typ...
The company I work for often has spouses and significant others (including the CEO's) around either for drinks in the evening, or just for fun.
They don't have any power or influence in the company beyond the typical role of adviser that all spouses serve.
Hey, this chair seems to be facing that bitch Julie. Imagine that. Now I can give her the evil eye for 8 hours straight!
It reads more like an admission that at least some of what Julie said is not immediately known to be untrue and that they have to check it out. Hence the, y'know, investigation.
The HR person has been on the job for a minimum of 31 business days and a maximum of 53. Horvath joined two years ago. Unless you are a GitHub insider, you currently are working off knowledge from a single source in which the information was provided by a person with a specific agenda. It is malicious to call for the HR person's job given your almost complete dearth of information.
Julie Horvath follows both Chris Wanstrath and PJ Hyett on Twitter, but not Tom Preston-Werner (at least as shown by Twitter's "Followed by people you follow" banner). Of course, this could just be a coincidence.
Wow - if anyone wants to see an example of an article being overanalyzed and then terrible conclusions being made out of it, this is a model comment for that.
Each of your supposed inferences is critical and harsh. Stop being so cynical - it will help you. The world is still a nice place..
> that person came on board in January 2014
most of the things that had happened predated the HR person coming on, but you do have a point, the wife thing should of stopped since January
should have stopped
Any guess?
Just last Friday his wife's startup is accepted to Techstars NYC, and she is going to be at NYC. It may be a good timing for Tom to take a leave to be with his wife.
Just guessing here. I could totally be wrong. No offense to Tom; I looked up to him.
I'm strongly inclined to believe that what Horvath said is true and that these two people should be laid off, but that shouldn't happen before an investigation. If they're not guilty, they should be exonerated; if they are, they should be dismissed with the full weight of evidence, so they can't paint themselves as innocent martyrs.
why is TechCrunch claiming Scott Chacon is a co-founder? He is married also but his wife is friends with Julie on Facebook so I doubt him
I doubt it was PJ's wife - https://twitter.com/kldub
which narrows it down to Theresa Preston-Werner and just for kicks
All in all, I'm really saddened.
Man, talk about CSI justice. Sadly, I think this episode is a two-parter. You'll have to tune in next time, sorry!
Bullshit. It just means that they're looking into it.
>Pretty much a full admission that everything that Julie said is true.
Lynch! Lynch! Lynch!
>Pretty much a full admission that everything that Julie said is true.
Then I dub you Sir Bedemir, Knight of the Round Table.
It sounds like GitHub is going to have to become more stale and corporate to survive as a larger company, which is inevitable, but hastened by their own choices.
What point are you trying to make here? Are you a classical music and hefeweizen type of employee typically? Or maybe based out of Seattle, in which case you'd prefer a more grunge/PBR culture?
Come on now...
/s
Now we know what the real problems are in this industry: taste in music and beer!
Pretty much a full admission that everything that Julie said is true.
This is great news, but putting these people on leave seems to be too nice. It's clear that these two people obey ethics that are in direct oppposition to the healthy growth of the company. Surely they don't want them back?
> The founder’s wife discussed in the media reports has never had hiring or firing power at GitHub and will no longer be permitted in the office.
Why did it take a Techcrunch article to reach this decision? Didn't anyone at Github see anything wrong with that founder's wife doing what she did, according to Julie's statement?
> GitHub has grown incredibly fast over the past two years, bringing a new set of challenges. Nearly a year ago we began a search for an experienced HR Lead and that person came on board in January 2014
Doesn't appear so. They did get an HR person, but an experienced one? Not a chance. No experienced HR person would have let any of that get as far as it got. That HR person should probably be put on leave or be fired as well.
> Chris Wanstrath > > CEO & Co-Founder
This narrows down the choices: the "founder" who is the cause for all this drama is either PJ Hyett or Tom Preston-Werner.