I would submit that at least one person thought it was a hostile work environment.

At every company in the world you can find at least one person who hates their job or has problems with their coworkers. I'm not sure they are the person you go to for a fair opinion.

> the investigator did find evidence of mistakes and errors of judgment.

GitHub isn't denying that there were problems and isn't claiming that her story is a complete fabrication. They merely said they don't believe they will lose a lawsuit over it. If anything, they validated that her opinion was fair

If you read Theresa Preston-Werner's post (linked above), she claims that the "mistakes and errors of judgment" were completely unrelated to the harassment story, but were discovered during the harassment investigation.

That's Theresa's claim (if we are going to play he-said-she-said we might as well be consistent). The official response does not suggest that the errors of judgment were unrelated to the subject at hand

The official response doesn't say anything about the errors of judgment being related or unrelated.

That's a good point, though: from our perspective it is still just he-said/she-said (er, she-said/she-said), and I guess it will always be. I guess it just depends on who we (individually) feel is more credible.

Based on Hovarth's public behavior, I'm not feeling too great about her story...

What makes Horvath's claim have any more bearing than Theresa's? What happened to "innocent until proven guilty"?

A priori, Horvath's claim has no more bearing than Theresa's. That part is very clear and it takes a very strained interpretation of my words to conclude I automatically assumed Horvath was correct.

My first comment was in response to onewaystreet's comment "At every company in the world you can find at least one person who hates their job or has problems with their coworkers. I'm not sure they are the person you go to for a fair opinion." The statement seems to imply that it was sour grapes and not an actual systemic problem that led to this situation. My response was that Github's official response admitted that there were problems (explicitly, mind you) but they believed they would win a legal case if it came to it.

My second comment was in response to kelnos's comment 'If you read Theresa Preston-Werner's post (linked above), she claims that the "mistakes and errors of judgment" were completely unrelated to the harassment story, but were discovered during the harassment investigation.' That comment gave Theresa's story much more credibility than Horvath's. Now, this would be a standard he-said-she-said were it not for the fact that Github's reply doesn't refute Horvath's allegations. In fact, Github's reply implicitly refutes Theresa's claim: after all, if what she were saying is true, the official response would have made it clear that the investigation uncovered issues unrelated to the situation at hand.

> if what she were saying is true, the official response would have made it clear that the investigation uncovered issues unrelated to the situation at hand.

That is not obvious, and I think it is impossible for us to figure out why the PR agency/HR/management/investors/lawyers that crafted this statement was not more specific and what it means that they did not say something. Only reading the report itself or getting a full summary of it can help with that.

They also don't say anything about the Preston-Werner's suppression of the truth about the moon landings.

Because tech companies have never followed any significant rules regarding employment, most tech companies are de facto hostile work environments, even if they try not to, because of the behavior of individuals toward each other. There's a culture that is changing, if slowly, but this is basically always the case.

IMO what it means is that people should work extra hard not to contribute to a hostile work environment, or expect to be perceived as contributing to a hostile work environment at randomly unpredictable points in their lifetime.

I think a lot of people do.