Follow up to the investigation results

Re:Follow up to the investigation results by SolarNet on Monday April 28, 2014 @04:01PM (#7662550)

Very much this. This report doesn't discredit's Horvath's perspective of sexism, it in fact supports it. The reality that there isn't sexism in general isn't in-congruent with that. The report also speaks of github's HR failures (that a founder (indirectly) was able to harass her repeatedly because of her gender), which Horvath explained as being a big reason for her view of sexism at the company.

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Re:Follow up to the investigation results by rhizome on Monday April 28, 2014 @04:27PM (#7662752)

I'm led to think that Tom Preston-Werner got off easy here.

failure to enforce an agreement that his spouse should not work in the office

It had been a big enough problem before that they had a formal agreement prohibiting it.

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Re:Follow up to the investigation results by asuffield on Monday April 28, 2014 @04:48PM (#7662919)

Why did he get off easy? Who's going to work for him now?

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Re:Follow up to the investigation results by smirksirlot on Monday April 28, 2014 @05:30PM (#7663224)

Given that Marc Andreessen publicly vocalized support for him and his new venture, I hardly think he'll have much trouble with his career.

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Re:Follow up to the investigation results by lexcorvus on Monday April 28, 2014 @06:02PM (#7663416)

Not to mention that he probably owns over $200m worth of GitHub stock.

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Re:Follow up to the investigation results by rhizome on Monday April 28, 2014 @05:12PM (#7663114)

Just off the top of my head, he was allowed to resign rather than fired for cause.

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Re:Follow up to the investigation results by asuffield on Tuesday April 29, 2014 @05:41PM (#7670114)

I don't mean he'll have trouble getting hired - he won't. This probably won't hurt his "career" per se.

I mean he'll have trouble hiring people to work for him. I'd certainly think twice (and this is not an entirely casual statement since I'm an engineer and a startup guy) - not because of the allegations, but because the result of a careful investigation was that he made it an unpleasant place to work for some of his employees by being confrontational, disregarding complaints, and being insensitive to something that wasn't a problem for him personally. I do not want to work in a place like that, and I'd be worried that he'd do it again.

It won't stop everybody from working for him. He'll still get plenty of graduate attention. But putting together a good startup team is hard, and this kind of verdict might make it impossible.

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Re:Follow up to the investigation results by offbrand on Monday April 28, 2014 @05:28PM (#7663209)

Perhaps he resigned before the investigation was over.

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Re:Follow up to the investigation results by rhizome on Monday April 28, 2014 @07:40PM (#7663880)

It's right there in the statement:

After being presented with the results we felt Tom could no longer be an effective leader at GitHub. He offered his resignation and we accepted.

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Re:Follow up to the investigation results by chippy on Tuesday April 29, 2014 @09:04AM (#7666644)

I'm a little bit confused. Are you saying that to Horvath her personal perspective was that it was sexist, that the report said it was not actually sexist, but that doesn't discredit her personal perspective of the matter?

Edits - let me clarify: I think this would go far in explaining why Horvath is reacting as she has been doing to the report. But I'm struggling to understand if this means that the personal subjective interpretation is more valuable to the truth than an objective independent investigation? (Now I think that the investigation on the whole may not have been at all independent - only to ensure that Github was in the clear legally - with no obligation to the truth or to expose any other things - but I think that's out of this side discussion!)

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Re:Follow up to the investigation results by SolarNet on Thursday May 01, 2014 @01:03PM (#7681071)

I'm saying they are of similar weight, to be clear Github's interpretation of the events and Horvath's interpretation of the events are both valid perspectives, neither can be invalid, to the party in question. We have to weight them the way we see fit, and the ones that have the most evidence of being generally true.

An investigation found no legal liability of sexism but that doesn't mean there isn't a culture aspect to it. On the other hand Horvath's experience with the founder may have colored her view of the culture.

I'm saying Github's interpretation of events and Horvath's interpretation are consistent, they don't conflict, hence they can both be true at the moment.

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