> 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.
Note that the denial is couched in the terminology "there was no legal wrongdoing". Not that there was no wrongdoing, just nothing blatant enough (or which left evidence) that it broke laws.
Actually, that specific denial is limited to two items: gender based discrimination by Tom Preston-Werner and his wife, and the existence of a discriminatory/hostile workspace. Not coincidentally, these are the two claims which would have been against the law, and also the least of the claims brought forth by Horvath (though it's the angle latched onto by the media) - she instead claimed personal harassment from Horvath's wife, and the non-responsiveness of HR to these issues.
The only real gender based problems she had were related to male co-worker's responses to female co-workers hula-hooping, as I remember it.
There wouldn't be much evidence of personal harassment, particularly the kind described by Horvath.
"[D]irect and testable assertion" sounds scientific, certainly. It would be interesting to hear how you would flesh that out, though. For example, when they say "no evidence exists," don't we immediately run into the question of whether the claims of Ms. Horvath don't actually constitute evidence? What does constitutes "evidence"? Is that question testable? If Ms. Horvath's claims don't count as evidence, then why does Github's claim that "no evidence exists" count? What test or tests do you propose?
Criminal and civil investigations are not scientific investigations. They may make use of science, but they are not scientific. To import the language of science--actually neo-Popperian pop-cultural language about science--into a discussion of an internal investigation into harassment claims is highly suspect.
Your claim aside, these are weasel words. The way to discover the fact that they are is to appropriately apply language akin to that of jurisprudence, rather than inappropriately apply that of science.
I'd like to see how you (or anyone here) propose to test it. This isn't science; it's a corporate press release.
Do we know the name of the "full, independent, third-party" investigator(s)? Do we know who paid for them, their methodology, and whether they reported to Horvath, giving her oversight?
Or are investigators the same, like software contractors?
You and I or 'tptacek probably cannot test it, but Horvath's lawyer may be able to sue to test it.
It would be very dumb of GitHub to state that there is no evidence if there is evidence that Horvath could turn up. (Granted, sometimes companies are dumb.)
They are definitely not saying Horvath was lying, they are saying they found no evidence of a sexist or hostile work environment - the investigation was lead by a third party, and best behaviour would have been in place at and before the moment they arrived following the claims, it's likely that many, if not most of the company hadn't experienced the same treatment that Horvath allegedly received, and they would have explained that to the investigators.
The key word in there would be “evidence”: take the example of “oogling” female employees hulla-ooping. You can prove that they did hulla-oop, but not that the way others watched them was sexist.
Proof is a huge issue with sexism in general: anecdotal, or separate cases for discrimination; expression of consent when it comes to rape, etc. I wished organisation handling such issues focused on provability in court, rather than awareness.
They're saying that the investigative team brought in to determine if there was anything they could be sued over found no evidence/email trail for the specific things that they could get sued over.
"We didn't find an email trail that could lead to a lawsuit, and the co-founder in question immediately resigned" is a very far cry from "Everything she said was a lie."
I didn't downvote you, but this is a hot-button issue right now. A lot of people are familiar with what happened, and (perhaps wrongly) assume that everyone else is as well. Assuming that context, your post can be interpreted as "I don't think that the things said Horvath brought up were a big deal", where you might have meant "I'm not familiar with this subject, what did she bring up that was so bad?"
That's about what I thought. But as it happens, no, I wasn't doubting the claims -- I just wasn't following the story obsessively and wasn't aware of the details.
I think it's possible that Horvath was right about the poor actions of management, and at the same time, very little of what she alleged seemed to fall into the bounds of gender-based discrimination. A colleague who reverts your commits because you wouldn't date him...that's not gender-based, that's office-romance strife (though obviously, such strife can be exacerbated with a gender imbalance at the company). I'm kind of interested in what happened to that engineer.
re: The co-worker who couldn't handle being rejected by her:
> The rejection of the other employee led to something of an internal battle at GitHub. According to Horvath, the engineer, “hurt from my rejection, started passive-aggressively ripping out my code from projects we had worked on together without so much as a ping or a comment. I even had to have a few of his commits reverted. I would work on something, go to bed, and wake up to find my work gone without any explanation.” The employee in question, according to Horvath, is both “well-liked at GitHub” and “popular in the community.”
His “behavior towards female employees,” according to Horvath, “especially those he sees as opportunities is disgusting.”
And there was one more incident that would purportedly fall under sexism:
> Two women, one of whom I work with and adore, and a friend of hers were hula hooping to some music. I didn’t have a problem with this. What I did have a problem with is the line of men sitting on one bench facing the hoopers and gawking at them. It looked like something out of a strip club. When I brought this up to male coworkers, they didn’t see a problem with it. But for me it felt unsafe and to be honest, really embarrassing. That was the moment I decided to finally leave GitHub.
The first one, of course, is bad. And there's possibly a case to be made that if management knew about this engineer and let it slide, well, that does create a hostile environment. Yet I don't think Horvath points out where she complained about this guy's commit-reverting behavior to management.
The second thing, about hula-hooping, without context, it doesn't really mean anything beyond what Horvath claims she was able to grok just by stumbling upon the scene. I think during the original HN discussion, a Githubber said that the hula-hooping happened during an in-office party. Either way, hula-hooping and watching said-hula-hooping is hard to claim, on its face, as being gender-discrimination.
The other stuff though, about the co-founder unfairly pressuring her partner to resign, and the co-founder's wife claiming to have access to Github employees' private data...Those could be things that the company frowns upon enough to merit a resignation.
How is a woman who refuses to date another employee considered an "office-romance?" Retaliation as a result of unwanted advances is considered harassment.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that there was an actual romance. I meant that this immature (and shitty) behavior was based in that domain of "romance" (the existence or lack thereof, in this case) and not, from the face of Horvath's description, automatically based on gender-discrimination.
From your link:
> Although the law doesn’t prohibit simple teasing, offhand comments, or isolated incidents that are not very serious, harassment is illegal when it is so frequent or severe that it creates a hostile or offensive work environment or when it results in an adverse employment decision (such as the victim being fired or demoted).
1. Did Horvath provide proof that this immature behavior was more-than-isolated and unpunished? It would be easy for her to, as it would exist in the git logs. But we don't know if it happened dozens of times, or just more than one time.
2. Reverting commits is still part of an engineer's job. She alleges that the commits were unfair...again, this evidence would exist in the logs. But what if the commits were justifiable, and the engineer was being snippy about it? That doesn't really count as harassment.
3. Was Horvath retaliated against by management (e.g. fired or demoted) for being angry at her colleague? Her account doesn't claim that.
The link you posted says that harassment, and sexual harassment, is illegal...But what Horvath describes is not harassment by the legal definition, because the other engineer could claim that the reverts were part of his job. Again, the commit logs, or even a description of them, are needed to decide whether this constituted harassment beyond a coworker criticizing another.
> I meant that this immature (and shitty) behavior was based in that domain of "romance" (the existence or lack thereof, in this case) and not, from the face of Horvath's description, automatically based on gender-discrimination.
Don't make up soft weasel words to describe it. It's sexual harassment plain and simple. Also, this bit about classifying it as gender-discrimination seems like pointless hair-splitting. Horvath felt wronged by many things, and she probably felt those things would not have happened if she were a man, and I think that's a fair assumption on her part. I'll leave it to the courts to get into the technical classification of precisely if and how she was wronged.
Sorry, reverting someone's commits out of spite because they rejected you is not sexual harassment "plain and simple." Words have meanings. Furthermore it is not "pointless hair-splitting" to say it is not gender discrimination. You clearly have no understanding of what these terms mean and why it's important to not let this type of drama bleed into the wider discussion about systemic gender discrimination in tech.
"Harassment can include “sexual harassment” or unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature. Harassment does not have to be of a sexual nature, however, and can include offensive remarks about a person’s sex. For example, it is illegal to harass a woman by making offensive comments about women in general."
Harassment of someone who happens to be of the opposite gender does not make it sexual harassment. Harassment of someone for rejecting you romantically does not make it sexual harassment. If someone "feels" they would not have been harassed the same way if they were a man does not make it sexual harassment. (This is clearly false in this case, obviously, because the same thing could have happened if it were an advancement by someone of the same gender.)
Reverting someone's commit is not harassment of a "sexual nature" nor does it include commentary on the person's sex or women in general. It has nothing to do with gender or sexual comments, it has to do with an emotional reaction to rejection and an immature pathetic response.
> The first one, of course, is bad. And there's possibly a case to be made that if management knew about this engineer and let it slide, well, that does create a hostile environment. Yet I don't think Horvath points out where she complained about this guy's commit-reverting behavior to management.
No...but it would bolster her claim that a hostile work environment was knowingly perpetuated, which is a component of harassment. I'm not saying that talking to management is a trivial thing, especially in cases of reporting harassment. But it's also unfair to argue "they should've stopped it" if they weren't appraised of the situation. Again, maybe Horvath did say so, but her account to TechCrunch doesn't mention it explicitly. In any case, such a thing would likely be an electronic record, and so if she feels that the record was not thoroughly examined, now's her chance to assert that.
Neither party has to be lying. She might honestly believe she was treated in a specific way because of her sex, while others may have treated her in a specific way because of, for instance, her competence. Both may be 100% honest in their assessment of the relationship, yet be completely at odds.
The workplace absolutely sounded unprofessional, which often means the entire gradient of behaviour from welcoming to hostile (versus the normal corporate realm of gray areas in between). Indeed, unprofessional workplaces are generally celebrated in the tech community, often for good reason.
> She might honestly believe she was treated in a specific way because of her sex
Yes, but the investigation said there was no evidence for a hostile work environment. That's a claim above and beyond sexism: it's quantifying over all of the various ways a work environment could be hostile (of which sexism is one way). If what Horvath says about Preston's wife is true, then that sounds like a hostile work environment to me, regardless of whether the treatment was due to her sex.
> Yes, but the investigation said there was no evidence for a hostile work environment. That's a claim above and beyond sexism
No, its not. "Hostile work environment" is mentioned as one of the legal violations it found to be unsupported, and "hostile work environment" is a legal term of art in sexual harassment law. In context, then, it is not a claim "above and beyond sexism", its is a claim about the absence of a particular form of sexual harassment.
> it's quantifying over all of the various ways a work environment could be hostile (of which sexism is one way).
You are reading it backwards: the finding of no legal wrongdoing, in the context of the allegations made of sexual harassment, is quantifying over all the various ways in which sexual harassment law could be violated, and the "hostile work environment" statement is one specific example of areas where sexual harassment was not found.
And yet conventional ideas of professionalism have such an iron grip on our minds that even startup founders are affected by them. In our startup, when outsiders came to visit we tried hard to seem "professional." We'd clean up our offices, wear better clothes, try to arrange that a lot of people were there during conventional office hours. In fact, programming didn't get done by well-dressed people at clean desks during office hours. It got done by badly dressed people (I was notorious for programmming wearing just a towel) in offices strewn with junk at 2 in the morning. But no visitor would understand that. Not even investors, who are supposed to be able to recognize real productivity when they see it. Even we were affected by the conventional wisdom.
The idea being, in that ultra-early-stage, 2-3 founding members only, state, trying too hard to be "professional" is counterproductive. Obviously, at the scale that we're talking about with Github, the game changes.
Ah, ok, I agree there's a big difference between an ultra-early-stage startup and a company the size of Github. But the latter criterion is what seems relevant to me for this thread, since it's about what happened at Github.
Limited or no dress code
No set hours
Limited involvement of HR
Wide degree of responsibility -- limited written work descriptions
Amorphous groups of collaboration that develop and disband
And on and on. Most technology companies, even once they are larger, try to hold onto those "unprofessional" traits. A strong HR group with heavy controls limit or eradicate the ability for some of the less pleasant behaviours, but they also can completely undermine self-motivation and creativity. It's a delicate balance.
I think there's a key distinction here between "unprofessional" traits that can enhance productivity, vs. unprofessional traits that kill productivity.
I agree that the former are good things and should be preserved where possible. (And not just in technology companies; some time ago I remember reading about a study that looked at various heavy industrial companies--auto manufacturers were one type--and found that the most productive ones were the ones that had many of the things you cite: limited or no dress code, limited HR involvement, limited written work descriptions and a lot of autonomy given to workers.)
However, the Github case appears to be an example of the latter. I don't think that's something to be celebrated.
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.