Github cofounder resigns after clearance in sex-harass probe Tom Preston-Werner, the cofounder and former CEO of Github, has left the company being cleared by a third-party investigation into claims of sexual harassment at the coding startup. "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 …
Julie Horvath. Another name, like Adria Richards, that will be getting added to the little "avoid this political-correctness troublemaker like the goddamn plague" blacklist that I sometimes see circulated around all the various IT service companies we share market with...
The poetic beauty of this blacklist is, that any political-correctness troublemaker who sees it and wants to raise a fuss about it, knows full well that if they do, they'll end up on it.
In fairness, I have been for some time in this business and I *have* seen the case where a superior went completely off-base, dishing out the complete harassment menu. Then the guy's wife called up and accused her. When the lady tried to get a hearing at the posh office level the old boys network just closed ranks and she was basically shunted to the basement and things were being sat on until she resigned.
"The poetic beauty of this blacklist is, that any political-correctness troublemaker who sees it and wants to raise a fuss about it, knows full well that if they do, they'll end up on it."
And despite what you may think, there are principled people out there who will blow the whistle. The building trade tried this and big fines were handed out. It might even still happen, but if it is, it's on a much smaller scale. Then there's the "no poaching" débâcle Silicon Valley is currently in.
While I was solidly for the ousting from Mozilla of whats-his-name, you know, the one who gave the world the Betsest Cross Site Scripting Vector Ever, I find this list offensive, odious and indefensible.
Not the principle of identifying repeat offenders and system gamers, that I applaud. But if you can get on the list simply by pointing at it it falls into a very different bucket, one that ends up at the place everyone claims we'll be in for what happened during the Mozilla Affair but way, way faster.
And in secret too.
I think that the poetic irony of this "circulating troublemaker list" idea is in fact that the people doing it and applauding those who do it are probably the loudest complainers against NSA surveillance.
And, when you think bout it, it is the same kind of thinking that ends in "special rendition", or the overly-inclusive, on-it-for-life sex offenders lists.
Julie Horvath ... had her code pulled by a staff member
...but was the code any good?
when she refused to sleep with him, and after female staff hula-hooped in the office while being ogled by male coders
While I do understand the sleeping bit, I do not understand why her code would be pulled "after female staff hula-hooped in the office while being ogled by male coders".
It sounds like a weird conflation of the Monty Python "job interview" and a standard Benny Hill production.
Those are selected incidents of the story, you can follow all the sordid details on reddit or ycombinator. Including the more worrying detail that the wife of the founder who allegedly did the bullying but wasn't employed by the company - claimed to have access to all the customer records and private chat logs
In both quotes, it's stated they found no evidence of sexual harassment or bullying. Seems like a very specific denial, and it leaves the complaints of bullying and constructive dismissal unaddressed.
Horvath's story is more one of bullying and constructive dismissal than sexual harassment. If a co-worker of mine started purging all of my commits from the company's codebase, with the approval of management, I'd be livid, and I'd be getting myself an employment lawyer. Just like she did.
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