> We know we have to take action and have begun a full investigation. While that’s ongoing, and effective immediately, the relevant founder has been put on leave, as has the referenced GitHub engineer.
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.
Pretty much a full admission that everything that Julie said is true.
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?
A "full investigation" is the law in California when sexual harassment claims are made. It's not an admission of anything, it's just literally the law.
The allegation that a co-worker made a sexual advance and then reverted code and generally created a hostile work environment is most definitely a "sexual harassment" claim.
It's particularly frightening to me because it appears that GitHub is attempting to do the right thing here -- investigate the allegations without the influence of potentially involved parties.
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.
It can be both true that the situation called for having a co-founder put on leave, and his wife banned from the premises because a first look shows Horvath's claims are likely to be true and that Github's management deserves respect for prompt action, candor, and open communication.
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.
As many others have said in this comment thread, Github's actions do NOT mean any claims are "likely to be true". It just means Github is taking proper steps to investigate the situation. The investigation may lead to them determining that Horvath, and not other employees, was in the wrong.
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.
Fair enough about the HR person (who probably acted in fear for their job), but how often does the co-founder of a very successful start up get put on leave within 24 hours of an article published on Techcrunch?
Have you considered the possibility that both parties are in the wrong? That Horvath does have something of a point, but she's massively overblown her experiences and read the wrong meaning into things?
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.
How? Easily. If you're investigating the matter you want to distance all parties involved from the situation, so that they cannot influence the outcome. If Julie was still employed there, she would have certainly been put on leave as well.
I think the fact that he went as far as to give a personal shout out to her at the end says that they're doing more than the bare minimum to keep from getting skinned alive, I think they must at least be taking it genuinely seriously.
>because if they said anything less, then regardless of the truth of the matter, they'd be skinned alive.
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.
> > We know we have to take action and have begun a full investigation. While that’s ongoing, and effective immediately, the relevant founder has been put on leave, as has the referenced GitHub engineer.
> 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.
There is a trick business schools like to play on students, where you are given a test with 10 - 15 scenarios where an employee has allegedly done something wrong and you need to write the proper response from the company.
The correct answer to every single scenario is "suspend pending investigation."
From a legal standpoint, an employee's status as a founder or owner/shareholder is largely irrelevant. There's no basis for special treatment--in fact, depending on how it's handled, such special treatment would, at a minimum, place the company in a potentially perilous legal situation with future cases.
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.
I also have never heard of a founder being put on leave. I wouldn't go quite so far as to say it is an admission that the allegations are true. But it is certainly an admission that they have merit and are not so far from reality as to be easily dismissed. I am pleased that Github is taking this seriously, and very sorry for Julie's experiences. This should never happen to anyone in our industry.
If you see a CEO/Founder/Chairman focusing on a new, spin-off, company, this is generally the American way of handling a volatile situation when the offender is perceived as irreplaceable.
Oh, I don't doubt. Probably he saw the wisdom in stepping back while this is investigated, as any rational person would, guilty or not. Nonetheless, I cannot recall a situation where a founder of a company large enough to make the news has put themselves into a position where it would be necessary.
> > We know we have to take action and have begun a full investigation. While that’s ongoing, and effective immediately, the relevant founder has been put on leave, as has the referenced GitHub engineer.
> 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.
>Pretty much a full admission that everything that Julie said is true.
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.
"I would like to personally apologize to Julie" certainly sounds like an admission that the company wronged her.
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?
That's the standard advice, but things are changing after recent empirical work found that doctors who apologized for mistakes ended up paying out less in malpractice claims than those who didn't.
The cheapest way to win a lawsuit is for it never to be filed in the first place.
If a CEO writes on his company's web site, it's usually understood to mean that he is speaking on behalf of the company.
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.
Maybe, but it could also be calculated: "If we don't apologize, the mob will cry for our blood even more, and we obviously can't do a non-apology apology, because they'd hate us for that too. Just be humble and supplicate to them so we can keep our IPO--I mean reputation intact."
The apology could be interpreted in a lot of ways. It could be we fucked up and we are sorry. Or it could be, Julie really blew things out of proportion/overreacted/misinterpreted things and we wish we were better able to react to her hysteria, and we apologize for not being able to.
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.
> Pretty much a full admission that everything that Julie said is true.
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.
> 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 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".
And their line manager would have followed up with "if I even hear a rumor of this happening again, you'll be fired for cause". Because such harassment is, per my understanding, illegal, and can create enormous problems for the individual, manager, and company. Not to mention incredibly unethical.
> Pretty much a full admission that everything that Julie said is true.
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.
> 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.
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.
It looks like HR was involved in this case and the issue with the wife seemed have been raised. That should have been an immediate red flag to this "experienced" individual before they even got down to business of addressing any other concerns. It was a major screw-up.
Precisely, it "looks like" HR was involved. Can you say with certainty this person, hired in Jan. 2014, was involved? And can you say with certainty that this person could have prevented this? Again, unless you're a GitHub insider (are you?), the answer is no. At the moment, no one on HN knows anything. It's entirely possible this was an HR issue, but specifically calling for the HR person to be suspended or fired, given our collective total ignorance, is a spiteful and bizarre declaration directed at someone the original poster does not know. These are real people, and HN comments – particularly top comments – can influence decisions.
> This narrows down the choices: the "founder" who is the cause for all this drama is either PJ Hyett or Tom Preston-Werner.
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.
>> We know we have to take action and have begun a full investigation. While that’s ongoing, and effective immediately, the relevant founder has been put on leave, as has the referenced GitHub engineer.
> Pretty much a full admission that everything that Julie said is true.
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..
> 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.
> 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
I would venture to guess Tom. I certainly don't know for sure, but he has a wife (don't know about PJ's marital status) who is herself a founder/CEO and wouldn't raise eyebrows spending time working at the Github offices.
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.
> 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?
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.
I have to say, I'm really disappointed. Unless the allegations are somehow made up -- which seems incredibly unlikely -- this is an enormous lapse from a company I use and admire. Not only did the founders, at least in public appearances, all seem like decent people, but they had one hell of a success story. I also liked their seeming tolerance for remote work and support for people like Julie who tried to make our industry more welcome to women by doing instead of just talking.
> ... 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?
Man, talk about CSI justice. Sadly, I think this episode is a two-parter. You'll have to tune in next time, sorry!
>> We know we have to take action and have begun a full investigation. While that’s ongoing, and effective immediately, the relevant founder has been put on leave, as has the referenced GitHub engineer.
>Pretty much a full admission that everything that Julie said is true.
Then I dub you Sir Bedemir, Knight of the Round Table.
GitHub is known to have a dubstep and IPA culture. If they want to be a standard bearer for feminism in tech, the transition is going to be difficult and they are going to take some hits. The two cultures don't mix well.
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.
They will have to move to a MDMA/THC based culture fused with early 90's pop + Mid 2000's minimal techno. This is a small step for a dubstep IPA culture. It's like moving from the Midwest to NYC.
> GitHub is known to have a dubstep and IPA culture.
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?
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.