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Comment by onlypylons | Hacker News Reader

I work at GitLab. Article sums it up. All of it seems right to me. There's also internal pushback and criticism on the diversity blog post. I guess the plus side is if you're a man and agree with everything the e-group says you'll go pretty far.

CEO and CMO keep saying there are inaccuracies in the story to discredit core concerns. Seems like they're positioning it as performance issues (it wasn't, they were all amazing and top talent) because they'd only not be able to comment on reasons for termination. That makes sense because disagreement with e-group and some in s-group more than once or twice is a performance issue now. Hard for them to say everyone is lying and the lived experience of everyone is wrong and they don't have a diversity problem with a straight face, so implying it's a performance issue seems fitting.

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Thank you for your support! That really means a lot. And for the record, performance was not given as a reason for my termination. I was told it was because I could not get along with, or work with my managers, whom I had reported concerns against.

The Chief People Officer was forced out for doing her job.

I work at GitLab and I tend to agree. It's insane!

Yeah pretty much. If you don't agree with the exec team, or otherwise to improve the situation you'll get the axe.

What are they saying that is inaccurate about the article?

They aren't telling us anything because of "privacy" concerns. Here is what the official response from Sid was:

"There was an article published in The Register today regarding the recent departures of female leaders from our company. There were multiple inaccuracies in the article. Because we value the privacy of our current and former employees, we do not discuss personnel issues publicly."

EDIT: the official response does go on to point to recent blog posts and other diversity "efforts" as well as ways to anonymously send in complaints or concerns.

People only file complaints if they feel safe to do so and the complaints are handled appropriately.

A way to lead on transparency might be to share number of investigations, internal and external, and what the findings were. There are ways to share findings without revealing names. Additionally, a company can benefit from transparent remediation discussions, which are very important.

Transparency is easy when it comes to being transparent about things you want to get out into the world. The old humble brag approach to transparency, if you will. But, values are only values if they are upheld when it's hard.

I'm not aware of any laws that require investigation findings to be private. However, ignoring material risks has huge penalties. This isn't legal advice, but willfully violating laws, in the US, is oftentimes the basis for treble damages,

I've anonymously reported an incident as a GitLab employee. It was ignored. I encouraged someone else to report an incident and it was handled dreadfully by the interim Chief People Officer at the time. The person ended up leaving due to the terrible experience and real fear of retaliation.

They're now supposed to be handled by the Chief Legal Officer which I find odd.

i personally know the CPO who just left would have handled your concern seriously. she really helped me and another person whom I know confided in her too.

Because the CPO is gone. GitLabbers - don't trust the CLO. She told us not to talk to the CPO the week she left, which is very odd too and makes us think something went wrong.

I didn't realize that. How sketchy and frustrating.

hmmmm... Men discrediting women...

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