Prominent GitHub Engineer Quits, Alleging Gender-Based Harassment
recode.net
recode.net
This author can't seem to distinguish between the code employees at GitHub write, and code users put onto GitHub.
Alleged workplace abuse. Let's wait for a statement from GitHub before we grab our pitchforks.
Let's say I am an open source developer and I put some crazy stuff on Github.
Some journalist does a profile on me. Am I a "Github Software Developer" to them?
* Google Name -- "aha, link to Github"
* Find crazy stuff checked into Github repos.
* Google Github -- "aha, technology company something something distributed ... eyes glaze over technical mumbo jumbo".
* Claim I am a "Github Engineer"
It is obvious to us how it works, but say someone who has no idea about repos or open source will not quite understand the separation between user content and platform.
I'm curious why she'd post this on Twitter instead of taking it to a lawyer. And I don't mean for that to be innuendo- there are many reasons for this to go any which way.
If you publicly told people that for two years, and suddenly have a live-streamed blow-out on twitter with Facebook-style innuendo, honestly I would completely discount your claims as an emotional tantrum, and would give it absolutely no stock.
There is absolutely nothing "actionable" being discussed. And this may surprise some people, but women are just as capable as men of grinding an axe or trying to take down someone (or some organization) they feel slighted by.
All it would take for me personally to reverse my stance on an employer being a good place for women is a single case in which I reported being sexually harassed and management then took the side of the harasser over me. Because one case is not acceptable, and it's all it takes to turn a workplace into a hostile and unpleasant environment.
That's not to say "oh, if she says something, she must be telling the truth", but the possibility that she is telling the truth is a huge red flag.
In my opinion, a simple tweet like "@x has done @y thus influencing me to leave this company, will put up a blog post." would be much more effective.
This way people know what happened, and all journalism is formed around the actual event. If the guy didn't want to get called out publicly, maybe he shouldn't have fucked up, but this way we get to hear both sides of the story.
Edited to add: the process of deciding the best action to take given uncertain information is fundamentally different from the process of trying to decide what is most likely to be true when there is nothing in particular at stake personally.
Great basis to form a decision.
If I'm in an unfamiliar city and someone I don't know says "Hey, watch out for that alley, several people have been attacked there recently," I wouldn't know whether it was true. But it would be pretty stupid to decline to take any precautions until I could perform my own plot of crime statistic data by location to assess the truth value, don't you think?
2. Actually, they have a history of problems with women that they were trying to repair. Which is why she was trying to turn the company around on the issue and evangelize it in the first place. Did you read the article?
Many people have developed PTSD from a traumatic childhood within which no one distinct event/spoken sentence can be pointed to-- just many, many hurtful episodes over days, weeks, months, and years.
There probably was an event that set her over the edge. I just wouldn't expect it to be some Disney movie scene in which a guy in a suit slams his fists down and shouts, "Women are the worst!" Real people are more crafty than that. Real-life abuse is more subtle.
Again-- I don't know what happened. Just can't help but point out the kind of faulty logic being used here, since it is so common.
If I was a woman interviewing at GitHub and then read this, it would absolutely influence my decision. I'd want to work there more.
There are two possibilities here:
1) Github has a culture of sexist workplace harassment
2) She is not telling the truth and Github is a perfectly nice place to work
In 1), I would be harassed, sure. I would then take care to document the harassment and file a lawsuit against the unrepentantly sexist company. I'd get a great settlement, Github likely has deep pockets or backers who do and would be desperate for this to go away. Cha-ching, cash in, and feel great doing it.
In 2), I'd have a nice job and everything would be cool.
It's cartoon-ish to say, "Well then I'd sue and everything would be worth it." Know why most women don't sue? Death treats. Rape threats. Not being able to ever get a job in tech again. No one believing the claims could possibly be true. The expense of suing someone and losing. Etc.
The day-to-day psychological effects alone are bad enough that, with any familiarity, you would never roll the dice on that chance.
I worked on a community care facility for developmentally disabled adults when I was in college. I was young when it happened, probably 19-20, and an older woman I worked with made constant unwanted sexual advances. We worked unsupervised in a two person team in a group home, and for about six months she would never let a day go by without pointing out that she would be willing to engage in intercourse with me, right here and now, in pretty graphic terms. I was pretty low on the totem pole, the woman harassing me was very good friends with management, and so I never did anything about it.
So yes, I have been in a situation like that, can imagine the reality, and would totally be willing to go through it again and do it right by reporting it and maybe saving others from getting that treatment in the future.
She's either currently faced with an unusual situation that doesn't reflect githubs normal behaviour, or she had no credibility in the first place.
At this point, she seems disgruntled about a single issue and is using it as a platform to stir up wider controversy.
Are you like... going back in time and revising your opinion?
"I regret defending GitHub's culture to feminists for the last two years. I'm sorry to everyone I've hurt in doing so."
"I've been harassed by 'leadership' at GitHub for two years. And I am the first developer to quit."
Worse than having a serious discussion on twitter, though, is tweeting twitter as a source of breaking news.
Because sometimes people do things, that while completely legal, can also make people feel unwelcome and unsafe.
The legal system is not the only possible recourse for settling disputes or grievances.
Congrats.
The whole piece reads more like a revenge of someone with twitter audience, who lost at the game of office thrones.
One of the comments[1] even seems to indicate an earlier version of the article included occurrences of "fag" that were benign words in another language. If you literally search for offense on the Internet, you'll find it, but without context you might be getting offended over nothing.
[1] http://gizmodo.com/hey-norwegian-here-mine-fag-and-finn-fag-...
Ignore for a moment the company (whether it's Github, Google, or Gawker). Isn't it sad that speaking out about (perceived) harassment carries a near 100% chance of inciting exponentially more harassment?
[0] Perhaps I'll be proven wrong; I'd like to be. Unfortunately, reading the article and then the comments, that's looking less likely.
Society seems to be divided in people who automatically believe all such accusations, and people who ask questions (and probably also people who automatically disbelieve them, to be fair).
To me it seems fair to ask questions if so much is at stake.
She simply is mentally unable to admit personal fault. Why? Social media encouragement and well-meaning enablers.
The secret.ly screenshot says how she can't handle professional criticism - behaviorally reinforced by culture, twitter and social networking sites "+1" and "retweet" is more important that doing what her manager and the house wants her to do.
If you disagree, form some substance. If you want to attack the messenger, hold your tongue. You're not helping regardless of which side you stand on and no matter how obviously that account is perceived by you to be a troll.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7406870
You're comfortable with that?
Normally I'd ignore it but you're trying to be an ally. Except, you're using one of the top tricks in the book that is used against your very allies to silence them, in order to silence a troll account that you disagree with. Pot, kettle, and so forth.
Why should we care if you think a user is a troll? Or say they are.. If they have content to add, what makes them so bad?
It's true, in USA, we respond to things emotionally, even the best of us sometimes.
Imagine, if you as a CEO of a security company acts like this, imagine what a marketer with no talent or skill does when she doesn't get what she wants? She can't lean on ability... nor reason, She leans on the, you've guessed it, the crowd.
I bet you, 9/10 times, you have better things to do than pick a fight or be on twitter because you have skills. Even if people hate you, you still can be a productive member of society. Other people only have a self-esteem boost of retweets to rely on, and they misinterpret that as career value.
I don't think this is a feminist/anti-feminist issue in this case. I'd want to know either way.
The Internet has worked very hard in the last couple of decades to make the truth, the actual truth, completely nonexistent in our lives. It's a discouraging threshold to realize that it doesn't even matter if what she is saying is true or not. I'm serious. It doesn't. Those days are over.
There is no truth any more. We now live in an age where one's interpretation of what is said first is the truth for them and they act accordingly. Some will interpret it as "pissing on a parade," as you see here, and will harass her. Some will interpret it as God's honest truth and will advocate accordingly. As a species, a lot of thought leaders have patted humanity on the back for how well-connected and well-informed we are with the Internet and 24/7 mentality being such a focused point of our lives, when in fact I think the truth is we're now a post-fact species.
Observe the reaction to @LeaVerou's timeline in the last couple of hours to see what I mean, in particular Ashe Dryden's condemnation of her (reasonable) position. We've long passed the era of human history wherein reserving judgment until all the facts are known was the most ideal course of action for all parties. We're never getting it back, either, and we have to live with that now. I can think of unbounded examples of this. Sunil Tripathi is the first to spring to mind.
As for the topic at hand, my cynicism tells me that I'd bet the farm on everything she's said being accurate. I do, however, wish to withhold judgment on both sides without being accused of enabling the decried behavior. That's an alarming trend from a certain vocal group in this industry, a "with us or against us" mentality that bothers me a lot. I've been called a "rape apologist" in the past for simply saying I didn't have enough information about an alleged rape to reach a conclusion.
I have to be honest, it's discouraging to be intelligent enough to see this, because it makes life feel hopeless. I can see what the old idiom about ignorance and bliss means now.
EDIT: And I just want to say, if @nrrdcore is right which she very well may be, then I agree that she should speak out. But we shouldn't be judging the situation until we have hard facts.
It is very easy to think that the Internet makes everyone worse sometimes, instead of what it actually does: expose us to our worst more than ever before.
Put another way, our bar for truth is now understanding. If you misunderstand something I say to you, what you've interpreted is your truth. The world is experienced subjectively and it is very complicated, and misunderstandings happen far too often in my life (in both directions) to not be queasy about firsthand accounts being the new truth.
I don't know what your problem is with the parade statement. I'm not a native speaker - I actually took it from a Robbie Williams song... I thought it just means ruining somebodies parade.
(And yes, that example has happened to me.)
Your implication by using that idiom is that GitHub has a good thing going and Julie's accusations ruined it for everybody. I'd avoid idioms in another language unless you're sure, because that one in particular carries some teeth depending on how you use it.
Also, there are by now more non-native speakers of English than native speakers in the world, so perhaps giving some benefit of the doubt is always a good idea.
Sadly I think, if anything, your position is still a bit naive; the Internet may have exacerbated the problem of truth by giving everyone a soapbox to spout their own version, but I think this problem has always been with us, since the dawn of human communication. While we gain some information through first-hand experience, a great deal of our knowledge comes from cognitive authorities[1] who we rely on for second-hand knowledge. So a significant portion of our knowledge rests upon our faith in the testimony of others. Granted, we can take steps to try and minimize our chance of error, such as consulting multiple sources, but it's hard to eliminate that leap of faith entirely.
But it's worse than that. Even agreeing on the "facts" is not enough to guarantee a unified interpretation. Different people may view a singular event through different lenses, based on how that event fits into their own personal narrative; this becomes especially apparent when dealing with contentious political issues.
So yeah, I agree: the Internet has made it more difficult to get a firm grasp on the truth. But when it comes to matters outside our own immediate experience, that grasp has always been nothing more than a useful fiction.
Before computing, I was a journalist. Nothing you said is news to me, though you used some epistemological concepts to make a similar point to my own.
Again, my apologies.
I learned long ago to not be offended by things people say on the Internet, along with my ability to stomach images that would probably make anybody else pass out. I'm not convinced all of the Internet's effects on me as a human are good.
(@jsmthrowaway I'd enjoy discussing this in more detail off-forum, if you'd like.)
"Those days are over."
Like the idealized 50s household of Leave it to Beaver, those days never existed in the first place.
Ask 4 people the truth of what happened at any single event (let alone a long series of events) and you're likely to get 4 different accounts with at the very least very different points of view based on pre-existing bias and in many cases you will get fundamentally contradictory reports on basic facts. And all 4 people may even be absolutely sure of their own recollection and answering you as truthfully as they can. I'm not even getting into people being purposefully deceptive yet, you don't have to go nearly that far to slip off from the "truth" of things.
This was true well before the Internet existed. I would argue strongly that if anything the Internet has made sussing out the truth easier than it has ever been because you can use the massive amount of data on it to build consensus which on matters such as these is the best indicator we have as to how actually true any single person's report of events is.
Of course, this forces us to disregard outlier reports on both the positive and negative and only make conclusions when a consensus comes through, but it is fairly easy to do that (unless you are specifically emotionally attached to whatever it is the issue is).
Was Julie Ann Horvath harassed? I have no idea. But if 5 more people pop up and say they either witnessed or experienced the conditions she reported, I will certainly start to think she was. Is github a place where such harassment occurs? Again, I have no idea, certainly I can't make a decision one way or another based on how I feel about their products because there is no relation between the two things.
No matter what happened, if she was harassed I feel pretty comfortable with her "airing her dirty laundry" because of the specific context wherein she either purposefully or accidentally became somewhat of a public face regarding github being a good place for women engineers to work.
And this is why people who understand the political nature of jobs and who find themselves in a toxic culture just move on and leave the company to rot.
There is zero upside to what she just did both legally and professionally.
Next she will be complaining sexism in that nobody will hire her. Go figure--how many companies would hire a man who caused this kind of public stink? (see: Zed Shaw for the male example).
Why should we fight a battle against an entrenched enemy? Leaving and making a better company elsewhere is FAR more effective. This isn't like fighting a government where we are stuck because of geographic place.
One of the many reasons why people form startups is to get out from under business culture that they perceive as oppressive.
She would be better off founding a company that shares her values where she can push them from the top rather than fighting from underneath inside one that does not.
If she wants the world to have more of the type of culture she wants to foster then she should go ahead and start a company and be the leader for once.
I'm certain that being at the top would temper her views of how much of her negative experiences were the result of actual active sexism and how much is inherent result of the manager/subordinate relationship.
For her personally, yes. As for the rest of society, there is a lot of up-side longer term.
This is typically how it works in civil rights movements. Some people have to step up and pay the price. Those that denigrate their efforts are part of the problem.
Is there up-side? What's a realistic victory condition? Firing all the executive staff? Making her CEO?
She just spent a lot of political capital on a fight that has no real victory condition. At best, one person gets fired and some "sensitivity training" get instituted. Was that worth the political capital she just expended?
If she is really that dynamic an individual, I would rather she expend the energy making a company that shares her values rather than fighting one that does not. That's a real victory and real up-side.
If more people are brave enough to speak out about harassment I wouldn’t argue that it’s inconceivable for harassers to be more careful. I’m speaking in the abstract here. If harassers know that ex-employees might be willing to speak out against them they might be less likely to do it in the future. It’s pretty simple. That’s pretty much how societal change works.
That’s also why one person doing it is not enough.
Sure, but there are shades here. Overtly sexual stuff needs to be wiped out. But what about promotions and support?
Jeri Ellsworth had a problem at Valve, but it didn't seem to be related to her gender. It was that she was outside the entrenched power structure which is a problem for both men and women at Valve.
However, there is collateral damage. If this kind of problem can sink your company and you have to be too careful, you can avoid the problem by not hiring women. Oops ... unintended consequence.
Why can't you see that this doesn't fix the problem?
Laws and social approbation can stop someone from grabbing your ass. However, they can't make someone respect you as a colleague.
I never said this is a fast process, ok? Stuff like that takes generations.
But whenever someone minimizes an individual effort, finds excuses why they shouldn't have fought back, questions whether they really deserved it or not, or nit-picks their stories they are setting things back and slowing things down. Often the most rational people are the worst. They love to ignore context, pose what-ifs, and explore every edge case. But really they are just biased.
I know a man who just got accused of sexual harassment and said (in effect) "fuck this" and walked away from the job. (Everyone I talked to, even extremely progressive women, thought that the accusation against him was bullshit.) It wasn't worth it to him to prove himself right because doing so would have opened up the accusation to the public and a bunch of people would have thought him guilty, even without evidence.
It was the right decision for him and his family. But if this person doesn't need to support a family, maybe it's the right thing for her to do.
What I don't get is asked to work at companies that have something to hide, which is fine by me. The real professionals have no problem contacting me about work.
Edit: The point of me saying that (before accidentally hitting submit) is to point out that no, speaking out about the industry does not prevent you from getting work. The people in power simply tell you that so you won't rat them out. If you're honest and have evidence to support you claims then other honest people will respect you for what you say. The others are simply people you don't want to deal with anyway.
I have no idea who this person is it what the validity of her claims are. But posting a series of angry rants on the twitter is probably not the right answer.
She claims to be a victim of abuse. How else should she handle this, report it to their superiors who are her abusers? Not only that, but she feels she is responsible for painting the company in a good light all these years, when it wasn't true.
https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/444650888859099136
> I regret defending GitHub's culture to feminists for the last two years. I'm sorry to everyone I've hurt in doing so.
>near 100% chance
>exponentially more [emphasis mine]
>Perhaps I'll be proven wrong
It seems like you're admitting that you don't know. Predicting the future can be tough, even when making unfalsifiable claims.
Lewis' Law: The comments on an article about feminism justify the existance of feminism.
It's equally frustrating because if Github (and others) actually do engage in despicable sexist behavior, I want to hear about it and adjust my views of them accordingly. However, when reporters, bloggers, and commentators flood the internet with harassment stories accompanied with such vitriolic language, it's harder for me to tell the actual stories apart from the bombastic linkbait.
What if you want to remain friends with some of your former co-workers? What if those former co-worker friends work on the same team as former co-worker harassers? Are you willing to put those friendships in jeopardy? Are you willing to make it harder for those friends to do their jobs? If they are forced to choose sides, how would you feel about affecting their working relationship with their coworkers? Sure, it's not your fault. But it's not their fault either!
What if you misremember who was involved in a particular incident? (Do you take detailed notes every time you're harassed? Even if it's a lot of little things that all added up in the end?) What if you name the wrong person? What if the hacker community focuses on that and uses it to discredit you and destroy your reputation you spent years working to build?
Would you enjoy remembering and reliving all of the experiences that hurt you over the past few years so that you can write a blog post about it? Would that actually make you feel better?
Would you enjoy feeling like you had to write that blog post just so that people would believe you?
I understand if she's just angry in response to other comments like the "Queen" one -- that's actually totally understandable. I don't blame her for reacting on Twitter like this. All that I said was if she did that, that would be one example of how I could understand what this kind of harassment is like and why it's harmful.
Maybe she doesn't want the story to be about the specific events in her specific case. She wants it to be about the industry as a whole. Going into the details would distract from that message. The problems here are not specific to GitHub and certainly are not specific to her.
The problem here is that nobody has yet given a concrete example of such a problem. In this particular case, there are a bunch of vague tweets, in others, people looked at user-submitted content etc. Just saying ‘there is a problem’ neither makes it clear that there is a problem, nor what that problem is nor how to fix that problem.
GitHub knows about the problems. I hope GitHub makes an honest effort to fix them. And I hope they blog about what they fixed and why they fixed it. Hopefully when that happens, there will be some good lessons there.
But we don't have to collectively relive what Julie went through. This story is about a real, systemic problem. It shouldn't turn into a "true crime" infotainment story about one person's experience.
GitHub went through tons of PR issues, if she had a valid complaint do you think HR would ignore it? Let's use common sense here for a minute.
If she had issue with the company and went public with this, she can say what it was. There is no need to post tweets and beating around the bush on this issue.
Is the leadership at Github sexist? You can't just handwave that question away and say "Of course it is, it's a well-known industry problem.", when a specific event has caused that allegation to be made very public. Talking about the event in question gives rise to understanding, generalities and vague tweets do not.
I don't want to attack the messenger here, but all we have to go on are a series of tweets which do not, by themselves, present a very clear message. She claims to be harassed by the leadership for two years... whilst defending them to feminists for the same time? And then in the next tweet, it's only the events of one day which have caused a problem.
It's very hard to get a consistent story out of the information at hand, which is why people are asking for a better explanation. Since Horvath has made this public in the first place, I don't think that's an unreasonable expectation.
It would be better to have the results of a survey done on a random sample of employees. Unfortunately, in journalism, we only get sensationalized and often completely unsubstantiated versions of single accounts. In this case, instead of an actual account, we merely have innuendo that could be one.
I just realized you may mean the author of the article is trying to harm github's image, which I agree is possible. But the real story to me is Horvath quitting, not someone writing an article about it.
But what you're missing is that people sometimes crack up. We're all a little unstable. You see two choices: The person is harassed out by the conspiracy in their company, or the person quits to fuel the conspiracy they're a part of.
I say there is a third choice: The person freaked out, or was under too much stress, or had a period of mental instability, and 'flamed out'. This actually happens to prominent people pretty frequently, hell it happens to most people at some time in their life. I've done it before. Fortunately I wasn't in a public position.
Start writing things down and then contact a local equal opportunity office and start the process. It will not be cheap for them. If people keep doing this they'll change their ways.
Going public on Twitter or Hacker News though hasn't done much other than bring out nasty and unproductive fights between Social Justice Warriors and Men's Rights fanatics. They make everyone look bad and we all walk away feeling like maybe we've lost faith in humanity when in reality a serious problem just stems from mostly unintentional, but hurtful ignorance.
Fletcher sued his employer, brokerage Kidder Peabody, for discrimination and won $1.3 million in 1991.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/kleiner-perkins-ellen-pao-law...
That's not how it works, at least not in California. That is if you use the equal employment opportunity system. You go through arbitration first. The two sides have to meet and negotiate an outcome, someone is there to help the process. Likely it will be settled there with money exchanged unless there was never any enough evidence for it to go to arbitration. Once there is arbitration, both sides have to compromise. If this fails, then you can file a law suit. The arbitration will be part of that I imagine, but I've never seen how the process works after arbitration. I think usually fixing it in arbitration is the norm.
You don't still have to work at that place to file the grievance. So this individual can still do that. I think if you've gone public with your accusation you are less likely to have success at arbitration because I would think at least.
The amount of money I've seen exchanged is usually a few months salary. You have to come in with a big number though, because you will be pressured to bring it down.
This links to a gizmodo article linking to random open source code on Github written by random people on the internet containing slurs. How is that Github's fault exactly? Should they censor "git push" with anti-slurs filters? This even links to a repo containing a list of words that should not be used by the user https://github.com/hhzl/Cuis-Smalltalk-StyledTextEditor/tree...
Ridiculous. No idea about the rest of the accusations though.
[1]: http://gizmodo.com/5980842/there-is-blatant-racist-and-sexis...
[2]: https://github.com/alanhogan/lessnmore/blob/master/-/banned_...
When I read the title (having never heard of Julie Horvath before), I expected the article to explain her technical contributions. However, there seem to be none that would make her a "prominent github engineer".
I think that singling out people as "prominent engineers" just because they are women is sexist and does a disservice to the equality cause.
Equality cuts both ways: people shouldn't be harassed because they are a minority. But they shouldn't be put on a pedestal just because of it, either. Because it defeats the whole purpose of equality by making them "more equal" than others.
Usually, when this happens, someone got a bad performance review because they were effectively useless, and then they raise some canard. She didn't contribute in any real meaningful way, got a bad review and decided she would drag her former employer's name through the mud.
Insulting a woman in the tech industry after making statements of suffering from harassment is a very tiring theme that occurs over and over again. Even on forums that pride themselves on being intelligent and tolerant.
Let's change this and stop with the insults and victim blaming.
Besides, it's a proven fact that tech is a meritocracy.
It seems like every time this sort of issue comes up, a large number of men both (a) take it as a personal attack, and (b) decide that the best way to handle this attack is to counter-attack someone's character with random accusations (like that they weren't a good enough engineer to talk about harassment in the workplace).
Really, really shameful to see it unfold every time.
Can you give more detail on what you had seen that you felt justified being fired over?
This same individual, was in the elevator when my friend who worked at another company, but same building. He got into the elevator with his wife, and the individual said something along the lines of "I bet you'd like it if I bent you over now. Let everyone here have a turn" to his wife. My buddy showed far more restraint than I would have.
Again, I do not know what is happening here, but the article has at the least made me mad that people are resorting to censorship to solve their disputes.
Now that she's gone does this mean that GitHub can get that cool carpet back?
http://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug#awesm...
You may also want to look into the history of 'meritocracy': http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/how-we-came-to-misunderstan...
In all seriousness though, entirely scrapping a noble idea because it isn't yet 100% realized is beyond ridiculous and is an example of why many people can't take modern feminists seriously.
You are supposed to work toward realizing goals, not destroying them.
No, we should get rid of anyone saying that we currently live under 'equality', because we don't.
> entirely scrapping a noble idea because it isn't yet 100% realized
It's not that it's 'not yet realized,' it's that it's not actually possible.
The very first question that comes into play is "who defines and measures merit?" Consider another failed opportunity at 'meritocracy': eugenics. It was once believed that we could determine some kind of 'genetic quality' and, well, have a meritocracy in human breeding, in a way. Turns out that whole idea is totally broken. At one point in time, people thought IQ was a reasonable way to measure merit. Turns out that it's not.
"Women (and others) do not feel unsafe in their work environment" is reasonably quantifiable, and someday, achievable. 'Merit' is not.
Agreed, but... isn't the 'trying' that counts in terms of the latter? I just don't see the problem in holding up "meritocracy" as something to strive for. I don't think any of us lives in a perfect democracy either, but we are still proud of trying, and think that it's the best way to run things, even if we're painfully aware of the shortcomings.
Please read the article I linked in my first comment, which directly explains this.
Or this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7406566
I think it's also distracting from the issue at hand, which I think is very real and important.
Just curious, if you were in charge--how would you choose to "dispose" of these undesirables?
His intention is clearly that people should get rid of the claim that we live in an equal society. Not to get rid of people.
What is strange to me it the feminist philosophy has rather recently turned against the concept[2]. As best I can tell this seems to be to discount "merit" as a defense against sexism.
I'm fascinated by the ability of political identity to shape understanding. It seems almost impossible to resist arguments that advance our goals or grok those that undermine them.
Meritocracy is not a desirable state of affairs, because it should be obvious that "merit" is a false currency used to justify what is, rather than work toward what should be. It is the quintessential naturalistic fallacy. By definition, an is-ought fallacy such as Meritocracy can not be an ideal (if you misunderstand meritocracy to mean "everyone gets what they deserve" that cannot be an ideal either, as it would be no different from "a world ruled by God", which is an imagined state rather than an ideal).
It amazes me time and again how people can take the term seriously, which only demonstrates how dangerous it is. Such a blatant, perverted joke, a dystopia that some intelligent people mistake for a utopia. Wikipedia says this: "Although the concept has existed for centuries, the term "meritocracy" was first coined in the 1950s. It was used by British politician and sociologist, Michael Young in his 1958 satirical essay, The Rise of the Meritocracy, which pictured the United Kingdom under the rule of a government favouring intelligence and aptitude (merit) above all else... In this book the term had distinctly negative connotations as Young questioned both the legitimacy of the selection process used to become a member of this elite and the outcomes of being ruled by such a narrowly defined group."
I still can't fathom how meritocracy can be taken as anything but a negative. I mean, the first question that comes to mind (or, rather, the second after "what is merit") is, "who has merit and why, and who does not?" Once this question is asked, it is immediately apparent that any attempt to paint "meritocracy" in a positive light is ludicrous.
That somebody wrote a parody about it doesn't prove anything.
It's also not obvious that it would cement a status quo: people can still strive to have merit? And does the concept forbid helping people to acquire skills? You can perhaps say Meritocracy is not the whole story (because of the self-sustaining elites problem), but it could be part of the solution, together with the usual efforts to give everybody a chance.
OK, the GitHub carpet perhaps made that claim, but they were truly trying to create a new kind of company. I'm pretty sure they didn't define merit to be "privilege and power" but coding skills and open source contribution.
Now you can make a very complicated case trying to reason why some people are excluded from open source and programming, but I don't really buy it. Everybody can start coding with an investment of perhaps 300$. Maybe some people are unlucky in that they never hit upon the idea. But it would be very difficult to prove that people can be actively prevented from programming (except by ways that would exclude them from everything, like making them slaves and never giving them any free time to do anything).
Also, why does the status quo always have to be bad?
Well, kids growing up in poverty without the right role models are pretty close to being "actively prevented from programming".
> Also, why does the status quo always have to be bad?
It doesn't, but it can't be an ideal either. The status quo can be better than the past (or "relatively good"), but still very far from an ideal. If you believe people should always work to make the world better, than trying to maintain the status quo is pretty bad (unless you see some danger looming).
Not really - they can still get a computer for 300$, head to the nearest library and get started.
Yes, there are bad fates - perhaps they never learned to read and so on. It's really possible someone never gets the chance. But as I said, programming is then really the last skill that can be blamed for being unattainable, plenty of other professions that would be way more forbidding.
" If you believe people should always work to make the world better, than trying to maintain the status quo is pretty bad"
But wouldn't people be forced to try to have merit, so they would automatically work on improving the world?
One of the reasons meritocracy is a joke is that merit cannot be measured; only success. Those who claim to believe in meritocracy think it simply means removing power from those who've gained success without merit (say, through connections and/or inheritance). But that doesn't really change the picture much, because the biggest bias is against those who haven't had success at all, in spite of their merit.
Like I said in my previous comment, when considering meritocracy, you should ask yourself "who does not have merit and why?"
As I said, I don't see why Meritocracy could not be part of the solution. I don't think it implies that society shouldn't try to give people a fair chance all along the way. It doesn't even define what kind of merits should be rewarded. Perhaps "helping people to achieve their potential" would be the merit regarded the highest.
And if you dismiss Meritocracy on those grounds you mentioned, aren't you straight back in communism territory? You probably wouldn't be allowed to pay the comp sci major more than any other unskilled worker, either. Otherwise it would be unfair, right?
True, but that doesn't make meritocracy an ideal. It's just how things are.
> As I said, I don't see why Meritocracy could not be part of the solution.
Again, how is meritocracy different from the status quo, then? But the reason your meritocracy is a problem more than a solution is twofold: first, it focuses effort on the wrong people (those who have success without merit) rather than those who need society's help. If your system is first let's wrestle power from those who have it without merit and only then turn our attention to the real problem, then your priorities are messed up. Second, it does all this by believing it somehow rewards merit while it really rewards privilege combined with some merit. A system not calling itself a meritocracy at least acknowledges its own unfairness.
What principle should tech companies use for hiring? And other companies, too?
Even if you say they should hire less skilled people and try to train them, that demand sounds like a tax to me. So perhaps it would be better to simply use taxes to train people, rather than burdening companies with something they are not specialized on? To start a company to cure cancer, you would then not only have to be an expert in curing cancer, but also in teaching people skills. That would raise the bar for creating successful companies significantly.
"it focuses effort on the wrong people (those who have success without merit)"
Ah, now we arrive at a crucial point: the anti-meritocracy crowd seems to think privileged people can never have merit. So if a Harvard graduate cures cancer, it counts less than if a girl from the slums does it. In fact a Harvard graduate doesn't deserve any recognition at all, he/she should probably be ashamed for curing cancer, thereby robbing the slum girl of her chance to do so.
I don't think such a value system can ever provide good results. Why not simply stick to the facts "cancer was cured, how much is that worth to me", rather than making moral judgements on the people who cured it?
Also, how can you argue against meritocracy with the argument it "focuses on people who have success without merit", when Meritocracy demands exactly the opposite of that?
Whatever works for them. But companies, at least in America, are not in the business of fixing society but that of making profit. As long as they remember that's what they're doing it's OK. I just think it makes them look stupid if they consider themselves to be some sort of utopia.
> the anti-meritocracy crowd seems to think privileged people can never have merit.
No. But "merit" is the least contribution to success. Otherwise, you'd think all merit is concentrated in about a billion people living in the West. Most success is 90% luck and 10% merit. Also, calling people "anti-meritocracy" is kinda funny, as meritocracy was intended as a parody of society. It was never intended to be taken seriously. I'm not against any kind of parody. I'm certainly pro-meritocracy: I think it's funny as hell.
> Why not simply stick to the facts "cancer was cured, how much is that worth to me", rather than making moral judgements on the people who cured it?
I'm not making a moral judgement. I just don't think that people lucky enough to have opportunities should be worshipped as being more than that. But most importantly, I'm not sure why that would necessarily mean they're the best people to rule society.
> Also, how can you argue against meritocracy with the argument it "focuses on people who have success without merit", when Meritocracy demands exactly the opposite of that?
Again, meritocracy is a parody. It demands nothing other than your laughter at our society's hypocrisy. But if I imagine how people who think it was meant as anything other than a joke take it to mean, I think: okay, so how does meritocracy differ from the system we have now in the eyes of people who don't see it as a joke? I mean, that Harvard guy already has the power. The answer is that these people think that if you're well-nourished, well-educated and study hard at Harvard, then you're fundamentally more deserving than someone who's well nourished and well educated, but gets into Harvard because his parent are super-rich and make a big contribution. Meritocracy implies that the second guy has less merit than the first, while the truth is that they're both mostly lucky, only the first guy works hard in addition to being lucky.
Any system that focuses on taking power from the vanishingly small number of people more fortunate than its believers is, in my opinion, seriously flawed. I prefer systems that focus on those less fortunate than me.
The criticism that there is no objective measurement might still apply, although I'd say sometimes there is. If cancer is cured, it is cured.
"you're fundamentally more deserving than someone who's well nourished and well educated"
I'd say he is more deserving because he can cure cancer - if I am looking for somebody to give my money so that he cures my cancer.
I agree that everything is luck. But I still want the cancer gone. What solution do you propose?
It seems to me the privileged people should receive even less credit, whereas I propose credit should be given for results. You can't blame the slum person for being born in a slum, but you also can't blame the rich person for being born rich.
I don't. But I don't want to idealize his luck either. If it all comes down to luck, I see little difference between giving power to those lucky enough to be born relatively rich as well as intelligent so that they can cure cancer, vs to those even luckier to be born extremely rich. If luck is your ideology, discriminating between different kinds of luck seems sheer jealousy.
The kid in the slum who can scrap together enough money for a cheap computer and internet connection can become a software engineer that is paid 6 figures. A college education will be something they can never approach unless the state makes it free for them. This is what we strive for.
Nobody is saying some people don't have any merit. Everyone has merit but in different amounts for different tasks - get it?
If, like me, you thought that carpet was funny because GitHub mistook a parody for real life, then I'm sorry for the misunderstanding.
There is an ideal of fairness in hiring and promotion that is to be striven for. But declaring that one's organization has attained it is the height of arrogance.
I get the issue that the elite has the means to reproduce itself. But should that really be the burden of companies, rather than the state (giving people equal access to education I mean).
Even if companies were to train some poor souls into the elite, where should they start? There are so many different disadvantaged people.
If your question is "what is the best way to organize a workplace," well, there are a ton of answers. But it's been repeatedly demonstrated that trying to do it based on some kind of 'merit' system leads to gaming the system, and does not actually reflect any sort of 'merit' whatsoever, while the 'fact' that the system is based on merit is used to reinforce those at the top of the pile at the expense of those at the bottom.
That measurements of merit are flawed is another problem. Does that mean you should never try to determine anybodies skills? What else besides completely random hiring would be possible?
Obviously, you want to hire the best people you can. There is a significant difference between "we try to hire good people" and "we objectively determine who the best people are."
And furthermore, there's a huuuuge difference etween "we try to hire good people" and "the people who currently occupy a particular place in the social sphere are there purely because of merit, and those who do not sit in places of power are there because they do not have merit." See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7406566
And I severely doubt for example GitHub put the carpet there to justify that they didn't hire some people ("see, we didn't hire you because you were not good enough, ktx bye"). They seem to be more driven by idealism, which would speak for the "we try to hire good people" interpretation.
I suppose they might also refer to open source in general. Again, what other criteria than merit would work in open source? Should sub-par merge requests be accepted out of a sense of fairness?
Sorry, I am really trying to understand...
Btw that carpet article claims women are being kept out of the tech meritocracy. I just want to note that these women probably have perfectly fine other jobs (for example in medicine, law, journalism, whatnot). So they are not really being kept stupid and un-elite.
(Edit: I meant this article http://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug#awesm... and this quote: "The tech industry isn’t still predominantly white and male because white men are better at their jobs than everyone else, it’s because many white men have had more opportunities to succeed than their minority and female counterparts." which seems unfounded to me).
Reading the article you linked to (not the carpet article), I have to say one of my criticisms of democracy is also that it exploits the stronger members of society. I guess some middle ground has to be found, but it doesn't seem just to me to demand that people who contribute the most should also be made to pay the most. The issue of incentives is also there (why perform if it only generates more demands?).
Should we have a coding test during the phone interview? No, because that sounds like we're making decisions based on some concept of merit.
Should we have the candidate write some code on a whiteboard or a laptop? No, because that sounds like we're making decisions based on some concept of merit.
Should we have the candidate take home a problem and spend a couple of hours on it? No, because that sounds like we're making decisions based on some concept of merit.
Should we promote people who inspire their coworkers, take on extra responsibilities, and get more things done? No, because that sounds like we're making decisions based on some concept of merit.
Companies are going to continue to hire, fire, and promote based on something. Every workplace is going to have some concept of what is merit, what is valued there. Better that it be explicit and understood.
In this book the term had distinctly negative connotations as Young questioned both the legitimacy of the selection process used to become a member of this elite and the outcomes of being ruled by such a narrowly defined group.
You could argue that successful startups (as well as other successful companies in any category) do something similar with their selection processes (aside from the fact they they do not have or exercise political power). Colloquially, the term "meritocracy" has come to imply "organization with clear and rigorous standards that hires, promotes, and fires based on such standards".
Maybe it's not a perfect word, but there seems to be some general consensus about what it means and what people are aiming at. Perhaps it's better for an organization to be more humble and to strive to be a meritocracy, even if it knows it can't do it perfectly.
If you don't have some concept of "merit" - based on job-specific skill, communication with others, emotional regulation, self-discipline, general effectiveness - how can you staff a company at all?
[1] I assumed you meant https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7406566
----
edit:
(based on clarified response in child post - thanks @steveklabnik )
I don't really see much distinction between the intention of "we try to hire good people" and "we objectively determine who the best people are", aside from the humility in the first statement and the hubris in the second one. If there were a process to objectively determine 'merit' for some company and job, people would be all over it. And 'merit' is obviously conditioned on the particular tasks to be done, the culture of the workplace, and a pile of other factors.
Bottom line - to be overly hubristic is not good. But striving to define your company's concept of merit is not a bad thing - it can only help in making better decisions in hiring and promotion.
There are plenty of professional responses when there is conflict with your coworkers and attempting to publicly shame them is very far from any of them.
oh yeah - it doesnt. if anything thats another thing that totally discredit her... i dont doubt she complained to ht over the years trying to fuck ppl up after reading the excerpt however.
Agreed, to say nothing of the extreme left-wing bias that they bring to the table - wealth is automatically bad and suspect; startups are toxic, evil, and sexist; business needs to get out of San Francisco which would otherwise be a prosperous socialist paradise ...
It's getting harder and harder to read it on a full stomach.
It's the legions of +1 commenters that are depressing.
Umm, maybe I'm misinformed, but from what I've read Horvath was a bit of a evangelist for women in tech at GitHub. So why is it problematic to assume she might have her finger on the pulse with regard to GitHub's female employees?
Also, if you've "been harassed by 'leadership' at GitHub for two years" why not stand up for yourself and put the jerks in their place, or talk to a lawyer? Why take to Twitter like a child and post a spate of accusations?
And wouldn't a developer evangelist have an opinion on developer culture within the company?
When she's positioned herself as an advocate for women in the company, why would she get so offended when someone asks how that's going? Maybe she's upset about getting the "special treatment" of being asked after specifically -- well then, she already does "special treatment" of her own by starting Passion Projects, "Talks From Incredible Women In Tech."
"You should ask them." In a perfect world, sure, but is she seriously saying Mr. Middle Manager should walk around the cubes asking, "So, Jane, how do you feel as a woman at the company?" She probably meant that management should listen in general (to all employees.) Well then, is she playing "I know some specific things that are suboptimal, but I want you find them yourself"? What if they are already improving things they know of, and they just wanted her input on anything they're missing? So she spits back some quip to make them feel bad, nobody wins, and they won't ask again.
> @getsecret told me they took down a post that's attempting to
> assassinate my character. They didn't. It continues.
>
> "Removed my comments, but why are people using Secret as an
> outlet? Internally, "Queen" has history of RAGING against any
> professional riticism. Leadership has stood idly by while she
> lied about contributions, threw hardworking oworkers under the
> bus (again and again), and spread vicious rumors about women at
> work and in the community. That's fucked. Maybe we shouldn't
> discuss that in the open, but unethical behavior should be
> exposed. If you have similar stories, please share with
> greenshirt on Anonyfish. This will be private. Just a safe way
> for us to talk. Thanks."
Who's telling the truth? I wasn't there for any of it - so I have no idea.
I'm not saying there is not a story here, yet. But let's wait until there are some facts to report.
Who will read this and hesitate the next time they're about to hire a woman because they're the best candidate for the job?
"If one person claims there's gender-based harassment in the company, it would really affect our valuation...Better go with the slightly less-good-fit male candidate."
Of course I don't know what happened exactly, but fixing problems from within seems more effective than leaving a place and pointing fingers. Nobody likes to get pointed at.
Lazy, sexist assholes, that's who.
No one has ever been convinced of an argument by someone holding a megaphone.
And "how much should you need to take..." is irrelevant. Life isn't fair, and sometimes you have to win arguments you think you shouldn't have to fight with otherwise reasonable people.
The bit about racial and sexist slurs in some random users' code? Completely irrelevant. GitHub is a platform to host code. They are not and should not be responsible for what people commit to repositories. To suggest otherwise is to suggest that GitHub should take on the role of a censor, and at that point, code associated with any gray area (like Popcorn Time) becomes a target for the vocal minority.
Let's wait for Horvath to finish her side of the story and go from there.
On some, there were newly created accounts commenting in defense of Github and claiming her comments and reasons were fraudulent.
What's up with that?
Though in this instance I'm not sure it's so bad, we have very little to make a meaningful discussion out of yet.
But it's magically vanished from being listed on the front page: http://hnrankings.info/7405510,7405325/
The discussion about the tweet mentioned above is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7403344 (and it looks like it was flagged off the front page almost instantly)
There is no place for discrimination in this world. Ever.
Of course there is. For instance, when hiring I discriminate against people that aren't qualified.
Of course I know that's not the kind of discrimination you mean. It's funny how "discrimination" has become a synonym for "bigotry."
The very existence of archaic hominids attests to billions of years of effective discrimination, between safety and danger, wholesome and putrid or poisonous food, good mates and less good (or worthless) ones. When these elevated apes differentiated between good and bad, appetizing and rotten, attractive and repulsive, they found such discriminations sufficiently similar in essence to be functionally substitutable. When judging that some food item is ‘not good for us’, a person is ‘rotten’, or the odor of a potential mate is ‘delicious’, we recall such substitutions, and the primordial sense of discrimination that they affirm. There can be no long-term deviation from the original principle: discrimination is intelligence aligned with survival.
Two contrary developments now present themselves. Firstly, there is a sublimation or sophistication of discrimination, which might be called cultivation. Abstract concepts, modes of expression, artworks, delicate culinary flavors, refined behaviors, and exotic elaborations of sexual-selection stimuli, among innumerable other things, can all be subtly discriminated on the ancient scale, supporting an ever more intricate and extended hierarchy of judgments. The reflexive doubling of this potential upon itself, as captured by the ‘higher’ judgment that to discriminate well is good, produces a ‘natural aristocracy’. For the first time, there is a self-conscious ‘Right’. This, at least, is its logico-mythical ur-form. To divide the good from the bad is good. Order, hierarchy, and distinction emerge from an affirmation of discrimination.
Because the Left cannot create, it comes second. It presupposes an existing hierarchy, or order of discriminations, which is subverted through a ‘slave revolt in morality’. The formula is simple enough: to discriminate is bad. Following from this leftist moral perversion, as its second-order consequence, those who do not discriminate (well), but are in fact discriminated against, must be the good. In the new moral order, therefore, to be bad at discrimination is good — or ‘universalist’ — whilst the old (and now ‘evil’) quality of good judgment, based on competent perception of patterns and differences, is the very quintessence of sin."
Shouldn’t have to say this, but I’m merely pointing out that you probably aren’t saying what you think you are saying, and I am neither condoning nor condemning Passion Projects, GitHub, or Julia.
1. Purge every company of assholes
2. Allow complete freedom of association
Alas, the obvious solution is illegal under US federal law. Asshole-filled companies are required by law to hire the kind of people assholes love to harass. In other words, the very laws designed to promote the interests of asshole-targets guarantee that they will come into contact with assholes. (Medical geeks might recognize this as iatrogenesis.)
Of course, there's always:
3. Convert all assholes to non-assholes
In sum, the obvious solution is illegal and the desirable solution doesn't work. Is it any wonder this conflict seems never-ending?
A. There are only two impossibly simplistic solutions to the problem.
B. Neither of them are workable in practice, so clearly the problem is intractable.
There are people out there who have spent more than 10 minutes considering the problem. Many of them have conducted research and published on the topic. You might consider reading some of them before concluding that it's hopeless.
Can you think of a solution that doesn't fall into either of the categories I suggested?
B. Neither of them are workable in practice, so clearly the problem is intractable.
Don't shoot the messenger.
Many of them have conducted research and published on the topic.
This is exactly what you would expect when there's an illegal but obviously workable solution. Nobody ever got a job for saying "let companies hire whomever they please", so researchers have an incentive to make the impossible solution seem possible—if only we would listen to (and fund the research of) people like them. The results simply involve increasingly complicated ways of purging (or converting) assholes.
For those with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
False.
In this case, someone has quit and said that a company hasn't been doing the right thing. That's a far more ethical stance to make.
Mind you, I've no idea what the issues were/are.
Seems like we have a pretty lame situation here being documented by pretty lame journalists.
Meanwhile, all sane male engineers will be walking the other way when they see Adria at a tech conference.
I signed up for the Secret yesterday based on the HN comments of their UX interactions and I immediately noticed that in comments below Secret posts, people are assigned random icons and then refer to each other by what the icon looks like. She refered to the author of that Secret comment as "greenshirt" in her tweets. Is it possible that the "Queen" was a reference to her icon(which we dont see from the screenshot), rather than an insult. It could be just be attributed to a chess figure icon.
I call my wife 'mi reina' and my daughter 'princesita'. Are you telling me these retards are saying that's a no-no?
I'm assuming whoever called her a queen wanted to allude to a domineering personality, and indeed nobody is called a "king" for being pushy and domineering, but the sentiment is also expressed in regards to men, as in "he does X like he fucking owns the place".
You may see it that way, and I won't question your integrity about it. However, it is undeniable that there has been a ton of misogyny directed towards women in the workspace in fields that have been classically dominated by men. And, the perpetrators of which, typically have used sexually-charged terms, such as "Queen", to refer negatively to women attempting to elevate their careers within in a organization in no different manner than a man would.
This isn't a semantic argument. It's quite possible to work in a professional setting with members of the other gender, and critique a coworker has having as being pushy and domineering without resulting to gender pronouns. Regardless if you think that the use of them implies that you think the other gender is equal or not, the context described in my previous paragraph makes it hard to escape the perception that if you use them, you don't think the genders are equal.
Huh? You mean you should not refer to your coworkers as "he" or "she" when they are a man and a woman, respectively?
This doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pronoun
"Queen" is not a pronoun, gendered or otherwise, it's a noun that refers to a female person.
That's what 'queen' is referring to.
This is pretty telling of her attitude, I think.
You could play the super long odds, everything was AWESOME for the past two years, but just turned awful. Then she was only lying now (because "I've been harassed by 'leadership' at GitHub for two years..."). That would paint her in the absolute best light, and it IMHO, rather unrealistic.
You could even play the super-super long odds, and assume everything she said before was a lie (said it was good, it was actually awful) and then things BECAME good recently and she doubled-down on lying and said things were bad.
... in my case, it isn't an assumption. It is a expectation based on prior behavior.
Here's an example:
X: The economy of Southern Portugal during the first half of the 13th century was bad. Do you agree?
Y: I don't know, I don't have enough info and absolutely zero knowledge of Portugal's economy during the 13th century.
X: are you calling me a liar?
Harry: I can't afford to do that
Tom: I don't know, I don't have enough info here to know if you can afford to do it or not.
Bob: Are you saying that Tom is lying, or that he doesn't know his own situation?
The big difference in this case is that while it is totally plausible for X and Y in your conversation to know literally nothing about Portugal, in my example it is not plausible for Harry to be unaware of his own situation without being an idiot. So when Tom 'withholds judgment' on Harry's situation, he is saying that evidence directly from Harry is untrustworthy - Harry is either a liar or an idiot. (I introduced the third person, Bob, as in this case Tom is Horvath and she is not the one responding to you, doubting Tom).
Harry: John punched me
Tom: I don't know, I don't have enough info here to know if you were punched or not
Bob: Are you saying that Tom is lying, or that he can't recognise when he's being punched?What's more is her testimony thus far has been very vague. She hasn't described any concrete event.
Her story as far as the article describes, is not an account, it's an accusation without much factual, actionable data. You normally don't judge on accusations until you have tried within reason to obtain factual data from both parties involved.
1) workplace harassment against women is quite common
2) such harassment is frequently ignored
3) there was some harassment in this case
And there's no evidence that I've seen that suggests there was no harassment or that it was handled properly by management. Therefore for the time being my assumption is that the harassment and mismanagement both happened.
That said, although I have seen mountains of evidence for 1) and 2), because the amount of evidence for the specific situation is small, that means a small amount of counter-evidence about the specific situation could easily shift the balance of probabilities.
That said, I have seen quite a bit of evidence that such accusations are only rarely false, so while I would change my balance of properties readily, I don't expect that to happen.
There's even the possibility that she's being completely truthful, but GitHub's side of the situation is relevant and changes the full picture.
Corroboration. Unless Julie Ann Horvath suffered in silence AND everyone else turned a blind eye, then there will be people who can support her story and provide additional credence to what she says.
> What reason do you have to think she's being anything less than truthful?
Experience. How often have we read a sensationalist-sounding story on the internet[0] that, in the end, turned out to be over-blown or an outright deception?
0 - "Single person claims that large/popular entity has done something despicable/outrageous! More at 11."
This isn't a formal court, but the court of public opinion can (in some cases) be more hurtful and more damaging than a real court that is merely exercising governmental powers.
I am not implying what she is saying is false. As @Jare said, "Her story as far as the article describes, is not an account, it's an accusation without much factual, actionable data."
> look
> examine speculation
> take speculation
I do believe that sexism is a real problem in this industry. But this woman's behaviour is childish and a completely inappropriate response no matter what it is that happened.
And
Julie Ann Horvath, an influential engineer at GitHub who has been vocal about the company’s increasingly positive culture for women
Hmmm. I don't think this is going to serve her well. So if you have been harassed for two years, why did you find the culture in Github positive for women?
Until we know what actually happened (if we ever do) it will be hard to judge.
You mean there are still informal networks? Power gradients? Alliances? They lied to us!
GitHub seems to fall to the right of the divide.
“I recently got an email from a middle manager that began,
‘So Julie, how are the women at GitHub?’ I said, ‘You
should ask them.’”
It seems like - while I'm sure the numbers like payscale and demographics probably still heavily favor male vs. female, looking around, you see pretty accomplished women in leadership positions - Jennifer Widom, Daphne Koller, heck you can even cite Ginny Rometti. Why don't we ever hear from/about them?
Why is that I almost never hear about a German female software developer crying wolf?
This person could have been legitimately harassed, but all of the bullshit flooding online has made me grow a thick skin and just not care anymore because I think it's fake.
Indeed, why.
[1] https://science-girl-thing.eu/en/splash [2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g032MPrSjFA
Then again, advertising paid for by tax money? I suspect somebody went golfing and sealed the deal...
EDIT: I mean the initiative as a whole, not the video alone. The whole initiative has been done in a fairly cringe worthy way for me though, but for the target audience it mostly gets it right.
http://www.amazon.com/Girls-Get-Curves-Geometry-Takes/dp/045...
http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Algebra-Exposed-Danica-McKellar/dp...
(a) evidence of that being extremely popular with women
(b) or evidence of people with the power/ability/money/resources to make/sell/publish books thinking that that sort of thing is extremely popular with women.
Not the same thing at all. After all, the original video was made by the European Commission to publicise their women in science campaign, which does not mean that the video is popular with women in science. Sometimes organisations make mistakes or are wrong.
So assuming the problem was equally prevalent at software startups in both countries would expect to hear about it a lot less from Germany.
I live in Germany and have female friends who worked in tech here.
"I just don't take these people seriously anymore. It seems like a uniquely north american woman phenomenon."
There could be some bias because I'm in the United States, and most of the tech news and tech discussion sites I read are in the US, so I'm probably more likely to learn of things happening in the US than in the rest of the world. Still, given that every example I can think of is North American, I cannot criticize his observation.
So, yes, sexist bullshit exists the world over.
Generally though, these things don't get resolved in threads like this, or even through laws or prominent lawsuits (although they can help). My feeling is that things really improve a bit at a time when each and every one of us becomes more vigilant about what goes on around us, and acts - perhaps just in a small way - to try and improve the situation whenever we see stuff that's not right. The other thing about acting locally is you act on stuff that you see and hear yourself, so none of this "he said, she said" stuff.
If P(can't work) > 0 it means E(days can't work) is also > 0.
Also stress for the mother is supposedly bad for the baby. Not sure how stress free a job as minister of the state can be expected to be.
It’s been a while since I last saw a televised brawl in the Italian parliament, but I would not expect such a job to be remotely comparable to that of an ordinary office worker (even without the fighting…). Just think of e.g. flying, which is apparently to be avoided during pregnancy, yet bouncing back and forth between meetings all over Europe happens fairly often at least for German ministers.
Did it not occur to you that it might be because German female software developers are treated better and it's North American tech culture that causes the problem?
But yeah probably a bunch of whiny girls amirite lol
It's just that I seen so many 'false-positives' before that just made me roll my eyes and think, "that's not really sexism.".
She is accusing people and a very large company of SERIOUS things, I hope she actually has proof her lawyer can use. I want her to have a happy ending.
The thing is, sexism and sexual harassment boils down to a lot of he-said-she-said, people individually passing judgment on what happened, and one person's definition of sexism isn't another person's definition while whatever happened has happened. Just because some people have a way thicker skin doesn't mean that even the smallest things should be given a free pass, and in a lot of these situations it's nearly impossible to get any proof of anything happening.
Like I hate that it's only March this year and I've had two men in 4? tech events with men attending just sit down next to me without asking if they could do so and try to talk to me - while I was coding on my laptop sitting by myself in the corner of the room on purpose while everyone else was further away chatting next to the food. Like if that's not a cue to leave me alone, I don't know what is. A shirt that says "fuck off" or telling them I'm busy like they'll even acknowledge that unless I just get up and leave - but then why do I have to do that? And of course, this wouldn't be complete without people telling me that that experience was just normal so be quiet and I shouldn't be surprised to encounter people with terrible social skills in tech. Thanks? Like, I should stop feeling uncomfortable when strangers sit close enough for our thighs to touch because at least they're not groping my breasts or raping me on video so that meets your standard for proof? And my terrible social skills can't be that terrible because I know when to leave strangers alone?
The best reply - and by best I really mean the stupidest one - is when my friends and acquaintances take my complaints seriously and offer to go with me in the future or do something about a guy annoying me or help me with whatever I'm currently doing for other women in tech, but then they complain that Shanley or some other "feminazi" is whining on Twitter again why can't that bitch shut up. Like what the hell. I just don't like to complain about things but I have a MOUNTAIN of stories to tell you if you were interested. And complaining and making things public doesn't make my message any less valid.
Even if it's something trivial, even if it's after all that Julie has said against other feminists, even if there's no proof that anything serious happened but something happened... if it made her uncomfortable, there's a problem there that needs to be fixed.
Yup.
My old therapist before I moved to SF actually thought I was kind of nuts for staying in the tech industry because I used to tell her everything because her son wanted to go into the industry too. Maybe she has a point. And my new one most definitely knows what harassment and uncomfortable situations are, she spent a while asking me questions about my fiancé to make sure I wasn't being abused at our very first session. (And no, no truly crippling problems other than not so hyperactive ADHD, so sorry.)
I have always been under the impression that tech events are just as much about networking and socializing as it is about the speakers themselves (otherwise we would all just be on a Google Hangout).
If you go to a social event knowing you will get upset if people try to socialize with you, you're going to have a bad time.
I don't mind the former at all in almost any situation, even if they ignored cues due to the nature of the event - being nice and respecting other people makes it okay and a few people did that just fine! I had to deal with the latter. It's the unwanted physical contact after interrupting without a care that's the problem. I have a sneaking suspicion most people don't want to be on the receiving end of that at a tech event, period, as it's (respectively) uncomfortable and rude. Or do people normally sit close enough to touch a stranger without an introduction and I'm making a big fuss about nothing?
With that out of the way, sure, I agree tech events are about socializing. I normally like socializing. I did socialize. I went to the event to go say hi to a couple people, watch the talks, maybe ask a question of the speakers in person, and then sat in a corner to wait for my fiancé to finish talking to friends...because I was tired and had a non-contagious but unpredictable cough from bronchitis and asthma flareups that would rear its ugly head if I talked for more than a couple sentences. So my lesson is learned. I'll just not even present an opportunity for people to creep?
False. [1][2][3][4][5][6][...]
[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/deannazandt/2013/02/01/germanys-...
[2] http://www.dw.de/opinion-how-sexist-is-germany/a-16555500
[3] http://interculturalmusings.blogspot.com/2013/07/germanys-bi...
[4] http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21571188-where-does-ger...
[5] http://freespeechdebate.com/fr/2013/06/twitter-free-speech-a...
[6] http://www.cafebabel.co.uk/society/article/sexism-on-europes...
[...] Google: "sexism germany". It would have taken you two seconds to do this before spouting off, but that would've required humility...
One of her bosses told her outright that he would just steal her ideas, take credit for it and never give her a raise or credit.
After years here she finally moved back to the US. She now does iOS and rails development in SF/Oakland.
Another friend of mine is German, female and doing well in iOS dev in Berlin now. Anecdotal.
So it's not 100% bad and German tech environment is improving overall I would say.
This reminds me how many in the Catholic Church had exactly the same attitude of denial about clerical pedophilia -- that it was an American phenomenon -- but they soon learned better (and, by coincidence, this article[1] on the topic is specifically about Germany):
BERLIN - The German Catholic church, which long regarded pedophilia among the clergy as a particularly American phenomenon, is now bracing for a possible crisis of credibility among the country's more than 27 million Catholics.
In recent weeks, half a dozen dioceses have come under intense media scrutiny for past abuse by priests and attempts by the church hierarchy to hush up the scandals. Critics are calling the revelations only the tip of the iceberg, while the church scrambles to control the damage.
[1]http://www.boston.com/globe/spotlight/abuse/print2/080402_ge...
It's a shame there's a lack of professionalism in the industry.
https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/444662613020913665
"The shitty thing about all of this is that by being open and honest about my experience I'm devaluing stock options of people I care about."
So Horvath is alleging what most definitely sounds like civil-court level of damages, if not criminal, but she won't provide details or file a lawsuit as a whistelblower because she fears for her friends' financial profit?
How the hell does that even make sense? What amount of IPO profit is worth the level of systematic oppression and discrimination that she is alleging here? And what kind of friends -- the ones privileged enough to earn a spot in Github's ranks and could easily get a job at a less purportedly evil company -- would be unsympathetic toward Horvath calling out her abusers, given the level of harassment and cruelty they have inflicted upon her, as she tells in her tweets?
I hate to pull the "I'm a minority card" too, but I am someone who can completely believe that a situation like Horvath's could exist "under the radar" and yet cause lasting harm to equality in society...it's a common fallacy to think that racism/sexism only exists when physical violence and criminal malfeasance (of the media frenzy kind) occur.
And so I'm equally frustrated that she, out of concern for her friends' bank accounts, will not do the right and just thing, given that she asserts to have irrefutable evidence and a solid case. And if there are enough good people at Github, as she also asserts, then legal and decisive action will only help Github to become a great company.
Really, what do you expect to happen when you put a bunch of young men with little life experience together and let the inmates run the asylum?
Also not surprised at the many blatantly misogynist comments here on HN.
If there was ever any doubt about how our industry treats women, all you have to do is let the industry speak for itself, like it does here on HN.
even thus this article was supposed to be in her defense. batshit crazy.
How do you know this? Do you work at GitHub?
How hard is it to treat people with respect, to treat them--ya know--like people?
All businesses should really care about is if the employee is a value add to the company. Male or Female, it should not matter.
Disgusting GitHub, didn't expect this from you.
She said so many times how bad her employees were treating her but she never said exactly what they were doing.
It's funny, the designer in the article fought against just that.
http://www.businessinsider.com/githubs-ceo-ditches-meritocra...
This caught my eye, though: "In one day, all of the work I've done at that company to be a better place for women to work has come undone."
"All work undone in a day" feels off. Either too impulsive, or speaking ill of her alleged work.
I'd be suspicious of anyone claiming great progress in their activist agenda (or whatever agenda) for two years, and then suddenly announcing it was all undone by a single remark or in a single day.
Or do you mean, people who are productive don't have time to defend themselves against harassment? In this case you are definitely blaming the wrong people because you should blame those who still don't manage to keep the workplace, and the rest of society, free of sexism, racism and so on.
If you are accusing a company of something, do so with facts.
This is not something you beat around the bush with.
Going into a workplace with a feminist agenda is a distraction and problem waiting to happen.
Twitter Followers != Engineer
https://github.com/nrrrdcore - she didn't even have any code. She's not a prominent engineer IMO. More of a marketer / enthusiast type.
Edit: Does anyone here have proof of gender discrimination or she was a good engineer?
(And the always popular implication that people who aren't engineers don't matter...)
There is also the popular implication when there is a girl on twitter starting trouble again, they're not coding and trying to claim some form of discrimination, instead of developing programming skill.
You can't--and obviously I mean in the "if you're a basically functioning, mostly vertebrate human being it's morally repugnant" sense of "can't", not the physical, over-literal sense that I feel like you're going to use--blame shitty workplace behaviors (and this isn't the first I've heard of GitHub having problems) on people not knowing how to code. I mean, what kind of world do you want to live in where you can excuse mistreating people because they don't "develop programming skill"?
Actually, don't answer that. I don't want to know what kind of world you want to live in.
Edit: I see from your profile that you're an undergrad. Hopefully you'll grow out of the attitude that only super-coders are valuable to a project, like I did.
Woah woah woah - all those she-beasts online had led me to believe otherwise. Hell just take a look at /r/tumblrinaction.
Some people are Assholes. Feminists are people. Ergo, some Feminists are Assholes. It doesn't say anything more about feminism than it does people in the checkout line at the grocery store.
Here's another feminist who also did the same (and was eventually made to resign for it, thankfully): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Daly
[0] Both many prominent Twitter Feminists and Tumblr SJWs cling to the idea that if you're privileged, you can't criticize the oppressed (even if you're not directly oppressing the oppressed in question), so if you're misunderstood as doing something that opresses the oppressed they can start a campaign against you so you lose your job, etc, but you can't answer in the same tone. This is to say, I'm being a jerk for using the word "unhinged" when I don't have any apparent mental disorders.
The vast majority of tech industry feminists are postmodernists.
There's a lot more to this phenomenon than you could get into on hacker news, but it goes something like "if you don't agree with everything i say exactly, you're clearly the enemy"
The 20% number definitely is not from the tech industry either.
So you have women picking different jobs. You have different incentives and preferences (motherhood is the big one here), different preferred industry (like media vs mining or whatever).
You also have women getting half of the income of their husbands, having the option to drop out of unpleasant jobs, not being under the same pressure to feed their family, and so on.
There are many many aspects to this. So far I haven't seen anything that convinces me women are being treated unfairly.
There are issues, but only if you consider staying at home with kids degrading. For example I suppose the incentive to get a good education is less if you know you will miss out several years where you could earn back the money invested. I don't think "unfair" is the right way to characterize that issue, though.
That said, feminism describes lots of different things, and I think she was addressing a broad group with that first statement. The sooner you realize that not all feminists have the same agenda, the easier it will be for you to understand what's going on.
This is not a subjective distinction. It is very objective thing and such judgement can be done by outsider.
Github ENGINEER. If she's not an engineer, she's not an engineer, it's pretty simple.
It shouldn't matter, but it does to many people.
Splitting hairs about her position distracts from the actual issue at hand.
Considering that GitHub appears to have hired her partially for the purpose of bettering the culture, your point about "feminist agendas" also falls short.
I'll wait for real facts before coming to any conclusions, but immediately rejecting her statements like you're doing is not constructive for anyone.
12.6K twitter followers disagree with you. For comparison, founder PJ Hyett has 14.9K.
you can be a really shitty engineer, or not one at all and have thousands of twitter followers.
As an example, my primary role in my company is administration of systems. I very rarely take out the trash, and sometimes refill the toilet rolls if they're low. It would be misleading to refer to me as a janitor, prominent or otherwise.
Edit: I say 'apparently not' because she may be an awesome engineer, but her code is in private repos.
It's an incredibly valuable contribution that I thanked her for and apologized for not yet merging in person.
If you identify as a developer, you're probably a developer.
Not to mention I can't actually share the code to a lot if not all of the work that I do, and I'm too busy elsewhere (a restaurant...) or dealing with impostor syndrome to share anything else most days. Hell, sometimes I have a hard time just opening my mouth to talk to other people because of impostor syndrome. But I code for a living, and I thought that was enough to call myself a coder.
But according to some people, including people I used to consider friends and allies of my very laid back feminism, nothing is ever fucking good enough for them so I don't really know what I am in the end. Amateur hour involving a part time restaurant owner that is clearly a fake coder and couldn't possibly have majored in CS in college because she has big boobs and she has other hobbies that aren't staring at the computer for the entire day? Gasp. I really have no fucking clue, why don't you tell me what I am? :|
Her skills and/or experience as a software developer have absolutely nothing to do with this. Someone's performance on a job is completely irrelevant when it comes to harassment or intimidation in the workplace.
You are part of the problem with sexism that exists in software development teams.
see the problem?
the only gender based issue is calling her queen.
i think people like you are the problem with toxic workplaces in general l you're blindly transforming arguments into whatever serves your cause - even when unjustified.
Then you turn it into some sort of fucked up meritocracy thing. She wrote No Code therefore her opinions are invalid! I've got more bitcoins than her too!!
Take a look at the gender disparity in the top 10 tech companies. Most of them are about 80% male. It's not that women don't want to work in tech, it's that society as a whole including the entire tech community is entrenched in a neo-good ol boys only mindset centered around a false meritocracy. Fuck the techies and fuck silicon valley. I grew up romanticizing the industry and in my adult life I've found it to be the ultimate disappointment.
In USA, we have a special sub-type of "office lady", which is the "marketer / enthusiast" twitter troll.
The issue is, in other countries, office ladies are happy to just dress professionally and do their clerical work.
In USA, we have self-esteem bubbles, an education system, a political culture that create a factory of women like this. Basically, office ladies who act like bulls, get enabled by nice-meaning people, then bite off more than they can chew.
Also in USA, understand that our english isn't to be taken literally; it infers complicated politically-charged emotions. Americans react very harshly and nit-pick blunt truths, our public discourse is not one of reflection, clarification or debate, but projecting emotion at an idea we don't feel reaffirms our view of the world.
These people are a tiny sliver of our society, but since we in USA are good people, we tend to give them benefit of the doubt. Because of the abuse by this type of women in the workplace, some Americans are associating women in distress with people like this. The boy who cried wolf.
People like this can really hurt things for actual victims of discrimination who do their job.
You could make similar claims about any cult personality. Anyone in a typical low-to-mid-level corporate job who has more social capital in the external world (twitter, etc.) than social capital inside the company.
Github has bent over backwards for Horvath, and it only fueled and enabled her delusions.
This "gender based harassment" was most likely someone disagreeing with her that Github did not need to be feminism 24x7.
Sometimes our society recognizes a problem. It becomes a sensitive, emotional topic. Racism, sexism, all real problems.
And when a society is in this sensitive state, some formerly (or even currently) oppressed people take advantage. The oppressors become the oppressed and the oppressed become the oppressors. It's a real thing, and it's quite natural, if undesired.
You don't know what the situation is here. I don't. No one commenting from aside knows.