Blog #4: Women in Tech + Github

Authors: Anvith Potluri, Kevin Li, Kevin Nguyen, & Varad Thorat

Don’t refresh your browser! Nothing went wrong! But in 2014, it might have for Github. Julie Ann Horvath, a highly regarded engineer at Github resigned after a series of unacceptable treatment by her co-workers internally. Contrary to Github’s initial environment with good intentions and a support system for women, Horvath felt very unwelcomed, claiming allegations of aggressive and biased behaviors against her in areas that shouldn’t be otherwise because of her gender and not due to the quality of her work.

On top of that, she would face pressure and harassment from the founder’s wife who was in the shadows of intervening with her passionate career at Github where she felt violated from the founder’s relative authority to the actual company. From a consequentialist framework, Horvath would endure the hostile environment around her to try to make Github appeal to other women and try to transform it to a more welcoming one so others could experience her passion.

Unfortunately, she would concede due to the continuation of harassment from the founder’s wife that HR looked the other way from that could perhaps be due to the “inherited authority” that the founder’s wife had over Github. In a duty-based framework, the founder’s wife fully exercised and asserted her authority over the whole company that would in turn would violate Horvath’s relationships with her colleagues and ultimately, her career, perhaps just to show dominance.

The founder’s wife was not thinking about how much scrutiny and bad publicity Github would exert by her actions and nonetheless, lose an invaluable employee. Such ignorance should not have been ignored by HR and the other founder’s in order to resolve inappropriate behavior in the work environment. If something had been done sooner than later, this could have been easily contained and flourished a better culture within Github’s workplace.

Sources:

• Wilhelm, Alex, and Alexia Tsotsis. “Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism And Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit.” TechCrunch, TechCrunch, 16 Mar. 2014, techcrunch.com/2014/03/15/julie-ann-horvath-describes-sexism-and-intimidation-behind-her-github-exit/.
• Farberov, Snejana. “High-Profile Female Programmer Quits GitHub after Series of Harassment Allegations Emerge against the Open-Source Start-Up.” Daily Mail Online, Associated Newspapers, 18 Mar. 2014, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2581981/High-profile-female-programmer-quits-GitHub-series-harassment-allegations-emerge-against-open-source-start-up.html.