Founder's Family Joins Fray to Make Employee Uncomfortable

Julie Horvath

We've all read about how difficult it is for a woman to navigate the Silicon Valley good-ole-boy culture.  So it won't surprise you to see Julie Horvath, since gone from GitHub, describe in detail how she was impacted. But it wasn't just with the founder, or even the employees of GitHub that Julie had her issues. Apparently, according to the Business Insider, she was also harassed and even threatened by the wife of one of the co-founders of GitHub.  According to their reports, the founder's wife interrogated Horvath and suggested that she take certain actions that were antagonistic to Horvath.  In an interview published in TechCrunch, she stated her allegations about the founder's wife, who was not identified:

... the wife went on to claim that she was responsible for hires at GitHub, and asked Horvath to explain to her what she was working on. The wife also claimed to employ “spies” inside of GitHub, and claimed to be able to, again according to Horvath, read GitHub employees’ private chat-room logs, which only employees are supposed to have access to.

Apparently now, that Co-founder has been put on leave and according to a post of the GitHub blog, the co-founder's wife has been banned from the company's offices.

Horvath left the company in the midst of this episode.  She claimed an unrequited love professed by another male GitHub employee caused her code to be ripped from certain projects.  But her complaints about this episode seem to exacerbate her HR issues internally.  This combination of inappropriate behavior as well as family involvement caused an environment in which Horvath grew uncomfortable.  

The company said it is hiring an experienced HR resource to avoid this type of issue in the future.

Horvath left to Start Passion Projects, a initiative intended to strengthen the support network for women who may be experiencing similar things.