write.as/jonbeckett

I happened to read the story at TechCrunch last night about Julie Ann Horvath leaving GitHub amid a (media inflated) storm of controversy. Lots of potentially damaging words are flying aroundsexism, prejudice, victimisation, and so on. As much as I am horrified about the story, the argumentative part of me wants to say “hang on a momentwe've only heard one side of the story so far”.

The only problem is I think she's telling the truth. I think her co-workers probably were behaving in many of the ways she described in the Tech Crunch interview.

I'm going to keep everything I write from this point forwards deliberately vague. I think Julie Ann Horvath is telling the truth, because I haveseen elements of the environment she has described.

I thought about what I might write while sitting on the train this morning, and rather than describe anything I have seen (which I would never share), I'm going to speculate on why these behaviours might come to light.

I've been a professional software developer in one form or another for over 20 years now, and have worked with a variety of peopleboth male and female, young and old. For perhaps the first two thirdsof my career I was either the same age, or younger than my peers, and naturally looked up to and respected them. During the last few years I have had the pleasure of working with “the next generation”, and for the most part it's been wonderfulbut not always thoughand almost certainly not for the reasons Miss Horvath describes.

I hesitate to seperate people into “generations”, but in this case it's probably appropriatethere is now a generation coming through that “grew up” with the internet, and smartphones being an integral part of daily life. They understand the entire game of existing as different personalities in public, or in private. They naturally switch behaviours depending on their surrounding audiencesomething that instant messaging, chat rooms, forums, and social networks will have made them expert at. While I might personally think their behaviour false at times, it's perhaps a symptom of the environment they have grown up in. The one huge problem of course is that it doesn't make any of it right.

Senior staff often have no idea that any unprofessional behaviour is occurringoften in plain sightand it then falls on those who witness it to report it. Of course those reports are incredibly rare becausethey open pandoras boxdamaging relationships, and the atmosphere in the workplace. I have never reported anybody for anything, and am not sure I would unless something that could not be ignored happened either in front of me, or in my presence.

Thankfully I have never witnessed anything that might be termed “gross misconduct”, but it invites another questionabout the judgement call on yourself. Is your reaction because of an act, or is it purely down to differences in personality, or sense of humour ? If so, you end up wondering if you're not just the “old fart”, put your headphones on, and get on with your work