GitHub puts founder on leave, kicks wife out of office after harassment claim

GitHub has placed one of its three cofounders on leave and barred the cofounder’s wife from the office while it investigates allegations made by a former employee.

Engineer Julie Ann Horvath announced this past weekend that she had left GitHub, describing a toxic office culture in an e-mail interview with TechCrunch. The wife of the cofounder played a prominent role in Horvath’s account.

Julie Ann Horvath

Credit: Julie Ann Horvath

“I met her and almost immediately the conversation that I thought was supposed to be casual turned into something very inappropriate,” Horvath told TechCrunch. “She began telling me about how she informs her husband’s decision-making at GitHub, how I better not leave GitHub and write something bad about them, and how she had been told by her husband that she should intervene with my relationship to be sure I was ‘made very happy’ so that I wouldn’t quit and say something nasty about her husband’s company because ‘he had worked so hard.’”

“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,” TechCrunch wrote.

Later, the founder allegedly accused Horvath of threatening his wife and called her a “liar.” In the same meeting, the founder allegedly told Horvath that dating a coworker was “bad judgment.” Horvath was dating a GitHub employee.

While this was happening, another GitHub employee told Horvath that he had romantic feelings for her. Horvath’s rejection of this coworker caused more problems, the TechCrunch report said.

“According to Horvath, the engineer, ‘hurt from my rejection, started passive-aggressively ripping out my code from projects we had worked on together without so much as a ping or a comment. I even had to have a few of his commits reverted. I would work on something, go to bed, and wake up to find my work gone without any explanation,’” TechCrunch reported.

On Twitter, Horvath wrote that she was “harassed by ‘leadership’ at GitHub for two years.” She also told TechCrunch that “I had a really hard time getting used to the culture, the aggressive communication on pull requests and how little the men I worked with respected and valued my opinion.”

GitHub CEO and cofounder Chris Wanstrath issued a statement yesterday describing how the company will proceed. In addition to the cofounder and his wife, the aforementioned engineer was put on leave.

“We know we have to take action and have begun a full investigation,” Wanstrath wrote. “While that’s ongoing, and effective immediately, the relevant founder has been put on leave, as has the referenced GitHub engineer. The founder’s wife discussed in the media reports has never had hiring or firing power at GitHub and will no longer be permitted in the office.”

GitHub’s three cofounders are Wanstrath, PJ Hyett, and Tom Preston-Werner. Wanstrath and Horvath have not revealed which cofounder is at the center of this controversy.

UPDATE: Valleywag reports that it has “confirmed with someone with internal knowledge of GitHub” that Preston-Werner and his wife, Theresa, are the couple described by Horvath. “We’re told this is certainly not the first time the Preston-Werners have treated a female employee this way: Melissa Severini, the company’s very first hire, was allegedly paid to sign a non-disparagement agreement after being fired after her own blowup with Theresa Preston-Werner,” Valleywag wrote. “Other employees have been pressured to do pro bono work for Theresa Preston-Werner’s own startup, Omakase.”