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> We learned that unnamed employees felt pressured by Tom and me to work pro-bono for my nonprofit. We racked our brains trying to understand this new allegatio

> We learned that unnamed employees felt pressured by Tom and me to work pro-bono for my nonprofit. We racked our brains trying to understand this new allegation...I am so very sorry if anyone felt that I was pressuring him or her for advice, labor, or to sign up. I truly never had that intention...my idealistic belief in the status-free community of GitHub, I failed to recognize that power structures cannot ever be obscured entirely. > employees view them as disconnected and only trying to build empires of gold. Tom saw himself not as CEO, but as the architect of a unique business structure...He wanted to invest heavily in employees and to create a space that gave each employee the autonomy, tools, and support to build great things. In our home every night, he spoke passionately about how to build a company that gave employees freedom. Other than being a Github user and customer, I know nothing of the details of this case other than what I've read. She admits she was obtuse about "power structures" in the company, but this also is not a unique thing in Silicon Valley - she's not blind to these things in a unique way. That said - it's like someone believing their own press releases. "A space that gave each employee the autonomy, tools, and support to build great things". To me that sounds like saying Platt from "Twelve Years a Slave" got an excellent bag to pick cotton from, and build up the glorious plantation he was working on. Preston-Warner can snap his fingers, and someone who was getting a check to put food on the table and a roof over their head is suddenly not going to have the rent check by the end of the month. Especially when the next employer is asking for references, why you left the last job, are there any gaps in employment etc. People on an H1-B visa are dependent upon the company so they can't be thrown out of the country, so their green card application can not be restarted etc. This is in the default structure of a corporation, and the laws, and all the default papers that super-angels and VC's put forward. Ownership and control of a corporation is 80-90% in the hands of the angels, VC's and founders. Of the scraps left over, executives and top-level experienced techs get the lion's share. This is the reality, and everyone knows it. People believing their own press releases about people building great things are delusional. It's like the Tuskeegee or Dr. Mengele subjects happy about how they are helping contribute to science. No one is fooled by this other than naive, new to the workplace, socially maladjusted programmers in their early 20's. This is why there is such a feeding frenzy over this small pool of naive young men.

swombat 12y ago
> Preston-Warner can snap his fingers, and someone who was getting a check to put food on the table and a roof over their head is suddenly not going to have the rent check by the end of the month. Very, very unlikely. Even though employment laws are very employer-friendly in the US, from the sound of it, Tom built an inclusive, open company culture. One of the side effects of that is that if you abuse your power as a leader, you cause irreparable damage to the culture - which is not something you want to do at practically any cost after spending so much effort building the culture and getting it to stand up on its own feet. Ricardo Semler, major shareholder and CEO of Semco, explained it like this: "I have a handgun in my desk drawer with a single bullet in it." If he really had built the kind of culture where he could just fire people by snapping his fingers, surely the easiest thing would have been to fire the troublemaker at the first sign of trouble instead of waiting for her to resign and make a fuss.
- kjhgkhjf 12y ago
  How is that unlikely? Unless Github has a very, very atypical employment contract, all employees are at-will[1]. Sure, it might damage Tom or Github's reputation if he just randomly fired people[2], but he could. Saying that it would also bring down the rest of the company doesn't really help. [1] Of course, you still have to give two weeks notice if you want to exercise that at-willness for yourself! [2] I mean, unless he "randomly" fires all the people of race X, or something like that
  - bronbron 12y ago
    It's very, very unlikely that he would fire someone on a whim. He has the ability, but it's very unlikely that he would exercise that ability.
  - bradhe 12y ago
    > Of course, you still have to give two weeks notice if you want to exercise that at-willness for yourself! No, you don't.
  - swombat 12y ago

swombat 12y ago

> Preston-Warner can snap his fingers, and someone who was getting a check to put food on the table and a roof over their head is suddenly not going to have the rent check by the end of the month. Very, very unlikely. Even though employment laws are very employer-friendly in the US, from the sound of it, Tom built an inclusive, open company culture. One of the side effects of that is that if you abuse your power as a leader, you cause irreparable damage to the culture - which is not something you want to do at practically any cost after spending so much effort building the culture and getting it to stand up on its own feet. Ricardo Semler, major shareholder and CEO of Semco, explained it like this: "I have a handgun in my desk drawer with a single bullet in it." If he really had built the kind of culture where he could just fire people by snapping his fingers, surely the easiest thing would have been to fire the troublemaker at the first sign of trouble instead of waiting for her to resign and make a fuss.

kjhgkhjf 12y ago
How is that unlikely? Unless Github has a very, very atypical employment contract, all employees are at-will[1]. Sure, it might damage Tom or Github's reputation if he just randomly fired people[2], but he could. Saying that it would also bring down the rest of the company doesn't really help. [1] Of course, you still have to give two weeks notice if you want to exercise that at-willness for yourself! [2] I mean, unless he "randomly" fires all the people of race X, or something like that
- bronbron 12y ago
  It's very, very unlikely that he would fire someone on a whim. He has the ability, but it's very unlikely that he would exercise that ability.
- bradhe 12y ago
  > Of course, you still have to give two weeks notice if you want to exercise that at-willness for yourself! No, you don't.
- swombat 12y ago