GitHub Tries To Become More Inclusive—Results Are Inconclusive (At Best)

The software development platform GitHub has been known to have both a problematic corporate environment and a lax attitude toward harrassment on the platform itself. Software developer and engineer Coraline Ada Ehmke was recruited for a job by GitHub in 2015 to work with a team called Community and Safety, assembled to remedy some of these problems. In this extended blog entry she chronicles her year at the company.

Ehmke was persuaded that the company was earnestly trying to overhaul its culture and, enticed by the possibility of having a real influence there, she joined the staff. The hiring process went smoothly, and her team was diverse. But quickly the situation took a nosedive.

Ehmke was subject to intense scrutiny by male peers and bureaucratic bungles that are hard not to interpret as discriminatory. Then her efforts to analyze the demographic of GitHub users in order to improve diversity were derailed by a colleague woefully unaware of gender politics who felt threatened when corrected.

Her experience there was not entirely negative; she describes several positive collaborations and praise for successful features she introduced. But she was also repeatedly met with hostility and criticism for getting too “personal” when speaking up about the very issues of marginalization and safety that she was hired to address. This gives the impression that she was brought on as a figurehead for political correctness without any intention of letting her actually push progress. She summarizes this as a “lack of empathy”.

It’s impossible to conclude from a one-sided report what exactly happened, but what comes across is a tech company climate at best opaque and weird—and at worst cruel and discriminatory. This piece of writing is essentially a detailed timeline of her year at the company (it’s not star journalism), making for a fascinating and lucid read. Not to mention it’s easy to read between the lines: Silicon Valley has a long way to go.