We don’t use GitHub; although GitLab does have a Code of Conduct it does not yet have any other signs of SJW infestation. But the convergence at GitHub, which was apparent when its former CEO was forced out in 2014 over a “sexual-harassment scandal by a female employee who quit”, appears to have shifted into a higher gear.
- Cofounder CEO Chris Wanstrath, with support from the board, is radically changing the company’s culture: Out with flat org structure based purely on meritocracy, in with supervisors and middle managers. This has ticked off many people in the old guard.
- Its once famous remote-employee culture has been rolled back. Senior managers are no longer allowed to live afar and must report to the office. This was one reason why some senior execs departed or were asked to leave, one person close to the company told us.
- Others tell us that key technical people from the old days like CTO Ted Nyman and third cofounder PJ Hyett are mostly absent from the office and not contributing much technically.
- GitHub has hit “hypergrowth,” growing from about 300 to nearly 500 employees in less than a year, with over 70 people joining last quarter alone.
- Some longer-term employees feel like there’s a “culture of fear” where people who don’t support all the changes are being ousted.
- In addition to previously reported executive departures, Business Insider has learned that Ryan Day, VP of business development; Adam Zimman, senior director of technology partnerships; and Scott Buxton, controller, have all left in the last six months. Buxton departed in January.
And what are all these changes? The usual diversity-and-inclusivity nonsense.
One insider criticized GitHub’s “social impact team,” which is in charge of figuring out how to use the product to tackle social issues, including diversity within the company itself. It’s led by Nicole Sanchez, vice president of social impact, who joined GitHub in May after working as a diversity consultant.
While people inside the company approve of the goal to hire a more diverse workforce, some think the team is contributing to the internal cultural battle.
“They are trying to control culture, interviewing and firing. Scary times at the company without a seasoned leader. While their efforts are admirable it is very hard to even interview people who are ‘white’ which makes things challenging,” this person said.
Sanchez is known for some strong views about diversity. She wrote an article for USA Today shortly before she joined GitHub titled, “More white women does not equal tech diversity.”
At one diversity training talk held at a different company and geared toward people of color, she came on a bit stronger with a point that says, “Some of the biggest barriers to progress are white women.”
I suspect there is more than a little confusion between correlation and confusion taking place there; Facebook is fully SJW-converged, therefore full SJW convergence equals revenue growth, profit, and massive equity overvaluations.
But, as Mike Cernovich noted, it’s the SJWs at the venture capital firms who are aggressively pushing this by throwing large sums of money at the converged firms and inflating their values. Does that model still work? Probably not now that the Federal Reserve is out of bullets, but we’ll see.