GitHub HR Head Resigns After Jewish Employee Termination

An internal review at GitHub has determined that the company committed “substantial missteps in judgment and process” regarding the dismissal of an employee who had alerted colleagues to the presence of Nazis in the Washington D.C. area on the day of the U.S. Capitol insurrection.

In a statement published on the company blog today, GitHub’s Chief Operating Officer, Erica Brescia, indicated that the head of Human Resources has accepted full accountability for the situation and has resigned from their position. While GitHub has not publicly named the individual who resigned, it is broadly understood that Carrie Olesen served as the chief human resources officer at GitHub.

GitHub’s senior director of global HR services, Gia Colosi, shared some thoughts on the company and the HR department via a tweet last night. This tweet has since been removed, but a screenshot is provided below.

A subsequent tweet from Colosi stated, “Women are in HR to clean up men’s messes. I’m done and tired.”

GitHub has stated that it has “reversed the decision regarding the employee’s separation” and is currently in communication with the employee’s representative.

“To the employee, we offer our sincere apologies,” Brescia stated in the blog post.

The employee, after posting a message in Slack stating, “Stay safe homies, Nazis are about,” received a complaint from a colleague who felt the statement was inappropriate for the workplace, the employee previously shared. Subsequently, he was terminated, with a human resources representative citing a “pattern of behavior inconsistent with company policy” as the reason for the termination, he reported.

In a prior conversation with TechCrunch this week, the employee indicated he was genuinely concerned for the safety of his colleagues in the area, as well as his Jewish family members. During that discussion, he expressed that while he was not interested in reinstatement, he would be open to other forms of resolution.