The "best talent" would probably rather work at a company without these kinds of allegations than at one with them. They might be unfounded, but why take the risk? If you're the "best talent," you've got a lot of other options.
The best talent would rather work on interesting problems and products. The fact that there may be some wrongdoing happening in some far corner of the company that is almost personal between the parties involved should be so down the list of reasons to work at a company.
The answers to these questions are still true today:
* does github make a great product? yes.
* does their product make software development and open-source better? yes
* are there interesting problems to work on there? yes.
* would I be working with very talented people there? yes.
* based on what we know as facts or admitted to as facts, would taking a job at github subject me or people I care about to these injustices? AFAICT that's no more likely than at any other company comparable to github in terms of the benefits of working there. Anyone working at github is there at will. If they feel wronged, they can leave, which means I don't have to worry about people I care about being wronged.
The only way my mind would change on this is if I see a voluntary exodus of talent from github over what happened. Absent talent leaving in the current hiring market, we can only come to the conclusion that these wrongdoings were isolated and personal.
Let's keep an eye out for who has left since March 15th, 2014 or so and leaves over the next 3 months. Of that cohort, discount TPW, JAH and anyone who leaves to join TPW's new venture. With the remaining figures, then check if that churn rate for github is any higher than it would have been had this event never happened. If it is not, then this whole issue is pretty much irrelevant.
The problem is that every (large enough) company really does have issues like these, no matter where you go. And it's not that they should be ignored but what should be looked at is the infrastructure to resolve them.
They're hiring new HR people, GOOD. They're adding training for employees (probably much to the annoyance of those employees), good.
These means that it'll be easier to make the places safer and better for everyone. That's what I'd look at.
Interestingly enough, I'd say that smaller startups suffer from larger biases. Basically if the founders don't like you for some reason or another, you're in for shit. If a "CTO" who worked at the company since the beginning doesn't like you, you're fucked as well. And there's no HR to turn to.
This definitely does weigh into many people's consideration I think.
However, determining how people will decide when put to such a situation is difficult. Speaking personally, I would certainly be wary, but I'm not going to dismiss a potential employer outright over something I don't have the complete facts about over one story.
I think it's not so much the allegations of a hostile work environment that would keep people away, it's the idea of working a company with ridiculous drama that looks like it came out of a bad high school movie. It indicates an unhealthy number of non-grown ups in positions of responsibility.
It's probably not what you meant to say, but it is a plausible reading of the actual text - it's just a slightly awkward phrasing that appears to say 'the best talent won't care, but women might' which casts them as disjoint groups.
I cannot believe the over-sensitive linguistically challenged group that must be downvoting that. Boy, doesn't it suck to know that sometimes words join together to have meanings and occasionally it includes one you weren't thinking of? Best approach is to say 'oh oops, I didn't mean that' and learn to construct your sentences better for next time. Worst approach is to deny that it could have meant that and learn nothing.
It probably will challenge their recruitment of women though.