If
a) Horvath had felt for some time that she was in a hostile work environment and that she was being subjected to pressures that a male employee would not have to endure (ie sexist discrimination, and
b) the company senior management / founder(s) felt that there was a risk that she was going to leave and go public with her allegations of sexism, then
c) it makes a twisted kind of sense that the founder would send his wife to go talk to Horvath to try to negotiate some kind of truce, make her happy. The (unfortunate) logic being that a woman to woman communication might be better for defusing Horvath's concerns.
d) unfortunately the wife, whilst female, handled it clumsily and make matters worse...and as the situation deteriorated she played an increasingly crazy and (apparently) unmanaged role. For all we know she had represented to her founder husband that she could handle it and panicked when things started going downhill.
e) etc etc
Your hypothesis was what I was thinking, and that a) was the part of the story that wasn't being told.
Like you, I have no idea what's actually going on, but the way the story was told, either by Horvath or the TC writer, the details didn't quite add up. I guess we wait until Github comes out with a statement.
If a) Horvath had felt for some time that she was in a hostile work environment and that she was being subjected to pressures that a male employee would not have to endure (ie sexist discrimination, and b) the company senior management / founder(s) felt that there was a risk that she was going to leave and go public with her allegations of sexism, then c) it makes a twisted kind of sense that the founder would send his wife to go talk to Horvath to try to negotiate some kind of truce, make her happy. The (unfortunate) logic being that a woman to woman communication might be better for defusing Horvath's concerns. d) unfortunately the wife, whilst female, handled it clumsily and make matters worse...and as the situation deteriorated she played an increasingly crazy and (apparently) unmanaged role. For all we know she had represented to her founder husband that she could handle it and panicked when things started going downhill. e) etc etc
Like I said, it's probably bullshit...