What probably needed to happen was whoever was in charge of that project should have recognized these two employees now didn't get along, and reassigned one or both of them away from the project.
If it is true and clear that the developer tampered with the codebase because of a personal issue with another developer, I am not even sure that is an issue to let HR resolve; I would want that developer fired immediately. Intentionally fucking with the product, or any other sort of company property, is inexcusable in my mind. Tanking the reputation of that developer is putting it nicely.
I was trying to be measured in the language because I don't consider the TechCrunch article to be completely unbiased on the man, but yes, in general I agree. Intentionally sabotaging code should have you out the door on your ass.
Retaliation in response to rejected sexual overtures is one of the basic forms of sexual harassment. It's arguably a quid pro quo situation and absolutely qualifies as the kind of conduct that can lead to a hostile work environment.
If I ever saw this happen, I would reprimand the developer in the parking lot while the HR people were bringing his personal belongings down in cardboard boxes so he could go away and never ever come back.
no. what needed to happen was that the guy should have been fired for deleting someone's code over a personal issue. "these two employees now didn't get along" makes it sound like there was fault on both sides, which is emphatically not the case.
That's actually impossible at GitHub (as far as I understand their working practices) because they are not a traditional company. They use Open Allocation, which means that employees decide which projects to work on, and specifically, project leads cannot veto that.
What probably needed to happen was whoever was in charge of that project should have recognized these two employees now didn't get along, and reassigned one or both of them away from the project.