"In 2013, Richard DeVaul, a director at Google X, the company’s research and development arm, interviewed Star Simpson, a hardware engineer. During the job interview, she said he told her that he and his wife were “polyamorous,” a word often used to describe an open marriage. She said he invited her to Burning Man, an annual festival in the Nevada desert, the following week.
Ms. Simpson went with her mother and said she thought it was an opportunity to talk to Mr. DeVaul about the job. She said she brought conservative clothes suitable for a professional meeting."
woah nelly! totally fucked that he was hitting on her in the interview and appears to be a pretty cut and dried abuse of power...
but... business casual, with mom, at burning man? that's absolutely bananas. however i can see how it would come to be, you're staring down your dream job, and there's this tight knit group of people you want to join so you go along with all of it... and then you realize later that you were just being played because someone wanted to sleep with you. yikes.
> and then you realize later that you were just being played because someone wanted to sleep with you. yikes.
I think she probably realized, that's why she brought her mom and conservative clothes.
Sometimes one way to win is to play along and lead your opponent into a trap.
Granted the trap didn't work as https://www.linkedin.com/in/rdevaul is still a director at X. Propositioning people and telling them about your open relationships during an interview process then inviting them to a drug infused festival should lead to not being a director anywhere in my opinion but maybe I am old-fashioned.
It's a trap in the sense that if he makes a move there is a witness (mom). And she gets to pretend like she didn't understand and thought it was a business meeting to further the professional engagement and get the job she wanted. Or he gets to look ridiculous with this person he invited that came along dressed professionally and her mom came too. She can tell the story to all his "friends" and pretend like she just thought it was a "nice gesture". They will read between the lines and see what he was really trying to do. Maybe a few of them will turn to be reporters or bloggers, etc.
It didn't quite work out as well in the sense that he got to keep his job. And that's how sexism usually works with powerful people. They get golden parachutes, spend time at "sex addiction retreats for a 1 week" and they are "cured" and so on. But they are usually not punished for their behavior.
As a burner myself this makes me really sad that this is what people are going to think of Burning Man. Many people absolutely do bring their mother and wear whatever they want to the burn. It’s sad to consider those were done as guarding measures in this case.
There is a movement to get “Consent” ratified as the 11th principle, and I have to image for most of the people who aren’t for it, it’s because they don’t see the image problem the event has from stories like this, and wonder why people need to be reminded of something as basic as “Consent”. Well, here is why.
I absolutely do not want this event I have fallen in love with to be associated with executives hitting on people and pushing drugs.
It seems odd to take this as an indictment of burning man when it should be verboten to invite anyone to an intimate event DURING A PROFESSIONAL INTERVIEW. Wait until after the interview and try to know them on personal terms.... then maybe. Even that seems super sketchy as you could interpet it as tied to the interview.
Rubicon is a rather shallow river and is easy to cross by the way. But comparing menage-a-trois to a watershed event in human history deflates the risks taken by Caesar.
I won't go to Burning Man, and my SO won't go back after going with our friends due to the culture around the event. There are lots of great people that make an effort to go to Burning Man, but I have no desire to hang out with a good portion that are essentially mindless techbros, if I want that I can go wander over to Fremont, South Lake Union or similar.
The pervasive "fuck you, got mine" among this crowd is toxic, similar to lawbertarians espousing their beliefs. In the context of Burning Man these attitudes don't make sense, but this demographic does not reconcile their attitudes and that of what they participate in, all that matters is others have said they should go.
I haven't read about them, but a friend of mine got to spend quite a bit of time out on playa pre-burn as part of staff. The labor practices of the org are not great from what I heard from this friend, they ended up replacing many employees this past year with contractors it seems...
I was also at Burning Man 2013 (when this seems to have taken place), and some of my female friends were approached by middle aged men who offered them massages. When trying to decline politely, these men used a sort of "uptight-shaming" tactic, saying things like "you're at burning man, you need to relax". They ended up going along with it and felt very badly about it afterwards. I'm not saying this is typical, but it does occur.
I don’t think this has too much to do with Burning Man. If he had even invited her to travel to a business conference with the intent to get laid it would have been the same deal.
The ability of people to complain about things they can easily avoid never ceases to astound me.
Secondly, nobody cares what you think about burning man. That goes for everyone. Just go if you want to and enjoy it on your own terms and don’t ruin someone else’s day.
The ability of people to complain about other people complaining, which they can easily avoid, never ceases to astound me.
Secondly, nobody cares what you think about other people's complaints. That goes for everyone. Just ignore it you want to and disregard it on your own terms and don't ruin someone else's day.
As usual the media gets this a bit wrong and is obscuring the truth. Star knew more about Burning Man than this harassing interviewer.
I was a couple years ahead of Star in school and know she was a long time fan of burning man, even going while in undergrad. No way this guy was the first person to tell her about it as this article implies. (but doesn’t explicitly state) Maybe meeting a fellow burner is what brought out his extra creepy side but that’s no excuse.
She was probably going to be there anyway. She might make plans with a weeks notice but really doubt a mom living in another state would have.
though also Star is a amazing famous person in her own right! She deserves more attention than Mr. DoucheVaul
I also know her, and camped with her at Burning Man many moons ago.
I don't think the account related in the article in any way obscures the truth, and it doesn't soften the sharp and inappropriate edge of what her interviewer did in the least.
I, myself, occasionally run across subordinates at Burning Man, and I make a very strong effort to interact with them in the same way I'd do at work, with the exception of offering them water bottles, extra ampoules of sunscreen, and electrolyte packets.
There is less than zero excuse for that guys' behavior.
The article led the reader to believe that the victim was not a burner, and that Burn was part of the weird SV culture and part of the setup for harassment. The problem was the guy's behavior, not inviting her to the Burn.
Totally agree! It really seems like the article is trying to say she was invited to attend her first burning man by this creepy interviewer and that she attended it mainly for networking purposes but brought her mom and a “conservative” attire to keep it professional. This isn’t explicitly stated but is strongly implied. The author also links predatory behavior with burning man by making Star seem like the outsider to it.
I commented because I think this article is doing a disservice to the victim and falsely depicting her as a bit naive, clueless, and perhaps a tad too desperate for the job which isn’t accurate at all.
I love how you're admittedly making stuff up that the article doesn't say, and then attack it for it.
To be fair, I can somewhat see what causes your misinterpretation. The first sentence about Burning Man is
She said he invited her to Burning Man, an annual festival in the Nevada desert, the following week.
What's cause for confusion here is the interjection defining Burning Man. Your interpretation sees it as a retelling of her experience, i.e. him having to explain her what it is.
But any semi-regular reader of the NYT will take this for what it is: an explanation of Burning Man to the reader.
It's rather common to introduce new terms in article in this way, whenever they are first mentioned. Sometimes, as arguably in this case, it is overdone. Worst offender here is the Economist: "The US, a large north-american country,...".
well glad we agree on content and just have a different interpretation of what his article is implying!
Instead of discussing the article, let’s just look at other commenters and see their interpretation.
reviewing other comments in this thread I see:
- commenters that believe she made plans to go to burning man on a weeks notice and convinced her mom to join. And got tickets.
- commenters that re-interpret “conservative” to mean professional/business casual attire. That interpretation makes Simpson seems particularly oblivious about the event which is clearly untrue
- a commenter that specifically mentions her naivete
As I’ve said already, what these commenters think isn’t true, but they believe these things because that’s what the article unfairly implies.
I’m glad this article is drawing attention to this harasser and this issue in general, but it does a disservice to the victim to falsely paint them in this light.
Dude, she was asked to do interview at Burning Man. It wasn't her choice. It is unfathomable that this guy is allowed to manage anyone at all anywhere.
Check out the article again - this is wrong. The reporter makes no claim about this.
>>Ms. Simpson went with her mother and said she thought it was an opportunity to talk to Mr. DeVaul about the job. She said she brought conservative clothes suitable for a professional meeting.
Talk about dedication - not planning on going to burning man, then going with a week's notice, in conservative clothing no less? Ms. Simpson is willing to go to far greater lengths than I to increase offer prospects...
I would have read it differently if she had gone "burning-man" mode, as I'd be tempted to do if invited on a whim like this. I'd always intended to try anyway, so having a guaranteed champion there (and maybe a camp? Unclear if crashing at the camp was implied in the invitation), would make it a fun thing to do. But the conservative clothes makes it seem like she was treating this as a step in the interview process.
Why was DeVaul talking about his personal romantic/sexual life in an interview? How stupid of him. What a dumb gamble, even if he was trying to get laid, the risk/reward just doesn't make sense in the context.
It's apparent from reading the article that Google had a widespread and pervasive sexual harassment problem with senior executives freely doing whatever they wanted - that the current chief legal fellow is still there (and got several promotions to the top) after having an extramarital affair and child with another employee in the legal department says everything - he knew all the consequences and how things could turn out and he did it anyways.
I would cut a bit of slack to Ms. Simpson, she was only 24, the power imbalance is huge, and reading about the women who have turned down these sort of invitations early in their career is to read a litany of careers crippled. I thought naively that the casting couch was a Hollywood institution but it's just an institution.
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/10/ha...
The article says that both founders and the 3rd majority owner triumvirate of Google a violated the company sexually conduct policy. It's part of the founding culture, even before the parade of SVPs.
Was tempted to go further but wanted to hew closely to what was supported by the news story and I also do not have any personal experience or knowledge of current work environment.
Every manager in California has to do mandatory 2 hour harassment prevention training every two years where such behavior is specifically called out as unacceptable. So he would have known this was wrong.
The irony is that this mandatory sexual harassment training was signed into law by then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger a couple of years after he had been fornicating with his house maid.
The problem is - what I see here is that a woman made a claim that a man did or said something that might have constituted harassment. As any employer ought, Google started investigating. Also, as any employer ought, they didn't go public about the claim, seeing as how that's a violation of everybody's privacy. They investigated, didn't find enough evidence to discipline the accused (or maybe they did, but that's also not, nor should it be, public). Independent of all of this, they made a payout that they were contractually obligated to pay out. Yet with the outrage machine in full gear, it's getting more and more like the only thing any company can do to avoid criticism is to not only terminate without investigating immediately when a claim is filed, but to also include "no accusation" clauses in all of their contracts so that they can default on their obligations essentially at whim. And it seems like most everybody on there thinks that's a good idea.
> Independent of all of this, they made a payout that they were contractually obligated to pay out.
Why did they make this payout and this contract? In other words—what benefit to Alphabet was it in exchange for?
Not damaging the reputation of the company is a common clause in severance agreements. I bet that not being retroactively found to have violated company policy is also common. Would it be in Google's interest to pay out the severance if the employee were found to have stolen corporate secrets?
> And it seems like most everybody on there thinks that's a good idea.
I think that probably almost anyone is aware of the danger that a system like that, its just that everyone is deliberately ignoring it and weighing it against the PR storm. Its pretty much universal, to throw due process out the window is something that a vast majority of people want to do after any heinous crime committed, something politicians also always exploited.
Er, except the actual cited definition matches use (there is an uncited definition upthread that doesn't, but that definition of just a poor definition, since definitions aim to describe use.)
However, a married person who is polyamorous is either a serial liar or in an open marriage. It’s reasonable to infer the latter since it is the least offensive.
Polyamorous people can still marry or be married. That doesn't somehow make them "serial liars" or otherwise result in them being required to describe their relationships using a specific term such as open marriage.
This depends on your definition of "open marriage", but to be clear, polyamory is _not_ about open relationships (which I think "open marriage" suggests). Polyamory typically means closed/committed relationships, but with multiple people. That they are made out to be sleeping around or in less serious relationships is incorrect, at least as far as the terminology goes. I would not say that a married poly person is necessarily a liar or in an open marriage.
You seem to be unreasonably narrowing options here for no reason. A polyamorous couple could date others, as a couple, without it being an open marriage
My understanding is that an open marriage bars long term amorous relationships from the mix, but that things are ok
I believe 100% that R. DeVaul is scum and I am not trying to attack the story, but the burning man part is too difficult to believe.
Tickets for burning man go on sale 6 months before, cost $1000 and become sold out in 30 minutes. It's a festival in the middle of the desert that you have to go pretty prepared if you want to last more than half a day (coolers, water, van, etc).
How did someone find tickets for 2 people a week before, drove to the desert with their mother because they honestly thought it was an interview test.
EDIT: Maybe she was going to be at burning man with her mom eitherway. She just decided to get some more business oriented clothes for when she would hang with her new work mates. That makes sense. But now it makes zero sense for the article to mention the burning man story.
You are missing the point of being rich and powerful. He probably had multiple tickets already handy 6 months earlier to "invite" people. He did not have to buy them himself, someone else would do it for him.
> EDIT: Maybe she was going to be at burning man with her mom eitherway. She just decided to get some more business oriented clothes for when she would hang with her new work mates. That makes sense.
How did that happen?
"You're going to the same event as me, your interviewer? We should totally hang out there!" maybe?
> But now it makes zero sense for the article to mention the burning man story.
Which interviewer suggests (during the interview!) to meet up a week later in private at some event? One that is trying to be professional?
It shows he wasn't just using his position to make suggestions, but taking it one step further and planning things. During the interview.
In a story about culture by management towards sexual harassment, it makes a ton of sense to include this story.
According to Star Simpson, she attended Burning Man 5 times prior to this this, between 2007-2011.[0]
Given she attended with her mom, it seems more likely that Star was already planning on going to Burning Man in 2013, not that she decided to go on a week's notice after her interview with DeVaul - which is something that many in this thread are assuming, but is not stated in the article.
Just FYI: tickets were $425 in 2018 with a small minority available at higher prices for those who explicitly wanted to help the event.
It's also fairly easy to get tickets up until days before the event through active secondhand swap communities. Many people do, in practice, show up with only a few days of preparation.
but... business casual, with mom, at burning man? that's absolutely bananas.
I think it speaks to how difficult it is for women to sort whether this is really a networking opportunity or not. A lot of networking that's obviously networking when done between two hetero men could be construed as a proposition for a woman. Where does she draw the line?
I was banned today from a (nominally) professional forum. I was active there years ago and returned a few months back. Many years ago, I hooked up with one of the mods while I was going through a divorce. So far, so good.
But I didn't want to see him again after that. So he was an ass to me about it in a way that abused his position of power on the forum. I didn't make a stink. I left, mostly for other reasons, but that was kind of a final straw. My comment last night detailing his crappy behavior was deleted and my account was quietly banned. The ban was not announced publicly.
Women in business are frequently in a no win situation. If a man in power is attracted to them, win, lose, or draw, her career gets hurt and people will say she somehow screwed it up.
I have no control over men being attracted to me. I've been celibate for nearly 13.5 years. That has proven to be essentially zero protection from having to worry about drama because some man sees me as hot for some damn reason.
If a man is attracted in spite of my best efforts to be repulsive to him (yes, I'm being flippant here cuz I'm aggravated today), it is typically all downside for me. There isn't a good solution.
But I don't see where that is pertinent. If a tech guy had his homemade tech gadget mistaken for a bomb, would this be somehow deemed pertinent to his female boss sexually harassing him years later or something like that?
It is perfectly civil to make a lighthearted comment about the least sensitive part of the entire discussion. Frankly, who cares whether someone wears conservative clothes to Burning Man. I don't appreciate people who attempt to police others on how and when to discuss things; I think it lacks social grace.
You chose to respond to me with an unnecessary and totally irrelevant candid view into your professional life and sexual habits. To be completely honest, your comment struck me as bizarre and made me feel uncomfortable. I think that your comment on celibacy, etc, was a far more inappropriate thing to say (on your part) than simply pointing out the humor in Star's wardrobe having made the news more than once.
To address my views on the discussion directly:
I find it difficult to immediately and unquestioningly believe an allegation that doesn't appear to have evidence aside from testimony from a single individual, Star, who plainly admits that she was motivated to speak out due to the rising public profile of the accused. I believe that as a 24-year-old, Star Simpson was old enough to make her own adult decisions and even if what she says was true, it doesn't amount to sexual harassment but rather a rejected offer for a back rub and a consensual neck massage at a music festival. i don't know anything about DeVaul's other exploits, but even if Star's account is totally accurate, at the very worst his invitation was in poor taste considering that she was an interviewee.
How would a man feel if a male interview invited them to meet his wife and him, who are into polyamory or what not? I feel like the connotations are clear are inappropriate during an interview.
That question is not at all relevant to anything I have said in this thread, nor do you and I know in detail what exactly was said in that interview.
If you're just randomly asking my opinion, then I would say that any person who goes to an interview and is treated unprofessionally can be expected to feel bad.
At the same time, I have been invited to socialize outside of work by people who have unusual/unhealthy hobbies. It doesn't always mean they want me to join in those hobbies, and if I were pressured to do so, I would decline.
It's tough to draw conclusions about something when the only information we have is two paragraphs about one side of the story, and one sentence about the other side.
I don't appreciate people who attempt to police others on how and when to discuss things; I think it lacks social grace.
I was in no way trying to police anything. I was merely trying to convey that context impacts interpretation of a remark. Lighthearted humor amidst such a serious discussion comes across as disrespectful and dismissive, even mocking.
Given your above comment on the matter, it seems it is not inaccurate to see the comment that way. In fact, that likely is a wholly accurate interpretation of your intent. Someone was sexually harassed and your reaction is to point and laugh, basically.
I didn't dismiss, disrespect, or mock anything. I didn't even draw any conclusions. I simply pointed out something that happened in the past. Please don't go off the deep end trying to put words in my mouth.
The truth of the matter is that for anyone who was at MIT at that time, it was a big news story. It was the junction of hacker culture and normal culture, and hacker culture almost got shot and killed for no reason. Seeing a conversation about her that doesn't mention this major story, to me, was like seeing the Michelin Man run for president and nobody mentions that he used to sell tires. It's just naturally funny to me because the most salient thing I know about Star is that she went to Logan with a lighted breadboard affixed to her chest and play-doh in her hand, and the next time she shows up in my news feed she's dressed for a business meeting at Burning Man.
Maybe you can step off your soap box to see the humor in that. Maybe not.
Just because you want to assume that anyone who doesn't want to burn the accused at the stake is a bigot, doesn't mean it's true. I just saw the humor in something that, apparently, is off limits in your mind. Well, for me, until it's proven in court, it's just another allegation in a sea of allegations, and I have neither the evidence to accept one view or the other. I didn't attack anyone, say anything untrue, make accusations that I can't substantiate, or ridicule anyone's pain. I'm just here in the comments section chatting, and as far as I can tell my comments don't violate any of the guidelines of HN....
...Unless, of course, someone with the ability to read my mind can identify that what REALLY drove me to comment, deep down, was a desire to ridicule Star for allegedly being a victim.
Give me a break.
Are you able to see why decrying me as "pointing and laughing" at Star for making allegations of sexual harassment is a jump to a far-flung conclusion?
I didn't even mention the situation or share an opinion at first, and later I said that absent evidence I don't have an opinion. Do you have a problem with hearing voices that don't unequivocally agree with your ideas of what everyone ought (in your mind) to think?
The knee-jerk reaction in the tech culture is to assume that everything is malicious and anti-women. You're doing that right now by "interpreting" my "intent." You don't know my name, you don't know my background, and you're purporting to understand what drives me. I guess it's satisfying to set up a straw man just to knock it down.
If you were talking to me on the street and you were to randomly bring up your decade-plus of celibacy (not judging), I would be absolutely taken aback. But here on HN it appears to be totally normal and that strikes me as bizarre. That one singular comment is honestly making me rethink the value of this community, because there are some ideas that get traction in the echo chamber ("all people who do not immediately stone the accused share in his guilt"), yet basic civility and manners are often totally absent. I don't know if that's a result of liberal/feminist political biases, or a lack of social skills associated with tech types.
On another note:
With all due respect, I've responded to everything you've said, represented my view candidly, and attempted to share my thoughts in a coherent way, but I get the impression that to continue this discussion would serve little purpose for me but to expend my time talking to someone who has demonstrated a desire to misinterpret what I'm saying by injecting malice into it on my behalf. If this were a real-life conversation, the second you mentioned your sexual habits, I would have smiled politely and walked away shortly thereafter.
>A college student who walked into Logan International Airport wearing a fake bomb strapped to chest was arrested at gunpoint Friday, officials said.
CBS News correspondent Bob Orr reports the Massachusetts Institute of Technology sophomore told police she was there to meet a passenger arriving on a Continental flight from Oakland. She explained her get-up saying, "I wanted to stand out in the crowd."
>Star Simpson, 19, allegedly had a computer circuit board, wiring and a putty that later turned out to be Play-Doh in plain view over a black hooded sweatshirt she was wearing, said State Police Maj. Scott Pare, the commanding officer at the airport.
This happened on September 21, 2007. It surprises me that she didn't get shot on sight as it happened after 9/11. Crazy ... I mean, I don't want to say she was/is crazy, but no sane person does such a thing, especially not in this day and age.
At MIT there was a bit of controversy because many professors argued that the university president should have gone to bat for her publicly, instead of releasing a statement saying that she showed poor judgment.
Wearing weird electronics and hacker-esque things is totally normal for MIT undergrads, especially the ones living on the east side of Mass Ave. I wouldn't think twice if I saw a kid walk into the campus convenience store wearing a hoodie with LEDs on a breadboard and playdoh in her hands, but I guess Logan Airport isn't exactly a hackathon.
Dude, Richard DeVaul has been harassing people for fucking years.
That guy shows up in academic settings and touches and communicates inappropriately and unwantedly with women, especially at MIT. I've personally witnessed this at something as routine as a party with alcohol. His entire mindset is twisted. He saw Star Simpson as a vulnerable target. She wasn't the only person!
His reckoning is long overdue, and I have no fucking clue why people at GoogleX keep him around.
This is the tip of the god damned iceberg. Google is a powder keg of abuse. If they weren't so rich, paying people off as handsomely as they do, it would have come to head years ago.
If you don't want to be a dick, consider not being a dick. What a horrible thing to post.
We've banned this account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and commit to never doing anything like this again.
> During the job interview, she said he told her that he and his wife were “polyamorous,” a word often used to describe an open marriage. She said he invited her to Burning Man, an annual festival in the Nevada desert, the following week.
Oh, commas and sentence structure, so important.
One says Burning Man was the next week, entirely possible because she thought it was talking about the job (leaving aside -that- naivete), and makes him a liar, in that he couldn't have "believed that she had been informed that she didn't get the job" if he invited her during the interview.
Yeah, super super unacceptable hit on someone in an interview.
BUT... professional clothes at burning man? The charitable view is that she's making that up and feigning indignation. The uncharitable view is that she's clueless and did absolutely no research about burning man whatsoever.
See my other comment...Star probably was attending burning man before this guy was. She knew more about it than him.
Also if you were into burning man since 2006, the event then was less about “bacchanalia” and “free love”. This was before it was mainstream for techies, when cheap tickets could be bought anonymously with cash at the entrance, and when you could even more believably show up in “conservative” clothes and be into it for the art and maker culture. If the victim was a man I doubt their style of attire would be mentioned, but for Star the author needs to clarify for their audience that she wasn’t there for the scanty costumed photoshoots that so many associate with burning man now. She’s a hardware engineer and well known maker. Is it that hard to believe she actually likes it for the art and everything that gets created that week? Networking for a Google X job was probably just a bonus.
...which is the charitable explanation: She's feigning surprise and indignation. She knew what she was signing up for. I'm not apologizing for the douchebag, but the narrative of "I wore my interview suit to burning man and was horrified when everyone got naked" does not hold water.
FWIW, my burning man years started in 1994. Check your assumptions, kiddo.
Edit: not sure why the downvotes, I was actually attempting to defend her, in the sense that her innocence has gotten her into bad situations in the past.
the only naivete I can find in those links is that of the airport workers thinking a light up nametag is a bomb. About as ridiculous as the time boston shut down over some light up LED signs [1]. Something has wires and LED lights? Must be a bomb, no other explanation possible
No. She went into an airport wearing a circuitboard with flashing lights that made some people uneasy. When they asked her about it, she ignored them. Edit: Also, she was holding Play-doh, which no adult does at an airport, and can look like plastic explosives.
Even if they did overreact (and they pretty much have to aggressively err on the side of caution), it was a bit tone deaf and callous for her to act that way.
Well, if in her view, it was just a nametag and not a scary piece of technology, then I think it's reasonable to not understand why anyone would be uneasy. Did people wearing google glasses back when that was a thing respond to everyone who harassed them about it? If you were walking with your phone in your hand and someone came up to you accusing you of trying to bomb them, would you bother responding or just roll your eyes and keep walking?
Or other similar airport stories I've read of people in an airport terminal remoting into work being accused of hacking because scary linux terminals are the tools of hackers who are trying to hack planes and crash them. If that happened to me, I'd probably ignore the person while thinking to myself "what the fuck is this guy's problem, have they never seen a computer before"
Being tone-deaf means being unaware of what kinds of things would make others uneasy. If the world changed to the point that a phone like mine was easily confused with a bomb, then I would consider it tone-deaf for me to carry on in ignorance of this dynamic.
I can acknowledge that in retrospect she could have acted differently and avoided this whole situation...
But she was mainly the victim.
The over reaction by the initial reporter and the authories above them seem a bit wrong but not egregious. The real unforgivable failure is how after the incident the authorities had to double down, never admit any fault, and unfairly paint her as some nefarious perpetrator. Someone is quoted with saying she’s “lucky she ended up in a jail cell and not the morgue”.
They propagated the narrative that it was an intentional hoax and bomb scare and mis-used her claim that it was art. (she was saying her shirt was just art, not that the bomb scare was art) The “hoax device” charges brought on her were thrown out. She never was never found to have broken any law.
Well I guess our disagreement is that the world at that point had the dynamic where any electronic item was to be confused with a bomb. I was alive in 2007, some LED lights arranged in a star would certainly not have screamed "bomb" at me, and I would not have expected anyone else to have been scared of it either. If she was carrying around a clock like that one kid made, maybe, but even by 2007 movie standards a bomb would at least have a countdown timer of some kind
Right, there isn't much I can say to convince you why a block of blinking electronics on someone walking around at an airport and ignoring everyone's questions, at a time of heightened airport security against suicide bombers, is tone deaf.
The obvious view is that she knows perfectly well what Burning Man is, and she also suspected lewd intentions, and purposefully dressed that way to avoid them without having to refuse the invitation, which could have cost her the job.
The sad reality is that for a significant number of people, office politics includes a good chance of sexual harassment, which they have to learn to navigate as well.
A commenter claimed to have been privy to the real story:
> The truth seems to be both (a) unpleasant for Andy and (b) unremarkable to the rest of us. In other words, it wasn't his choice, but there wasn't a scandalous smoking gun either. He just wanted what Larry wouldn't give him. Nothing that would be front page news.
I don't think that the commenter was necessarily bullshitting at the time. The story conveyed to those inside Google may have been that there was sex involved, not necessarily that the act allegedly involved coercion. Even in 4 years, a lot has changed in how people interpret such accusations.
There's also an awful lot we don't know; we don't know who at Google leaked, what they leaked, and what their other motivations may have been. Even the word "credible" is pretty tricky here.
Having watched friends go through similar trials over bogus accusations that stem from a wide array of causes, I'm leery of the way many of these stories are reported.
This is really on Google. Companies shouldn't be providing cover to sexual predators. They just made sure Andy keep abusing in his even more powerful position as CEO of startup. Shame on them. They have really divorced themselves from ethics.
According to interviews with Google insiders, this sort of inappropriate behavior was accepted there from the beginning and started from the very highest levels of the company.
>Here Fisher quotes Google’s first executive chef, Charlie Ayers, and Heather Cairns, the company’s first HR manager:
Charlie Ayers: Sergey’s the Google playboy. He was known for getting his fingers caught in the cookie jar with employees that worked for the company in the masseuse room. He got around.
Heather Cairns: And we didn’t have locks, so you can’t help it if you walk in on people if there’s no lock. Remember, we’re a bunch of twentysomethings except for me—ancient at 35, so there’s some hormones and they’re raging.
Charlie Ayers: H.R. told me that Sergey’s response to it was, “Why not? They’re my employees.” But you don’t have employees for fucking! That’s not what the job is.
Heather Cairns: Oh my God: This is a sexual harassment claim waiting to happen! That was my concern.
This is such a thorny ugly issue to which there are really no right answers. It should be very clear that using a position of authority to coerce someone into a relationship of any kind is wrong. But at the same time it's pretty much impossible to prevent people from dating within the work place. You simply spend to much of your life there for it to be at all realistic. Many relationships end poorly, regardless of the obvious incompatibilities of these sorts of power dynamics. It's guaranteed to be a mess more often than not. I'm honestly not sure how you both given people the benefit of the doubt (innocent until proven guilty) while also ensuring that predators aren't allowed to abuse the people around them. Andy Rubin sounds like a sleazy guy. Paying him lots of money to go away seems like a no brainer move here from Google's perspective, but I'm not sure what else they could have done.
I think it is reasonably easy to prevent people from dating subordinates in the workplace. Up front, you explain that the policy is one word: don't. If it ever happens, you fire the higher-level person promptly. No excuses, no second chances.
Bosses should know not to have sexual or romantic relationships with people who work for them. We all know how one has to be careful what one says to one's boss. And we all no how hard it can be to say no to a boss or boss's boss about anything. It puts the junior person in an impossible situation.
But it's just as bad from the employer's perspective. Suddenly two people who are supposed to be putting the company's interests first have a strong conflict of interest. And when the relationship ends (as most do) you have a whole different set of unnecessary potential conflicts in the workplace.
> I think it is reasonably easy to prevent people from dating subordinates in the workplace. Up front, you explain that the policy is one word: don't. If it ever happens, you fire the higher-level person promptly. No excuses, no second chances.
In such a world, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation would likely not exist:
Off the top of my head, there are a few things wrong with this.
One, the fact that a rule might have downsides is not proof that it's a bad rule.
Two, if the rule had existed, it's hardly impossible that they would have gotten together later, or found some accommodation.
Three, if they hadn't gotten together, there's no reason to think they both wouldn't have gone on to find happiness with other people.
Four, your suggestion that them not dating means a Bill Gates foundation wouldn't exist is without evidence. At best you could say it might has another name on it.
Five, even if this rule would somehow have caused Gates to just burn his billions instead of doing some good, you haven't grappled at all with the harm that the lack of that rule does to many people who aren't as famous.
I think the point is that your rule implies that dating anyone in a consensual, non-coercive way implies that relationship is wrong[0] given certain contextual circumstances. That people, when they break up go on to do toxic and terrible things isn't and shouldn't be an indictment of the original relationship or sexual interaction if it was consensual and non-coerced rather of instead of critiquing the toxic behavior after the relationship.
Therefore, if we must not consider the resultant behavior separate from the relationship before it, then you are making a moral[0] judgement on the validity of relationships.
Consider the following: being coerced into a relationship and consenting because you fear being fired. That is clearly coercive and wrong because the consent isn't genuine, and I don't think anyone in this thread is arguing is worth being protected. A second situation: two people with mutual attraction who end up dating (like Melinda and Bill Gates) but have a power differential. It sounds like you are saying this is a priori wrong, even if the two consent and neither party feels coerced, or that one is coerced even if they believe sincerely that they are not being coerced.
Even if you don't say it is morally wrong, you still will forbid and prohibit such relationships, adults whom aren't you and who might not have the same value judgements you have. That's why it isn't so clear cut to me and others in this thread.
[0] I say wrong and moral, because this is an argument about morality, fundamentally.
> your rule implies that dating anyone in a consensual, non-coercive way implies that relationship is wrong
In a word, no. It implies that the class of covered activities is too risky for the company.
Consider company rules about receiving gifts from vendors. Typically, there's some limit, like $25. If you are negotiating a contract with somebody and they give you a $26 pen or even a $100 pen, is that morally wrong? No, unless that's enough for you to improperly favor them. But it's still forbidden, and the danger to the company is significant enough that they still ban it.
> Even if you don't say it is morally wrong, you still will forbid and prohibit such relationships, adults whom aren't you and who might not have the same value judgements you have.
I think it's okay to prohibit relationships that have a high likelihood of causing problems for the company, just like it's okay to prohibit (legal, morally-permissible!) behavior that is likely to detriment the company in other ways such as all engineers having root on production boxes.
If it's probably gonna cause problems it doesn't matter if it's legal, or if it's morally permissible under certain moral frameworks: don't do that shit, and it's fine for a company to ask you not to. Having relationships with subordinates is likely gonna cause problems, because most relationships end, and many of those that end will end poorly. All it takes is one lawsuit or even some bad PR to damage the business.
Or maybe it's an attempt to bring nuance to the discussion. Granted, it's kind of ham-handed. But absolutist positions frequently turn out to be draconian.
There seems to be no good way to make this point, but most relationships have some power imbalance. Where do we stop? Can you only marry someone your age with similar incomes? Do we encode this into law? Does this become a caste system?
The world seems to be okay with the relationship Bill Gates has. Wouldn't the world be a better place if we wondered how to foster such successes more often instead of designing rules based on an assumption of guilt in essence? Maybe rules that would forbid Gates current marriage aren't as thoroughly thought out and wise as they might seem at first blush.
Designing rules to prevent a worst case scenario sometimes goes very bad places. I have joked it can be a little like me starting a dating profile and putting "No rapists!" at the top of it. This isn't going to accomplish anything good and is likely to go bad places. Good policies need to consider more scenarios than just that worst case scenario we absolutely don't want to see.
Tldr: Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Yes, most relationships have some sort of power imbalance (although historically that has been drastically decreasing). What makes work relationships different is that it is hard to change jobs.
If you decide to go date a rich man on Tinder, you can break up without significant consequence to your income or your career. But if your boss asks you out you may face severe career consequences just for saying no. If you say yes and then break it off, the risks to you go up.
This rule has no assumption of guilt. It's just acknowledging the risk to the company and the people involved.
You're right in principle, but the problem is that nuance doesn't scale. In 1987 Microsoft only had about 1800 employees so it was more practical to apply some individual judgment to employee policies. Google had about 38000 employees in 2013, so it was more than an order of magnitude larger. That's a much tougher management problem.
So, what your telling me is there is a specific circumstance under which we know that it can work to not have absolutist rules. Now, it might be nice to have more hard data suggesting roughly what size of company this can work with, plus other details as to what makes it work.
Most companies are not behemoths. Everything I have ever read indicates most companies qualify for definitions of small to mid sized.
SMEs outnumber large companies by a wide margin and also employ many more people. For example, Australian SMEs make up 97% of all Australian businesses, produced one third of total GDP, and employ 4.7 million people. In Chile, in the commercial year 2014, 98.5% of the firms were classified as SMEs.[1] In Tunisia, the self-employed workers alone account for about 28% of the total non-farm employment and firms with fewer than 100 employees account for about 62% of total employment.[2] In developing countries, smaller (micro) and informal firms, have a larger share than in developed countries. SMEs are also said to be responsible for driving innovation and competition in many economic sectors.
> At best you could say it might has another name on it.
...does disservice to the influence she had (on Bill & the world) and shortchanges her contribution.
Your point still stands, i.e. that the claims of harm of the policy are post-hoc reasoning and therefore irrelevant its expected utility. But that does not actually conflict with this one particular instance possibly being a lucky coincidence.
This is pretty silly. We're not talking about Bill and Melinda Gates. We're talking about the David Drummond and Jennifer Blakely Foundation, which lasted a couple years, and resulted in Jennifer Blakely --- Drummond's subordinate --- losing her job along with the relationship.
"David C. Drummond, who joined as general counsel in 2002, had an extramarital relationship with Jennifer Blakely, a senior contract manager in the legal department who reported to one of his deputies, she and other Google employees said. They began dating in 2004, discussed having children and had a son in 2007,"
I don't understand, doesn't she bear some responsibility in her actions? She chose to date him and also chose to have kids with him. All knowing that he was already married. Why would she do that to another woman?
The dynamics of Drummond's marriage are literally none of our business. You have no idea what Blakely "did" or "didn't" do to "another woman". How Google handles like this, though, is absolutely open to analysis and criticism.
"We're not talking about <implication of my position that makes it look bad>, so it doesn't matter. We're talking about <implication of my position that makes it look good>."
Edit: Seriously? Does that count as a valid response now on HN?
A: X is bad. We should prohibit all X. Look at Y, which was a case of X.
B: But Z was a case of X too -- is that an acceptable cost?
No, we're talking about how dredging up an exception to the rule where things worked out for two people is not a a very good argument that it's actually fine most of the time and bosses won't victimize subordinates under the right circumstances.
Bill and Melinda Gates's relationship isn't so important to the world that we must allow bosses to date, pressure into a relationship or manipulate subordinates just in case.
That wasn't tptacek's response, which was effectively "we don't have to worry about implications that make the policy look bad if we're not talking about them".
Your claim -- that it's an extreme exception and doesn't outweigh the harm of a blanket prohibition -- would be a relevant response (although suboptimal because you're only replying to that one case and not the general phenomenon).
There’s just one problem. Who the hell are you (or anyone else) to tell Bill or Melinda who they should date?
You don’t get to sacrifice 2 people’s liberty who mind their own business and did nothing wrong because someone else in another place and time that they have nothing to do with can’t behave themselves.
> Who the hell are you (or anyone else) to tell Bill or Melinda who they should date?
If you're Google, and Bill and Melinda in this universe were Google employees, you'd be their employer. And employers can (and almost always do) ask the managers that work for them to not date their subordinates, for clear reasons:
1. It's easy, given power, for managers to abuse it. Even unknowingly. With these kinds of relationships it's very hard to tell if they are/were abusing it, so it's better for the company if they didn't happen in the first place.
2. Companies don't want articles like this written about them in the New York Times.
They're paying you to do your job to promote the company's best interests, part of which is not dating subordinates. If you don't want to do your job you don't have to, and similarly they don't have to pay you.
> You don’t get to sacrifice 2 people’s liberty who mind their own business and did nothing wrong...
You're not sacrificing anyone's liberty to date. Managers at these companies aren't being coerced into working there, and have the liberty to work elsewhere — that's the law in California. Having a rule banning a behavior at a company isn't like having a law banning a behavior in a country, where you usually can't just up and join a different country on a whim if you don't want to be bound by your country's laws. You can up and join another company on a whim because you don't want to be bound by your company's policies.
It's difficult to differentiate, though. How do you know what relationship is coercive or isn't? Were you there at the time?
There are always power differences between males and females, and in the past, dating a superior was often the only way a female could transcend the class they were born into. Hypergamy is a real, observed social phenomenon, and it bothers me that people are hand wringing over a problem that may not even exist in the first place. Hypocrisy runs deep in this country, especially for the self-appointed moral police.
If the situation is avoided, then there's no need to differentiate. That's the best part about the "don't" policy. There are plenty of people out there.
Also, hypergamy doesn't require that the two parties work at the same company, so it doesn't seem relevant to this discussion.
> If the situation is avoided, then there's no need to differentiate. That's the best part about the "don't" policy. There are plenty of people out there.
It’s not my company's business as to who I am allowed to date or engage in a consensual relationship with. It literally has nothing to do with them.
Sorry, but that is a very simplistic way of seeing it.
For example:
If you date someone who works for you, and you have multiple subordinates (as most managers do), and you rate / evaluate those subordinates (as most managers do), and you rate your partner higher than another subordinate, you are opening the company up to legal action that you discriminated against the other subordinate due to your relationship. That costs the company money to defend and more more if they lose, so they have every "business" to tell you not to.
Alright, so in the first place, this is attacking the problems in American work (and work the world over) from the wrong vantage point. What if you merely like one of your workers more than the others and you rate them higher than the others? That should be just as insidious but because it doesn't involve sex, somehow that's not as bad, it's just "life". Almost everyone in HN has experienced this sort of toxic manager at some point in our careers and we've for some reason normalized it just like the rampant sexual harassment.
If I could have my way, we'd ask ourselves why do managers have so much sway and power over our lives in the first place, that their bad moods and habits can literally kill us? If people cannot be trusted to be managers when normal human emotions and interactions occur, then why are they managers in the first place and why do they have so much power over us?
Two reasons mainly. First and less charitably, managers and executives are a self-perpetuating phenomenon. They’d have to be the ones to slit their own throats, and they won’t. The second and more depressing reason is at the core of much human misery from politics to business: it’s better than the known and proven alternatives in most cases. Like what passes for democracy these days, it’s a lamentable mess, but still preferable to the proven alternatives on offer.
This is just plain wrong. A romantic relationship between a subordinate and superior is definitely the employer's business. If you want to date a subordinate one of you needs to quit or hide it and accept the consequences if it is ever discovered.
The guy who used it was discussing the difficulty of ascertaining whether or not power-imbalances between people in a relationship implies coercion. Women's general preference towards dating up is obviously a factor, so to ascribe a dismissive attitude to anybody who mentions it is uncharitable to say the least.
Did you not read what the OP said? He demonstrated why that “simple rule” may have unintended consequences, and the Bill and Melinda comparison was applicable, not silly. We are talking about all relationships in which the male is a superior on the org chart.
Just because Bill Gates did it, doesn't make it right. The problem is the power imbalance. Yeah sometimes that situation turns into a long-lasting relationship, but sometimes it doesn't and sometimes the subordinate feels coerced into it in the first place.
Maybe Bill wouldn't be charitable at all if he hadn't met Melinda but I'd like to think he would've been into philanthropy either way.
it's not like pairing happens in a random chance chaotic void, people like what they like and are what they are, it's quite as likely that a Bill & Mrs Gates foundation would have happened anyway.
The Foundation probably also wouldn’t exist in a world where Hitler got into art school. The fact that dating subordinates sometimes works out doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to allow it.
Your statement implies Melinda Gates as sexually assaulted at work by Bill, which is wrong.
sigh It implies no such thing except under the most uncharitable of interpretations. Here, I'll spell it out: one exception with a positive outcome does not offset the millions of women who have been harassed by their boss. IOW, "hey, baby, we could be the next Billinda!", just no.
You're digging yourself a hole by once again presuming that people who are involved in office romances are mostly likely to be in situations of sexual coercion.
This is not remotely the case.
Most office romances are just two people dating - and that's it.
It's the possibility that something might go awry that's problematic, not the situation itself.
Gates is not 'one example' - it's the norm.
Wherever you work, there are surely people dating/married to one another, it's almost normative.
You're digging yourself a hole by once again presuming that people who are involved in office romances are mostly likely to be in situations of sexual coercion.
I believe you've lost the thread of the conversation if you feel it involves just "office romances". We can part ways here.
The problem is that is an infinitely arbitrarily moving goalpost. The issue isn't even clear with in the specifics of Rubin's situation. If someone directly reports to you then the answer is obviously no. But from the article it seems like some of these relationships which were inappropriate were with people who were only tangentially in his chain of command. And some not at all. What happens when you start at the same level but are promoted to different levels? If you're responsible for making your company Billions of dollars a year the way Andy Rubin is you can easily argue he shouldn't be able to date anyone in that company at all without there being an unacceptable power dynamic. But as someone worth close to a billion dollars that's probably true of any relationship he's in. Google has literally millions of employees, is it ok to say he can't date any of them? That's why I said it's a tricky issue with no good answers. It's easy to say people should know this or know that but the fact is different people know and believe different things. You have to have a codified policy. And if you can't codify a policy that works in every case then you don't have a good one.
> What happens when you start at the same level but are promoted to different levels?
If through promotion or re-org one partner ends up in the subtree of the other, either end the relationship or find a new position for one of the two people.
> If you're responsible for making your company Billions of dollars a year the way Andy Rubin is you can easily argue he shouldn't be able to date anyone in that company at all without there being an unacceptable power dynamic.
So be it! Being in charge of thousands of people and billions of dollars is an incredible responsibility. That kind of responsibility requires discipline and sacrifice. If you want the freedom to fuck anyone you want in the org chart, don't try to climb to the top of the org chart.
> Google has literally millions of employees, is it ok to say he can't date any of them?
Thousands, not millions. And, yes, that's totally OK. Any executive who doesn't like that can spend some of the millions of dollars making themselves feel better. Seriously, if you're worth +$100M and you can't find a date outside of the office, you've got bigger problems than the org chart.
> You have to have a codified policy.
Google has a codified policy, which every employee signs that they agree to. It says you can't date people when there is a reporting chain between them.
There are seven billion people on Earth. Executives can find someone outside of their reporting structure to fall in love with. This isn't hard.
The only problem here is that the kind of people who want to be in charge of thousands of people and billions of dollars are often also the kind of people who want lots of power and to have the rules not apply to them.
Google has a policy which they don't follow all the time because there are situations where they don't feel it properly addresses the situations to the satisfaction of all parties. That is a policy that doesn't work. I don't disagree with a lot of your points here. I'm just pointing out that people are trying to make what is a very complex issue sound simple. If it was simple the same problem wouldn't keep coming up.
> There are seven billion people on Earth. Executives can find someone outside of their reporting structure to fall in love with. This isn't hard.
And yet you don't control who you fall in love with. And everything we know tells us that you are far more likely to see 1-200 of those 7 billion people every day. And incredibly more likely to have things in common with and fall in love with someone in that much smaller group.
I think the problem here is that people are still people whether they are rich/successful or not. My policy is I don't date coworkers superior, inferior, or otherwise. But I think it's foolish to think that's a policy that everyone can and will adhere to. And that is really the only policy properly addresses all the issue with office romances.
It is neither arbitrary nor moving. If one person has power over another in a corporate context, the senior person should not date the junior person.
A pretty simple way to think about it: who in your company would you be afraid to be frank with if you knew it would upset them? Those people shouldn't be allowed to date you. That leaves billions of people for each of you to date, so I'm not seeing a big problem.
Are there edge cases and nuanced situations? Sure. Is that true about any important rule? Sure. E.g., look at your company's conflict of interest policy. For the sake of clarity, a bunch of relatively arbitrary lines will be drawn. But that doesn't produce the same hand-wringing and rushes to the fainting couches that a rule like this does. I'll leave the reason why as an exercise for the reader.
> the senior person should not date the junior person
What if the junior person realllllly wants to date the senior person. And the senior person kinda wouldn't mind giving it a go. Should the junior be reprimanded for their outrageously flirtatious behaviour? Perhaps we should have a committee draft an exhaustive set of rules that unambiguously eliminate this danger.
My concern here is abuse of power, so I would not make any additional rules in this case. If the junior person is bothering the senior person that's unprofessional conduct and so can be dealt with normally. If the senior person isn't bothered, I don't see why it's any business of the company's.
I believe that policy will work for mid-level and lower-level employee where the reporting structure is their power.
However, for people like Rubin, the reporting structure isn't their power but their overall sway with the organization. In those cases it's not as easy to make a clear delineation along organizational boundaries.
It's really not, when you're at that level (which I think is easy enough to define) you don't sleep with anyone in the company. At this point you should be a mature enough adult to be able to handle this, if you're not, you probably shouldn't be in a leadership role. If you're so enamored with someone then you leave.
The workplace is a place for work, not a place to find a date. Do people date people they work with? Of course – and that's fine, but the second it gets in the way of the work it's a problem and needs to be handled, rarely can it be handled any other way than having one person leave.
Someone at that level can afford to pay for a matchmaking service and has plenty of willing strangers to date, and doesn't ned to go foraging among the staff.
Sure, I'm not meaning to be an apologist for people in Rubin's position.
Only meaning to say that a focus on organizational lines is not appropriate for somebody like that. The article itself points this out several times as if it should make a difference, however, I'd disagree. The power imbalance is too extreme, even for people not in the direct organizational chain.
> I think it is reasonably easy to prevent people from dating subordinates in the workplace. Up front, you explain that the policy is one word: don't. If it ever happens, you fire the higher-level person promptly. No excuses, no second chances.
This is completely absurd. How many current great relationships would have never existed under such a rule? (Bill and Melinda Gates is the obvious go-to example, or Barack and Michelle Obama, but there are no doubt millions.)
Other way around, she was his mentor as a summer associate
"Robinson met Barack Obama when they were among the few African Americans at their law firm, Sidley Austin LLP (she has sometimes said only two, although others have noted ut there were others in different departments).[55] She was assigned to mentor him while he was a summer associate.[56] Their relationship started with a business lunch and then a community organization meeting where he first impressed her.[57]"
>This is completely absurd. How many current great relationships would have never existed under such a rule?
How many great relationships/working relationships wouldn't be ruined because of that rule?
How many people wouldn't have lives and careers ruined because of that rule?
Frankly if you love someone that damn much, move to a different job and avoid the potential conflicts that are involved. Good luck arguing that a boss absolutely needs the option to date a subordinate because what if a serious relationship never happens?
I mean it's nice if you can pull examples out of the air when it worked out for two people. But for everyone else? What's the ratio of happy couples to victims do you need to tilt scales to one side or the other?
" Up front, you explain that the policy is one word: don't. If it ever happens, you fire the higher-level person promptly. No excuses, no second chances."
In the real world, it's not that easy. Things happen.
Also, it's probably illegal, or it wouldn't hold up in court.
VP of Customer Service falls in love with one of the help-desk assistants, they get married, VP gets fired - that's a lawsuit.
No contract any VP of Customer Service is going to have will insulate them from being fired for cause, which is what would be happening if they violated a basic HR handbook rule about dating subordinates.
And that's assuming the "VP of Customer Service" has a negotiated contract in the first place. Most employees, even managers, don't have negotiated contracts; they have the default handbook contract, which I guarantee you restates and maintains the US default, which is termination at will.
It appears that this is not settled case law, with the most recent case in the 9th district court (basically all of the west coast) ruling that at least public officials have the right to have affairs with coworkers: https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Police-can-t-be-fir...
Other appeals courts have ruled otherwise, but the 9th district court has had a couple of precedents in the past, according to the article.
Personally, I think it's an interesting issue. If the company fires the higher ranked employee, they are probably losing more value.
It's also interesting that I think everyone would agree that it would be absurd to fire any employee if they were a married couple - yet absent the (mostly religious and tax related) binds of marriage, there's some moral judgment cast upon the participants. It seems so puritanical and absurd. What if the two employees got married before anyone found out about the affair? I bet they'd be protected both legally and in terms of moral or business implications.
From that one, "One reason is that about 20 states and many cities ban employment discrimination on the basis of marital status. If a married employee who has an affair is fired and an unmarried employee who has an affair isn't, the fired employee in those states conceivably could claim illegal discrimination, attorneys say. Thus, many employers turn a blind eye to marital cheating."
We're not talking about marital status, nor do we care that Drummond was married at the time the affair began. We care about the fact that he had the affair with a subordinate.
Situation 1: Person A and B are married and have a sexual relationship. A is a VP, B is just a regular worker. Nobody has a problem with this, and policies generally don't have any problem with coworkers being married.
Situation 2: Person A and B are not married and have a sexual relationship. A is a VP, B is just a regular worker. Some people have a problem with this, and policies often have a problem with coworkers being married.
That's called discrimination based on marital status (or lack thereof).
In case you didn't know, most companies would feel very uncomfortable with situation 1. Creating a situation where someone is managing their significant other is asking for disaster.
Absolutely. I knew a couple who met and married at American Express. It was strictly forbidden that one manage the other. I suspect that's the case at most large companies.
Most US employers absolutely can legally fire an employee because of who they fall in love with, as long as the action isn't based on a policy which disproportionately impacts a protected class.
About the same as "employee says controversial thing in personal life". In other words, employer has absolutely every right to fire them for their self-expression.
Yes but "rights" are legally defined, not just 'well I feel like I have a right to this'. Employees dating their subordinates is not a protected class, so "and probably not because they fall in love with each other either" is factually incorrect.
> In the real world, it's not that easy. Things happen.
No, things don't "happen". People make them happen, and should own up to the consequences of their actions. If the policy is "don't", then you can choose to 1) do not, no matter how much you would like to; 2) move / leave so you can do freely; or 3) do and (if/when found) you get smacked in the face with the policy.
A lot of policies, contract clauses, and even laws exist only to be applied in certain situations, not rigerously.
I can accept that google wants to avoid trouble at the work place and love dramas can cause trouble. And sexual harassment is already forbidden by law. But it is not automatically harassment when two consenting adults of different levels start a love affair mostly happening outside work.
This is as much google’s business as what sex I prefer, what party I vote for or to which god I may pray - none.
The protection against possible harassment does not justify to limit the freedom of adult citizens. For children the limits do make sense, though.
When there is no harassment claim and no other disturbance of peace at work the state should protect me against overreaching policies.
> Also, it's probably illegal, or it wouldn't hold up in court.
Most states in the US are at-will employment. You can be fired for literally any reason whatsoever outside of a very very limited number of protections against discrimination.
Hooking up with a subordinate is not one of those protections.
Please provide evidence for your claim that it's illegal to fire someone for banging the help. In an at-will state, people can generally be fired for any reason or no reason as long as some specific employee protection isn't violated. I have worked at companies, including a publicly traded company, that have rules like that, and the didn't see any problem with it.
You're right that there could be a lawsuit. People can sue for anything. But it's much more likely that a company will see a lawsuit for failing to protect employees from predatory managers and execs. So if lawsuits are the problem, then this rule would be a huge help in reducing the total number, as well as the PR risk.
I think the fact that you refer to Bill and Melinda as a case of “banging the help” says a lot about your understanding of decent human relationships and is probably why you are failing to see the nuaunce that applies to many of these situations. If your understanding of relationships is that simple, then it’s not surprising that you think there is a simple solution.
It also seems a little insulting to imply that women have no agency, but I’ll let them decide if they want to be offended.
I am not referring to Bill and Melinda Gates. I am referring to the broad problem.
I am not denying human relationships are nuanced. I am proposing a very simple rule, one that many companies already have on the books, because a) the deep ambiguity is managerially untractable, and b) as we see in many examples including this article, more nuanced rules are easily interpreted to let powerful men off the hook.
I am not implying women have no agency. There's nothing in this rule about men and women, or even about straight relationships. If you are inferring that women have no agency, maybe that's you.
In a modern matrix organization with shifting project assignments it's not always clear who is a subordinate. Some employees may have formal or informal "dotted line" responsibilities to multiple managers, all of whom can impact their career.
If the organization structure is so complex it isn’t clear, then all the more reason for senior-level leaders to abstain from intimate relationships with people they work with, at any level within the org.
I don't think the issue is that simple with senior execs. The article brings up Page and Brin dating Google employees. Pretty much the entire Alphabet employee base are subordinates of those 2.
The fact that they date someone in their organization becomes only problematic if they coerce their partner into something using their position. Or if the partner accuses them of such.
Ruling out theses intra company relationships is like saying that you cannot date a physically weaker partner because you are in a better position to physically force him int things he doesn’t want.
It's a problem whether or not there's explicit coercion, because the subordinate will always have a reasonable suspicion of retaliation.
But how do you plan to prove that no explicit coercion took place? Should they just video-record all of their interactions so that an impartial review board can regularly review goings on to make sure no harm is happening?
Or is instead your plan to place a burden on the junior person to report? If that's the case, you should do a little research on what percentage of problems are reported, which of those reports are taken seriously, and which of the seriously-taken reports see appropriate action. In those numbers you'll find your answer as to why it won't work.
> But how do you plan to prove that no explicit coercion took place?
How do you do that on regular dates? Do you record them? What’s the difference?
Proving is always difficult. You just have to take contextual evidence.
> Or is instead your plan to place a burden on the junior person to report?
Of course the burden of proof is on the accuser. The fact that two people are in a relationship is not a proof. But creepy comments about polyamorism is good evidence.
And yes, the superior is in a weaker position if accused of coercion. So the higher level partner should take a higher risk if the case is brought to court.
Regular dates don't happen in a context where a company has given significant power to one person over another person. A company a) has a responsibility to make sure that power is not abused, and b) has an obligation to avoid legal liability for misuse of that power.
Your theory that "contextual evidence" will be enough to ensure fair outcomes is absurd. Either you haven't paid much attention to how this works in the real world or you are willfully ignoring the experiences of people who go through this.
Both from press reports and from what I hear personally, the average outcome of someone reporting sexual misconduct in a work context is a) the accuser is put through the wringer, b) nothing happens to the accused, and c) the accuser eventually has to leave a poisonous environment.
Do you know of some data that relationships within companies (and in particular where one person has power over the other) are significantly more abusive than the average?
That's what it would take for me to reconsider my belief that relationships within companies are not to be regulated by policies.
My experience is that there is a) no significant difference and b) that sexual predators won't be stopped by a policy (but it makes it easier to remove them).
I actually have difficulties why we have to discuss relationships and sexual misconduct in the same thread.
Ok? I guess you're welcome to have any beliefs you like. But many companies have a rule like the one I describe, and they do it purely for business reasons. They don't need the hassle, and it's part of the normal course of business to make sure that managerial power isn't misused.
If you think there should be some sort of law preventing companies from having this sort of rule, I guess that's your prerogative. But you'll have to make an argument why companies shouldn't have the freedom to make what they see as reasonable and necessary decisions about how to run their business.
Bob and Alice can be connected in many different ways. They could be highschool friends, follow the same faith, be of the same ethnicity (different from Ted). Why single out a romantic relationship?
Professional employees will handle it professionally. If you don’t have that trust - maybe don’t hire them.
The military is so different in many ways that I don’t think it’s worth discussing here.
Usually law/policy that strictly forbid someone to date somebody which is deemed inferior in any way haven’t turned out to be good idea throughout human history...
At some point people will only hire people of their own gender or different sexual orientation to avoid any problem down the line and it would be a loss for everybody.
This Rubin story isn't about sexual harassment. Some woman dated him and then decided she was "coerced" (how?) into doing something she late regretted. Given the modern notion some women have developed that they can change their mind about whether an act was consensual at any time, even retroactively, it's not at all clear Rubin did anything wrong beyond adultery. After all have only this woman's word for it.
> Some woman dated him and then decided she was "coerced" (how?) into doing something she late regretted. Given the modern notion some women have developed that they can change their mind about whether an act was consensual at any time
jesus. With all due respect dude, this is incredibly retrogressive and I suggest you reevaluate your personal views on that.
Did you miss the part that covered the fact that she was consensually having an affair with him for years, and the trip where she decided it was time to break up is only when it became “pressure”?
My previous employer, Booking Holdings, then the Priceline Group and one of the largest e-commerce companies, treated these kinds of issues with a lot of respect. So much so that allegations were investigated by OUTSIDE counsel, who then also made the call on how far to go in the investigation. This led to the dismissal of the group CEO (relationship with indirect report) and number of other execs over the years.
There was also always a way to (anonymously if need be) report such things to a third party (not just hr). Managers and execs generally considered it a feature, not a threat. Every so often, somebody would try to use the mechanism for a vendetta, but best I can tell (and I've been involved in a few of these investigations), those were effectively recognized as such and treated with respect for accuser and subject of the complaint.
I'm not objecting to holding executives at higher standard. I'm objecting to zero-tolerance policies at workplace (or anywhere), which is (in a way) the opposite of holding people at higher standard: it's basically saying "I don't trust you to have common sense, so here are the rules and you will follow them unquestionably."
It's a pain in the ass for those who have common sense, and unmitigated disaster for those who don't.
Everyone thinks they have common sense but it all goes out the window when romance is involved. When you decide to date a close coworker, you are setting her (and it’s always her) to lose her job or feel uncomfortable enough that she needs to leave, if it doesn’t work out. Many men don’t even consider that ‘cause hormones.
Firing the more senior person automatically is an interesting idea. Are there any companies that do this in a way that doesn't add excessive legal liabilities to the company?
This isn't rocket science. If you fancy someone, you ask him/her on a date, a simple neutral stuff, like a movie. If the other party refuses, that's it. If the other party is a subordinate you just don't.
You don't invite them to Burning man, you don't have business meetings in your house late at night, you don't tell someone your his slave, you don't offer to swing with your wife (from a different post I read), seriously.
What's a sex positive culture? regardless if you want casual romantic or sexual relationship do it with someone out of the office. There are enough people in the world that you don't know anything about you can easily have a casual relationship with, there are apps for that, apparently.
A date assumes you have a more serious relationship in mind. No body cares if you marry a co-worker, it's causal relationships that could cause trouble. Besides, asking someone on a date is never ambiguous, and it can't be taken badly or out of context.
> Paying him lots of money to go away seems like a no brainer move here from Google's perspective, but I'm not sure what else they could have done.
The story suggests that he could have been fired without much if any kind of severance package. But besides the worry that such a senior person would file a termination lawsuit, there was the problem that Google's board had given him a $150M stock grant a few weeks after Google investigated the complaint. It's not clear whether the board knew of the investigation before rewarding him, but that sum apparently served as a reference point when settling the matter:
> The $150 million stock grant gave Mr. Rubin an enormous bargaining chip when he started negotiating his exit package about a month later. That is because an executive’s stock compensation — and how much of it they would leave behind — is often taken into consideration during settlement talks.
Is it really impossible to prevent people from dating within the workplace? I've worked for many years at large and small companies and I've never done it, nor have the majority of my co-workers.
The HN demographic is skewed by a lot of young people who work for companies that are managed more like college dorms than real businesses. I think this gives some people a distorted perspective about what's realistic.
To be clear I'm not proposing a blanket ban on all workplace relationships everywhere. But if some employers choose to go that route it's not necessarily bad or unrealistic.
Should bosses ban friendships in the work place? I mean, horse play can impede work. At some point, bosses shouldn't be dictators of their workers' lives.
As I understand it, that money was the legitimate severance pay of Rubin (who, by the way, might have left the company for reasons completely unrelated to this sexual harassment accusation- the nyt article is written as to suggest a connection, without really stating it). There are plenty of perfectly reasonable explanations for Rubin leaving Google (dissatisfaction or other). Anyway, that was the money that the company felt was adequate for his contribution to its success. What is or should be the relationship between that sum and the claim of sexual harassment is frankly unclear to me.
How is his severance legitimate if a regular employee would never get this type of consideration? Regular people don’t get severance when they decide their job is boring and they want something new.
> But at the same time it's pretty much impossible to prevent people from dating within the work place.
This goes beyond that - there were rules about reporting such relationships, presumably so HR could look out for the less advantaged party, but those rules were ignored. And this doesn’t sound like simple ‘dating a coworker’ - guy was a sleazy scumbag:
FTA - ‘The suit included a screenshot of an August 2015 email Mr. Rubin sent to one woman. “You will be happy being taken care of,” he wrote. “Being owned is kinda like you are my property, and I can loan you to other people.”’
>This is such a thorny ugly issue to which there are really no right answers. It should be very clear that using a position of authority to coerce someone into a relationship of any kind is wrong. But at the same time it's pretty much impossible to prevent people from dating within the work place.
It's actually pretty simple.
The problem isn't co-workers dating. The problem is people in a position of power dating someone that reports to them.
There's a handful of of options here.
1) Don't do it
2) If it is actually legitimate and not coerced, you reassign one of them to a separate team and completely remove them from the reporting chain and any impact on the other's career.
3) If it is actually legitimate and not coerced, one of them resigns.
4) If it is coerced, you fire the shit out of the person in power.
If it's two people that are not in each other's reporting chain and one isn't subordinate to the other, or there isn't some other reason one could have an outsized impact on the other's career, it's generally not the same sort of issue.
> using a position of authority to coerce someone into a relationship of any kind
Is not a necessity for
> people from dating within the work place
> while also ensuring that predators aren't allowed to abuse the people around them
People in high positions can take actions to prevent conflict of interests like when any legitimate President places their assets into a blind trust.
There is absolutely nothing stopping people in positions of power in companies from doing the same and to avoid dating anyone they have power over.
> but I'm not sure what else they could have done.
They could make it clean house, add a zero tolerance policy and make it clear they don't allow people to be in personal relationships with those they have power over, perhaps as defined by being their superior in the org chart.
What if having a healthy work-life balance means a person who wants to meet other people for intimate activities has time to date outside the workplace?
You spend 40 hours a week just at work, not to mention commute and lunch. If you're getting a full night's sleep that means you spend more time with the people you work with than you do probably anyone else in the world. I agree you should aim for a healthy work-life balance and date outside the workplace but it's a bit naive to think that people won't build relationships with people they see that often.
What do you consider a healthy work-life balance?
8 hours a day?
6 hours?
If we assume you sleep 8 hours then you spend 16 hours awake, 7 days a week for a total of 112 hours in a week.
Even if you only work 6 hours on the weekdays that'd still 30 hours a week, or more than 1/4 of your waking hours.
If you work at a big company you probably run into a lot of people and you already have a shared interest and stuff to talk about. There will always be a decent chance you'll meet someone you're interested in at work.
Unless you think that everyone should restrict themselves to only dating people who they meet for the explicit purpose of dating there will be relationships at work. Often relationships form without people actively seeking them out.
No, I am saying that coercing people to have sex they do not want is rape, which is a criminal (not civil) offense, regardless of one’s contract with their employer.
I’m not familiar with the case, but if the other party was consenting and of legal age, there isn’t much anyone can do criminally, it isn’t technically illegal even if it is immoral. Rape has a very specific definition.
Are you smoking something? There are no right answers, seriously? This dudes were the boss of victims who used their power to control their paycheck, promotions and career for sex. This is very different then relationships between peers. On the top of this, victims lives and careers were destroyed anyway while the bosses obtained fat paychecks to buy private islands and never having to work for all their future generations. In what world there are no right answers?
I'm not sure a couple of millions is lots of money. this is the guy who started and led android. he should have been a bilionaire easily, 100x times more than whatsup and android guys...
Google is a company that has explicitly stated its ethics over and over and over. Obviously they have been under fire for the rumors regard a censored Chinese site, and their AI contracting with the government, but firing high level executives who have been investigated and found liable for sexual harassment COMPLETELY aligns with the values that they state to the rest of the world. No one would've batted an eye if they said: "Hey, we're firing Andy because of these claims that we investigated and found credible, and he's not getting a dime because he violated his contract".
Now, due to the cover-up this looks awful. I just don't understand it. Intel's CEO was let go after an extra-marital affair was uncovered and there was very little controversy around it.
> Google is a company that has explicitly stated its ethics over and over and over.
Isn't it usually the company or person who shouts loudly about virtue that end up being the least virtuous? Whether it is the most vocal anti-gay republican who is caught having sex with a man in an airport bathroom or the most vocal pro-woman and anti-racist democrat DA who is found to have assaulted his "brown slave".
This is why I roll my eyes whenever someone talks in a virtuous evangelical manner. It usually hides a guilty conscious. ( Ahem, cough such as Tim Cook's recent media blitz about privacy )
> Now, due to the cover-up this looks awful. I just don't understand it.
Maybe rubin knows a thing or two about the co-founders or top execs in the company. The reason why execs get glorious golden parachutes isn't because they were such hard working people, it's because they know too much and you want them to be quiet and beholden to you.
Keep in mind that it isn't a secret in the tech industry ( especially silicon valley ) that people use their position for sex. Many times it's reciprocal. One side gets sex, the other side gets cushy jobs/advancement/etc.
I am not very familiar with the monster sums of money that are paid in SV (read: I'll never see 1/100 of them in my whole life), but do you really think that to justify a $90M severance pay to the creator of Android you need to assume knowledge of secrets and whatnot? That sounds like a rather typical sum to me in this context.
I think the answer to your question is they paid Andy not to compete with them.
If they fire him and didn’t pay him a dime, he could walk into Samsung or Apple and take all his domain knowledge with him and get paid that $100mm to make a competitor’s products better.
And yet, ultimately, Rubin went out and started his own hardware company (Essential Phone) and it didn't work out well.
Maybe Rubin's domain knowledge wasn't really much of a threat after all. In hindsight, one might argue that Android's success hasn't depended on Android quality/innovation nearly as much as it depended on Google's already powerful position in the search market.
Although I'm not taking a position on whether the numbers are correctly reasoned, I think evaluating the value of the noncompete after the fact and as a static value (was his domain knowledge worth $90 M) isn't likely how it was thought about.
It was probably looked at as insurance against a catastrophic tail risk, the existential threat to the whole Android ecosystem. It might have only been a 10% chance that he could have blown up Android by going to a competitor, but insuring against a 10% chance of multi-$B loss was worth $90 M (for example).
The ceo of intel was fired because it was one of his employees and it is specifically against compaby policy, not because he was cheating on his wife by comitting the act.
In September 2014, a few weeks into the inquiry, Google’s board of directors awarded Mr. Rubin a stock grant worth $150 million, to be paid out over several years, said three people briefed on the decision. It was an unusually generous sum, even by Google’s standards.
Mr. Page typically recommends how much senior executives are paid, said three former Google executives. Over the years, Mr. Page had told people he felt Mr. Rubin was never properly compensated for his contribution to Android, two people who spoke to him said.
What about all the engineers who helped build Android? I wonder if their aggregate compensation even comes close to $150 million.
It is insane how much we compensate and praise the people at the very top as if they did the work alone.
> I wonder if their aggregate compensation even comes close to $150 million.
at 200k/yr on the low end, to 500k/yr on the high end (excluding outliers), let's call it 300k/yr average. That's 500 engineers costing 150m per year. So, yeah I think it comes close and probably exceeds.
The number of employees under Andy is not clear to me. 500 for the early days of Android seems plausible.
But yeah, I did not intend my comment as a rebuttal to yours - I just like numbers to add up.
I don't really think "fair" comes into it. It's a market value issue. I'm here at Google making senior engineer compensation, and when I look at what I go through every day and compare to friends who make less per year than I pay in taxes, that seems unfair to me too.
But, in the end, some combination of skillset, talent, scarcity, and luck results in my value to my employer being what it is, and my friends' value to their employers being what that is. It doesn't seem fair, but I also don't see particular fault from any party.
Now, with my comp and my friends' comp, it's sort of the result of the blind machine and in the end only larger political or social forces can affect things.
With executive comp, it seems like a small club of bamboozlers at the top, wanting more and more and sharing more and more among themselves. However, in this case, it was basically Larry's money to give and he decided how much. Android is clearly a win for Google, and (perhaps unjustly, but how could I know?) Andy was the one pegged as responsible for the success.
Edit: Also this wasn't his yearly compensation, but a one-time bonus recognizing his total contribution to Android.
> I wonder if their aggregate compensation even comes close to $150 million.
$150 million / 10 years / $200k per dev = 75 developers. I'm pretty sure more than 75 people work on Android, so yeah, a lot more than $150 million has been paid out.
I'm reminded of the joke, "When you owe the bank a million dollars and can't pay, you have a problem. When you owe the bank a billion dollars and can't pay, the bank has a problem."
The same is true with senior executives. If you fire manager or even a director for sexual harassment you're risk is at one level, if you fire someone who is VP or above then that person has a wide array of ways to 'fight back' that can cause serious harm to the company, so the company has a problem.
Some people cross that threshold of 'company risk' and do something wrong, have it get exposed to the company and then see the company contort itself to make it go away, and they realize they have way more power over the company than the company does over them. I have seen it bring out the worst in people.
It is a complex situation that is difficult to navigate and something I don't think anyone can prepare for.
Add to this that in the context of Android and Andy Rubin it may be the case that Google paid him $90M because it pretty much owed him $90M no matter what.
This may reflect poorly on Google's competency in negotiating in the past and their willingness to accept blame for poor negotiation.
But, yeah, Google pretending that Andy Rubin left a hero is Google pretending they are (still, if ever) a hero too
I've been wondering about Google's competency with senior executives a few weeks ago, when reading the Anthony Levandowski story that was making the rounds. Despite repeated and blatant acts of disloyalty and self dealing, Google kept throwing money at him.
Your comment is not being downvoted despite talking only about one side of the problem. I like HN.
Part of the solution to the problem you described is to make such company behavior more costly. If the outcry from today's story was significant, the company would have to calculate such cost into their decision. "Look Andy, we know you know lot of our secrets, but if we pay you millions and call you a hero it could cost us much more."
This would in turn have effect on companies calculating whether to try to hide dirty laundry or come clean, knowing they have little leverage on disgraced VPs.
This is really a partial accounting of the risk. Don't forget to include the risk of reporters finding out about this whole arrangement and doing further damage to an already tarnished company and industry.
But risk assessment is really besides the point anyway. It's not difficult to see the correct course of action here and that Google as a company failed to take it.
> Don't forget to include the risk of reporters finding out about this whole arrangement and doing further damage to an already tarnished company and industry
Perhaps, but 2014 is pre-#MeToo, so those risks wouldn't have been fully appreciated. SV has a long history of being able to use money to sweep sexual misconduct allegations under the rug and the current landscape of these arrangements causing PR problems for companies is a pretty recent development.
Not paying these bonuses would have certainly resulted in a court case and publicity that Google perhaps thought, at the time, would be negative. So they probably rationalized that resolving the situation by a) paying a settlement to the victim, b) ending Rubin's employment and c) not having to go to court and face that bad PR was the prudent approach.
Given how the industry (and country) has changed it's handling of sexual misconduct allegations in the last couple years, it's easy to find fault with the way they handled it, but Google's lawyers were operating in a very different context in 2014.
>Given how the industry (and country) has changed it's handling of sexual misconduct allegations in the last couple years, it's easy to find fault with the way they handled it, but Google's lawyers were operating in a very different context in 2014.
I think the height of metoo power was temporary. When #metoo fades out, reactions will regress to the mean (or a slightly heightened mean).
Blacks rioted all over LA for Rodney King. Then that died off, and police killed unarmed blacks here and there without any major reaction for almost 30 years -- until black lives matter erupted. No this has faded again.
> Google's lawyers were operating in a very different context in 2014.
Worth noting that (as pointed out in the article) the head of Google's lawyers is himself a beneficiary of the very different context he's operating in in 2014. This imagined recommendation/risk assessment isn't made in a vacuum, independent of biases.
> Not paying these bonuses would have certainly resulted in a court case and publicity that Google perhaps thought, at the time, would be negative. So they probably rationalized that resolving the situation by a) paying a settlement to the victim, b) ending Rubin's employment and c) not having to go to court and face that bad PR was the prudent approach.
And we all agree that this 'prudent approach' was objectively terrible, right? Not just in the hindsight of post-#MeToo PR. At the time it was actually wrong and a bad thing to do.
Explaining the reasoning behind unethical behavior does not make it more ethical.
As a VP you have visibility into a wide section of the organization, you know where it is strong and where it is weak. As people get more senior they become more loyal to individuals rather than companies, so when a VP leaves, even without trying, they will often pull away other critical employees who follow the person not the company. Then there is the ability to disrupt without getting your hands dirty, an anonymous tip to TechCrunch to "watch this garage at 5AM on Fridays" or "You might want to dig into that unexplained event last October." which can put journalists on the trail of damaging information the company covered up (previously successfully).
If you are mad, and you feel like they have impeded your ability to get re-hired or funded at a later date, then you are more inclined to take some of these actions. If they say, "Look you have to go, but we'll make it comfortable for you and we'll just call it a day." then you might feel more charitable to them and forego starting processes that will cause them pain.
A technique I was told was used on an executive at Sun was to give them a stock grant that would only be "vested" in 5 years. The purpose was to keep it in that person's best interest to insure the Company was not damaged in order to reap the maximum reward down the line. To be clear, they got the stock in 5 years no matter what, it was just in their interest to have it be worth as much as possible at that time.
It also makes it look like it was condoned at higher levels if it gets out and can give ammo for lawsuit settlements at lower levels for other dirt-bags.
* They expected windfall from the lawsuit is higher, so law firms would be more inclined to accept the case and spend more resources on it.
* At lower levels, people are given boilerplate contracts written by company lawyers and told to take it or leave it. Apart from things like remuneration, nothing is up for negotiation. These contracts often heavily favour the company and make lawsuits difficult. At higher levels, contracts are genuinely negotiated between the lawyers for both sides.
* It is unlikely that a director could create or move to another company and start successfully poaching their former colleagues. A VP or higher level executive probably could.
Managers and directors at Google-sized companies know nothing of the inner workings and personal lives of the core leadership team of the company. VP and above often do.
Samsung already kind of did that with Tizen and it hasn't really worked out. Same with Amazon. Lack of engineering leadership isn't the main obstacle preventing Samsung and other vendors from successfully forking Android.
Tizen is not a fork of Android. Tizen is about as far away from Android from a technology perspective as you can get with a mobile OS.
This would be kind of like saying iOS was a successful fork of Android, it just doesn't make sense because they really are not the same. One runs native apps, the other runs a JVM. The only similarity is that they are both mobile OSs running Linux.
>The same is true with senior executives. If you fire manager or even a director for sexual harassment you're risk is at one level, if you fire someone who is VP or above then that person has a wide array of ways to 'fight back' that can cause serious harm to the company, so the company has a problem.
It's not just that (e.g. the thread of negative consequences).
It also, who would have been doing the punishment?
Other senior executives. Who were friends with Andy, went to the same parties and clubs, spend time together etc.
Despite token lip service, they wouldn't care about a misconduct claim from someone below their league.
They wouldn't care about such a complain against one of their own. Some would just trust his version of things, and others would think the only issue is him getting called for doing it (whereas if he did it without getting called for it, it would be fine).
In fact, they might have laughed it off with Andy too, either in "that person is telling bs", or in "hey bro, you overdid it there, better lay low". (And the fact that the person making the accusation might indeed be lying, or at least that has been the case sometimes, makes it even easier to brush it off).
Also, if you don't pay fellow exec for getting caught in such things, the same thing might be done to you, if you get in a similar situation (or another kind of disfavor). Better to support the fellow senior exec, to receive the same support yourself.
Didn't care personally doesn't mean you wont do what you need to cover the company (and your own ass) from negative future feedback (plus legal trouble) of not doing anything.
They cared about that, but they also cared about their pal (and fellow senior exec) more, so they designed a nice respectable and profitable exit strategy (people can resign for any reason after all, and at the time Google presented it as his own decision, amicable and everything).
Depends on who knew about it, and what it means to them. Once its out, its out. Even if its a friend, he’ll have to accept certain consequences lest you reap greater retribution.
But because its a friend, you can lighten the burden. The golden parachute, not pursuing the case beyond the minimum, not bringing it up in hiring recommendations, etc.
If its already beyond his friend circle, then some kind of punishment is required; but only just enough to get everyone to shut up about it.
It sounds to me like he benefited more from this being made public than if things kept quiet. His new startup received 800 million in investment dollars from Google.
Companies fire senior execs all the time. What "protections" do these people have? Sundar could fire them all tomorrow with zero expectation of repercussions.
If by "fire" you mean ask them to resign with a multi-million dollar incentive/severance package, then yes, you are correct. Executives rarely, if ever, get fired
If something rarely happens, it's just another way to say that it happens. So I'm not sure why you're arguing like the above poster is saying it never happens.
Not to mention even in the case you're posting it's probably not the same as if you get fired from a job, where maybe security escorts you out immediately and you pick up your last paycheck next week.
And it's not as if the transcription discloses all the details of this event either. Things like severance and whatever contract obligations GE must fulfill that simply don't existing for rank and file employees. Which is kind of the point. Even when the language is the same, being "fired", the actual circumstances and details are usually much much different between executives and low level employees.
> "When you owe the bank a million dollars and can't pay, you have a problem. When you owe the bank a billion dollars and can't pay, the bank has a problem."
Precisely the reason why something called "corporate debt restructuring" was invented.
Wow, this article is eye-opening. It's staggering the level of misconduct that's occurring at Google, especially relative to execs taking advantage of its lower-level employees. I wonder what the atmosphere is at other ultra-successful companies like Facebook, Netflix, Apple and Amazon.
I've been hearing about issues at Google for years privately and on Twitter. No idea what goes on at other companies, as this stuff is often so aggressively covered up that you are only likely to hear about something if you know multiple women at the company in question and they trust you enough to tell you the truth.
Almost every story cited in today's NY Times piece was previously reported by The Information about a year ago. It's a paywall site, but it's stories do get disseminated by other sources. But the bigger sources (who are dependent on Google Ad revenue) didn't run very far with it.
What do you think it is like? This is what unlimited power over others does to people. I suspect it's the same or likely worse (there's a lot we don't know, what is public is just the tip of an iceberg) in those other companies.
Wow, so the entire leadership of Google/Alphabet is in on this. Including Page having had multiple flings with subordinates... is this for real? Its unbelievable how power and money makes people lose any judgment and how the high ups seem to fix it themselves and the policy that applies for us low levels doesnt apply to them. Disgusting.
I can't even imagine the poor candidate being asked to take the shirt off during an interview!?
> “When Google covers up harassment and passes the trash, it contributes to an environment where people don’t feel safe reporting misconduct,” said Liz Fong-Jones, a Google engineer for more than a decade and an activist on workplace issues. “They suspect that nothing will happen or, worse, that the men will be paid and the women will be pushed aside.”
> Isn't it standard for companies to never/rarely disclose why an employee is being fired (or even if it is being fired)?
IIRC, they do that because disclosing the reason could open the company up to legal liability if the reason isn't accurate or well documented enough to hold up in court in defamation case.
Even is the accusation isn't credible enough to hold up in court, it might make sense for a company to dismiss an employee (although not always, it depends on the accusations), particularly in at-will employment. Employment is not a court case.
What if the accusation was false and it were made publicly? Or at the very least, if whisperings went around and all my (or your) co-workers found out about the accusation?
"Guilt" in the court of public opinion is a real thing and this industry is smaller than most people realize. You may try to get another job only to find the same people from your previous job are at the new one, know people there, or that word has just gotten around about you whether online and searchable or through word of mouth. Or maybe someone calls a previous employer and they mention why you were let go?
All for something that was false?
Would it count as slander/libel in this case? You could make the argument that it led to lost earnings or whatever too.
"She said he* invited her to Burning Man, an annual festival in the Nevada desert, the following week.
Ms. Simpson went with her mother and said she thought it was an opportunity to talk to Mr. DeVaul about the job. She said she brought conservative clothes suitable for a professional meeting."
Regardless of who, inviting an interviewee for a week-long vacation/party is a huge red flag. These things should be reported immediately. It's so sad that humans are conditioned to a social hierarchy and will seldom do anything that might bring the rage of a higher status person. In my short career, I saw too many attempts by C-level suits to build their own little harems (and most were successful in that by the way)
Not to mention that he described his relationship with his wife as polyamorous during the interview. I can't imagine a scenario where this would be even remotely appropriate to discuss.
It’d be kinda weird to talk about that with coworkers, let alone during an interview. The sexual habits of my coworkers is not an open area of discussion.
I personally view that as a sexual proposition, it’s a way of saying “I’m available”.
Polyamory isn't simply about sex, it just means you can find love with more than one person.
I think if you can say you have a wife, which implicitly tells your sexual preference and explicitly tells your legal family situation, then it's okay to add that you also have girlfriends or boyfriends as well.
>Polyamory isn't simply about sex, it just means you can find love with more than one person.
Completely disagree. Every person I know who identifies as poly has their own definition of what that actually means, and many of them do not include "love" in their definition.
Honestly, a lot of my coworkers don’t really talk about their singular partners either.
I maintain that discussions of such nature have to clear a “need to know” bar at work. There’s a lot of discussions about my relationship I’d be perfectly willing to have with friends that I would not discuss at work.
Regardless, you absolutely should not be mentioning your relationship status in any way during an interview. Single, married, poly, whatever.
If you are an interviewer and you go by Mrs., then you are already mentioning your relationship status. This is such a low bar to jump over that I feel it is safe.
This. Saying this during an interview should mean the same day termination for the interviewer. Of course that's not the case for people with power or influence in the company like this guy.
Burning Man is like the pilgrimage to Mecca for a lot of SV cultists. Saying no to an invite would mark you as a heretic who's just not a good 'culture fit'.
I think you'd be surprised. There are plenty of people who wear cargo shorts and t-shirts (not rangers) all week. Those are the people actually building art and maintaining the infrastructure. A lot of the time you can tell someone's ability to give back by their costuming effort.
Yeah that's the opposite of what would he regarded as good interview clothes. And to be so ignorant as to what BM is, says enough about the naivete of the person
How about your naivete for thinking that is what i meant...
Her naivete thinking that any meaningful job interview would happen at freaking burning man such that it would include conservative clothing as a requirement.
>What Google did not make public was that an employee had accused Mr. Rubin of sexual misconduct. The woman, with whom Mr. Rubin had been having an extramarital relationship, said he coerced her into performing oral sex in a hotel room in 2013, according to two company executives with knowledge of the episode. Google investigated and concluded her claim was credible, said the people, who spoke on the condition that they not be named, citing confidentiality agreements. Mr. Rubin was notified, they said, and Mr. Page asked for his resignation.
> Google could have fired Mr. Rubin and paid him little to nothing on the way out. Instead, the company handed him a $90 million exit package, paid in installments of about $2 million a month for four years, said two people with knowledge of the terms. The last payment is scheduled for next month.
this is respectable of Google imho. There is no need that the whole world knows the details about this 'performance'. A bit low of the New York Times. But of course, sex sells.
The "parachute" has nothing to do with the sexual harassment claim. I don't get why, even if Rubin were guilty, one should cancel the other. Should they ask back his salaries as well? Take his house?
'victim'? For me this term should be reserved for grave situations; what shall I say, what sometimes unfortunately now happens in Germany with knives maybe? The reward is for building Android. For such a successful platform the sum is more than justified, don't you think? In a way I feel Rubin is also a 'victim', Clinton didn't get fired back then.
Are you seriously saying that sexual coercion is justified by how successful your mobile OS is? Holy crap! Please don’t ever - and I mean please in the most violent way possible - come near my daughters.
I said that there are different degrees of 'victims' and that there is an over-use of 'victim'. I didn't speak about Rubin as I don't know the details and neither did I speak about justification.
(No need for personal attacks. Some friendliness would help not to split society/politics/discourse)
> Google could have fired Mr. Rubin and paid him little to nothing on the way out. Instead, the company handed him a $90 million exit package, paid in installments of about $2 million a month for four years, said two people with knowledge of the terms. The last payment is scheduled for next month.
This appears to be original research on behalf of the journalist, with no citation. What evidence do they have to support it? They don't even claim an anonymous source "with knowledge of the contract".
Slightly offtopic: My friend's Mum went to the Woodstock festival in the 60's. When I asked her about it, she said she only went because she thought it would be like a craft fair.
Google was once my favorite tech company. I was amazed by their search engine, excited by Gmail, and ecstatic when I was selected to receive a CR-48. I loved their "do no evil" motto.
I am sad to say that I no longer trust or like Google.
Exactly my thoughts. This was a fantastic company in the early 2000's and to be honest they probably did a lot worse back in the day as a fast moving startup flush with cash and success.
The difference today is that Google is a solid Ad-tech company and is just like any other massive advertising company, rife with politics and an army of anonymous employees just grinding away each day.
The similarities between these stories and Madmen is striking.
The reality is this (specific example from
NYTimes) was always part of google. There never was a point where they were the good guys. Google has always been a bunch of amoral brilliant engineers.
I don't get it. Why would rich/powerful men try to get other people in their line of work to have sexual relations with. It doesn't make much sense to me. When you are super rich, you can travel to xxx countries and have legitimate, legal and safe sex with, eh, probably, much hotter woman.
Is this a case of a psyco guy who just wants to own whatever people he stumbles upon?
Personally, most of the people I know don't. And thus who I know want to do that, are usually filled with lots of psychic baggage and seems like good candidates for rehabilitation that will both benefit them and the people they encounter.
I don't think most people are that evil or damaged.
It's about power and the abuse of that power. It's probably thrilling to them, and this provides plenty of opportunities "right in front of them", instead of say traveling the world to find similar experiences.
It had the total opposite effect on me. As a nerd who got richer with time; it made me much calmer toward the opposite sex. It also made the rule of not engaging in any external relations with professional people I work with much easier to follow.
It's easy to imagine someone who is not socially oriented and spends almost all of his time at work, thus not surrounding himself with an alternate circle of people with whom to have nonprofessional relationships, resorting to making a pass at a coworker.
Those of us who studied or work with CS types are 100% aware that there are some people in those circles who have trouble controlling inappropriate manifestations of sexual desire.
It's more "metoo" to think that all wealthy people who have relationships with subordinates are trying to exploit a power relationship for sexual gratification. But I think that just gives such people too much credit. The reality is sex is a basal drive and people often follow the path of least resistance. No food? Stealing bread starts to seem appropriate. No social life or game? Dating a subordinate starts to seem appropriate.
I see it more as incompetence than malice.
(And personally I think all mentally able adults should take responsibility for their own conscious and consensual decisions, instead of trying to blame the underlying dynamics of the situation.)
> And personally I think all mentally able adults should take responsibility for their own conscious and consensual decisions, instead of trying to blame the underlying dynamics of the situation.
Taking that logic to the extreme: what if an on-duty police officer orders someone to perform a sexual act? What if they're being held at gunpoint? Should we expect them to take responsibility for their "conscious and consensual" decision to perform, or can we blame the underlying dynamics of the situation?
> The suit included a screenshot of an August 2015 email Mr. Rubin sent to one woman. “You will be happy being taken care of,” he wrote. “Being owned is kinda like you are my property, and I can loan you to other people.”
How on earth does this jack@%% think it’s ok to think this way, let alone write it down in a company email?
Google should be ashamed - the entire article is full of shocking allegations, any one of which should have resulted in a sacking.
What makes you think this is a company email? Andy Rubin left Google in 2014. The email seems to express a pretty common BDSM kink, so why isn't it ok to "think this way"?
Particularly twisted for a company obsessed with how their users are supposedly misbehaving and need controlled and censored, while the company runs wild in disgusting abuses.
Not surprising however, given their extraordinary monopoly power and what that type of power always seems to lead to. The people that run Alphabet have been operating in a power bubble the likes of which few ever experience in a business environment. Larry Page being missing in action[1], detached, is just another of the many symptoms of that power bubble. As many others have noted here, this sort of widespread abuse and the culture that protects it, starts at the top. It's time for much of Alphabet's leadership to be removed. Or given that the share structure makes that very difficult to accomplish, an attempt at least should be made to permanently alter the corporate structure so the culture can be changed for the better. Enough investor pressure would probably yield positive results.
I don't know why Google has always been so generous with its execs. It's a little club I guess. But when someone is walking out the door, why the need to heap money on them? They're all as rich as anyone already. When Pichette left they converted his _unvested_ options to cash. Why? Why give a guy tens of millions when the theory of executive compensation revolves around retention?
From the article it sounds like they care very strongly about those execs not going to work for direct competitors. Gotta provide some kind of consideration for that. While it would be nice to drag these guys through the street a little more, I have to imagine Google is in like the 80th+ percentile of not-evilness by forcing key employees to resign after a single credible complaint.
This was my take also. It's a purely business decision: how much is it worth to not have this person work for a competitor?
Also dovetails with the statement that lower level employees are dismissed with a little to no severance. Less risk there.
The article goes into some details on that. Basically at that level, you're bribing the employee to not bother to file a wrongful termination lawsuit (that they have the resources to execute on, and that will be embarrassing for the company whether or not it succeeds). Incentives are structured around defending the company from that.
Rumours of this were floating around, but were never confirmed. Larry page has basically given Andy a blank Check and told him to build a Robotics subsidiary.
Andy went shopping for robotics startups at the Darpa Grand Challenge, and bought 8 of them. All the good ones, including Boston Dynamics.
Then Andy left Google, and all that shit got left in the lurch, it was leaderless, and a real mess.
It would have been some kind of alternate history timeline if Andy kept it in his pants and stuck with the robotics subsidiary.
Fabulous, so now in a company with 72 thousand employees anybody can just fill in an online form and file completely anonymous accusations of a serious crime that is very hard to disprove and leads to immediate termination. Can't wait to see how it goes.
If anyone from Google leadership is reading, I have a hell of a deal for you. For only half of what you gave Mr. Rubin, I will not only keep silent about my sexual harassment, I will also not commit any in the first place.
I have a question that I know is really stupid, but I'm asking sincerely: why is it permitted for the company to do this? Paying any person a windfall after sexual indiscretions seems like it violates their responsibility to the shareholders, especially when it's $90 million (wow!).
Why is this type of payout allowed by the SEC or the corporate governance structure?
Rubin wasn't fired, he resigned. Google seem to have paid out his severance package. It's possible they could have fired him, citing sexual misconduct; then they would most likely have to content with a lawsuit by him for wrongful firing, and all the details would have to leak out. There are a myriad of reasons why Google would not want this:
1) They did not have enough evidence to fight in court - the article claims Google thought the accusations were "credible", but not necessarily proven. This could easily be a disaster for Google which can easily go away with some money and a resignation.
2) Even if they had enough evidence, the damage to their public image from this would be substantial, which could be costlier than the "payout".
3) The majority of controlling shareholders(Brin, Page, Schmidt) want to remain on good terms with Rubin and are willing to sacrifice the money to do so, thus fulfilling the responsibility to the shareholders angle.
It's not stupid. Think about large families with inherent power dynamics- everyone's either been in or knows at least one. It's just a human thing. We know what's right and wrong, but acting according to what we /know/ is a lot harder said than done when human nature is factored in.
Now make the assumption that a group of human beings were doing the right things at the right time in the right place to become mega rich, and then apply the same rules.
People aren't terribly different from one another on the fundamental level- the only different things are circumstances which determine 1) the number of restrictions, and conversely 2) the number of privileges.
The only valuable question is how to minimize this human dynamic as the size of the group grows, because leaving a 5-person group behind to find something different is a lot easier and a lot less consequential than leaving a 5000-person group.
The board signed off on it and the Brin, Page and Schmidt have class A shares which are controlling. So if they vote for something it is automatically approved by a majority of shareholders.
I wonder if the incidence rate for abuse is higher among the wealthy and powerful. Seems plausible that those in power feel they can bend the rules. And sometimes (not often enough) this blows up in their faces and ruins their personal life, as well as so many around them. In retrospect, perhaps many would trade all their power/money to have their family lives intact.
Many of us wish to be rich/powerful/famous and slog towards this goal. Maybe it's good that most of us don't reach that level.
I think history has proven enough times that it's hard to maintain power/wealth as you get more and more of it, and that is as it should be, because the complexity of all the moving pieces becomes harder and harder to manage when more and more human beings are involved.
"When you have 1 million dollars, that money belongs to you. When you have 10 million dollars, that belongs to your family. When you have 100 million, your community, and when you have a billion dollars, that's society's money."
We just don't hear that much about all the people who got some of it then lost/gave up a bunch of it. The ones who happen to maintain for long periods of time stand out.
And yes I agree it's good for most of us to not get there- both for the good of others and for the good of ourselves.
Conversely maybe it’s easier to rise into the ranks of rich/powerful/famous if you view people as objects to be played with. If you’re not being restrained by anything like a conscience, it’s probably a lot easier to fight the kind of dirty battles needed to reach those heights without burning out or turning to drugs to soothe a battery sense of self.
>In a statement, Mr. DeVaul apologized for an “error of judgment.” He said X decided not to hire Ms. Simpson before she went to Burning Man and that he did not realize she had not been informed.
The part I find hard to believe is that X would pass on hiring Star Simpson -- she's awesome! They made a mistake right there.
Biases and most negative behaviors are not built in[1], they are part of experiential memory and hence learnt(and can be erased[0]). Racial profiling, gender roles and biases in general are established when we are young(or at least open to change) and subjected to norms and stereotypical behavior[2][3]. Women did not magically drop out of Software professions in the 80s it's because WE handed the young boy a PC and the girl a doll[4].
Why is our reaction so visceral to some forms of biases and negative behaviors and not others? It is because we SEE, FEEL and READ about the damage on a daily basis to real people and then, eventually, envision and bring laws into existence that punish such behavior.
Eventually sexual exploitation will be seen on a level field with denying the right to vote based on caste or employment based on color of the skin. But it will be permanent only if the good people in power do something, until then we have The Times and WAPO to tell these stories.
>Eventually sexual exploitation will be seen on a level field with denying the right to vote based on caste or employment based on color of the skin. But it will be permanent only if the good people in power do something, until then we have The Times and WAPO to tell these stories.
So mostly ignored as long as it doesn't happen systemically or to too large a fraction of the population?
Last line of article: "According to his ex-wife’s civil suit, his net worth is now about $350 million."
Assuming his ex-wife had access to accurate financial statements, the $350 million number is smaller than I would have expected by about 3X.
According to published reports, Levandowski made $120 million for working on the google self-driving car project. Android seems to have had at least 10x the influence already.
Clearly these are already funny-money numbers for mere mortals, but what metrics do execs at these levels use to negotiate their compensation?
created android? last time i checked he completely changed it after iPhone release to pretty much just copy it, because he was clueless about interface
and also he created it alone by himself? is he some genius? please don't give this guy more credit than it's necessary
his Essential company it's basically bankrupt running off last money, but some people still praise this guy as some success?
also look at what state was android when he left android project, the good things happened after him, not thanks to him
The striking thing to me in this article is the utter weakness of the policy: "Google’s sexual harassment policy states that violators may be terminated."
May be terminated? Most employment agreements in the U.S. are at-will. Any employee "may be" terminated at any time, for any reason.
Any sexual harassment policy that doesn't say, "Will be terminated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law." isn't a policy. It's a fucking joke.
Google could have fired Mr. Rubin and paid him little to nothing on the way out. Instead, the company handed him a $90 million exit package, paid in installments of about $2 million a month for four years
So, I have to wonder how the world would frame it had they fired him. Would the scandalous headline be, instead, "Google screws Android creator out of millions on flimsy excuse of unprovable sexual harassment claims"?
In settling on terms favorable to two of the men, Google protected its own interests. The company avoided messy and costly legal fights, and kept them from working for rivals as part of the separation agreements.
So, this is "good business" for reasons beyond my point above.
Don't get me wrong. I'm a woman and I spend a whole lot of time trying to figure out how to get taken seriously, make business connections, yadda. My experience/opinion/hypothesis is that, never mind that I'm a toothless gray-haired old hag, most men don't really want to engage me in meaty, meaningful discussion unless they are looking to sleep with me. And, in fact, engaging me in meaty, meaningful discussion seems to fairly frequently lead to men having the sudden realization that "I'd totally hit that. I'd hit that so very hard, good god."
I used to think I was all special. I'm not so sure these days. Maybe that's just how men react to a "deep" conversation with a woman. Because if it isn't pointless small talk and goes on for more than a minute (so to speak), that seems to be the routine outcome.
Later quote in the article about a different person at Google:
During the job interview, she said he told her that he and his wife were “polyamorous,” a word often used to describe an open marriage. She said he invited her to Burning Man, an annual festival in the Nevada desert, the following week.
To me, this should be straight up a firing offense. There is absolutely no (legitimate) reason whatsoever for telling someone in a job interview that the interviewer is "polyamorous."
I don't know what policy is these days, but, back in the day, an Army officer who had an affair with the wife of a lower ranking soldier in his unit would be busted down to E-1 and thrown in jail. It didn't matter if she swore up and down that it was consensual.
It is basically treated like statutory rape. Because of the nature of military work, he can have literal power of life and death over her husband, plus power over his career. The implication 'You will sleep with me or I will see to it that your husband winds up in a combat zone/ is ordered to his death/etc" does not need to be stated for the wife to know that turning down someone with that kind of power over her husband's very life could go very bad places for the man she swore to love for life.
So, it's illegal in a "We throw people in jail for that" kind of way in part for reasons of morale. An army can't function if the soldiers are worried they might be ordered to their death so some guy can get his damn freak on with their wife. That just absolutely doesn't work. Being an officer is a position of trust.
The stakes are not usually literally life and death at most jobs, but close enough. Being barred or blacklisted from being able to have a good job at all means you wind up homeless and starving, basically. In order to have the good life we expect in a developed country, you have to be able to get a good paying job (for most people -- I realize there are exceptions as some people inherit vast wealth).
I don't know the full answer for how to resolve this complicated problem. But I think it is clear that we need to get a whole lot clearer about the fact that powerful men on the job need to be explicitly educated about the fact that hitting on women at work is inherently problematic, and not just for the woman being asked.
I'm 53. I'm still trying to wrap my head around this problem space. I sometimes blog about it, largely for my own edification.
We are in a transition where the old rules really don't work and we haven't yet sorted out what does work. Historically, powerful men could have multiple lovers. If he could support them all, a mistress on the side tended to be culturally tolerated.
I think there are some valid reasons why, so I'm not saying "Those heathens!" I'm just saying we have this history and powerful men often have this expectation because it wasn't an unreasonable expectation at one time. But now it is turning into scandal for powerful men to behave that way. It's no longer being treated as their "just deserts."
And I think that is part of why it keeps getting swept under the rug. On some level, most folks know that a lot of these men grew up with this idea that if they made enough money, they could have multiple women and society would kind of wink and nod and look the other way, even if it wasn't officially approved. So it is a kind of unstated expectation of a longstanding social contract. There is lots of precedent for it.
When push comes to shove, I think a lot of folks are hesitant to burn men too badly for that for various reasons.
> The woman, with whom Mr. Rubin had been having an extramarital relationship, said he coerced her into performing oral sex in a hotel room in 2013.
I do not understand this. "extramarital relationship" implies a consensual relationship. How then can the 'coerced' part of the oral sex in hotel be established?
A person in a consensual relationship can still abuse or exert power over the other person in the relationship. Based on the what the women said, she didn't want to do that in the hotel room and Rubin "convinced" her to do it. Perhaps he said he would hurt her career if she didn't. Or, perhaps he said he would help her career if she did. Either way it would have been totally inappropriate.
I don't like these stories where the major sources are anonymous. I want to know who said what, because without knowing the source it's impossible to know if they have a motive, aside from simply telling the truth for truth's sake.
This is why you have to trust the outlet; there is a presumption that this sort of due diligence is performed by the reporting organization. For obvious reasons they can’t publish the source but they have serious disincentives to be used as a tool in someone else’s agenda.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. cf Bloomberg.
If Google found the allegations credible, why didn't the accuser proceed with a lawsuit against Rubin? It's still not too late, if Google has a paper trail backing the allegations.
On the contrary, if Rubin is innocent & being maligned, I hope he doesn't take this trial by social media and NYT lying down. I hope he fights this in the courts.
Hit on women who only give you clear signs of attraction first and your life will be so much better on the relationships side of things, as well as avoiding nearly all the negatives. You don't usually get clear signs of attraction? Then work on yourself(diet, exercise, speaking lessons, dress better etc) and make yourself more attractive
What's annoying in particular is these are the same people who would grandstand and signal virtue during the weekly meeting (TGIF) and institute policies which could get you reprimanded for calling someone out on "kill all men" type of rhetoric on internal Google+ (I kid you not). Laws for thee but not for me.
Well you know it takes a special kind of person to be on an A Team right? I mean they have to be very “googly”. It’s really important that we have a special club of only the best students ivy colleges can produce. Only they are useful employees. Google only hires the best.
I think it could be said that Andy Rubin's penis is responsible for delay in robot revolution at least by decade.
BTW, surprising that article entirely forgot about Vic Gundotra who was also fired because of sexual misconduct with big payout and forcing victims to keep mum. Google is sure more and more looking like Uber these days with execs going on sexual abuse spree like no tomorrow. I'm not sure firing one person every other week for sexual abuse is something to be proud about. Anyone who thinks #MeToo is overrated needs to read this article.
>The suit included a screenshot of an August 2015 email Mr. Rubin sent to one woman. “You will be happy being taken care of,” he wrote. “Being owned is kinda like you are my property, and I can loan you to other people.”
This exact snippet could both be part of a SSC (safe, sane and consensual) relationship, or sexual harassment, possibly even sexual exploitation. Which it is, depends on the context; removing or implying context makes it very easy to have one appear as the other.
Exactly. And people would get surprised to know just how many "sexually progressive" (I'm using that term because I don't know a better one) people there are in silicon valley.
I know people who have full BDSM dungeons in their homes, go to all sorts of outrageous parties and have some of the craziest stories.
SV in general has every type of person.
I recall some contractors commenting on a multi-million dollar "pleasure dungeon" they built into a huge mansion in Los Altos Hills....
So, for some this can be SSC, for other context it can be far worse.
One thing is for sure, whatever the context, these situations typically don't turn out good when they get the public eye.
I'm not quite understanding what you are saying. Do you mean kink in general is abusive; do you mean workplace relationships are abusive or are you relating to this specific case?
I was asking samstave. It's complicated... Of course kink in general is not abusive. But often when otherwise private things are exposed publicly, abuse or alleged abuse is the reason for the exposure. It's a general thing, but it's also related to the specific case where some presumably non-workplace relationship details came out and there was apparent (not proven) arguable abuse of financial privilege which shows that, if true, this is not necessarily a wonderful person that I would want as a leader in my company. And the information coming out is not great for the abuser. In this specific case we can say the alleged abuser, if that helps.
I wouldnt say they are better for anyone - I was saying that regardless of the consent or context - when private conversations of this nature come to light - its never good.
Assume that a couple were consenting in owner/slave BDSM play and their dialogue were recorded and read by those who are not even previously aware that such relationships occur, no matter what these types of conversations will hit ears that were not ready/interested/amenable to hearing them, and judgements will be made.
Co-worker or not, which you mentioned, is not all that helpful in determining whether this is OK or not.
Being outside of the workplace does not make a power relationship that is akin to slavery OK. (You could claim the woman is free to leave, but there are implied threats against doing so, such as an asymmetric implied threat to reputation, with email documentation, at a minimum).
Yes it is true that context matters. However, I think it's safe to say his ex-wife who shared the quote has more knowledge of the context than we do... and again, slavery is not an indicator of leadership to aspire to. Nor is paying massive rewards to such a person.
Andy: Strange. I prefer just "Love." Being owned is kinda like you are my property, and I can loan you to other people. I am glad you are no longer with that guy.
This is why context, as OP mentioned, is important.
>This is why context, as OP mentioned, is important.
But I agreed with the OP about context being important. So why are you telling me this?
The context, as the article mentioned, is that the screenshot is being used as evidence against him in a lawsuit.
He is said to have had several of these "ownership" relationships.
And you seem to be claiming that not only was a screenshot taken, but then someone came after the fact with photoshop and altered it to remove sentences from it, before submitting it as evidence.
================
Ex-Wife: I'm suing Andy Rubin, here's an email he wrote.
Judge: Why is this stuff blacked out?
Ex-Wife: (makes up excuse) It mentions proprietary information.
Judge: OK, well just show me the original, and we can keep it out of the record, and I'll decide whether this thing is pertinent.
Ex-Wife: OK, here is the original.
Judge: That is not proprietary information. It doesn't need to be covered.
Ex-Wife: But covering it up makes my case stronger because it makes him look like a creepy jerk.
Judge: GTFO
================
You really think this is what is going on? Seems like quite a stretch to me.
I'm not defending Rubin's situation regarding Google, but I don't think the evidence in his ex-wife's divorce suit is automatically relevant to what led Google to force him out. The email may have been used as evidence of infidelity, not necessarily of (other) sexual misconduct -- the article doesn't say one way or the othewr.
What's to answer about what you asked? You're making an unjustified assumption about what the ex-wife knows or thinks about his extramarital relationships -- that because the email was in her lawsuit, that it insinuates the relationship is morally wrong (besides being adultery), i.e. "akin to slavery". We simply do not have the info or context to know otherwise.
God help whoever received that. I won't comment on the perversions in private life, but i hope that was not sent to a coworker. Sending such a message to a coworker, especially if you are in a managerial position above them is… reprehensible to the point of permanent ejection from any respectable company.
Exactly. If that was a private partner and done with consent, it’s fine, even if I personally would never consider such an arrangement for my own life.
If he’s gotten into a consenting relationship with his subordinates, then that’s kinda skeezy, since one has to wonder how much workplace power dynamics come into play. There’s a damn good reason why HR tends to clamp down on workplace dating, it creates a whole host of issues.
If he was using his power to push that, or springing it suddenly on coworkers and subordinates, then he needs to be blacklisted ASAP.
Ironically, HR people I have known in the past have been some of the worst offenders in this area...
Think of Zenefits, for example, an HR tools tech company which had to literally create an official policy stopping people from having sex in stairwells at the office.
> Think of Zenefits, for example, an HR tools tech company which had to literally create an official policy stopping people from having sex in stairwells at the office.
dev1: busy?
dev2: coding wizard for "no workplace dating" policies
I mean this is the same Zenefits that according to friends that worked there only had 1 chair for every 1.5 employees. Everything I hear about their boom time was reminiscent of an old school frat party shit show.
... reprehensible to the point of permanent ejection from any respectable company.
Courts will make any company "respectable," whether they want to or not.
As a matter of principle, people should enter such agreements if the want to and able to give consent. Of course, this doesn't make it right to send such email to the 18 year interne that started last week.
That's perfectly fine to send to a consenting partner. But completely inappropriate for the workplace.
Edit: not sure why this is being downmodded (not complaining about it, just curious). Is it somehow not completely fine for consenting adults to have whatever kinks they want?
Rubin deserves to be punished for sexual harassment. Kink shaming is unnecessary.
Slight nitpick: it's not clear that this particular email was about a workplace relationship (or sent on company time/servers). It was an email included as evidence in a civil suit by his ex-wife:
> In a civil suit filed this month by Mr. Rubin’s ex-wife, Rie Rubin, she claimed he had multiple “ownership relationships” with other women during their marriage, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to them. The couple were divorced in August. The suit included a screenshot of an August 2015 email...
The email was from 2015, but he had left Google in 2014, so it wasn't sent on company time/servers.
Even if it had been sent earlier, Andy Rubin had been named in enough patent lawsuits and deposed enough times to know that multiple plaintiffs had lawyers billing $700/800 per hour (at the very least) to go through all his corporate account's messages. He must have had tens of litigation holds.
Vanilla person here. Do women actually find it "hot" to be "loaned" like a sex slave? Given the circumstances I don't think it's absurd to assume that this was his fantasy and his only.
In my experience at a college in the northeast, it was about 10% that had actually thought a lot about it already and really wanted to do it. Around 50%, however, were more than happy to try it after learning about it.
This is definitely pretty far on the spectrum (the loaning part more so than the slave part), but I've said the 'loaning' part to people many times in a certain context and never actually meant it. I'd bet it just stayed as a fantasy between them.
Since the comments here seem to be mostly like "well at least some of them do", I'll just go ahead confirm your suspicion as a woman who has talked to other women about their relationships. Liking to be denigrated is not the norm at all, it's kinda gross and demeaning. However, much like many other sexual practices that many women find distasteful, some women will play along or pretend that they're into it to make their partners happy. Most of the time the partners aren't trying to be controlling or whatever, they're just imitating porn which normalizes that kind of thing. So yeah, there's a high chance this was a one-sided fantasy like you suspect.
> woman who has talked to other women about their relationships
That's less relevant as actually having sexual encounters with a woman. People often don't know their close friend's fetishes, but they do (or should) know what their lovers enjoy.
For a counterpoint: open a book of women's fantasies written by and marketed to women.
Rubin deserves to be punished for sexual harassment....
IF, in fact, he sexually harassed, right?
A) What in the hell was his partner doing reporting to his place of business that she felt like he had compelled her to have sex with him in a hotel room? What does that have to do with work? That smells like using an accusation as a weapon to me.
B) What does "compelled" mean? I had a girlfriend once who was into kink and I wasn't. We did kink all the time and it wasn't fulfilling to me, and once time in particular I was trying very hard to just get her to have sex with me (which I thought was going to be part of the relationship and was just beginning to realize it was not). I kept asking, she kept saying no. Eventually she gave in. After our break-up she cited this as a rape to a friend. Is this rape? Is it even sexual harassment?
There are so few details here it's shameful it's even being reported on.
So what if Google gave a severance to someone who was accused of harassment? It's not even clear, from the details, that he did. Shit, what if they did an internal investigation and determined that he didn't?
What's wrong with people here, acting like this is something we know he did?
A) The article states that the two were in a relationship. Meeting someone at their hotel room doesn't automatically mean a consent to sex.
B) I'll give you the benefit of the doubt for your particular experience. But keep in mind that many sexual misconduct accusations involve the victim refusing but eventually "giving in". Harvey Weinstein, for example:
> Shit, what if they did an internal investigation and determined that he didn't?
I hate to say "did you read the article?", but your question suggests that you may have skimmed the details. The article specifically states that Google investigated Rubin, and decided to terminate him as a result of the investigation. The investigation did not "prove" the accusation, but apparently the accusation was credible enough for Google to decide it was better to part ways with one of its most important executives.
> Google’s inquiry ultimately found the complaint against Mr. Rubin credible, said the two company executives familiar with the incident. While Mr. Rubin denied the accusation, it became clear that — at the very least — the relationship was inappropriate, they said. Mr. Page decided Mr. Rubin should leave, they said.
So what? People who work together have sexual relationships, and people who have relationships will have conflict.
"People who disagree with me are ignorant." Come on, man. Seriously? You sounds like a college kid on facebook.
If a company is not going to prohibit employees from having sexual relationships with each other, horizontally or vertically, that company also need to expect those employees to work their conflict out outside of work. If google does want to prohibit this, they should have disciplined both of them the moment they heard about it and fired them if it continued.
What's with people expecting companies to be mommy and daddy when we have conflicts in our relationships? That's crazy.
Ignoring the 'she worked for him' part, where her pay and career were subject to his whim? That's the issue. Its classic blackmail. Google doesn't have to be 'mommy' to oppose blackmail when it finds it occurring within their walls.
And what if she's using the relationship to get ahead? What, are we going to pretend that women are powerless, agentless puppets that smart, capable men can use?
If the company you're in doesn't prohibit relationships, if you get into one you need to resolve conflict in those relationships outside of work.
People gravitate towards environments where they can do what they want. If you've read anything about Sergey Brin and his behavior towards women who worked at Google, especially in the early days, and the fact that he's still where he is, tells anyone who's looking for a safe place to sexually harass women that Google is a safe place to operate.
Well there was the $3.2 billion dollar acquisition of a company whose products are complete garbage, but I guess the OP was referring to Fadell's notoriously rude behavior toward his subordinates.
Just because you're smart, doesn't mean that you don't harass people at work. Richard Feynman was a brilliant man, but was utterly horrible to the women he worked with.
Every company that's large enough has a few people participating in unintentional, or highly intentional harassment.
What you should judge companies on, is how they deal with it - especially when the perpetrator is not some middle-manager, but a rockstar.
In his biography of Feynman, Lawrence Krauss apparently details incidents in which Feynman had affairs with his colleagues' wives, and even pretended to be a student to chase co-eds. Some biographers have suggested (but not justified) that Feynman's behavior is partly due to the loss of his young wife.
The charming side of Richard helped people forgive him for his uncharming characteristics. For example, in many ways Richard was a sexist. Whenever it came time for his daily bowl of soup he would look around for the nearest "girl" and ask if she would fetch it to him. It did not matter if she was the cook, an engineer, or the president of the company. I once asked a female engineer who had just been a victim of this if it bothered her. "Yes, it really annoys me," she said. "On the other hand, he is the only one who ever explained quantum mechanics to me as if I could understand it." That was the essence of Richard's charm.
But he also describes a lot of his attitudes toward women in Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman, and by modern standards they would basically fall into the PUA/RedPill category.
I found that link before asking, and I read SYJMF, but neither actually talk about female coworkers, hence wondering if there was something more than I had missed. I have no intention of defending (or attacking) Feynman, I was merely curious.
> Just because you're smart, doesn't mean that you don't harass people at work.
I think the point was "how could smart people be so stupid at managing this sort of situation in a way that won't blow up in their faces later down the line".
Anecdotal evidence would suggest that "really smart" people have some lacking in other areas most commonly social skills. It can be tough working alongside this kind of person when they constantly think they are working with "lesser" people whether that's based on knowledge/skill or race/sex.
And we know a great deal about starvation thanks to Nazi research on Jewish prisoners.
Given that at the time, we couldn't know the, I guess, "benefits" of the Nazi experimentation (barf), all present fighting against the Nazis were right to do so.
Given that we don't know what foundations/benefits could result from a subordinate/boss relationship at Google today, it is more logical to fight against them on the principle of what we know now - that they are dangerous, potentially damaging to the company for multiple reasons.
One potential angle someone take arguing my point is that objectively, starvation / rocket research is not worth the cost of lives due to the Nazi regime (or could have been discovered without it), but that doesn't necessarily detract from the point - we can't see into the future, we must weigh decisions on presently available information.
Wow reading the whole story...Sundar needs to clean house. California is an at-will state, he doesn't need justification, just sweep out all of this trash.
Downvotes for suggesting the CEO get rid of execs who carry on like this at work and expect a payday? Wow this thread not only details how sordid Google is, but also the continued decline of HN...scary how many apologists showed up here.
I would point out that you may be getting downvoted not by Google fans, but for suggesting Sundar could do something, or even, isn't part of the problem. Google's misconduct goes all the way to the top, above him.
Larry Page (Sundar's boss) has been involved in this and other coverups of executive misconduct, having made the decision to give people like Andy Rubin and Amit Singhal large severances and allow them to "move on" to other things.
Sergey Brin (also Sundar's boss) stated that the whole purpose of having female employees at Google was so he could sleep with them. While working on Google Glass, he had an affair with a member of the Glass team that was fairly publicized at the time.
Eric Schmidt (recently chairman of Alphabet's board, over Google) put his mistress on payroll once as a consultant. Supposedly, he was the "adult in the room" of this organization.
David Drummond (chief legal officer of Alphabet, also over Google) had an affair with an underling, and only admitted it in accordance with company policy after she had his kids. She lost her job because of it.
It's likely the only way to clean house at Alphabet/Google is to break it up and sell it off, ideally in a manner that doesn't make the very people responsible for these transgressions even more rich.
Does California being an "at-will" state mean all contracts must be at-will, or that simply some contracts can be at-will? The latter would imply that Sundar cannot just "clean house" without justification.
A loan that the company knows about is not embezzlement. It's a perk designed to make Rubin's life easier which is worth more than money to both Google and Rubin. He could of course arrange his own loan, just like an average Google employee could arrange their own lunch.
Using company funds to hedge against personal risk is shady and selfish, even if it might technically be legal. It’s as close to embezzlement as you can get. I can’t imagine explaining to investors why I needed to loan myself company funds for a fucking vacation home, for my mistresses no less!
But whatever, executives are Gods who can do no wrong and deserve 90 million for sexual harassment and assault, and they deserve company loans for vacation homes for their whores. What a joke!
There is nothing new about this type of behavior, at Google or any other company that has existed since, oh, the dawn of time. This happens in almost every sector that has large businesses. I guess the news is that "this happened again", but that's hardly news. Other than doing an expose on Google for not being a "perfect model company" I'm not entirely sure why this is front-page New York Times material.
If I understand the article correctly, Rubin was released due to credible evidence of sexual misconduct but was given $90M going out the door. How is this appropriate punishment? The "news" of the article is that this needs to change.
It wasn’t punishment. Google was paying him to sign a non-compete. It was in their corporate self-interest that if they couldn’t keep him due to a credible harassment accusation, they would pay for no one else to get him.
> Google found her claim credible, they said. The company did not fire Mr. Singhal, but accepted his resignation and negotiated an exit package that paid him millions and prevented him from working for a competitor, said the people.
Given the specific wording("found her claim credible"), it seems quite possible they did not have enough evidence to bring to court in case of a wrongful firing suit.
It's the most obvious cliché people can (and invariably do) bring into such a discussion. Anything so predictable has zero curiosity in it and therefore is off topic on HN. See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
They were having a relationship, and one time the woman didn't feel like giving oral sex and felt 'coerced'.
What does that mean exactly and how do you investigate it? I've pleased people in all kinds of way, including sexual when I didn't feel like it, and I don't go crying about it - it's no big deal.
It's not a company's place to air people's dirty laundry - what happens in hotel rooms of all places, is none of anyone's employer's business. If there was a problem - call the police.
End of story.
The reason Mr Rubin was given an exit package is unknown. It could have absolutely nothing to do with oral sex in a hotel room. How would this mediocre reporter know? He/she doesn't.
Ms. Simpson went with her mother and said she thought it was an opportunity to talk to Mr. DeVaul about the job. She said she brought conservative clothes suitable for a professional meeting."
woah nelly! totally fucked that he was hitting on her in the interview and appears to be a pretty cut and dried abuse of power...
but... business casual, with mom, at burning man? that's absolutely bananas. however i can see how it would come to be, you're staring down your dream job, and there's this tight knit group of people you want to join so you go along with all of it... and then you realize later that you were just being played because someone wanted to sleep with you. yikes.