Original title: "Google Engineers Are Organizing A Walk Out To Protest The Company’s Protection Of An Alleged Sexual Harasser" (28 characters too long).
But from what I read it sounds as if Google had to pay him the $90MM+, else be sued by him right? Because if they didn't pay him, he'd sue, then they [Google] would have to prove that he [Rubin] acted maliciously (or whatever), which would've been hard (if not impossible) to do, given that the accuser said they were coerced (not forced).
So it seems as if Google's hands were tied legally on this.
Most issues of social or civil justice typically have at least one conflict of interest. However, individuals are burned at the proverbial stake daily for far less than coercion, and the idea that Google would sweep this under the rug instead of fighting the fight is sickening to some.
But this wasn't swept under the rug. The alleged harasser was fired. Google took steps to remove the alleged harasser. Keeping the details private is standard practice and is usually something all the parties involved want.
From what I'm reading, Google paid Rubin the amount he was entitled to in his contract. Some people point out that Google could have paid him next to nothing for firing him with cause - but Rubin could have sued Google, and almost certainly would have made the claim that the harassment allegations we're Google's way of trying to avoid paying him - and from what I read, Google probably wanted to avoid this, because it would inevitably involve the details of the alleged assault going public. I assume that the alleged victim doesn't want this, we don't have good reports of how much proof there is for these allegations, and there's also the possibility of Google losing the suit and looking like they're the ones in the wrong.
But it was swept under the rug. He got a splashy send-off and a thanks for his service. At the very least, that seems over the top.
The reasons for his ouster weren't disclosed. I would be curious if Essential's investors (Redpoint, Altimeter, Amazon Alexa Fund) were aware of why Rubin left Google.
Moreover, this is a pattern at Google. Amit Singhal[1] was fired (also with a send-off and goodbye party and settled outstanding grants) after accusations of harassment were found credible.
He then landed as SVP of engineering at Uber, where he was forced to resign because he hadn't disclosed the prior HR complaint at Google. Now, obviously, the lack of disclosure is what did him in -- but why did Google not tell Uber that he was asked to leave during his background check?
Yes, Rubin likely would have sued. Yes, it likely would have been messy and very public. No, I do not believe for a second that Google settled to "protect" the victim; Google's settlement with the the alleged victim was certainly less than $90m.
Google settled b/c in 2014, the drama of fighting with someone like Rubin seemed more risky than just paying him off -- even with the risk that the reasons why might become public later. The climate of 2018 makes me believe that was a fundamental mistake and the company should have fought back to not pay money that a labor attorney could argue was not owed.
To sweep something under the rug means to ignore it and not deal with it. Google did deal with it, so it's incorrect to say that the accusation was swept under the rug. Sure, you may be displeased at how they handled it but there's no denial of the fact that they did take the accusations seriously and fired a high level exec.
You're ignoring the damage cause by the optics of such a lawsuit. Google being known as the company that used an allegation of harassment to try and cheat an exec out of his outstanding compensation would be atrocious for the company's image - and not to mention attach huge negative stigma around people who come forward with harassment campaigns against powerful people. It's easy to be idealistic when you're not the person or group who is at stake.
GP isn't ignoring the optics of the situation, they're just asserting that being perceived as a company that paid a sexual predator almost one hundred million dollars to avoid dealing with a sexual assault claim is worse than the scenario you described.
I dispute that. Google going to trial, exposing the victim to the public eye, and risking the possibility that the public remembers this episode as an example of harassment claims being weaponized by corporations is a worse scenario. I think people are really underestimating the last one of those. Would the metoo movent have even spread to tech if an there existed a public (or at least, what the public percieves to be) instance of a company using allegations of harassment to cheat employees out of compensation? Would it have even existed at all?
You keep saying "cheat", but Google found the allegations credible; I'm genuinely confused as to your position here. Are you saying that companies should still pay severance to employees fired for sexual assault?
> You keep saying "cheat", but Google found the allegations credible
“Credible” isn't the same as “true” or even “more likely than not to be true”, even though it has recently become popular for credible allegations of certain wrongs to be treated as if they were proven true.
> Are you saying that companies should still pay severance to employees fired for sexual assault?
If a contract requires payment unless a certain wrong has been done, a party finding it credible that the wrong has been done that would relieve it of it's obligations, even if it would get a trier of fact to the same conclusion, hasn't actually established that it is free of the obligation.
Contract vs. at-will employment presents different considerations.
I'm saying there's a good change Rubin's lawyers could convince a jury that Google wrongfully avoided paying him the compensation that was due. This would almost certainly cause the public to view allegations of sexual assault with greater suspicion.
The point is, while Google itself determined that they had enough evidence to conclude that Rubin harassed someone, they probably didn't think they had enough evidence to convince a jury. All I'm saying is that the company should choose the least harmful option. Sometimes, being inflexible does more harm than good. For all we know, bringing this to trial would have made Google and the victim look like the bad guys, while the harasser looks like a hero standing up to a deceitful corporation. Instead, Google played it safe and chose not to risk it's reputation (which is an act of self interest) but also to avoid risking the reputation of the alleged victim (which is a benefit). Was this the right decision? Ultimately we'll never know short of inventing a time machine, but saying that Google unambiguously chose the worse of two options is short sighted.
Executive employment contracts are a whole other universe away from what the rank and file gets. How do people not know this?
Google for "golden parachute" and "termination clause", e.g. https://www.thebalancecareers.com/golden-parachute-2276017. Yes, when you're valuable enough, you can actually require as part of your employment agreement that your employer pay you massive amounts of money for being terminated, even if it's for cause. Had they tried not to pay out the golden parachute, it would have been an open and shut case ending in a loss for them. (And, believe me, they wouldn't have been even remotely tempted to try because every executive there also has their own personal golden parachute.)
>You're ignoring the damage cause by the optics of such a lawsuit. Google being known as the company that used an allegation of harassment to try and cheat an exec out of his outstanding compensation would be atrocious for the company's image
That's not the case with Matt Lauer at NBC. Lauer sued and NBC has continued to fight back. It's also not the case with Les Moonves at CBS (the CBS situation is much more complicated because of the broader disputes between CBS, Viacom, and the infighting on the board of directors) -- in fact, CBS has been roundly criticized for potentially paying out $100m to Moonves (even if they withheld $80m in stock). CBS' business reputation is in the shitter b/c they have paid out.
>- and not to mention attach huge negative stigma around people who come forward with harassment campaigns against powerful people. It's easy to be idealistic when you're not the person or group who is at stake.
This stigma already exists. Refusing to settle doesn't make it go away or make it any better. Any person who goes forward against a powerful executive -- no matter how much proof they have -- is almost always fucked over. Going forward doesn't lead to someone winning. Financial settlements mostly exist b/c it's understood that the complainant will have an incredibly difficult time finding future employment.
And you're also forgetting that the person who is the alleged victim in this case could and would be protected in filings by shield laws (it's possible that someone on the other side would leak the identity, but that's legally not supposed to happen). This would be a civil complaint, not criminal. Moreover, I feel certain that there was already a settlement with a very strict NDA in place (and if either party were to violate the NDA, there would be substantial consequences).
The person who brought the claims against Rubin already has a stigma around her neck. Her life was already torn apart in an investigation by HR and presumably in whatever settlement was achieved. Please don't use the fact that those that come forward are often re-victimized as an excuse to PAY PEOPLE WITH CREDIBLE ACCUSATIONS AGAINST THEM $90 MILLION AND GIVE A HERO'S SENDOFF.
People who come forward almost always lose in very tangible ways -- even if they win. That's why coming forward is so difficult and why those that do are so incredibly brave.
> People who come forward almost always lose in very tangible ways -- even if they win. That's why coming forward is so difficult and why those that do are so incredibly brave.
I agree. The point is, refusing to pay Rubin and going to trial would have made the victim lose even more. She'd lose her privacy, for one. And if the case is lost she may lose her reputation and live the rest of her life branded as a false accuser.
Do you know if the accuser wanted to go to trial? If not then we have no business talking about how Google didn't act with the victim's interest in mind.
> He then landed as SVP of engineering at Uber, where he was forced to resign because he hadn't disclosed the prior HR complaint at Google. Now, obviously, the lack of disclosure is what did him in -- but why did Google not tell Uber that he was asked to leave during his background check?
Likely, because his contract (executives are almost never at-will employees) included a mutual non-disparagement clause, which literally prevents either party from ever saying anything negative about the other.
> No, I do not believe for a second that Google settled to "protect" the victim
No, they did it to protect themselves. The fact that the route to Rubin winning would—as it always is in harassment cases—been destroying the victim further was probably incidental to Google, but no less true for that.
> The climate of 2018 makes me believe that was a fundamental mistake and the company should have fought back to not pay money that a labor attorney could argue was not owed.
I'm not sure even in 2018 it would look better for Google to have fought, lost, and left the accuser as collateral damage. Oh, it would be better optics if they fought and won without the victim's life being further destroyed, but whether that actually was the rational expectation at the time seems far from clear.
The problem here is the "it costs more to do the right thing" is a bad argument.
If you have a serial harasser, who is just paid off to leave quietly, then you just ensure that he gets to go off and do the same thing again. And be richer.
How about instead of giving him $90 million, you give that to his victims in exchange for them not making claims against him? The result is approximately the same, but at least you're giving money to the victim rather than the criminal.
Companies often say "court is more expensive than Y" because that's a directly measurable thing, and simply ignore the actual long term costs. Much like elected officials :-O
He was not "terminated for having sexual relations with a subordinate". From the article:
> Google gave Rubin a reported $90 million exit package in 2014, following an investigation into an allegation that he had coerced another employee to perform oral sex on him. That investigation reportedly found that allegation to be credible.
Furthermore, correct me if I misread, but what he did wrong was have consensual sexual relations with a subordinate, right? And then he was fired for it (which he should be). And they protected him how? Paying him the severance package he was owed?
No, he coerced them into it - if you have a position of power, and you say "have sex with me", effectively in exchange for your treatment/employment in the company - I can't recall if Rubin was the burning man "sex or no job" guy, or that was another - that is sex discrimination and/or harassment.
I doubt Rubin would have had the same behaviour with male subordinates, so that's a difference in treatment based on gender (woman who have to sleep with him to get equal treatment, or super devil advocate here, against men unable to "sleep to the top").
The reason companies have clear rules against this - which should be super easy to enforce - is because if you are in a position of power over someone, even if it was a hypothetical case of not abusing power, the subordinate can't tell so may feel coerced. If your underling feels coerced, they are. That it was unintentional is not relevant. Note, this is distinct from consent, which may or may not apply. Certainly if it's consent related the company should be forwarding to police.
In addition to that it seems like there is a large body of evidence of what is at minimum inappropriate behaviour of any employee, let alone the management and executive tiers. Any of which should have been firable.
The burning man guy is another guy (who still works at Google afaik).
This Rubin guy was no doubt a creep. From the NYT 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.”"
There are totally fine sexual and romantic relationships involving consenting "ownership". That part shouldn't necessarily make him sound creepy. The part where he managed to make it all the way up to the executive level at a company like Google and still be dumb enough to have those kinds of relationships with employees is the part that deserves attention.
As others have already pointed out, any relationship with an employee in that kind of environment is exploitative by nature.
>"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.”"
I don't understand why Americans are so concerned with what happens in somebody else's bedroom. I don't give a single flying f about what two consenting adults decide to do in a bedroom. There are all sorts of sexual kinks that I find disgusting and sometimes disturbing - but it turns out it's not really any of my business. The second you introduce a non-consenting adult, or someone not old enough to consent, then we've got a problem.
Otherwise - why do you care? It's none of your business.
> Otherwise - why do you care? It's none of your business.
When your boss is sleeping with one of your co-workers, how do you know that they are not in a quid-pro-quo relationship?
This isn't an American thing - this is a workplace thing.
If you're a manager, there's seven billion other people in the world, who don't report to you. You'll probably find your soulmate, or whatever the hell you're looking for - outside of your reporting chain.
>When your boss is sleeping with one of your co-workers, how do you know that they are not in a quid-pro-quo relationship?
And as I've said in just about every post I've made, he should've been fired for sleeping with a subordinate. There are countless reasons that's not OK. I was responding to and quite obviously referring to the guy making a big deal about him telling someone he "owns them" - or whatever terminology he used. Do I think that's disgusting? Sure. But that's between him and whomever he has that relationship with. If she's consenting and willing, so be it, not my place to judge.
First off, why do you assume I am american? And my point is that this kink of his, which involves dominating and "owning" his employees, should raise alarm bells considering the accusations levied against him.
Though I can't find the exact context at the moment, I believe that was from his divorce. Most of the world seems to think it is your spouse's concern whom else you get involved with, both for health reasons and financial ones.
>No, he coerced them into it - if you have a position of power, and you say "have sex with me", effectively in exchange for your treatment/employment in the company
Unless you've got info beyond what was in the times report, you're making a TON of assumptions about the nature of the relationship.
As I said, it's wrong and he should be fired for having relations with a subordinate no matter what the circumstances were. But to dive Right into "do this if you want to stay employed" when you don't even know which party initiated the relationship is a bit unfair.
Unless Google or the woman in question come forward with more info, I don't think it's at all fair to just assume the worst about everyone involved.
Is there something you enjoy about explicit stories of sexual assault and coercion that would make you want to force victims to see the intimate details of their trauma published for all to see?
Because that seems to go somewhat beyond the usual standard. And it wouldn't even be helpful, unless you follow it up with a demand of DNA samples and expert witnesses.
FWIW: the parent comment wasn't assuming anything–they just more or less gave you the definition of coercion.
The problem is that none of that is even alleged to have happened. The burning man guy was not Andy Rubin. According to the report, the coercion bit was from a woman he had a multi-year consensual affair with, after she decided to break up with him. So, it is not that simple.
The linked NYT article states pretty clearly that she was accusing him of coercion, and that Google determined that accusation to have merit. This article by buzzfeed adds that there was a second such allegation, from a different woman:
> following an investigation into an allegation that he had coerced another employee to perform oral sex on him.
To not acknowledge these facts clearly stated in every article strikes me as bad faith rather than confusion.
> Google could have fired Mr. Rubin and paid him little to nothing on the way out. [...]
> When Google fires lower-level employees, it typically marches them out immediately and pays little, if any, severance. But for senior executives, Google weighs other factors, said former executives. A wrongful termination lawsuit could mean unwanted media attention for Google and the victims of a misconduct case, with a loss resulting in significant damages.
It doesn't say explicitly, but it sounds like they didn't have a legal obligation to pay him; rather, they did so to avoid the possibility of a lawsuit or bad press.
What they definitely didn't have to do was this:
> Afterward, Google invested in Playground Global, a venture firm Mr. Rubin started six months after leaving the company.
It's one thing to pay severance if you don't think you can win an unlawful termination lawsuit, but it's another entirely to invest in that person's next venture after you're absolved of any legal obligation to them.
>My gut tells me that at the time of his ouster, Alphabet was worried more about the optics of a protracted lawsuit with Rubin, rather than a cover-up for a harassment claim coming to light. Presumably the other individual in the harassment case settled and signed an NDA, which would preclude public discussion and disclosure.
In 2014, that may have seemed like the "safe" bet. In 2018, it's coming back to bite Alphabet in the ass.
> It doesn't say explicitly, but it sounds like they didn't have a legal obligation to pay him; rather, they did so to avoid the possibility of a lawsuit
The possibility of the lawsuit indicates there was at least a plausible argument for a legal requirement.
It's not "malicious", its the assumption that he gets to act like that. What they need to do is prove that he behaved in a way that was inappropriate. It sounds like there's plenty of evidence that he did - hell, they had enough evidence to record, in writing, that they found the claims against him credible.
The difference between him and the people that they did fire was his position. Which is entirely backwards - the penalties for criminal behaviour should be higher for people with more power, not less.
Unfortunately, this is also all too common. But that doesn't make it OK and that doesn't mean that when it happens in our backyard (and not in Hollywood or finance or [insert industry here]), we should stand back and not do anything about it or speak up that it's not alright.
> It sounds like there's plenty of evidence that he did - hell, they had enough evidence to record, in writing, that they found the claims against him credible.
“Credible” is a far cry from being likely to meet the civil “preponderance of the evidence” standard, it literally is just “not implausible”.
> The difference between him and the people that they did fire was his position. Which is entirely backwards - the penalties for criminal behaviour should be higher for people with more power, not less.
Google doesn't impose criminal punishment, and I don't think anyone wants that to change.
Preponderance of the evidence would be the standard if Rubin sued Google for wrongful termination, not the standard for evaluating allegations against executives - the latter is entirely up to Google. Rubin would have to convince the jury that he was terminated wrongfully against Google's argument that a credible allegation against senior management is enough to terminate with cause.
> Google doesn't impose criminal punishment, and I don't think anyone wants that to change.
GP never suggested that Google hand out jail sentences, just that they shouldn't be giving $90 million severance to Rubin when many employees who got fired for a lot less egregious behavior got nothing.
> Preponderance of the evidence would be the standard if Rubin sued Google for wrongful termination, not the standard for evaluating allegations against executives
Insofar as the issue is whether or not he is entitled to things promised in his employment contract, the standard for evaluation the allegation that he violated provisions of the contract which would trigger forfeiture of those things is necessarily ultimately the exact same standard as would apply in a suit over the contract, since whatever initial decision Google attempts to make is subject to potential suit.
> GP never suggested that Google hand out jail sentences,
The response was to the reference to “crimes” which was not otherwisegermane.
> just that they shouldn't be giving $90 million severance to Rubin when many employees who got fired for a lot less egregious behavior got nothing.
At-will employees are less protected than those with specific employment contracts; executives are usually in the latter category, rank and file employees generally not unless unionized.
Expecting treatment of employees to be the same when they are dissimilarly situated in terms of legal relationship is irrational.
Even if they were legally obligated to pay him, they were not obligated to protect him. They had nice parting words for him and invested in his subsequent venture. They could have just kept their mouths shut and cut off all contact. They didn't.
As bdcravens says, what upsets some is that THIS executive and THIS situation was deemed worthy of sweeping under the rug, paying out the $90m and giving a hero's send-off of sorts (yes, anyone with eyes knew Andy was forced out, but there wasn't any chatter that I was aware of that he was forced out for personnel reasons. Instead, it was assumed to be a power struggle that he lost.), when many others are often let-go for far less compelling reasons (there might not be an HR report that finds fault), without their options fully vested.
It isn't clear if Rubin's actions reached a level that would breach his contracts morality clause (assuming one existed -- and one almost always exists), which would allow them to fire him with cause -- but the fact that an internal investigation found that he acted inappropriately, would at least indicate there was a legal way to fire Rubin without paying him $90m.
(I am not a lawyer, FWIW.)
My gut tells me that at the time of his ouster, Alphabet was worried more about the optics of a protracted lawsuit with Rubin, rather than a cover-up for a harassment claim coming to light. Presumably the other individual in the harassment case settled and signed an NDA, which would preclude public discussion and disclosure.
In retrospect, that was a bad call -- because in 2018, the optics of sweeping credible harassment allegations by a senior executive under the rug and then guiding them out the door with a $90m settlement is something that sickens and angers many individuals.
It's the sort of move that is incredibly common in other parts of business (Hollywood and the media business in general), but that doesn't make it OK. And it is particularly offensive when the industry in which it takes place -- and the company it is taking place at -- have a history of trying to be "better" than the status quo.
> In retrospect, that was a bad call -- because in 2018, the optics of sweeping credible harassment allegations by a senior executive under the rug and then guiding them out the door with a $90m settlement is something that sickens and angers many individuals.
And then, not three months later, investing substantially in his next venture...
At my company the employment contract limits the company's liability if you're fired for harassment (this was standard at past places too). Executives probably have different contracts than mere rank-and-file employees though, in which case I hope we get a law that forbids companies from paying out "golden parachutes" if they conduct an investigation and find proof of sexual misconduct.
A lot of the popular unrest facing both corporations & governments today is people learning that conflict gets results. The logic goes that "Well, Andy Rubin managed to exercise his threat to sue to get a $90M severance package, and he doesn't even work for the company anymore. We do work for the company, so we are going to exercise our power as employees to put pressure on the company to not do this again, so that our interests as current employees who don't want to work in an environment rife in sexual harassment aren't discounted." The whole point is to make the company uncomfortable so that they realize they're caught between a rock and a hard place, and the next time an executive's caught with his dick in somebody's face the company's like "Well, we really wish we could work out an amiable settlement with you for your past service, but you remember the protests when this happened with Andy Rubin? Our hands are tied here - the whole company almost fell apart, and if we avoid your lawsuit we'll just end up with a bigger one from them."
They aren't really wrong in this - the squeaky wheel gets the grease and always has, and now a much larger portion of the population is willing to squeak.
The end result probably looks like us burning most of the modern world to the ground, literally, but that's where game theory is taking us. I wonder if much of the appeal of the crypto world (where whole organizations are disintermediated in favor of smart contracts) is because people are realizing that an organization is nothing but a target for angry people, and so by getting rid of the organization and making any people behind it anonymous & fungible, you can continue to organize economic activity without painting a target on your face.
This is like the business version of Assassination Politics leading to all identifiable people being utterly milquetoast and all activity happening under crypto-secure nyms.
Crypto is a compelling simulacrum of classical liberalism (free individuals engaging in trade and limited governments using precise laws to protect the commons).
This time we are trusting machines and mathematics to preserve individual rights rather than culture.
>Crypto is a compelling simulacrum of classical liberalism
hard nod
points to last sentence in profile
I'm one of those "get off my yard types" when someone comes along and (seemingly) blindly proposes blockchain in a discussion because blockchain is very good at what it does but what it doesn't do is 'everything'...
...but I'd take it a step further and say it's simulacra, the dollar became classical liberal econ simulacrum the minute we decided to start printing the things at will and standing well back[1].
> The end result probably looks like us burning most of the modern world to the ground, literally
The end does not justify the means. So what good is a society built on prejudice, harassment, and corruption?
If you can sweep controversy under the rug until such time that it's convenient then good luck ever getting change to occur for the better.
> by getting rid of the organization and making any people behind it anonymous & fungible, you can continue to organize economic activity without painting a target on your face.
Making it anonymous & fungible is only necessary if you're unable or unwilling to stand up for your actions. If you're unwilling to stand up for what's right or are doing something you know is unethical, then what right do you have to the proceeds from your actions?
> The end does not justify the means. So what good is a society built on prejudice, harassment, and corruption?
Spoken like someone who was raised in a culture where airing grievances led to getting what you wanted most of the time.
I mean, it's not illogical. There's a reason why the activist archetype is so respected in our society. It gets results!
But the outlook that fuels activists to push things things until they win: "I'd rather burn everything to the ground than not get what I want" is also an incredibly short sighted and selfish way to look at things.
This is the human condition I guess. We take things for granted. Like the stability we've grown up in, so much that we're willing to sacrifice our inheritance [a stable and mostly fair society] chasing windmills.
Luckily we've amassed so much wealth and institutional inertia that I think it'll be a while before it all comes tumbling down.
> This is the human condition I guess. We take things for granted. Like the stability we've grown up in, so much that we're willing to sacrifice our inheritance [a stable and mostly fair society] chasing windmills.
The notion that this is a “stable and mostly fair society” is not self-evidently true. And I suspect that if the question were surveyed, the results would differ dramatically across identity groups.
Even the poorest "identity groups" in the United States own more wealth than most other "identity groups" across the planet. Western Society also goes out of its way to embrace "the outsider" insofar as it tries very hard to include them in everything to the point of ridiculousness. This tradition of inclusion goes all the way back to Rome, which preferred integration over annihilation (excepting Carthage).
But I get it. It feels good to complain and to hate on things. Especially when there is no downside (e.g. you get patted on the back and told you're a holy person). You might even convince some of the oppressed "identity groups" you're speaking for to help you implement your pet projects along the way.
I suspect that at a certain level, corporations must have accountability similar to nations. Right now corporations don’t need to be democratic, they don’t need to allow any type of “freedom of speech” and indeed have strong incentives/prohibitions against it in the case of no-disparagement clauses.
I think people may need to be allowed a vote in the companies they work for/monopolies that service them, and that freedom-of-speech rules for corporations, employees, and customers is likely to follow that of their host nations — not equally free everywhere, but that no-disparagement clauses would be legal in the UK and illegal in the USA, for example.
Do companies apply any of that to employees unless they are a protected class? If they want you gone you're gone for whatever reason they make up if they even make one. You don't get to have a presumption of innocence or due process.
Why shouldnt companies be treated the same way by their employees?
That's not a court. It's a company. And just like they can decide to hand out golden parachutes to execs accused of misbehaving they could chose not to. That's not the same as punishment by a court of law after 'due process'.
(1) it depends on what else was in the contract, I haven't seen the contract but 'being fired for cause' usually triggers a whole pile of clauses that have serious consequences.
and
(2) Google went on to invest in his new venture, which I highly doubt was in the contract no matter when the whole thing went down.
As it is one arm of Google decided to let the man go for cause and give him a golden parachute, and another arm of the company decided to invest in his next venture.
Neither of those read like something bad happening to Andy Rubin. You could fire me any day for any reason you'd like to pick if you gave me 90 million.
I've never bothered with crypto but I can think of a few situations where it would be useful. A few years ago I went on a vacation to Argentina which was suffering from high inflation, had instituted currency controls, and had an official bank exchange rate that was laughable compared to what you could get quite openly on most street corners. Being able to buy crypto in the US and then sell it in Argentina for local currency could have been useful. For locals, using it as a store of value might have been useful if not for the crazy amount of volatility.
Another edge case is for purchasing things in legal gray areas. Obviously some use it to buy drugs, illegal services, and other things most wouldn't want to be involved in. Before streaming services became popular there was a Russian music ecommerce site called AllOfMP3. They sold MP3s for the local Russian price to customers around the world. As this was a large discount, it made the record companies unhappy so they pressured the credit card companies to stop allowing payment to AllOfMP3. In the age of crypto, they would have been able to chug along with little problem but back then it caused them to resort to trading in gift cards. I don't know how long they lasted once the credit card embargo was put in place but such a financial lockout would be more difficult for the record companies to accomplish today. Of course streaming services have made that business model mostly obsolete so we'll probably never know for sure.
Or, alternatively, sexual abuse is a current hot-button issue, and this is helping to create a perfect storm of people who feel either exploited by companies and their executives (because they are), or that they don't have a reasonable amount of influence in large companies (they don't), or that so many executives get to fail upward (they do), or that sexual abuse is still not handled as seriously as it should be (it isn't).
Google will have a few bad days of PR, nobody will be able to identify this event in Google's stock price or quarterly reports, and in about three weeks everyone will have forgotten completely about this and gone on to the next series of things to be bothered about.
This much simpler explanation allows the world to keep stumbling along about like it always has, and cryptocurrency gets to continue to be a solution in search of a problem.
>this is helping to create a perfect storm of people who feel either exploited by companies and their executives (because they are)
What do you mean by that? I know only a few Googlers, mostly new grads. They don't seem to be worked to the bone or mistreated (9-5, high comp, benefits etc.) and have excellent working conditions (ergonomic workflow, offices with natural light, mentoring, good internal tooling).
In fact, I don't know if I would enjoy it. Since I like intense environments... they have it good though.
Those are good by modern standards, but you still get to see someone get paid $2 million a month for 4 years, plus receive investments in their next venture, after committing an offense that would probably get you summarily fired.
It's pretty messed up that we look at a situation like that now and say, "well the employees only have to work 9 to 5 and they get great health benefits, so I don't see why anybody would be upset."
I don't have an opinion on whether what google did was good or bad. I'm just a point of "outrage fatigue," especially with protests that come off as gimmicky.
Maybe pushback against google is appropriate, maybe it's effective, but I am sure fatigued by this kind of stuff.
I don't understand... Did any protesters walk through your office? Are you having trouble getting GMAil support?
Because if, as professed, have no opinion one way or the other, I fail to see how you can be annoyed by something you only read about (after clicking on links presumably informing you what to expect). Are you also annoyed by the weather report? Because that seems to have become a daily staple.
Posts on my local subreddit asking where the next protest is are becoming increasingly common. They're not asking for details on specific protests, just want to know when there is a protest scheduled for pretty much anything. It's becoming mostly a social event for many. It'll be interesting to see how people whose social interactions depend on protest culture fare when the current trend fades away.
> A lot of the popular unrest facing both corporations & governments today is people learning that conflict gets results.
Conflict likes workers peaceful protests, union negotiations, and various acts of civil disobedience against the government are in a broad category of "conflict."
Corruption, violence, harassment, threats of violence, libel, literally burning parts of the world to the ground, incitements to violence, swatting, disinformation campaigns, and genocide are in another very broad category of conflict.
If your use of the word "conflicts" mixes anything freely from both two categories then the sentence I quoted is meaningless.
> The end result probably looks like us burning most of the modern world to the ground, literally, but that's where game theory is taking us.
If you are talking mainly about any of the things I mentioned in my first category of "conflict," then this sentence isn't persuasive.
If you are talking about the second category only, I don't understand the relationship to the article.
>The end result probably looks like us burning most of the modern world to the ground, literally, but that's where game theory is taking us.
Has it ever occurred to you that if people are willing to burn it to the ground, the "modern world" might not be quite as good for them as it is for you?
What we are seeing today are people who have long felt grievances talking to each other and discovering that they're not alone, and that the civil institutions which are supposed to address those grievances systematically do not do so.
And when people are given no other options to correct injustice, conflict is all that's left to them.
If you want to stop the world from burning, don't blame the people for fighting, blame the system for making it necessary.
> Has it ever occurred to you that if people are willing to burn it to the ground, the "modern world" might not be quite as good for them as it is for you?
Has it ever occurred to you that some people identify themselves not as individuals but as cells in a group organism (race, gender, etc...) and that these people seem to live by the old saying "it's better to rule in hell than serve in heaven"?
It's not about justice. It's about your group being on top.
The world that grievance mongers are building does not strive for fairness. It strives for an inversion of the cartoon hierarchy they've dreamed up. Where every imagined historical evil is played out against the descendants of the people who they think are responsible.
The whole thing is fueled by a vicious mixture of hate and envy, providing an endless supply of righteous anger induced endorphin rushes. It's addictive and cruel.
They could've claimed he broke his employment contract (I'm assuming he had a contract - he almost certainly did) which presumably had some "bad boy" clause in it, thus firing him for cause and not paying him anything. But that is messy, and costly, and the outcome is uncertain, and while Rubin sounds like a scumbag here, this also wasn't the most egregious behavior out there. Bottom line, Google was screwed the moment they signed that employment contract...those things are written incredibly favorably for the employee.
>[Google] would have to prove that he [Rubin] acted maliciously (or whatever), which would've been hard (if not impossible) to do, given that the accuser said they were coerced (not forced).
my understanding (IANAL) is that sexual coercion is illegal under CA labor laws. And it would definitely be a clear violation of a policy in any corp i've worked at and i suppose Google has a similar policy as well.
And then, after the walk out, they will return to their desks and continue working for the company. If you want a walk out to matter, you leave... and don't come back for free food in the employee cafeteria right after.
I think these are two very different things. The cost of changing companies (especially if you are at Google) is fairly low (and often comes with a salary increase). The cost of changing citizenship could be exorbitant. People claim that if you want change in a country, you vote. If you don't believe in a company's values, you join another. Tech employees in this economy do have a lot of power. I think that is a more apt comparison.
Exactly. Every single engineer at Google could get hired almost anywhere else. And many, who start their own projects could build those things outside Google as startups as well. (One of my favorite services was created by a Xoogler's startup.)
In addition to that, while a walk out does not "move the needle" for executives or investors in any significant sense, if any even statistically significant number of engineers were to leave, it would likely force them to reevaluate their executives and whether they should still be employed there. If they want true change, the executives at the very top have to go.
As another commenter said, what are they hoping a walk out will accomplish? What are they asking for? Andy Rubin already has his $90 million.
I don't know what the demands are -- I would hope they were transparency and accountability going forward. I do agree that a walkout without clear demands is meaningless -- except that it can embarrass senior management and that is sometimes the goal.
But beyond embarrassment, what these types of walkouts do is signal to management that discontent is brewing and that employees are willing to fight back and stand-up. And as people are arguing upthread, tech workers have a certain amount of power in deciding where they work. Recruiting is competitive as it is -- it certainly doesn't make it any easier if you have employees walking out en mass because of policies that protected senior executives.
Do walkouts work without mass buy-in, no -- not usually. The bad publicity/embarrassment factor could force some corporations to make changes, but just as many won't care.
This is why unions are typically successful with threats of work stoppage, and also why the hardest part of unionizing is getting enough employees to sign cards (not to mention fighting against the mistruths management usually puts out about the union itself).
I've never walked-out, but in my last job (which was union (WGA-E), we did very seriously consider a work stoppage because of changes that undermined our editorial independence, Even then, the walk-out is the last-resort, but to management's credit, once it was clear that we were willing to walk out, our demand (written indemnity protecting us from personal lawsuits based on things we wrote for the publication -- this is almost always provided by major news organizations but isn't always in writing. The circumstances of our company and the reason why we now had new ownership made it crucial that we get written indemnity and not merely a verbal promise that if sued, the company would pay legal bills if we were named personally) was met.
By contrast, there is no shortage of people willing to work for Google. If the most ethical people with the strongest moral compass leave, then they may be replaced with people who have less aversion to working on military drone contracts, or other things.
Smart people can be moral, they can also be amoral. Google can continue to execute with either. What you're suggesting could lead to a 'morality drain' equivalent to 'brain drain'
Previous internal protests have gotten Google to give up the DOD contract, and may convince them to give up on Dragonfly, without having the loudest voices -- who organize other people in the company -- from all leaving.
Leaving is a last resort protest, and often, if you get that far, you've reached a tipping point and there's no going back. You can bring economic pressure and harm to a company by striking, that's how unions work.
I see you constantly make this 'love it or leave it' suggestion on HN, but this could lead to a worsening of Google's behavior, not an improvement.
I've been in the industry since the early 90s, and have worked for several startups, as well as IBM, Oracle, and Google, and in every case, I've encountered more sexism and sexual harassment behavior elsewhere. Good lord, Oracle would take engineers to strip clubs on business trips. You're asking someone to quit a company which might be persuadable to change its behavior, and join other companies of tech-bros who don't have sexual harassment training, and often don't even have an internal mechanisms to report abuse. To what, walk out and quit again?
Sexual harassment and sexism in the tech industry is wide spread, and worse in many other companies. You can't run from it, you should organize collective action where you are and make them fire you. Quitting is the easy way out for a lot of companies.
It is interesting that the defense you've chosen is that which many have used to defend both Maven and Dragonfly; that at least if Google is doing it, it is better than if someone "less moral" was doing it, without recognizing the reduced excellence that would occur if that were true.
Perhaps you have less respect for Google engineers than I do! If Google is hiring the best, and many of them leave because of moral issues, then Google is left with hiring the second best. You seem to treat all Google engineers as replaceable cogs which are easily swapped out. But just because there is no shortage of people willing to work for Google doesn't mean there won't be a shortage of people of the caliber Google needs to continue at their current level.
Sure, the last few moral people leaving could lead to Google's behavior getting worse, but it would arguably also lead to Google being less successful. Even less people would trust Google as their behavior became "worse".
Perhaps you believe other places are worse because you remember them being worse a number of years ago. But things like sexual harassment training are pretty much nationwide standard these days. I've never been to a workplace that didn't mandate it, and every one of them has a process to report abuse. I am curious how you believe you can work for somewhere that's better than elsewhere when nearly every Alphabet executive has some sort of sexual misconduct that can be associated with them, and it's hard to see what way forward there is for remedying this.
Is Larry Page and Sergey Brin resigning a possible endgoal here? It's hard for me to see an end to the culture of sexual exploitation at a company where it starts at the very top and those people face no penalty.
It was only 2006 when I worked at Oracle, I moved to Google in 2009, it’s not like a sea change in sexual harassment reform happened between those years.
Oracle was a worse environment than Google in many ways, this is not nostalgia. Political infighting between teams was far worse, to the point that you’d have people yelling in meetings and then deliberately backstabbing and undermining other teams.
On a trip I went to Helsinki, they arranged naked Finnish sauna with beer and made no provision for the females with us, some who were from traditionally conservative cultures. After the sauna, they took the men to a strip club with Estonian and Russian strippers. I walked the female team members back to the hotel.
Startup companies in the Bay Area of course don’t have these processes, many of them don’t even have a legal or HR department if they have less than 50 people.
The toxic bro culture of SV startups has been well documented by female journalists, a lot of it stemming from the VCs themselves.
Google has 90000 people now, no one is irreplaceable, except maybe Jeff Dean :).
I don't think that's true. Given how consolidated "big tech" has become you have a limited number of options for matching liquid compensation, especially from a company that pays near top of market. You would need to heavily discount the value of whatever private shares from the 1000s of startups that would love to convince you that what they're offering you is equivalent or more than what you have (which it's almost definitely not).
Also some people would rather try to use their power to change things they don't like about a company from within rather than assume they have no power to affect change and just leave.
That's not universally true. If you have a family, if a lot of your salary is tied up in stock grants, or you are an immigrant, leaving isn't always so easy.
I'm none of those things (well, I'm married but we're child-free by choice and that's not changing), and even if tech employees do have more power than employees in other industries, that doesn't make "quitting" so easy.
And my past work in organized labor certainly gives me a bias here, but I'm of the opinion that if you like the place you work and you enjoy your job -- the appropriate response to bad things happening isn't always to quit (sometimes it is. Sometimes things are too egregious and you walk out. I did this once when I worked retail in college and saw blatant racism targeted at an employee by a regional manager and I walked out), the appropriate response is to fight internally to change things to make them better.
Google could have given him the 90 million but at the same time still call out his behavior.
But what happened was that Google only said how awesome everything is and hence in fact protected and worse, basically endorsed, his behavior.
I find it good that Google employees stand up here. I'm already wondering what will Google do about that other guy who gives back rubs in interviews? He got similar support and is still at Google as far as I understood.
> Google could have given him the 90 million but at the same time still call out his behavior.
Probably not; mutual non-disparagement clauses are extremely common in executive contracts. Breaking that would have been the same, in terms of kind of litigation risk, as not paying the $90 million.
It depends on the contract, but based on one I recently saw for a very sizable startup (several billion raised) - yes. The document I saw specifically stated you cannot say anything, written or otherwise, that speaks negatively of the company regardless of validity.
Non-disparagement clauses are usually worded in such a way to prohibit making disparaging statements even if the statements are true. The disparagement is based in the fact that it will damage the party's reputation, not on whether it is true or substantiated or not. (It all depends on the wording of the contract of course, and also how the courts are likely to interpret or enforce it, which is why professional legal advice is so essential in these matters.)
> Is it disparagement to report facts without attaching an opinion?
If the facts can reasonably be expected to damage the reputation of the other party to the agreement, yes, generally (subject to any specific exception in the agreement, such as the common one for accurate testimony in court proceedings when legally mandated.)
And you think the mutual non-disparagement clause required Google to invest in Playground Global?
> Rubin has also pulled together a group of high-rolling financiers; the endeavor is supported by a $300 million venture capital fund, whose investors include Google, HP, Foxconn, Redpoint Ventures, and Tencent, the Chinese Internet-services company.
> And you think the mutual non-disparagement clause required Google to invest in Playground Global?
Not directly.
It is a reason that he details of the separation would be tightly held, and thus may not have known to those in whatever of Google's investment subsidiaries was making the decision on that investment.
It would be surprising to me if a middle manager approved investing in a former highly visible executive's company without talking to folks involved with the separation agreement, precisely because there might be unknown legal details. The appropriate part of Google could have said "We cannot invest in this company because we have confidentially found reason to suspect future reputational risk, and you can't even tell him that's why you're not investing" or something.
My NDA with a client of mine works the same way, they're very common.
The question is whether it's enforceable. For my NDA it doesn't matter because I don't want to go to court, but for this situation it's much more likely to go there and probably end up with an even larger settlement.
> Breaking that would have been the same, in terms of kind of litigation risk, as not paying the $90 million.
Then maybe that's what they should have done. Not everything about running a company is about not taking risks that you can afford. Sometimes you just make a stand because you feel something is important enough to warrant the risk, even when you feel that calculus of the risk works out against you.
speaking of $90 million, is there any reporting anywhere on the compensation (if any) the victim of the coerced sexual act has received? is this known?
> During the job interview, she said he told her that he and his wife were “polyamorous,”.
> She said he invited her to Burning Man, an annual festival in the Nevada desert, the following week.
> 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.
> At Mr. DeVaul’s encampment, Ms. Simpson said, he asked her to remove her shirt and offered a back rub.
The thing about "credible" is that it has two sides. Was his denial also credible?
We need a shared public consensus around the truth about particular situations, such as whether someone has done something bad or not. One way to do that is with a trial, that has long-established traditions for admissible evidence and due process. And it has a definite and timely conclusion.
Is this shared public consensus always right? No, and it doesn't have to be. We just have to have a process that everyone has enough faith in. Do the particular parties always need to agree with that public consensus? No, they and their friends, family, etc. may still proclaim the innocence of a convict and there's nothing wrong with that.
The problem is when the public is called to be a huge jury on all kinds of issues; informed by whatever evidence makes it in the news (with no standards of admission). That leads to different people coming to different judgements, and those judgements build up into different sets of facts.
There's a saying "you are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts". That is a noble idea: that we can share facts and disagree, and that allows us to ultimately compromise and work together. But it depends on a shared consensus of what the facts are.
For better or worse (I believe better), when evidence is inconclusive, the shared public consensus is to give the benefit of the doubt to the accused. One-sided "credibility" is not conclusive and doesn't belong in the set of shared public facts.
The investigation at Google, considering both side came to that conclusion. Two other execs provided input also the NYT article last week mentioned. Page believed it and showed Rubin the door.
Came to what conclusion, specifically? Did they come to that conclusion based on a process established beforehand? Is this process documented publicly?
Or maybe this was just a calculated risk assessment, thinking more about PR and avoiding internal drama than a search for truth?
This article is missing a fairly important detail - the demands of the protesters. It is one thing to be unhappy with a situation, but given that the situation is now in the past - what exactly do they want to change going forward?
The article is almost scrupulous in painting the walkout as out-of-control employees rather than the precursors of organised labour.
It seems that the protesters believe that Google erred too much in favor of Andy Rubin (and other protected execs). A protest makes these concerns known to Google -- and just as importantly, to the public -- and ostensibly reduces the chances that Google will have a different mindset when a similar situation arises in the future.
In any case, the article describes this particular walkout as part of an ongoing/emerging movement:
> Employees participating in this movement for increased transparency and ethics within Google have presented management with petitions, made demands for greater employee oversight into product decisions made by management, and even quit their jobs in protest of Google’s decisions. Increasingly, employees have been signing their names to a spreadsheet, refusing to participate in screening interviews for potential new hires at Google as a form of protest.
> Increasingly, employees have been signing their names to a spreadsheet, refusing to participate in screening interviews for potential new hires at Google as a form of protest.
In general protests involve some amount of inflicting inconvenience or pain. Google is short on interviewer bandwidth, so bottlenecking it more is certainly a way to get management to feel the pain.
Do you mean forgoing an opportunity to shape it through choosing who gets hired?
Google's process is engineered in such a way that individuals will not be able to individually skew cultural selection for new hires, so I don't think they would even see hiring as such an opportunity.
Or were you talking about the more classic issue of whether it's more effective to be an insider vs. an outsider to affect change?
I think the general reasoning behind that type of protest is to weaken the legitimacy of the function (screening interviews) by refusing to either help perform or tacitly endorse it.
That paragraph you quote from the article is extremely vague though, is that what the protesters have actually said?
'Greater employee oversight into product decisions' is particularly .. what is that? The employees have veto power by majority vote? An individual employee can delay the project for a 3 month review? The project team chooses their own manager?
If they want a measurable change they need an articulation of what that change is that a corporate structure can handle. The boys and girls of Google are usually pretty clever, they 'll have figured that out.
I don't like their chances either way, management will persist in making management decisions even if they need to fire people to do so, but having a walk out to raise awareness would be silly. Google has internal message boards and isn't that big a company - they can talk to people directly.
> I don't like their chances either way, management will persist in making management decisions even if they need to fire people to do so
I'm not sure this is true - Google's legendarily high salaries and retention incentives are high because management has high demand for good people and specifically for people who have been at the company for a while. They might fire people, yes, but they won't do so casually. They might give in to the protesters out of rational self-interest. So I think the protestors' chances are better with this approach than with politely trying to change management's mind by debate.
(I also suspect that there are plenty of other Rubins in management, and rational debate that Google was too nice to Rubin is not ever going to be convincing to other rich abusers.)
Anything is possible. But there is a world of difference between an employee getting a lot of compensation and an employee who won't work on something the company thinks is important.
This could be an existential challenge to the company's owners being in control. The reason employees don't get % share of the profits is literally because they don't control what the company does.
If employees seriously can control what the company does, like turning down military projects for moral reasons or circumstances around making hiring/firing decisions, they become something like shareholders and the question becomes why aren't they exposed to the financial implications of their decisions in the same way shareholders are. Ie, why are they being paid a wage if not to have their decisions subsumed by a management structure?
Seems like a reasonable question to ask, but one less urgent for the employees (or anyone, really) to resolve than these other policy questions they're interested in. I do agree that Google should operate as a worker's collective instead of as a corporation with shareholders, but I don't think it's a prerequisite for anything.
(Also I'm pretty sure literally every employee involved is a shareholder with personal finances exposed to the state of the company. Stock is a serious form of compensation at Google.)
> If employees seriously can control what the company does ... they become something like shareholders
yes, but, in another sense, as a tech company, Google hires high-powered individuals precisely because they will control what the company does. i mean Google management knows it doesn't have all the answers itself and truly needs such high-powered employees to discover new markets and create technology to successfully exploit those markets and push the company in new directions.
Employees at tech firms have been asking for clarity and transparency on the HR processes applied to employees for the past couple of years.
Facebook, famously, publishes its HR guidelines, procedures, and the steps that it has pledged to take to deal with reports of misconduct, harassment, as well as how disciplinary actions will be carried out against at-fault employees.
This costs the company nothing, and makes it clear to employees where they stand, what steps will be taken if they bring up an issue/are the subject of disciplinary action. It makes it crystal-clear what behaviour is appropriate, what is inappropriate, what is a dangerous grey area, and how it will be dealt with.
a "walk out"... one in which people are so darn angry they walk out of work.. and then walk right back in and keep doing their job. I wish more people would quit these mega-corps over stuff like this. "Google engineers outraged...", "Facebook employees outraged..."... so quit. Go find work at a place that isn't an evil corporation. If you didn't get the memo, Facebook, Amazon, Google and Microsoft are all pretty evil.
If you work at Google and you really, truly believe that Google's overall work is good, good for you! I suppose I have more self respect to say that if a company is going to push me far enough to walk out, I probably need to move on in general.
And Amazon will host the Pentagon cloud, and no one really cares, employees aren't derailing things and they sure aren't protesting.
Meanwhile at Google there is one employee driven mess after another, they leak everything to the press, and have no regard for company image or reputation, maybe Google should just show the door to those threatening to quit and start incorporating these lessons into their hiring process.
As about a dozen people in this thread have already patiently explained, Google investigated the accusations and found them credible. If you have evidence to the contrary, which Google didn’t have at the time of its investigation, kindly present it.
I believe in the law. Google guys are smart, but they don`t have enough skills and intelligence in this kind of investigation and they can`t make any decision about guilty/not guilty.
Can you imagine a search engine developed by union labor? It’s actually funny if you think about it.
Side note: Do you think police officers act with more accountability or less considering their unions status? As if anyone else can shoot innocent people and take paid leave.
Yes, those are two obstacles that employers face when hiring strikebreakers, along with more significant obstacles like laws forbidding strikebreakers, licensing, and union violence.
The common factor is that it's not enough to refuse to work, unions must be able to ensure that no one does the work.
> unions must be able to ensure that no one does the work.
Often the barrier is natural, such as with folks at Google who built the systems and are (collectively) the only ones who can keep them running without significant interruption. By what authority, for what compelling reason, would you abridge their freedom of association (or in this case non-association)?
I wouldn't, they should be free to work or not as they choose. But they shouldn't be able to abridge anyone else's freedom and I doubt they're as irreplaceable as you think.
Doubt all you like. It doesn't matter. What matters is whether Google doubts it, and I think they know better. They know the costs of hiring and training and downtime for their business. Do you seriously suppose that they think they could just find a few thousand replacements on a moment's notice?
Now you're making a different argument. Yes, there are costs involved in replacing employees, and there are costs involved in allowing employees to walk out or refuse to work on certain projects. Naturally Google will weigh those costs.
But earlier you claimed they were "the only ones" capable, and that I wanted to abridge their freedom of association. I disagreed with both those statements.
Now that you've restricted your position to acknowledging a reasonable cost/benefit tradeoff for Google, I agree.
> earlier you claimed they were "the only ones" capable
No, I claimed that they were the only ones capable of running the systems without significant interruption. Others can be trained up, but it would take months and there would be some failures along the way. You're the one whose argument has been changing, since you started with the presumption that strikes' effectiveness relies on explicitly excluding others (e.g. via law or force).
I wonder what it would take for google to lose it's star as being such a great career defining place to work? I think it's kind of happening. We need more people out of the motherships and doing new, innovative stuff and defining their own progressive policies in their companies to compete with the motherships.
I get the scale of capital and everything, but the internet is still a changing place and could be so much more if people just said no.
Reminds me that Kierkegaard has written about Google:
"A revolutionary age is an age of action; ours is the age of advertisement and publicity. In the present age a rebellion is, of all things, the most unthinkable. Such an expression of strength would seem ridiculous to the calculating intelligence of our times. On the other hand a political virtuoso might bring off a feat almost as remarkable. He might write a manifesto suggesting a general assembly at which people should decide upon a rebellion, and it would be so carefully worded that even the censor would let it pass. At the meeting itself he would be able to create the impression that his audience had rebelled, after which they would all go quietly home – having spent a very pleasant evening."
If this is aiming to invoke the tired "virtue signalling" cliché, it's rather vacuous.
Kierkegaard's alternative was an armed rebellion. Are you seriously advocating for civil war, and dismissing all peaceful methods of achieving change?
That gets to the heart of what's wrong with the concept as it is used by the 4chan crowd these days: The success of democracy is exactly the possibility to effect change without shouldering grave personal risks. Trying to reframe this accomplishment as ineffective, weak, or lazy runs the danger of provoking exactly the sort of dramatic, self-sacrificing gestures that have been in the news recently.
In the specific case, maybe quitting would be slightly less dramatic but more forceful form of protest. But it's quite obvious that exists a gray area where it's perfectly legitimate to try to change an organisation, while still being convinced of its overall benefit. Recruitment & retainment are also huge factors for Google's future prospect, making a walk-out with the implied threat of quitting, an effective tool.
I don't super disagree, but note that one can argue for a mechanistic explanation of human behavior, with important implications about what we should conclude from that behavior, without implicitly endorsing different behavior or otherwise making an ethical claim.
>The success of democracy is exactly the possibility to effect change without shouldering grave personal risks...
True. In effect, we have a civil war every 4 years. During these civil wars there is zero personal risk to the participants. And even still, the largest bloc of us chooses not to participate.
Describing the process of voting and elections as a civil war is something that I think (and no offense meant by this) only be done by an American. No other democracy would describe voting this way (with the exception of dictatorships in democracy's clothing).
>making a walk-out with the implied threat of quitting, an effective tool.
Unless Google employees are addressing one of the elephants in their house, can any internal criticism of the company be seen as more than showmanship?
Andy Rubin is safe to target. He's already gone, and accused of something uncontroversial to hate.
Show me a walkout over Dragonfly and I'll show you a news story.
Good comment. But it is not about "forcing" an outcome. These kind of polarizing sensitive issues are never resolved long term through forcing any issue.
At their best these movements make people feel the hurt/injustice and need for safety being expressed underneath all the noise/reactions/counter reactions.
Once a majority in the room feel it the movement has succeeded. This entire process ofcourse doesn't align neatly with our cultural conditioning that change happens through confrontation and punishment.
“The success of democracy is exactly the possibility to effect change without shouldering grave personal risks. Trying to reframe this accomplishment as ineffective, weak, or lazy runs the danger of provoking exactly the sort of dramatic, self-sacrificing gestures that have been in the news recently.“
Wow, that quote is breathtakingly beautiful...and it’s so relavent today. Many have this self righteous feverish belief that their side is good and the other evil. When we as a society begin taking for granted the benefits of democracy and start truly believing we can’t enact change, the number of nut jobs committing violence will absolutely increase. Tribalism today is insane, and our ability to enact change peaceful,h keeps the violence and the bad acting to an extreme minimum. It’s easy to get lost in the chaos.
Honestly, I’m completly blown away by that quote and I’m using it as a rebuttal when these topics come up.
This in turn reminds me of a Dostoyevski story where a guy thinks he can make an amazing speech of 15 minutes that will convince everybody. I don't think this is how reality works
Whenever I hear about things like this, I always believe that only a fraction really care about the issue. The other half are saying “Wait... we can skip work and not get in trouble? Count me in!”
The same company that threw James Damore out for his scientifically backed opinion saying that misogyny isn't tolerated? They're a soulless entity that doesn't give a shit about people.
Every story needs two sides, I think Google didn't predicted that employees will be against the company policy. Well it's a two way highway and using everything to barricade themselves against an employee isn't the most constructive way of a dialog and change of policies.
Have the protest organizers communicated any specific set of outcomes they wish to achieve from the walkout? The news article does not go into those details. Perhaps I have missed out something there.
In the previous protests, Google employees had their demands penned in open letters which I believe also contributed to concrete actions taken or responses given by Google. A generic protest is bound to only draw vague assurances such as those given in their all-hands meeting as reported in the article.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 60.1 ms ] threadBut from what I read it sounds as if Google had to pay him the $90MM+, else be sued by him right? Because if they didn't pay him, he'd sue, then they [Google] would have to prove that he [Rubin] acted maliciously (or whatever), which would've been hard (if not impossible) to do, given that the accuser said they were coerced (not forced).
So it seems as if Google's hands were tied legally on this.
From what I'm reading, Google paid Rubin the amount he was entitled to in his contract. Some people point out that Google could have paid him next to nothing for firing him with cause - but Rubin could have sued Google, and almost certainly would have made the claim that the harassment allegations we're Google's way of trying to avoid paying him - and from what I read, Google probably wanted to avoid this, because it would inevitably involve the details of the alleged assault going public. I assume that the alleged victim doesn't want this, we don't have good reports of how much proof there is for these allegations, and there's also the possibility of Google losing the suit and looking like they're the ones in the wrong.
The reasons for his ouster weren't disclosed. I would be curious if Essential's investors (Redpoint, Altimeter, Amazon Alexa Fund) were aware of why Rubin left Google.
Moreover, this is a pattern at Google. Amit Singhal[1] was fired (also with a send-off and goodbye party and settled outstanding grants) after accusations of harassment were found credible.
He then landed as SVP of engineering at Uber, where he was forced to resign because he hadn't disclosed the prior HR complaint at Google. Now, obviously, the lack of disclosure is what did him in -- but why did Google not tell Uber that he was asked to leave during his background check?
Yes, Rubin likely would have sued. Yes, it likely would have been messy and very public. No, I do not believe for a second that Google settled to "protect" the victim; Google's settlement with the the alleged victim was certainly less than $90m.
Google settled b/c in 2014, the drama of fighting with someone like Rubin seemed more risky than just paying him off -- even with the risk that the reasons why might become public later. The climate of 2018 makes me believe that was a fundamental mistake and the company should have fought back to not pay money that a labor attorney could argue was not owed.
[1]: https://www.recode.net/2017/2/27/14745360/amit-singhal-googl...
You're ignoring the damage cause by the optics of such a lawsuit. Google being known as the company that used an allegation of harassment to try and cheat an exec out of his outstanding compensation would be atrocious for the company's image - and not to mention attach huge negative stigma around people who come forward with harassment campaigns against powerful people. It's easy to be idealistic when you're not the person or group who is at stake.
“Credible” isn't the same as “true” or even “more likely than not to be true”, even though it has recently become popular for credible allegations of certain wrongs to be treated as if they were proven true.
> Are you saying that companies should still pay severance to employees fired for sexual assault?
If a contract requires payment unless a certain wrong has been done, a party finding it credible that the wrong has been done that would relieve it of it's obligations, even if it would get a trier of fact to the same conclusion, hasn't actually established that it is free of the obligation.
Contract vs. at-will employment presents different considerations.
The point is, while Google itself determined that they had enough evidence to conclude that Rubin harassed someone, they probably didn't think they had enough evidence to convince a jury. All I'm saying is that the company should choose the least harmful option. Sometimes, being inflexible does more harm than good. For all we know, bringing this to trial would have made Google and the victim look like the bad guys, while the harasser looks like a hero standing up to a deceitful corporation. Instead, Google played it safe and chose not to risk it's reputation (which is an act of self interest) but also to avoid risking the reputation of the alleged victim (which is a benefit). Was this the right decision? Ultimately we'll never know short of inventing a time machine, but saying that Google unambiguously chose the worse of two options is short sighted.
Google for "golden parachute" and "termination clause", e.g. https://www.thebalancecareers.com/golden-parachute-2276017. Yes, when you're valuable enough, you can actually require as part of your employment agreement that your employer pay you massive amounts of money for being terminated, even if it's for cause. Had they tried not to pay out the golden parachute, it would have been an open and shut case ending in a loss for them. (And, believe me, they wouldn't have been even remotely tempted to try because every executive there also has their own personal golden parachute.)
That's not the case with Matt Lauer at NBC. Lauer sued and NBC has continued to fight back. It's also not the case with Les Moonves at CBS (the CBS situation is much more complicated because of the broader disputes between CBS, Viacom, and the infighting on the board of directors) -- in fact, CBS has been roundly criticized for potentially paying out $100m to Moonves (even if they withheld $80m in stock). CBS' business reputation is in the shitter b/c they have paid out.
>- and not to mention attach huge negative stigma around people who come forward with harassment campaigns against powerful people. It's easy to be idealistic when you're not the person or group who is at stake.
This stigma already exists. Refusing to settle doesn't make it go away or make it any better. Any person who goes forward against a powerful executive -- no matter how much proof they have -- is almost always fucked over. Going forward doesn't lead to someone winning. Financial settlements mostly exist b/c it's understood that the complainant will have an incredibly difficult time finding future employment.
And you're also forgetting that the person who is the alleged victim in this case could and would be protected in filings by shield laws (it's possible that someone on the other side would leak the identity, but that's legally not supposed to happen). This would be a civil complaint, not criminal. Moreover, I feel certain that there was already a settlement with a very strict NDA in place (and if either party were to violate the NDA, there would be substantial consequences).
The person who brought the claims against Rubin already has a stigma around her neck. Her life was already torn apart in an investigation by HR and presumably in whatever settlement was achieved. Please don't use the fact that those that come forward are often re-victimized as an excuse to PAY PEOPLE WITH CREDIBLE ACCUSATIONS AGAINST THEM $90 MILLION AND GIVE A HERO'S SENDOFF.
People who come forward almost always lose in very tangible ways -- even if they win. That's why coming forward is so difficult and why those that do are so incredibly brave.
I agree. The point is, refusing to pay Rubin and going to trial would have made the victim lose even more. She'd lose her privacy, for one. And if the case is lost she may lose her reputation and live the rest of her life branded as a false accuser.
Do you know if the accuser wanted to go to trial? If not then we have no business talking about how Google didn't act with the victim's interest in mind.
Likely, because his contract (executives are almost never at-will employees) included a mutual non-disparagement clause, which literally prevents either party from ever saying anything negative about the other.
> No, I do not believe for a second that Google settled to "protect" the victim
No, they did it to protect themselves. The fact that the route to Rubin winning would—as it always is in harassment cases—been destroying the victim further was probably incidental to Google, but no less true for that.
> The climate of 2018 makes me believe that was a fundamental mistake and the company should have fought back to not pay money that a labor attorney could argue was not owed.
I'm not sure even in 2018 it would look better for Google to have fought, lost, and left the accuser as collateral damage. Oh, it would be better optics if they fought and won without the victim's life being further destroyed, but whether that actually was the rational expectation at the time seems far from clear.
If you have a serial harasser, who is just paid off to leave quietly, then you just ensure that he gets to go off and do the same thing again. And be richer.
How about instead of giving him $90 million, you give that to his victims in exchange for them not making claims against him? The result is approximately the same, but at least you're giving money to the victim rather than the criminal.
To verify my reading (oh text communication :D)
Companies often say "court is more expensive than Y" because that's a directly measurable thing, and simply ignore the actual long term costs. Much like elected officials :-O
[edit: wtf typing :D)
Except Rubin was never accused of being a serial harasser that I've seen. He was terminated for having sexual relations with a subordinate.
> Google gave Rubin a reported $90 million exit package in 2014, following an investigation into an allegation that he had coerced another employee to perform oral sex on him. That investigation reportedly found that allegation to be credible.
I'm not following if that's all correct.
I doubt Rubin would have had the same behaviour with male subordinates, so that's a difference in treatment based on gender (woman who have to sleep with him to get equal treatment, or super devil advocate here, against men unable to "sleep to the top").
The reason companies have clear rules against this - which should be super easy to enforce - is because if you are in a position of power over someone, even if it was a hypothetical case of not abusing power, the subordinate can't tell so may feel coerced. If your underling feels coerced, they are. That it was unintentional is not relevant. Note, this is distinct from consent, which may or may not apply. Certainly if it's consent related the company should be forwarding to police.
In addition to that it seems like there is a large body of evidence of what is at minimum inappropriate behaviour of any employee, let alone the management and executive tiers. Any of which should have been firable.
This Rubin guy was no doubt a creep. From the NYT 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.”"
Yikes!
As others have already pointed out, any relationship with an employee in that kind of environment is exploitative by nature.
I don't understand why Americans are so concerned with what happens in somebody else's bedroom. I don't give a single flying f about what two consenting adults decide to do in a bedroom. There are all sorts of sexual kinks that I find disgusting and sometimes disturbing - but it turns out it's not really any of my business. The second you introduce a non-consenting adult, or someone not old enough to consent, then we've got a problem.
Otherwise - why do you care? It's none of your business.
When your boss is sleeping with one of your co-workers, how do you know that they are not in a quid-pro-quo relationship?
This isn't an American thing - this is a workplace thing.
If you're a manager, there's seven billion other people in the world, who don't report to you. You'll probably find your soulmate, or whatever the hell you're looking for - outside of your reporting chain.
And as I've said in just about every post I've made, he should've been fired for sleeping with a subordinate. There are countless reasons that's not OK. I was responding to and quite obviously referring to the guy making a big deal about him telling someone he "owns them" - or whatever terminology he used. Do I think that's disgusting? Sure. But that's between him and whomever he has that relationship with. If she's consenting and willing, so be it, not my place to judge.
Unless you've got info beyond what was in the times report, you're making a TON of assumptions about the nature of the relationship.
As I said, it's wrong and he should be fired for having relations with a subordinate no matter what the circumstances were. But to dive Right into "do this if you want to stay employed" when you don't even know which party initiated the relationship is a bit unfair.
Unless Google or the woman in question come forward with more info, I don't think it's at all fair to just assume the worst about everyone involved.
Because that seems to go somewhat beyond the usual standard. And it wouldn't even be helpful, unless you follow it up with a demand of DNA samples and expert witnesses.
FWIW: the parent comment wasn't assuming anything–they just more or less gave you the definition of coercion.
> following an investigation into an allegation that he had coerced another employee to perform oral sex on him.
To not acknowledge these facts clearly stated in every article strikes me as bad faith rather than confusion.
> Google could have fired Mr. Rubin and paid him little to nothing on the way out. [...]
> When Google fires lower-level employees, it typically marches them out immediately and pays little, if any, severance. But for senior executives, Google weighs other factors, said former executives. A wrongful termination lawsuit could mean unwanted media attention for Google and the victims of a misconduct case, with a loss resulting in significant damages.
It doesn't say explicitly, but it sounds like they didn't have a legal obligation to pay him; rather, they did so to avoid the possibility of a lawsuit or bad press.
What they definitely didn't have to do was this:
> Afterward, Google invested in Playground Global, a venture firm Mr. Rubin started six months after leaving the company.
It's one thing to pay severance if you don't think you can win an unlawful termination lawsuit, but it's another entirely to invest in that person's next venture after you're absolved of any legal obligation to them.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/technology/google-sexual-...
Quoting myself from upthread
>My gut tells me that at the time of his ouster, Alphabet was worried more about the optics of a protracted lawsuit with Rubin, rather than a cover-up for a harassment claim coming to light. Presumably the other individual in the harassment case settled and signed an NDA, which would preclude public discussion and disclosure.
In 2014, that may have seemed like the "safe" bet. In 2018, it's coming back to bite Alphabet in the ass.
The possibility of the lawsuit indicates there was at least a plausible argument for a legal requirement.
The difference between him and the people that they did fire was his position. Which is entirely backwards - the penalties for criminal behaviour should be higher for people with more power, not less.
Unfortunately, this is also all too common. But that doesn't make it OK and that doesn't mean that when it happens in our backyard (and not in Hollywood or finance or [insert industry here]), we should stand back and not do anything about it or speak up that it's not alright.
“Credible” is a far cry from being likely to meet the civil “preponderance of the evidence” standard, it literally is just “not implausible”.
> The difference between him and the people that they did fire was his position. Which is entirely backwards - the penalties for criminal behaviour should be higher for people with more power, not less.
Google doesn't impose criminal punishment, and I don't think anyone wants that to change.
> Google doesn't impose criminal punishment, and I don't think anyone wants that to change.
GP never suggested that Google hand out jail sentences, just that they shouldn't be giving $90 million severance to Rubin when many employees who got fired for a lot less egregious behavior got nothing.
Insofar as the issue is whether or not he is entitled to things promised in his employment contract, the standard for evaluation the allegation that he violated provisions of the contract which would trigger forfeiture of those things is necessarily ultimately the exact same standard as would apply in a suit over the contract, since whatever initial decision Google attempts to make is subject to potential suit.
> GP never suggested that Google hand out jail sentences,
The response was to the reference to “crimes” which was not otherwisegermane.
> just that they shouldn't be giving $90 million severance to Rubin when many employees who got fired for a lot less egregious behavior got nothing.
At-will employees are less protected than those with specific employment contracts; executives are usually in the latter category, rank and file employees generally not unless unionized.
Expecting treatment of employees to be the same when they are dissimilarly situated in terms of legal relationship is irrational.
It isn't clear if Rubin's actions reached a level that would breach his contracts morality clause (assuming one existed -- and one almost always exists), which would allow them to fire him with cause -- but the fact that an internal investigation found that he acted inappropriately, would at least indicate there was a legal way to fire Rubin without paying him $90m.
(I am not a lawyer, FWIW.)
My gut tells me that at the time of his ouster, Alphabet was worried more about the optics of a protracted lawsuit with Rubin, rather than a cover-up for a harassment claim coming to light. Presumably the other individual in the harassment case settled and signed an NDA, which would preclude public discussion and disclosure.
In retrospect, that was a bad call -- because in 2018, the optics of sweeping credible harassment allegations by a senior executive under the rug and then guiding them out the door with a $90m settlement is something that sickens and angers many individuals.
It's the sort of move that is incredibly common in other parts of business (Hollywood and the media business in general), but that doesn't make it OK. And it is particularly offensive when the industry in which it takes place -- and the company it is taking place at -- have a history of trying to be "better" than the status quo.
And then, not three months later, investing substantially in his next venture...
They aren't really wrong in this - the squeaky wheel gets the grease and always has, and now a much larger portion of the population is willing to squeak.
The end result probably looks like us burning most of the modern world to the ground, literally, but that's where game theory is taking us. I wonder if much of the appeal of the crypto world (where whole organizations are disintermediated in favor of smart contracts) is because people are realizing that an organization is nothing but a target for angry people, and so by getting rid of the organization and making any people behind it anonymous & fungible, you can continue to organize economic activity without painting a target on your face.
Someone will win an Econ Nobel for this.
Crypto is a compelling simulacrum of classical liberalism (free individuals engaging in trade and limited governments using precise laws to protect the commons).
This time we are trusting machines and mathematics to preserve individual rights rather than culture.
But I still think it's a worthwhile endeavor.
hard nod
points to last sentence in profile
I'm one of those "get off my yard types" when someone comes along and (seemingly) blindly proposes blockchain in a discussion because blockchain is very good at what it does but what it doesn't do is 'everything'...
...but I'd take it a step further and say it's simulacra, the dollar became classical liberal econ simulacrum the minute we decided to start printing the things at will and standing well back[1].
---
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2AvU2cfXRk
The end does not justify the means. So what good is a society built on prejudice, harassment, and corruption?
If you can sweep controversy under the rug until such time that it's convenient then good luck ever getting change to occur for the better.
> by getting rid of the organization and making any people behind it anonymous & fungible, you can continue to organize economic activity without painting a target on your face.
Making it anonymous & fungible is only necessary if you're unable or unwilling to stand up for your actions. If you're unwilling to stand up for what's right or are doing something you know is unethical, then what right do you have to the proceeds from your actions?
Spoken like someone who was raised in a culture where airing grievances led to getting what you wanted most of the time.
I mean, it's not illogical. There's a reason why the activist archetype is so respected in our society. It gets results!
But the outlook that fuels activists to push things things until they win: "I'd rather burn everything to the ground than not get what I want" is also an incredibly short sighted and selfish way to look at things.
This is the human condition I guess. We take things for granted. Like the stability we've grown up in, so much that we're willing to sacrifice our inheritance [a stable and mostly fair society] chasing windmills.
Luckily we've amassed so much wealth and institutional inertia that I think it'll be a while before it all comes tumbling down.
The notion that this is a “stable and mostly fair society” is not self-evidently true. And I suspect that if the question were surveyed, the results would differ dramatically across identity groups.
But I get it. It feels good to complain and to hate on things. Especially when there is no downside (e.g. you get patted on the back and told you're a holy person). You might even convince some of the oppressed "identity groups" you're speaking for to help you implement your pet projects along the way.
I think people may need to be allowed a vote in the companies they work for/monopolies that service them, and that freedom-of-speech rules for corporations, employees, and customers is likely to follow that of their host nations — not equally free everywhere, but that no-disparagement clauses would be legal in the UK and illegal in the USA, for example.
Why shouldnt companies be treated the same way by their employees?
and
(2) Google went on to invest in his new venture, which I highly doubt was in the contract no matter when the whole thing went down.
As it is one arm of Google decided to let the man go for cause and give him a golden parachute, and another arm of the company decided to invest in his next venture.
Neither of those read like something bad happening to Andy Rubin. You could fire me any day for any reason you'd like to pick if you gave me 90 million.
Doesn’t this presuppose “good” people are in charge?
Google will have a few bad days of PR, nobody will be able to identify this event in Google's stock price or quarterly reports, and in about three weeks everyone will have forgotten completely about this and gone on to the next series of things to be bothered about.
This much simpler explanation allows the world to keep stumbling along about like it always has, and cryptocurrency gets to continue to be a solution in search of a problem.
What do you mean by that? I know only a few Googlers, mostly new grads. They don't seem to be worked to the bone or mistreated (9-5, high comp, benefits etc.) and have excellent working conditions (ergonomic workflow, offices with natural light, mentoring, good internal tooling).
In fact, I don't know if I would enjoy it. Since I like intense environments... they have it good though.
It's pretty messed up that we look at a situation like that now and say, "well the employees only have to work 9 to 5 and they get great health benefits, so I don't see why anybody would be upset."
Maybe pushback against google is appropriate, maybe it's effective, but I am sure fatigued by this kind of stuff.
Because if, as professed, have no opinion one way or the other, I fail to see how you can be annoyed by something you only read about (after clicking on links presumably informing you what to expect). Are you also annoyed by the weather report? Because that seems to have become a daily staple.
Conflict likes workers peaceful protests, union negotiations, and various acts of civil disobedience against the government are in a broad category of "conflict."
Corruption, violence, harassment, threats of violence, libel, literally burning parts of the world to the ground, incitements to violence, swatting, disinformation campaigns, and genocide are in another very broad category of conflict.
If your use of the word "conflicts" mixes anything freely from both two categories then the sentence I quoted is meaningless.
> The end result probably looks like us burning most of the modern world to the ground, literally, but that's where game theory is taking us.
If you are talking mainly about any of the things I mentioned in my first category of "conflict," then this sentence isn't persuasive.
If you are talking about the second category only, I don't understand the relationship to the article.
Has it ever occurred to you that if people are willing to burn it to the ground, the "modern world" might not be quite as good for them as it is for you?
What we are seeing today are people who have long felt grievances talking to each other and discovering that they're not alone, and that the civil institutions which are supposed to address those grievances systematically do not do so.
And when people are given no other options to correct injustice, conflict is all that's left to them.
If you want to stop the world from burning, don't blame the people for fighting, blame the system for making it necessary.
Has it ever occurred to you that some people identify themselves not as individuals but as cells in a group organism (race, gender, etc...) and that these people seem to live by the old saying "it's better to rule in hell than serve in heaven"?
It's not about justice. It's about your group being on top.
The world that grievance mongers are building does not strive for fairness. It strives for an inversion of the cartoon hierarchy they've dreamed up. Where every imagined historical evil is played out against the descendants of the people who they think are responsible.
The whole thing is fueled by a vicious mixture of hate and envy, providing an endless supply of righteous anger induced endorphin rushes. It's addictive and cruel.
my understanding (IANAL) is that sexual coercion is illegal under CA labor laws. And it would definitely be a clear violation of a policy in any corp i've worked at and i suppose Google has a similar policy as well.
That's a rather delightful image! But I think you meant "exorbitant".
In addition to that, while a walk out does not "move the needle" for executives or investors in any significant sense, if any even statistically significant number of engineers were to leave, it would likely force them to reevaluate their executives and whether they should still be employed there. If they want true change, the executives at the very top have to go.
As another commenter said, what are they hoping a walk out will accomplish? What are they asking for? Andy Rubin already has his $90 million.
But beyond embarrassment, what these types of walkouts do is signal to management that discontent is brewing and that employees are willing to fight back and stand-up. And as people are arguing upthread, tech workers have a certain amount of power in deciding where they work. Recruiting is competitive as it is -- it certainly doesn't make it any easier if you have employees walking out en mass because of policies that protected senior executives.
Do walkouts work without mass buy-in, no -- not usually. The bad publicity/embarrassment factor could force some corporations to make changes, but just as many won't care.
This is why unions are typically successful with threats of work stoppage, and also why the hardest part of unionizing is getting enough employees to sign cards (not to mention fighting against the mistruths management usually puts out about the union itself).
I've never walked-out, but in my last job (which was union (WGA-E), we did very seriously consider a work stoppage because of changes that undermined our editorial independence, Even then, the walk-out is the last-resort, but to management's credit, once it was clear that we were willing to walk out, our demand (written indemnity protecting us from personal lawsuits based on things we wrote for the publication -- this is almost always provided by major news organizations but isn't always in writing. The circumstances of our company and the reason why we now had new ownership made it crucial that we get written indemnity and not merely a verbal promise that if sued, the company would pay legal bills if we were named personally) was met.
Smart people can be moral, they can also be amoral. Google can continue to execute with either. What you're suggesting could lead to a 'morality drain' equivalent to 'brain drain'
Previous internal protests have gotten Google to give up the DOD contract, and may convince them to give up on Dragonfly, without having the loudest voices -- who organize other people in the company -- from all leaving.
Leaving is a last resort protest, and often, if you get that far, you've reached a tipping point and there's no going back. You can bring economic pressure and harm to a company by striking, that's how unions work.
I see you constantly make this 'love it or leave it' suggestion on HN, but this could lead to a worsening of Google's behavior, not an improvement.
I've been in the industry since the early 90s, and have worked for several startups, as well as IBM, Oracle, and Google, and in every case, I've encountered more sexism and sexual harassment behavior elsewhere. Good lord, Oracle would take engineers to strip clubs on business trips. You're asking someone to quit a company which might be persuadable to change its behavior, and join other companies of tech-bros who don't have sexual harassment training, and often don't even have an internal mechanisms to report abuse. To what, walk out and quit again?
Sexual harassment and sexism in the tech industry is wide spread, and worse in many other companies. You can't run from it, you should organize collective action where you are and make them fire you. Quitting is the easy way out for a lot of companies.
Perhaps you have less respect for Google engineers than I do! If Google is hiring the best, and many of them leave because of moral issues, then Google is left with hiring the second best. You seem to treat all Google engineers as replaceable cogs which are easily swapped out. But just because there is no shortage of people willing to work for Google doesn't mean there won't be a shortage of people of the caliber Google needs to continue at their current level.
Sure, the last few moral people leaving could lead to Google's behavior getting worse, but it would arguably also lead to Google being less successful. Even less people would trust Google as their behavior became "worse".
Perhaps you believe other places are worse because you remember them being worse a number of years ago. But things like sexual harassment training are pretty much nationwide standard these days. I've never been to a workplace that didn't mandate it, and every one of them has a process to report abuse. I am curious how you believe you can work for somewhere that's better than elsewhere when nearly every Alphabet executive has some sort of sexual misconduct that can be associated with them, and it's hard to see what way forward there is for remedying this.
Is Larry Page and Sergey Brin resigning a possible endgoal here? It's hard for me to see an end to the culture of sexual exploitation at a company where it starts at the very top and those people face no penalty.
Oracle was a worse environment than Google in many ways, this is not nostalgia. Political infighting between teams was far worse, to the point that you’d have people yelling in meetings and then deliberately backstabbing and undermining other teams.
On a trip I went to Helsinki, they arranged naked Finnish sauna with beer and made no provision for the females with us, some who were from traditionally conservative cultures. After the sauna, they took the men to a strip club with Estonian and Russian strippers. I walked the female team members back to the hotel.
Startup companies in the Bay Area of course don’t have these processes, many of them don’t even have a legal or HR department if they have less than 50 people.
The toxic bro culture of SV startups has been well documented by female journalists, a lot of it stemming from the VCs themselves.
Google has 90000 people now, no one is irreplaceable, except maybe Jeff Dean :).
Also some people would rather try to use their power to change things they don't like about a company from within rather than assume they have no power to affect change and just leave.
I'm none of those things (well, I'm married but we're child-free by choice and that's not changing), and even if tech employees do have more power than employees in other industries, that doesn't make "quitting" so easy.
And my past work in organized labor certainly gives me a bias here, but I'm of the opinion that if you like the place you work and you enjoy your job -- the appropriate response to bad things happening isn't always to quit (sometimes it is. Sometimes things are too egregious and you walk out. I did this once when I worked retail in college and saw blatant racism targeted at an employee by a regional manager and I walked out), the appropriate response is to fight internally to change things to make them better.
But what happened was that Google only said how awesome everything is and hence in fact protected and worse, basically endorsed, his behavior.
I find it good that Google employees stand up here. I'm already wondering what will Google do about that other guy who gives back rubs in interviews? He got similar support and is still at Google as far as I understood.
Probably not; mutual non-disparagement clauses are extremely common in executive contracts. Breaking that would have been the same, in terms of kind of litigation risk, as not paying the $90 million.
For some examples of how non-disparagement clauses are commonly worded: https://www.contractstandards.com/public/clauses/non-dispara...
If the facts can reasonably be expected to damage the reputation of the other party to the agreement, yes, generally (subject to any specific exception in the agreement, such as the common one for accurate testimony in court proceedings when legally mandated.)
> Rubin has also pulled together a group of high-rolling financiers; the endeavor is supported by a $300 million venture capital fund, whose investors include Google, HP, Foxconn, Redpoint Ventures, and Tencent, the Chinese Internet-services company.
https://www.wired.com/2016/02/android-inventor-andy-rubin-pl...
Not directly.
It is a reason that he details of the separation would be tightly held, and thus may not have known to those in whatever of Google's investment subsidiaries was making the decision on that investment.
The question is whether it's enforceable. For my NDA it doesn't matter because I don't want to go to court, but for this situation it's much more likely to go there and probably end up with an even larger settlement.
Then maybe that's what they should have done. Not everything about running a company is about not taking risks that you can afford. Sometimes you just make a stand because you feel something is important enough to warrant the risk, even when you feel that calculus of the risk works out against you.
Can you post some more details, a simple google search does not return anything meaningful.
> During the job interview, she said he told her that he and his wife were “polyamorous,”.
> She said he invited her to Burning Man, an annual festival in the Nevada desert, the following week.
> 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.
> At Mr. DeVaul’s encampment, Ms. Simpson said, he asked her to remove her shirt and offered a back rub.
We need a shared public consensus around the truth about particular situations, such as whether someone has done something bad or not. One way to do that is with a trial, that has long-established traditions for admissible evidence and due process. And it has a definite and timely conclusion.
Is this shared public consensus always right? No, and it doesn't have to be. We just have to have a process that everyone has enough faith in. Do the particular parties always need to agree with that public consensus? No, they and their friends, family, etc. may still proclaim the innocence of a convict and there's nothing wrong with that.
The problem is when the public is called to be a huge jury on all kinds of issues; informed by whatever evidence makes it in the news (with no standards of admission). That leads to different people coming to different judgements, and those judgements build up into different sets of facts.
There's a saying "you are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts". That is a noble idea: that we can share facts and disagree, and that allows us to ultimately compromise and work together. But it depends on a shared consensus of what the facts are.
For better or worse (I believe better), when evidence is inconclusive, the shared public consensus is to give the benefit of the doubt to the accused. One-sided "credibility" is not conclusive and doesn't belong in the set of shared public facts.
Or maybe this was just a calculated risk assessment, thinking more about PR and avoiding internal drama than a search for truth?
The truth came out eventually, although unfortunately four years later looking at the dates. Google tried to hide it, that's why people are upset.
The article is almost scrupulous in painting the walkout as out-of-control employees rather than the precursors of organised labour.
In any case, the article describes this particular walkout as part of an ongoing/emerging movement:
> Employees participating in this movement for increased transparency and ethics within Google have presented management with petitions, made demands for greater employee oversight into product decisions made by management, and even quit their jobs in protest of Google’s decisions. Increasingly, employees have been signing their names to a spreadsheet, refusing to participate in screening interviews for potential new hires at Google as a form of protest.
That last seems particularly counterproductive.
In general protests involve some amount of inflicting inconvenience or pain. Google is short on interviewer bandwidth, so bottlenecking it more is certainly a way to get management to feel the pain.
I do see your point it this is a real resource constraint, but though.
Google's process is engineered in such a way that individuals will not be able to individually skew cultural selection for new hires, so I don't think they would even see hiring as such an opportunity.
Or were you talking about the more classic issue of whether it's more effective to be an insider vs. an outsider to affect change?
'Greater employee oversight into product decisions' is particularly .. what is that? The employees have veto power by majority vote? An individual employee can delay the project for a 3 month review? The project team chooses their own manager?
If they want a measurable change they need an articulation of what that change is that a corporate structure can handle. The boys and girls of Google are usually pretty clever, they 'll have figured that out.
I don't like their chances either way, management will persist in making management decisions even if they need to fire people to do so, but having a walk out to raise awareness would be silly. Google has internal message boards and isn't that big a company - they can talk to people directly.
I'm not sure this is true - Google's legendarily high salaries and retention incentives are high because management has high demand for good people and specifically for people who have been at the company for a while. They might fire people, yes, but they won't do so casually. They might give in to the protesters out of rational self-interest. So I think the protestors' chances are better with this approach than with politely trying to change management's mind by debate.
(I also suspect that there are plenty of other Rubins in management, and rational debate that Google was too nice to Rubin is not ever going to be convincing to other rich abusers.)
This could be an existential challenge to the company's owners being in control. The reason employees don't get % share of the profits is literally because they don't control what the company does.
If employees seriously can control what the company does, like turning down military projects for moral reasons or circumstances around making hiring/firing decisions, they become something like shareholders and the question becomes why aren't they exposed to the financial implications of their decisions in the same way shareholders are. Ie, why are they being paid a wage if not to have their decisions subsumed by a management structure?
(Also I'm pretty sure literally every employee involved is a shareholder with personal finances exposed to the state of the company. Stock is a serious form of compensation at Google.)
yes, but, in another sense, as a tech company, Google hires high-powered individuals precisely because they will control what the company does. i mean Google management knows it doesn't have all the answers itself and truly needs such high-powered employees to discover new markets and create technology to successfully exploit those markets and push the company in new directions.
Facebook, famously, publishes its HR guidelines, procedures, and the steps that it has pledged to take to deal with reports of misconduct, harassment, as well as how disciplinary actions will be carried out against at-fault employees.
This costs the company nothing, and makes it clear to employees where they stand, what steps will be taken if they bring up an issue/are the subject of disciplinary action. It makes it crystal-clear what behaviour is appropriate, what is inappropriate, what is a dangerous grey area, and how it will be dealt with.
And Amazon will host the Pentagon cloud, and no one really cares, employees aren't derailing things and they sure aren't protesting.
Meanwhile at Google there is one employee driven mess after another, they leak everything to the press, and have no regard for company image or reputation, maybe Google should just show the door to those threatening to quit and start incorporating these lessons into their hiring process.
Side note: Do you think police officers act with more accountability or less considering their unions status? As if anyone else can shoot innocent people and take paid leave.
I built my house with union labor. I think I got a much better result.
Unions are rather weak when they can't prevent employers from hiring strikebreakers.
The common factor is that it's not enough to refuse to work, unions must be able to ensure that no one does the work.
Often the barrier is natural, such as with folks at Google who built the systems and are (collectively) the only ones who can keep them running without significant interruption. By what authority, for what compelling reason, would you abridge their freedom of association (or in this case non-association)?
But earlier you claimed they were "the only ones" capable, and that I wanted to abridge their freedom of association. I disagreed with both those statements.
Now that you've restricted your position to acknowledging a reasonable cost/benefit tradeoff for Google, I agree.
No, I claimed that they were the only ones capable of running the systems without significant interruption. Others can be trained up, but it would take months and there would be some failures along the way. You're the one whose argument has been changing, since you started with the presumption that strikes' effectiveness relies on explicitly excluding others (e.g. via law or force).
I get the scale of capital and everything, but the internet is still a changing place and could be so much more if people just said no.
"A revolutionary age is an age of action; ours is the age of advertisement and publicity. In the present age a rebellion is, of all things, the most unthinkable. Such an expression of strength would seem ridiculous to the calculating intelligence of our times. On the other hand a political virtuoso might bring off a feat almost as remarkable. He might write a manifesto suggesting a general assembly at which people should decide upon a rebellion, and it would be so carefully worded that even the censor would let it pass. At the meeting itself he would be able to create the impression that his audience had rebelled, after which they would all go quietly home – having spent a very pleasant evening."
Kierkegaard's alternative was an armed rebellion. Are you seriously advocating for civil war, and dismissing all peaceful methods of achieving change?
That gets to the heart of what's wrong with the concept as it is used by the 4chan crowd these days: The success of democracy is exactly the possibility to effect change without shouldering grave personal risks. Trying to reframe this accomplishment as ineffective, weak, or lazy runs the danger of provoking exactly the sort of dramatic, self-sacrificing gestures that have been in the news recently.
In the specific case, maybe quitting would be slightly less dramatic but more forceful form of protest. But it's quite obvious that exists a gray area where it's perfectly legitimate to try to change an organisation, while still being convinced of its overall benefit. Recruitment & retainment are also huge factors for Google's future prospect, making a walk-out with the implied threat of quitting, an effective tool.
True. In effect, we have a civil war every 4 years. During these civil wars there is zero personal risk to the participants. And even still, the largest bloc of us chooses not to participate.
Unless Google employees are addressing one of the elephants in their house, can any internal criticism of the company be seen as more than showmanship?
Andy Rubin is safe to target. He's already gone, and accused of something uncontroversial to hate.
Show me a walkout over Dragonfly and I'll show you a news story.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this sentence, because it so succinctly expresses something I find absolutely immoral. The gamble without a downside.
At their best these movements make people feel the hurt/injustice and need for safety being expressed underneath all the noise/reactions/counter reactions.
Once a majority in the room feel it the movement has succeeded. This entire process ofcourse doesn't align neatly with our cultural conditioning that change happens through confrontation and punishment.
Wow, that quote is breathtakingly beautiful...and it’s so relavent today. Many have this self righteous feverish belief that their side is good and the other evil. When we as a society begin taking for granted the benefits of democracy and start truly believing we can’t enact change, the number of nut jobs committing violence will absolutely increase. Tribalism today is insane, and our ability to enact change peaceful,h keeps the violence and the bad acting to an extreme minimum. It’s easy to get lost in the chaos.
Honestly, I’m completly blown away by that quote and I’m using it as a rebuttal when these topics come up.
In the previous protests, Google employees had their demands penned in open letters which I believe also contributed to concrete actions taken or responses given by Google. A generic protest is bound to only draw vague assurances such as those given in their all-hands meeting as reported in the article.