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"As part of the deal, Mr. Jacobs was kept on as a security consultant, Ms. Padilla testified. His job: investigating the claims made in the letter his lawyer wr
by throw7 9y ago
"As part of the deal, Mr. Jacobs was kept on as a security consultant, Ms. Padilla testified. His job: investigating the claims made in the letter his lawyer wrote."
Is this a joke? Is this real? I can't even.
- danmaz74 9y agoIt for sure looks unreal.
- tptacek 9y agoThis to me is the most damning part of Uber's response. Can I believe you'd pay low 7 figures to someone extorting your 11-figure firm? Yes. Can I believe you would then, even on paper, retain that person on your security staff? No. What makes much more sense is that the payoff bought off his silence, and that the "position" they offered him was a sop to his conscience.
- forapurpose 9y agoThe "position" might have given them more leverage over his actions: They can control the communications and other actions of an employee, to a significant degree, and as someone investigating the bad behavior, the employee now shares some liability for what Uber does in that regard.
- tptacek 9y agoThis is the kind of thing that makes sense on a message board, but having been a party to a situation in which a former employee (not at one of my companies) made claims which the management team believed to be bogus, the (professional) management of that company did whatever they could to get that employee _as far as they possibly could_ from the operations of the company, _as quickly as they could_. The idea that there was some machievellian scheme to keep this guy on the books in order to monitor him more closely does not ring true at all.
- user5994461 9y agoI agree that professional management would get rid of the guy as quickly as far away as possible. If we assume for a minute that uber is abysmal at management, it makes sense that they would go for the crazy strategy to keep him aboard and monitor him.
- tptacek 9y agoNo it doesn't! That's crazy logic. "They're dumb, so it's reasonable to attribute every possible dumb decision to them." Dumbness doesn't work that way.
- forapurpose 9y agoTo omit statements like the following would not at all detract from the comments or from the discussion. > This is the kind of thing that makes sense on a message board > That's crazy logic. The HN guidelines almost directly address this kind of comment: When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." Brevity is the soul of wit.
- londons_explore 9y agoA random payment looks like a bribe, which is illegal. Payments spread over 12 months with an employment contract look like salary. Uber probably said "you're employed to stay at home and not have any valid work logins or email addresses"
- woodandsteel 9y agoWould be interesting if the Waymo lawyers did discovery on all the specifics, if there are any, of what Jacobs did as a consultant who was supposed to be investigating his own claims. If he did nothing, then I think that would be pretty good evidence it was really a bribe payed out over time.
- tptacek 9y agoNo, that's not how bribery works.
- jedmeyers 9y agoSeems like straight from the Fight Club "Narrator: I have a better solution: You keep me on the payroll as an outside consultant and in exchange for my salary, my job will be never to tell people these things that I know. "