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There is no way you would fire a CEO you actually wanted in place because they had a consensual relationship with a subordinate in the past. Why are US companie

• seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  It is pretty scandalous. If it ever became public, the board would look really bad, so even if they didn’t want to fire him they probably had little choice but to.
• Gargoyle 8y ago
  There has to be more to this than is being revealed. Either something about the relationship or...they don't really want him in place anyway.
• jrs95 8y ago
  To an extent I think that these things are promoted because they’re a very effective way to mislead people.
• catbatdat9034 8y ago
  The way the world works, it doesn't make sense that that alone is the reason. There has to be something more.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• unknown_apostle 8y ago
  Not sure if he just got fired for a relationship or if there's something more. But your remark about the "moralising" of US companies has also been my experience. I worked in a Europe-based office for a US-owned multinational company. Alcohol was strictly forbidden. (Needless to say, the fridge was filled regardless and late Friday afternoon, people would have a beer and fraternize.)
  • SimbaOnSteroids 8y ago
    Wasn't this guy basically caught red handed selling shares of intel rather quickly and suspiciously right before news of the meltdown and spectre vulnerabilities were publicized. If the board got wind of a pending investigation into that incident they might be looking to distance him from the company before the other shoe drops.
  • vidanay 8y ago
    Opposite situation for me....I work for a Swiss company in a US office. They all think we are crazy for not allowing Glühwein at our Christmas....errr.....Winter party. And there's no such thing as Friday afternoon beers in the fridge.
• marcus_holmes 8y ago
  A relationship between a manager and someone they manage compromises the effectiveness of both the manager and the team. As CEO, he is everyone's boss, so having a consensual relationship with anyone involved in the organisation is a bad thing. If she got promoted, would it be because of her work, or her relationship with the boss? If she didn't get promoted, would it be because of her attitude, or her relationship with the boss? If she had an argument with a colleague, was it because she was an entitled slut? If he cut the budget of the department she worked in, was it because he was going off her? It's pernicious and there's nothing you can do about it except simply not sleep with the people you manage. If a CEO of a blue-chip like Intel doesn't get this basic rule of management, what other basic mistakes is he going to make? Bring a gun into work? ;)
  • tfha 8y ago
    You can ask those same questions about any attractive person or any person with powerful family members. Does that mean we can't employ those people either? Of course not. If a manager runs a tight ship and treats their team fairly, then there shouldn't be anything wrong with a relationship. If as a manager you can't properly separate your emotions and friendships from your management duties, you aren't going to make a good manager anyway. The manager who is going to unfairly promote the person they are seeing is also going to unfairly promote the worker who they are best friends with over the worker who best deserves the promotion.
    • marcus_holmes 8y ago
      it's not about what the manager actually does. It's about the team's perception of it. He could be the best manager in the world, and have perfect separation between his emotions and his professional judgement. But the other people in the team will evaluate his decisions with the relationship in mind even if he doesn't. There will always be a question mark over his leadership decisions, even if those decisions were made for the best reasons.
    • rurban 8y ago
      Exactly. There are many successful cases of teachers, where their own kids are sitting in their classes. According to the CEO logic this should not be allowed and would not work. It does. Are teachers better managers than CEO's? Apparently. But then they should get paid accordingly.
• morogop 8y ago
  Because there are other reasons, and only an absolute fucking moron would think a few consensual dates were the only driver. Congratulations on being a zero-intelligence, non-critical thinking idiot.
• dooglius 8y ago
  >No one would take issue if he carried a gun at work You really don't think so? I'm no CEO but I imagine carrying a gun around would at least warrant some public criticism, particularly for a tech CEO in the San Francisco Bay Area.
  • ghaff 8y ago
    In areas of the country where some material number of people do carry firearms (e.g. Texas), it's not uncommon to have explicit signs on company buildings that forbid firearms. I imagine that's pretty common policy at many if not most companies.
    • paulddraper 8y ago
      Though unless they have metal detectors, it's a bit like requiring your employees to wear briefs. If you can tell they're not doing what you say, they're not doing it right.
      • ghaff 8y ago
        Depends. There are open carry and concealed carry licenses. Also, if you are an employee and sneak a weapon in and someone finds out, you will be fired.
  • sizzzzlerz 8y ago
    We had a CFO bring a handgun onto company property in his car. Some one spotted it (apparently, it was in plain view in the car) and notified the police. He was given a talking-to by the cops and then by company reps. He wasn't fired at that point but he was gone in a month or two. Related? I don't know but it wouldn't surprise me. The company is in Sunnyvale, site of the Richard Farley murders at ESL in 1988. So, yeah, I think the police would be interested in knowing his intentions.
  • johngalt 8y ago
    Why? If you were worth hundreds of millions, wouldn't it make sense to have some means of self defense?
• frockington 8y ago
  Is it really acceptable for a manger to have sexual relations with direct reports in other countries? That seems so 1950s Mad Men era from an American perspective
• hux_ 8y ago
  Politics. People use whatever they can to take each other down at that level. Which is why they get paid so much. For their mindless ambition and to put up with each others mindless ambition.
• InTheArena 8y ago
  Because firms end up on the front page of the WSJ and the London Financial Times when someone decides to go public with it.
• paulddraper 8y ago
  > Why are US companies always so aggressive about moralising these issues? Or consider Mozilla's week-long CEO who years earlier donated $1000 to a popular ballot initiative supported by most California voters. Be careful how you vote, citizen. Your livelihood depends on it.
  • daeken 8y ago
    I really liked that you skipped over what that ballot initiative was. He donated in support of Prop 8, an attempt to ban same-sex marriage in California. As a former Mozilla employee, I'm pretty glad that he was ousted for his homophobia. Good riddance.
    • paulddraper 8y ago
      It was an opinion on marriage, a millenia-old quasi-political-religious traditional institution. The world is full of such opinions. Polygamy is illegal in 50 of 50 United states, even California. Don't slip on that edge of political wrongthink. Communism is certainly the most damaging political movement of the 20th century. Should we oust Communist sympathizers from their positions of power?
      • meowface 8y ago
        Polygamy is very different from same-sex marriage, though.
        • cuckcuckspruce 8y ago
          How?
          • meowface 8y ago
            How is it similar?
            • 8y ago
• acdha 8y ago
  Quoting the article: “An ongoing investigation by internal and external counsel has confirmed a violation of Intel’s non-fraternization policy, which applies to all managers.” It's not just the specific act(s) but the fact that he knowingly broke policy, which raises the question of whether he decided other policies also didn't apply to him. CEOs have a lot of power and enormous compensation and, at least in theory, that's founded on their judgement.
  • mattthebaker 8y ago
    Its also company policy that you should be fired on the spot for sleeping at your desk -- some kind of hold over from manufacturing that makes no sense for most office positions. Risk exposure to lawsuit is incomparable to the relationship case but it was consensual.
    • acdha 8y ago
      Yeah, and if the CEO was sleeping at his desk it'd be reasonable to either reprimand him or expect him to spend 30 seconds rescinding that policy because “the rules are for you but not me” has a terrible effect on morale.
• randomguy23 8y ago
  Why is it that morals rule on message boards?
• jseliger 8y ago
  Why are US companies always so aggressive about moralising these issues? No one would take issue if he carried a gun at work. Why is it that corporate morals rule? These are short questions that probably can't ever be fully answered and require books to be answered even semi-adequately. That said, a good answer probably has some element of the U.S.'s strange relationships with sexuality and Christianity, going back to the particular kinds of European settlers who showed up here. This is often referred to as "Puritanism," although the Puritans actually had a much more complicated and less prim experience than is commonly supposed with the slur "Puritanism." At the same time, in the last several decades (maybe 50 or 60), there have been various strands of feminism; two particularly noticeable parts could be labeled as "sex positive" (Camille Paglia is a good person to read on the subject) and... I actually can't think of a good label for the other one. But the other one actually has quite a bit in common with the old-school and religiously motivated views of sexuality as dangerous and in need of extreme restraint or channeling into "appropriate" spaces. This one has quite a bit of currency, currently, and it has a lot of continuity with past aspects of U.S. culture.
  • _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
    Even if the Puritans (who usually referred to themselves as 'godly') were slightly less prim about sex then some people expect, they certainly weren't keen on sex outside of marriage. (They also banned Christmas and other holiday celebrations, theatre, walking 'for fun', and smashed stained glass windows in churches, slashed and burned paintings by Rubens and others, and pulled down medieval monuments as being 'idolatrous', had serious discussions about legislating that Catholics should have to wear special clothes so everyone could recognise them. When you hear 'Puritan' think 'Christian Taliban'.)
• mathattack 8y ago
  Let’s say he promotes the subordinate over a few other candidates who all thought they were worthy? You’ve just killed the corporate culture and reputation for meritocracy.
• thrillgore 8y ago
  Conflict of interest.
• squarefoot 8y ago
  "Why are US companies always so aggressive about moralising these issues?" Not just in the US but almost everywhere people tend to extremize moral reactions to the point their judgement in a situation is being impaired. Generally morals are used to drive people actions away from cold rational reasoning, and they also make strong arguments during war time or elections. Unrelated, but strong example: take a toy gun and a sex toy then ask 1000 people if they would let their children play with one or the other or both. Pretty sure all of them would say no to the sex toy in disgust (which would be my reply as well, just to be clear), but most wouldn't mind letting their kids play with the toy gun. That would be a pretty normal reaction, so no problem here, apparently. But we can also describe a sex toy as a device to simulate the act of creating a life, and a toy gun as a device to simulate the act of taking away a life, so the question would be: why our morals which rightly prevent us from giving dildos to children don't prevent us from giving them toy guns as well?
• whatsstolat 8y ago
  In tech ... its a Nerf gun