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Google paid Andy Rubin $90M while keeping silent about a misconduct claim

• pinewurst 8y ago
  "She said he* invited her to Burning Man, an annual festival in the Nevada desert, the following week. Ms. Simpson went with her mother and said she thought it was an opportunity to talk to Mr. DeVaul about the job. She said she brought conservative clothes suitable for a professional meeting." *Not Andy Rubin
  • azinman2 8y ago
    The article covers multiple execs, not just Andy Rubin. It’s showing a consistent behavior at google.
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    • samstave 8y ago
      And Uber and Zenefits and zynga and and and...
  • JustSomeNobody 8y ago
    You missed this? >What Google did not make public was that an employee had accused Mr. Rubin of sexual misconduct. The woman, with whom Mr. Rubin had been having an extramarital relationship, said he coerced her into performing oral sex in a hotel room in 2013, according to two company executives with knowledge of the episode. Google investigated and concluded her claim was credible, said the people, who spoke on the condition that they not be named, citing confidentiality agreements. Mr. Rubin was notified, they said, and Mr. Page asked for his resignation. > Google could have fired Mr. Rubin and paid him little to nothing on the way out. Instead, the company handed him a $90 million exit package, paid in installments of about $2 million a month for four years, said two people with knowledge of the terms. The last payment is scheduled for next month.
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    • chappi42 8y ago
      >What Google did not make public ... this is respectable of Google imho. There is no need that the whole world knows the details about this 'performance'. A bit low of the New York Times. But of course, sex sells.
      • zapita 8y ago
        If you were the victim, would you also feel that it's "respectable" of Google to reward your agressor with a massive golden parachute?
        • chappi42 8y ago
          'victim'? For me this term should be reserved for grave situations; what shall I say, what sometimes unfortunately now happens in Germany with knives maybe? The reward is for building Android. For such a successful platform the sum is more than justified, don't you think? In a way I feel Rubin is also a 'victim', Clinton didn't get fired back then.
          • djrogers 8y ago
            Are you seriously saying that sexual coercion is justified by how successful your mobile OS is? Holy crap! Please don’t ever - and I mean please in the most violent way possible - come near my daughters.
            • chappi42 8y ago
              I said that there are different degrees of 'victims' and that there is an over-use of 'victim'. I didn't speak about Rubin as I don't know the details and neither did I speak about justification. (No need for personal attacks. Some friendliness would help not to split society/politics/discourse)
        • 8y ago
  • myth_drannon 8y ago
    Regardless of who, inviting an interviewee for a week-long vacation/party is a huge red flag. These things should be reported immediately. It's so sad that humans are conditioned to a social hierarchy and will seldom do anything that might bring the rage of a higher status person. In my short career, I saw too many attempts by C-level suits to build their own little harems (and most were successful in that by the way)
    • Jagerbizzle 8y ago
      Not to mention that he described his relationship with his wife as polyamorous during the interview. I can't imagine a scenario where this would be even remotely appropriate to discuss.
      • village-idiot 8y ago
        It’d be kinda weird to talk about that with coworkers, let alone during an interview. The sexual habits of my coworkers is not an open area of discussion. I personally view that as a sexual proposition, it’s a way of saying “I’m available”.
        • true_religion 8y ago
          Polyamory isn't simply about sex, it just means you can find love with more than one person. I think if you can say you have a wife, which implicitly tells your sexual preference and explicitly tells your legal family situation, then it's okay to add that you also have girlfriends or boyfriends as well.
          • village-idiot 8y ago
            Honestly, a lot of my coworkers don’t really talk about their singular partners either. I maintain that discussions of such nature have to clear a “need to know” bar at work. There’s a lot of discussions about my relationship I’d be perfectly willing to have with friends that I would not discuss at work. Regardless, you absolutely should not be mentioning your relationship status in any way during an interview. Single, married, poly, whatever.
  • gadders 8y ago
    Slightly offtopic: My friend's Mum went to the Woodstock festival in the 60's. When I asked her about it, she said she only went because she thought it would be like a craft fair.
    • bitL 8y ago
      Plausible deniability.
    • samstave 8y ago
      Define "craft"
• mariusmg 8y ago
  Do No Evil
  • dang 8y ago
    Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.
    • cpach 8y ago
      The contrast of the motto and what is revealed in this article is quite telling, IMHO.
      • Jach 8y ago
        It's not even the right motto. Do you believe you can do evil, without being evil?
      • dang 8y ago
        It's the most obvious cliché people can (and invariably do) bring into such a discussion. Anything so predictable has zero curiosity in it and therefore is off topic on HN. See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
• bitwize 8y ago
  Android, created by a rapist. Based on Java, co-created by a pedophile (look up Patrick Naughton). More reasons to switch to iPhone.
  • pknopf 8y ago
    Is that really a reason why you'd switch? Seems silly.
• romed 8y ago
  I don't know why Google has always been so generous with its execs. It's a little club I guess. But when someone is walking out the door, why the need to heap money on them? They're all as rich as anyone already. When Pichette left they converted his _unvested_ options to cash. Why? Why give a guy tens of millions when the theory of executive compensation revolves around retention?
  • itsdrewmiller 8y ago
    From the article it sounds like they care very strongly about those execs not going to work for direct competitors. Gotta provide some kind of consideration for that. While it would be nice to drag these guys through the street a little more, I have to imagine Google is in like the 80th+ percentile of not-evilness by forcing key employees to resign after a single credible complaint.
    • DaveWalk 8y ago
      This was my take also. It's a purely business decision: how much is it worth to not have this person work for a competitor? Also dovetails with the statement that lower level employees are dismissed with a little to no severance. Less risk there.
      • dreamdu5t 8y ago
        Its not a business decision, it’s simply the culture of executive management. It’s because they can.
        • gaius 8y ago
          This is why executives go to strip clubs together. So they’ve all got something on each other, so no one betrays their cosy little club.
      • gowld 8y ago
        > How much is it worth to not have this person work for a competitor? Isn't this line of reasoning an antitrust violation?
• IBM 8y ago
  >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.” Uhhh
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • nailer 8y ago
    That's perfectly fine to send to a consenting partner. But completely inappropriate for the workplace. Edit: not sure why this is being downmodded (not complaining about it, just curious). Is it somehow not completely fine for consenting adults to have whatever kinks they want? Rubin deserves to be punished for sexual harassment. Kink shaming is unnecessary.
    • danso 8y ago
      Slight nitpick: it's not clear that this particular email was about a workplace relationship (or sent on company time/servers). It was an email included as evidence in a civil suit by his ex-wife: > In a civil suit filed this month by Mr. Rubin’s ex-wife, Rie Rubin, she claimed he had multiple “ownership relationships” with other women during their marriage, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to them. The couple were divorced in August. The suit included a screenshot of an August 2015 email...
      • puzzle 8y ago
        The email was from 2015, but he had left Google in 2014, so it wasn't sent on company time/servers. Even if it had been sent earlier, Andy Rubin had been named in enough patent lawsuits and deposed enough times to know that multiple plaintiffs had lawyers billing $700/800 per hour (at the very least) to go through all his corporate account's messages. He must have had tens of litigation holds.
    • sololipsist 8y ago
      Rubin deserves to be punished for sexual harassment.... IF, in fact, he sexually harassed, right? A) What in the hell was his partner doing reporting to his place of business that she felt like he had compelled her to have sex with him in a hotel room? What does that have to do with work? That smells like using an accusation as a weapon to me. B) What does "compelled" mean? I had a girlfriend once who was into kink and I wasn't. We did kink all the time and it wasn't fulfilling to me, and once time in particular I was trying very hard to just get her to have sex with me (which I thought was going to be part of the relationship and was just beginning to realize it was not). I kept asking, she kept saying no. Eventually she gave in. After our break-up she cited this as a rape to a friend. Is this rape? Is it even sexual harassment? There are so few details here it's shameful it's even being reported on. So what if Google gave a severance to someone who was accused of harassment? It's not even clear, from the details, that he did. Shit, what if they did an internal investigation and determined that he didn't? What's wrong with people here, acting like this is something we know he did?
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• danso 8y ago
  Interesting to read the HN thread 4 years ago about Rubin's departure: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8536609 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8536609 A commenter claimed to have been privy to the real story: > The truth seems to be both (a) unpleasant for Andy and (b) unremarkable to the rest of us. In other words, it wasn't his choice, but there wasn't a scandalous smoking gun either. He just wanted what Larry wouldn't give him. Nothing that would be front page news. I don't think that the commenter was necessarily bullshitting at the time. The story conveyed to those inside Google may have been that there was sex involved, not necessarily that the act allegedly involved coercion. Even in 4 years, a lot has changed in how people interpret such accusations.
  • jseliger 8y ago
    There's also an awful lot we don't know; we don't know who at Google leaked, what they leaked, and what their other motivations may have been. Even the word "credible" is pretty tricky here. It may be another of these situations: https://quillette.com/2018/10/17/the-scandal-at-ubc-keeps-growing-but-no-one-has-been-held-accountable https://quillette.com/2018/10/17/the-scandal-at-ubc-keeps-gr.... Having watched friends go through similar trials over bogus accusations that stem from a wide array of causes, I'm leery of the way many of these stories are reported.
  • bronson 8y ago
    > He just wanted what Larry wouldn't give him. This... reads differently now.
  • tinkerteller 8y ago
    This is really on Google. Companies shouldn't be providing cover to sexual predators. They just made sure Andy keep abusing in his even more powerful position as CEO of startup. Shame on them. They have really divorced themselves from ethics.
• 0xmohit 8y ago
  > “When Google covers up harassment and passes the trash, it contributes to an environment where people don’t feel safe reporting misconduct,” said Liz Fong-Jones, a Google engineer for more than a decade and an activist on workplace issues. “They suspect that nothing will happen or, worse, that the men will be paid and the women will be pushed aside.”
  • ucaetano 8y ago
    Isn't it standard for companies to never/rarely disclose why an employee is being fired (or even if it is being fired)?
    • eiaoa 8y ago
      > Isn't it standard for companies to never/rarely disclose why an employee is being fired (or even if it is being fired)? IIRC, they do that because disclosing the reason could open the company up to legal liability if the reason isn't accurate or well documented enough to hold up in court in defamation case.
      • sololipsist 8y ago
        ..... And what if the accusation isn't credible, and it wouldn't actually hold up in court to fire him because of it?
        • ucaetano 8y ago
          Even is the accusation isn't credible enough to hold up in court, it might make sense for a company to dismiss an employee (although not always, it depends on the accusations), particularly in at-will employment. Employment is not a court case.
          • mehblahwhatevs 8y ago
            What if the accusation was false and it were made publicly? Or at the very least, if whisperings went around and all my (or your) co-workers found out about the accusation? "Guilt" in the court of public opinion is a real thing and this industry is smaller than most people realize. You may try to get another job only to find the same people from your previous job are at the new one, know people there, or that word has just gotten around about you whether online and searchable or through word of mouth. Or maybe someone calls a previous employer and they mention why you were let go? All for something that was false? Would it count as slander/libel in this case? You could make the argument that it led to lost earnings or whatever too.
• outside1234 8y ago
  And this article doesn't even cover Tony Fadell and the Nest nightmare... Holy cow, how could so many smart people at Google be so stupid?
  • icebraining 8y ago
    What Nest nightmare?
    • romed 8y ago
      Well there was the $3.2 billion dollar acquisition of a company whose products are complete garbage, but I guess the OP was referring to Fadell's notoriously rude behavior toward his subordinates.
  • vkou 8y ago
    Just because you're smart, doesn't mean that you don't harass people at work. Richard Feynman was a brilliant man, but was utterly horrible to the women he worked with. Every company that's large enough has a few people participating in unintentional, or highly intentional harassment. What you should judge companies on, is how they deal with it - especially when the perpetrator is not some middle-manager, but a rockstar.
    • icebraining 8y ago
      How was Feynman horrible to the women he worked with?
      • nostrademons 8y ago
        There's a summary with links here: https://galileospendulum.org/2014/07/13/the-problem-of-richard-feynman/ https://galileospendulum.org/2014/07/13/the-problem-of-richa... But he also describes a lot of his attitudes toward women in Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman, and by modern standards they would basically fall into the PUA/RedPill category.
• eykanal 8y ago
  "...and in other news, water is still wet." There is nothing new about this type of behavior, at Google or any other company that has existed since, oh, the dawn of time. This happens in almost every sector that has large businesses. I guess the news is that "this happened again", but that's hardly news. Other than doing an expose on Google for not being a "perfect model company" I'm not entirely sure why this is front-page New York Times material.
  • deeg 8y ago
    If I understand the article correctly, Rubin was released due to credible evidence of sexual misconduct but was given $90M going out the door. How is this appropriate punishment? The "news" of the article is that this needs to change.
    • icebraining 8y ago
      Arguably only a judge could give out appropriate punishment for the described action.
      • deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    • zaroth 8y ago
      It wasn’t punishment. Google was paying him to sign a non-compete. It was in their corporate self-interest that if they couldn’t keep him due to a credible harassment accusation, they would pay for no one else to get him.
    • Sacho 8y ago
      The article's exact words are: > Google found her claim credible, they said. The company did not fire Mr. Singhal, but accepted his resignation and negotiated an exit package that paid him millions and prevented him from working for a competitor, said the people. Given the specific wording("found her claim credible"), it seems quite possible they did not have enough evidence to bring to court in case of a wrongful firing suit.
• docker_up 8y ago
  Wow, this article is eye-opening. It's staggering the level of misconduct that's occurring at Google, especially relative to execs taking advantage of its lower-level employees. I wonder what the atmosphere is at other ultra-successful companies like Facebook, Netflix, Apple and Amazon.
  • wpietri 8y ago
    I've been hearing about issues at Google for years privately and on Twitter. No idea what goes on at other companies, as this stuff is often so aggressively covered up that you are only likely to hear about something if you know multiple women at the company in question and they trust you enough to tell you the truth.
    • ocdtrekkie 8y ago
      Almost every story cited in today's NY Times piece was previously reported by The Information about a year ago. It's a paywall site, but it's stories do get disseminated by other sources. But the bigger sources (who are dependent on Google Ad revenue) didn't run very far with it. November 2017: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/androids-andy-rubin-left-google-after-inquiry-found-inappropriate-relationship https://www.theinformation.com/articles/androids-andy-rubin-... and https://www.theinformation.com/articles/google-reckoning-with-history-of-interoffice-romance-by-top-execs https://www.theinformation.com/articles/google-reckoning-wit...
  • richardknop 8y ago
    What do you think it is like? This is what unlimited power over others does to people. I suspect it's the same or likely worse (there's a lot we don't know, what is public is just the tip of an iceberg) in those other companies.
• dcole2929 8y ago
  This is such a thorny ugly issue to which there are really no right answers. It should be very clear that using a position of authority to coerce someone into a relationship of any kind is wrong. But at the same time it's pretty much impossible to prevent people from dating within the work place. You simply spend to much of your life there for it to be at all realistic. Many relationships end poorly, regardless of the obvious incompatibilities of these sorts of power dynamics. It's guaranteed to be a mess more often than not. I'm honestly not sure how you both given people the benefit of the doubt (innocent until proven guilty) while also ensuring that predators aren't allowed to abuse the people around them. Andy Rubin sounds like a sleazy guy. Paying him lots of money to go away seems like a no brainer move here from Google's perspective, but I'm not sure what else they could have done.
  • fixermark 8y ago
    What if having a healthy work-life balance means a person who wants to meet other people for intimate activities has time to date outside the workplace?
    • dcole2929 8y ago
      You spend 40 hours a week just at work, not to mention commute and lunch. If you're getting a full night's sleep that means you spend more time with the people you work with than you do probably anyone else in the world. I agree you should aim for a healthy work-life balance and date outside the workplace but it's a bit naive to think that people won't build relationships with people they see that often.
    • GiorgioG 8y ago
      What people at that level in any large corporate hierarchy have a healthy work-life balance? I would expect the answer to be near zero.
      • fixermark 8y ago
        Perhaps we have identified the root problem.
• dreamdu5t 8y ago
  “In 2012, Google also lent Mr. Rubin $14 million to buy a beach estate in Japan. “ Sounds like the culture of embezzlement everyone knows corporate executive management is.
  • jonknee 8y ago
    A loan that the company knows about is not embezzlement. It's a perk designed to make Rubin's life easier which is worth more than money to both Google and Rubin. He could of course arrange his own loan, just like an average Google employee could arrange their own lunch.
    • sjg007 8y ago
      I guess though, the notion of fairness would be that Google would provide similar loans for all of its employees.. e.g. if they want to buy a house.
    • dreamdu5t 8y ago
      Using company funds to hedge against personal risk is shady and selfish, even if it might technically be legal. It’s as close to embezzlement as you can get. I can’t imagine explaining to investors why I needed to loan myself company funds for a fucking vacation home, for my mistresses no less! But whatever, executives are Gods who can do no wrong and deserve 90 million for sexual harassment and assault, and they deserve company loans for vacation homes for their whores. What a joke!
• alexashka 8y ago
  What a smear piece. They were having a relationship, and one time the woman didn't feel like giving oral sex and felt 'coerced'. What does that mean exactly and how do you investigate it? I've pleased people in all kinds of way, including sexual when I didn't feel like it, and I don't go crying about it - it's no big deal. It's not a company's place to air people's dirty laundry - what happens in hotel rooms of all places, is none of anyone's employer's business. If there was a problem - call the police. End of story. The reason Mr Rubin was given an exit package is unknown. It could have absolutely nothing to do with oral sex in a hotel room. How would this mediocre reporter know? He/she doesn't.
• dilyevsky 8y ago
  Lol are there any google execs that haven’t been mired in this? Apparently “nojerks” only applies to low level employees
  • dmitrygr 8y ago
    some are more equal than others
• claydavisss 8y ago
  Wow reading the whole story...Sundar needs to clean house. California is an at-will state, he doesn't need justification, just sweep out all of this trash. Downvotes for suggesting the CEO get rid of execs who carry on like this at work and expect a payday? Wow this thread not only details how sordid Google is, but also the continued decline of HN...scary how many apologists showed up here.
  • cycrutchfield 8y ago
    None of those people would be reporting to Sundar if they were still there, with the exception of Singhal.
  • ocdtrekkie 8y ago
    I would point out that you may be getting downvoted not by Google fans, but for suggesting Sundar could do something, or even, isn't part of the problem. Google's misconduct goes all the way to the top, above him. Larry Page (Sundar's boss) has been involved in this and other coverups of executive misconduct, having made the decision to give people like Andy Rubin and Amit Singhal large severances and allow them to "move on" to other things. Sergey Brin (also Sundar's boss) stated that the whole purpose of having female employees at Google was so he could sleep with them. While working on Google Glass, he had an affair with a member of the Glass team that was fairly publicized at the time. Eric Schmidt (recently chairman of Alphabet's board, over Google) put his mistress on payroll once as a consultant. Supposedly, he was the "adult in the room" of this organization. David Drummond (chief legal officer of Alphabet, also over Google) had an affair with an underling, and only admitted it in accordance with company policy after she had his kids. She lost her job because of it. It's likely the only way to clean house at Alphabet/Google is to break it up and sell it off, ideally in a manner that doesn't make the very people responsible for these transgressions even more rich.
    • Apocryphon 8y ago
      > It's likely the only way to clean house at Alphabet/Google is to break it up and sell it off Unexpected series of events to spark antitrust, but whatever works. Susan Fowler's revelations led to the public outrage wave against Uber, after all.
• testfoobar 8y ago
  Last line of article: "According to his ex-wife’s civil suit, his net worth is now about $350 million." Assuming his ex-wife had access to accurate financial statements, the $350 million number is smaller than I would have expected by about 3X. According to published reports, Levandowski made $120 million for working on the google self-driving car project. Android seems to have had at least 10x the influence already. Clearly these are already funny-money numbers for mere mortals, but what metrics do execs at these levels use to negotiate their compensation?
  • gowld 8y ago
    Levandowski was famous in part because his pay was an absurd anomaly.
  • fairlyodd 8y ago
    Levandowski sold two companies to Google for $120M, while still being a Google employee.. That's where the funny money comes from.
• ChuckMcM 8y ago
  I'm reminded of the joke, "When you owe the bank a million dollars and can't pay, you have a problem. When you owe the bank a billion dollars and can't pay, the bank has a problem." The same is true with senior executives. If you fire manager or even a director for sexual harassment you're risk is at one level, if you fire someone who is VP or above then that person has a wide array of ways to 'fight back' that can cause serious harm to the company, so the company has a problem. Some people cross that threshold of 'company risk' and do something wrong, have it get exposed to the company and then see the company contort itself to make it go away, and they realize they have way more power over the company than the company does over them. I have seen it bring out the worst in people. It is a complex situation that is difficult to navigate and something I don't think anyone can prepare for.
  • Cyclone_ 8y ago
    In what ways would a VP or above be able to fight back that a manager or director could not?
    • krupan 8y ago
      Managers and directors at Google-sized companies know nothing of the inner workings and personal lives of the core leadership team of the company. VP and above often do.
    • glibgil 8y ago
      Leaving to fork Android at Samsung or some such, for one
      • nradov 8y ago
        Samsung already kind of did that with Tizen and it hasn't really worked out. Same with Amazon. Lack of engineering leadership isn't the main obstacle preventing Samsung and other vendors from successfully forking Android.
        • slimsag 8y ago
• appleflaxen 8y ago
  I have a question that I know is really stupid, but I'm asking sincerely: why is it permitted for the company to do this? Paying any person a windfall after sexual indiscretions seems like it violates their responsibility to the shareholders, especially when it's $90 million (wow!). Why is this type of payout allowed by the SEC or the corporate governance structure?
  • Stryder 8y ago
    It's not stupid. Think about large families with inherent power dynamics- everyone's either been in or knows at least one. It's just a human thing. We know what's right and wrong, but acting according to what we /know/ is a lot harder said than done when human nature is factored in. Now make the assumption that a group of human beings were doing the right things at the right time in the right place to become mega rich, and then apply the same rules. People aren't terribly different from one another on the fundamental level- the only different things are circumstances which determine 1) the number of restrictions, and conversely 2) the number of privileges. The only valuable question is how to minimize this human dynamic as the size of the group grows, because leaving a 5-person group behind to find something different is a lot easier and a lot less consequential than leaving a 5000-person group.
  • sjg007 8y ago
    The board signed off on it and the Brin, Page and Schmidt have class A shares which are controlling. So if they vote for something it is automatically approved by a majority of shareholders.
  • Sacho 8y ago
    Rubin wasn't fired, he resigned. Google seem to have paid out his severance package. It's possible they could have fired him, citing sexual misconduct; then they would most likely have to content with a lawsuit by him for wrongful firing, and all the details would have to leak out. There are a myriad of reasons why Google would not want this: 1) They did not have enough evidence to fight in court - the article claims Google thought the accusations were "credible", but not necessarily proven. This could easily be a disaster for Google which can easily go away with some money and a resignation. 2) Even if they had enough evidence, the damage to their public image from this would be substantial, which could be costlier than the "payout". 3) The majority of controlling shareholders(Brin, Page, Schmidt) want to remain on good terms with Rubin and are willing to sacrifice the money to do so, thus fulfilling the responsibility to the shareholders angle. How would you ban this type of behavior?
• amoorthy 8y ago
  I wonder if the incidence rate for abuse is higher among the wealthy and powerful. Seems plausible that those in power feel they can bend the rules. And sometimes (not often enough) this blows up in their faces and ruins their personal life, as well as so many around them. In retrospect, perhaps many would trade all their power/money to have their family lives intact. Many of us wish to be rich/powerful/famous and slog towards this goal. Maybe it's good that most of us don't reach that level.
  • bcOpus 8y ago
    Conversely maybe it’s easier to rise into the ranks of rich/powerful/famous if you view people as objects to be played with. If you’re not being restrained by anything like a conscience, it’s probably a lot easier to fight the kind of dirty battles needed to reach those heights without burning out or turning to drugs to soothe a battery sense of self.
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  • Stryder 8y ago
    I think history has proven enough times that it's hard to maintain power/wealth as you get more and more of it, and that is as it should be, because the complexity of all the moving pieces becomes harder and harder to manage when more and more human beings are involved. "When you have 1 million dollars, that money belongs to you. When you have 10 million dollars, that belongs to your family. When you have 100 million, your community, and when you have a billion dollars, that's society's money." We just don't hear that much about all the people who got some of it then lost/gave up a bunch of it. The ones who happen to maintain for long periods of time stand out. And yes I agree it's good for most of us to not get there- both for the good of others and for the good of ourselves.
    • woah 8y ago
      This seems like a particularly baseless and far fetched theory. It actually becomes easier and easier to earn more money if you have more money.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• itissid 8y ago
  Biases and most negative behaviors are not built in[1], they are part of experiential memory and hence learnt(and can be erased[0]). Racial profiling, gender roles and biases in general are established when we are young(or at least open to change) and subjected to norms and stereotypical behavior[2][3]. Women did not magically drop out of Software professions in the 80s it's because WE handed the young boy a PC and the girl a doll[4]. Why is our reaction so visceral to some forms of biases and negative behaviors and not others? It is because we SEE, FEEL and READ about the damage on a daily basis to real people and then, eventually, envision and bring laws into existence that punish such behavior. Eventually sexual exploitation will be seen on a level field with denying the right to vote based on caste or employment based on color of the skin. But it will be permanent only if the good people in power do something, until then we have The Times and WAPO to tell these stories. [0] https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/ajp.115.5.459 https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/ajp.115.5.4... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow#Heuristics_and_biases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow#Heuris... [2] http://psycnet.apa.org/record/1980-25271-001 http://psycnet.apa.org/record/1980-25271-001 [3] http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.872.5825&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.872... [4] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when...
  • dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    >Eventually sexual exploitation will be seen on a level field with denying the right to vote based on caste or employment based on color of the skin. But it will be permanent only if the good people in power do something, until then we have The Times and WAPO to tell these stories. So mostly ignored as long as it doesn't happen systemically or to too large a fraction of the population?
• DoreenMichele 8y ago
  Google could have fired Mr. Rubin and paid him little to nothing on the way out. Instead, the company handed him a $90 million exit package, paid in installments of about $2 million a month for four years So, I have to wonder how the world would frame it had they fired him. Would the scandalous headline be, instead, "Google screws Android creator out of millions on flimsy excuse of unprovable sexual harassment claims"? In settling on terms favorable to two of the men, Google protected its own interests. The company avoided messy and costly legal fights, and kept them from working for rivals as part of the separation agreements. So, this is "good business" for reasons beyond my point above. Don't get me wrong. I'm a woman and I spend a whole lot of time trying to figure out how to get taken seriously, make business connections, yadda. My experience/opinion/hypothesis is that, never mind that I'm a toothless gray-haired old hag, most men don't really want to engage me in meaty, meaningful discussion unless they are looking to sleep with me. And, in fact, engaging me in meaty, meaningful discussion seems to fairly frequently lead to men having the sudden realization that "I'd totally hit that. I'd hit that so very hard, good god." I used to think I was all special. I'm not so sure these days. Maybe that's just how men react to a "deep" conversation with a woman. Because if it isn't pointless small talk and goes on for more than a minute (so to speak), that seems to be the routine outcome. Later quote in the article about a different person at Google: During the job interview, she said he told her that he and his wife were “polyamorous,” a word often used to describe an open marriage. She said he invited her to Burning Man, an annual festival in the Nevada desert, the following week. To me, this should be straight up a firing offense. There is absolutely no (legitimate) reason whatsoever for telling someone in a job interview that the interviewer is "polyamorous." I don't know what policy is these days, but, back in the day, an Army officer who had an affair with the wife of a lower ranking soldier in his unit would be busted down to E-1 and thrown in jail. It didn't matter if she swore up and down that it was consensual. It is basically treated like statutory rape. Because of the nature of military work, he can have literal power of life and death over her husband, plus power over his career. The implication 'You will sleep with me or I will see to it that your husband winds up in a combat zone/ is ordered to his death/etc" does not need to be stated for the wife to know that turning down someone with that kind of power over her husband's very life could go very bad places for the man she swore to love for life. So, it's illegal in a "We throw people in jail for that" kind of way in part for reasons of morale. An army can't function if the soldiers are worried they might be ordered to their death so some guy can get his damn freak on with their wife. That just absolutely doesn't work. Being an officer is a position of trust. The stakes are not usually literally life and death at most jobs, but close enough. Being barred or blacklisted from being able to have a good job at all means you wind up homeless and starving, basically. In order to have the good life we expect in a developed country, you have to be able to get a good paying job (for most people -- I realize there are exceptions as some people inherit vast wealth). I don't know the full answer for how to resolve this complicated problem. But I think it is clear that we need to get a whole lot clearer about the fact that powerful men on the job need to be explicitly educated about the fact that hitting on women at work is inherently problematic, and not just for the woman being asked. I'm 53. I'm still trying to wrap my head around this problem space. I sometimes blog about it, largely for my own edification. We are in a transition where the old rules really don't work and we haven't yet sorted out what does work. Historically, powerful men could have multiple lovers. If he could support them all, a mistress on the side tended to be culturally tolerated. I think there are some valid reasons why, so I'm not saying "Those heathens!" I'm just saying we have this history and powerful men often have this expectation because it wasn't an unreasonable expectation at one time. But now it is turning into scandal for powerful men to behave that way. It's no longer being treated as their "just deserts." And I think that is part of why it keeps getting swept under the rug. On some level, most folks know that a lot of these men grew up with this idea that if they made enough money, they could have multiple women and society would kind of wink and nod and look the other way, even if it wasn't officially approved. So it is a kind of unstated expectation of a longstanding social contract. There is lots of precedent for it. When push comes to shove, I think a lot of folks are hesitant to burn men too badly for that for various reasons.
• 40acres 8y ago
  Just one question, why? Google is a company that has explicitly stated its ethics over and over and over. Obviously they have been under fire for the rumors regard a censored Chinese site, and their AI contracting with the government, but firing high level executives who have been investigated and found liable for sexual harassment COMPLETELY aligns with the values that they state to the rest of the world. No one would've batted an eye if they said: "Hey, we're firing Andy because of these claims that we investigated and found credible, and he's not getting a dime because he violated his contract". Now, due to the cover-up this looks awful. I just don't understand it. Intel's CEO was let go after an extra-marital affair was uncovered and there was very little controversy around it.
  • maceurt 8y ago
    The ceo of intel was fired because it was one of his employees and it is specifically against compaby policy, not because he was cheating on his wife by comitting the act.
  • zaroth 8y ago
    I think the answer to your question is they paid Andy not to compete with them. If they fire him and didn’t pay him a dime, he could walk into Samsung or Apple and take all his domain knowledge with him and get paid that $100mm to make a competitor’s products better.
    • HillaryBriss 8y ago
      And yet, ultimately, Rubin went out and started his own hardware company (Essential Phone) and it didn't work out well. Maybe Rubin's domain knowledge wasn't really much of a threat after all. In hindsight, one might argue that Android's success hasn't depended on Android quality/innovation nearly as much as it depended on Google's already powerful position in the search market.
      • rlucas 8y ago
        Although I'm not taking a position on whether the numbers are correctly reasoned, I think evaluating the value of the noncompete after the fact and as a static value (was his domain knowledge worth $90 M) isn't likely how it was thought about. It was probably looked at as insurance against a catastrophic tail risk, the existential threat to the whole Android ecosystem. It might have only been a 10% chance that he could have blown up Android by going to a competitor, but insuring against a 10% chance of multi-$B loss was worth $90 M (for example).
• a-dub 8y ago
  "In 2013, Richard DeVaul, a director at Google X, the company’s research and development arm, interviewed Star Simpson, a hardware engineer. During the job interview, she said he told her that he and his wife were “polyamorous,” a word often used to describe an open marriage. She said he invited her to Burning Man, an annual festival in the Nevada desert, the following week. Ms. Simpson went with her mother and said she thought it was an opportunity to talk to Mr. DeVaul about the job. She said she brought conservative clothes suitable for a professional meeting." woah nelly! totally fucked that he was hitting on her in the interview and appears to be a pretty cut and dried abuse of power... but... business casual, with mom, at burning man? that's absolutely bananas. however i can see how it would come to be, you're staring down your dream job, and there's this tight knit group of people you want to join so you go along with all of it... and then you realize later that you were just being played because someone wanted to sleep with you. yikes.
  • zymhan 8y ago
    Yeah I cannot imagine how uncomfortable of a position that would be, wanting such a prestigious job and being taken advantage of.
  • komali2 8y ago
    Talk about dedication - not planning on going to burning man, then going with a week's notice, in conservative clothing no less? Ms. Simpson is willing to go to far greater lengths than I to increase offer prospects... I would have read it differently if she had gone "burning-man" mode, as I'd be tempted to do if invited on a whim like this. I'd always intended to try anyway, so having a guaranteed champion there (and maybe a camp? Unclear if crashing at the camp was implied in the invitation), would make it a fun thing to do. But the conservative clothes makes it seem like she was treating this as a step in the interview process. Why was DeVaul talking about his personal romantic/sexual life in an interview? How stupid of him. What a dumb gamble, even if he was trying to get laid, the risk/reward just doesn't make sense in the context.
    • stevenwoo 8y ago
      It's apparent from reading the article that Google had a widespread and pervasive sexual harassment problem with senior executives freely doing whatever they wanted - that the current chief legal fellow is still there (and got several promotions to the top) after having an extramarital affair and child with another employee in the legal department says everything - he knew all the consequences and how things could turn out and he did it anyways. I would cut a bit of slack to Ms. Simpson, she was only 24, the power imbalance is huge, and reading about the women who have turned down these sort of invitations early in their career is to read a litany of careers crippled. I thought naively that the casting couch was a Hollywood institution but it's just an institution. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/10/harvey-weinstein-and-the-economics-of-consent/543618/ https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/10/ha...
• Animats 8y ago
  Again? Google already paid out $500 million in 2012 to get Page and Brin off the hook on the Sportsdrug.net thing.[1] And then there was the conspiracy with Jobs to keep wages down. $324 million paid out. Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe all had to pay on that one.[2] In progress: the GDPR lawsuit and the Android tracking lawsuit. Is Google at "ongoing criminal enterprise" yet? [1] https://archives.cjr.org/the_audit/the_journal_takes_us_inside_th.php https://archives.cjr.org/the_audit/the_journal_takes_us_insi... [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-google-lawsuit-exclusive/exclusive-apple-google-to-pay-324-million-to-settle-conspiracy-lawsuit-idUSBREA3N28Z20140425 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-google-lawsuit-excl...
• 55555 8y ago
  How much of his net worth is his wife asking for?
  • dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    If the court wants to give it all to her I doubt she'll refuse.
• komali2 8y ago
  And we know a great deal about starvation thanks to Nazi research on Jewish prisoners. Given that at the time, we couldn't know the, I guess, "benefits" of the Nazi experimentation (barf), all present fighting against the Nazis were right to do so. Given that we don't know what foundations/benefits could result from a subordinate/boss relationship at Google today, it is more logical to fight against them on the principle of what we know now - that they are dangerous, potentially damaging to the company for multiple reasons. One potential angle someone take arguing my point is that objectively, starvation / rocket research is not worth the cost of lives due to the Nazi regime (or could have been discovered without it), but that doesn't necessarily detract from the point - we can't see into the future, we must weigh decisions on presently available information.
  • dang 8y ago
    We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18303167 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18303167 and marked it off-topic.
    • komali2 8y ago
      Cheers dang, thanks for keeping things clean around here
• csomar 8y ago
  I don't get it. Why would rich/powerful men try to get other people in their line of work to have sexual relations with. It doesn't make much sense to me. When you are super rich, you can travel to xxx countries and have legitimate, legal and safe sex with, eh, probably, much hotter woman. Is this a case of a psyco guy who just wants to own whatever people he stumbles upon?
  • brown9-2 8y ago
    Why go through all that work when your employer condones your behavior and rewards you for it?
  • mtgx 8y ago
    It's about power and the abuse of that power. It's probably thrilling to them, and this provides plenty of opportunities "right in front of them", instead of say traveling the world to find similar experiences.
    • totalZero 8y ago
      Or maybe they're nerds with zero game and they don't get out much.
      • csomar 8y ago
        It had the total opposite effect on me. As a nerd who got richer with time; it made me much calmer toward the opposite sex. It also made the rule of not engaging in any external relations with professional people I work with much easier to follow.
        • totalZero 8y ago
          Not all nerds have zero game. It's easy to imagine someone who is not socially oriented and spends almost all of his time at work, thus not surrounding himself with an alternate circle of people with whom to have nonprofessional relationships, resorting to making a pass at a coworker. Those of us who studied or work with CS types are 100% aware that there are some people in those circles who have trouble controlling inappropriate manifestations of sexual desire. It's more "metoo" to think that all wealthy people who have relationships with subordinates are trying to exploit a power relationship for sexual gratification. But I think that just gives such people too much credit. The reality is sex is a basal drive and people often follow the path of least resistance. No food? Stealing bread starts to seem appropriate. No social life or game? Dating a subordinate starts to seem appropriate. I see it more as incompetence than malice. (And personally I think all mentally able adults should take responsibility for their own conscious and consensual decisions, instead of trying to blame the underlying dynamics of the situation.)
• totalZero 8y ago
  I don't like these stories where the major sources are anonymous. I want to know who said what, because without knowing the source it's impossible to know if they have a motive, aside from simply telling the truth for truth's sake.
  • sneak 8y ago
    This is why you have to trust the outlet; there is a presumption that this sort of due diligence is performed by the reporting organization. For obvious reasons they can’t publish the source but they have serious disincentives to be used as a tool in someone else’s agenda. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. cf Bloomberg.
• DonHopkins 8y ago
  >In a statement, Mr. DeVaul apologized for an “error of judgment.” He said X decided not to hire Ms. Simpson before she went to Burning Man and that he did not realize she had not been informed. The part I find hard to believe is that X would pass on hiring Star Simpson -- she's awesome! They made a mistake right there.
• ianamartin 8y ago
  The striking thing to me in this article is the utter weakness of the policy: "Google’s sexual harassment policy states that violators may be terminated." May be terminated? Most employment agreements in the U.S. are at-will. Any employee "may be" terminated at any time, for any reason. Any sexual harassment policy that doesn't say, "Will be terminated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law." isn't a policy. It's a fucking joke.
• jeffdavis 8y ago
  This is why I think the idea of expecting justice within companies or universities is a bad idea. The justice system should be independent and have a defined process and standards of evidence. This helps avoid two kinds of injustice: * injustice giving an unfair advantage to high-value accused people * injustice giving unfair dis advantage to accused people who aren't high-value enough to justify the internal drama (or legal risk) of an accusation
• justboxing 8y ago
  > The woman, with whom Mr. Rubin had been having an extramarital relationship, said he coerced her into performing oral sex in a hotel room in 2013. I do not understand this. "extramarital relationship" implies a consensual relationship. How then can the 'coerced' part of the oral sex in hotel be established?
  • jartelt 8y ago
    A person in a consensual relationship can still abuse or exert power over the other person in the relationship. Based on the what the women said, she didn't want to do that in the hotel room and Rubin "convinced" her to do it. Perhaps he said he would hurt her career if she didn't. Or, perhaps he said he would help her career if she did. Either way it would have been totally inappropriate.
• majani 8y ago
  Hit on women who only give you clear signs of attraction first and your life will be so much better on the relationships side of things, as well as avoiding nearly all the negatives. You don't usually get clear signs of attraction? Then work on yourself(diet, exercise, speaking lessons, dress better etc) and make yourself more attractive
• kerng 8y ago
  Wow, so the entire leadership of Google/Alphabet is in on this. Including Page having had multiple flings with subordinates... is this for real? Its unbelievable how power and money makes people lose any judgment and how the high ups seem to fix it themselves and the policy that applies for us low levels doesnt apply to them. Disgusting. I can't even imagine the poor candidate being asked to take the shirt off during an interview!?
  • zxcvvcxz 8y ago
    >Its unbelievable how power and money makes people lose any judgment I'm reminded of this South Park clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN57UhWy8_g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN57UhWy8_g
• 0xfffff 8y ago
  Amazing how this is a common and recurring pattern at Google without much consquences - some of these folks had repeated violations!
• tareqak 8y ago
  In response to this article, Sundar Pichai sent an email to Google employees: http://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/25/google-ceo-memo-says-48-fired-for-sexual-misconduct.html http://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/25/google-ceo-memo-says-48-fired... .
  • jpm_sd 8y ago
    And were two of those people Drummond and DeVaul?
    • tareqak 8y ago
      The email doesn't list any names.
  • Udik 8y ago
    Fabulous, so now in a company with 72 thousand employees anybody can just fill in an online form and file completely anonymous accusations of a serious crime that is very hard to disprove and leads to immediate termination. Can't wait to see how it goes.
    • brown9-2 8y ago
      This is a juvenile expectation of what such a policy would produce.
• 0xfffff 8y ago
  Imagine that interview... Google Guy: can you please take off your shirt? Candidate: aeh... why? Google Guy: Oh, I just want to give you a backrub. Candidate: thats a bit strange... Google Guy: No worries, its just to see if we get along well and so i know we can work together. Candidate: No, sorry. Google Guy: come on, I'll get you the job. How about a neck rub? Candidate: i guess... ok Google Guy: hehe. ( evil grin and proceeds)
• Crontab 8y ago
  Google was once my favorite tech company. I was amazed by their search engine, excited by Gmail, and ecstatic when I was selected to receive a CR-48. I loved their "do no evil" motto. I am sad to say that I no longer trust or like Google.
  • 1290cc 8y ago
    Exactly my thoughts. This was a fantastic company in the early 2000's and to be honest they probably did a lot worse back in the day as a fast moving startup flush with cash and success. The difference today is that Google is a solid Ad-tech company and is just like any other massive advertising company, rife with politics and an army of anonymous employees just grinding away each day. The similarities between these stories and Madmen is striking.
    • jiqiren 8y ago
      The reality is this (specific example from NYTimes) was always part of google. There never was a point where they were the good guys. Google has always been a bunch of amoral brilliant engineers.
• twitchh 8y ago
  Google employees be like Working with China? nope Working with the US Army? nope Sexual harassment? who cares lmao
  • pnw_hazor 8y ago
    Working with China is more in the "maybe" category.
• throwaway9323 8y ago
  What's annoying in particular is these are the same people who would grandstand and signal virtue during the weekly meeting (TGIF) and institute policies which could get you reprimanded for calling someone out on "kill all men" type of rhetoric on internal Google+ (I kid you not). Laws for thee but not for me.
• erobbins 8y ago
  If there's one thing I've learned in my 45 years of life, it's that being a horrible scumbag makes it a lot easier to get rich.
  • 1290cc 8y ago
    Only have to get rich once.
• Fricken 8y ago
  Rumours of this were floating around, but were never confirmed. Larry page has basically given Andy a blank Check and told him to build a Robotics subsidiary. Andy went shopping for robotics startups at the Darpa Grand Challenge, and bought 8 of them. All the good ones, including Boston Dynamics. Then Andy left Google, and all that shit got left in the lurch, it was leaderless, and a real mess. It would have been some kind of alternate history timeline if Andy kept it in his pants and stuck with the robotics subsidiary.
• brown9-2 8y ago
  In September 2014, a few weeks into the inquiry, Google’s board of directors awarded Mr. Rubin a stock grant worth $150 million, to be paid out over several years, said three people briefed on the decision. It was an unusually generous sum, even by Google’s standards. Mr. Page typically recommends how much senior executives are paid, said three former Google executives. Over the years, Mr. Page had told people he felt Mr. Rubin was never properly compensated for his contribution to Android, two people who spoke to him said. What about all the engineers who helped build Android? I wonder if their aggregate compensation even comes close to $150 million. It is insane how much we compensate and praise the people at the very top as if they did the work alone.
  • skj 8y ago
    > I wonder if their aggregate compensation even comes close to $150 million. at 200k/yr on the low end, to 500k/yr on the high end (excluding outliers), let's call it 300k/yr average. That's 500 engineers costing 150m per year. So, yeah I think it comes close and probably exceeds.
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    • khazhou 8y ago
      So you just demonstrated that indeed, the 500 employees under Andy, all combined might have received the same compensation as him alone. Compensation in tech is ridiculously unfair.
      • skj 8y ago
        The number of employees under Andy is not clear to me. 500 for the early days of Android seems plausible. But yeah, I did not intend my comment as a rebuttal to yours - I just like numbers to add up. I don't really think "fair" comes into it. It's a market value issue. I'm here at Google making senior engineer compensation, and when I look at what I go through every day and compare to friends who make less per year than I pay in taxes, that seems unfair to me too. But, in the end, some combination of skillset, talent, scarcity, and luck results in my value to my employer being what it is, and my friends' value to their employers being what that is. It doesn't seem fair, but I also don't see particular fault from any party. Now, with my comp and my friends' comp, it's sort of the result of the blind machine and in the end only larger political or social forces can affect things. With executive comp, it seems like a small club of bamboozlers at the top, wanting more and more and sharing more and more among themselves. However, in this case, it was basically Larry's money to give and he decided how much. Android is clearly a win for Google, and (perhaps unjustly, but how could I know?) Andy was the one pegged as responsible for the success. Edit: Also this wasn't his yearly compensation, but a one-time bonus recognizing his total contribution to Android.
• GeekyBear 8y ago
  According to interviews with Google insiders, this sort of inappropriate behavior was accepted there from the beginning and started from the very highest levels of the company. >Here Fisher quotes Google’s first executive chef, Charlie Ayers, and Heather Cairns, the company’s first HR manager: Charlie Ayers: Sergey’s the Google playboy. He was known for getting his fingers caught in the cookie jar with employees that worked for the company in the masseuse room. He got around. Heather Cairns: And we didn’t have locks, so you can’t help it if you walk in on people if there’s no lock. Remember, we’re a bunch of twentysomethings except for me—ancient at 35, so there’s some hormones and they’re raging. Charlie Ayers: H.R. told me that Sergey’s response to it was, “Why not? They’re my employees.” But you don’t have employees for fucking! That’s not what the job is. Heather Cairns: Oh my God: This is a sexual harassment claim waiting to happen! That was my concern. https://qz.com/work/1326942/sergey-brin-started-google-with-some-strange-ideas-about-his-female-employees-according-to-a-new-book/ https://qz.com/work/1326942/sergey-brin-started-google-with-...
  • jrnichols 8y ago
    didn't some of this stuff also come to light after James Damore sued Google for discrimination? or is this all separate?
    • cududa 8y ago
      Completely separate/ predates that
• mikeash 8y ago
  If anyone from Google leadership is reading, I have a hell of a deal for you. For only half of what you gave Mr. Rubin, I will not only keep silent about my sexual harassment, I will also not commit any in the first place.
• djrogers 8y ago
  > The suit included a screenshot of an August 2015 email Mr. Rubin sent to one woman. “You will be happy being taken care of,” he wrote. “Being owned is kinda like you are my property, and I can loan you to other people.” How on earth does this jack@%% think it’s ok to think this way, let alone write it down in a company email? Google should be ashamed - the entire article is full of shocking allegations, any one of which should have resulted in a sacking.
  • Sacho 8y ago
    What makes you think this is a company email? Andy Rubin left Google in 2014. The email seems to express a pretty common BDSM kink, so why isn't it ok to "think this way"?
  • adventured 8y ago
    Particularly twisted for a company obsessed with how their users are supposedly misbehaving and need controlled and censored, while the company runs wild in disgusting abuses. Not surprising however, given their extraordinary monopoly power and what that type of power always seems to lead to. The people that run Alphabet have been operating in a power bubble the likes of which few ever experience in a business environment. Larry Page being missing in action[1], detached, is just another of the many symptoms of that power bubble. As many others have noted here, this sort of widespread abuse and the culture that protects it, starts at the top. It's time for much of Alphabet's leadership to be removed. Or given that the share structure makes that very difficult to accomplish, an attempt at least should be made to permanently alter the corporate structure so the culture can be changed for the better. Enough investor pressure would probably yield positive results. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-09-13/larry-page-is-a-no-show-with-google-under-a-harsh-spotlight https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-09-13/larry-pag...
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• IOT_Apprentice 8y ago
  The corrupt tech elite of Silicon Valley protect their own and give them golden parachutes on the way out.
• tinkerteller 8y ago
  I think it could be said that Andy Rubin's penis is responsible for delay in robot revolution at least by decade. BTW, surprising that article entirely forgot about Vic Gundotra who was also fired because of sexual misconduct with big payout and forcing victims to keep mum. Google is sure more and more looking like Uber these days with execs going on sexual abuse spree like no tomorrow. I'm not sure firing one person every other week for sexual abuse is something to be proud about. Anyone who thinks #MeToo is overrated needs to read this article.
• jfjfjfifhfhd 8y ago
  Well you know it takes a special kind of person to be on an A Team right? I mean they have to be very “googly”. It’s really important that we have a special club of only the best students ivy colleges can produce. Only they are useful employees. Google only hires the best.
• jeisc 8y ago
  what would have been the proper ethical behavior required in this unsavory situation?
• ballooney 8y ago
  90% of this thread is people arguing about Burning Man. n-gate practically writes itself.
• writepub 8y ago
  If Google found the allegations credible, why didn't the accuser proceed with a lawsuit against Rubin? It's still not too late, if Google has a paper trail backing the allegations. On the contrary, if Rubin is innocent & being maligned, I hope he doesn't take this trial by social media and NYT lying down. I hope he fights this in the courts.
• aedron 8y ago
  The woman [...] said he coerced her into performing oral sex in a hotel room [...]. ... “Specifically, I never coerced a woman to have sex in a hotel room." I feel like I have heard this kind of word game before somewhere...
• Markoff 8y ago
  created android? last time i checked he completely changed it after iPhone release to pretty much just copy it, because he was clueless about interface and also he created it alone by himself? is he some genius? please don't give this guy more credit than it's necessary his Essential company it's basically bankrupt running off last money, but some people still praise this guy as some success? also look at what state was android when he left android project, the good things happened after him, not thanks to him
• rajacombinator 8y ago
  Google is great at attracting these kind of weirdos. Starting from the top. Nothing less sexy than some awkward kinky nerds...