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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

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.
- rifung 8y ago
  What do you consider a healthy work-life balance? 8 hours a day? 6 hours? If we assume you sleep 8 hours then you spend 16 hours awake, 7 days a week for a total of 112 hours in a week. Even if you only work 6 hours on the weekdays that'd still 30 hours a week, or more than 1/4 of your waking hours. If you work at a big company you probably run into a lot of people and you already have a shared interest and stuff to talk about. There will always be a decent chance you'll meet someone you're interested in at work. Unless you think that everyone should restrict themselves to only dating people who they meet for the explicit purpose of dating there will be relationships at work. Often relationships form without people actively seeking them out.
sneak 8y ago
> but I'm not sure what else they could have done. They could have fired him without compensation for breaking the law, and then used the money to defend themselves in the resulting lawsuit. Duh. I shouldn’t have to say this, but coercing people to have sex they do not want is a criminal offense.
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  He didn’t break the law, unless you are claiming there was coercion involved that could have been criminally prosecuted?
  - Illniyar 8y ago
    I think he meant that he broke his contract, which would have allowed them to be fired with cause.
    - sneak 8y ago
      No, I am saying that coercing people to have sex they do not want is rape, which is a criminal (not civil) offense, regardless of one’s contract with their employer.
      - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
        I’m not familiar with the case, but if the other party was consenting and of legal age, there isn’t much anyone can do criminally, it isn’t technically illegal even if it is immoral. Rape has a very specific definition.
danso 8y ago
> Paying him lots of money to go away seems like a no brainer move here from Google's perspective, but I'm not sure what else they could have done. The story suggests that he could have been fired without much if any kind of severance package. But besides the worry that such a senior person would file a termination lawsuit, there was the problem that Google's board had given him a $150M stock grant a few weeks after Google investigated the complaint. It's not clear whether the board knew of the investigation before rewarding him, but that sum apparently served as a reference point when settling the matter: > The $150 million stock grant gave Mr. Rubin an enormous bargaining chip when he started negotiating his exit package about a month later. That is because an executive’s stock compensation — and how much of it they would leave behind — is often taken into consideration during settlement talks.
wpietri 8y ago
I think it is reasonably easy to prevent people from dating subordinates in the workplace. Up front, you explain that the policy is one word: don't. If it ever happens, you fire the higher-level person promptly. No excuses, no second chances. Bosses should know not to have sexual or romantic relationships with people who work for them. We all know how one has to be careful what one says to one's boss. And we all no how hard it can be to say no to a boss or boss's boss about anything. It puts the junior person in an impossible situation. But it's just as bad from the employer's perspective. Suddenly two people who are supposed to be putting the company's interests first have a strong conflict of interest. And when the relationship ends (as most do) you have a whole different set of unnecessary potential conflicts in the workplace.
- conradfr 8y ago
  At some point people will only hire people of their own gender or different sexual orientation to avoid any problem down the line and it would be a loss for everybody.
  - kevincrane 8y ago
    Is that really easier than just not sexually harassing people?
    - sievebrain 8y ago
      This Rubin story isn't about sexual harassment. Some woman dated him and then decided she was "coerced" (how?) into doing something she late regretted. Given the modern notion some women have developed that they can change their mind about whether an act was consensual at any time, even retroactively, it's not at all clear Rubin did anything wrong beyond adultery. After all have only this woman's word for it.
      - thereare5lights 8y ago
        I sincerely hope you are not in any positions of power.
simonebrunozzi 8y ago
I am in total disagreement with you. Google should have punished Rubin for sexual misconduct, and sue him instead of praise and pay him.
- Udik 8y ago
  As I understand it, that money was the legitimate severance pay of Rubin (who, by the way, might have left the company for reasons completely unrelated to this sexual harassment accusation- the nyt article is written as to suggest a connection, without really stating it). There are plenty of perfectly reasonable explanations for Rubin leaving Google (dissatisfaction or other). Anyway, that was the money that the company felt was adequate for his contribution to its success. What is or should be the relationship between that sum and the claim of sexual harassment is frankly unclear to me.
  - brown9-2 8y ago
    How is his severance legitimate if a regular employee would never get this type of consideration? Regular people don’t get severance when they decide their job is boring and they want something new.
Illniyar 8y ago
This isn't rocket science. If you fancy someone, you ask him/her on a date, a simple neutral stuff, like a movie. If the other party refuses, that's it. If the other party is a subordinate you just don't. You don't invite them to Burning man, you don't have business meetings in your house late at night, you don't tell someone your his slave, you don't offer to swing with your wife (from a different post I read), seriously.
- ummonk 8y ago
  I agree about "don't" if the party is a subordinate. However, in a sex positive culture, what makes a date request so special compared to all the other types of romantic / sexual requests?
  - Illniyar 8y ago
    What's a sex positive culture? regardless if you want casual romantic or sexual relationship do it with someone out of the office. There are enough people in the world that you don't know anything about you can easily have a casual relationship with, there are apps for that, apparently. A date assumes you have a more serious relationship in mind. No body cares if you marry a co-worker, it's causal relationships that could cause trouble. Besides, asking someone on a date is never ambiguous, and it can't be taken badly or out of context.
nradov 8y ago
Is it really impossible to prevent people from dating within the workplace? I've worked for many years at large and small companies and I've never done it, nor have the majority of my co-workers. The HN demographic is skewed by a lot of young people who work for companies that are managed more like college dorms than real businesses. I think this gives some people a distorted perspective about what's realistic. To be clear I'm not proposing a blanket ban on all workplace relationships everywhere. But if some employers choose to go that route it's not necessarily bad or unrealistic.
- noobermin 8y ago
  Should bosses ban friendships in the work place? I mean, horse play can impede work. At some point, bosses shouldn't be dictators of their workers' lives.
tdb7893 8y ago
I don't think it's that hard. I would bet 90m$ that if there was a similar sexual harassment situation now he wouldn't get the money.
thereare5lights 8y ago
There are absolutely right answers. > using a position of authority to coerce someone into a relationship of any kind Is not a necessity for > people from dating within the work place > while also ensuring that predators aren't allowed to abuse the people around them People in high positions can take actions to prevent conflict of interests like when any legitimate President places their assets into a blind trust. There is absolutely nothing stopping people in positions of power in companies from doing the same and to avoid dating anyone they have power over. > but I'm not sure what else they could have done. They could make it clean house, add a zero tolerance policy and make it clear they don't allow people to be in personal relationships with those they have power over, perhaps as defined by being their superior in the org chart.
djrogers 8y ago
> But at the same time it's pretty much impossible to prevent people from dating within the work place. This goes beyond that - there were rules about reporting such relationships, presumably so HR could look out for the less advantaged party, but those rules were ignored. And this doesn’t sound like simple ‘dating a coworker’ - guy was a sleazy scumbag: FTA - ‘The suit included a screenshot of an August 2015 email Mr. Rubin sent to one woman. “You will be happy being taken care of,” he wrote. “Being owned is kinda like you are my property, and I can loan you to other people.”’
tinkerteller 8y ago
Are you smoking something? There are no right answers, seriously? This dudes were the boss of victims who used their power to control their paycheck, promotions and career for sex. This is very different then relationships between peers. On the top of this, victims lives and careers were destroyed anyway while the bosses obtained fat paychecks to buy private islands and never having to work for all their future generations. In what world there are no right answers?
cthalupa 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. It's actually pretty simple. The problem isn't co-workers dating. The problem is people in a position of power dating someone that reports to them. There's a handful of of options here. 1) Don't do it 2) If it is actually legitimate and not coerced, you reassign one of them to a separate team and completely remove them from the reporting chain and any impact on the other's career. 3) If it is actually legitimate and not coerced, one of them resigns. 4) If it is coerced, you fire the shit out of the person in power. If it's two people that are not in each other's reporting chain and one isn't subordinate to the other, or there isn't some other reason one could have an outsized impact on the other's career, it's generally not the same sort of issue.
PunchTornado 8y ago
I'm not sure a couple of millions is lots of money. this is the guy who started and led android. he should have been a bilionaire easily, 100x times more than whatsup and android guys...

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.
rifung 8y ago
What do you consider a healthy work-life balance? 8 hours a day? 6 hours? If we assume you sleep 8 hours then you spend 16 hours awake, 7 days a week for a total of 112 hours in a week. Even if you only work 6 hours on the weekdays that'd still 30 hours a week, or more than 1/4 of your waking hours. If you work at a big company you probably run into a lot of people and you already have a shared interest and stuff to talk about. There will always be a decent chance you'll meet someone you're interested in at work. Unless you think that everyone should restrict themselves to only dating people who they meet for the explicit purpose of dating there will be relationships at work. Often relationships form without people actively seeking them out.

sneak 8y ago

> but I'm not sure what else they could have done. They could have fired him without compensation for breaking the law, and then used the money to defend themselves in the resulting lawsuit. Duh. I shouldn’t have to say this, but coercing people to have sex they do not want is a criminal offense.

seanmcdirmid 8y ago
He didn’t break the law, unless you are claiming there was coercion involved that could have been criminally prosecuted?
- Illniyar 8y ago
  I think he meant that he broke his contract, which would have allowed them to be fired with cause.
  - sneak 8y ago
    No, I am saying that coercing people to have sex they do not want is rape, which is a criminal (not civil) offense, regardless of one’s contract with their employer.
    - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
      I’m not familiar with the case, but if the other party was consenting and of legal age, there isn’t much anyone can do criminally, it isn’t technically illegal even if it is immoral. Rape has a very specific definition.

danso 8y ago

> Paying him lots of money to go away seems like a no brainer move here from Google's perspective, but I'm not sure what else they could have done. The story suggests that he could have been fired without much if any kind of severance package. But besides the worry that such a senior person would file a termination lawsuit, there was the problem that Google's board had given him a $150M stock grant a few weeks after Google investigated the complaint. It's not clear whether the board knew of the investigation before rewarding him, but that sum apparently served as a reference point when settling the matter: > The $150 million stock grant gave Mr. Rubin an enormous bargaining chip when he started negotiating his exit package about a month later. That is because an executive’s stock compensation — and how much of it they would leave behind — is often taken into consideration during settlement talks.

wpietri 8y ago

I think it is reasonably easy to prevent people from dating subordinates in the workplace. Up front, you explain that the policy is one word: don't. If it ever happens, you fire the higher-level person promptly. No excuses, no second chances. Bosses should know not to have sexual or romantic relationships with people who work for them. We all know how one has to be careful what one says to one's boss. And we all no how hard it can be to say no to a boss or boss's boss about anything. It puts the junior person in an impossible situation. But it's just as bad from the employer's perspective. Suddenly two people who are supposed to be putting the company's interests first have a strong conflict of interest. And when the relationship ends (as most do) you have a whole different set of unnecessary potential conflicts in the workplace.

conradfr 8y ago
At some point people will only hire people of their own gender or different sexual orientation to avoid any problem down the line and it would be a loss for everybody.
- kevincrane 8y ago
  Is that really easier than just not sexually harassing people?
  - sievebrain 8y ago
    This Rubin story isn't about sexual harassment. Some woman dated him and then decided she was "coerced" (how?) into doing something she late regretted. Given the modern notion some women have developed that they can change their mind about whether an act was consensual at any time, even retroactively, it's not at all clear Rubin did anything wrong beyond adultery. After all have only this woman's word for it.
    - thereare5lights 8y ago
      I sincerely hope you are not in any positions of power.

simonebrunozzi 8y ago

I am in total disagreement with you. Google should have punished Rubin for sexual misconduct, and sue him instead of praise and pay him.

Udik 8y ago
As I understand it, that money was the legitimate severance pay of Rubin (who, by the way, might have left the company for reasons completely unrelated to this sexual harassment accusation- the nyt article is written as to suggest a connection, without really stating it). There are plenty of perfectly reasonable explanations for Rubin leaving Google (dissatisfaction or other). Anyway, that was the money that the company felt was adequate for his contribution to its success. What is or should be the relationship between that sum and the claim of sexual harassment is frankly unclear to me.
- brown9-2 8y ago
  How is his severance legitimate if a regular employee would never get this type of consideration? Regular people don’t get severance when they decide their job is boring and they want something new.

Illniyar 8y ago

This isn't rocket science. If you fancy someone, you ask him/her on a date, a simple neutral stuff, like a movie. If the other party refuses, that's it. If the other party is a subordinate you just don't. You don't invite them to Burning man, you don't have business meetings in your house late at night, you don't tell someone your his slave, you don't offer to swing with your wife (from a different post I read), seriously.

ummonk 8y ago
I agree about "don't" if the party is a subordinate. However, in a sex positive culture, what makes a date request so special compared to all the other types of romantic / sexual requests?
- Illniyar 8y ago
  What's a sex positive culture? regardless if you want casual romantic or sexual relationship do it with someone out of the office. There are enough people in the world that you don't know anything about you can easily have a casual relationship with, there are apps for that, apparently. A date assumes you have a more serious relationship in mind. No body cares if you marry a co-worker, it's causal relationships that could cause trouble. Besides, asking someone on a date is never ambiguous, and it can't be taken badly or out of context.

nradov 8y ago

Is it really impossible to prevent people from dating within the workplace? I've worked for many years at large and small companies and I've never done it, nor have the majority of my co-workers. The HN demographic is skewed by a lot of young people who work for companies that are managed more like college dorms than real businesses. I think this gives some people a distorted perspective about what's realistic. To be clear I'm not proposing a blanket ban on all workplace relationships everywhere. But if some employers choose to go that route it's not necessarily bad or unrealistic.

noobermin 8y ago
Should bosses ban friendships in the work place? I mean, horse play can impede work. At some point, bosses shouldn't be dictators of their workers' lives.

tdb7893 8y ago

I don't think it's that hard. I would bet 90m$ that if there was a similar sexual harassment situation now he wouldn't get the money.

thereare5lights 8y ago

There are absolutely right answers. > using a position of authority to coerce someone into a relationship of any kind Is not a necessity for > people from dating within the work place > while also ensuring that predators aren't allowed to abuse the people around them People in high positions can take actions to prevent conflict of interests like when any legitimate President places their assets into a blind trust. There is absolutely nothing stopping people in positions of power in companies from doing the same and to avoid dating anyone they have power over. > but I'm not sure what else they could have done. They could make it clean house, add a zero tolerance policy and make it clear they don't allow people to be in personal relationships with those they have power over, perhaps as defined by being their superior in the org chart.

djrogers 8y ago

> But at the same time it's pretty much impossible to prevent people from dating within the work place. This goes beyond that - there were rules about reporting such relationships, presumably so HR could look out for the less advantaged party, but those rules were ignored. And this doesn’t sound like simple ‘dating a coworker’ - guy was a sleazy scumbag: FTA - ‘The suit included a screenshot of an August 2015 email Mr. Rubin sent to one woman. “You will be happy being taken care of,” he wrote. “Being owned is kinda like you are my property, and I can loan you to other people.”’

tinkerteller 8y ago

Are you smoking something? There are no right answers, seriously? This dudes were the boss of victims who used their power to control their paycheck, promotions and career for sex. This is very different then relationships between peers. On the top of this, victims lives and careers were destroyed anyway while the bosses obtained fat paychecks to buy private islands and never having to work for all their future generations. In what world there are no right answers?

cthalupa 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. It's actually pretty simple. The problem isn't co-workers dating. The problem is people in a position of power dating someone that reports to them. There's a handful of of options here. 1) Don't do it 2) If it is actually legitimate and not coerced, you reassign one of them to a separate team and completely remove them from the reporting chain and any impact on the other's career. 3) If it is actually legitimate and not coerced, one of them resigns. 4) If it is coerced, you fire the shit out of the person in power. If it's two people that are not in each other's reporting chain and one isn't subordinate to the other, or there isn't some other reason one could have an outsized impact on the other's career, it's generally not the same sort of issue.

PunchTornado 8y ago

I'm not sure a couple of millions is lots of money. this is the guy who started and led android. he should have been a bilionaire easily, 100x times more than whatsup and android guys...