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It's a total mystery to me why do people feel the urge to defend him. I kind of understand this in the case of technically brilliant but socially awkward people

• ATsch 5y ago
  My unfortunate conclusion is that a large portion of people in this industry are either like this or wish they could get away with being like this. The amount of people who always reply about how they don't see any issues is enough proof of that.
  • truetraveller 5y ago
    Nah. These accusations are exaggerated and without proof. Put yourself in his shoes. Would you like random internet people to accuse you with dramatized statements and/or exaggerations?
    • krapp 5y ago
      If they're without proof, how do you know they're exaggerated and dramatized? Were you there? Do you have the proof to the contrary?
      • truetraveller 5y ago
        The burden of proof is on the claimant. And if your gonna post a sensationalist article about it to the public, you better provide proof to the public. Don't just do character assassination on another fellow human.
        • krapp 5y ago
          You're the one claiming the story is exaggerated, dramatized, sensationalist and now character assassination. This isn't a court of law, there is no "burden of proof." And if there were, you're clearly not willing to carry it yourself.
          • truetraveller 5y ago
            Yes, I am also claiming something. I am claiming exaggeration. My proof is the article, and I would rightfully assume they provided the strongest reasons for him being a bully there, I do not see bullying. I am not the court, and I don't expect to know the fine details, but I need to the know the high-level points. I do not find these. This is not Soviet-era Russia. If your going to be public about a person's guilt, you gotta give high-level evidence.
            • deleted 5y ago
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          • s7atic 5y ago
            > This isn't a court of law, there is no "burden of proof." That's exactly the problem with news publications like this; they are extrajudicial. They throw away the right to due process. And make no mistake: The consequences for the accused are very tangible. There are also important second order effects from legitimizing this rhetoric. A democracy cannot exist without a rule of law. When we violate those basic legal principles, we risk destabilizing our society at large. In some jurisdictions, defamation is illegal irrespective of the claims' veracity in order to ensure the right to due process and avoid non-sactioned punishments. I cannot help but feel legalization in other countries, including the US and UK, have not yet caught up with the forces enabled by today's social media climate.
            • krapp 5y ago
              >And make no mistake: The consequences for the accused are very tangible. A promotion and a raise? The horror. > democracy cannot exist without a rule of law. When we violate those basic legal principles, we risk destabilizing our society at large. It's weird, Hacker News is usually extreme in its defense of absolute freedom of speech and the press, especially the freedom of the press to report negatively on people in positions of power. But when someone writes an article on a Google employee that they don't like, it's "destabilizing our society at large" and violates "basic legal principles." Where did all the Friends of Voltaire go, I wonder? Where was all of this sympathy and assumption of good faith for Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell? Why does HN only ever go to the mat for sociopaths, bigots and assholes? >In some jurisdictions, defamation is illegal irrespective of the claims' veracity in order to ensure the right to due process and avoid non-sactioned punishments. What defamation? What punishment? He got a promotion. He was punished with money and power and being in line for CEO. > cannot help but feel legalization in other countries, including the US and UK, have not yet caught up with the forces enabled by today's social media climate. Are you trying to make this "cancel culture" now? This has nothing to do with "today's social media climate." There was no Twitter mob calling for Mustafa Suleyman's head, there were internal complaints made by employees.
        • klyrs 5y ago
          Here's a fun one: > "Employees said Suleyman encouraged them to use private chat groups on Signal and Telegram for work conversations, some of which were set up to automatically delete messages after a set period. Employees were also on occasion asked to delete messages from their phones, a former employee said. They were also told to notify the group once they had done so." The burden of proof is on the claimant, sure. But if your boss forces you to delete the evidence, the stakes are that much higher.
          • joebob42 5y ago
            Google makes all employees do this, for whatever it's worth. I think this may just be kinda standard for corporate stuff. (Not telegram, but the self destructing messages)
            • peakaboo 5y ago
              It's not kind of standard. Are you mad?
            • rsynnott 5y ago
              I think the odd bit here is the encouragement to use messaging systems out of the employer's control for work stuff.
            • shard972 5y ago
              then google is suspect
            • ewalk153 5y ago
              That seems odd for corporate communications at a publicly traded company.
  • cutemonster 5y ago
    In addition to that, I wonder if a few are employees at that company, and don't want to dislike their bosses or workplace (and then defend that weird exec instead)
• truetraveller 5y ago
  We're defending him because the accusations against him are egregiously exaggerated, and without proof. I'm against screaming, but infrequent/involuntary screaming by a very senior exec does happen, and in my opinion, cannot be called abusive. In fact, I would be upset if I had a sheep for an exec. I want a exec who is kind, and who can lead and is firm. Not screaming, but almost there.
  • mLuby 5y ago
    > screaming by a very senior exec is common place and cannot be called abusive It is possible that what's been acceptable for a long time is no longer okay. At the very least, I'd say tantrum are unprofessional; After all, if the exec is losing their shit over something minor, how can I trust them to keep a level head if things really get challenging? But maybe some people respond better to the stick than to the carrot, or to a reasoned explanation of why the cart needs to go to market.
    • truetraveller 5y ago
      I'm against screaming. But doing someone once or twice in year, is not the same as doing something everyday. There's no mention, at all, about how frequent his outbursts / yelling / screaming was. This is precisely the issue.
      • sjg007 5y ago
        There’s no place for screaming at someone in the workplace or even in the home unless someone’s life is in danger and you’re trying to save them. It’s low EQ.
        • lazide 5y ago
          Amen. Literally the only time I can think it might be a reasonable thing is to scream ‘watch out’ or the equivalent in a noisy environment at someone about to get run over or hit by something. And then it should kick off an investigation as to why that was necessary, because it shouldn’t be. That said, I’ve definitely seen people say someone was screaming at them when nothing of the sort even remotely happened. So your mileage may vary.
• IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago
  It's a culture war thing... HN believes that capabilities tend to be zero-sum, and any character flaws are evidence of genius in other regards. The "brilliant but eccentric scientist" cliché, more or less. There's also an unwillingness to either consider the concept of "bullying" as real, because it's not easily quantified and/or defined in such a way that you could spot it in a single-page flowchart. Or a learnt defense to immediately show solidarity with any bully so as to avoid being targeted. There might be hints of what's sometimes referred to as "toxic masculinity" in there, as well. This exec's mistake, resulting in less than overwhelming support here, was not to get accused of sexual harassment.
  • bobthechef 5y ago
    > HN believes that capabilities tend to be zero-sum, and any character flaws are evidence of genius in other regards. The "brilliant but eccentric scientist" cliché, more or less. I think "zero sum" is itself rooted in envy and pride. I.e., when people that lack humility know, or at least sense, suspect, or believe, that they lack some quality that someone else has, they are prone to believing the zero-sum distribution of qualities because it gratifies their egos. They also tend to view these qualities as fungible (at least in a manner that benefits their calculus of self-worth), which they are not. Of course, envy, like all vices, warps one's perception of reality. I wish more people understood that unrepented vice leads to rationalization of the vice which leads to the subsequent corruption of knowledge and wisdom. Breaking free of this pathology is difficult. > There might be hints of what's sometimes referred to as "toxic masculinity" in there, as well. Sadly, that term is entirely ambiguous, but I would say that both absence of masculinity in men as well as the "the brute" are two extremes that ought to be avoided. Masculinity is neither about domineering behavior nor subservience. Masculinity finds its fulfillment in the readiness for self-sacrifice. Leaderships is service. The difference between leadership and tyranny is that in the second case, the "leader" exploits those he is suppose to be leading in some capacity for the common good of the group. Abusive behavior is especially egregious when done by those in positions of leadership.
• Guthur 5y ago
  Because some of us are getting really tired of these witch hunts. Was he an ahole, possibly. Did Google value his contribution, probably. Did he commit any crime, doubtful. Humans are all deeply flawed and if you were to pick enough sound bites about someone across a long enough period of time you could paint them as monsters. This current climate of holier than thou rhetoric is becoming increasingly poisonous.
  • jakelazaroff 5y ago
    It’s a “witch hunt” when someone doesn’t get a promotion? No one’s calling for his arrest. They’re just saying that someone who abused his power to bully people should not be rewarded with more power over people.
    • Guthur 5y ago
      And so what. If you work at take it up with them. Or if it's bad for the company or will hurt them. Or if you are shareholder take it up at the next meeting. You and I have no idea of the context unless we are actually there. It's frankly none of our business. All these journalists and keyboard sycophants live to pull something down and destroy.
      • joshuamorton 5y ago
        How would a shareholder know without such an article?
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      • deleted 5y ago
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• GoodJokes 5y ago
  I think people have an urge to defend him because they know they have done the same. There is a crisis right now when it comes to managers of people. They either haven’t been trained to see people that they supervise as equals or have been explicitly told or learned that it is ok to be a shitty person while being a manager.
• contravariant 5y ago
  Well even in the cases of technically brilliant but socially awkward people it doesn't really make sense to place them high in the hierarchy. Unless they have no people directly under them, I suppose.
  • beerandt 5y ago
    Even if they're only making technical decisions and not managing anyone directly, it still is going to result in employees being told to do what he commands. You've either got power or don't, there's not much to being high-up if you're decisions don't carry much weight.
• mhh__ 5y ago
  Working with quite a few contrarians, I have noticed a tendency to be so done-with-it and disapproving of conventional wisdom that one can end up subtly approving really immoral things on the basis that you can kind of do anything - proportionality be damned - as long as you are right (for some value of correct)
• dimitrios1 5y ago
  It's the same reason people defend Bill Gates or Bezos, or any other rich or powerful person for that matter. People want what they have, and they feel if they attack them, recognize their immorality or destitute nature of their souls they are in a sense attacking their future self image, and it feels inconvenient. Especially where where there are a lot of valley Elizabeth Holmes types on here that fancy they are potentially one or two exits away from that lifestyle, they would rather see past the heaps of immoral actions taken to achieve success in order to maintain their fantasies. If I call out that successful persons immoral behavior, I can potentially be placing my future self in a morally compromised position when I encounter such a situation that may lead me to take immoral actions. No one want's to fantasize themselves being a hypocrite.
  • ip26 5y ago
    Alternate theory: We want to believe the rich and powerful deserve to be rich and powerful. If they didn't deserve it, that would imply 1) the system is not fair and 2) we can't ever get what they have even if we become deserving. Thus, we defend their credibility & merits so that we can go on believing in the meritocracy.
    • ignoramous 5y ago
      Also: The rich and famous make for lucarative targets given their appeal and profile. Blowing things out of proportion, bias in reporting, privacy-violating scrutiny, coordinated defamation isn't all that uncommon to have happened to them.
    • thereare5lights 5y ago
      The first path are people that initially tilt towards morally good but eventually tilt towards morally bad as they accumulate more and more wealth and power. The people that the maxim "power corrupt" was made for. Your path describe the naive people that would rather believe that the world is a meritocracy rather than a free for all with a thin veneer of meritocracy and will defend that facade until they are personally affected. There is yet another path which is people that figure out the game and embrace it and say that anyone that doesn't play the game gets what's coming to them. I'd say that this guy is probably in this camp.
• SquishyPanda23 5y ago
  It's the tech version of being edgy. Some people in tech like to believe that it takes a real asshole to get things done.
  • torstenvl 5y ago
    No. People in tech like to believe that holding people accountable is "abusive" or "bullying." Someone in this thread literally posted that shooting down someone's opinions is bullying, accusing someone of insufficient effort is bullying, working them hard is bullying. There are people in this world who actually care. They want to make a positive impact. Then leeches join their team and want to do the minimum. And when they get called out, it's "bullying." That's bullshit.
    • SquishyPanda23 5y ago
      > People in tech like to believe that holding people accountable is "abusive" or "bullying." Nobody believes this. You are blinded by your politics.
• jrsj 5y ago
  I imagine it’s because your personal success as a manager has a lot more to do with politics, taking credit for others achievements, and redirecting blame onto others than actually being good at managing anyone
• refenestrator 5y ago
  I'm stifling the urge, because the article does the typical thing where they categorize his douchiness as 'misbehavior' and then immediately pivot to talking about that sexual harassment walkout, using the term 'misconduct'. The fuck does 'misbehavior' even mean? I'm automatically suspicious of people playing word-association games like that. Sounds like the guy has poor emotional control and is only in his position due to right place, right time. Fortune passes everywhere.
• belorn 5y ago
  I suspect that the discussion would look very differently if the article had not named the person but rather discussed general abusive behavior of managers in faang. Now people feel like they have to take a side, with the mob or against the mob, and that makes people uncomfortable. This might be the origin to libel laws. One might think they exist exclusively to protect those accused unfairly, but it might be to also protect society in general from feeling uncertainty about people being attacked.