6 ms·

Can anyone explain the mindset of these firms that become very protective of execs that do things like this?

by brigadier132 2y ago

tptacek 2y ago
Apparently this firm fired the exec.
- kerkeslager 2y ago
  Sure, but it's not clear whether that happened before or after the civil suit went public.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
danielmarkbruce 2y ago
They fired him. What protection did they provide?
- brigadier132 2y ago
  I assumed there was negligence on the side of the firm because of the lawsuit.
  - tbrownaw 2y ago
    Well the article says she's alleging retaliation, which seems like a bit more than just negligence.
- kerkeslager 2y ago
  Did the do that before or after the civil suit went public?
  - danielmarkbruce 2y ago
    Assuming the article is reporting it faithfully, before. Doesn't meet any definition of "protective". I don't know the details here, but if the person did such thing claimed and deserves punishment, it's for society via the criminal justice system to decide and hand out.
    - kerkeslager 2y ago
      > Assuming the article is reporting it faithfully, before. I read the article and I'm not seeing that at all.
alephnerd 2y ago
Employers are overly protective if charges have not been filed and litigated due to the reputational impact it might have. It can also potentially mean the employer is liable as well for not protecting the victim - such as the case being litigated in the article, where Blumberg Capital is alleged to have tried to hush up sexual harassment allegations. Furthermore, in relationship heavy fields like Entrepreneurship, power politics can and do happen - look at what David Sacks did to Parker Conrad. Sacks only stopped because PG and sama both threatened to blackball A16Z. Now imagine if you are a less connected founder like Parker Conrad - you don't have many options and if you go public, you might be blackballed despite being the victim.
mvkel 2y ago
Admitting blame in any form exposes you to all sorts of litigation potential. Since it's impossible to know definitively that every hire you make is a good human, it's inevitable that someone will come along who can really do damage. That said, culpability at the org level is mostly optics, unless it's a systemic problem. Which this could be. TLDR if you have a legal team, they'll demand you say nothing and not admit any wrongdoing.
- jclulow 2y ago
  I think it might actually be _the wrongdoing_ that really exposes you to legal liability.
  - lazide 2y ago
    Ah, the naïveté. You can end up with mountains of liability while doing nothing wrong. And doing plenty of things wrong while having no practical liability (due to leverage). Frankly, it’s so common that lawyers often don’t even care about what actually happened, rather what can be spun/alluded to/proven.
    - bryanrasmussen 2y ago
      In the American system the lawyer is also obligated to give you the best defense possible, actually caring about what happened might make that more difficult.
  - curiousthought 2y ago
    I have to agree with lazide here. One poignant example is a man who accepts the fatherly role of a child can become legally liable for that child's wellbeing, support payments etc., whether or not the child is actually his biologically. Therefore it is not _the action_ of having a child that exposes the man to legal liability, it is verbally accepting and or acting as if the child is his (cases and situations vary greatly). This is part of why saying "Sorry" is so heavily avoided in certain subcultures, because it accepts culpability.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
heavyset_go 2y ago
It's the old boys club mindset.
- lazide 2y ago
  Also ‘old girls’ - it shows up in any group with power.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
tbrownaw 2y ago
Groups approximately never like outsiders imposing consequences on group members. This shows up everywhere. It's why whistleblower protection laws exist. It's why it's reportedly hazardous for the cops to interrupt domestic disputes. It's why various organizations keep getting caught covering up bad behavior by their members.
- shombaboor 2y ago
  this just reminded me of the warriors video of draymond green punching his teammate. the organization was more mad that the video got out than anything else. Steve Kerr who likes to moralize carries endless weight for the misdeeds of his players. Institutions protect themselves foremost as a law of nature
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  > Groups approximately never like outsiders imposing consequences on group members. It's also worth considering why this happens, instead of just regarding it as something people do because they're inherently malevolent. Suppose you suspect your organization of violating some law. You think they're supposed to be using some safety feature on their equipment and they're not, or what have you. In a normal organization, you report this to the leadership and if it's a real problem they fix it, because they know what happens if you report it to law enforcement or it causes someone to get hurt and they don't want that. Now suppose one of your members reports it to law enforcement instead of the organization's leadership. Government inspectors show up and you have to pay lawyers to deal with them, and lawyers are expensive. Reporters write negative stories about you. These things happen even if the person reporting it was wrong and there was never a real problem. Worse, these outsiders are not always that diligent and you could be prosecuted or dragged through the mud despite the person reporting it being the one who made an error. And if they didn't make an error -- if the problem was real -- that's even worse, because now you're getting convicted instead of having an opportunity to correct the problem. Many laws are even implicitly written under the expectation that honest mistakes are handled internally and only intransigent bastards get reported to the government, so anyone who goes there first is going to be a pariah. This is legitimately hard to fix because there is a trade off between cost and accuracy. If investigators are more diligent, so they get the result right more often, they have to spend more time finding out what's really going on in an organization they don't come into it with any internal understanding of. Which imposes costs on both the government and the possibly-innocent subject of the investigation. But if they're less diligent then they'll be imposing penalties on innocent people more often. In both cases, any group is not going to want there to be an investigation and is going to be resentful of anyone who causes there to be one. Governments often make this worse by trying to make it better and imposing penalties on people who fail to report. Because that requirement doesn't eliminate the structural incentive -- if nobody reports then nobody gets punished for not reporting -- but now the group is going to respond with more severe retaliation for reporting because you've just given everyone who didn't report it the incentive to protect the perpetrators to protect themselves and to retaliate against anybody who does. What you really want here is to do the opposite. Limit the costs and consequences to the unrepentant actual perpetrators, and make sure they're actually guilty, so you don't give the general group the impression that they're all in the same boat and should be collectively fighting against their enemies in the other tribe.
dyauspitr 2y ago
[flagged]
cortesoft 2y ago
Lots of reasons... 'the firm' isn't its own thing, it is controlled by the executive team, and the people making decisions about how to respond to allegations like these are the peers of the person being accused... they are likely close and know each other well, so they are more likely to believe and want to protect their friend. In addition, often times the other executives also behave in the same way as the accused exec and want to protect themselves.
- fasa99 2y ago
  It may also have nothing to do with friendships with the accused offender whatsoever. Maybe they also hate the accused offender. One thing big orgs do a LOT LOT LOT of is cover-ups. I would imagine (gut estimate) 1% or less of such saucy dramatic events ever float out into the public due to limited media coverage and cover ups. It's not about covering whatever accused who is accused of doing this, no, it's about protecting the fine name and reputation of the firm. So they aren't saying necessarily "we don't care" in a typical case, more like "we care.. buuuut we care way more about our own org, so we're hushing this all up like it never happened and it will never see the light of day". This is particularly true of very big or very prestigious orgs, your McKinseys, your Goldman, Your Harvard, your Stanford, your federal government, and so on
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]
seanhunter 2y ago
Having seen this multiple times before[1] I think a lot of time it’s partly embarrassment and partly acting on bad legal advice because they kinda know about it and have been turning a blind eye. The legal advice is bad as well as immoral because the coverup is only going to make any liability worse. [1] including one where it was an open secret but the guy was pretty powerful in his world. He’s in jail for rape now so make of that what you will.
thefz 2y ago
Keeping up denial of the evidence is a valid defense strategy, albeit maybe a cheap one.
Xen9 2y ago
Obviously, in a war against other humans, you'd never want the executives who know your weaknesses, to be your enemies. Usually the challenger will be an agent with less knowledge—easy to tackle them.

Can anyone explain the mindset of these firms that become very protective of execs that do things like this?

tptacek 2y ago

Apparently this firm fired the exec.

kerkeslager 2y ago
Sure, but it's not clear whether that happened before or after the civil suit went public.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

danielmarkbruce 2y ago

They fired him. What protection did they provide?

brigadier132 2y ago
I assumed there was negligence on the side of the firm because of the lawsuit.
- tbrownaw 2y ago
  Well the article says she's alleging retaliation, which seems like a bit more than just negligence.
kerkeslager 2y ago
Did the do that before or after the civil suit went public?
- danielmarkbruce 2y ago
  Assuming the article is reporting it faithfully, before. Doesn't meet any definition of "protective". I don't know the details here, but if the person did such thing claimed and deserves punishment, it's for society via the criminal justice system to decide and hand out.
  - kerkeslager 2y ago
    > Assuming the article is reporting it faithfully, before. I read the article and I'm not seeing that at all.

alephnerd 2y ago

Employers are overly protective if charges have not been filed and litigated due to the reputational impact it might have. It can also potentially mean the employer is liable as well for not protecting the victim - such as the case being litigated in the article, where Blumberg Capital is alleged to have tried to hush up sexual harassment allegations. Furthermore, in relationship heavy fields like Entrepreneurship, power politics can and do happen - look at what David Sacks did to Parker Conrad. Sacks only stopped because PG and sama both threatened to blackball A16Z. Now imagine if you are a less connected founder like Parker Conrad - you don't have many options and if you go public, you might be blackballed despite being the victim.

mvkel 2y ago

Admitting blame in any form exposes you to all sorts of litigation potential. Since it's impossible to know definitively that every hire you make is a good human, it's inevitable that someone will come along who can really do damage. That said, culpability at the org level is mostly optics, unless it's a systemic problem. Which this could be. TLDR if you have a legal team, they'll demand you say nothing and not admit any wrongdoing.

jclulow 2y ago
I think it might actually be _the wrongdoing_ that really exposes you to legal liability.
- lazide 2y ago
  Ah, the naïveté. You can end up with mountains of liability while doing nothing wrong. And doing plenty of things wrong while having no practical liability (due to leverage). Frankly, it’s so common that lawyers often don’t even care about what actually happened, rather what can be spun/alluded to/proven.
  - bryanrasmussen 2y ago
    In the American system the lawyer is also obligated to give you the best defense possible, actually caring about what happened might make that more difficult.
- curiousthought 2y ago
  I have to agree with lazide here. One poignant example is a man who accepts the fatherly role of a child can become legally liable for that child's wellbeing, support payments etc., whether or not the child is actually his biologically. Therefore it is not _the action_ of having a child that exposes the man to legal liability, it is verbally accepting and or acting as if the child is his (cases and situations vary greatly). This is part of why saying "Sorry" is so heavily avoided in certain subcultures, because it accepts culpability.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

heavyset_go 2y ago

It's the old boys club mindset.

lazide 2y ago
Also ‘old girls’ - it shows up in any group with power.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

tbrownaw 2y ago

Groups approximately never like outsiders imposing consequences on group members. This shows up everywhere. It's why whistleblower protection laws exist. It's why it's reportedly hazardous for the cops to interrupt domestic disputes. It's why various organizations keep getting caught covering up bad behavior by their members.

shombaboor 2y ago
this just reminded me of the warriors video of draymond green punching his teammate. the organization was more mad that the video got out than anything else. Steve Kerr who likes to moralize carries endless weight for the misdeeds of his players. Institutions protect themselves foremost as a law of nature
AnthonyMouse 2y ago
> Groups approximately never like outsiders imposing consequences on group members. It's also worth considering why this happens, instead of just regarding it as something people do because they're inherently malevolent. Suppose you suspect your organization of violating some law. You think they're supposed to be using some safety feature on their equipment and they're not, or what have you. In a normal organization, you report this to the leadership and if it's a real problem they fix it, because they know what happens if you report it to law enforcement or it causes someone to get hurt and they don't want that. Now suppose one of your members reports it to law enforcement instead of the organization's leadership. Government inspectors show up and you have to pay lawyers to deal with them, and lawyers are expensive. Reporters write negative stories about you. These things happen even if the person reporting it was wrong and there was never a real problem. Worse, these outsiders are not always that diligent and you could be prosecuted or dragged through the mud despite the person reporting it being the one who made an error. And if they didn't make an error -- if the problem was real -- that's even worse, because now you're getting convicted instead of having an opportunity to correct the problem. Many laws are even implicitly written under the expectation that honest mistakes are handled internally and only intransigent bastards get reported to the government, so anyone who goes there first is going to be a pariah. This is legitimately hard to fix because there is a trade off between cost and accuracy. If investigators are more diligent, so they get the result right more often, they have to spend more time finding out what's really going on in an organization they don't come into it with any internal understanding of. Which imposes costs on both the government and the possibly-innocent subject of the investigation. But if they're less diligent then they'll be imposing penalties on innocent people more often. In both cases, any group is not going to want there to be an investigation and is going to be resentful of anyone who causes there to be one. Governments often make this worse by trying to make it better and imposing penalties on people who fail to report. Because that requirement doesn't eliminate the structural incentive -- if nobody reports then nobody gets punished for not reporting -- but now the group is going to respond with more severe retaliation for reporting because you've just given everyone who didn't report it the incentive to protect the perpetrators to protect themselves and to retaliate against anybody who does. What you really want here is to do the opposite. Limit the costs and consequences to the unrepentant actual perpetrators, and make sure they're actually guilty, so you don't give the general group the impression that they're all in the same boat and should be collectively fighting against their enemies in the other tribe.

dyauspitr 2y ago

[flagged]

cortesoft 2y ago

Lots of reasons... 'the firm' isn't its own thing, it is controlled by the executive team, and the people making decisions about how to respond to allegations like these are the peers of the person being accused... they are likely close and know each other well, so they are more likely to believe and want to protect their friend. In addition, often times the other executives also behave in the same way as the accused exec and want to protect themselves.

fasa99 2y ago
It may also have nothing to do with friendships with the accused offender whatsoever. Maybe they also hate the accused offender. One thing big orgs do a LOT LOT LOT of is cover-ups. I would imagine (gut estimate) 1% or less of such saucy dramatic events ever float out into the public due to limited media coverage and cover ups. It's not about covering whatever accused who is accused of doing this, no, it's about protecting the fine name and reputation of the firm. So they aren't saying necessarily "we don't care" in a typical case, more like "we care.. buuuut we care way more about our own org, so we're hushing this all up like it never happened and it will never see the light of day". This is particularly true of very big or very prestigious orgs, your McKinseys, your Goldman, Your Harvard, your Stanford, your federal government, and so on

aaron695 2y ago

[dead]

seanhunter 2y ago

Having seen this multiple times before[1] I think a lot of time it’s partly embarrassment and partly acting on bad legal advice because they kinda know about it and have been turning a blind eye. The legal advice is bad as well as immoral because the coverup is only going to make any liability worse. [1] including one where it was an open secret but the guy was pretty powerful in his world. He’s in jail for rape now so make of that what you will.

thefz 2y ago

Keeping up denial of the evidence is a valid defense strategy, albeit maybe a cheap one.

Xen9 2y ago

Obviously, in a war against other humans, you'd never want the executives who know your weaknesses, to be your enemies. Usually the challenger will be an agent with less knowledge—easy to tackle them.