Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bill Gurley Is Leaving Uber’s Board

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 170 posts

Re: Bill Gurley Is Leaving Uber’s Board

#111

Post by stale2002 »

013a wrote: post #104
stale2002 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sexual harassment and retaliation against employees for reporting it is not "just being jerks". It is illegal.

No it is not. The word "illegal" gets thrown around way too much; it has a very specific definition in law, and nothing you described is illegal.

"Expanding Rights under the “Retaliation” Provision of Title VII. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (the “Act”) prohibits an employer from retaliating against an employee who has “made a charge, testified, assisted or participated in” any charge of unlawful discrimination under the Act."

http://www.sgrlaw.com/ttl-articles/826/

Words are defined by how people use them, and this fits the common usage of the word illegal.

Nobody cares what pedantic definition a lawyer would use to describe this, because nobody made lawyers the language police.

Re: Bill Gurley Is Leaving Uber’s Board

#112

Post by stale2002 »

tyingq wrote: post #57
stale2002 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sexual harassment and retaliation against employees for reporting it is not "just being jerks". It is illegal.

Perhaps it should be actually illegal, like criminally punishible, but it is not. It is a tort, civil violation, etc...but nobody is going to jail.

From the civil rights act of 1964:

"Expanding Rights under the “Retaliation” Provision of Title VII. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (the “Act”) prohibits an employer from retaliating against an employee who has “made a charge, testified, assisted or participated in” any charge of unlawful discrimination under the Act."

http://www.sgrlaw.com/ttl-articles/826/

If the civil rights act of 1964 prohibits something, I think that that fits the common definition of "illegal" that a normal person would use.

Maybe a lawyer would use a different word, but who cares, everyone understood what you meant.

Re: Bill Gurley Is Leaving Uber’s Board

#113

Post by goodriddance »

jcrben wrote: post #110
goodriddance wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything you need to know is linked to on that page I linked to. Nothing is wrong with AngelList. AngelList is great. It was Bill Gurley's slimey VC actions to conspire with Nirav Tolia against the other Epinions founders and early employees that led Naval Ravikant to found AngelList as an alternative to the VC system.

That article doesn't say much. Which link in it has the meat?

The first link which is the actual claim filed in a US court of law.

Re: Bill Gurley Is Leaving Uber’s Board

#115

Post by skeptik5 »

goodriddance wrote: post #15

For all the future founders on HN, the lesson here is to never do business with Bill Gurley. He's one of the reasons AngelList exists. I hope his lesser known reputation finally catches up with him and forces him out of Benchmark and out of the VC industry entirely. The Ravikant v. Tolia (and Bill Gurley) Lawsuit: http://blog.ericgoldman.org/personal/archives/2005/02/ravika...

Yes, my first reaction was Bill did this solely to maximize his PR because he knew the press would make him look like a hero.

Re: Bill Gurley Is Leaving Uber’s Board

#116

Post by wsc981 »

andybg wrote: post #87
neil1 wrote: post #11

I wonder if Travis resigning was contingent on Bill Gurley leaving the board. As Bill seems to be the main anti-Travis actor on the board.

It's unclear if Gurley actually wants to leave the board. Part of me thinks that he knows something really bad is coming down the pipes (e.g. potential criminal liability re: Otto, etc) and he wants to distance himself now. It's half a conspiracy theory, but makes you think ...

This was the same thing that popped my mind when I read this news.

Also: if he leaves before something really bad happens to the company, he might claim he left because the unethical behaviour of the company didn't align with his ideals, perhaps not hurting his future prospects at the boards of other companies.

Re: Bill Gurley Is Leaving Uber’s Board

#117

Post by CalChris »

johan_larson wrote: post #9

I remain flabbergasted by all of this upheaval at Uber. What's happening is the sort of housecleaning I would expect if the company had to file for bankruptcy or got caught flat out bribing judges or something. But really, what triggered all this was acting like jerks. It seems to me, what should have happened (a long time ago) was that they got shut down for systematically breaking the law, or encouraging others to…

I think the board is just covering their asses now for what they should have done at least a year ago.

Re: Bill Gurley Is Leaving Uber’s Board

#118

Post by rattray »

johan_larson wrote: post #9

I remain flabbergasted by all of this upheaval at Uber. What's happening is the sort of housecleaning I would expect if the company had to file for bankruptcy or got caught flat out bribing judges or something. But really, what triggered all this was acting like jerks. It seems to me, what should have happened (a long time ago) was that they got shut down for systematically breaking the law, or encouraging others to…

> they are getting flayed alive

What unjust consequences are they experiencing, exactly?

Bad press – and the associated bad reputation – seem warranted and acceptable, no? Uber always had a terrible reputation as a place to work, as far as I could tell (worked in the same building for a year).

Employees leaving – also seems like a reasonable consequence for a negative work environment, and the press tables turning on a company that many joined because it was "hot".

CEO getting fired – a key part of the job of a CEO is crisis management. He didn't manage "crises" well (eg; top execs left). Whether the crises were real or inflated is irrelevant.

Re: Bill Gurley Is Leaving Uber’s Board

#119

Post by dang »

V-eHGsd_ wrote: post #68

that person has been elected president.

Would you please not take HN threads on generic political tangents? They lead to flamewars and trainwrecks, as seen below. We're hoping for better than that here.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14609910 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Bill Gurley Is Leaving Uber’s Board

#120

Post by dang »

stale2002 wrote: post #112
tyingq wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps it should be actually illegal, like criminally punishible, but it is not. It is a tort, civil violation, etc...but nobody is going to jail.

From the civil rights act of 1964: "Expanding Rights under the “Retaliation” Provision of Title VII. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (the “Act”) prohibits an employer from retaliating against an employee who has “made a charge, testified, assisted or participated in” any charge of unlawful discrimination under the Act." http://www.sgrlaw.com/ttl-articles/826/ If the civil rights act of 1964 prohibits someth…

It looks like you've been using HN primarily for political and ideological arguments. That's an abuse of the site, and we ban accounts that do it, so please don't use HN this way.

The key test is 'primarily'. Commenting occasionally on political topics, among others, is fine. But using the site primarily for political battle is not fine, regardless of which politics you favor. It's destructive of the intended use of the site, which is the gratification of intellectual curiosity. Since we can't have both kinds of site, we have to be careful about this.

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=...

Post reply on HN