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Google Engineers Organizing a Walk Out to Protest the Protection of Andy Rubin

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Re: Google Engineers Organizing a Walk Out to Protest the Protection of Andy Rubin

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dispute that. Google going to trial, exposing the victim to the public eye, and risking the possibility that the public remembers this episode as an example of harassment claims being weaponized by corporations is a worse scenario. I think people are really underestimating the last one of those. Would the metoo movent have even spread to tech if an there existed a public (or at least, what the public percieves to b…

You keep saying "cheat", but Google found the allegations credible; I'm genuinely confused as to your position here. Are you saying that companies should still pay severance to employees fired for sexual assault?

> You keep saying "cheat", but Google found the allegations credible

“Credible” isn't the same as “true” or even “more likely than not to be true”, even though it has recently become popular for credible allegations of certain wrongs to be treated as if they were proven true.

> Are you saying that companies should still pay severance to employees fired for sexual assault?

If a contract requires payment unless a certain wrong has been done, a party finding it credible that the wrong has been done that would relieve it of it's obligations, even if it would get a trier of fact to the same conclusion, hasn't actually established that it is free of the obligation.

Contract vs. at-will employment presents different considerations.

Re: Google Engineers Organizing a Walk Out to Protest the Protection of Andy Rubin

#73
post #3

Someone with more info please correct me: But from what I read it sounds as if Google had to pay him the $90MM+, else be sued by him right? Because if they didn't pay him, he'd sue, then they [Google] would have to prove that he [Rubin] acted maliciously (or whatever), which would've been hard (if not impossible) to do, given that the accuser said they were coerced (not forced). So it seems as if Google's hands were…

A lot of the popular unrest facing both corporations & governments today is people learning that conflict gets results . The logic goes that "Well, Andy Rubin managed to exercise his threat to sue to get a $90M severance package, and he doesn't even work for the company anymore. We do work for the company, so we are going to exercise our power as employees to put pressure on the company to not do this again , so that…

That may be the appeal of the crypto world but the reality of the crypto world is that it is retarded. Crypto has no real world applications.

Re: Google Engineers Organizing a Walk Out to Protest the Protection of Andy Rubin

#74
post #58
post #18

Google could have given him the 90 million but at the same time still call out his behavior. But what happened was that Google only said how awesome everything is and hence in fact protected and worse, basically endorsed, his behavior. I find it good that Google employees stand up here. I'm already wondering what will Google do about that other guy who gives back rubs in interviews? He got similar support and is stil…

> that other guy who gives back rubs in interviews Can you post some more details, a simple google search does not return anything meaningful.

It's an incorrect paraphrase of a part of the big article: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/technology/google-sexual-...

> During the job interview, she said he told her that he and his wife were “polyamorous,”.

> She said he invited her to Burning Man, an annual festival in the Nevada desert, the following week.

> 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.

> At Mr. DeVaul’s encampment, Ms. Simpson said, he asked her to remove her shirt and offered a back rub.

Re: Google Engineers Organizing a Walk Out to Protest the Protection of Andy Rubin

#75
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that the protesters believe that Google erred too much in favor of Andy Rubin (and other protected execs). A protest makes these concerns known to Google -- and just as importantly, to the public -- and ostensibly reduces the chances that Google will have a different mindset when a similar situation arises in the future. In any case, the article describes this particular walkout as part of an ongoing/emergin…

> Increasingly, employees have been signing their names to a spreadsheet, refusing to participate in screening interviews for potential new hires at Google as a form of protest. That last seems particularly counterproductive.

How so?

In general protests involve some amount of inflicting inconvenience or pain. Google is short on interviewer bandwidth, so bottlenecking it more is certainly a way to get management to feel the pain.

Re: Google Engineers Organizing a Walk Out to Protest the Protection of Andy Rubin

#76
I wonder what it would take for google to lose it's star as being such a great career defining place to work? I think it's kind of happening. We need more people out of the motherships and doing new, innovative stuff and defining their own progressive policies in their companies to compete with the motherships.

I get the scale of capital and everything, but the internet is still a changing place and could be so much more if people just said no.

Re: Google Engineers Organizing a Walk Out to Protest the Protection of Andy Rubin

#77
post #3

Someone with more info please correct me: But from what I read it sounds as if Google had to pay him the $90MM+, else be sued by him right? Because if they didn't pay him, he'd sue, then they [Google] would have to prove that he [Rubin] acted maliciously (or whatever), which would've been hard (if not impossible) to do, given that the accuser said they were coerced (not forced). So it seems as if Google's hands were…

A lot of the popular unrest facing both corporations & governments today is people learning that conflict gets results . The logic goes that "Well, Andy Rubin managed to exercise his threat to sue to get a $90M severance package, and he doesn't even work for the company anymore. We do work for the company, so we are going to exercise our power as employees to put pressure on the company to not do this again , so that…

Or, alternatively, sexual abuse is a current hot-button issue, and this is helping to create a perfect storm of people who feel either exploited by companies and their executives (because they are), or that they don't have a reasonable amount of influence in large companies (they don't), or that so many executives get to fail upward (they do), or that sexual abuse is still not handled as seriously as it should be (it isn't).

Google will have a few bad days of PR, nobody will be able to identify this event in Google's stock price or quarterly reports, and in about three weeks everyone will have forgotten completely about this and gone on to the next series of things to be bothered about.

This much simpler explanation allows the world to keep stumbling along about like it always has, and cryptocurrency gets to continue to be a solution in search of a problem.

Re: Google Engineers Organizing a Walk Out to Protest the Protection of Andy Rubin

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Increasingly, employees have been signing their names to a spreadsheet, refusing to participate in screening interviews for potential new hires at Google as a form of protest. That last seems particularly counterproductive.

How so? In general protests involve some amount of inflicting inconvenience or pain. Google is short on interviewer bandwidth, so bottlenecking it more is certainly a way to get management to feel the pain.

It's protesting culture by forgoing an opportunity to shape it.

I do see your point it this is a real resource constraint, but though.

Re: Google Engineers Organizing a Walk Out to Protest the Protection of Andy Rubin

#79
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google could have given him the 90 million but at the same time still call out his behavior. Probably not; mutual non-disparagement clauses are extremely common in executive contracts. Breaking that would have been the same, in terms of kind of litigation risk, as not paying the $90 million.

Is it disparagement to report facts without attaching an opinion?

It depends on the contract, but based on one I recently saw for a very sizable startup (several billion raised) - yes. The document I saw specifically stated you cannot say anything, written or otherwise, that speaks negatively of the company regardless of validity.

Re: Google Engineers Organizing a Walk Out to Protest the Protection of Andy Rubin

#80
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that the protesters believe that Google erred too much in favor of Andy Rubin (and other protected execs). A protest makes these concerns known to Google -- and just as importantly, to the public -- and ostensibly reduces the chances that Google will have a different mindset when a similar situation arises in the future. In any case, the article describes this particular walkout as part of an ongoing/emergin…

> Increasingly, employees have been signing their names to a spreadsheet, refusing to participate in screening interviews for potential new hires at Google as a form of protest. That last seems particularly counterproductive.

I think the general reasoning behind that type of protest is to weaken the legitimacy of the function (screening interviews) by refusing to either help perform or tacitly endorse it.
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