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Intel CEO resigns after relationship with employee

nytimes.com

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Re: Intel CEO resigns after relationship with employee

#121

Post by KSS42 »

stamps wrote: post #119
InTheArena wrote: post #93

Intel is in serious trouble right now.They accidentally gaffed recently and stated that their goal was "to keep AMD from getting more then 10-20% of the server market" while they deal with a whole bunch of engineering and fab problems with their current generation of chips. They are also looking down the barrel of Apple abandoning Intel, and for the first time in two decades, unleashing a true X86 competitor to the m…

Why do you think Apple would develop an x86 chip over other architectures?

I read that as a competitor to x86.

Re: Intel CEO resigns after relationship with employee

#122

Post by gdulli »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #104
gdulli wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the obvious literal answer is that the subordinate can't exploit the organizational power dynamic the way someone the CEO can, and misbehavior of a CEO brings bad press and dysfunction to hurt the company in a way that a random employee can't. But I'm sure that isn't relevant. The obvious true answer is that the board wanted to get rid of the CEO, didn't care about the affair, but used it as an excuse.

>Well the obvious literal answer is that the subordinate can't exploit the organizational power dynamic the way someone the CEO can This is absolutely not the case. The dynamic surrounding someone who is sleeping with the CEO will be similar to the dynamic surrounding the CEO's brother. They get what they want, even if they want something dumb that isn't in the company's best interest, with little to no push-back bec…

Well that's a very limited and simplistic best case scenario for the subordinate, but you'd really have to go out of your way to fail to see the other obvious possible outcomes that range from problematic to criminal.

Re: Intel CEO resigns after relationship with employee

#123

Post by erikb »

ckastner wrote: post #22

Relationships among employees are very hard to keep concealed -- especially so when you're in a very exposed position, as a CEO is. At some point, somebody is going to notice something. If this is the case, then I'm pretty sure that this knowledge had reached the board long before. Rumors spread fast, after all. That leaves me to wonder as to the timing of this action. Krzanich received a lot of flak over the past mo…

Well, he could just use it himself, e.g. if he at least wants to keep a rather clean image on paper, and maybe the biggest trouble isn't even public knowledge yet.

Re: Intel CEO resigns after relationship with employee

#124

Post by toast0 »

fastball wrote: post #84
fareesh wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I have understood of this topic: If the relationship continues, the power could be used to favour the subordinate over other subordinates (give them good reviews, etc). If the relationship ends poorly, the power could be used to spite the subordinate over other subordinates (give them poor reviews, etc).

Right, so the it's an issue only if the power dynamic is abused. The power imbalance itself is not intrinsically going to cause problems.

It's a problem for the company even without misconduct. If a coworker claims a promotion went to a romantic partner instead of them because of romance, the company has to spend a bunch of time looking into that, even if there was no misconduct.

It's the same thing with conflicts of interest. The clear possibility for misconduct is a problem that at least must be declared, and at best is avoided.

Re: Intel CEO resigns after relationship with employee

#125

Post by rimliu »

ghein wrote: post #76
amyjess wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem wasn't that she was a coworker. It was that she was a subordinate. Nobody cares if two engineers hook up, but it's a Very Bad Thing if your boss starts putting the moves on you. Relationships where one person holds real-world power over another are prone to exploitation and violation of consent.

All relationships at work are a bad idea. They're dangerous to the firm and bad for the people's involved careers. Best rule for everyone is no relationships between co-workers and if one happens both people are fired.

But do not forget to mention that "we are like family here".

Re: Intel CEO resigns after relationship with employee

#126

Post by krotton »

InTheArena wrote: post #93

Intel is in serious trouble right now.They accidentally gaffed recently and stated that their goal was "to keep AMD from getting more then 10-20% of the server market" while they deal with a whole bunch of engineering and fab problems with their current generation of chips. They are also looking down the barrel of Apple abandoning Intel, and for the first time in two decades, unleashing a true X86 competitor to the m…

Given knowledge that the CEO is a male, assuming the relationship is with a female is simply based on statistics.

Re: Intel CEO resigns after relationship with employee

#127

Post by corpMaverick »

mtgx wrote: post #23
code4tee wrote: post #12

A board doesn’t fire its CEO because they went on a few dates with someone a while back—even if that’s against company policy. Getting the popcorn out to see how this unfolds...

They had so many reasons to push him out. I feel like the board has been aware of the relationship for a while, but they got together one day to figure out which public reason to give for the ousting of Krzanich. And they chose this, which is probably the reason with the least negative impact on whatever is left of Krzanich' career. He may even get high-fives for it at his next gig. At the end of the day, they had to…

The easier way for Krzanich was to let him resign because "he wanted to spend more time with his family".

Re: Intel CEO resigns after relationship with employee

#129

Post by poster123 »

geofft wrote: post #99
poster123 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good thing if you are attracted to the boss. How do we know that the happiness such consensual relationships bring to employees does not outweigh the unhappiness of potential sexual harassment, averaged over all workers?

They can't outweigh each other, otherwise you get versions of the utility monster problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_monster If person A doesn't want to have sex with person B and person B would be inordinately happy to have sex with person A, just about all ethical systems would say they shouldn't have sex. If person A has money in savings and is clinically depressed and person B wants to take that money…

It is possible that a ban on boss-employee relationships reduces the average utility of employees (excluding the utility of bosses), if the happiness of employees from good relationships outweighs the unhappiness from bad ones. Maybe one could do a survey of whether employees in companies with non-fraternization policies are happier than those without such policies.

Re: Intel CEO resigns after relationship with employee

#130

Post by dsfyu404ed »

geofft wrote: post #99
poster123 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good thing if you are attracted to the boss. How do we know that the happiness such consensual relationships bring to employees does not outweigh the unhappiness of potential sexual harassment, averaged over all workers?

They can't outweigh each other, otherwise you get versions of the utility monster problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_monster If person A doesn't want to have sex with person B and person B would be inordinately happy to have sex with person A, just about all ethical systems would say they shouldn't have sex. If person A has money in savings and is clinically depressed and person B wants to take that money…

>One of the things functional societies do is to limit the amount that certain people can make themselves happy as a mechanism of limiting the amount to which other people get hurt. Banning workplace relationships because of their serious potential for hurt seems like a straightforward case of this.

Nobody the debate is not between "some restrictions" and "no restriction", the latter is very much a straw man. We are debating where in particular the line should be drawn. For any given behavior X there are trade offs across the entire spectrum from full restriction of X to no restriction of X and the latter extreme is almost always far from ideal but much better than the former extreme.

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