Alphabet’s Chief Legal Officer Stepping Down Amid Investigation

Post by hackinthebochs » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 10:44 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #147

hackinthebochs wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get this "abuse of power" angle at all. Having a relationship with a subordinate is not an abuse of power. Insisting that your job rests on a relationship is an abuse of power, but without evidence that happened (and it seems like it didnt), there's no abuse. This idea that a power differential invalidates a relationship is nonsense. The fact is, people spend half or more of their waking hours at work. You sp…

> This idea that a power differential invalidates a relationship is nonsense. Why? Seems pretty sound to me.

Post by loganfrederick » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 10:51 PM UTC

pinewurst wrote: post #142

loganfrederick wrote: post #79

I really liked Ben Horowitz's new book "What You Do Is Who You Are". However, the only passage that I disliked and stood out to me is when he defended David Drummond for his ability to thrive at Google for a long time despite the corporate culture changing. This was after Drummond was called out publicly for abandoning his kid he had with a subordinate: https://www.law.com/corpcounsel/2018/10/25/report-alphabet-c...…

This is the same Ben Horowitz who defended illegal option price fixing and other ethically dubious behavior in his last book. I'll probably get penalized for this, but achieving success is not equivalent to being a role model.

Post by hackinthebochs » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 10:55 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #135

d1zzy wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The child doesn't get a choice about being brought into the world, so your desire or intent to produce a child is irrelevant. If you don't want to father a child, don't do anything that could reasonably lead to producing a child. If you father one anyway, that's on you. That's on a man no more than it's on a women if she gets pregnant and the previous agreement was that the guy had to use condoms and he didn't. Oth…

People routinely get pregnant despite using hormonal birth control. (Condoms are even less effective.) The purpose of sex is having kids, and unsurprisingly humans are very good at conception. If you don’t want to have kids, don’t have sex.

Post by m0zg » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 11:01 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #146

m0zg wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No aggrieved parties stepped forward. And you can make whatever "cases" you want, but if no one was "aggrieved" you don't really have a case. >> you could make the case that your career was >> harmed because she's sleeping with the head of Google X Funny how otherwise "progressive" people automatically assume that the only reason women would sleep with their boss is to advance their careers. The romantic component do…

I'm also an ex-Googler, and was at Google when the Rosenberg affair broke. Sergey was nominally head of Google X (the reporting org that Google Glass was in) at the time. Whether he was actively doing anything other than boning his employees is another matter; I had a number of friends in X (including in Glass) and his job largely seemed to be to cheerlead various X initiatives at the time. And the role of HR and leg…

Post by 6nf » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 11:06 PM UTC

throwaway17_17 wrote: post #123

zepto wrote: post #75

There is nothing toxic about Google’s culture. These are normal events in any organization of this size. They are just as focussed as ever on organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible.

Curious, are the downvotes on this comment for the comment which I assumed was sarcasm, or for the fact that a non-qualified sarcastic comment is of a type of discussion HN rules discourage?