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After DeepMind’s cofounder was placed on leave for bullying, Google promoted him

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Re: After DeepMind’s cofounder was placed on leave for bullying, Google promoted him

#21

Post by gigatexal »

lostlogin wrote: post #14
gigatexal wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How machiavellian of you... I think the world has moved on from the days of letting visionaries like Job's rant and rave and yell and scream to "bring out more in people than they knew they had in them". There are likely more effective ways to bring out the best in people that also build environments that are healthy and where people want to work.

> I think the world has moved on from the days of letting visionaries like Job's rant and rave and yell and scream What evidence do you see of that?

The fact that we are having this conversation. And if engineering wants to grow past its problems it has got to change.

(edit: the previous part of this disparaged those on the spectrum and I am sorry)

Re: After DeepMind’s cofounder was placed on leave for bullying, Google promoted him

#22

Post by temp8964 »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #16

I see a lot of people saying this seems not a big deal, or that his leadership deserved promotion. It’s because this is a second order article. The original, most substantive source that I could find is quite thorough: https://archive.is/wqdkF > "He would ask us to do personal things for him," one of these people said. "He said, 'I need you to write a briefing for me on Russian history and politics.' [...] We had abs…

Why is writing about Russia a personal thing? I think I will need more context to understand this.

Re: After DeepMind’s cofounder was placed on leave for bullying, Google promoted him

#23

Post by whoisjuan »

Don’t care about this guy, but why would they think that changes in the reporting hierarchy means a promotion? If my boss leaves then I would report to my skip in the interim and in many companies that’s forever.

So just because there’s nobody between me and my skip I got promoted? That’s the most dumb rationale I have ever read.

This guy was already the head of a prominent Alphabet division. If you move him around the executive structure he could have ended up one or two skips below the CEO without that meaning absolute shit .

At that level of organizational hierarchy that’s far from a promotion. He is now the VP of some random AI program that’s way more obtuse and irrelevant than DeepMind.

The only clear public signal of a promotion at executive levels is being a VP and becoming a Chief or a SVP. That’s it. At companies like Google and Facebook changing titles doesn't mean that you got promoted. A promotion is going from one level to the next one. This guys was probably an L10 and is still an L10.

Blows my mind that they arrived to this conclusion based on such a weak signal.

Re: After DeepMind’s cofounder was placed on leave for bullying, Google promoted him

#24

Post by elzbardico »

lpghatguy wrote: post #6
tvirosi wrote: post #5

His disagreeability is probably correlated with his track record of innovation and if we cancel every outlier like that our ability to reach new plateaus will lag decades behind than if we only allow nice people to play.

How many incredibly smart people are pushed out of the industry by awful people? By letting jerks run the show, you don't get a chance to see the intelligence of people who these folks suppress.

Really smart people are rarely pushed out of the industry. They just suffer. Usually people who say they were pushed are not that brilliant to start and are just making excuses

Re: After DeepMind’s cofounder was placed on leave for bullying, Google promoted him

#26

Post by [deleted] »

torstenvl wrote: post #12

"Misconduct" of "bullying"? With no further details or facts? Unless he was actually committing a crime and Google somehow shielded him from criminal responsibility, this is a nothingburger. When you are responsible for a significant step in AI progress you get promoted. I swear to God, the SV woker-than-thou crowd will be trying to cancel Babbage for "sexual harassment" of Ada Lovelace soon.

[deleted]

Re: After DeepMind’s cofounder was placed on leave for bullying, Google promoted him

#27

Post by Tycho »

This guy appears to be a self-styled liberal activist operating in the business world. According to this fawning Business Insider piece (did his PR agent write it?), he has tried his hand at fixing climate change, inequality, health care, AI ethics, and so on. https://www.businessinsider.com/mustafa-suleyman-the-lefty-a...

He dropped out of his degree at Oxford and then founded a telephone helpline for Muslim youths. Then got a job with Ken Livingstone, the politician.

This early history seems strange to me. Who drops out of Oxford unless it’s to start a business? You’d almost think he was an intelligence asset of something.

Re: After DeepMind’s cofounder was placed on leave for bullying, Google promoted him

#28

Post by paulryanrogers »

xioren00 wrote: post #15

> “He used to say, ‘I crush people,”’ one former DeepMind employee told Insider The horror...

Is this reaction sarcastic? As if to say "I'm not afraid of people who boast of crushing others"?

Re: After DeepMind’s cofounder was placed on leave for bullying, Google promoted him

#29

Post by ur-whale »

tvirosi wrote: post #5

His disagreeability is probably correlated with his track record of innovation and if we cancel every outlier like that our ability to reach new plateaus will lag decades behind than if we only allow nice people to play.

For your theory to work you'd have to exhibit an actual track record of innovation in the case of this dude, other than being Demis's henchman / fusebox.

Re: After DeepMind’s cofounder was placed on leave for bullying, Google promoted him

#30

Post by paulryanrogers »

corty wrote: post #20
lpghatguy wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many incredibly smart people are pushed out of the industry by awful people? By letting jerks run the show, you don't get a chance to see the intelligence of people who these folks suppress.

But that works in all directions. There are many kinds of people who cannot work together. I for one, despise the "lets all be friends and never say a bad word" crowd. They drive me mad and drive me to leave. I'd rather have a frank exchange of views with someone.

In the toxic positivity sense, "please don't be vulgar", or something else?
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