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Alphabet’s Chief Legal Officer Stepping Down Amid Investigation

nytimes.com

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Re: Alphabet’s Chief Legal Officer Stepping Down Amid Investigation

#281

Post by theli0nheart »

barry-cotter wrote: post #252
theli0nheart wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely disagree. Power and influence allow one to be a shitty person without having to deal with the consequences that other folks might, so the situations where that happens are outrageous and rightfully get a lot of exposure. However, this is a consequence of the fact that you already need to be powerful. Unless you get lucky, or otherwise hit the jackpot, you generally have to be a nice person to work your w…

> Not going to lie; taking advantage of others can be a great short-term business strategy. Long-term, not so much. People tend to remember shitty behavior. Vinod Khosla. Robert Bolton. Samantha Power. Practically every dictator bar Lee Kuan Yew.

Did you skip reading the second paragraph I wrote?

If you’re already powerful, the same rules don’t quite apply.

Re: Alphabet’s Chief Legal Officer Stepping Down Amid Investigation

#282

Post by jessaustin »

barry-cotter wrote: post #252
theli0nheart wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely disagree. Power and influence allow one to be a shitty person without having to deal with the consequences that other folks might, so the situations where that happens are outrageous and rightfully get a lot of exposure. However, this is a consequence of the fact that you already need to be powerful. Unless you get lucky, or otherwise hit the jackpot, you generally have to be a nice person to work your w…

> Not going to lie; taking advantage of others can be a great short-term business strategy. Long-term, not so much. People tend to remember shitty behavior. Vinod Khosla. Robert Bolton. Samantha Power. Practically every dictator bar Lee Kuan Yew.

Even Lee's dictatorship seems less benign now that we've learned that it's hereditary...

Re: Alphabet’s Chief Legal Officer Stepping Down Amid Investigation

#283

Post by swedish_mafia »

joering2 wrote: post #233
bhaile wrote: post #154

Interesting comment from Bill Maris from Axios. Bill Maris, who founded Google's venture capital arm and reported directly to Drummond before quitting in 2016, tells Axios... "The news of David Drummond leaving Google today brings to mind a quote from one of my most favorite creatures. 'At an end, your rule is. And not short enough, it was.' I had been asked in the past why I left Google in 2016, and I have never rea…

> Drummond was charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2005 with causing Google to violate securities law because he failed to advise the company's board that the company was required to register $80 million in stock options used as compensation for employees.[1] Do you know anyone who would hire someone after making a $80MM mistake?? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Drummond_(businessman)

And this https://medium.com/@jennifer.blakely/my-time-at-google-and-a...

Re: Alphabet’s Chief Legal Officer Stepping Down Amid Investigation

#284

Post by [deleted] »

citizenkeen wrote: post #205
celdon25 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We'll have to agree to disagree on point 1, as there's plenty of common knowledge out there that I don't need to muddy the thread with. The parent comment was referring to the general election of 49%, and the "grab by the pussy" story broke after the primary was over, so point 3 is a straw man argument. Edit: Sometimes I underestimate how in the dark people really are on the subject so I did a quick search to find th…

[flagged]

[deleted]

Re: Alphabet’s Chief Legal Officer Stepping Down Amid Investigation

#285

Post by [deleted] »

kcanini wrote: post #211
bhaile wrote: post #154

Interesting comment from Bill Maris from Axios. Bill Maris, who founded Google's venture capital arm and reported directly to Drummond before quitting in 2016, tells Axios... "The news of David Drummond leaving Google today brings to mind a quote from one of my most favorite creatures. 'At an end, your rule is. And not short enough, it was.' I had been asked in the past why I left Google in 2016, and I have never rea…

I worked for Bill for about a year at GV. He was one of the friendliest managers I've ever met at Google. I randomly met Dave Drummond once at a coffee shop in Sausalito (I didn't know who he was at the time... he just commented on my Google shirt), and he gave me an inexplicably uncomfortable feeling.

[deleted]

Re: Alphabet’s Chief Legal Officer Stepping Down Amid Investigation

#286

Post by javajosh »

roenxi wrote: post #276
ksec wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this sums up not just big cooperate, but large part of our society in general as well. ( May be a bigger problem in US than other parts of the world, but still a problem ) I often wonder why realistic people are called cynical, even when they are facts happening everywhere in a statistically large sums. Do others live in fairy land?

I can give the cynical answer to that. Being correct is a lousy strategy for social creatures, and making the best decision within the limits of what a person knows is a nearly guaranteed way to lose out to someone who takes risks. In that context, realists are not encouraged by the broader society. Better to be surrounded by and encouraging of irrepressible optimists, they explore more and are more likely to try to…

Your risk-taking realist needs at least one more quality -- a high pain tolerance. There are two pains you need to deal with, the pain of fearing failure, and the pain of failure itself.

Failure, as in "that machine is halted, and it's not going to move ever again" kind of failure. (Of course, I guess you can always clear out some entropy and start feeding it input again..)

Re: Alphabet’s Chief Legal Officer Stepping Down Amid Investigation

#287

Post by [deleted] »

aluminussoma wrote: post #261
lostcolony wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it doesn't make you a bad person. In fact, there's a good chance you're a good person, and if you have accidentally made someone uncomfortable, it was through something they could easily put their finger on; you said something, you reminded them of something, etc. This doesn't sound like it's that. He does, after all, call it 'inexplicable'; literally unable to be interpreted or expanded upon. It was a 'gut…

The danger with such unqualified sentiments is that there are many things that can make someone uncomfortable. Let me be more plain: David Drummond is (was) the most famous black male executive in tech. I have heard black men voicing frustrations at people being uncomfortable at them for no good reason. I am not saying that the OP or anyone here is being racist. We need to provide more context to these statements if…

[deleted]

Re: Alphabet’s Chief Legal Officer Stepping Down Amid Investigation

#288

Post by nl »

jessaustin wrote: post #280
nl wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because some right wing opinion piece thinks Hillary Clinton started 4 civil wars doesn't make it true. she convinced Obama to back military coups against the democratically-elected leaders of Honduras and Egypt. The Intercept (no friend of the Clintons!) writes: A retired U.S. military intelligence officer, who helped with the lobbying and the Honduran colonels’ trip, told me on condition of anonymity that the…

Ignoring USA politics for a moment, can we admit that the current state of Syria is better for both residents and the world than the current state of Libya? I.e., that it's better not to completely destroy society, subjecting everyone who lives there to unrelenting death, violence, poverty, and slave markets?

Err I think you have that back to front?

It's Syria that is mostly destroyed and has millions of refugees. Libya is bad but not quite as bad.

I agree with your point that there is degrees of destruction though.

Re: Alphabet’s Chief Legal Officer Stepping Down Amid Investigation

#289

Post by zozbot234 »

roenxi wrote: post #260
lostcolony wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it doesn't make you a bad person. In fact, there's a good chance you're a good person, and if you have accidentally made someone uncomfortable, it was through something they could easily put their finger on; you said something, you reminded them of something, etc. This doesn't sound like it's that. He does, after all, call it 'inexplicable'; literally unable to be interpreted or expanded upon. It was a 'gut…

It is totally unreasonable to go around commenting on third parties giving off creepy vibes of no consequence based on no evidence. Not to be too personal because a comment isn't the measure of a commentator but kcanini is basically saying nothing with as much negative allusion as can be put into a comment. It is a comment with no consequences, no relevant context, no observations and no argument. Gut feelings are of…

> Gut feelings are often surprisingly accurate, sometimes we all pick things up a lot earlier than our consciousness cottons on. ... We've figured out that good looking people are not more upstanding than ugly people.

There, see the difference? You said it yourself - as it turns out, being good looking vs. ugly is not meaningful evidence as to whether you're going to treat others fairly. Being actively disdainful of others to the extent that you're giving off huge "creeper" vibes (perhaps unwittingly, perhaps intentionally!) can be evidence of sorts - at least in a very loose, "more likely than not" sense.

Of course, this is not to say that it should be considered anywhere close to OK to spread wild rumors about "the creeper vibes that this creepy guy gave me once", or anything like that - just think about how open this would be to abuse! But OP wasn't doing that, at all. He/she was seeking to confirm the assessment that others had already, independently come up with, and that can be a very good thing.

Re: Alphabet’s Chief Legal Officer Stepping Down Amid Investigation

#290

Post by roenxi »

zozbot234 wrote: post #289
roenxi wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is totally unreasonable to go around commenting on third parties giving off creepy vibes of no consequence based on no evidence. Not to be too personal because a comment isn't the measure of a commentator but kcanini is basically saying nothing with as much negative allusion as can be put into a comment. It is a comment with no consequences, no relevant context, no observations and no argument. Gut feelings are of…

> Gut feelings are often surprisingly accurate, sometimes we all pick things up a lot earlier than our consciousness cottons on. ... We've figured out that good looking people are not more upstanding than ugly people. There, see the difference? You said it yourself - as it turns out, being good looking vs. ugly is not meaningful evidence as to whether you're going to treat others fairly. Being actively disdainful of…

Drummond is black. I'm not one for political correctness, but there is pretty conclusive evidence that a lot of non-blacks people think black people give off creepy vibes. The in-group favoritism bias is a very real thing and it is very reasonable that it manifests as a vague unsubstantiated feeling.

Somebody saying they ran into him at a coffee shop and got what amounts to a feeling of bad vibes is literally not evidence or conformation of anything about the man's character. It is quite likely to be run of the mill background racism. We know nothing about the commentator, nothing about the situation. And it looks like the standard outcome of racism. Even if it isn't the commentator can do a lot better than that with minimal effort. Now if there were any evidence of any kind proffered that would be a different story. You are fabricating some notion of some sort of 'active ... disdain' here that isn't mentioned in the objectionable comment. If they don't mean unsubstantiated they shouldn't be saying unsubstantiated. They should be substantiating their claim.

The standard should be higher than that comment.

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