I keep trying to live without JS but so little of the internet works.
* Gitlab/Github (obviously)
* Google maps (obviously)
* Linkedin... (uh... less obviously)
* Outlook
* Infoq.com
* Rust docs
* Google Cloud Docs
etc;
A lot of the internet is butchered without JS.
I really want a way of just blocking third-party JS (IE; the site can deliver JS, but not anything it tries to import unless whitelisted). But that seems to be hard with qutebrowser.
Perhaps I did not express it clearly, but I do not browse WITHOUT ANY JAVASCRIPT EVER. I browse with js disabled by default, but enable it (using excellent uMatrix Firefox addon) for certain sites that I trust. Although even then I try to find the least possible amount of uMatrix permissions that enables the functionality I need from a site.
That said, I do not use many of the obvious mainstream sites - e.g. I ditched Github like dirty socks the moment Microsoft grabbed them.
But yes, modern web (not the Internet, mind you) is very damaged, and I fear it will take decades to fix the damage, once (I hope) smarter people take the reins after high-visibility security and privacy incidents become more and more frequent, and, well, more visible to general public.
I use noScript with "Allow None by Default" on Firefox while I'm at work and should in theory only be browsing docs anyway. Trying to blanket ban third-party JS wouldn't really work b/c many sites have their legitimate JS on various CDNs. After enabling individual scripts on maybe a dozen sites I'm in good shape when it comes to web browsing day to day.
Do you consider "exploitation" here to be negative or unethical?
He is willingly using Google because the provide amazingly useful services completely free of monetary charge. Are you objecting to the fact that Google benefits in some way by providing this service?
I'm almost there, after reading about how much Boeing has spent on stock buybacks (5x all of R&D over the past six years) I think I'm going to start looking into which model typically services a route and avoid all modern Boeing planes.
Boeing made a lot of executives super rich with buybacks and equity compensation, this led directly to the shoddy engineering choices.
No, the current buyback madness (at least at these levels) is a very recent invention of the past decade and quite abnormal. We can go back to reinvesting in companies and employees and research tomorrow if we want to.
But this would require boards and executives who didn't want to just grant themselves huge amounts of equity while buying back stock. So far not many boards are standing up for this.
Yeah recent like you said for boening last six years. They are doing what everyone else is doing so it is pretty strange to single them out on this issue.
I've complained about many companies that are devoting even more resources to buybacks on this very forum, including Chevron, Texas Instruments, Google and Oracle. Google in particular has been the trendsetter, everyone else is trying to keep up with their buybacks.
This news story is about Boeing, so yes I'm going to talk about Boeing here.
Do you work in defense or aerospace? You seem to be taking this personally for some reason.
First, if you think Airbus is any better, you should think again.
Second, what do you mean by "all modern Boeing planes"? If you just mean "planes designed after the merger with McDonnell Douglas", that's just the 787 and the 737 Max. The latter is grounded and the former only flies select long haul routes. For the average US business traveler they're a non-issue.
This is 90% of science these days, just keep tweaking numbers in the model until it fits with what you want to see. The why and the how is not really something we have the capability or tooling to tackle.
I got bored with physics really quickly when I realized this is what everyone does.
I come from a very rough rural town in Kansas, I've personally known dozens of people who worked super hard their whole lives and still died in poverty and despair.
I'm not sure what the correlation is between hard work and success, but it's much weaker than at least ten other factors.
It's not about working hard. It's about working "smart" and hard. You can work crazy hard to dig a hole in the middle of a field, but unless you are actually trying to accomplish a goal, the effort is wasted and leads nowhere.
In much the same way, you can bust your ass working as a cart fetcher at a grocery store, but unless you are intentional about how you are going to use that hard work to leverage yourself into a better position, you are just going to maintain.
Hard work should always be balanced by some amount of self education and intention, or else you run the risk of treading water and getting nowhere.
The reality is that learning is an uncomfortable process. A lot of people find a comfortable rut and they seem to prefer just staying in it. This is why public education is so important. It forces people to give themselves at least a bare minimum amount of education. Just imagine how dumb and poor everyone would end up if parents weren't legally required to educate their kids.
I agree but by the time you realize anything, you are pretty much burnt. Everyone around you pushes you to become like them in poverty. I have experienced it...now I do stupid things because I want peace instead of going against the momentum. I don't have energy to be smart to get belittled and thrown rocks at every time. It sucks!
Nobody in Kansas is wasting their time trying to dig a pointless hole to China, they are all pinching every penny and coming up with every hack, innovation, and shortcut they can to get by.
The fact that you think people who failed must be stupid or slow learners says a lot about your worldview.
I grew up in a large family, and we moved over 10 times during my childhood. My parents moved our family every time we needed (like when my dad was laid off and couldn't find work).
It's a complete cop-out to say that only young men with no obligations can do such a thing. My parents had tons of obligations and responsibilities, and they found a way to move when necessary.
People get way too attached to the idea of staying in one place their whole lives. The world is a big place.
I think we should add a new stat for C-level execs on financial websites, in addition to compensation and tenure and whatnot we should have a "body count" number listed.
I think you're referring to external body count. We should also include their internal count -- how many bodies they climbed over on the way to the top.
MCAS is the dumb bandaid they invented to save money on pilot retraining. Turns out that bandaid was so poorly built it killed people.
In the 777x It's not exact same software system, but the exact same "cheapest option on the menu every time" mindset that seems to be pervading Boeing and causing lots of problems.
>MCAS is the dumb bandaid they invented to save money on pilot retraining.
No, the MCAS is to make the plane certifiable, full stop. It's less "handling characteristics of the previous model" and more "handling characteristics permissible on commercial aircraft".
The distinction is important because if they could have forgone the MCAS and sacrificed the type rating, the story becomes about cutting small corners to pinch pennies. In actual fact, however, the MCAS was vital to the aircraft, which was rushed out to compete with Airbus - and so it becomes about cutting BIG corners, to save the company.
I don't know where you got that from because it bears no relation whatsoever to what I was saying.
The point is you can't just take the MCAS out of a MAX and retrain pilots - it's a vital fix for handling characteristics that were unsafe to fly, full stop. Without the MCAS, it - quite rightly - wouldn't have been allowed to carry passengers at all. It's an important distinction with wide implications.
(However, it does strike me that an MCAS-like device, an automated trim to paper over the inability of the airframe to fly stably under all flight regimes, is a fundamentally unsafe device and should never have been allowed in the first place, let alone with such a poor sensor suite. The MAX is an irredeemably unsafe plane, a result of bolting new engines on an ancient airframe that was not designed for them, and the resultant pile of hacks.)
Because it's called "autopilot" and Tesla has already fraudulently sold millions of people on the false claim that it is an autopilot for your car. Gating or segmenting how it works exposes this falsehood immediately.
We were supposed to have a million fully autonomous Tesla taxis by the end of last December, remember that nonsense claim too?
Google and other large tech giants have been working on precisely that sort of AI with those types of data for at least 10 years now. They are famous for tinkering with their hiring process based on mountains of data, with mostly bad results.
At Google machine learning was was always used for vetting the 100k+ applications per year that the HR team just doesn't have time to go through.
The main goal was to filter people who have the biggest chance to go through the human interviews later in the process.
The only reason why it's called ,,AI'' now is because it's trendy. It can be just a simple linear model that takes education (University) and GPA score into account.
The simplest way to skip these filters is to get a reference from a person who already works at the company.
I wonder why ultra-elite companies like Google don't swap to a model where they reach out to people they want to hire, rather than accepting random applications?
> I wonder why ultra-elite companies like Google don't swap to a model where they reach out to people they want to hire, rather than accepting random applications?
This is exactly what happens. Most experienced engineers I know with a good resume get emails almost weekly from Google and Amazon in particular.
I know - I meant why do they also have an open mailbox for millions of people not remotely qualified (I presume) to spam into, creating this problem for themselves.
If you’re at the level of working for Google you’re presumably already at the absolute top of your field internationally and will know people at Google you can reach out to personally.
Google hires tons of people fresh out of university, they're not going to be "at the absolute top of their field" or well-connected. (they do seem to hire previous interns a lot, but that moves the filter having to handle the flood to people applying for internships instead)
I think they were saying the claimed performance of the interview-processing software has got to be fake, not that the article must be. I read it the same way as you at first,though.
confirm that at least one UC Berkeley affiliated PR was paid quite a lot of money to do exactly this kind of work for several years, that was five years ago at least.. they did not use bombastic terms to describe the project, evoking the authority aspect, instead they used language that signaled "finding hidden talent"
I would love to see tech pivot away from being an industry that is 100% about tracking & advertising more and more every year and towards something, anything that was an actual real new product or service.
We used to take it for granted that tech was the industry of innovation and progress, but there seems to be very little of that any more. Just a few more ads on the page.
I'm hoping/wondering if 2020 will be the year there's some sort of real cultural shift in how this is all viewed. We already know about all the research pointing to social media making people generally less happy, but a huge part of the internet/tech economy is just ads and services that... bluntly, don't really add much to the world. And a ton of capital and human effort is going into that.
I had a moment of excitement when Google announced their practical quantum computing breakthrough, then I instantly realized it meant they will just find a way to track me at a quantum level and anticipate my consumer targeting brand preferences 10000x more quickly or something equally as awful.
He specifies that he was there over 20 years, prior to the company being incorporated, and only joined full-time in 2002.
That being said: David Drummond is a terrible person[0], who only has been there this long because of Larry Page and Sergey Brin's protection, because they are terrible people too[1][2]. The way Google's highest executives have treated women is disgusting and inexcusable. And while Drummond may not be getting an exit package, he sold off $200 million in stock this past year.
Please keep the "terrible person" trope off HN. The online call-out culture is good for shaming and indignation, but it wrecks curious conversation. Here we want curious conversation.
Two answers. First: sure it does. It's not about the person, it's about ourselves and what things like personal attacks do to the community [1].
The second answer is more pragmatic: in practice, it's much easier to simply ask "please don't take HN threads into partisan flamewar" [2]. Everyone understands that. If we say "please don't do personal attacks" or "please don't do online shaming" about a major political figure, people mistake that for an expression of political support and object sharply. It's not worth the confusion, and I only have so much energy for explaining that it doesn't mean we're Trump supporters or communists or whatever.
> After our son was born, I received a call from HR notifying me that one of us would have to leave the legal department where David was now Chief Legal Officer (...)
This sounds like the worst possible policy I can think of. Get pregnant from your boss, and HR kicks you from the team! How does that help anyone?
The right way to implement a policy like that is to say that supervisors are not permitted to have relationships with their subordinates. That way, if such a relationship develops against the rules, it's clear upon whom the consequences should fall: the supervisor.
Supervisors get more money and power from the organization than their subordinates, so it's fair for the organization to have higher expectations for the behavior of the supervisor than the subordinate.
Agreed, but a bigger factor is the power differential, IMO: the boss has the higher need to maintain at least an image of impartiality, and it's harder for the subordinate to resist advances knowing that the giver is key in deciding when they can and can't get time off, pay rises, etc.
Google had one that said exactly that when I joined in 2009, but that post-dates the alleged affair(s) here, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was introduced directly because of this.
Drummond wasn't the only one engaged in such shenanigans, too - I can think of at least half a dozen executives (including both founders) who engaged in relationships within their reporting chain.
Supervisors also have more skin in the game so, quite trivially, making the supervisor responsible also means it's inherently easier to enforce that policy! The fact that they'd try to shift that burden onto the subordinate just tells you how much they care about following the rules, i.e. not at all.
I wonder what they would have said if her response had been, "OK, David can leave. I'm fine right here." It's hardly like they could fire her for refusing to leave her job after her boss knocked her up. Unfortunately all these kinds of hypotheticals that come up in these situations are impossible to test, because the person without power always has too much on the line to stand up and fight.
They knew the relationship was against company policy from the get go, what did they think was going happen? Two people made a poor decision and have to live with the consequences?
> aware that our relationship was in violation of Google’s new policy which went from “discouraging” direct-reporting-line relationships to outright banning them.
During manager training done by any lawyer worth their salt, it is drilled into you two hundred times that if you start a relationship with a subordinate, you have to declare this relationship to HR, you have to move jobs, and that you may be personally liable for any of the legal fallout that comes with workplace relationships/allegations of harassment/allegations of nepotism.
It seems that the execs don't get the same kind of training that line managers get. Or, perhaps, they are protected from the consequences. One set of rules for me, another for you...
Both people knew it was wrong, but Larry and Sergey's best buddy got promoted to become one of the most powerful executives on the planet and paid hundreds of millions of dollars, and the woman got pushed out of her job and left to support their kid herself.
She was forced out because it was against company policy. She wasnt forced out of google, but to a different department. And she voluntarily quit google, she was never fired. It's a sad story, but it's just adults making their own decisions that don't work out.
> so I quit Google, signing whatever documents they required because likewise, I wanted to protect him
She worked for him in the legal department. If she's asked to change departments, what's someone presumably trained and skilled in law going to do? Start coding? Run a product team? Do sales?
Right, she had affair with her boss at a company where there was a clear policy against it. What was she supposed to do? Maybe think ahead and realize this is a bad idea, OR realize there are potential consequences for making said decisions. Regardless when google found out they did not fire her, they gave her a chance to continue employment at the company. I dont know what her qualifications were but if she managed to get hired at google I would imagine she could also find work relatively easily outside of google.
>aware that our relationship was in violation of Google’s new policy which went from “discouraging” direct-reporting-line relationships to outright banning them
Usually in these situations the onus should be on the senior colleague, because, besides the increased expectations of seniority, they have the power to punish a junior colleague for refusing sexual advances.
From the article, he lied and as a consequence of the lie extended a sexual relationship with a person. Then when his actions (among other things) had created a new human, he behaved in a way most people recognize as badly. This narrative clearly depicts a despicable person. If you are happy with a lot of powerful institutions being controlled by and for despicable people, then by all means, there's no issue. However, it's a common trend for despicable people to run institutions into the ground rather than create a happy institution that ends up realizing the "transform humanity for the better" vision that so many profess.
Come on now, these are consenting adults. She wasn't a child getting tricked. She was a grown woman who had consensual sex, didn't take birth control or use protection, and choose to take the pregnancy to term.
In her blog post she says that they had a long relationship, decided to have a baby, and after the baby was born he began another affair and left her to care for the baby alone.
I wouldn't say "he tricked her into having a baby", but it's not exactly nice to leave someone after a baby was born and not provide any support at all (she had to fight him in the court for child support).
I agree hes probably a terrible person, but I just dont see where he is abusing his power at Google. He didn't pressure her into a relationship, he didnt force himself upon her, didnt threaten her job if she didnt cooperate, he didnt pressure her into leaving, she even says so in the article. These both sound like people of poor judgement, I just dont see the abuse people are trying to levy.
> so I quit Google, signing whatever documents they required because likewise, I wanted to protect him
>Besides that he pressured her into quitting with promises of financial support, then left her with the baby and refused to pay.
California doesn't have child support? If he's not in his child's life he's a scumbag but at the very least I'm assuming the child is getting a very generous financial contribution.
> Well she's stuck raising the son of an emotionally abusive sociopath.
She decided to have a child and she decided to raise them. These are choices she made. He decided he doesn't want to take part in raising his son.
It sounds like you want her to get all the pros and him all the cons in this situation. But their decisions have both pros and cons for both of them. Her decision means she gets to have a family/child (at the cost of the work/money needed to raise a child). His decision means he's a bad father who will his son will likely always hate but it has its financial advantages.
> Besides that he pressured her into quitting with promises of financial support, then left her with the baby and refused to pay.
>
> I can't even comprehend the type of person who doesn't see the cruelty of this man. She trusted the wrong person, that doesn't justify his behavior.
Yes, he's a cruel liar. Probably most people would be if given the opportunity (yes I'm a cynic and I don't believe in natural/native human kindness) but I'm not trying to make excuses for him. From the article he seems like a terrible person. But so what, that's not illegal. In the end what are we trying to achieve by pointing this out?
There are people who aren't cruel liars and who manage to make their companies truly great and beloved. "Don't do what is illegal" is not "don't be evil" and being evil will make it harder to organize the worlds information, and harder to get a long sustained effort from others to help with that task.
It's not a punishment, it's to prevent nepotism and moral hazard. I think normally they will try to place you in the same role in some other project but that may not have been possible in this case(?)
The way you implement that is by proactively asking for a transfer before the relationship comes to light. If you don't do that, this is essentially proof that you were seeking to abuse the situation in some way hence penalties (on the supervisor, see my side comment) are very much appropriate.
It's not down out of cruelty, it's done out of greed. He's more important, so even though he should absolutely 1000% be the one on the chopping block, she gets forced to sales. Then he uses the financial hardship and promises from him to get her to quit.
How to tidy up a disastrous bit of professional misconduct in just a few easy completely sociopathic steps.
> David would go for months or even years at a time completely ignoring my pleas to see his son — not even so much as a text to us, despite living about a mile away.
I can see not having the desire to be with her and break up the relationship, but abandoning his child and not seeing them for years at a time is downright evil.
It's so strange to hear how Google touts itself to be at the forefront of inclusivity and tolerance, and here their executive acting this way for decades and nobody does anything.
What is "evil" about not wanting to see a child that you presumably didn't want to begin with? A woman with an unwanted pregnancy can abort. Men don't have that option. But that doesn't obligate them to an emotional bond with the child.
> What is "evil" about not wanting to see a child that you presumably didn't want to begin with?
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. To deliberately alienate yourself from your child in that way, especially when you have the wealth and resources he does, is evil in my opinion.
> 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. Otherwise what you're saying is "if you don't want to get STDs or have kids never have sex". Luckily that's not how the law works.
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.
How do you square this with your claim in a sister comment of "by virtue of their right to control their own bodies can abort a baby before it is born"
And yet, we generally accept that women have the right to an abortion regardless of their willfully chosen actions prior. How do you square the two positions? Note that I'm not arguing that the man has a right to absolve himself of financial responsibility.
There is nothing that needs to be squared. People are responsible for the predictable consequences of their actions. We hold women and men equally accountable when their having sex produces a child.
The fact that women, by virtue of their right to control their own bodies, can abort a baby before it is born, doesn’t change the analysis for either. Both are still responsible for a baby that is born. The fact that the woman has additional options to avoid the consequence doesn’t absolve the man of responsibility (both to provide financial support and to be a father). Women may have many reasons for not aborting a baby. (Maybe they even believe it’s morally wrong!) But if you take action that predictably may result in an outcome, you don’t get off the hook because someone else had the power to avert the outcome at a later stage and chose not to. Both people are responsible.
An abortion doesn't result in a person so it's not really comparable. My understanding is that the vast majority of surgical or medical abortions occur due to either 1) grave risk to the mother's life 2) serious genetic defects or malformities in the fetus or 3) well before viability (during a time when spontaneous abortions are also common)
Basing a principle of rights or duties based on contingencies (live birth or not) seems dubious. If the mother has a right to decide against the burden of a child, the father should as well (all things being equal). Granted, all things aren't equal, but the financial obligation seems sufficient to fulfill a duty to the living child. Besides, why should we force contact when the father doesn't want it? I don't see that as benefiting the child.
> If the mother has a right to decide against the burden of a child, the father should as well (all things being equal).
This is your false premise. Nothing about fairness requires the law to give someone additional rights to offset someone else’s intrinsic advantages. Neither men nor women have a “legal right to decide against the burden of a child.” If either has a child, they’re on the hook for it. The law doesn’t need to give men an additional legal right to “make up” for the fact that women can terminate a pregnancy by exercising their natural right to control their own pregnancies.
I'm talking about what should be the case, i.e. what is a moral right or duty. Legal concerns just add extra complication that are tangential to my claims.
I am not talking about what the law is, but rather what fairness requires the law to be. Fairness doesn’t necessarily require giving one sex more legal rights (allowing men to disavow parental obligations) to make up for a biological limitation (inability to terminate a pregnancy).
I just don't know how to respond meaningfully when you mix moral and legal concerns. Regarding fairness, I don't see disavowing parental obligation as more legal rights. Women can give their child up for adoption after all.
> The people in Google’s legal department were very close and in 2004, at my birthday party at the W in San Francisco, David reserved a suite to host an “after party.” It was there, that night he told me how he wanted more children. I urged to him to have one with his wife but he demurred and said that would never happen because he was estranged from her, which admittedly I already knew — he was the only married one in attendance without his spouse.
The kid was, in fact, David's idea from the get-go. He lamented at a party to a then-just-coworker about how badly he wanted more children. Of course, whether or not that was just his move to try to get a woman into an affair with him or not, we have no way of knowing.
And: "deeply at odds with the ethical standards that Google once claimed to stand for (not that we ever took them seriously when they said those things)."
Yes, this is a woman who entered a relationship and it didnt work out. Ive definitely read it and this is not a #metoo story. He didnt force himself up on, he didnt take advantage of her, he didnt threaten her, he didnt demand she date him, it's about dating someone at work when there are clear rules around it. No one said she had to leave the department, but that one of them would have to leave. It's a tragically sad story, especially for the child, but this was two consenting adults in an adult relationship that was full of bad choices.
Well, then maybe you read the story but did not understand it. That's fine with me, but I did read the story and that is not my takeaway at all.
For starters, there is a clear abuse of power here with one party being the senior person at the company suggesting that things will be 'ok' when clearly there was a plan all along to create a situation of asymmetry and dependency, followed up with a lot of very mean and manipulative action.
Besides using the child as leverage against the mother there is a clear - and continuous - act in the self interest of the dominant party, more wealthy, still employed and willing to use every dirty tactic in the book and a couple I'd never even seen before against the other.
Utterly revolting and not simply 'two consenting adults in an adult relationship full of bad choices'. That's victim blaming at its worst.
An abuse of power? They had an affair, how was that a plan to create a situation of asymmetry and dependency? How did she not know this was a bad idea all along? Did she think a person willing to cheat on a spouse was going to be a good person down the road?
> David and I began an affair shortly after that night and we were together for years.
She made a bad choice in life. She had an affair with a married man that worked in her department, when she knew such a relationship was against company policy. No one said she had to leave the department, only that one of them had to.
Everything that happened after, while terribly cruel, is not anything you dont see frequently when a relationship falls apart that involves children. It's very sad story but I am not victim blaming anyone, they are both at fault. But they both willingly went into this situation with their eyes open knowing full well what the consequences could be.
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 spend more time with your colleagues than you do your own family in many cases. Relationship are going to happen. We need to learn how to deal with it rather than try to codify rules against it.
The abuse of power is that he maneuvered her into a position of dependency, then bailed out and used the fact that she was now dependent on him against her.
Because power differentials do not invalidate consent? Power differentials do not indicate coercion and people are fully capable of consenting even in the presence of power differentials. We've gotten to the point where we equate potential for abuse with abuse. Its a little ridiculous.
Surely you agree that sometimes power differentials can invalidate consent. Can sex between a police officer and another person that they have placed under arrest be consensual?
I don't think a power differential in itself invalidates consent. In your example I would say the scenario of an arrest is inherently coercive. But this is just quibbling over semantics.
What's the fundamental difference between an employer / employee relationship (where economic power can be wielded) and a police office / arestee relationship (where legal power can be weilded)?
What makes the latter "inherently coercive" but not the former?
Aren't these just different degrees of fundamentally the same thing?
I don't think so. With a police officer/arrestee relationship, coercive power is already being wielded. Being detained is inherently coercive. Any "request" from an officer acting in an official capacity is done with the implied backing of state power, and being arrested clearly establishes the coercive relationship.
But employment is transactional. There is an expectation that the agreed upon transaction will be upheld. A request that falls outside of the transaction, e.g. your boss asking you out, does not inherently imply economic coercion (whereas a request within the employment transaction does). But specifics of the context can alter that, i.e. wording of the request or specific context can imply coercion.
Adulterous relationships. Incestuous relationships. Relationships between professors and students. Relationships based on economic or employment coercion. Relationships in the workplace, even if not coerced, that could result in favoritism prejudicial to others. Again, consent merely distinguishes rape from non-rape. There are many degrees of wrong and unethical conduct short of the outright criminal.
Some of those are fair points (scenarios issues involving external people), although considering the context of this discussion I was referring to ethical concerns between the two parties involved in the relationship. Coercion of various sorts negates consent in my book.
I’ll add to the list: doctor-patient, lawyer-client, judge-lawyer, judge-litigant, social worker-charge, police-detainee, prison guard-prisoner, etc., even in contexts where there is no actual coercion. There is more to relationship ethics than consent. You have to consider the ethics in the context of the other relationships between the parties. Lawyers engaging in relationships with their clients is in fact an ethical violation, regardless of consent, because of the possibility of or appearance of abusing the lawyer-client relationship. Relationships necessarily also affect third parties (other partners, coworkers, etc.) Those effects must be considered too. People owe each other (not just partners, but third parties) more than just not committing rape.
You don't punish the subordinate. Given his level, he should have been out.
Instead they transferred her from legal to sales and her performance tanked because it was a job she was in no way qualified to do.
He got her to quit (and sign a bunch of forms) promising to support her, then bailed.
He refused child support and after she sued, he started using threats against her kid to fuck with her.
This is a woman who got into a relationship, then realized that not only was the guy a complete psycho but the company had his back because he's the important one.
He did not get her to quit, she made that choice herself because she wanted to protect him. She made that choice. Yes he is a terrible person, yes possibly psycho and this story sucks but no one forced anything.
> so I quit Google, signing whatever documents they required because likewise, I wanted to protect him
Is rape the only thing that companies should fire people for? A pattern of relationships like this is quite likely to be very bad for Google, both in terms of settlements and in terms of lost morale and acceptance of shitty behavior instead of working together on the great common project. The question isn't "forced" it's "why is firing the subordinate done instead of firing the habitual asshole when it's clearly in the companies interests to fire the habitual asshole." And the answer to that question makes it plausible that Google has been protecting bad people at the cost of their idealistic but achievable missions.
Also, she may have made that choice, but also he "got" her to quit - not sure if you've been in a relationship, but both things can be true. Someone can influence you to make a bad choice. The responsibility for that bad choice then exists in both people.
> And the answer to that question makes it plausible that Google has been protecting bad people at the cost of their idealistic but achievable missions.
She wasnt fired. And she quit on her own volition.
I can't speak to a pattern of bad behavior because I just dont know more than this story and the one she posted about. He absolutely sounds like human garbage, but her story isn't a #metoo story. There was no abuse, no abuse of power, no forcing anything.
> so I quit Google, signing whatever documents they required because likewise, I wanted to protect him.
... because he had promised her financial support and if he also lost his job, that would go away.
And then he withdrew / refused support, that he'd agreed to, in writing.
Yes, it's not all black and white, but it's close to willfully obtuse to see a timeline of events and then fall back to a definition of "well, he didn't hold a gun to her head/use physical violence so it wasn't really a forced situation".
I agree he's a horrible person, but all those things have nothing to do with Google and his position at Google or her position at Google. Those were relationship decisions they made on their own. They both made horrible personal decisions, but it doesn't involve google.
Except he was her boss at google, google forced her into a position she didn't want, and he encouraged her to quit under false pretenses.
This is a high level google executive engaging in grossly unprofessional behavior with one of his employees. It's abuse of both power and trust. As far as I'm concerned the judgement and behavior shown by him should make him completely untouchable.
I did but I don't take her comments after the disappointment at face value. How dare a married, billionaire cheater not settle down with her but continue to sleep with other women?
She was an adult that entered in a consenting relationship with a married man (I can guess why), she admitted so much. Google policy or not, is irrelevant since both sides knew the deal.
It's not irrelevant, it's a blatant abuse of power.
This guy is clearly a pretty sick sort of predator.
> How dare a married, billionaire cheater not settle down with her but continue to sleep with other women?
He basically got her fired and then bailed on her and their son. He refused to pay child support despite being a millionaire and is basically in an abusive relationship with her still.
It's disgusting. It's the sort of behaviour that should ruin your personal and professional life completely.
>>This guy is clearly a pretty sick sort of predator.
Maybe he was the prey. You cannot refuse to pay child support, it's one option you do not have. Play hard ball in response to stuff etc maybe, but you will pay in the end.
She should have named her price upfront. All consensual and he is a d*ck and a moron in a sense, as a billionaire, he could have used his pocket change and made her happy $$ wise. Now he gets bad press.
Yeah maybe. She's the one who wound up being abandoned with a kid though.
> You cannot refuse to pay child support, it's one option you do not have. Play hard ball in response to stuff etc maybe, but you will pay in the end.
Which is what he did. Despite being filthy rich. Then he continued to threaten her visitation rights, screw around with his visitations.
> She should have named her price upfront. All consensual and he is a d*ck and a moron in a sense, as a billionaire, he could have used his pocket change and made her happy $$ wise. Now he gets bad press.
This is the type of comment I was talking about. This just seems dismissive of the cruelty of this situation and deeply lacking in empathy for 3 people in a lousy spot.
I assume you're positing that she tried to start an affair and get pregnant for child support? Nobody really knows, and it would be a "he-said-she-said" issue. What we do know is that unless he was raped (and there was no charge made of that sort and didn't happen), he made his choice and can deal with the consequences. If he didn't want to deal with the consequences then he shouldn't have fathered a bastard.
> She should have named her price upfront.
I'd support changing the law, but as it stands today and stood then, that's prostitution and illegal.
I'm really close to just defaulting JavaScript off entirely, the web is becoming so much worse by the day.