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Comment by dcole2929 | Hacker News Reader

This is such a thorny ugly issue to which there are really no right answers. It should be very clear that using a position of authority to coerce someone into a relationship of any kind is wrong. But at the same time it's pretty much impossible to prevent people from dating within the work place. You simply spend to much of your life there for it to be at all realistic. Many relationships end poorly, regardless of the obvious incompatibilities of these sorts of power dynamics. It's guaranteed to be a mess more often than not. I'm honestly not sure how you both given people the benefit of the doubt (innocent until proven guilty) while also ensuring that predators aren't allowed to abuse the people around them. Andy Rubin sounds like a sleazy guy. Paying him lots of money to go away seems like a no brainer move here from Google's perspective, but I'm not sure what else they could have done.

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I think it is reasonably easy to prevent people from dating subordinates in the workplace. Up front, you explain that the policy is one word: don't. If it ever happens, you fire the higher-level person promptly. No excuses, no second chances.

Bosses should know not to have sexual or romantic relationships with people who work for them. We all know how one has to be careful what one says to one's boss. And we all no how hard it can be to say no to a boss or boss's boss about anything. It puts the junior person in an impossible situation.

But it's just as bad from the employer's perspective. Suddenly two people who are supposed to be putting the company's interests first have a strong conflict of interest. And when the relationship ends (as most do) you have a whole different set of unnecessary potential conflicts in the workplace.

I believe that policy will work for mid-level and lower-level employee where the reporting structure is their power.

However, for people like Rubin, the reporting structure isn't their power but their overall sway with the organization. In those cases it's not as easy to make a clear delineation along organizational boundaries.

Someone at that level can afford to pay for a matchmaking service and has plenty of willing strangers to date, and doesn't ned to go foraging among the staff.

Sure, I'm not meaning to be an apologist for people in Rubin's position.

Only meaning to say that a focus on organizational lines is not appropriate for somebody like that. The article itself points this out several times as if it should make a difference, however, I'd disagree. The power imbalance is too extreme, even for people not in the direct organizational chain.

It's really not, when you're at that level (which I think is easy enough to define) you don't sleep with anyone in the company. At this point you should be a mature enough adult to be able to handle this, if you're not, you probably shouldn't be in a leadership role. If you're so enamored with someone then you leave. The workplace is a place for work, not a place to find a date. Do people date people they work with? Of course – and that's fine, but the second it gets in the way of the work it's a problem and needs to be handled, rarely can it be handled any other way than having one person leave.

Right. Even Travis Kalanick understood this.

When you fail to clear an ethical bar that Kalanick cleared, it's time to stop and reconsider your life.

I don't think the issue is that simple with senior execs. The article brings up Page and Brin dating Google employees. Pretty much the entire Alphabet employee base are subordinates of those 2.

Isn’t it pretty simple to just say that Page and Brin shouldn’t have ever dated anyone in the entire organization?

But why?

The fact that they date someone in their organization becomes only problematic if they coerce their partner into something using their position. Or if the partner accuses them of such.

Ruling out theses intra company relationships is like saying that you cannot date a physically weaker partner because you are in a better position to physically force him int things he doesn’t want.

It's a problem whether or not there's explicit coercion, because the subordinate will always have a reasonable suspicion of retaliation.

But how do you plan to prove that no explicit coercion took place? Should they just video-record all of their interactions so that an impartial review board can regularly review goings on to make sure no harm is happening?

Or is instead your plan to place a burden on the junior person to report? If that's the case, you should do a little research on what percentage of problems are reported, which of those reports are taken seriously, and which of the seriously-taken reports see appropriate action. In those numbers you'll find your answer as to why it won't work.

> But how do you plan to prove that no explicit coercion took place?

How do you do that on regular dates? Do you record them? What’s the difference?

Proving is always difficult. You just have to take contextual evidence.

> Or is instead your plan to place a burden on the junior person to report?

Of course the burden of proof is on the accuser. The fact that two people are in a relationship is not a proof. But creepy comments about polyamorism is good evidence.

And yes, the superior is in a weaker position if accused of coercion. So the higher level partner should take a higher risk if the case is brought to court.

Regular dates don't happen in a context where a company has given significant power to one person over another person. A company a) has a responsibility to make sure that power is not abused, and b) has an obligation to avoid legal liability for misuse of that power.

Your theory that "contextual evidence" will be enough to ensure fair outcomes is absurd. Either you haven't paid much attention to how this works in the real world or you are willfully ignoring the experiences of people who go through this.

Both from press reports and from what I hear personally, the average outcome of someone reporting sexual misconduct in a work context is a) the accuser is put through the wringer, b) nothing happens to the accused, and c) the accuser eventually has to leave a poisonous environment.

Do you know of some data that relationships within companies (and in particular where one person has power over the other) are significantly more abusive than the average?

That's what it would take for me to reconsider my belief that relationships within companies are not to be regulated by policies.

My experience is that there is a) no significant difference and b) that sexual predators won't be stopped by a policy (but it makes it easier to remove them).

I actually have difficulties why we have to discuss relationships and sexual misconduct in the same thread.

Ok? I guess you're welcome to have any beliefs you like. But many companies have a rule like the one I describe, and they do it purely for business reasons. They don't need the hassle, and it's part of the normal course of business to make sure that managerial power isn't misused.

If you think there should be some sort of law preventing companies from having this sort of rule, I guess that's your prerogative. But you'll have to make an argument why companies shouldn't have the freedom to make what they see as reasonable and necessary decisions about how to run their business.

CEO Bob is dating underling Alice who works alongside underling Ted. Should Alice and Ted have conflict, Alice can always play the Bob card.

The rule of thumb in the military (I don't know if it's the law) is not to date someone in your chain of command.

Bob and Alice can be connected in many different ways. They could be highschool friends, follow the same faith, be of the same ethnicity (different from Ted). Why single out a romantic relationship?

Professional employees will handle it professionally. If you don’t have that trust - maybe don’t hire them.

The military is so different in many ways that I don’t think it’s worth discussing here.

> I think it is reasonably easy to prevent people from dating subordinates in the workplace. Up front, you explain that the policy is one word: don't. If it ever happens, you fire the higher-level person promptly. No excuses, no second chances.

This is completely absurd. How many current great relationships would have never existed under such a rule? (Bill and Melinda Gates is the obvious go-to example, or Barack and Michelle Obama, but there are no doubt millions.)

> Barack and Michelle Obama

I actually don't think that's true. They met through work, but didn't start dating until her summer term in the job ended.

Other way around, she was his mentor as a summer associate

"Robinson met Barack Obama when they were among the few African Americans at their law firm, Sidley Austin LLP (she has sometimes said only two, although others have noted ut there were others in different departments).[55] She was assigned to mentor him while he was a summer associate.[56] Their relationship started with a business lunch and then a community organization meeting where he first impressed her.[57]"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Obama

>This is completely absurd. How many current great relationships would have never existed under such a rule?

How many great relationships/working relationships wouldn't be ruined because of that rule?

How many people wouldn't have lives and careers ruined because of that rule?

Frankly if you love someone that damn much, move to a different job and avoid the potential conflicts that are involved. Good luck arguing that a boss absolutely needs the option to date a subordinate because what if a serious relationship never happens?

I mean it's nice if you can pull examples out of the air when it worked out for two people. But for everyone else? What's the ratio of happy couples to victims do you need to tilt scales to one side or the other?

Doesn't the counterfactual matter rather a lot here? I'm reminded of Tim Minchin's "If I didn't have you"

> I think it is reasonably easy to prevent people from dating subordinates in the workplace. Up front, you explain that the policy is one word: don't. If it ever happens, you fire the higher-level person promptly. No excuses, no second chances.

In such a world, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation would likely not exist:

Office Romance: How Bill Met Melinda https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/fe...

The first time Bill Gates asked Melinda Gates out on a date, she turned him down https://www.businessinsider.com/melinda-gates-turned-bill-ga...

In such a world, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation would likely not exist:

We can cure malaria without having millions of women sexually harassed at work.

Your statement implies Melinda Gates as sexually assaulted at work by Bill, which is wrong.

Or more directly, your response does not speak to the argument.

Your statement implies Melinda Gates as sexually assaulted at work by Bill, which is wrong.

sigh It implies no such thing except under the most uncharitable of interpretations. Here, I'll spell it out: one exception with a positive outcome does not offset the millions of women who have been harassed by their boss. IOW, "hey, baby, we could be the next Billinda!", just no.

You're digging yourself a hole by once again presuming that people who are involved in office romances are mostly likely to be in situations of sexual coercion.

This is not remotely the case.

Most office romances are just two people dating - and that's it.

It's the possibility that something might go awry that's problematic, not the situation itself.

Gates is not 'one example' - it's the norm.

Wherever you work, there are surely people dating/married to one another, it's almost normative.

You're digging yourself a hole by once again presuming that people who are involved in office romances are mostly likely to be in situations of sexual coercion.

I believe you've lost the thread of the conversation if you feel it involves just "office romances". We can part ways here.

The same applies to situations wherein one person might have rank over the other.

It's common, and it does not imply some kind of harassment or coercion.

That Andy Rubin may apparently be bad guy does not invalidate people's right to have such relationships, nor does it make them inherently immoral.

This is pretty silly. We're not talking about Bill and Melinda Gates. We're talking about the David Drummond and Jennifer Blakely Foundation, which lasted a couple years, and resulted in Jennifer Blakely --- Drummond's subordinate --- losing her job along with the relationship.

"We're not talking about <implication of my position that makes it look bad>, so it doesn't matter. We're talking about <implication of my position that makes it look good>."

Edit: Seriously? Does that count as a valid response now on HN?

A: X is bad. We should prohibit all X. Look at Y, which was a case of X.

B: But Z was a case of X too -- is that an acceptable cost?

A: Irrelevant; we're talking about Y.

There's even a famous joke about this fallacy! ctrl-f "changing the subject": https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2002/12/26/15545311.php?sh...

We are literally commenting on a story about David Drummond, so no, that's not a real rebuttal.

And "we're not talking about that" is literally an invalid response to pointing out a negative implication of a proposed policy. Do you disagree?

No, we're talking about how dredging up an exception to the rule where things worked out for two people is not a a very good argument that it's actually fine most of the time and bosses won't victimize subordinates under the right circumstances.

Bill and Melinda Gates's relationship isn't so important to the world that we must allow bosses to date, pressure into a relationship or manipulate subordinates just in case.

That wasn't tptacek's response, which was effectively "we don't have to worry about implications that make the policy look bad if we're not talking about them".

Your claim -- that it's an extreme exception and doesn't outweigh the harm of a blanket prohibition -- would be a relevant response (although suboptimal because you're only replying to that one case and not the general phenomenon).

There’s just one problem. Who the hell are you (or anyone else) to tell Bill or Melinda who they should date?

You don’t get to sacrifice 2 people’s liberty who mind their own business and did nothing wrong because someone else in another place and time that they have nothing to do with can’t behave themselves.

> Who the hell are you (or anyone else) to tell Bill or Melinda who they should date?

If you're Google, and Bill and Melinda in this universe were Google employees, you'd be their employer. And employers can (and almost always do) ask the managers that work for them to not date their subordinates, for clear reasons:

1. It's easy, given power, for managers to abuse it. Even unknowingly. With these kinds of relationships it's very hard to tell if they are/were abusing it, so it's better for the company if they didn't happen in the first place.

2. Companies don't want articles like this written about them in the New York Times.

They're paying you to do your job to promote the company's best interests, part of which is not dating subordinates. If you don't want to do your job you don't have to, and similarly they don't have to pay you.

> You don’t get to sacrifice 2 people’s liberty who mind their own business and did nothing wrong...

You're not sacrificing anyone's liberty to date. Managers at these companies aren't being coerced into working there, and have the liberty to work elsewhere — that's the law in California. Having a rule banning a behavior at a company isn't like having a law banning a behavior in a country, where you usually can't just up and join a different country on a whim if you don't want to be bound by your country's laws. You can up and join another company on a whim because you don't want to be bound by your company's policies.

It's difficult to differentiate, though. How do you know what relationship is coercive or isn't? Were you there at the time?

There are always power differences between males and females, and in the past, dating a superior was often the only way a female could transcend the class they were born into. Hypergamy is a real, observed social phenomenon, and it bothers me that people are hand wringing over a problem that may not even exist in the first place. Hypocrisy runs deep in this country, especially for the self-appointed moral police.

My read of "hypergamy is a real observed phenomenon" is that it is mostly a way of dismissing concerns when they pertain to women employees.

Here, have some empirical evidence. [0]

The Atlantic [1] spends some time with this study, and here are some takeaways. Attractiveness is measured from 0 to 1.

* The headline: People are "hypergamous" (what a terrible word), aiming about 0.25 above their own position

* Women are most attractive (0.62) when young, with sharp falloff; men are most attractive (0.53) in mid-life, with middling falloff

* "Men experience slightly lower reply rates when they write more positively worded messages."

* Different metropolitan areas have different dating patterns

Humans are weird.

[0] http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/8/eaap9815

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/08/online-d...

I wasn't actually asking for more evidence. I was criticizing the invocation of "hypergamy" as something relevant to the story we're commenting on.

The guy who used it was discussing the difficulty of ascertaining whether or not power-imbalances between people in a relationship implies coercion. Women's general preference towards dating up is obviously a factor, so to ascribe a dismissive attitude to anybody who mentions it is uncharitable to say the least.

If the situation is avoided, then there's no need to differentiate. That's the best part about the "don't" policy. There are plenty of people out there.

Also, hypergamy doesn't require that the two parties work at the same company, so it doesn't seem relevant to this discussion.

> If the situation is avoided, then there's no need to differentiate. That's the best part about the "don't" policy. There are plenty of people out there.

It’s not my company's business as to who I am allowed to date or engage in a consensual relationship with. It literally has nothing to do with them.

It's not the company making the decision; it's oneself. Of course, you're free to make your own decisions, but I personally use the "don't" policy.

Sorry, but that is a very simplistic way of seeing it.

For example:

If you date someone who works for you, and you have multiple subordinates (as most managers do), and you rate / evaluate those subordinates (as most managers do), and you rate your partner higher than another subordinate, you are opening the company up to legal action that you discriminated against the other subordinate due to your relationship. That costs the company money to defend and more more if they lose, so they have every "business" to tell you not to.

There are many more examples.

Alright, so in the first place, this is attacking the problems in American work (and work the world over) from the wrong vantage point. What if you merely like one of your workers more than the others and you rate them higher than the others? That should be just as insidious but because it doesn't involve sex, somehow that's not as bad, it's just "life". Almost everyone in HN has experienced this sort of toxic manager at some point in our careers and we've for some reason normalized it just like the rampant sexual harassment.

If I could have my way, we'd ask ourselves why do managers have so much sway and power over our lives in the first place, that their bad moods and habits can literally kill us? If people cannot be trusted to be managers when normal human emotions and interactions occur, then why are they managers in the first place and why do they have so much power over us?

Two reasons mainly. First and less charitably, managers and executives are a self-perpetuating phenomenon. They’d have to be the ones to slit their own throats, and they won’t. The second and more depressing reason is at the core of much human misery from politics to business: it’s better than the known and proven alternatives in most cases. Like what passes for democracy these days, it’s a lamentable mess, but still preferable to the proven alternatives on offer.

This is just plain wrong. A romantic relationship between a subordinate and superior is definitely the employer's business. If you want to date a subordinate one of you needs to quit or hide it and accept the consequences if it is ever discovered.

"David C. Drummond, who joined as general counsel in 2002, had an extramarital relationship with Jennifer Blakely, a senior contract manager in the legal department who reported to one of his deputies, she and other Google employees said. They began dating in 2004, discussed having children and had a son in 2007,"

I don't understand, doesn't she bear some responsibility in her actions? She chose to date him and also chose to have kids with him. All knowing that he was already married. Why would she do that to another woman?

The dynamics of Drummond's marriage are literally none of our business. You have no idea what Blakely "did" or "didn't" do to "another woman". How Google handles like this, though, is absolutely open to analysis and criticism.

This is silly. We can't discuss Google's handling of a situation without digging into the situation itself.

No part of Google's handling of this has anything to do with Drummond's marriage, obviously.

The only difference is that Gates was CEO and owner so no one good force his subordinate to change jobs.

When Brin cheated on his wife with his assistant, she wasn't forced to change jobs.

Did you not read what the OP said? He demonstrated why that “simple rule” may have unintended consequences, and the Bill and Melinda comparison was applicable, not silly. We are talking about all relationships in which the male is a superior on the org chart.

She didn't turn him down. She told him "You aren't spontaneous enough for me." An hour later, he upped his game to meet her standard.

As It Should Be. ;)

It was founded as just the William H. Gates foundation, so I don't think that this is true.

The world when Bill and Melinda met doesn't exist anymore.

That's a reasonable price to pay. If it means having to tolerate sleezeballs rather than preventing more Bill and Melindas, then so be it.

Looks like fascism is on the rise.

The Foundation probably also wouldn’t exist in a world where Hitler got into art school. The fact that dating subordinates sometimes works out doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to allow it.

Off the top of my head, there are a few things wrong with this.

One, the fact that a rule might have downsides is not proof that it's a bad rule.

Two, if the rule had existed, it's hardly impossible that they would have gotten together later, or found some accommodation.

Three, if they hadn't gotten together, there's no reason to think they both wouldn't have gone on to find happiness with other people.

Four, your suggestion that them not dating means a Bill Gates foundation wouldn't exist is without evidence. At best you could say it might has another name on it.

Five, even if this rule would somehow have caused Gates to just burn his billions instead of doing some good, you haven't grappled at all with the harm that the lack of that rule does to many people who aren't as famous.

I think the point is that your rule implies that dating anyone in a consensual, non-coercive way implies that relationship is wrong[0] given certain contextual circumstances. That people, when they break up go on to do toxic and terrible things isn't and shouldn't be an indictment of the original relationship or sexual interaction if it was consensual and non-coerced rather of instead of critiquing the toxic behavior after the relationship.

Therefore, if we must not consider the resultant behavior separate from the relationship before it, then you are making a moral[0] judgement on the validity of relationships.

Consider the following: being coerced into a relationship and consenting because you fear being fired. That is clearly coercive and wrong because the consent isn't genuine, and I don't think anyone in this thread is arguing is worth being protected. A second situation: two people with mutual attraction who end up dating (like Melinda and Bill Gates) but have a power differential. It sounds like you are saying this is a priori wrong, even if the two consent and neither party feels coerced, or that one is coerced even if they believe sincerely that they are not being coerced.

Even if you don't say it is morally wrong, you still will forbid and prohibit such relationships, adults whom aren't you and who might not have the same value judgements you have. That's why it isn't so clear cut to me and others in this thread.

[0] I say wrong and moral, because this is an argument about morality, fundamentally.

> Even if you don't say it is morally wrong, you still will forbid and prohibit such relationships, adults whom aren't you and who might not have the same value judgements you have.

I think it's okay to prohibit relationships that have a high likelihood of causing problems for the company, just like it's okay to prohibit (legal, morally-permissible!) behavior that is likely to detriment the company in other ways such as all engineers having root on production boxes.

If it's probably gonna cause problems it doesn't matter if it's legal, or if it's morally permissible under certain moral frameworks: don't do that shit, and it's fine for a company to ask you not to. Having relationships with subordinates is likely gonna cause problems, because most relationships end, and many of those that end will end poorly. All it takes is one lawsuit or even some bad PR to damage the business.

> your rule implies that dating anyone in a consensual, non-coercive way implies that relationship is wrong

In a word, no. It implies that the class of covered activities is too risky for the company.

Consider company rules about receiving gifts from vendors. Typically, there's some limit, like $25. If you are negotiating a contract with somebody and they give you a $26 pen or even a $100 pen, is that morally wrong? No, unless that's enough for you to improperly favor them. But it's still forbidden, and the danger to the company is significant enough that they still ban it.

I mostly agree, but I think:

> At best you could say it might has another name on it.

...does disservice to the influence she had (on Bill & the world) and shortchanges her contribution.

Your point still stands, i.e. that the claims of harm of the policy are post-hoc reasoning and therefore irrelevant its expected utility. But that does not actually conflict with this one particular instance possibly being a lucky coincidence.

Or maybe it's an attempt to bring nuance to the discussion. Granted, it's kind of ham-handed. But absolutist positions frequently turn out to be draconian.

There seems to be no good way to make this point, but most relationships have some power imbalance. Where do we stop? Can you only marry someone your age with similar incomes? Do we encode this into law? Does this become a caste system?

The world seems to be okay with the relationship Bill Gates has. Wouldn't the world be a better place if we wondered how to foster such successes more often instead of designing rules based on an assumption of guilt in essence? Maybe rules that would forbid Gates current marriage aren't as thoroughly thought out and wise as they might seem at first blush.

Designing rules to prevent a worst case scenario sometimes goes very bad places. I have joked it can be a little like me starting a dating profile and putting "No rapists!" at the top of it. This isn't going to accomplish anything good and is likely to go bad places. Good policies need to consider more scenarios than just that worst case scenario we absolutely don't want to see.

Tldr: Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Yes, most relationships have some sort of power imbalance (although historically that has been drastically decreasing). What makes work relationships different is that it is hard to change jobs.

If you decide to go date a rich man on Tinder, you can break up without significant consequence to your income or your career. But if your boss asks you out you may face severe career consequences just for saying no. If you say yes and then break it off, the risks to you go up.

This rule has no assumption of guilt. It's just acknowledging the risk to the company and the people involved.

You're right in principle, but the problem is that nuance doesn't scale. In 1987 Microsoft only had about 1800 employees so it was more practical to apply some individual judgment to employee policies. Google had about 38000 employees in 2013, so it was more than an order of magnitude larger. That's a much tougher management problem.

So, what your telling me is there is a specific circumstance under which we know that it can work to not have absolutist rules. Now, it might be nice to have more hard data suggesting roughly what size of company this can work with, plus other details as to what makes it work.

Most companies are not behemoths. Everything I have ever read indicates most companies qualify for definitions of small to mid sized.

SMEs outnumber large companies by a wide margin and also employ many more people. For example, Australian SMEs make up 97% of all Australian businesses, produced one third of total GDP, and employ 4.7 million people. In Chile, in the commercial year 2014, 98.5% of the firms were classified as SMEs.[1] In Tunisia, the self-employed workers alone account for about 28% of the total non-farm employment and firms with fewer than 100 employees account for about 62% of total employment.[2] In developing countries, smaller (micro) and informal firms, have a larger share than in developed countries. SMEs are also said to be responsible for driving innovation and competition in many economic sectors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_and_medium-sized_enterpr...

Just because Bill Gates did it, doesn't make it right. The problem is the power imbalance. Yeah sometimes that situation turns into a long-lasting relationship, but sometimes it doesn't and sometimes the subordinate feels coerced into it in the first place.

Maybe Bill wouldn't be charitable at all if he hadn't met Melinda but I'd like to think he would've been into philanthropy either way.

it's not like pairing happens in a random chance chaotic void, people like what they like and are what they are, it's quite as likely that a Bill & Mrs Gates foundation would have happened anyway.

" Up front, you explain that the policy is one word: don't. If it ever happens, you fire the higher-level person promptly. No excuses, no second chances."

In the real world, it's not that easy. Things happen.

Also, it's probably illegal, or it wouldn't hold up in court.

VP of Customer Service falls in love with one of the help-desk assistants, they get married, VP gets fired - that's a lawsuit.

No contract any VP of Customer Service is going to have will insulate them from being fired for cause, which is what would be happening if they violated a basic HR handbook rule about dating subordinates.

And that's assuming the "VP of Customer Service" has a negotiated contract in the first place. Most employees, even managers, don't have negotiated contracts; they have the default handbook contract, which I guarantee you restates and maintains the US default, which is termination at will.

Termination at will doesn't cover things that violates people's rights, and a whole host of other things.

You can't fire someone because they are black, or gay, or Mormon, or get sick - and probably not because they fall in love with each other either.

Most US employers absolutely can legally fire an employee because of who they fall in love with, as long as the action isn't based on a policy which disproportionately impacts a protected class.

Maybe you're right, but I'm doubtful. I wonder how it would hold up in a big supreme court challenge (or maybe it has already ... I'm not an expert)

You think maybe employment at will is just waiting to be tested in the Supreme Court?

Maybe it should.

"You think maybe employment at will is just waiting to be tested in the Supreme Court?"

It's in court right now.

And it always will be.

On what grounds are you doubtful? The concept of protected classes is well-defined and well-tested and "office lovebirds" aren't one of those classes.

For fuck's sake, "being gay" isn't even one of those classes.

Federal protected class, no. But in CA, yeah, it is.

https://www.employmentattorneyla.com/blog/2017/06/what-are-c...

About the same as "employee says controversial thing in personal life". In other words, employer has absolutely every right to fire them for their self-expression.

"About the same as "employee says controversial thing in personal life""

No way. Two people falling in love is not in the same category as someone saying public things.

Yes but "rights" are legally defined, not just 'well I feel like I have a right to this'. Employees dating their subordinates is not a protected class, so "and probably not because they fall in love with each other either" is factually incorrect.

It appears that this is not settled case law, with the most recent case in the 9th district court (basically all of the west coast) ruling that at least public officials have the right to have affairs with coworkers: https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Police-can-t-be-fir...

Other appeals courts have ruled otherwise, but the 9th district court has had a couple of precedents in the past, according to the article.

Personally, I think it's an interesting issue. If the company fires the higher ranked employee, they are probably losing more value.

It's also interesting that I think everyone would agree that it would be absurd to fire any employee if they were a married couple - yet absent the (mostly religious and tax related) binds of marriage, there's some moral judgment cast upon the participants. It seems so puritanical and absurd. What if the two employees got married before anyone found out about the affair? I bet they'd be protected both legally and in terms of moral or business implications.

It appears many states actually prevent firing based on marital status: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB111041550490175318

From that one, "One reason is that about 20 states and many cities ban employment discrimination on the basis of marital status. If a married employee who has an affair is fired and an unmarried employee who has an affair isn't, the fired employee in those states conceivably could claim illegal discrimination, attorneys say. Thus, many employers turn a blind eye to marital cheating."

We're not talking about marital status, nor do we care that Drummond was married at the time the affair began. We care about the fact that he had the affair with a subordinate.

You seem to not get it.

Situation 1: Person A and B are married and have a sexual relationship. A is a VP, B is just a regular worker. Nobody has a problem with this, and policies generally don't have any problem with coworkers being married.

Situation 2: Person A and B are not married and have a sexual relationship. A is a VP, B is just a regular worker. Some people have a problem with this, and policies often have a problem with coworkers being married.

That's called discrimination based on marital status (or lack thereof).

In case you didn't know, most companies would feel very uncomfortable with situation 1. Creating a situation where someone is managing their significant other is asking for disaster.

Absolutely. I knew a couple who met and married at American Express. It was strictly forbidden that one manage the other. I suspect that's the case at most large companies.

termination for no reason is not the same as termination for any reason.

> In the real world, it's not that easy. Things happen.

No, things don't "happen". People make them happen, and should own up to the consequences of their actions. If the policy is "don't", then you can choose to 1) do not, no matter how much you would like to; 2) move / leave so you can do freely; or 3) do and (if/when found) you get smacked in the face with the policy.

A lot of policies, contract clauses, and even laws exist only to be applied in certain situations, not rigerously.

I can accept that google wants to avoid trouble at the work place and love dramas can cause trouble. And sexual harassment is already forbidden by law. But it is not automatically harassment when two consenting adults of different levels start a love affair mostly happening outside work.

This is as much google’s business as what sex I prefer, what party I vote for or to which god I may pray - none.

The protection against possible harassment does not justify to limit the freedom of adult citizens. For children the limits do make sense, though.

When there is no harassment claim and no other disturbance of peace at work the state should protect me against overreaching policies.

Employer says:

1 "don't be gay"

2 "don't fall in love"

1 is illegal obviously, 2 is legal?

Seriously?

A lawsuit for what? You can’t just allege “someone will file a suit”, that is meaningless.

> Also, it's probably illegal, or it wouldn't hold up in court.

Most states in the US are at-will employment. You can be fired for literally any reason whatsoever outside of a very very limited number of protections against discrimination.

Hooking up with a subordinate is not one of those protections.

I didn't say it was easy. It is, however, simple.

Please provide evidence for your claim that it's illegal to fire someone for banging the help. In an at-will state, people can generally be fired for any reason or no reason as long as some specific employee protection isn't violated. I have worked at companies, including a publicly traded company, that have rules like that, and the didn't see any problem with it.

You're right that there could be a lawsuit. People can sue for anything. But it's much more likely that a company will see a lawsuit for failing to protect employees from predatory managers and execs. So if lawsuits are the problem, then this rule would be a huge help in reducing the total number, as well as the PR risk.

I think the fact that you refer to Bill and Melinda as a case of “banging the help” says a lot about your understanding of decent human relationships and is probably why you are failing to see the nuaunce that applies to many of these situations. If your understanding of relationships is that simple, then it’s not surprising that you think there is a simple solution.

It also seems a little insulting to imply that women have no agency, but I’ll let them decide if they want to be offended.

I am not referring to Bill and Melinda Gates. I am referring to the broad problem.

I am not denying human relationships are nuanced. I am proposing a very simple rule, one that many companies already have on the books, because a) the deep ambiguity is managerially untractable, and b) as we see in many examples including this article, more nuanced rules are easily interpreted to let powerful men off the hook.

I am not implying women have no agency. There's nothing in this rule about men and women, or even about straight relationships. If you are inferring that women have no agency, maybe that's you.

Sure, because zero-tolerance policies work so well in practice..

While we're at it, why don't we also tell teenagers about sex? One word: Don't. Problem solved.

Should we not have higher expectations for rich senior executives than we do your average teenager?

I'm not objecting to holding executives at higher standard. I'm objecting to zero-tolerance policies at workplace (or anywhere), which is (in a way) the opposite of holding people at higher standard: it's basically saying "I don't trust you to have common sense, so here are the rules and you will follow them unquestionably."

It's a pain in the ass for those who have common sense, and unmitigated disaster for those who don't.

Everyone thinks they have common sense but it all goes out the window when romance is involved. When you decide to date a close coworker, you are setting her (and it’s always her) to lose her job or feel uncomfortable enough that she needs to leave, if it doesn’t work out. Many men don’t even consider that ‘cause hormones.

No, theen who don't consider it get laid while the men who do consider don't get anywhere.

You'll notice these themes are always repetively "sex bad!" with no "sex good" elements ever.

Oh - do a lot of rich senior executives display a greater degree of sexual restraint than high school students?

I think human mating dynamics are far more nuanced than can be captured by simplistic rules, and that's true regardless of the ages involved.

You may be exaggerating, but I find it very reasonable advice in these times, and not just for teenagers.

My previous employer, Booking Holdings, then the Priceline Group and one of the largest e-commerce companies, treated these kinds of issues with a lot of respect. So much so that allegations were investigated by OUTSIDE counsel, who then also made the call on how far to go in the investigation. This led to the dismissal of the group CEO (relationship with indirect report) and number of other execs over the years.

There was also always a way to (anonymously if need be) report such things to a third party (not just hr). Managers and execs generally considered it a feature, not a threat. Every so often, somebody would try to use the mechanism for a vendetta, but best I can tell (and I've been involved in a few of these investigations), those were effectively recognized as such and treated with respect for accuser and subject of the complaint.

In other words, this is solvable problem.

At some point people will only hire people of their own gender or different sexual orientation to avoid any problem down the line and it would be a loss for everybody.

Is that really easier than just not sexually harassing people?

This Rubin story isn't about sexual harassment. Some woman dated him and then decided she was "coerced" (how?) into doing something she late regretted. Given the modern notion some women have developed that they can change their mind about whether an act was consensual at any time, even retroactively, it's not at all clear Rubin did anything wrong beyond adultery. After all have only this woman's word for it.

I sincerely hope you are not in any positions of power.

> Some woman dated him and then decided she was "coerced" (how?) into doing something she late regretted. Given the modern notion some women have developed that they can change their mind about whether an act was consensual at any time

jesus. With all due respect dude, this is incredibly retrogressive and I suggest you reevaluate your personal views on that.

Did you miss the part that covered the fact that she was consensually having an affair with him for years, and the trip where she decided it was time to break up is only when it became “pressure”?

I suggest you be less naive.

Hiring people of only one sex is illegal in the US. See the Hooters lawsuit, who had to settle for millions for only hiring women.

In a modern matrix organization with shifting project assignments it's not always clear who is a subordinate. Some employees may have formal or informal "dotted line" responsibilities to multiple managers, all of whom can impact their career.

If the organization structure is so complex it isn’t clear, then all the more reason for senior-level leaders to abstain from intimate relationships with people they work with, at any level within the org.

The problem is that is an infinitely arbitrarily moving goalpost. The issue isn't even clear with in the specifics of Rubin's situation. If someone directly reports to you then the answer is obviously no. But from the article it seems like some of these relationships which were inappropriate were with people who were only tangentially in his chain of command. And some not at all. What happens when you start at the same level but are promoted to different levels? If you're responsible for making your company Billions of dollars a year the way Andy Rubin is you can easily argue he shouldn't be able to date anyone in that company at all without there being an unacceptable power dynamic. But as someone worth close to a billion dollars that's probably true of any relationship he's in. Google has literally millions of employees, is it ok to say he can't date any of them? That's why I said it's a tricky issue with no good answers. It's easy to say people should know this or know that but the fact is different people know and believe different things. You have to have a codified policy. And if you can't codify a policy that works in every case then you don't have a good one.

> What happens when you start at the same level but are promoted to different levels?

If through promotion or re-org one partner ends up in the subtree of the other, either end the relationship or find a new position for one of the two people.

> If you're responsible for making your company Billions of dollars a year the way Andy Rubin is you can easily argue he shouldn't be able to date anyone in that company at all without there being an unacceptable power dynamic.

So be it! Being in charge of thousands of people and billions of dollars is an incredible responsibility. That kind of responsibility requires discipline and sacrifice. If you want the freedom to fuck anyone you want in the org chart, don't try to climb to the top of the org chart.

> Google has literally millions of employees, is it ok to say he can't date any of them?

Thousands, not millions. And, yes, that's totally OK. Any executive who doesn't like that can spend some of the millions of dollars making themselves feel better. Seriously, if you're worth +$100M and you can't find a date outside of the office, you've got bigger problems than the org chart.

> You have to have a codified policy.

Google has a codified policy, which every employee signs that they agree to. It says you can't date people when there is a reporting chain between them.

There are seven billion people on Earth. Executives can find someone outside of their reporting structure to fall in love with. This isn't hard.

The only problem here is that the kind of people who want to be in charge of thousands of people and billions of dollars are often also the kind of people who want lots of power and to have the rules not apply to them.

> Google has a codified policy

Google has a policy which they don't follow all the time because there are situations where they don't feel it properly addresses the situations to the satisfaction of all parties. That is a policy that doesn't work. I don't disagree with a lot of your points here. I'm just pointing out that people are trying to make what is a very complex issue sound simple. If it was simple the same problem wouldn't keep coming up.

> There are seven billion people on Earth. Executives can find someone outside of their reporting structure to fall in love with. This isn't hard.

And yet you don't control who you fall in love with. And everything we know tells us that you are far more likely to see 1-200 of those 7 billion people every day. And incredibly more likely to have things in common with and fall in love with someone in that much smaller group.

I think the problem here is that people are still people whether they are rich/successful or not. My policy is I don't date coworkers superior, inferior, or otherwise. But I think it's foolish to think that's a policy that everyone can and will adhere to. And that is really the only policy properly addresses all the issue with office romances.

> And yet you don't control who you fall in love with.

Tough luck. If forcing people to choose between their job and their love is the price to pay to stop these sleezeballs, then so be it.

The policy doesn’t work for Google because they bend the rules for executives that they never would for rank-and-file employees.

> Google has literally millions of employees

Literally millions? More like 75,000:

https://www.recode.net/2017/7/24/16022210/alphabet-google-em...

It is neither arbitrary nor moving. If one person has power over another in a corporate context, the senior person should not date the junior person.

A pretty simple way to think about it: who in your company would you be afraid to be frank with if you knew it would upset them? Those people shouldn't be allowed to date you. That leaves billions of people for each of you to date, so I'm not seeing a big problem.

Are there edge cases and nuanced situations? Sure. Is that true about any important rule? Sure. E.g., look at your company's conflict of interest policy. For the sake of clarity, a bunch of relatively arbitrary lines will be drawn. But that doesn't produce the same hand-wringing and rushes to the fainting couches that a rule like this does. I'll leave the reason why as an exercise for the reader.

> the senior person should not date the junior person

What if the junior person realllllly wants to date the senior person. And the senior person kinda wouldn't mind giving it a go. Should the junior be reprimanded for their outrageously flirtatious behaviour? Perhaps we should have a committee draft an exhaustive set of rules that unambiguously eliminate this danger.

My concern here is abuse of power, so I would not make any additional rules in this case. If the junior person is bothering the senior person that's unprofessional conduct and so can be dealt with normally. If the senior person isn't bothered, I don't see why it's any business of the company's.

> I think it is reasonably easy to prevent people from dating subordinates in the workplace.

I think you are terribly naiive.

Why does someone have the drive to climb these corporate power structures in the first place? What's the point of power if it's not being (ab)used?

If you want to accomplish something, you're better off starting a company rather than climbing one.

Firing the more senior person automatically is an interesting idea. Are there any companies that do this in a way that doesn't add excessive legal liabilities to the company?

> I think it is reasonably easy to prevent people from dating subordinates in the workplace

Even the military struggles with this. It's not easy.

Usually law/policy that strictly forbid someone to date somebody which is deemed inferior in any way haven’t turned out to be good idea throughout human history...

This isn't rocket science. If you fancy someone, you ask him/her on a date, a simple neutral stuff, like a movie. If the other party refuses, that's it. If the other party is a subordinate you just don't.

You don't invite them to Burning man, you don't have business meetings in your house late at night, you don't tell someone your his slave, you don't offer to swing with your wife (from a different post I read), seriously.

I agree about "don't" if the party is a subordinate.

However, in a sex positive culture, what makes a date request so special compared to all the other types of romantic / sexual requests?

What's a sex positive culture? regardless if you want casual romantic or sexual relationship do it with someone out of the office. There are enough people in the world that you don't know anything about you can easily have a casual relationship with, there are apps for that, apparently.

A date assumes you have a more serious relationship in mind. No body cares if you marry a co-worker, it's causal relationships that could cause trouble. Besides, asking someone on a date is never ambiguous, and it can't be taken badly or out of context.

> Paying him lots of money to go away seems like a no brainer move here from Google's perspective, but I'm not sure what else they could have done.

The story suggests that he could have been fired without much if any kind of severance package. But besides the worry that such a senior person would file a termination lawsuit, there was the problem that Google's board had given him a $150M stock grant a few weeks after Google investigated the complaint. It's not clear whether the board knew of the investigation before rewarding him, but that sum apparently served as a reference point when settling the matter:

> The $150 million stock grant gave Mr. Rubin an enormous bargaining chip when he started negotiating his exit package about a month later. That is because an executive’s stock compensation — and how much of it they would leave behind — is often taken into consideration during settlement talks.

Is it really impossible to prevent people from dating within the workplace? I've worked for many years at large and small companies and I've never done it, nor have the majority of my co-workers.

The HN demographic is skewed by a lot of young people who work for companies that are managed more like college dorms than real businesses. I think this gives some people a distorted perspective about what's realistic.

To be clear I'm not proposing a blanket ban on all workplace relationships everywhere. But if some employers choose to go that route it's not necessarily bad or unrealistic.

Should bosses ban friendships in the work place? I mean, horse play can impede work. At some point, bosses shouldn't be dictators of their workers' lives.

I am in total disagreement with you.

Google should have punished Rubin for sexual misconduct, and sue him instead of praise and pay him.

As I understand it, that money was the legitimate severance pay of Rubin (who, by the way, might have left the company for reasons completely unrelated to this sexual harassment accusation- the nyt article is written as to suggest a connection, without really stating it). There are plenty of perfectly reasonable explanations for Rubin leaving Google (dissatisfaction or other). Anyway, that was the money that the company felt was adequate for his contribution to its success. What is or should be the relationship between that sum and the claim of sexual harassment is frankly unclear to me.

How is his severance legitimate if a regular employee would never get this type of consideration? Regular people don’t get severance when they decide their job is boring and they want something new.

> But at the same time it's pretty much impossible to prevent people from dating within the work place.

This goes beyond that - there were rules about reporting such relationships, presumably so HR could look out for the less advantaged party, but those rules were ignored. And this doesn’t sound like simple ‘dating a coworker’ - guy was a sleazy scumbag:

FTA - ‘The suit included a screenshot of an August 2015 email Mr. Rubin sent to one woman. “You will be happy being taken care of,” he wrote. “Being owned is kinda like you are my property, and I can loan you to other people.”’

>This is such a thorny ugly issue to which there are really no right answers. It should be very clear that using a position of authority to coerce someone into a relationship of any kind is wrong. But at the same time it's pretty much impossible to prevent people from dating within the work place.

It's actually pretty simple.

The problem isn't co-workers dating. The problem is people in a position of power dating someone that reports to them.

There's a handful of of options here.

1) Don't do it

2) If it is actually legitimate and not coerced, you reassign one of them to a separate team and completely remove them from the reporting chain and any impact on the other's career.

3) If it is actually legitimate and not coerced, one of them resigns.

4) If it is coerced, you fire the shit out of the person in power.

If it's two people that are not in each other's reporting chain and one isn't subordinate to the other, or there isn't some other reason one could have an outsized impact on the other's career, it's generally not the same sort of issue.

There are absolutely right answers.

> using a position of authority to coerce someone into a relationship of any kind

Is not a necessity for

> people from dating within the work place

> while also ensuring that predators aren't allowed to abuse the people around them

People in high positions can take actions to prevent conflict of interests like when any legitimate President places their assets into a blind trust.

There is absolutely nothing stopping people in positions of power in companies from doing the same and to avoid dating anyone they have power over.

> but I'm not sure what else they could have done.

They could make it clean house, add a zero tolerance policy and make it clear they don't allow people to be in personal relationships with those they have power over, perhaps as defined by being their superior in the org chart.

What if having a healthy work-life balance means a person who wants to meet other people for intimate activities has time to date outside the workplace?

You spend 40 hours a week just at work, not to mention commute and lunch. If you're getting a full night's sleep that means you spend more time with the people you work with than you do probably anyone else in the world. I agree you should aim for a healthy work-life balance and date outside the workplace but it's a bit naive to think that people won't build relationships with people they see that often.

What people at that level in any large corporate hierarchy have a healthy work-life balance? I would expect the answer to be near zero.

Perhaps we have identified the root problem.

What do you consider a healthy work-life balance? 8 hours a day? 6 hours?

If we assume you sleep 8 hours then you spend 16 hours awake, 7 days a week for a total of 112 hours in a week.

Even if you only work 6 hours on the weekdays that'd still 30 hours a week, or more than 1/4 of your waking hours.

If you work at a big company you probably run into a lot of people and you already have a shared interest and stuff to talk about. There will always be a decent chance you'll meet someone you're interested in at work.

Unless you think that everyone should restrict themselves to only dating people who they meet for the explicit purpose of dating there will be relationships at work. Often relationships form without people actively seeking them out.

> but I'm not sure what else they could have done.

They could have fired him without compensation for breaking the law, and then used the money to defend themselves in the resulting lawsuit. Duh.

I shouldn’t have to say this, but coercing people to have sex they do not want is a criminal offense.

He didn’t break the law, unless you are claiming there was coercion involved that could have been criminally prosecuted?

I think he meant that he broke his contract, which would have allowed them to be fired with cause.

No, I am saying that coercing people to have sex they do not want is rape, which is a criminal (not civil) offense, regardless of one’s contract with their employer.

I’m not familiar with the case, but if the other party was consenting and of legal age, there isn’t much anyone can do criminally, it isn’t technically illegal even if it is immoral. Rape has a very specific definition.

Are you smoking something? There are no right answers, seriously? This dudes were the boss of victims who used their power to control their paycheck, promotions and career for sex. This is very different then relationships between peers. On the top of this, victims lives and careers were destroyed anyway while the bosses obtained fat paychecks to buy private islands and never having to work for all their future generations. In what world there are no right answers?

I'm not sure a couple of millions is lots of money. this is the guy who started and led android. he should have been a bilionaire easily, 100x times more than whatsup and android guys...

I don't think it's that hard. I would bet 90m$ that if there was a similar sexual harassment situation now he wouldn't get the money.

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