Executive accused of harassment at Alphabet 'X' unit is out
axios.com
axios.com
>Here Fisher quotes Google’s first executive chef, Charlie Ayers, and Heather Cairns, the company’s first HR manager:
Charlie Ayers: Sergey’s the Google playboy. He was known for getting his fingers caught in the cookie jar with employees that worked for the company in the masseuse room. He got around.
Heather Cairns: And we didn’t have locks, so you can’t help it if you walk in on people if there’s no lock. Remember, we’re a bunch of twentysomethings except for me—ancient at 35, so there’s some hormones and they’re raging.
Charlie Ayers: H.R. told me that Sergey’s response to it was, “Why not? They’re my employees.” But you don’t have employees for fucking! That’s not what the job is.
Heather Cairns: Oh my God: This is a sexual harassment claim waiting to happen! That was my concern.
https://qz.com/work/1326942/sergey-brin-started-google-with-...
There are going to be men who just like money and power, but there are also going to be stereotypical men who seek out money and power to translate into creating sexual opportunity. Presumably Google is not going to have an unusually skewed executive either way.
That is a problem, but it is not the problem. The problem is developing good practices for handling harassment situations going forward. We can fret over what has been done, but we can only change the future.
I find it impossible to believe that lawyers are giving sub-optimal advice. Generally, it's probably situations where lawyers say "x is the best practice", leaders say, "what else do you have" and they end up with some sort of compromising, risk-accepting solution - a la any number of Google recent announcements or any other number of companies that bury things until it makes the headlines.
Cut out this sort of crap first.
A lot of places have this rule. Why doesn't Google adopt this rule?
Maybe Google could invest in his next venture, like they did with Andy Rubin...
You should verify your facts before repeating provably false information.
[1] https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-do... [2] http://time.com/4060575/alphabet-google-dont-be-evil/
In [1]: > The updated version of Google’s code of conduct still retains one reference to the company’s unofficial motto
[2] is not about Google and explicitly says: > Google, which will going forward be a subsidiary of Alphabet, is retaining the creedo however.
Maybe it’s just me, but I get the impression from these articles that Google et al. has been an auspicious hidey hole for well-pedigreed sexual deviants.
We are definitely hearing a lot about this stuff from Google and other tech companies lately. I don't know what we can reliably infer from the absence of that kind of news what that says about other industries.
My intuition is that workplace sexual harassment has been rife in all aspects of human endeavor since the dawn of time. The "boss screwing the secretary" trope isn't exactly a new one. It may be that we're seeing a combination of things:
1. Thanks to the #metoo movement, people who get harassed now have enough power to actually be able to stand up and cause the person they accuse to face some scrutiny. Before, it was just swept under the rug. "Boys will be boys", "that's what you get for dressing like that", "you should have known better to stay late at work with him", etc.
2. The very rapid rise of tech as a cultural dominator makes them a prime actor in our moral narratives. The average person sees a handful of giant tech companies dramatically changing the way we all live, and they naturally want to know if they are a force for good or evil. Those kinds of journalistic narratives sell.
For all we know, sexual harassment could be 10x worse in the insurance industry but we won't know because who wants to read articles about the insurance industry?
3. There's also the obvious bias that if something happens too much, it ceases to be news. "Newsworthiness" is a combination of significance and novelty. The former is where good investigative journalism can show the scope of a sweeping hidden problem. The latter is the old "dog bites man" isn't news but "man bites dog" is. It's easy to mistake the latter for the former and assume that something being reported indicates a trend, when really it indicates the exact opposite.
So, it may be that things really are worse at Google than at other places, but I don't know if we can rely on the presence of news articles to judge that.
This creates a perverse set of incentives to hide all misbehavior even if you're a victim of it.
So I don't know where you're getting this idea that lawyers would automatically defend themselves in those kinds of situations when the incentives are heavily weighted towards ignoring the situations and moving on.
As a software engineer in the tech industry though (especially at a place like Google), you can tell your employer to fuck off and you can find a new high-paying job tomorrow.
My point is that the Overton window is in a different place: whether it's okay for supervisors to date underlings, with all the problems that causes, is a settled debate in law as well as most of the rest of corporate America (it's not). Tech seems out of the mainstream to me in still entertaining the idea that it's okay.
I actually didn't consider it from that perspective e.g. it's a settled debate in other professions but a seemingly recurring debate in tech. That's an interesting point you raise and I think it's a valid one.
A white or asian man can do that, sure. But that's not necessarily true for women and other marginalized groups in the tech industry. Especially if this means they won't get a reference from their current employer.
If you're a software engineer, woman, and at Google, you'll obviously still face challenges but getting hired is less likely to be one of them. That's a powerful wind in a person's back when standing up to a company - especially when others are willing to band together with you (because the others can easily find new jobs too). It's a compounding effect.
I presume the dynamic is far different in law or investment banking even if you're highly skilled in the respective industry.
I think you would be terribly surprised.
Most of the people sitting in politics come from the legal profession.
You don't magically start harassing people simply because you get elected. The fact that you harass people is already well established before that.
That would imply that "jocks have sex" isn't news but "nerds have sex" is. Heh.
But there were also news about jocks having sex... so perhaps the rule governing the sexual harassment coverage in news is instead: "sex sells".
Writing stories about sexual harassment, especially colorful stories with lots of details, is simply a way to write about sex (and for the readers to read about sex) with plausible deniability. "No, I am NOT writing/reading these juicy stories as a form of porn; how dare you suggest that?! We are fighters against patriarchy, and we need to know every technical detail about how this agent of patriarchy misbehaved."
> Later on, Simpson learned that she did not get the job, and that DeVaul knew this when she chose to attend Burning Man.
> he thought Simpson had been aware that she did not get the job when she attended the festival.
This is all kinds of weird, and I am not sure how I feel about any of it. It seems like a failure to communicate all around, with some information asymmetry muddying the waters.
On one hand, what the hell are you discussing your sexual relationship with your wife to an interviewee for? How does that come up in an interview process?
On the other hand, Burning Man is not a place one goes to for professional reasons. Unless you've been under a rock, you know what Burning Man is, and what goes on there.
Telling someone that's interviewing "you should come to burning man because my wife and I are swingers" is gross and inappropriate (borderline illegal?).
If you're inclined to ask someone who you were interviewing for a job to come do sex to you and your wife, I think it's a very reasonable expectation that you confirm this person is aware they have not gotten the job. Doubly so when you're an executive of one of the largest companies in the world. Seems like this is extremely poor judgement at best, and abuse of his position/the implication of a job at worst.
Exactly right. Stop right there. You've gone over the line of professional behavior into something far below that standard.
This is always unacceptable. Sorry if that cramps someone's social life, but there are other places to look for sex partners.
I do not condone the behavior of either party involved. But at least one person should be strong enough to say no thanks, I don't believe in compromising my integrity for an interview with those requirements attached. I'd report this to HR ASAP too.
peace.
Great that you have such high moral standards. Here's the thing: You're victim blaming. This is a bad look. This sort of "there are bad people on both sides" choice is ignoring that you're only condemning her behavior because she responded to his horrible behavior. She did report this behavior to google. She also said she didn't have sex with the guy, and only gave him a neck massage after constant badgering.
TL;dr- You're being part of the problem here bro, and you need to knock that off if you want to maintain this air of moral superiority.
Do men not ever talk shop at Burning Man?
This isn’t muddy at all. If someone invites me somewhere after an interview, I assume (as a man) it’s work related. Women should be able to make the same assumption. And interviewers should never be sexually propositioning candidates. (The excuse that she hadn’t gotten the job is worthless, because if that’s an out it creates a huge conflict of interest and incentive to torpedo candidates because of the interviewer’s attraction.)
This isnt weird at all. It's exactly how harassment works. One individual is in a weak position and someone exploit that weakness. The person in the weak position will do: false confessions, unwanted sexual activities, unwanted financial transactions (for lack of better term), etc, in order to survive.
Was she interviewed for a job in relation with DeVaul? Anything he does that's sex or finance related toward Simpson is therefore harassment. At least, by my book.
Thank you! It’s not complicated. Be a g-ddamn grownup, treat your professional position with respect, and don’t make sexual passes at people you meet because they came in for an interview.
This is not strictly true. I know someone that went to Burning Man to find investors for his company and was successful in doing so.
If you want to compare apples-to-apples, your friend would have been invited to Burning Man as part of the process of investing in his company (with it being implied that it is in their best interest to attend).
Or unless you are smart and know exactly what you're doing. She brought her mom and conservative clothes. Now there is both a witness if he decides to do anything more and him having to explain the background of his new employee getting there ... along with her mom.
It was a pretty good tactical move. Granted he ended staying as a director for all those years. And I think that tells us quite a bit about Google's values and culture.
I remember really wanting to work at Google. I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole these days.
"In the Times story, DeVaul allegedly invited hardware engineer Star Simpson, who was interviewing to work at Google, to the art and culture festival Burning Man, telling her he and his wife were polyamorous. Simpson attended the festival in hopes it would improve her chances of getting hired — she brought her mother with her and “professional attire,” according to the Times. Yet DeVaul encouraged her to remove her clothing and asked to give her a massage."
https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Student_arrested_over_%22art%22...
Good interview there.
Honestly, I know nothing of the case. I've just googled the name and was surprised by the number of search hits, and the wikinews article was among the first search results.