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Comment by whimsicalism | Hacker News Reader

> definitely not civil.

I agree that people should try to be kind and charitable to each other, and this conversation didn't show that.

That said, I think we also have to be cognizant of the way "civility" is not objective/neutral, often relies on codifying the norms of a dominant majority, and also preserves the status quo.

It might not have been very "civil" for instance when Google employees walked out of the office, but I also don't think it was "civil" when Google paid $90 million to someone fired for sexual harassment.

Sometimes big problems can't be met just with civil discourse, it's why many of us still voted for Biden (for instance) even after he told Trump to "shut up."

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What about paying $90 million to the key person in creation of android? Honestly, he is a scumbag, but that doesn’t nullify his contribution to google (?) it’s not that he was paid for sexual harassment, it’s that he got paid for being creator of one of the most important products in the world.

Was he laboring for free before that?

He was laboring with contracts that stipulated severance, which got paid out.

This is a lie, do some reading about it.

Getting fired for sexual harassment seems like an easy way to lose your severance package

He sold Android to Google in 2005 for a hefty sum, and he drew a large salary and stock package every year since. Why in the world would he need a $90M exit package on top of all that when he's being fired for severe workplace misconduct? He already got paid for those contributions.

Because Android is arguably worth a hell of a lot more than the $50 million + salary that he received and if they didn't kick him some money, they would never be able to make a similar acquisition deal in the future. Nobody would sell a technology like that for that little and Google would have to forever compete with future-Androids.

If they had fired him under more favorable circumstances his payout would have been significantly higher.

He sold the company to them in 2005. If he didn't think that was a fair price he wouldn't have agreed to the sale. That was when he was compensated for his creation. After that, he was compensated through salary.

I don't understand your point of view here. If I sell something to someone else, I'm not expecting to get more payout for it fifteen years down the line unless some kind of residual was explicitly negotiated in the original sale agreement. Acquisitions would never happen at all if the acquiring company was on the hook for unbounded amounts of money decades later just because they made it successful. This point of view seems very un-businesslike. Andy Rubin was not owed that $90M, it shouldn't have been paid to him, and Google has admitted to its mistake and will not be paying out in similar cases going forward.

1. It was an aquihire. Usually there's some performance secondary payout strings attached.

2. It doesn't matter what their deal was. It matters what public perception is. I'm talking entirely about public perception.

Regardless of what their deal was, Google has to send a signal that _impacts future deals_. If the general developer public thinks that Android was acquired for too little, then we will all be reluctant to sell our projects to Google. That's the whole point.

It has nothing to do with him thinking Google treated him fairly. It has to do with whether we think we could keep a company going long enough to make more money than his payout on _our_ work.

Google needs to make more Android-like deals in the future.

And all of that needs to be weighed against the huge worldwide negative PR resulting from the payout, the global walkout of tens of thousands of employees expressing their anger with the decision, and the depressive effect on hiring that has for specific targeted groups. You can't just analyze the payout in isolation; you have to analyze its sum total effects. Turns out, the payment wasn't worth it. Google has said as much and won't be doing it again in the future.

> If the general developer public thinks that Android was acquired for too little, then we will all be reluctant to sell our projects to Google. That's the whole point.

I'm still not understanding the point here. If you agree to sell your company for price $X, it doesn't matter who you're selling to; you've sold for that amount. If you think you should get more than $X, then don't sell to Google, or anyone else for that matter, for only $X. If you want less up front but more money over time as part of an incentive structure, then negotiate for that as part of the acquisition (which Andy Rubin did do and was paid out for). All of this is independent from a severance payout fully 15 years after the acquisition.

> Google needs to make more Android-like deals in the future.

I think you'd be hardpressed to find a founder that wouldn't sell to Google for what they consider the right price if he didn't get $90M. Do you think any football players don't want to play for the Patriots, because Aaron Hernandez wasn't supported by them? People get that all bets are off with criminally poor behavior.

That's an extreme comparison given that Andy Rubin was never tried in a court of law for any crimes and Hernandez was convicted of murder

Don’t see what need has to do with a severance package

You shouldn't get severance packages if you're fired for egregious misbehavior. Google has admitted it was a mistake and will not be paying out severance packages in these situations going forward.

What does "need" have to do with anything? If someone walks away with 8-digit sums, there were contracts involved. Nobody pays out $90M for fun.

This is false. The $90M was optional, not contractual. Google did indeed choose to pay out this amount when it didn't have to. Some sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/technology/google-sexual-... https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/25/18023364/google-andy-rub...

Also, take a step back and consider how there was a worldwide walkout of 10k+ employees. That wouldn't have happened if Google's hands were tied here and they had been contractually forced to pay that money out to Andy Rubin. The outrage was because they knew about his misconduct and yet still chose to let him "retire" and give him a big amount of extra money, rather than firing him and giving him the $0 he was legally entitled to.

That NYT article says:

In settling on terms favorable to two of the men, Google protected its own interests. The company avoided messy and costly legal fights, and kept them from working for rivals as part of the separation agreements.

Real life isn't a melodrama. I suspect there's plenty of nuance here.

You claimed:

> If someone walks away with 8-digit sums, there were contracts involved

The NYT article is pretty unequivocal that that is false, even if you want to pull out quotes talking about different issues.

> paying them millions of dollars as they departed, even though it had no legal obligation to do so.

They had no legal obligation to pay the severance.

If you want to discuss a different reason to pay $90 million to someone fired for sexual harassment, fine.

But your original comment was unequivocally wrong, let's just recognize that.

Nonsense. Implied contracts are still contracts - they wouldn't be worried about avoiding a "messy and costly legal fight" otherwise.

> "civility" is not objective/neutral, often relies on codifying the norms of a dominant majority, and also preserves the status quo.

In this case, the norm in question was respectful argumentation grounded in empirical evidence. Why does it matter that that norm belongs to a dominant majority?

> Why does it matter that that norm belongs to a dominant majority?

It matters

a. if the norm is actually universally applied - I find that this norm of respectful argumentation is not universally applied.

Remember: this is a twitter argument entirely unrelated to what Timnit is under discussion for now. Elon Musk and Linus have had unrelated arguments where they engaged in very offensive argumentation (calling their opponents pedophiles, telling them to kill themselves) without any evidence, yet I rarely see these issues brought up on unrelated issues about them. But for Timnit, it's a scarlet letter she has to bear.

b. I think we substantially underestimate how frustrating it might be to be a scientist of color where people are constantly discounting your expertise (because, yes, Timnit is an expert.) I'm sure seeing that same sentiment for the ith+1 time can evoke strong emotions and we are not necessarily seeing the context.

Regardless, maybe not an incredible look for Timnit but not super huge in the context of a large body of work.

What about the context of their interaction warranted the tone her response? There’s a time and place for incivility, but that was not it.

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