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Comment by Blot2882 | Hacker News Reader

> extremely well liked

By who? By what metric? That is a much shallower claim.

I would wager the guy blaming their middling AI development on "work life balance" was not well liked.

Even if that’s true, it misses the entire point of the parent comment. His marital issues, infidelity, that one time he made out under a bridge when he was 14… none of it matters to this discussion as anything other than tabloid-fodder.

> Even if that’s true

If it's true? It's a quote from the talk itself.

> it misses the entire point of the parent comment

Not really. I would say cheating on your wife with your PR executive is extremely bad for morale and an all around leadership failing. Just because sex is involved doesn't make it tabloid fodder. I can't just punch a coworker and call it "my personal life."

More importantly, you're ignoring the part of the comment that said he was extremely well liked, which was the baseless claim I responded to. You can say that's not the point of the comment, but that's just because acknowledging it weakens the argument.

> If it's true? It's a quote from the talk itself.

Sorry, didn't mean to be unclear - my "even if that's true" was referring to the assertion that Schmidt wasn't well-liked, not your quote.

Behaving like a sexual predator at work while complaining that workers don't wanna be in the office. Maybe just maybe things could be related?

Dating a coworker does not necessarily imply you are “behaving like a sexual predator.” Many people met their partners at work; some even worked for them. Sometimes you meet people in places, and sometimes that place is work. That doesn’t mean you’re walking around hitting on everything that moves.

Yes, he was married. Yes, maybe a serial cheater. Or an awful marriage. Or a great one. I have no idea. But I don’t care?

> Dating a coworker does not necessarily imply you are “behaving like a sexual predator.”

Dating a coworker (or many) when you are the boss and married is exactly what a sexual predator do. Being a predator doesn't mean he "predate" on every walking thing.

Dating a coworker is a thing a lot of people do. Sometimes it is done by sexual predators who are preying on others. That is also true outside work.

Dating someone at work doesn’t automatically make you a sexual predator. That’s an absurd statement. Plenty of relationships start that way, and sometimes one of them is a boss, and companies have processes for these situations because they happen and the majority of situations are not due to predation.

> Dating someone at work doesn’t automatically make you a sexual predator.

Are you going to pretend we are not talking about the CEO here? CEOs dating subordinates at work are sexual predators, yes.

Imbalanced power dynamics are bad if they are abused, and they are easy to abuse.

However, not every CEO that dates a subordinate is a sexual predator. Again, that is an absurd statement; life is never that black and white. Sometimes, people meet and fall in love regardless of their lot in life. Stating that anytime that happens and one person happens to be a CEO instantly makes that person a sexual predator is not based in any kind of reality.

A CEO that abuses their power or engages in any kind of non-consensual relationship is a different story.

I agree it’s generally a bad idea, because of perception, favoritism, the power imbalance, and a dozen other reasons. But it being a bad idea doesn’t necessarily imply that the CEO is a sexual predator, either.

Sometimes even people in power care about consent.

And sometimes people in power are predators. That happens too. Maybe even more often; I don’t have stats.

I’m not defending Schmidt. I have no idea about him or his sexual proclivities, nor do I know the details about any of his personal relationships. Neither do you. He may be a monster! But dating someone at work isn’t the thing that makes him one.

Life is quite black and white in many things, unless you are a CEO dating someone that you have power over. if you need this much to explain that some times CEOs abusing their position at WORK for sex maybe aren't sexual predators it just prove that yes, in 99% of the cases they are.

And yes, you are defending not only Schmidt but maybe yourself too?

Now I’m too verbose? Walking around saying “the sky is always black” just because it’s nighttime is short and pithy, but untrue. An explanation might be longer than just saying “99%” as if that is some actual data instead of a number you made up. So what?

Now that we’ve moved solidly from discussion to ad hominems, have a nice day and a nice life.

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