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Tech Boss Attacks 'Whiners' in Angry Email (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: The co-founder of a Silicon Valley investment firm said it is "not my job to make you all feel good" in a long email to staff and investors. Jonathan Teo from Binary Capital was responding to negative press coverage about the firm following allegations of sexual harassment by his co-founder Justin Caldbeck. He added that he was "tired and indignant," and raged against "whiners" who demanded his attention. Mr Teo has already offered to resign. He did so after Mr Caldbeck left the firm in June. "I'm incredibly sorry," Mr Caldbeck tweeted when the news broke last month. Mr Caldbeck's actions were one of several sexism scandals to rock Silicon Valley in recent months. They include a damning report into the work culture inside ride-hailing firm Uber, and the resignation of venture capitalist Dave McClure, who admitted "inexcusable behaviour" towards "multiple women."
There are no lack of workplace bullying lawsuits, and while I can't speak for every organization, the definition of harassment in our policies is pretty darned broad, and largely because our lawyers over the years have made it pretty clear that if a harassment lawsuit of any kind is delivered to our doorstep, we'd better be able to show that not only did we have policies in place to protect employees, but that they were enforced. Even the articles of incorporation and the shareholders agreement have language to force the removal of a director, which allows even members of the board to be held to account for violating company harassment policies.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
First of all, no it's not.
The job of a CEO is to increase shareholder earnings
No, it's not. There may not be any shareholders, or the shareholders may be the employees, but even assuming it's a publicly traded company with a capitalist charter, it's not. Selling all assets and allotting all proceeds as dividends would immensely increase the shareholder earnings. Investing anything in research will always reduce shareholder earnings with no guarantee of later increased earnings.
The CEOs job is to execute on the visions of the owners or board of directors. That might mean spending money to increase the chance of long term survival at the cost of short and medium term profits.
Or it might mean building a hugely expensive new head offices, because that's the vision of the board.
The reason for the rules very often arises from experience. The purely consensual no strings attached relationships do blow up and they do disrupt the workplace badly. When the don't blow up there is often accusations of nepotism or favoritism when the boss promotes the person in the sexual relationship than to the others in the group.
I've worked some places where some early relationships formed in the startup days (handful of people working in close quarters with zero free time to see anyone outside of work). Then you've got people in a relationship in relatively higher levels of power in the company. So I want to bitch about a persons behavior to my boss, except that they live together. It's hard to complain about that person to others in the company because they don't want to cause waves, and the whole thing is a minefield.