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Andy Rubin Takes Leave From Essential as Probe Into 'Inappropriate' Google Relationship Goes Public, Report Claims (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Essential founder and CEO Andy Rubin has taken a leave of absence from his new company for "personal reasons" following a report on the circumstances of his 2014 departure from Google. According to The Information, Rubin left Google shortly after an investigation found that he had maintained an "inappropriate relationship" with a woman who worked under him and filed a complaint to HR. The nature of that relationship isn't detailed in the report, and Rubin's spokesperson Mike Sitrick denies the connection. "Any relationship that Mr. Rubin had while at Google was consensual," Sitrick tells The Information. "Mr. Rubin was never told by Google that he engaged in any misconduct while at Google and he did not, either while at Google or since." Rubin is said to have told Essential employees of his leave of absence on Monday after The Information informed Sitrick of its story.
All these psychopaths that have been publicly outed in the last few weeks are a GREAT BEGINNING !!
Let's clean up the human race and put these predators in jail!
Hiring a woman these days seems to have become a liability for a company. Why on earth a company would expose itself to potential problems is behind my understanding.
Women find men in positions of authority over them attractive. Men find women subordinate to them attractive because authority and respect are strong aphrodisiacs for men...
He had a consensual relationship with someone. He was deemed to have never interacted inappropriately or caused any harassment. Their relationship violated a company policy that saw him requested to part. This isnâ(TM)t sexual harassment. You people on a witch hunt are going to seriously screw up a lot of lives before you finally stop this. It helps to read.
Andy Rubin is one of the biggest names in tech. This is essentially the downfall of Essential. It won't survive this.
The scandal angle I don’t care to read here, but hearing that a famous founder of a company is “taking a leave of absence” just a few weeks after the launch of their much-hyped device? That’s news for nerds, since it’s a klaxon call for anyone still working at Essential to abandon ship, and it’s a signal to the rest of us that Essential is essentially done at this point.
If you care about your carreer limit to a bare minimum all non work related relations. I for one, I'm growing more paranoid about having a coffee with a female collegue. And If I do, I always do in public.
Considering that many buisness decisions are made over coffee, this will slowly lead the to exclusion of women.
You should go and make your own news site, with hookers, and blackjack!
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
"a woman who worked under him and filed a complaint to HR."
Sounds like there's probably some disagreement about whether it was a mutual relationship or not. If it was just a violation of company policy, the woman wouldn't exactly be lining up to report it herself.
Both outcomes are plausible, Rubin claiming it was mutual to save his reputation despite it not being harassment, or a sour end to a consensual relationship that caused the woman to file a complaint and screw things up for Rubin.
We have about 0 data to go on to make an intelligent call here.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Because 'Essential' had basically one big selling point for it: From the big Android guy formerly of Google. Without that, all that venture capital will stall out and the company is pretty well doomed, as they don't have a sustainable business model yet and need the investment to keep going.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
According to the complaint, he's actually quite small.
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Andy Rubin is one of the biggest names in tech. This is essentially the downfall of Essential. It won't survive this.
How will this affect the price of my 1986 Andy Rubin rookie year tech collector's card?
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
"a woman who worked under him and filed a complaint to HR."
She was expected to work at the same time! Now that is unreasonable
2018, Year of the Women
That sounds more fun than the year of the Linux Desktop
Feminists and feminism-inclined women want to be on all sides of the issue in a "heads we win, tails you lose" way. Don't believe me? Consider two facts about male-female interaction and how they approach them:
Office time:
1. Closing the door is dangerous.
2. Not closing the door is sexist because it makes her feel less comfortable having an honest discussion.
3. Women are always to be given the benefit of the doubt when they say something happened.
4. Behind a closed door it's impossible, short of secretly recording (which isn't always legal), for a man to have any evidence to defend himself.
Moral of the story: due your duty and fall on your sword if a woman wants to advance over you.
Fraternization:
1. If a woman wants to romantically pursue coworkers you are an awful person who thinks they own women for telling her to not shit where she eats, particularly if you threaten to fire her pursuant to an archaic policy that prohibits relationships.
2. If a woman feels there are any consequences to saying no other than "totally cool, I get you" from the man, she's automatically a victim if he is nominally more powerful than her in the org chart. This holds true even if he's above her but in a totally unrelated group and actually protected by a manager with real authority over her.
3. If a woman agrees, for any reason, to have sex or be in a relationship she is not expected to "put on her big girl panties and be a professional" instead of complaining about her one night stand or ex.
4. If a man decides to call it off because he decides it is unprofessional, he is fully responsible and to be condemned and not lauded.
Moral of the story: women get a total free pass short of sexually assaulting barely legal interns in full view of corporate counsel.
The industry values your card at $1.4 trillion now. Truly a Unicorn.
Thank you for the sensible post. I'm very tired of the current trend where the accused is always believed to be guilty, no matter what.
He had a consensual relationship with someone.
Who was his subordinate. Forget whether or not that's ethical for a minute: it's a fucking stupid move. A CEO having a relationship with an employee = a big liability and terrible PR.
If Rubin had decided "Hey, we don't need to secure user data," what would slashdot's response be? Probably that he shouldn't be in charge of anything beyond a mop.
That's the level of stupidity we're dealing with here.
If you're defending this moronic decision, I have to ask why. Is it because it involves a personal fantasy of yours (eg "having a relationship with a woman")? Is it because this (gasp) is kinda-sorta-almost a progressive thing of maybe female employees are there to do a job, not for sex?
"a woman who worked under him and filed a complaint to HR."
Sounds like there's probably some disagreement about whether it was a mutual relationship or not. If it was just a violation of company policy, the woman wouldn't exactly be lining up to report it herself.
Both outcomes are plausible, Rubin claiming it was mutual to save his reputation despite it not being harassment, or a sour end to a consensual relationship that caused the woman to file a complaint and screw things up for Rubin.
We have about 0 data to go on to make an intelligent call here.
One of those options is more likely than the other, because if it wasn't a mutual relationship then it was an assault (or a series of them), and that makes it a crime that Google's HR would have had to report to the nearest police station; they don't get the option of investigating internally instead of calling the cops.
As of writing no crime has been reported, ergo it was a mutual relationship.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
I think if this keeps up, they're going to eventually hit every male executive in every company.
It must be a power thing...I've never worked in a department with someone who was crazy enough to get involved with a work relationship, especially the superior-and-subordinate kind. I've worked with salespeople in some aspects of my work -- those guys, even at the non-exec level, always pegged the slimebag-meter so I wouldn't be surprised if sales orgs get cleaned out as well. What's interesting is that I've always avoided even the hint of impropriety because I like my job, like getting paid and my family likes that I contribute. I guess when you're an executive, you're set for life anyway and untouchable so you go after what you want regardless of the consequences. From the outside looking in, it seems like a very nice life...you basically have a waitstaff taking care of your every need, chauffeuring you around, handling your daily business, etc. and you don't really have to do a lot other than be the company cheerleader.
What is "Essential"? I have never heard of this company before, and I have no idea what kind of relationship it would have with Google. Just because it's familiar to the submitter doesn't mean the rest of Slashdot has any clue about it!
Also, ho hum, another domino falls.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
I've worked for very big, very follow-the-rules companies for a long time. Almost every place I've been has had compulsory sexual harassment training regardless of whether or not we're too busy to harass anyone. And almost every place has a written policy banning relationships with subordinates, or puts so many rules around them that it's crazy to bother with them. The norm for big companies is also a zero-tolerance policy...if anyone reports anything, it's very likely that the company will cut the accused person loose rather than risk being involved in covering it up. Contrast that with recent examples like Uber where the HR department swept evidence-backed complaints under the rug to protect a "rockstar" manager. In my experience, the only departments that get a free pass in big companies with real HR departments and real legal counsel are the sales team -- and if it's egregious enough that they can't deny it even rockstar salespeople get let go too.
In short, it's just not worth it for a regular employee to get involved with anyone at work. People should be professionals and not go fishing in the company pond.
1. The left always eats it's own, sooner or later.
2. Many folks on the left aren't actually ideological - they enjoy power and the trappings of power and just hitched their sails to where the wind was blowing. They don't actually believe in the social justice B.S. and powerful men without morals will use the women as their personal harems if they can regardless of their ideological bent.
That one is called Soylent News.
So your argument is either that women don't have a brain in their head, or that they don't have the responsibility to choose their sexual partners without your approval.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'll swap you a Hans Reiser ... for it.
Signed? In 'red ink'?
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
It's kind of curious how most of the people getting shitcanned for pussy grabbing (Harvey Weinstein, Rob Malda, Al Franken, John Conyors, Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, etc) are liberals.
I'm not saying conservatives don't like pussy. But they get busted for it. Liberals have been getting a free pass (Bill Clinton much) for years and now the bill is coming due.
The current outpouring of sexual harassment accusations are primarily focused against politicians, Hollywood, and the press. It's not surprising that most of those accused would have Democratic leaning views considering the demographics of those groups. As for politicians, there are plenty of Republicans being accused such as Trump, Moore, and Bush Sr.
This is not a partisan issue. This is a gender issue.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Can we just talk about this issue please?
When people say that the victim should be believed, what they mean is that the assumption by those responsible for investigating should be that they are not lying and the claims should be checked out. It doesn't mean an assumption of guilt, merely that the claims are worth checking out (with consequences if they are malicious).
All too often victims are told that they must have been "asking for it" or simply fobbed off and then decades later 20 of them come forward with the same story.
Of course it's important for the investigation to be fair. Ideally the accused should remain anonymous initially. Unfortunately this tendency to dismiss potential victims means that eventually one is forced to go public and hope others also come forward, which is bad for everyone involved. If the accused is innocent they suffer reputation damage that an investigation could have avoided, and the lack of investigation often means that they are unable to clear their name definitively.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Would you want to work at a place where your peer was your boss's wife?
What if she gets bonuses and you don't (regardless if she deserves them).
This is not Bible thumping.
I think that note has already gone out.
Just junk food for thought...
I wasn't actually responding to that post.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
A CEO having a relationship with an employee = a big liability and terrible PR.
Unless they marry later (having both been already single, etc.). Then it's the feel good love story of the year.
No, his argument is that when your boss tries to start a relationship with you it puts you in a very difficult position. If you say no, there could be retribution. Some people, especially younger ones, don't handle it very well. We have seen that with Kevin Spacey debacle and the young men working under him.
In the end she went to HR. We don't know more than that at this point, but it's not hard to imagine that it was because she refused him or broke off the relationship and suffered retribution. I'm not say that's what happened, merely that your statement is obtuse in the extreme.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Essential was the downfall of Essential. It was never going to survive.
I've worked at a place where my peer was fucking the boss, if that counts. She ended up being promoted from accounting to Network Admin, with no experience, and orders to me to train her. Shit like this happens all the time, and there's nothing that can be done about it if you're a guy.
I have. I do. I worked in a company where the boss' wife was the accountant. I worked where the other dev guy was the son. My current employer is nepotism central. Sons, daughters friends all come and go.
That's small family businesses for you. SME sector is full of this. But you know I'll go half way with you on your point.
If the person doing the job is doing a good job, their pay and bonus structure is none of my business. It is my business to make sure that I am remunerated appropriately for my skillset and deliver what is contractually asked.
I'm also pretty sure all standard employment contracts say something along the lines of not talking about your pay.
Here's the halfway I'll go with you....
Theres always the niggling thought they are getting an easier time. Or maybe let off being late. Or a break. Or they get to go and do personal things on work time. That stuff is a shitter sometimes, but I have never worked somewhere where even the incompetence of a family member is stood for. If anything there is more criticism as there is a higher expectation to set a good ethic.
But I have to refer to my first point, keep my head down and be glad I am employed, glad I earn enough to get by and happy to do the job my contract asks of me
Signature v3.0, now with 42% less memory usage.
The Bush Sr. story was hilarious. He's sitting in a wheelchair for a photo op, and while posing he says "Hey, you know my favorite magician? David Cop-a-feel," and he grabs some ass. I mean, come on!
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
What does a complaint to HR at an organization he left have to do with the current company? I miss the connection.
He had a consensual relationship with someone. He was deemed to have never interacted inappropriately or caused any harassment. Their relationship violated a company policy that saw him requested to part. This isnâ(TM)t sexual harassment. You people on a witch hunt are going to seriously screw up a lot of lives before you finally stop this. It helps to read.
The word consensual should always be air-quoted when describing an inherently superior-subordinate relationship. That's why statutory rape is a law, even if the relationship is claimed to be consensual. That's why the Uniform Code of Military Justice prohibits an officer from having sexual relationships with an enlisted member in all circumstances. That's why some companies have rules against these types of relationships. There is an implicit inability to freely consent for someone in a subordinate position.
Is the McAfee signed by him, or his hooker, or his accountant? I'm still looking for one with the accountant's signature, but can trade you a foil "hooker-signed" for it.
No, his argument is that when your boss tries to start a relationship with you it puts you in a very difficult position. If you say no, there could be retribution.
And it goes the other way round, too. One can't really win this.
Ezekiel 23:20
This is a gender issue.
It's not even that, any man or woman can get harassed by any other man or woman.
Ezekiel 23:20
Andy Rubin is one of the biggest names in tech.
Funny, when people say "one of the biggest names", I always think of Watt, Otto, Diesel, Siemens, Edison...as in, who the hell is this Rubin?
Ezekiel 23:20
Thank you for the sensible post. I'm very tired of the current trend where the accused is always believed to be guilty, no matter what.
If you have a relationship, even a consensual one, with a subordinate, you are guilty of being an idiot and a liability to the organization.
I realize this is scary news for all the people out there who are too scared to approach people in the real world and have to rely on captive environments for even the possibility of meeting someone.
Al Franken and John Conyers still have their jobs. Conservatives Bill O'Reilly and Roger Ailes do not (although Ailes is no longer alive to worry about that).
1. It is taken as an axiom of feminist thinking that if women ever lie about such things, it is so rare as to be unworthy of altering public policy. If you tell us you have never seen this sort of thinking you are either too ignorant of feminist arguments to have an opinion worth a damn or you are lying because it is repeated by every major and most minor feminists on the Internet.
2. Merely having an open investigation can destroy a career or someone's life, so just starting one because some woman said someone did bad things is guaranteed to hurt a lot of innocent men. People frequently have their names trashed, even when exonerated, because some bitch or asshole will keep saying "yeah, I bet they did it." I've seen it happen, and unfortunately that sort of speech is not defamation per se despite it being a malicious, quasi-statement of fact aimed at hurting a reputation with no evidence to back it up other than feelz.
3. We don't even do this for murder. The government's investigators do a preliminary examination, usually as discretely as possible, to determine if it was a murder or some other form of death.
4. Most "sex crimes" involving adults don't have signs of coercion that could be used to prove a lack of consent. It's entirely based on her word against his. If you have sex with your wife tonight and don't use a condom, she can go to the police tomorrow and accuse you of rape. The evidence that sex happened is there. She says it wasn't consensual. You say it was. The average feminist would say she needs to be the one given the benefit of the doubt.
-1, Liar
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Some lazy sophistry there. Gender is irrelevant. The boss sleeping with subordinates of any gender is an unnecessary liability and poor decision making. The subordinate can plausibly claim HE OR SHE felt like they had to exchange sex for continued employment or advancement. Additionally, instant bad PR.
This isn't rocket science.
Again I have to ask why slashdotters are so anxious to make excuses for behavior that is idiotic. Is the only way YOU can get sex to use authority at work?
Not quite clear what you mean by "the other way round." There are MRA types all over slashdot, so just so we're clear, a boss in most cases has little to fear about turning down a subordinate's advances, let alone compared to the vast majority of the time when it's a slimeball superior harassing a subordinate.
It's like false accusations of rape: yes, bad, but pretending the extremely rare reverse situations balance out for the extremely common forward situations is idiotic.
Frequently companies (usually larger ones) fire the leader and the subordinate for this behavior. If you aren't subject to much age discrimination you can get a job elsewhere.
Perhaps you are too young to recall the Lewinsky saga.
Perhaps it is harder to get them fired if you are a dude. Anyway, I think companies can make an effort to remove this junk.
You seemed to have weighed things out with your personal standards and made some generally true observations.
It looked like the OP could be read along the lines of "don't mess with nepotism" like people were getting pushed into religion. My point was that some of these protections have no real basis in religion.
In what way was GP saying anything about women? (In the final paragraph, GP was talking about attitudes, not realities.) A relationship between two people, one of which has significant power over the other, is always suspect, and that's true no matter what whose sex and/or gender is what. You never really know whether the one without the power is going along out of desire or fear or intimidation.
Therefore, someone having a relationship with a subordinate is opening himself/herself/itself/whatever open to harassment charges that can't really be fully countered. It's a dumb thing to do, unless the intention is to harass a person of the appropriate sex and/or gender.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
In my state, deliberately grabbing someone's ass without consent is punishable by up to a year's imprisonment and/or a fine up to a number I don't remember. You may find it funny, but the people grabbed tend not to see it that way.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The stuff Franken was accused of is generally not that bad, and he did apologize and say he'd improve. If we start throwing everyone out of office who did anything in the least off-color, we're going to have an awfully hard time finding enough people to make up Congress.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Rick Rubin is a legendary producer in the music business. He'll be remembered by future generations a lot more than Andy.
In my state, deliberately grabbing someone's ass without consent is punishable by up to a year's imprisonment and/or a fine up to a number I don't remember. You may find it funny, but the people grabbed tend not to see it that way.
Humor is often in the eye of the beholder. I don't think getting hit in the balls would be funny to the person it happened to, either, but people still laugh at it...
David Cop-a-feel.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
I'm tired of posts that assume that we know who some obscure guy and obscure company are.
Humor may be in the eye of the beholder, but it's bad if the eye of the person potentially being victimized doesn't contain the humor. That's the sort of thing I'd pull on my wife, but for any other woman I'd want consent in advance.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
OMG he's in his 90's and in a wheelchair. Lighten up.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
At what point of age and disability do I get to start ignoring the law and common courtesy? Harass people without warning in a way that my critics get told to lighten up?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
At what point of age and disability do I get to start ignoring the law and common courtesy? Harass people without warning in a way that my critics get told to lighten up?
Is that really what you want to do? You seem so anxious to be a White Knight and walk on eggshells around anyone of an apparent opposite sex, that I think it's best you avoid initiating any contact with them whatsoever.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
That's from you, several postings back. I replied that the act would be a gross misdemeanor in my state, and that the story didn't include anything about the woman finding it funny. You excused it because Bush was old and feeble. You're not exactly the right person to excuse it, in the first place, and being old and feeble doesn't mean you get to be an asshole.
I know when to grab a woman I don't know by the ass without warning or darn good reason, and that is never. You seem to believe that it's justified if the grabber is sufficiently something or other. I'm going to suggest that, if you're not clear when it's OK to grab a woman's ass without consent, you stay well away from women. This is only reinforced by your equating walking on eggshells with not committing fifth-degree criminal sexual conduct. If you're that unclear, stay away. I treat women with respect, don't grab them by various parts of the body for alleged humor value, and get along just fine with them.
I have no good idea what you mean by White Knight, unless you mean someone who wants to discourage lawbreaking and violence.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I have no good idea what you mean by White Knight
Well read back through your over reactionary response to the "David Cop-a-feel" joke, and you'll see a perfect illustration of the term.
You must be a lot of fun at parties :/
I think the only "excuse" Bush got for being old and feeble is the girl didn't turn around and slap him across the face, something Taylor Swift should have done which would have gotten that disc jockey fired a lot faster and avoided the media circus of a court case.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
In what way am I being over-reactionary? You're the one who called it hilarious, and I was just explaining that not everyone may have thought it so, and that at least one state considers the action serious enough to be a gross misdemeanor. You seem to want to gloss over these facts, and blame the person who brings them up.
I'm rather quiet at parties, but people seem to want me there. It may have something to do with the fact that I don't get invited to parties that involve sexual assault. One advantage of this is that I get attractive young women relaxing and being themselves at parties I'm at, not worrying about being taken advantage of. It's very nice.
It's hard to know exactly how hard to slap an old, feeble, ex-President. That doesn't mean the woman should have no recourse.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes