Google Engineers Are Organizing A Walk Out To Protest The Company's Protection Of An Alleged Sexual Harasser (buzzfeednews.com)

In response to a story about Google paying and protecting former executive Andy Rubin following an investigation into sexual misconduct, a group of 200 Google employees are organizing a "women's walk." From a report: A group of more than two hundred engineers at Google are organizing a company-wide "women's walk" walkout for later this week to protest recent revelations about the search giant's protection of employees that had allegedly engaged in sexual misconduct, according to four people familiar with the situation inside Google. The protest, which is expected to happen on Thursday, comes in light of a story by the New York Times last week into the misbehavior of Android creator Andy Rubin and other executives at the company, some of whom still have positions of prominence at Google. Google gave Rubin a reported $90 million exit package in 2014, following an investigation into an allegation that he had coerced another employee to perform oral sex on him. That investigation reportedly found that allegation to be credible.

Comments

Re:Fire them all

[swillden]

I'd be happy to take a position at Google. And I won't spend...time on SJW virtue signaling

Come on, they paid somebody $90m to receive a bj. Call me a SJW if you want, but that's just plain stupidity on Google's part in my book. It encourages more BS.

That's a deep mischaracterization. Google had already given Rubin $150M in stock that vested over time. By firing him, they effectively took that stock away, opening themselves up to a lawsuit in which they'd have had to prove that they had cause for firing Rubin. It would have been a circus. So instead they gave him $90M (effectively taking back $60M) in exchange for which he agreed to go quietly.

I think they could and should have fired him with no parachute and dealt with the PR storm. But saying they paid him $90M to receive a BJ is ridiculous. It would be more accurate (though still not very) to say that they fined him $60M for it.