[mwfunk]

Offers of career advancement in exchange for sexual favors are really really bad, regardless of whether or not someone took them up on it, and regardless of whether they benefited from it later. Not just from the victim's perspective- the person who made the offer of a quid pro quo is just literally a shitty manager or investor and I would question every other aspect of their leadership ability and character. If they can't figure out the blindingly obvious, simple stuff, who knows what other blind spots they have. It's a huge red flag about someone's judgement.

For an investor, their main professional task is to determine if someone is a good risk for investment (possibly with other people's money, who are trusting this person to make good decisions). If their criteria is a quid pro quo for sexual favors rather than whether or not someone's startup is a good place to invest, they're not doing their job. They're doing the opposite of their job.

Likewise, a manager who promises advancement in exchange for sexual favors is advancing someone based on their willingness to sleep with them rather than whether or not the person is a good candidate for advancement. Again, not only is that manager doing a shitty job at being a manager, they're almost doing the worst possible job at being a manager. It's akin to promoting someone based on their personal loyalty to the manager rather than their ability to do the job. It happens all the time but that doesn't make it any better.

TL;DR, even ignoring whether or not someone is a victim in this situation, and not caring about any of the moral or ethical aspects, the harasser has still shown themselves to not be worthy of their job. The most selfish, amoral interpretation of the situation still demands getting rid of the harasser, even if all you care about is business success and are willing to overlook everything else.

[tomp]

> It's akin to promoting someone based on their personal loyalty to the manager rather than their ability to do the job.

Nah, it's way worse. Promoting based on trust can be good, trust is a very important commodity (and hard to come by). In contrast to sexual availability or whatever.

[mwfunk]

I agree, although I would distinguish between trust and personal loyalty. Trust is collegial, but loyalty is a submissive relationship, at least in the sense that I mean it here. I trust decisions based purely on trust, but I distrust decisions based purely on loyalty, which is unquestioning.

[tomp]

Makes sense, I didn't consider that small but important distinction!