[geebee]

I'm surprised the Damore controversy didn't show up in this article. There are a couple of things that resonated for me:

"About 20,000 employees walked out last fall over the company’s generous treatment of executives accused of sexual harassment"

There is a kind of moral collapse in a company that fires a rank and file employee for writing a memo while quietly paying out massive exit packages to executives who have been repeatedly and credibly accused of sexual harassment. I think people can agree on this while disagreeing about whether Damore should have been fired.

I'll admit to my own personal politics - free speech doesn't exist for you when you deny it to others. I'm not making a fairness argument, that it's unfair to deny free speech to others if you have yourself, I'm making an existential one. If it doesn't exist for others, it doesn't exist for you - free speech is the right to listen, otherwise it's nothing but a tree falling in the forest with no one around to hear it.

Google employees are now getting fired for speaking out on activist issues, including unionization. Yeah, unions often protect their members right to speech, including unpopular speech. And guess what, your bosses may not like that. Why are people who decide to create an authoritarian tribunal always so sure they're going to be able to keep their little monster on a leash?

[godshatter]

Those executives probably had their "massive exit packages" written into their employment contracts. Google couldn't not pay them, if that was the case, because it would have been a breach of contract. Rank and file employees likely don't have such a clause in their employment contracts.

Should they have had such clauses written into their contracts? Maybe not, but maybe it's hard to hire people at that level without them.

[PeterisP]

Exit packages generally don't apply if you're fired for cause e.g. due to sexual harassment. They weren't properly fired, they were gently and silently "let out" - in some cases with negotiated settlements that added payouts which weren't in their original "exit package", possibly due to added non-competes and silence clauses.

[geebee]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/technology/google-sexual-...

This article asserts that google shielded a lot of higher ups and paid large exit packages in spite of having no obligation to do so.

I need to read this more thoroughly and I’m not claiming it’s the only word on the topic.

Whatever the difference, I think there is a compelling case that google exercised discretion in shield execs who were credibly accused of harassment while making a big public display of throwing damore under the bus for expressing an opinion.

[godshatter]

Interesting read. I have no information that they actually had contractual requirements they had to meet, I was just putting it out there as a possible reason.

[perl4ever]

"maybe it's hard to hire people at that level without them"

At that level, maybe everybody just assumes you can't hire people without that sort of thing, and they don't test whether it's true.