[bhaile]

Interesting comment from Bill Maris from Axios.

Bill Maris, who founded Google's venture capital arm and reported directly to Drummond before quitting in 2016, tells Axios...

"The news of David Drummond leaving Google today brings to mind a quote from one of my most favorite creatures. 'At an end, your rule is. And not short enough, it was.' I had been asked in the past why I left Google in 2016, and I have never really commented on that. David Drummond is the reason I left Google. I simply could not work with him any longer. It’s that simple. We have very, very different ideas about how to treat people, and this was a long time coming."[1]

[1]https://www.axios.com/alphabet-david-drummond-departure-7572...

[godzillabrennus]

I met Bill years ago and he was insanely helpful to me at the time. Google lost an incredible person when he walked away.

[joering2]

> Drummond was charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2005 with causing Google to violate securities law because he failed to advise the company's board that the company was required to register $80 million in stock options used as compensation for employees.[1]

Do you know anyone who would hire someone after making a $80MM mistake??

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Drummond_(businessman)

[swedish_mafia]

And this https://medium.com/@jennifer.blakely/my-time-at-google-and-a...

[LanceH]

Not entirely sure about the date, but wasn't everyone backdating options and/or marking them as zero cost to the company?

[rlucas]

In the late 1990s "everyone" was doing so -- and then a nonzero percentage of "everyone" went to jail for it. By 2005 people were on notice.

[kcanini]

I worked for Bill for about a year at GV. He was one of the friendliest managers I've ever met at Google.

I randomly met Dave Drummond once at a coffee shop in Sausalito (I didn't know who he was at the time... he just commented on my Google shirt), and he gave me an inexplicably uncomfortable feeling.

[aluminussoma]

I think it is a bad idea to say this about him without providing a concrete example on how he made you uncomfortable. I'm sure I have accidentally made someone uncomfortable before. Does that make me a bad person? I hope not.

[lostcolony]

Of course it doesn't make you a bad person. In fact, there's a good chance you're a good person, and if you have accidentally made someone uncomfortable, it was through something they could easily put their finger on; you said something, you reminded them of something, etc.

This doesn't sound like it's that. He does, after all, call it 'inexplicable'; literally unable to be interpreted or expanded upon. It was a 'gut' feeling, a combination of all the things you pick up quickly and instinctively, the summation of which is discomfort.

That _also_ doesn't mean the guy is bad, or that it's necessarily fairly representative of him. Just that he gave the OP a feeling of discomfort.

[roenxi]

It is totally unreasonable to go around commenting on third parties giving off creepy vibes of no consequence based on no evidence. Not to be too personal because a comment isn't the measure of a commentator but kcanini is basically saying nothing with as much negative allusion as can be put into a comment. It is a comment with no consequences, no relevant context, no observations and no argument.

Gut feelings are often surprisingly accurate, sometimes we all pick things up a lot earlier than our consciousness cottons on. But that is no standard to hold in public discourse. There are a bunch of people who give off creepy vibes who are great and a bunch of people who give off positive vibes who are creepy. Binning people like that should ideally be done with evidence or at the very least an argument to give the comment some substance.

We've figured out that good looking people are not more upstanding than ugly people. Truly the next step is to avoid comments like that. Truth is no defence for a comment like that; a comment that says nothing is automatically truthful but also meaningless.

[zozbot234]

> Gut feelings are often surprisingly accurate, sometimes we all pick things up a lot earlier than our consciousness cottons on. ... We've figured out that good looking people are not more upstanding than ugly people.

There, see the difference? You said it yourself - as it turns out, being good looking vs. ugly is not meaningful evidence as to whether you're going to treat others fairly. Being actively disdainful of others to the extent that you're giving off huge "creeper" vibes (perhaps unwittingly, perhaps intentionally!) can be evidence of sorts - at least in a very loose, "more likely than not" sense.

Of course, this is not to say that it should be considered anywhere close to OK to spread wild rumors about "the creeper vibes that this creepy guy gave me once", or anything like that - just think about how open this would be to abuse! But OP wasn't doing that, at all. He/she was seeking to confirm the assessment that others had already, independently come up with, and that can be a very good thing.

[roenxi]

Drummond is black. I'm not one for political correctness, but there is pretty conclusive evidence that a lot of non-blacks people think black people give off creepy vibes. The in-group favoritism bias is a very real thing and it is very reasonable that it manifests as a vague unsubstantiated feeling.

Somebody saying they ran into him at a coffee shop and got what amounts to a feeling of bad vibes is literally not evidence or conformation of anything about the man's character. It is quite likely to be run of the mill background racism. We know nothing about the commentator, nothing about the situation. And it looks like the standard outcome of racism. Even if it isn't the commentator can do a lot better than that with minimal effort. Now if there were any evidence of any kind proffered that would be a different story. You are fabricating some notion of some sort of 'active ... disdain' here that isn't mentioned in the objectionable comment. If they don't mean unsubstantiated they shouldn't be saying unsubstantiated. They should be substantiating their claim.

The standard should be higher than that comment.

[apatheticschism]

>Being actively disdainful of others to the extent that you're giving off huge "creeper" vibes (perhaps unwittingly, perhaps intentionally!) can be evidence of sorts - at least in a very loose, "more likely than not" sense.

This statement shows a surprising lack of empathy or objectivity or even self-awareness.

Consider that Person A and Person B meet and that Person A gets the creepy vibe from Person B - for no clearly defined reason, it just happens.

Person B increasingly tries to socially interact with Person A and this puts Person A in a tough position because they don't like the creepy vibe that they get from Person B.

Person A continually tries to use social cues to try to deter the interactions from being frequent or even increasing. Person B just doesn't "get the clue", as it were.

It might be unfair or untactful for Person A to use contempt or disdain to get the interactions with Person B to decrease; however, we can probably safely arrive the conclusion that this might be a far more tactful route to use than just calling Person B a creepy cunt to their face, yeah?

The problem with your explicit inference is that Person B never has reason to take pause and consider that it was their creepy vibe that initially caused the situation to occur, much less their continued attempts at increasing interactions that caused it to exacerbate.

If Person B has the "it's never me, it's always them" mentality, then we can presumably arrive that the conclusion that this is ultimately what occurred; however, to arrive at the conclusion that Person A used contempt or disdain against Person B solely because Person A is the creeper entirely detracts and ignores (in a very subjective way) Person A's experience[s] with/around Person B.

Succinctly put: You're ascribing to malice (e.g.: creepiness) where another reason can just easily and just as validly be subjected, without even considering that possibility.

[aluminussoma]

The danger with such unqualified sentiments is that there are many things that can make someone uncomfortable. Let me be more plain: David Drummond is (was) the most famous black male executive in tech. I have heard black men voicing frustrations at people being uncomfortable at them for no good reason.

I am not saying that the OP or anyone here is being racist. We need to provide more context to these statements if we are going to say these in public. Otherwise, some groups of people will be at the receiving end of these kind of statements more often than the rest of us.

[meesterdude]

> I think it is a bad idea to say this about him without providing a concrete example on how he made you uncomfortable.

They don't have to justify themselves to you. He saw what he saw, and felt what he felt. if you have any problem with that, that's on you.

[wmeredith]

So what? This comment is nonsense.

[Supermancho]

The majority of human communication is nonverbal. I saw this same kind of commentary about Epstein's "assistants". Humans can read humans to an extent that should impact behavior (but rarely does). Get over it.

[throw7]

is that a star wars quote???

[asimpletune]

Yes I believe that’s what Yoda says to palpatine in episode III.

[leetcrew]

which is a weird quote to use, considering palpatine went on to rule for a couple more decades after the big fight.