
Alphabet’s Chief Legal Officer Stepping Down Amid Investigation - SuperKlaus
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/technology/david-drummond-google.html
======
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...](https://www.axios.com/alphabet-david-drummond-
departure-7572e49b-0f5b-4c72-95eb-24fce0cd82aa.html)

~~~
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.

~~~
zozbot234
> but there is pretty conclusive evidence that a lot of non-blacks people
> think black people give off creepy vibes.

There's pretty conclusive evidence that a lot of people think 'people outside
their in-group' give off creepy vibes, yes. It's not a black vs. non-black
thing, it's literally that being together with 'familiar' groups of people
makes you feel more comfortable than otherwise. And while this _can_ be a
source of unwanted 'noise', it can also be quite separate from the more
specific feeling about a particular person's attitude. I'm pretty sure that if
we asked OP about black males _other_ than this guy, he/she would tell us that
no, as a rule, they did not make him/her feel uncomfortable the way he did.

(After all, working at a firm like Google, in this day and age, involves being
exposed to people of many diverse backgrounds and being willing to engage with
them as peers regardless of how one might _initially_ feel about their group
identity. That's a pretty good antidote to ingroup biases!)

I did mention disdain as a possibility because that's perhaps the most common
source of those "inexplicable" creeper vibes, and also because OP themselves
seems to be drawing a contrast between these and the "friendly" attitude of
the person they worked with.

------
loganfrederick
I really liked Ben Horowitz's new book "What You Do Is Who You Are". However,
the only passage that I disliked and stood out to me is when he defended David
Drummond for his ability to thrive at Google for a long time despite the
corporate culture changing.

This was after Drummond was called out publicly for abandoning his kid he had
with a subordinate: [https://www.law.com/corpcounsel/2018/10/25/report-
alphabet-c...](https://www.law.com/corpcounsel/2018/10/25/report-alphabet-clo-
drummond-secretly-fathered-child-with-subordinate/?slreturn=20200010162407)

I am sure he's made a lot of people money, but it's not like Google couldn't
find a great legal chief who also wasn't a terrible person.

Edit: First article I linked to was paywalled, so here is the underlying
story: [https://medium.com/@jennifer.blakely/my-time-at-google-
and-a...](https://medium.com/@jennifer.blakely/my-time-at-google-and-
after-b0af688ec3ab)

~~~
baddox
> but it's not like Google couldn't find a great legal chief who also wasn't a
> terrible person.

This is actually an argument I wish would come up more often in cases where
prominent people are fired or lose opportunities due to misconduct. Critics
invariably react as if there aren't hundreds or thousands of qualified people
for the position who _didn 't_ conduct themselves inappropriately, but I would
argue that there almost always were.

There are hundreds of talented directors who could direct your children's
movie and never tweeted about molesting children in a movie theater.

~~~
microtherion
In general, I agree, and I also agree this is not acknowledged often enough.

I can think of one exception, though: I think Apple would have done
significantly worse if they had forced Steve Jobs out in response to the
option backdating scandal or the non-poaching collusion scandal.

~~~
barry-cotter
That’s not an exception; that’s the norm. Talent in every field is wildly
unequally distributed. Messi makes the average international player look kind
of ok. The average international player makes club players look like a weekend
hobby player. The hobby player can run rings around people who don’t care
about football.

Satya Nadella has what? Quintupled Microsoft’s market capitalization during
his tenure? Steve Ballmer was so bad the stock jumped ~20% on the news he was
resigning.

------
lacker
These sexual misconduct investigations at Google are really finding some
critical stuff. At this point my guess is that it is related to the Larry and
Sergey resignations, and we will eventually hear information that reflects
poorly on them directly.

~~~
outside1234
Haven't we already? Sergey was banging everything that moved at one point.

ref: [https://www.businessinsider.com/google-sergey-brin-
employees...](https://www.businessinsider.com/google-sergey-brin-employees-
masseuse-room-2018-7)

~~~
joering2
Xoogler here; I haven't been close to the food chain to be there in person,
but close enough to see photos from Managers/owners trips to Thailand, and
believe me they were not going there to visit Temple of the Emerald Buddha. I
seen photos that UK's the Sun would probably pay me seven digits for, but I
was much younger and still wanted to live lawsuits free life. Fun times.

~~~
zzzcarrot
Details pls!

------
aylmao
It's honestly more angering when figures like this think everyone else is dumb
and will swallow the story that nothing is happening, it was just the right
time to leave. This one is even worse, he's trying to sell himself as a wise
leader leaving to see his pupils grow:

> He said that it was the “right time for me to make way for the next
> generation of leaders”

> In his farewell note, Mr. Drummond did not mention any of the claims.

Really? At least mention the full context around your departure. Moreover, he
tries to pull this one off:

> “I know this company is in the best of hands, and I am excited for what the
> future holds for Google, for Alphabet and for me,”

> His departure had been telegraphed in the last few months as he sold off
> most of his shares in Alphabet, unloading roughly $170 million worth of
> company stock from November to January.

Come on. Drummond, you're leaving as consequence of the investigation around
your misconduct. This is not an opportunity to try to squeeze idolatry out of.
Just leave.

~~~
H8crilA
This is just standard corpspeak. All of that can be summarised to "k, bye".

------
vl
> Last year, a committee of independent directors from Alphabet’s board hired
> a law firm to investigate its handling of allegations of sexual misconduct
> and inappropriate relationships by current and former executives as part of
> its legal defense against shareholder lawsuits over its handling of the
> matters, according to documents viewed by The Times.

Let’s sure hope they investigated Sergey and Larry too, unlike them, at least
this guy got married to his office romantic interest.

~~~
vkou
> Let’s sure hope they investigated Sergey and Larry too, unlike them, at
> least this guy got married to his office romantic interest.

One of them, at least.

Another one, whom he had a baby with, was allegedly pushed out of the firm.

------
radu_floricica
Am I the only one not thinking there's anything too outrageous in the article?
I've also read the medium article by the ex. It paints the picture of somebody
that definitely doesn't get top marks in family, but ... well... he's not that
much different from the average american. A standard deviation, maybe? He met
somebody else, separated from the wife, tried to make a new family, failed,
went back to the wife. Makes me feel a bit sorry for everyone involved, but
that's it. I really don't see a demon.

If the bad part is moving the girlfriend in another department, everybody
looks like they've been overly accommodating, honestly. Having the bosses's
wife work in the same department is not fair to the other members of the team.
"Hey, Bill, who do you think will get the big bonus this time? You or the
bosses's wife?". The decision to be together was mutual - acting as if it
wasn't is extremely insulting to her. Some consequences are positive and some
negative, that's just life, and one is that they couldn't work together
anymore.

I can't see anything else. Alleged affairs? Not that many, not while in a
committed relationship, and to be perfectly candid, not unusual if they
happened. And given the current popularity of poly, possibly accepted by
everybody. Definitely not loudly protested at the time.

What did I miss that makes him the devil?

~~~
dgacmu
He's not the devil, he just makes it extremely hard for alphabet to claim any
moral authority (or that it's really being serious) about the issue of
executives facing any consequences for misbehavior. It's pretty awkward to
simultaneously say "we will never have another Andy Rubin case" and have a
chief legal officer who dated (and mistreated) a subordinate.

------
yibg
Maybe unpopular opinion but I would assume men in positions of power / wealth
would be more likely to engage in these types of behavior.

Romance / sex is a pretty primal thing for most people, in many cases limited
by available options and / or consequences. It also tends to override the more
logical parts of the brain. Having more options opened up, even if causing
ethical issues I'm pretty sure will push a good percentage of men over.

I have no idea what that percentage is, but I wouldn't think it is very small.
I think if we dig hard enough we'd uncover a lot more of of these cases in
many different companies.

~~~
Aloha
I would assume _people_ in positions of power / wealth are more likely to
engage in these types of behavior.

~~~
yibg
Possibly, but at least in the news it’s been primarily men. Could be just
reporting bias. Would be interesting if there were actual numbers though.

~~~
Aloha
I suspect its reporting bias by the victims, male victims of sexual
harassment/rape are often not taken seriously.

~~~
celticmusic
In addition, many men don't consider a lot of behaviors as sexual harassment,
and so think nothing of it.

------
ChuckMcM
Not one of my favorite people at Google. We had an interesting discussion
about why Google, which was "transparent" about ranking and rating kept two
variables about your performance secret which made it impossible to verify
whether or not your bonus was in fact what they had promised you. Very
annoying.

------
rvz
The multiple scandals, trip-ups, investigations and blunders at Google sounds
very eligible to be turned into its own theatrical melodrama set.

In this rehearsal, the CLO has already been "off script" for many years and
the "directors" have told him that he isn't getting his $50m golden parachute
this time. Instead, he leaves with nothing and takes an Uber back home. No
travel expenses paid.

~~~
jillesvangurp
People zoom in on the wrong things. What this person did is one thing. In a
normal company that kind of thing results in a chat with your boss and
ultimately some kind of resolution that probably involves people leaving the
company.

What happened here instead is years of this being the status quo with people
looking the other way that really should not be. Even helping to cover this
up; or even actively harassing people pointing out that this wasn't cool.
Google is firing people who speak up and rewarding people who abuse their
power & privilege.

This person was very gently nudged out the door when he should have obviously
been fired years ago. This kind of thing is a no-brainer in modern companies.
You fuck around like that and you fail to keep it a secret, that's a career
ending event. It's a failure of leadership right there. That leadership is
still in place. The problem is still there.

------
duxup
I thought his relationships were pretty much known... for a long time by
everyone?

I swear I remember folks publicly noting these relationships.

------
neonate
[http://archive.md/uZkcU](http://archive.md/uZkcU)

------
jiveturkey
huh.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/10/alphabets-legal-chief-is-
lea...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/10/alphabets-legal-chief-is-leaving-the-
company.html)

> Drummond is also a board member of private equity firm KKR & Co. L.P.

KKR is the PE firm well known for destroying the companies they buy, for their
benefit ... and not for their LP's benefit. Dastardly.

------
kjgkjhfkjf
Once again, we must sadly admit that Google is a place where bad things
occasionally happen, just like at every other company big and small.

------
gumby
No $50M for him.

~~~
dlp211
Yes, the $150MM in stock he's unloaded over the past quarter will have to
suffice.

~~~
booi
how do you live on only $150MM in this day and age?

~~~
whamlastxmas
If he's lucky he'll buy a house in the bay area with that

------
dredmorbius
Earlier / dupe:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22013436](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22013436)

This is (for obvious reasons) getting multiple submissions. The CNBC article
seems the most comprehensive to date:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22014115](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22014115)

~~~
Fnoord
That post from earlier received no discussion, so it isn't a dupe (does not
count as such).

~~~
dredmorbius
Right. I'd gotten a similar clarification from dang when I emailed mods.

When I was posting the dupe/prior notes, there'd been about 4-5 submissions
within an hour, and it seemed likely the story would continue to draw
submissions. A challenge in that case is that _no_ submission gains critical
mass.

A challenge of user-submission-based media aggregators.

------
stopads
It's pretty wild that he was there since 2002, he's practically a founder.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
He specifies that he was there over 20 years, prior to the company being
incorporated, and only joined full-time in 2002.

That being said: David Drummond is a terrible person[0], who only has been
there this long because of Larry Page and Sergey Brin's protection, because
they are terrible people too[1][2]. The way Google's highest executives have
treated women is disgusting and inexcusable. And while Drummond may not be
getting an exit package, he sold off $200 million in stock this past year.

Evil is still very, very good business.

[0] [https://medium.com/@jennifer.blakely/my-time-at-google-
and-a...](https://medium.com/@jennifer.blakely/my-time-at-google-and-
after-b0af688ec3ab)

[1] [https://www.businessinsider.com/google-sergey-brin-
employees...](https://www.businessinsider.com/google-sergey-brin-employees-
masseuse-room-2018-7)

[2] [https://fossbytes.com/larry-page-andy-rubin-150m-sexual-
hara...](https://fossbytes.com/larry-page-andy-rubin-150m-sexual-harassment-
lawsuit/)

~~~
jakobegger
> After our son was born, I received a call from HR notifying me that one of
> us would have to leave the legal department where David was now Chief Legal
> Officer (...)

This sounds like the worst possible policy I can think of. Get pregnant from
your boss, and HR kicks you from the team! How does that help anyone?

~~~
snowwrestler
The right way to implement a policy like that is to say that supervisors are
not permitted to have relationships with their subordinates. That way, if such
a relationship develops against the rules, it's clear upon whom the
consequences should fall: the supervisor.

Supervisors get more money and power from the organization than their
subordinates, so it's fair for the organization to have higher expectations
for the behavior of the supervisor than the subordinate.

~~~
TallGuyShort
Agreed, but a bigger factor is the power differential, IMO: the boss has the
higher need to maintain at least an image of impartiality, and it's harder for
the subordinate to resist advances knowing that the giver is key in deciding
when they can and can't get time off, pay rises, etc.

~~~
snowwrestler
Great point.

------
freepor
A true all-star in his profession. Managed to protect one of the most
unethical businesses in technology history from any substantial
legal/regulatory consequences. His tenure at Google is comparable to OJ
Simpson’s unforgettable 1973 season for the Buffalo Bills.

------
jeffrallen
Oh gross. Why can't powerful men behave themselves? Makes me grateful I'm not
a powerful man.

~~~
stronglikedan
> Why can't powerful men behave themselves?

They can behave themselves equally as well as not-powerful men, but they're
just in more of a spotlight.

~~~
d1zzy
I think it's more than that, powerful/rich people men are going to have more
access to (consensual) sex than poor men.

~~~
stronglikedan
But if it's consensual, then they _are_ behaving themselves.

~~~
EForEndeavour
That's a low bar. Consensual does not mean ethical or palatable to
shareholders and the public.

~~~
throwaway17_17
At the rates of return Alphabet experiences, along with such a large share
percentage held by a ‘smallish’ group of founders/early supporters, many of
whom are apparently credibly stated to have engaged in very similar behavior,
I doubt there will much pressure from shareholders. It is doubtful, but if
this was the straw that broke the regulation-impasse-camel’s back, Drummond
makes a good scapegoat for current leadership.

------
ycombonator
Is there a database of all sexual abusers who have been let go ?

~~~
itronitron
I believe Medium was created for just that purpose.

------
pinopinopino
Good, more mayhem for Google. I don't mind see them burning a bit. Hopefully
the EU forces them to split up soon too. I have had my share of monopolist
corporations playing moral compass.

~~~
dang
Ok, but please don't post rage comments to HN. We're hoping for conversation
here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
zepto
There is nothing toxic about Google’s culture. These are normal events in any
organization of this size. They are just as focussed as ever on organizing the
world’s information and making it universally accessible.

~~~
throwaway17_17
Curious, are the downvotes on this comment for the comment which I assumed was
sarcasm, or for the fact that a non-qualified sarcastic comment is of a type
of discussion HN rules discourage?

~~~
zepto
Just to clarify, I’m not being sarcastic as such, but it is makes sense why
people would consider that as a possibility.

I have tended to interpret Google in the negative over time, but I have heard
the kind of statement I expressed enough times that I honestly am not sure
that it isn’t as true as the more negative reads are.

