
Google’s top lawyer allegedly had affairs with multiple employees - Tomte
https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/29/20837232/google-david-drummond-chief-legal-officer-cheating-wife-affair-policies
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supahfly_remix
> According to Blakely, Drummond refused to pay child support at times and
> also went long stretches without seeing his child.

How does one get away with not paying child support and not having wages
garnished? I thought the courts were very aggressive in enforcing child
support.

~~~
pjc50
> I thought the courts were very aggressive in enforcing child support.

I imagine _Google 's top lawyer_ is rather better at that. Also, I suspect
we're not hearing an equal balance of stories about unpaid child support.

~~~
throwaway_law
>I imagine Google's top lawyer is rather better at that.

Being a Google lawyer (over even Google's "top lawyer") has little to do with
being a good lawyer, rather everything to do with connections and ticking the
boxes (Stanford grad and minority).

After all the guy failed to register $80M of Google Stock Options with the
SEC, thats not some slight or minor oversight or error, but evidence the
lawyer was not competent for the position.

You see it every day with general counsel at tech companies, Facebook is kind
of notorious for FB Shareholder lawsuits against Zuckerburg as a result of
poor legal work from their army of Harvard trained lawyers. Search the
Director compensation lawsuits and its clear Zuck has the power to do the
things he is doing (as he has majority voting rights as shareholder, is
chairman of the board, and CEO) but the FB general counsel seems to regularly
authorize corporate actions "wearing the wrong hat" (i.e. Zuck authorizes
something as shareholder when it should have been as CEO, or as CEO when it
should have been Shareholder, etc...), which is about as basic as corporate
laws go.

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nprateem
So what? I've never understood why a company should get to decide whom someone
has a relationship with.

~~~
sokoloff
> I've never understood why a company should get to decide whom someone has a
> relationship with.

The second sentence in the article says "The relationship violated Google’s
policies which ban relationships between managers and their subordinates."

That seems like a sensible corporate policy for a number of reasons as just
one example where there's a corporate interest.

~~~
kome
yeah, but corporate policy is not real policy: google can fire him... but this
really deserve media attention?

it's their private life.

~~~
save_ferris
It's worth noting that he's still at Google, which means that Google knows
about this behavior and accept it from one of their top executives.

In the age of #MeToo, companies are getting called out for inconsistently
handling these types of situations. No doubt Google would probably quickly
terminate lower-level employees who transgressed in the same way.

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saiya-jin
Hmm, cheating with guy on his wife, even having kid with such an amoral
person, and she would expect that somehow magically he would be a nice shiny
knight on a white horse for her... this kind of story happens way too often.
People are who they are, they don't change (or do but at glacial pace apart
from some traumatic events), only the situation around them does.

Its always a massive failure of all involved, on many levels. Hard to have
true sympathy for anybody but that poor kid which didn't deserve this

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JoeAltmaier
People will inevitably have relationships. There's power in relationships.
Power corrupts. So its a problem.

But banning them is nonsense. It's meaningless. How about a proactive rule
that defines the outcome: e.g. if you have a relationship with a superior in
your department, then you are switched to a different department.

Now everybody understand the playing field, and can choose, and some of the
undesirable outcomes are minimized.

~~~
alistairSH
In your proposed solution, why should the subordinate be punished? The power
imbalance goes the other direction and is more likely to be abused by the
manager.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Practical: because there's less and less room at higher levels for lateral
moves. And remember, a relationship is voluntary. Is it punishment if its a
well-known process?

~~~
alistairSH
All the more reason the person with the power should be the one who moves.
It's a bigger incentive to keep their pants on.

And part of the justifications for these rules is to prevent Involuntary
relationships. "Fuck me if you want a raise next year."

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Sometimes its not that. Maybe usually?

Its considered a bigger risk to the company, to disrupt the executive suite
than the rank-and-file.

That was an example process. Come up with one! None are perfect. But I know
certainly, that a company with a pragmatic process will be in business longer
than an ivory-tower non-process (Ban work relationships! Punish employees
routinely!)

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macspoofing
>The relationship violated Google’s policies which ban relationships between
managers and their subordinates

Good luck with that.

I know a few couples with long and happy marriages that initially came out of
manager-subordinate relationship.

~~~
betterunix2
I suspect there are far more cases of disasters ensuing -- other subordinates
getting angry about perceived favoritism, difficult break-ups spilling over
into the workplace, accusations of abuse of power (and actual abuses of
power), _the situation mentioned in the article_ , and so forth.

~~~
macspoofing
Sure. And you can have sane policies to deal with this. One of which is to
disclose your relationship to HR so that provisions could be made to mitigate
these kinds of issues or to move the manager or subordinate to another team.

If you don't disclose a relationship with a subordinate, you should be held
accountable for that.

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mindcrime
Flagged. This would be a great article for Valleywag, but it's not what I come
to HN for.

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gingabriska
What if they are actually doing this for Google to pay them huge payout to
keep quite?

It seems big companies are more like a kingdom than a democracy where powerful
men have harem consisting of their own employees.

~~~
muthdra
No big company is like a democracy.

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nske
None of our business.

~~~
muthdra
Speak for yourself.

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kome
American puritanism with private affairs is really showing here. The article
doesn't mention anything illegal or socially relevant. So, none of our
business.

Google polices are private rules for internal arbitration, with no relevance
outside of google. Why are we even talking about that?

