

CEO Gurbaskh Chahal Fired by RadiumOne Board - buro9
http://recode.net/2014/04/27/exclusive-ceo-gurbaskh-chahal-fired-by-radiumone-board/

======
swombat
I hate mobbings as much as anyone, but I have to say, this is one lousy
character the tech scene could do without. His self-defence post earlier
today, including gems like:

> _The situation that resulted in my legal case began when I discovered that
> my girlfriend was having unprotected sex for money with other people._

( [http://recode.net/2014/04/27/gurbaskh-chahal-says-he-
didnt-d...](http://recode.net/2014/04/27/gurbaskh-chahal-says-he-didnt-do-it-
i-didnt-hit-her-117-times/) )

...really drove home the point that this guy shows no guilt or remorse for
anything and was still, until today, thinking he could get away with it.

Some people are worth using the court of public opinion to attack. People like
Tom Preston-Werner or Brendan Eich, imho, didn't deserve the level of attack
they got, particularly considering the case was not so clear in their cases
(lack of reliable data in Tom's case, distance from the guilty event in
Brendan's). But this guy deserved it and I'm glad he got it in the end.

It would have been a terrible misallocation of outrage if Tom and Brendan lost
their jobs for their actions, but this guy didn't.

Good riddance.

~~~
tzs
From the article cited above:

> In perhaps the most problematic part of the post, he also claimed he lost
> his temper because his girlfriend, Juliet Kakish, was “having unprotected
> sex for money with other people.” (Presumably, there are PR people who
> objected to this she’s-loose-and-it-made-me-real-angry meme, because calling
> a woman a whore while saying you abhor violence against women is a rather
> large disconnect.)

The author is assuming that the "sex for money" part is what set him off. How
does she know it was not the "unprotected sex...with other people" part that
set him off, due to the risk of disease?

~~~
leothekim
The problematic part of “having unprotected sex for money with other people"
is that the bully is blaming the victim for his behavior. This is typical
"rationale" behind most sexual and physical assaults on women, that "she had
it coming, therefore you can see why I did what I did." It's barbaric and
disgusting, and underscores why this monster needs to be removed from a
position of power immediately.

------
leorocky
Don't strike anyone, regardless of their gender. That shit is serious legal
business. Things kids did while fighting on the school yard become felony
charges as adults. You can't use physical violence against anyone. The
government has a monopoly on the use of violence.

~~~
selmnoo
> Don't strike anyone, regardless of their gender. That shit is serious legal
> business. Things kids did while fighting on the school yard become felony
> charges as adults.

Unless you have money. Because then you get away with it. Like this asshole
did (cleared of 45 felony counts because video footage evidence was ruled
inadmissible in court, continues to breathe the free air).

------
jmount
And this thread is now deleted/blocked/banned/hidden. (not by me, I am not
part of ycombinator/HN org).

edit: It seems to be back now. It probably scrolled of instead of being
flagged/buried. So I was wrong, sorry.

~~~
swombat
Hey dang, what's happening here?

~~~
dang
The story is being flagged by users as well as a relatively mild moderation
penalty. The penalty makes it go slightly further down the front page; most of
the action is by the user flags (edit: which have now buried the story
altogether).

This story is a good example—almost a litmus test—of what pg called "shallowly
interesting" [1] and what davidw called "articles that get you riled up, but
really don't lead to any productive or interesting discussions" [2]. I'm as
shocked by the story as anyone, but it's essentially celebrity gossip (for
some sort of "celebrity"), and that is off topic for Hacker News. This person
is of little importance to this community (how many of us had heard of him
before? surely very few), nor do the threads reveal insight into underlying
phenomena. They're mostly about what a horrible person he is. So in terms of
HN moderation practices, this doesn't seem like a borderline call.

This is not to deny the obvious importance of the story to the people—most
importantly the victim—affected by it.

1\.
[http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)

2\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7495446](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7495446)

~~~
danso
I think the underlying phenomena is pretty interesting and evident here. Part
of the reason why this has blown up, besides the alleged abuse and his
eventual guilty plea of course, is an entrepreneur who is drunk on his own
Kool-Aid. How else could you explain his ill-informed decision to rant about
this, in public, without even a proofreader, even though he's retained the
services of high profile PR firms? This is an entrepreneur whose prominence
and success was accelerated by the current dynamic in the tech industry, and
his rise would be quite admired by most HNers here, especially at his young
age, and he's apparently thought that makes him immune to the laws of public
outreach and image.

Besides this being a good lesson of how being an asshole is not the ideal way
to success...it's also a good example of the machinations of our justice
system. Wonder why the rich seem to have better outcomes than the poor? This
guy's legal team did great wonders for him. If only his PR team was a bit
better, he may be still CEO (deservedly or not).

~~~
dang
I didn't say there weren't interesting underlying phenomena, only that the HN
threads don't reveal insight into them—and if I may, I think your attempt
here, though well-intentioned, mostly reinforces that. Every sentence strikes
me as projecting way beyond the available information.

------
defen
Why doesn't this guy just release the video? He can write as many words as he
wants, but no one is going to believe that the police report was "overblown
and grossly exaggerated" until they see the video.

------
danso
Besides the obvious lesson of: don't commit domestic violence...It's almost
karma-like in how Chahal's need to puff his own image up blew up in his face.

Back in 2007, his Wikipedia bio was flagged for being not-notable :
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gurbaksh_Chahal#Not_very_e...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gurbaksh_Chahal#Not_very_encyclopedic)).
But he apparently had hired a PR firm to manage his page, and 7 years later,
it became a convenient place to list the charges against him:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gurbaksh_Chahal#Article_ab...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gurbaksh_Chahal#Article_about_this_Wikipedia_article)

Being a CEO of a top 10 online advertising firm would normally not be enough
for a non-interested Wiki user to create a page for him. And since he only
pled to misdemeanors, that may not have been enough for someone to create a
page out of spite. Nice to see his attempted circumvention of Wiki rules
backfire on him.

Of course, he didn't do himself any favors by proclaiming his innocence
(despite the existence of the video tape) and making no apology whatsoever.

~~~
michaelochurch
Why would anyone want a Wikipedia page about him? There was one about my card
game (deleted and reinstated several times) at one time and it was a
nightmare.

Someone who got kicked out of his university for supplying alcohol to a
17-year-old girl (nothing else stuck to him, so I won't speculate) created a
page in which he lists about 50 Wikipedia accounts (half of which have zero
contributions and therefore, effectively, don't exist) that he alleges to be
my sock puppets.

That place is a fucking nightmare. The best use of your PR resources is to
have your WP bio taken down.

------
gopalv
Not to disagree with the decision, but it comes too late (August 2013?) from
the actual event to feel like a direct consequence.

This reads too much like "bad publicity" related firing, way after the court
cases have run their course.

What's the point of having a justice system, when the court of public opinion
extends its hands beyond it & overrules it?

~~~
leorocky
The justice system convicted him very recently. Nothing overruled him, he was
fired because of the conviction.

~~~
rohamg
To be fair, the justice system convicted him of a misdemeanor, hardly enough
cause to fire most founder/CEOs. This was a (justified) decision by the
RadiumOne board to move on, and heavily motivated by the court of public
opinion (due to RadiumOne's impending IPO).

~~~
leorocky
> the justice system convicted him of a misdemeanor, hardly enough cause to
> fire most founder/CEOs

I think you may be under the impression that a misdemeanor is not a big deal.
A misdemeanor is a serious criminal charge. It is not as life altering as a
felony, but it's not a joke. You seem to be taking it as a civil citation or
something. A misdemeanor isn't somewhere between a parking ticket and a real
crime, it is a real crime.

~~~
swombat
Indeed: (
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misdemeanor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misdemeanor)
)

> _In the United States, the federal government generally considers a crime
> punishable with incarceration for one year or less to be a misdemeanor. All
> other crimes are considered felonies. Many states also employ this
> distinction._

