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...
Do you know anyone who would hire someone after making a $80MM mistake??
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.
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.
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.
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...
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...
That's literally the opposite of what he did in the book, and in subsequent interviews.
Ooooof. That shatters the "Early on Google's culture was great!" narrative...
[1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/google-sergey-brin-employees...
Lest you think I'm being cynical (I am, but also realistic), note that similar cultural shifts have also played out at other Silicon Valley startups (notably Uber and Zenefits), that the financial and cryptocurrency worlds have even worse cultural problems, and that 49% of America elected a president whose attitude toward women is "grab 'em by the pussy!", usually explicitly citing his promise to bring back jobs, glory, and power to America as the reason why they overlook his personal failings.
I often wonder why realistic people are called cynical, even when they are facts happening everywhere in a statistically large sums. Do others live in fairy land?
Make me a star Harvey...
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.
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.
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.
Qualified is what you’re looking for in areas so routinised that everyone is adequate and no one is worth even ten times the average performer.
She's not exactly squeaky clean either.
Did he commit a fireable offense while on the job?
It's not an employers responsibility or right to dismiss someone for conduct in their personal life.
Under American law, if my manager, Bill, is having a secret - or not-secret affair/relationship/'friendly' arrangement with Sally, who reports to him, I have grounds to sue both Bill, and my employer, on the allegations that this is a quid-pro-quo relationship. If they break up, Sally also has grounds to sue both Bill, and the employer, on allegations that she was pressured into this relationship. It turns into an incredibly nasty game of he-said-she-said, which is why the professional thing to do is... Not sleeping with your reports. Professionals don't open their employer up for liability, in exchange for personal gain.
If he were sleeping with some rando engineer that worked on Cloud, that would be his personal life - because he is outside that engineer's reporting chain.
Being good at business does not make you a "good person".
One had a complex relationship at the time that he refuse to believe the kid was his. And he didn't "abandoned" her, he reconciled.
I don't think Jobs was diddling his employees though. Big difference.
As but one example: Google once gave us money for a non-profit event, in no way related to their business, with explicit instructions not to mention them.
https://www.vox.com/new-money/2017/4/29/15471634/american-ai...
>American Airlines agreed this week to do something nice for its employees and arguably foresighted for its business by giving flight attendants and pilots a preemptive raise, in order to close a gap that had opened up between their compensation and the compensation paid by rival airlines Delta and United.
>Wall Street freaked out, sending American shares plummeting. After all, this is capitalism and the capital owners are supposed to reap the rewards of business success.
>“This is frustrating. Labor is being paid first again,” wrote Citi analyst Kevin Crissey in a widely circulated note. “Shareholders get leftovers.”
ref: https://www.businessinsider.com/google-sergey-brin-employees...
Yes, it does sound like that. I'd advise all people in leadership to avoid conduct that could be interpreted this way.
Edit: Thank you jacquesm for fixing my freudian slip :)
>"'Oh my God, this is a sexual harassment claim waiting to happen!' That was my concern," she recalled
> 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.
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.
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?
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.
It makes no sense at all to invoke the entire of mammalia.
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.
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.
I swear I remember folks publicly noting these relationships.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/10/alphabets-legal-chief-is-lea...
> 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.
This is (for obvious reasons) getting multiple submissions. The CNBC article seems the most comprehensive to date: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22014115
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.
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...
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/google-sergey-brin-employees...
[2] https://fossbytes.com/larry-page-andy-rubin-150m-sexual-hara...
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?
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.
> aware that our relationship was in violation of Google’s new policy which went from “discouraging” direct-reporting-line relationships to outright banning them.
It helps the boss, of course.
There isn't much anyone can do to prevent disaster after this.
> David would go for months or even years at a time completely ignoring my pleas to see his son — not even so much as a text to us, despite living about a mile away.
I can see not having the desire to be with her and break up the relationship, but abandoning his child and not seeing them for years at a time is downright evil.
It's so strange to hear how Google touts itself to be at the forefront of inclusivity and tolerance, and here their executive acting this way for decades and nobody does anything.
They can behave themselves equally as well as not-powerful men, but they're just in more of a spotlight.
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.
