Maybe. In my worst moments, I haven't sexually harassed a coworker. I think a lot of people can say that, honestly and proudly. Singhal made his $35M+, and I'm honestly not too worried about him finding his next job. He'll be OK.
I dunno, I'm happy to throw anyone under any bus, pretty much of anything ever. I just think we should consider sticking with "innocent until proven guilty", if only beacuse cultures without it, like Middle Ages England and the witch hunts, didn't seem like very fair places.
It's time for housecleaning in this industry. If it is true that he jumped before he was pushed at Google, then they must have had some serious evidence against him.
Should Hans Reiser be given a second chance because he's good at file systems?
Turn it around, if an engineer does amazing work all their career, and behaves within societal norms, do they at some point accumulate enough credit to allow them a "get out of jail free" pass?
Your example has some false equivalence, Hans is a convicted murderer, Singhal is an accused sexual harasser. Those are not equivalent.
In a purely procedural society such a hypothetical person does not get a pass --in a more relative society he gats a pass. Kind of how we look the other way regarding historical figures of importance and their flaws when what they achieved transcends those flaws.
This is one of those subtle things that can be problematic, we don't have a good moral calculus on where to draw the line. Slippery slope or reductio, your choice.
Large companies often run a simple financial thought experiment:
"How much liability does this expose us to (a.k.a. how much to make this go away -- hence the popularity of confidentiality clauses in settlements)" vs. "What is this person worth to us"
If we accept that he left Google before they forced him out, then (cynically) Google must have decided that the liability was greater than his value.
But when we consider this from the perspective of someone who has been abused at their place of employment, they may be facing a career change, PTSD, you name it. Both of the women that have written about their experiences at Uber describe stark psychological responses to their experiences - these can/will have lifelong impact. Does a track record of technological innovation excuse even one instance of that?
As another example, I knew women who complained about sexual harassers to me, but as I encouraged them to seek out HR and report, they said the harassment, in their estimation, didn't warrant getting their supervisor in trouble, that they could handle it. Different people have different tolerances and different ways to address unfavorable circumstance.
> But then again, having been robbed at gunpoint in highschool, while kind of scary hasn't scarred me measurably.
A mildly dismissive viewpoint followed by an irrelevant appeal to emotion followed by an anecdote. This feels a little unfair to those who've actually gone through sexual harassment (which is a spectrum and ranges in severity). Surely, there's something to be said of the psychological damage that results from sexual harassment as well.
How does sexual harassment further the aims of the team?
Putting aside the over-simplification, when we no longer have to contest with discrimination in the workplace, then sure, we have to be cautious about misuse of those protections. But until then we have to fix the situation that we are in now.
I'm not sure I'm able to follow your analogy. Hans murdered his Russian mail-order bride who was getting a divorce from him. There's a pretty big difference from a convicted murderer to an alleged sexual harasser.
If someone came to me and told me that they'd been convicted of murder, I could not in good conscience hire them and expose my team members to that risk. There would be no further discussion.
If someone came to me and told me that they'd been accused of sexual harassment and had left that job, I'd inquire and try to understand the details. There is much more gray area. If someone had physically assaulted another person, I'd immediately say no-hire. If someone had made untoward sexual remarks and was unapologetic for it, no-hire. If someone had said they misread someone else's body language and made a pass was apologetic for it, then negative, but not an immediate no-hire.
Also, what happens to more serious crimes when a person is released from prison? I've had several ex-cons on my team from time to time. My view is, if they've been released from prison then they've done their time and we (as a society) owe them a chance to show that they can rehabilitate. What's the alternative? Once you've committed a crime, even a serious crime, you should be unemployable and starve on the street? It's a serious question.
Yes, I perceive that as negative compared to someone who did not exhibit that mistake. I'm not saying that's a no-hire or an extreme negative. I'm trying to communicate that is an indicator of a possible issue, that means it needs to be looked at further to see if there's a pattern of misreading body language.
> Once you've committed a crime, even a serious crime, you should be unemployable and starve on the street? It's a serious question.
I understand and respect the question you've asked. I want to make sure we separate genuinely serious crimes like murder/rape from crimes that are perceived as serious but in my subjective opinion are harmless like drug use. If someone had been convicted of using or even selling cannabis, I would not perceive that as a negative. If someone had been convicted of murder, I would perceive that as unemployable in my team. The reason being is that I could not consider exposing my team to that risk. I can see that even here, there's some gray areas. For example, if the murder was in self-defense or an act of revenge, and there had been a long period of healthy behavior, then perhaps this could be mitigating factors. I would not want anyone to be unemployable or to starve. There are jobs that are less team oriented that might be suitable, or where the risk can be more tightly controlled.
Upper management told me that he "was a high performer" (i.e. had stellar
performance reviews from his superiors) and they wouldn't feel comfortable
punishing him for what was probably just an innocent mistake on his part.