> "He would ask us to do personal things for him," one of these people said. "He said, 'I need you to write a briefing for me on Russian history and politics.' [...] We had absolutely no work in Russia."
I originally made a joke in a now-deleted comment, but then was slightly horrified to hear people excusing this behavior. So here’s a serious one: if you get locked into a prestigious institution under someone like this, run.
EDIT: I should have known this would turn into a sub thread about whether it’s ok to demand an AI researcher brief an executive on Russian political history.
Here’s another one: gossiping about firing someone across the entire office, before you fire them. This article says he did that. I recommend reading through it. I have to go move into our house now, so I can’t paste everything. Suffice to say, the behavior patterns were not productive.
I think people want to recognize DeepMind’s eventual success. Having worked under some effective YC founders vs some Suleyman types, I’ve learned that sometimes a startup can succeed in spite of flaws. And remember, DeepMind was bought by Google. At that point they were the anointed child. Their success wasn’t guaranteed, but it wasn’t as tenuous as pre-billions Google investment.
It's a total mystery to me why do people feel the urge to defend him. I kind of understand this in the case of technically brilliant but socially awkward people, but this guy seems to have done nothing but management in his life. And if this is how he's doing management then I don't understand why he's tolerated at all.
My unfortunate conclusion is that a large portion of people in this industry are either like this or wish they could get away with being like this. The amount of people who always reply about how they don't see any issues is enough proof of that.
In addition to that, I wonder if a few are employees at that company, and don't want to dislike their bosses or workplace (and then defend that weird exec instead)
Nah. These accusations are exaggerated and without proof. Put yourself in his shoes. Would you like random internet people to accuse you with dramatized statements
and/or exaggerations?
The burden of proof is on the claimant. And if your gonna post a sensationalist article about it to the public, you better provide proof to the public. Don't just do character assassination on another fellow human.
> "Employees said Suleyman encouraged them to use private chat groups on Signal and Telegram for work conversations, some of which were set up to automatically delete messages after a set period. Employees were also on occasion asked to delete messages from their phones, a former employee said. They were also told to notify the group once they had done so."
The burden of proof is on the claimant, sure. But if your boss forces you to delete the evidence, the stakes are that much higher.
Google makes all employees do this, for whatever it's worth. I think this may just be kinda standard for corporate stuff. (Not telegram, but the self destructing messages)
Yes, I am also claiming something. I am claiming exaggeration. My proof is the article, and I would rightfully assume they provided the strongest reasons for him being a bully there, I do not see bullying.
I am not the court, and I don't expect to know the fine details, but I need to the know the high-level points. I do not find these.
This is not Soviet-era Russia. If your going to be public about a person's guilt, you gotta give high-level evidence.
> This isn't a court of law, there is no "burden of proof."
That's exactly the problem with news publications like this; they are extrajudicial. They throw away the right to due process. And make no mistake: The consequences for the accused are very tangible.
There are also important second order effects from legitimizing this rhetoric. A democracy cannot exist without a rule of law. When we violate those basic legal principles, we risk destabilizing our society at large.
In some jurisdictions, defamation is illegal irrespective of the claims' veracity in order to ensure the right to due process and avoid non-sactioned punishments. I cannot help but feel legalization in other countries, including the US and UK, have not yet caught up with the forces enabled by today's social media climate.
>And make no mistake: The consequences for the accused are very tangible.
A promotion and a raise? The horror.
> democracy cannot exist without a rule of law. When we violate those basic legal principles, we risk destabilizing our society at large.
It's weird, Hacker News is usually extreme in its defense of absolute freedom of speech and the press, especially the freedom of the press to report negatively on people in positions of power. But when someone writes an article on a Google employee that they don't like, it's "destabilizing our society at large" and violates "basic legal principles."
Where did all the Friends of Voltaire go, I wonder? Where was all of this sympathy and assumption of good faith for Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell? Why does HN only ever go to the mat for sociopaths, bigots and assholes?
>In some jurisdictions, defamation is illegal irrespective of the claims' veracity in order to ensure the right to due process and avoid non-sactioned punishments.
What defamation?
What punishment? He got a promotion. He was punished with money and power and being in line for CEO.
> cannot help but feel legalization in other countries, including the US and UK, have not yet caught up with the forces enabled by today's social media climate.
Are you trying to make this "cancel culture" now? This has nothing to do with "today's social media climate." There was no Twitter mob calling for Mustafa Suleyman's head, there were internal complaints made by employees.
This is not an argument in good faith. I'm referring to the consequences of attacking a person's character publicly. We have yet to see what those consequences will be in the case of Mustafa Suleyman.
> It's weird, Hacker News is usually extreme in its defense of absolute freedom of speech and the press, especially the freedom of the press to report negatively on people in positions of power. But when someone writes an article on a Google employee that they don't like, it's "destabilizing our society at large" and violates "basic legal principles."
I cannot say anything about the opinion of HN, and, indeed, I'm the one being downvoted here. My position is that, in order to protect the freedom of the individual, some freedom of speech must be sacrificed. Unlimited freedom of speech risks violating people's right to privacy and due process, which ultimately limits their freedom and promotes conformity. Defamation laws and well-functioning legal systems combat this outcome.
> Where was all of this sympathy and assumption of good faith for Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell? Why does HN only ever go to the mat for sociopaths, bigots and assholes?
I know as little of Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell as I do of Mustafa Suleyman. If they were unlawfully terminated, I support their cause. My comment was not tied specifically to the case at hand.
> Are you trying to make this "cancel culture" now? This has nothing to do with "today's social media climate."
The consequences of being publicly shamed have never been greater than they are today. This is largely a result of the rise of the information economy and the current design of social media. My point is that many lawmakers have yet to catch up with this development.
> There was no Twitter mob calling for Mustafa Suleyman's head, there were internal complaints made by employees.
Again, I don't think we have seen all the consequences yet. As long as complaints are internal, I have no problem with them.
The underlying idea I think you're missing is that personnel disputes just shouldn't be litigated through the media. There's no reliable information that can be gained and no productive discussion that can be had; the only possible outcome is to feed our confirmation biases and provide a platform to get mad.
For example, you mention:
> Where did all the Friends of Voltaire go, I wonder? Where was all of this sympathy and assumption of good faith for Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell? Why does HN only ever go to the mat for sociopaths, bigots and assholes?
But lots of people went to the mat for Gebru and Mitchell! And many more were willing to provide an assumption of good faith without necessarily taking their side. You're condemning people who argue against you here, not because of anything they said, but because of your assumptions about what position they might have taken in a different controversy about different people. The article has tricked you into getting angry at phantoms and guesswork.
> You're condemning people who argue against you here, not because of anything they said, but because of your assumptions about what position they might have taken in a different controversy about different people.
Can you prove this beyond a reasonable doubt? Should you have to?
Well, I’m not sure what “have to” means. If I got a Washington Post article published about how suchandsuch person made a HN comment I don’t like, I would call that a clear case of harassment, no matter how much proof I had that the comment was wrong.
It's the same reason people defend Bill Gates or Bezos, or any other rich or powerful person for that matter. People want what they have, and they feel if they attack them, recognize their immorality or destitute nature of their souls they are in a sense attacking their future self image, and it feels inconvenient. Especially where where there are a lot of valley Elizabeth Holmes types on here that fancy they are potentially one or two exits away from that lifestyle, they would rather see past the heaps of immoral actions taken to achieve success in order to maintain their fantasies.
If I call out that successful persons immoral behavior, I can potentially be placing my future self in a morally compromised position when I encounter such a situation that may lead me to take immoral actions. No one want's to fantasize themselves being a hypocrite.
It's a good point, but also believe it fits within the framework I was (poorly) attempting to describe. If you don't believe those people deserve their wealth and power, then when we achieve wealth and power within our own spheres, we will have doubts about our status as well, and again, it is inconvenient to the human psyche to believe these things about oneself.
Also: The rich and famous make for lucarative targets given their appeal and profile. Blowing things out of proportion, bias in reporting, privacy-violating scrutiny, coordinated defamation isn't all that uncommon to have happened to them.
The first path are people that initially tilt towards morally good but eventually tilt towards morally bad as they accumulate more and more wealth and power. The people that the maxim "power corrupt" was made for.
Your path describe the naive people that would rather believe that the world is a meritocracy rather than a free for all with a thin veneer of meritocracy and will defend that facade until they are personally affected.
There is yet another path which is people that figure out the game and embrace it and say that anyone that doesn't play the game gets what's coming to them. I'd say that this guy is probably in this camp.
Because some of us are getting really tired of these witch hunts. Was he an ahole, possibly. Did Google value his contribution, probably. Did he commit any crime, doubtful.
Humans are all deeply flawed and if you were to pick enough sound bites about someone across a long enough period of time you could paint them as monsters. This current climate of holier than thou rhetoric is becoming increasingly poisonous.
It’s a “witch hunt” when someone doesn’t get a promotion? No one’s calling for his arrest. They’re just saying that someone who abused his power to bully people should not be rewarded with more power over people.
And so what. If you work at take it up with them. Or if it's bad for the company or will hurt them. Or if you are shareholder take it up at the next meeting.
You and I have no idea of the context unless we are actually there. It's frankly none of our business. All these journalists and keyboard sycophants live to pull something down and destroy.
No. People in tech like to believe that holding people accountable is "abusive" or "bullying." Someone in this thread literally posted that shooting down someone's opinions is bullying, accusing someone of insufficient effort is bullying, working them hard is bullying.
There are people in this world who actually care. They want to make a positive impact. Then leeches join their team and want to do the minimum. And when they get called out, it's "bullying." That's bullshit.
Working with quite a few contrarians, I have noticed a tendency to be so done-with-it and disapproving of conventional wisdom that one can end up subtly approving really immoral things on the basis that you can kind of do anything - proportionality be damned - as long as you are right (for some value of correct)
I suspect that the discussion would look very differently if the article had not named the person but rather discussed general abusive behavior of managers in faang. Now people feel like they have to take a side, with the mob or against the mob, and that makes people uncomfortable.
This might be the origin to libel laws. One might think they exist exclusively to protect those accused unfairly, but it might be to also protect society in general from feeling uncertainty about people being attacked.
I imagine it’s because your personal success as a manager has a lot more to do with politics, taking credit for others achievements, and redirecting blame onto others than actually being good at managing anyone
Well even in the cases of technically brilliant but socially awkward people it doesn't really make sense to place them high in the hierarchy. Unless they have no people directly under them, I suppose.
Even if they're only making technical decisions and not managing anyone directly, it still is going to result in employees being told to do what he commands.
You've either got power or don't, there's not much to being high-up if you're decisions don't carry much weight.
We're defending him because the accusations against him are egregiously exaggerated, and without proof. I'm against screaming, but infrequent/involuntary screaming by a very senior exec does happen, and in my opinion, cannot be called abusive.
In fact, I would be upset if I had a sheep for an exec. I want a exec who is kind, and who can lead and is firm. Not screaming, but almost there.
> I'm against screaming, but infrequent/involuntary screaming by a very senior exec is common place.
What?! I've worked with executives most of my career. Screaming was definitely not common place. I can only recall 2 examples, and neither lasted long or had any business being in a position of power. And what even is "involuntary screaming"? Has the executive just broken their leg or something? If so OK. But if they're just yelling at an employee about work, it's not "involuntary".
> cannot be called abusive.
It can. I'm calling it abusive to scream at an employee.
> In fact, I would be upset if I had a sheep for an exec. I want a exec who is kind, and who can lead and is firm. Not screaming, but almost there.
I don't want an exec whose almost screaming. I want an exec who is in control. Screaming is the antithesis of that.
I agree that is not "common place" in every industry. I've removed that bit. It does happen, and and it becomes "normalized" as "that manager is just being himself".
But, there is no mention that he frequently screamed. Screaming once or twice, out of stress perhaps, is not "abusive". Definitely, one should make amends / be regretful of that.
Once or twice a year? Maybe once or twice a career if a family member has just died or something I could excuse it. But multiple times a year is a pattern.
I've somehow gone 10 years without screaming at an employee, and it's not something I'd tolerate from any of my managers. Definitely not from an executive. The higher your rise the more responsibility you have to model proper behavior. If you can't handle the stress of being an executive and control yourself you have no business being one.
Barring maybe some safety issue (screaming at an employee to stop before to they drive into a ditch), there is no good reason to scream at an employee. If firing is justified you do it calmly and dispassionately. If it's just behavior that needs corrected, you do it calmly and firmly. Screaming weakens your message and makes you seem erratic and out of control.
For the record, I am completely against screaming.
You see, screaming happens on a spectrum. It really isn't black and white. I wish there was a quantitative scale, but there isn't. And it actually does depend on a person's natural demeanor, some people literally scream when they're even being nice or happy! Is raising your voice without being negative called "screaming". I don't think so.
Perhaps true "screaming" is that which is coupled with negative words / profanity / putting someone down.
Unfortunately, if asking nicely (or even firmly) several times does not work and you have to scream at someone, they will never get it anyways, and it’s better for everyone else’s morale if that person is fired.
> If yelling/lecturing/screaming at an employee gets the point across and prevents them from being fired, is it justified?
Good question! I'm going to say no (except for lecturing, which I'd say is different than the others) for a few reasons.
First I'm going to claim if your actually being clear this situation doesn't exist. Being clear means making it clear how serious the issue is and spelling out the consequences if the behavior doesn't change. Imagine Fred has been filing his TPS reports late every week, and in our industry late TPS reports are a serious liability. I've had multiple conversations, starting with "Hey Fred, your TPS reports were late this week. It's actually really important that those are filed on time." To more serious conversations where I've invited him into my office given him a chance to explain what the situation is, and made it clear why it's so important and that this must be done. And his TPS reports were late this week. Fred's on his last chance.
The way to deal with this now is to make it clear, this is it. "Fred, we've had multiple conversations about your TPS reports. When I asked you why they were always late you said you kept getting busy during the week and it was hard to get them done. I made it clear they were higher priority than your other work because not having them puts us at risk for X, and told you to prioritize them, and come to me if you need something taken of your plate to get them done. You haven't done that. This is a serious situation Fred. I'm going to be paying attention to make sure you file on time from here on out. If your reports are late again, you will be fired. Do you understand?". Then listen to Fred's response and drive home the point if necessary that he will lose his job if this doesn't change.
On the other hand I could drag him into my office (or just do it at his cube) and scream something like "Fred what is wrong with you?! I need your TPS reports! How hard is that? If you do it again your fired!" Really imagine someone screaming it for a moment. See how unhinged they look? In the first example it's clear to Fred that he's going to be fired if it happens again precisely because I'm in control and calm (not calm does not mean not being firm). In the second Fred's not sure if that firing threat is real or if I've just lost my temper.
But let's say for a moment Fred's not normal and really does just respond better to screaming than clear communication. You need to fire Fred. You can't have someone on your staff who you have to scream at every time you need to get a point across, and if he's like this with you, he's going to be difficult for others to communicate with too. I assure you, you can find someone just as good as Fred who isn't this difficult to talk to.
But Fred is weird in that he responds best to screaming AND he's a savant at his job? You really don't think you can find someone who can do the job as well? I doubt it, but even accepting that as true... Fred's gotta go. Up till now, we've just focused on the impacts to Fred, but the rest of your employees will be paying attention too. They'll see how Fred's treated and that's what they'll expect from you. If your screaming at Fred, they're going to be constantly afraid that if they make a mistake they'll get the same treatment. This may result for example in them attempting to cover up a mistake instead of working with you to resolve it. This same effect is why it's important to manage people out compassionately. You might think that it's fine to tell Fred to "pack up his shit and get out, he's done", or maybe just let him discover his key-card doesn't work one day, after all, Fred's going right? What's the point in being nice about it? But your other employees will be paying attention and they probably won't see the line of disciplinary discussions or issues that you haven't advertised leading up to this action, so it's important to handle the situation with as much grace as possible for their sake if not for Fred's.
If anyone is still reading this I'll also note I separated out lecturing. Depending on how you choose to define it, lecturing may be appropriate. By that I mean explaining why it is so vital in our industry it's so vital that TPS reports get done on time, so that the employee understands that this isn't an arbitrary requirement. As much as possible you should try to avoid making it a lecture where you talk and their eyes glaze over and keep it an interactive conversation, but one could easily imagine an employee then reporting "I got lectured on the importance of TPS reports", and that interpretation may be unavoidable.
Have you stopped to think for a sec that some of us like screaming, and in some cultures a lot of screaming is common place. Screaming it not out of control, its using the volume of your voice to command attention.
Perhaps the abuse is the thin skin. Perhaps the abuse is the lack of forgiveness. Perhaps the abuse is the failure to recognize we all have flaws.
There are cultures and then their is business culture. Nobody is acting exactly the way they do at home in a business, because in order for a business to work efficiently people have to adapt to the cultural practices that can help a disparate group of people (who are usually not family) work together effectively and efficiently.
So let's talk about the effectiveness and efficacy of screaming. What is the point? To compete for attention? Won't that just lead to louder and louder screaming and the drowning out of voices of people who have the decency not to scream?
To intimidate a coworker or a subordinate?
To express anger?
I can't think of one reason screaming could be beneficial to the workplace, but I can think of many that make it intolerable. Intimidated, stressed subordinates. A culture where the loudest person (not the most competent) gets the most attention. And acceptance of a practice that can easily turn abusive and lead to a toxic workplace.
> Have you stopped to think for a sec that some of us like screaming
I don't care if you "like" screaming. There are lots of things I like to do that aren't appropriate in the workplace. If you want to go to a "scream club" and scream your heart out you do you. In the workplace as a corporate executive act like an adult.
> and in some cultures a lot of screaming is common place
By all means enlighten me as to in what cultures it's common place for your boss to scream at you and not considered dysfunctional?
> Perhaps the abuse is the thin skin.
No.
> Perhaps the abuse is the lack of forgiveness. Perhaps the abuse is the failure to recognize we all have flaws.
People have flaws. People can be forgiven for them. "Forgiveness" doesn't mean all consequences go away. If you can't do your job as a executive properly, I can forgive. I can't let you keep abusing employees.
I'm dubious of this, but cannot prove or disprove it so I'll take your word for it. Given this is an executive is a large US company, it doesn't change the discussion any.
> Have you stopped to think for a sec that some of us like screaming, and in some cultures a lot of screaming is common place. Screaming it not out of control, its using the volume of your voice to command attention.
> Perhaps the abuse is the thin skin. Perhaps the abuse is the lack of forgiveness. Perhaps the abuse is the failure to recognize we all have flaws.
Out of all the comments supporting abuse in this thread, this is the most damning one of all.
"...but infrequent/involuntary screaming by a very senior exec does happen,..."
After about 30 years in the industry, I suggest you reconsider your experience. The only place I've worked that had any kind of executive screaming was IBM, which was completely disfunctional.
Someone who involuntarily screams at a coworker is someone who needs help.
There's a difference between one-off and frequent. Very big difference. A question to everyone: You screamed at anyone, ever? Oh, you screamed once, 5 years ago? Now you're a bully.
Of course if you scream you are a bully. Because you can only scream to someone in a lower position than you, by definition, and that is cowardice. You become outright hostile and let loose your childish immature selfish self because you feel safe and powerful enough to do so. That, is dysfunctional and unhonorablr and that's why I never scream.
> screaming by a very senior exec is common place and cannot be called abusive
It is possible that what's been acceptable for a long time is no longer okay. At the very least, I'd say tantrum are unprofessional; After all, if the exec is losing their shit over something minor, how can I trust them to keep a level head if things really get challenging? But maybe some people respond better to the stick than to the carrot, or to a reasoned explanation of why the cart needs to go to market.
I'm against screaming. But doing someone once or twice in year, is not the same as doing something everyday. There's no mention, at all, about how frequent his outbursts / yelling / screaming was. This is precisely the issue.
Amen. Literally the only time I can think it might be a reasonable thing is to scream ‘watch out’ or the equivalent in a noisy environment at someone about to get run over or hit by something. And then it should kick off an investigation as to why that was necessary, because it shouldn’t be.
That said, I’ve definitely seen people say someone was screaming at them when nothing of the sort even remotely happened. So your mileage may vary.
I think people need to read up on psychopaths and sociopaths. Realize it’s a spectrum but this behavior is the basis of cults. People here would be good to educate themselves.
Is this a common thing outside Silicon Valley? The US?
Having worked almost ny entire professional life outside of the States I have never, not once, heard of this happening. And it would absolutely not be tolerated in any professional organisation that I’ve been part of.
Or have I just been lucky not to have come across this type of behaviour?
You have just been lucky, back office technology when I used to work for a large bank in the UK there was a manager who would routinely shout at everyone. He was repeatedly promoted and seen as a person who "got things done."
I really pitied the juniors who learned to model this as what "good" looked like, I suspect it has genuinely harmed their long term life prospects.
In response to complaints it was always, "he's a Southern European, they're passionate," that came as the response.
> I'm against screaming, but infrequent/involuntary screaming by a very senior exec does happen, and in my opinion, cannot be called abusive.
There is no situation where screaming at employees is okay unless they're actively endangering lives.
If somebody loses their shit and flies off the handle, then calms down and apologizes and doesn't do it again, that's forgivable. That doesn't mean it was acceptable to do it in the first place.
> but infrequent/involuntary screaming by a very senior exec does happen
Eh, sorry, no. I mean, maybe if you drop a book on their foot or something, but if it's just screaming at employees as part of their work, then they should probably be looking for a less demanding job.
I'm stifling the urge, because the article does the typical thing where they categorize his douchiness as 'misbehavior' and then immediately pivot to talking about that sexual harassment walkout, using the term 'misconduct'. The fuck does 'misbehavior' even mean?
I'm automatically suspicious of people playing word-association games like that.
Sounds like the guy has poor emotional control and is only in his position due to right place, right time. Fortune passes everywhere.
It's a culture war thing... HN believes that capabilities tend to be zero-sum, and any character flaws are evidence of genius in other regards. The "brilliant but eccentric scientist" cliché, more or less.
There's also an unwillingness to either consider the concept of "bullying" as real, because it's not easily quantified and/or defined in such a way that you could spot it in a single-page flowchart. Or a learnt defense to immediately show solidarity with any bully so as to avoid being targeted.
There might be hints of what's sometimes referred to as "toxic masculinity" in there, as well. This exec's mistake, resulting in less than overwhelming support here, was not to get accused of sexual harassment.
> HN believes that capabilities tend to be zero-sum, and any character flaws are evidence of genius in other regards. The "brilliant but eccentric scientist" cliché, more or less.
I think "zero sum" is itself rooted in envy and pride. I.e., when people that lack humility know, or at least sense, suspect, or believe, that they lack some quality that someone else has, they are prone to believing the zero-sum distribution of qualities because it gratifies their egos. They also tend to view these qualities as fungible (at least in a manner that benefits their calculus of self-worth), which they are not. Of course, envy, like all vices, warps one's perception of reality. I wish more people understood that unrepented vice leads to rationalization of the vice which leads to the subsequent corruption of knowledge and wisdom. Breaking free of this pathology is difficult.
> There might be hints of what's sometimes referred to as "toxic masculinity" in there, as well.
Sadly, that term is entirely ambiguous, but I would say that both absence of masculinity in men as well as the "the brute" are two extremes that ought to be avoided. Masculinity is neither about domineering behavior nor subservience. Masculinity finds its fulfillment in the readiness for self-sacrifice. Leaderships is service. The difference between leadership and tyranny is that in the second case, the "leader" exploits those he is suppose to be leading in some capacity for the common good of the group. Abusive behavior is especially egregious when done by those in positions of leadership.
Wouldn't the point of such a high level briefing be because they're tying to get work in Russia but don't already have any? It's rather common for employees to not know the details of the strategic plans of the executives until the execution starts.
1. Even if you're considering doing business in Russia, an over-broad request with insufficient context is unlikely to yield a result which is of any value. Russia is huge, and its history goes back to the 9th century. Asking for a report of its history and politics without saying anything about how the report would be used is absurd. "Prepare a report on how Russian government contracts for software services are awarded" is a prompt which might give you something useful. "Summarize more the a millennia of history and politics in a giant country" is not.
2. In the article linked in the comment above, this is given as a single example of a pattern of behavior of asking people to do things unrelated to their jobs. Surely we can understand that even if there were many examples, in this article only one could be mentioned due to space reasons. One might contrive a situation in which any single example, removed from its context, could be arguably a valid request. But if someone who worked with him observed this as a pattern rather than a single incident, doesn't that have to be taken seriously? Esp in combination with the "I crush people" and the assertion that he would humiliate people in front of their colleagues? Between the possibilities of "maybe there was a secret plan to work in Russia" and "maybe he asked for things out of personal interest disregarding people's actual roles" or "maybe he had a dysfunctional need to demonstrate power over others by having them do bullshit 'work'", I think the latter two are seem pretty plausible.
> Suleyman would also sometimes ask employees to carry out tasks unrelated to their jobs or DeepMind's work, two former employees said.
> "He would ask us to do personal things for him," one of these people said. "He said, 'I need you to write a briefing for me on Russian history and politics.' We knew it was absurd. We knew it was a waste of time. We had absolutely no work in Russia."
Because when you're as large as Google, you don't ask your underlings to write book reports on things that are of strategic business importance. You go through the proper channels and get them to hire qualified people to cut through the bullshit.
Yeah but, red tape. When you ask a business unit to do it, it becomes a whole big thing. When you ask somebody on your team to do it, it might not be as good, but it gets done.
Only if you don't actually care what "done" means. Anyone can make an omelette if you're willing to define an omelette as "literally any eggs cooked in a pan." But I'd rather just ask someone who actually knows how to make an omelette.
I guess it depends what you are trying to achieve by cooking an omelette. Taking the analogy to an extreme:
If you want to serve a really high-quality meal and are willing to wait a few days or weeks to get the omelette then you would probably wait for a chef from the omelette department, or hire in an external consulting chef. Note that a single omelette will take a long time to get this way, as you will probably also have to get authorisation to hire/spend money/use another teams resources.
If you needed food now, and if eggs in a pan now are better than omelettes in a few weeks, you would probably just find someone from your team to do it and you would have an omelette within the hour. It won't be as good, but it's better than waiting if you are hungry.
If you weren't cooking an omelette, and were writing a report trying to assess if the omelette team should be rolled into the frittata, you probably wouldn't ask the omelette team to write this report. Sure, they might have the most knowledge of how the team works and their capabilities, but asking the omelette team to write this report might have a pro-omelette bias because there is a conflict-of-interest in terms of job preservation.
I think the issue here is about how hard it is to ask for the chef to make you an omelette. If you go to https://food.gle type in onellette and your desk number then great. But first you have to even know that https://food.gle exists as an internal domain which might be something your underling has as much chance of finding out as you do.
Or, again, you ask the company about it because if they have business units in said country then that's probably a bridge they've already crossed ten dozen times.
That depends on how much internal politics there is. In some companies asking will make the other department concerned that you're going to compete with them for the market and they will then attempt to shut you down preemptively. Thus secrecy and keeping things internal to the the department since your greatest competitors are internal and not external.
In a good org you wouldn't be fired for doing a mediocre job. In a bad org you'd be fired for saying no. In either case trying is better than not trying.
How far does this go? If you boss asks someone to strip for him is that ok? It's a legal job after all. If they didn't want to do that because it's not their job would you say 'go join the plumbers union'?
End of the day, it's a job. Requirements change. You have to do things you don't want to do that might not even seem related. If you don't want to work under someone who does that stuff then leave.
I yelled at a CEO because he asked me to do something that wasn't related to software engineering role. He stopped asking me and anyone else in eng due to that confrontation. But - guess what - he wanted to fired every single day I worked there after that incident. I only remained because I had a lot of people protecting me.
So - you have to ask - are you willing to lose your job over it? If so - great - see ya! If not - then take your lumps and get it done.
> o - you have to ask - are you willing to lose your job over it? If so - great - see ya! If not - then take your lumps and get it done.
This is ridiculous. Jobs have pretty clear, if arbitrary at times, functions. You wouldn’t ask a chef to brief you on Russian political history, a field of itself that is vastly nuanced just as much as AI itself, nor would you ask a data scientist. It isn’t because job function can’t change it’s because people have careers and an AI researches is not likely to be able to actually brief one on Russian political history without doing a deep dive and learning the field itself.
> without doing a deep dive and learning the field itself.
My response would be to ask about the employer's continuing education program. I could see myself taking a Russian studies program and get that report back in 2-3 years if tuition and time was 100% covered by the employer.
If it really ends up being a useful task and not pointless, your boss should be willing to expend additional resources in addition to your time. You take it seriously, which requires additional resources if it's outside the scope of your job or knowledge.
And they should be happy to provide those resources if the task needs to be done.
The CEO has a job, too, and that job is set by the board and/or the company's owners. And the most important job of the CEO is to be a good leader.
Was your CEO within his legal rights to ask you to do the job? Sure, assuming it was legal and not forbidden by your contract. Would it have been advisable for you to do it anyway, for the sake of your job? Probably. But that doesn't mean that the CEO was doing his job well by asking. And evidently he knew that, because he didn't actually fire you and the people protecting you.
In the case of Google, a public company, it is simultaneously true that individual low-level employees should act strategically and optimize for their own benefit - which might include putting up with misbehaving management to remain employed under them - and that the public has a strong interest in knowing when management, especially senior management, is being bad at their jobs.
I really don't think there's that much alignment in organizations in the sense you're speaking of. While it's nice to think that these places are acting in best interests of blahblahblah - I think selfish interests hold true more often than not and accountability is basically nigh impossible in our world.
We have so many people who have been abusing people in so much worse of ways than "write me a report on Russia" and they have little to no accountability.
The public doesn't care about how a company is managed - they care about the share price going up so they make their money.
> The public doesn’t care how a company is managed - they care about the share price going up so they make their money.
Thats like saying you don’t care about the fridge temperature of a restaurant, you care how quickly they get you your chicken Kiev.
> I don’t think there is much alignment…
Considering the fact that deepmind spends a significant amount on AI safety, a misalignment between their leadership and human values seems pretty concerning.
It's absolutely fine for an exec to ask an employee to do "x" task, where there is value for the company, even if it is not in the employee's scope. This is a moot point, and I'm astonished we're even debating this. What has the world come to?
So, imagine I ask my developer or even my accountant on a one-off, rare occasion: "write me a critique of this new UX design". He replies "How dare you ask me about UX design!". What a strange answer.
Did you just compare asking if something looks good to having them write up an assessment of Russian political history?
Yeah I’ll go ahead and ask my dog walker to write me an analysis of the potential outcomes if Britain had joined against the US during the Trent affair. If they refuse I’ll fire them and write horrible reviews about them because obviously they don’t take their job seriously /s
You’ve got to be kidding or seriously biased here.
Is the dog walker an employee here? That makes a big difference. As does whether writing reports is a normal part of their job. If both of those things are true, asking them to spend a day researching some stuff and writing a report doesn't sound crazy.
You're also totally in your rights to ask your bank teller to write you an essay about Russian political history and switch banks if they refuse. Being within your rights doesn't mean you're not acting totally insane.
Why not? Suppose you have to choose between two dog walkers for hire, one who is will to write essays about Russian history and one who is not. You happen to be very interested in Russian history. Why wouldn't you prefer the dog walker who is willing to write about it?
> Are you really comparing a "dog walker" to somebody who creates IP
Yes. Why wouldn’t I? These are examples of people who were hired from completely different fields than what is requested of them in the scenario. Why would an AI researcher be a better Russian political history analyst than a dog walker? Neither is a polsci major.
Seems to imply a lack of business value, so you don’t have to be that astonished. No one reading this has enough information about whether the business value of that actually existed or not, but at that statement should explain to you why people are upset at this.
Secondly, the degree to which a task is close to the domain the employee was hired for also matters. For example, hiring a software engineer to do misc tasks like this clearly shows a lack of proper management. You either do it yourself as a manager or hire the headcount to get these kinds of misc tasks done. E.g. executive assistants/ secretary etc.
Asking someone for their opinion on UX design is very different from asking someone to prepare a brief on Russian history.
To me it starts to feel more like one person is asking another to do their job.
This person actually isn't your employer, your employer is the company, so if your manager starts to ask you to do tasks that should normally fall to them, they're asking you to do their job and taking the credit, that's neither good for the employer nor for you.
It sounds like it was a side task not related to the company or the company’s work, but rather the writing was at the whim of the person at issue. My framing is something like telling someone who reports to you to do your college homework.
Demanding random, pointless tasks from subordinates is a bad sign, but the Russia example might not be one of those. If a boss needs information s/he can ask a subordinate to make a brief.
Sometimes the reasoning behind the important request is not clear to the subordinate and it might seem pointless. A good boss would generally explain, but failing to do it is still very very far from bullying (plus, some important info is gathered piecemeal on purpose to avoid leaking things early). I am not claiming those are applicable here, just that much more context is needed to understand the situation.
Well, I write software. If you randomly ask me to write a brief history of Japanese factories, I’m going to be like wtf. You’re going to have to explain yourself.
> Well, I write software. If you randomly ask me to write a brief history of Japanese factories, I’m going to be like wtf. You’re going to have to explain yourself.
honestly I see that more as evidence of employment mobility and financial security.
a friend of mine works as a fry-cook as a chain restaurant. He is paid a low wage, and has a dwindling savings account. He told me a story about having to re-caulk toilets at the restaurant during low-traffic hours, I replied with "I thought you were a fry-cook?, he replied with "I do whatever keeps the job."
(i'd have serious misgivings about the history essay, too.. I just tend to think that our willingness to question the duty is just evidence that we're confident we could go elsewhere and write code instead. That confidence isn't intrinsic in the workplace across all professions.)
That is perfectly reasonable. Someone else might gladly learn something interesting on the company dime, even if the topic seems unrelated to the job. For example, if my employers offers me a sailing, woodworking or machining class (neither of which has anything to do with what I work on) I will take it. Sausage making -- I will pass; not my kettle of fish.
> He would demand people do random, pointless tasks for him to show dominance.
Is this just speculation or do you know more examples where he did this?
Given his background of bringing up his political activism during tech conferences he could have just been using it as background for his talks (which has included AI ethics). In that context I could see a connection to Russian politics.
Still likely personal but not "random tasks to show dominance".
I feel if it was for a purpose like this it could be contextualized to the employee (which IMO is necessary if they're going to write anything that is useful for any purpose beyond personal interest)
Ah, but the context of the thread is more than that! The context is around outrage that he got promoted. And being promoted is about a lot more than if someone is a good boss, as painful as that is for many folks working for such a bad boss.
It’s possible to get an immense amount done and/or be remarkable effective despite being a bad boss - if the folks working for them put up with it.
And it isn’t illegal to be a bad boss, as long as someone is bad in specific ways and not others.
Even if it he is unaware of it, it still shows dominance to ask someone to do something outside of the scope of their job. If I asked a coworker to get my coffee, you could say that perhaps I just wanted coffee. But I am also expressing a power dynamic by my expectation that the coworker will do something I can and should damn well do myself.
Then subordinates must show their dominance not doing useless work. I've been in meetings in which I'm the one screaming to my boss in the face. When another boss tried to make me look bad with our superiors, I showed them their ineptitude and bully behavior. A few times had to quit a job due to the toxic environment, but always got more interesting and rewarding jobs. Never felt guilty about crushing a bully.
That's how to get fired. If the boss says "do it" and you say "no" and you each hold your ground, eventually it gets to "do it or you're fired." (In a few companies it might be "do it or you're fired" vs "stop asking or I'll transfer" but it's rarely "stop asking or boss is fired.") A good boss won't let it to that, but that power over another—to hire, promote, and terminate—is what fundamentally defines the hierarchy.
Giving you the benefit of the doubt as to who was toxic at those jobs that ended badly, it still sounds like you're significantly more assertive than most workers. I do agree that people should stand up for themselves regardless of their position in the hierarchy. There's no excuse for mistreatment, and especially these days, consider how someone who's mistreating you may mistreat someone who's more vulnerable.
That's why when any boss asks for something completely irrelevant for the job, in my opinion the correct approach would be to ask for a documented request. i.e. "please, send me an official email with your request". If the boss then goes crazy, then reveals he had no good intentions from start, and yes, it's definitely hard to fight back without eventually get to that point of no return. If that's the case, you then better leave that place before getting fired, which has the side effect of showing that you're not that easy to manipulate. It's not just about self esteem and/or testosterone however: any time diverted from the job to other things could impact the project, and doing that during your time means there's your name stuck to the job at that time; if something goes wrong because of the time spent doing other stuff then it is your fault, so he better gives some good official explanation for demanding that extra work.
I agree with you on success often being in spite of, or regardless of negative traits. That said, there are quite a lot of arseholes at the top... or maybe being at the top allows arseholes to indulge.
Jobs, by most accounts, was a real arsehole. Musk, by some reports, at least at time. Gates too, had a reputation for nastiness. Lots of professors are known for bullying and meanness. Film directors, rock stars.... In fact, most people have encountered areshole bosses at some point.
I'm not saying that arseholery isn't a problem. There's just sense of willful ignorance here. No one wants to admit that they tolerate arseholes in positions of power, but most everyone has them. Creating an environment of no tolerance would be novel, probably hard.
A lot of people confuse being direct and honest with being an asshole.
To elaborate; To me, being an asshole means being mean spirited or verdictive without a purpose for the heck of it. On the other hand telling someone directly that their work isn't acceptable or that something needs to be fixed may feel harsh but it is absolutely necessary to cultivating a functional high performing organization. One of the biggest problems with large bureaucratic organizations is that no one is ever willing to say anything uncomfortable and thus none of the problems are ever dealt with effectively and they devolve into swamps of mediocrity.
I suppose that statement is true in both directions.
Directness and honesty are often missing, and I agree that this can be insulting and perceived as arseholery. Equally, people who are being arseholes at work also confuse their arseholery for directness and honesty.
>> Multiple people said Suleyman would sometimes scream at employees in group meetings and one-on-ones.
This is the behavior you're excusing? If my boss screamed at me, I would tell them to fuck off. I'm shocked you think this is OK behavior, especially from a Google executive.
People are human which means we sometimes lose our cool, but it also means, hey I'm a human so don't fucking scream at me.
If that is the worse accusation we’re hearing from an entirely 1 sided story - that’s pretty mellow. I’ve seen people accuse some of ‘screaming at them’, when they literally never raised their voice and just disagreed with them firmly in a meeting
Exactly - tell him to fuck off. Don't start a media campaign against his career. Tell him to fuck off directly. The "snowflake" aspect here is people not standing up for themselves, but calling on "society" to provide them with perfect bosses.
I trust that the people felt his behaviour was awful. If they don't like working with him, they can switch jobs. Or even complain to higher ups and what not.
What is not OK imo is this appeal to some imaginary "societal moral court" that should somehow punish the guy.
I said they felt he is awful. Maybe he felt they are awful, too. It is a thing that happens in human relationships, that people end up disliking each other. We have only heard one side of the story here.
It is a pretty normal thing that people don't get along with each other, for whatever reason. Just because one party goes public and frames the other as a horrible person, doesn't necessarily mean they really are.
If nobody who is disliked by somebody could become boss, there would only be very few candidates left.
The guy is certainly a terrible leader if these accusations are true. But if worst things he did are giving dumb assignments and being mean to people he's planning to fire, I'm pretty comfortable saying that's not a big deal in the scheme of things. I'm not excusing the behavior, I'd never work for someone who acted like this, but I don't know why it's important news either.
We have not heard the story from all sides with zero bias. So why are we making authoritative conclusions? Some of these threads feels like celebrity tabloid gossip.
Edit: Absolutely baffled by the downvotes. Do we really, truly, factually know all sides of the story? What's the disagreement here?
It’s because this is a second order article. The original, most substantive source that I could find is quite thorough:
https://archive.is/wqdkF
> "He would ask us to do personal things for him," one of these people said. "He said, 'I need you to write a briefing for me on Russian history and politics.' [...] We had absolutely no work in Russia."
I originally made a joke in a now-deleted comment, but then was slightly horrified to hear people excusing this behavior. So here’s a serious one: if you get locked into a prestigious institution under someone like this, run.
EDIT: I should have known this would turn into a sub thread about whether it’s ok to demand an AI researcher brief an executive on Russian political history.
Here’s another one: gossiping about firing someone across the entire office, before you fire them. This article says he did that. I recommend reading through it. I have to go move into our house now, so I can’t paste everything. Suffice to say, the behavior patterns were not productive.
I think people want to recognize DeepMind’s eventual success. Having worked under some effective YC founders vs some Suleyman types, I’ve learned that sometimes a startup can succeed in spite of flaws. And remember, DeepMind was bought by Google. At that point they were the anointed child. Their success wasn’t guaranteed, but it wasn’t as tenuous as pre-billions Google investment.