It's apparent from reading the article that Google had a widespread and pervasive sexual harassment problem with senior executives freely doing whatever they wanted - that the current chief legal fellow is still there (and got several promotions to the top) after having an extramarital affair and child with another employee in the legal department says everything - he knew all the consequences and how things could turn out and he did it anyways. I would cut a bit of slack to Ms. Simpson, she was only 24, the power imbalance is huge, and reading about the women who have turned down these sort of invitations early in their career is to read a litany of careers crippled. I thought naively that the casting couch was a Hollywood institution but it's just an institution. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/10/ha...

The article says that both founders and the 3rd majority owner triumvirate of Google a violated the company sexually conduct policy. It's part of the founding culture, even before the parade of SVPs.

This. Tone at the top.

Realworld is always more wonderful than novels

You speak in past tense. Some of the mentioned Google execs are still at the company, and they are still in high ranking positions of power.

Was tempted to go further but wanted to hew closely to what was supported by the news story and I also do not have any personal experience or knowledge of current work environment.

> What a dumb gamble, even if he was trying to get laid, the risk/reward just doesn't make sense in the context.

What risk are you thinking of? There has been no consequence for him that I can see. He correctly assessed that there was no risk to him.