If they had fired him under more favorable circumstances his payout would have been significantly higher.
I don't understand your point of view here. If I sell something to someone else, I'm not expecting to get more payout for it fifteen years down the line unless some kind of residual was explicitly negotiated in the original sale agreement. Acquisitions would never happen at all if the acquiring company was on the hook for unbounded amounts of money decades later just because they made it successful. This point of view seems very un-businesslike. Andy Rubin was not owed that $90M, it shouldn't have been paid to him, and Google has admitted to its mistake and will not be paying out in similar cases going forward.
2. It doesn't matter what their deal was. It matters what public perception is. I'm talking entirely about public perception.
Regardless of what their deal was, Google has to send a signal that _impacts future deals_. If the general developer public thinks that Android was acquired for too little, then we will all be reluctant to sell our projects to Google. That's the whole point.
It has nothing to do with him thinking Google treated him fairly. It has to do with whether we think we could keep a company going long enough to make more money than his payout on _our_ work.
Google needs to make more Android-like deals in the future.
> If the general developer public thinks that Android was acquired for too little, then we will all be reluctant to sell our projects to Google. That's the whole point.
I'm still not understanding the point here. If you agree to sell your company for price $X, it doesn't matter who you're selling to; you've sold for that amount. If you think you should get more than $X, then don't sell to Google, or anyone else for that matter, for only $X. If you want less up front but more money over time as part of an incentive structure, then negotiate for that as part of the acquisition (which Andy Rubin did do and was paid out for). All of this is independent from a severance payout fully 15 years after the acquisition.
I think you'd be hardpressed to find a founder that wouldn't sell to Google for what they consider the right price if he didn't get $90M. Do you think any football players don't want to play for the Patriots, because Aaron Hernandez wasn't supported by them? People get that all bets are off with criminally poor behavior.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/technology/google-sexual-... https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/25/18023364/google-andy-rub...
Also, take a step back and consider how there was a worldwide walkout of 10k+ employees. That wouldn't have happened if Google's hands were tied here and they had been contractually forced to pay that money out to Andy Rubin. The outrage was because they knew about his misconduct and yet still chose to let him "retire" and give him a big amount of extra money, rather than firing him and giving him the $0 he was legally entitled to.
In settling on terms favorable to two of the men, Google protected its own interests. The company avoided messy and costly legal fights, and kept them from working for rivals as part of the separation agreements.
Real life isn't a melodrama. I suspect there's plenty of nuance here.
> If someone walks away with 8-digit sums, there were contracts involved
The NYT article is pretty unequivocal that that is false, even if you want to pull out quotes talking about different issues.
> paying them millions of dollars as they departed, even though it had no legal obligation to do so.
They had no legal obligation to pay the severance.
If you want to discuss a different reason to pay $90 million to someone fired for sexual harassment, fine.
But your original comment was unequivocally wrong, let's just recognize that.
In this case, the norm in question was respectful argumentation grounded in empirical evidence. Why does it matter that that norm belongs to a dominant majority?
It matters
a. if the norm is actually universally applied - I find that this norm of respectful argumentation is not universally applied.
Remember: this is a twitter argument entirely unrelated to what Timnit is under discussion for now. Elon Musk and Linus have had unrelated arguments where they engaged in very offensive argumentation (calling their opponents pedophiles, telling them to kill themselves) without any evidence, yet I rarely see these issues brought up on unrelated issues about them. But for Timnit, it's a scarlet letter she has to bear.
b. I think we substantially underestimate how frustrating it might be to be a scientist of color where people are constantly discounting your expertise (because, yes, Timnit is an expert.) I'm sure seeing that same sentiment for the ith+1 time can evoke strong emotions and we are not necessarily seeing the context.
Regardless, maybe not an incredible look for Timnit but not super huge in the context of a large body of work.
I agree that people should try to be kind and charitable to each other, and this conversation didn't show that.
That said, I think we also have to be cognizant of the way "civility" is not objective/neutral, often relies on codifying the norms of a dominant majority, and also preserves the status quo.
It might not have been very "civil" for instance when Google employees walked out of the office, but I also don't think it was "civil" when Google paid $90 million to someone fired for sexual harassment.
Sometimes big problems can't be met just with civil discourse, it's why many of us still voted for Biden (for instance) even after he told Trump to "shut up."