On the one hand – work has become such a big part of our lives. If we make it impossible for romance and work to co-exist, that reduces a lot of surface area for finding long-term romantic partners.

On the other – at a certain level of authority and prominence, you just shouldn't have sex with someone you're working with. There's too much that can go wrong. This is the nightmare scenario for at least one of the parties, though we don't know for sure yet who it is.

But even if things don't shit the bed quite this bad, you're just asking for awkwardness and trouble in most cases.

Impossible.

If the company and HR knew about their relationship then his position might not be so impossible.

Sometimes it feels like even talking about a relationship to other people can effect the state of that relationship. It's easy in hindsight to say, hey, you shouldn't have done it this way. But maybe at certain points it looked like it was about to dissolve itself, but didn't... who knows. I can see a few reasons why I wouldn't want to say anything, especially if this person wasn't a direct report.

(This is taking the story at face value – who knows the truth and if there was a more nefarious reason behind the withholding of that information.)

It's a spectrum. Consider two extremes:

Smart and clean: Don't form relationships at the office, period.

Dumb and messy: As CEO, have sex with the office manager of your small startup.

This sounds like something very much in the gray area in between.

Really?

The guy was the COO, almost by definition everyone else in the company reports to him through some direct line.

The guy admitted to having a physical relationship. There is absolutely no gray area here as far as HR would be concerned.

Your a C level exec, you have a physical relationship with someone else at the company, whether or not it stopped before that person arrived, you report it the first moment you know that person starts working at your company.

I agree relationships are messy and life has lots of gray areas. This, however, is not one of them. This is HR 101 and if your still not convinced he admitted he knew this and should have reported it.

Wouldn't want to say anything isn't the same as wouldn't say anything. We do things all the time where we know it's the wrong call, but we want to do it a certain way anyway.

I doubt there's anyone who believes he should have said something more than he. I just get the mindset that clouded things.

I know I should have gone to the gym this week. I didn't. You can probably understand the thinking, moods and circumstances that made that true, but we'd still agree I made the wrong call. That's all I'm saying.

Yeah, it's really feeling like you skipped the part where I explain why the nebulous nature of the relationship might have affected the disclosure.

That said if crazy legal allegations like this come out of it I can understand the pressure. Still, it seems just wrong.

You still have a sexual relationship between two people in the same organization with a big power differential between them.

Shouldn't the proper HR response just be "you need to absolutely not do that?" What can HR do beyond "keeping an eye on things?"

Let's imagine a horribly messy situation. A professor and a graduate student that works in her lab want to become intimate. That's perfectly fine, so long as the professor gives up the ability to determine if they can graduate, dictate what classes they take, dictate pay, etc. Even cleaner because there is a record that the professor is to not be asked to evaluate performance in the future, so there's less likelihood that the other professor could be influenced.

You at some point do have to assume that people are trying to do things correctly, of course. But the more people there are who are aware of the situation the less likely it is that a conspiracy to cover up abuse of power will occur.

But when you realise he's a C-Level exec, it's more a case of "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!"

Basically any sexual harassment training will tell you that yes, it is in fact okay to have a work place relationship so long as you disclose the relationship, and do not have a "evaluatory position" (meaning that either person is allowed to evaluate the performance of the other).

This was like stuff I was told on day one of working a real job. This sounds like an awful situation, so I hope anyone else in a similar situation realizes that disclosure is the only thing that disarms these sorts of situations.

HR is required to keep such things confidential, and there is nothing necessarily wrong with a work place relationship. And if you do this, what can really go wrong? If your relationship explodes into some dramatic fireball, sure, it sucks, but that's the reason you're in a non-evaluatory role. You may have to work in the same building, but at least you don't have your career path impacted by your ex.

If you are a C-level executive then this sort of disclosure is fundamental - a good lesson to take away.

Recommending someone with technical skills work at your startup only crosses a line when you're both porking them and directly making the hiring decision, which if we're taking this at face value, didn't happen.

Keith wrote, “I recommended that he interview at Square.”

The first is a recommendation given to Square. The second is a recommendation given to the thus-far-anonymous party. Big difference.

Perhaps it will come out that Keith did put in a good word at Square, but thus far Keith is denying this.

Or am I missing something really obvious?

edit: I figured it out.

You seem to desire a world where Square is exalted to some sort of sovereign status, answerable to no law beyond their own policies and procedures. Which is a horrifying state of affairs.

If something happened here that is against the law, I am heartened that a legal framework exists to provide remedies. If it did not, I am similarly heartened to note that the accused at least has resources sufficient to mount a defense. We can argue the injustice of a false accusation, if indeed it turns out the accusation was so, but the accused admits maintaining a physical relationship was in poor judgment. This is one of the realities that comes from that level of success. It's a cost of doing business that you must be much, much more cautious in the deployment of your genitals.

You seem to desire a world where Square is exalted to some sort of sovereign status, answerable to no law beyond their own policies and procedures. Which is a horrifying state of affairs.

Why would it be a horrifying state of affairs? I'm not saying you're wrong, I just don't understand!

Well.

It would mean that corporations would exist outside of laws to govern their behavior. And we've already figured out that's a bad idea.

Society, generally, wants it to be illegal to force people to fuck you to keep a job, in an extreme example.

Generally, it wants it to be legal to blow the whistle on illegal activity.

Generally, it wants it to be illegal to prioritize profits over the safety of workers.

Being successful and making lots of money shouldn't relieve your company of accountability under the law.

> Was Square harmed?

Square's reputation would have been harmed by a protracted and public legal battle.

> I guess I just don't see who, other than the couple in question, was harmed here.

There's not a couple here. There's an accuser, who claims that Rabois sexually harassed him and that Square covered for it.

Where it gets complicated for Rabois, I suspect, comes with this line:

"exchanged intimate, personal information, as people in similar relationships often do."

This suggests to me that the accuser has sufficient proof that Rabois can't deny a sexual relationship continuing after the hire. Given the asymmetry of power between these two sexual partners, consent starts to get very muddy to sort out.

So he had to leave, given the very real legal issues this opened for the company.

I'm not saying that's what happened here; rather, the laws against this sort of arrangement are what the alleged "victim" is invoking to bring a case against Mr. Rabois.

Well, we seem to have done that with sports. Or, has Lance Armstrong been indicted yet?

I'm not asserting that Keith did what he's accused of. But many, many other people have, and if we have to choose, I'd rather see the state monopoly on violence used to protect the victims, not the perpetrators.

I don't know Keith, anyone at his company, this story or have any opinion on who did or didn't do what to whom.

I will just say this: The quote above, regardless of who says it when, is perhaps the worst business decision a person could ever make. Full Stop.

Please, don't do this. Especially if you are the boss.

2. "Maybe Bob is the better qualified candidate, but I'm going to promote the guy who's having sex with me"

In the UK, I've never been asked by a company to disclose any office relationships. Usually such relationships are had in the open even between different level employees.

So, the board has considerable power. If the relationship is not open, the board may end up with members with conflicts of interest (COI).

The promotion process at my large (5000 employees) California-based organization was changed a few years ago so that HR has input into every promotion, even junior developers. The board used to have pretty much the last word, but now HR has independent input into the decision, partly to put a check on potential COIs like the one I mentioned above. (There are other reasons too.) There was considerable grumpiness from engineering management, and there is foolishness resulting from the change.

HR: "From what you sent us, it seems like the candidate has a significant role in project X, but not a highly significant role...could you provide additional material to document a highly significant role?"

I assume lawsuits from unhappy employees were the reason for these changes. Large organizations are really afraid of large settlements and bad PR from employee lawsuits. All these questions would be decided by a jury, in a setting ripe for David vs. Goliath thinking.

As for your own experience, note that you've observed open relationships between different level employees. Keith's was not open....so not sure what point you're trying to make.

Put it this way: if everyone knows that senior manager Alice is in a relationship with first year employee Bob...how easy do you think it is for Alice to pull the strings to make sure Bob gets promoted past his merit? Sure, it can happen, but people aren't as likely to not notice it. And so Alice just may not try to pull the strings.

> Square did not know of the relationship before a lawsuit was threatened; it came as a complete surprise to the company.

Is what makes it "perhaps the worst business decision a person could ever make"

The less likely outcome is that everything will go fine forever after.

It will very likely either become a mess (awkward situations, loss of job even for third parties, etc.) or a disaster for everyone involved (like a sexual harassment lawsuit.)

Espcially if you are the boss.

And even more if the person wasn't working there to begin with!

TL:DR Devils Advocate Postion

I guess the answer to your question is...yes?

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/06/masters-their-do...

I knew Thiel was gay - and until today had no idea Rabois was as well. The story you linked to is the first time I've seen this and to see that they were some ultra conservative bible toting rebels is... Bizarre.

Are they Tech's equivalent of the anti-gay senators caught in rest-stop bathrooms?

How weird this got quickly

Or Mother Jones is trying to set up a strawman of them as being homophoboic bigots without realizing that they were actually protesting [1] the then-controversial Stanford speech code, which prohibited much more speech than the government could prohibit. Lawsuits [2] were underway against the speech code and it was a bit of a topic of the day.

As others have pointed out, the safest way to protest a speech code that bans certain slurs against protected groups is to attack your own group. Rabois standing around using anti-gay slurs can easily prove that he's actually protesting the speech code by saying "look, I'm not homophobic, I'm actually gay myself." A bunch of white guys standing around dropping the n-word would not work out as well.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Rabois#Early_life [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corry_v._Stanford

"As others have pointed out, the safest way to protest a speech code that bans certain slurs against protected groups is to attack your own group. Rabois standing around using anti-gay slurs can easily prove that he's actually protesting the speech code by saying "look, I'm not homophobic, I'm actually gay myself.""

Also, if he were a closeted homosexual it would make sense as to why he didn't tell Square about the relationship.

first-year law student Keith Rabois - refused to answer their questions, but sent a letter to the Stanford Daily confirming the allegations. "Admittedly, the comments made were not very articulate, not very intellectual nor profound," Rabois wrote. "The intention was for the speech to be outrageous enough to provoke a thought of 'Wow, if he can say that, I guess I can say a little more than I thought.' " http://news.stanford.edu/pr/92/920212Arc2432.html

Because obviously, the world is a poorer, fundamentally less free place if we're not allowed to harrass people by shouting we hope they die of AIDs. Thiel at least later admitted embarrassment over the whole episode.

The bona fide bigots have more integrity.

http://news.stanford.edu/pr/92/920212Arc2432.html

I am confused.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Rabois#Early_life

http://news.stanford.edu/pr/92/920212Arc2432.html

He's gone through something as traumatic as a lawsuit, a resignation, potential for trial, potential embarrassment of family, friends, colleagues all in the last two weeks... And his sign-off is that he has, in the midst of it all, already begun to work on a new startup?

People expect stupid things. Everyone copes with adversity differently. Having something to occupy your mind is something I would expect. It doesn't matter as much what it is.

Yeah - that was a really weird thing to end it with.

Almost as if this post was written under the intense emotional stress that such things can cause - and make you do and say weird things.

I agree that it feels tacked on there. Probably would've been better to close with a "thanks for all of the support and understanding..." and wrap it up.

Even then with a single date I wouldn't feel any need to report a single date unless they were reporting to me fairly directly and I was covering my ass.

A CEO is on everyone's reporting line and is also potentially a target so there is more of a reason for them to be careful and to report things.

None of this matters to me know as I'm married and am currently a one man company with no plans for staff growth.

The more disclosure, the less likely that it would escalate. At the very least, there would be records that either party could use if something improper happened. For instance, there would now be written records if later on the person with more power did attempt to influence promotions that they should have explicitly not been allowed to be involved in that process.

I don't know why the UK would be different from the US from a legal standpoint, except perhaps just generally that the US is a more litigious society lately.

And because a reporting relationship between sexual partners is a bad idea.

"I think we need to let X go" could take on a whole new context if the speaker was just dumped by X.

For example, if I have just been fired by the manager who I just dumped, I go to HR and have them resolve the situation then and explain the conflict of interest given that we were in a relationship. The manager is given a talking to, I keep my job and the situation is resolved. Please explain how this situation plays out differently under your rules.

I would counsel against but not fire engineers who were dating each other within a group (and, in a larger organization, if it's outside of a specific group, wouldn't be a problem. I think a good manager would give them each an opportunity to change roles so they're not directly working together.)

In the intermediate case of a manager dating a direct report, the problem is with the manager, not the direct report.

COO/founders/etc. don't get any slack for things like that, though, even if they are not directly managing the other relationship party.

And if you read that, you're still asking why HR has any right to know if their executives are in a possible enanglement with a subordinate?

OK, maybe you have a reflexive hate of HR. don't fixate on them. Instead, pretend you were in the shoes of Square's founders or major investors, and you're reading a lawsuit that accuses your COO of sexual harassment, the kind of sexual harassment allegation that can only come from a COO who broke standard operating procedure (I.e. not informing HR of this)

Would you think the investors and partners are more angrier or less angrier than you right now?

A person no matter what level he is at who has a genuine consensual relationship with another employee should not cause the company any issues which HR would need to resolve so I still don't understand the need to declare all such relationships to them.

For what it's worth, in the UK it's perfectly OK to have a secret office romance and such things are not required to be declared. It could be that our cultural differences are the main reason for this difference in opinion.

“The first we heard of any of these allegations was when we received the threat of a lawsuit two weeks ago. We took these allegations very seriously and we immediately launched a full investigation to ascertain the facts. While we have not found evidence to support any claims, Keith exercised poor judgment that ultimately undermined his ability to remain an effective leader at Square. We accepted his resignation.”

Anyone could have registered that tumblr, and it has no other content.

Please leave tabloid gossip to the tabloids until real information is available - and then leave it off HN.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/25/rabois-left-square-over-sex...

It could be legit, but the bar should be higher than this.

http://allthingsd.com/20130125/keith-rabois-long-statement-o...

[edit to add the question]

People say: you should NOT hire your partner.

So, you should NOT hire friends? So, you should NOT hire people you like? So, you should NOT hire people for who you have any opinion? So, you should NOT have any hobbies other employees can have?

Our decisions are obviously biased by our feelings, and it's normal, we want people reliable, people we can trust! What's wrong with that?

In some cases, we want objective decisions. In these cases, you should just recognize your incapacity to be unbiased and let other people take the decision.

When I read the blog post, Keith didn't seem to have faced a such case, so non-disclosed his relationship seemed to have been the best decision to avoid to influence other people decisions.

It's common to meet the "love of our life" where we work, I don't understand why it should be forbidden to those who have a management role.

If he is in the same situation that I was in, I can only feel sorry for both parties as it is such a terrible thing to happen.

(posting annonamusly for obvious reasons)

Everybody seems to be on his side without having the details.

The large potential financial payoff from a successful lawsuit gives the accuser a motive to lie or misremember.

Also, people are notoriously bad about communicating with each other about relationships. So it's possible that the accuser genuinely thought he was being coerced, when this was not actually the case. I.e. if he'd simply broken up with Mr. Rabois instead of filing a lawsuit, there might have been no work-related consequences whatsoever; but he didn't believe this.

Who is bringing this lawsuit?

The person he had the relationship with?

If not, who else and why/how would they have any grounds to do so?

EDIT: It appears the relationship ended in December (http://allthingsd.com/20130125/exclusive-interview-keith-rab...).

I guess that that opens up the options for who was possibly behind it and what the possible motivation was.

Keith is an excellent human being and I am confident he acted appropriately (with the exception of being too trusting of this guy, and recommending him for Square, which was probably a mistake, but not a malicious act, rather an overly-generous act).

I am confident I would react much more poorly in this situation.

His judgement was bad? Enough to fire him over?

Or this another case of a corporation putting overly politically correct perception and avoidance of risk beyond taking care of their own?

If you believe Mr. Rabois' story, he did nothing wrong, and the allegations are baseless.

So, why is Square peeved enough to let him go? I don't believe for an instance that Mr. Rabois is leaving out of altruistic ideals for Square.

I don't mean rape (or else I think Keith's response would have a different approach). How Keith describes it, it could be anything relationship-related, just as sexual harassment does not necessarily involve sex.

If I were to enter into a relationship with you, and I said that the only way I would continue the relationship is if you kept it under wraps, then is that really qualification as sexual harassment?

The fact that we provide legal representation for people who have the choice to discontinue a relationship is beyond me.

But Keith, according to his note, did not let Square know. And as much as you want to say "what, can't someone's love life be their own business?"...well, not when such an engagement presents legal liabilities and possible conflicts of interests. Even if Keith did nothing wrong toward the accuser, the company can understandably be upset that he did not notify them of the relationship...because stuff like this happens...

The accuser is claiming that Keith sexually harassed him into interviewing for a job at Square? Or did the harassment start once the accuser was hired? Or both?

I'm not sure how the company fits into the picture until the guy was actually hired and working there.

1. Know Keith or the accuser personally, and therefore have the capacity to make an educated guess as to the veracity of the claims?

2. Believe that rich people, well known people, or people with blogs don't have the capacity to do what Keith is accused of doing?

3. Believe the first side of the story you hear in any given situation?

If neither 1, 2, nor 3 is the case, I urge you to not jump to conclusions. There's a human being on the other side of the story.

I can't side with either party right now (due to the lack of facts), but I certainly feel more for Keith than I do the other, anonymous party.

Not really, we're biased to the alleged victim (aka the accuser). Granted, not as much as if it was female but still.

If empathy is a car fueled by how vocal you are in expressing yourself, well... that's not so good.

It's a shakedown - and successful entrepreneurs need to start getting smarter about this shit. We've actually got something to lose now.

Consider the following, which are presumably objectively verifiable facts:

A. Mr. Rabois doesn't name his accuser. If he was looking to inflict damage on them, he'd publicize it.

B. The accuser is seeking a payment of "millions of dollars."

C. The relationship began several months before the accuser's employment with Square.

D. The two came into relatively little contact at work.

These facts all show a high probability that the relationship was consensual, and also give a low probability that the accuser will be able to produce conclusive proof of coercion, such as:

. Texts or emails from the accuser saying Mr. Rabois's advances were unwelcome or made him uncomfortable.

. Evidence that Mr. Rabois gave the accuser job-related threats and/or rewards in exchange for the continuing relationship.

This does not conclusively show, of course, that Mr. Rabois is innocent. Nor does it mean the accuser doesn't have a solid case that will stand up in court. But based on the available information, this does seem to be the likelier outcome.

B. Allegedly.

C. It could easily go bad later, leading to "if we break up I'll get you fired" type statements.

D. An executive of this level has enough power to at least make the threat of punitive actions have weight.

I don't think we have anything to go on beyond a blog post from one of the parties.

(IANAL, I just remember this from an engineering law class)

I absolutely hate seeing innocent people have their reputations and lives trashed by someone who places a false claim against them. Innocent until proven guilty is a good policy to maintain, especially as everyone contorts a story to fit his or her views and agenda.

Given the 4 word response, I thought I'd mention that standards from criminal law will not apply here and that the case will be decided on a balance of probabilities. I don't know this guy but I do hope he gets a fair shake in court.

It's not just criminal law, it's a fundamentally decent way to treat people.