After New York Times posted an eye-opening report of the circumstances behind Andy Rubin’s departure, Google fired back in an email defending itself. Google CEO Sundar Pichai emailed all Google employees on Thursday that it had fired 48 of its employees in the last two years due to sexual allegations.
Out of the 48 employees, 13 held senior management positions and above. Google claimed none of them received a severance package when they were let go. This email was in response to the bombshell report released by the New York Times on Thursday.
NYT accused Google of protecting senior executives from sexual allegations and giving them handouts on their resignation. According to the CEO, Google has also created tools which employees can use to report incidents of sexual misconduct.
Pichai stated that such incidents could also be reported anonymously, thereby protecting the victim’s identity. Google’s vice president of people’s operations Eileen Naughton also signed off on the email.
As far as Rubin was concerned, the creator of Android received a $90 million bonus, which was to be paid out in sums of $2 million each month. Next month will be the last month of Rubin getting the sum. Rubin who had resigned in 2014, under mysterious circumstances was caught in a number of sexual allegations.
Naturally the father of Android, Rubin had to resign in 2014 but was given a fine farewell. Google’s then CEO Larry Page said in a statement,” I want to wish Andy all the best with what’s next,” With Android, he created something remarkable — with billion-plus happy users. ”
In November of last year, it was revealed that Rubin was forced to resign because he had been sexually involved with a junior member of the Android team. This resulted in Rubin having to take a leave of absence from the startup he had created; Essential.
At that time, Essential was about to release the Essential Phone but had to be pushed back because of this shocking revelation. The New York Times reveals that Rubin was one of three senior male Google members who had been either given huge bonuses after they resigned, or continued working while earning huge sums.
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The charges against Rubin arose due to an extra-marital affair he had with a junior Google employee in a hotel room. It opens a grey area in regards to the employee-boss relation, even though both parties seemed to have consented.
Such actions can have serious ethical and legal repercussions, and every company has to follow the rules to avoid them. So the sexual allegations against Rubin hold up.
Eileen Naughton, Google’s vice president for people operations, said in a statement, “We investigate and take action, including termination. In recent years, we’ve taken a particularly hard line on inappropriate conduct by people in positions of authority. We’re working hard to keep improving how we handle this type of behavior.”
With the #metoo movement growing stronger than ever, it is great to see many brave men and women share their personal stories about sexual harassment. It is not surprising to see more and more people come out to discuss the horrors they had to face.
In the case of Google, it seems like it acted as a massive hypocrite. It knowingly swept Rubin’s past under the rug. Let’s see how Google recovers from this calamity.
Fazeel Ashraf
