After DeepMind’s cofounder was placed on leave for bullying, Google promoted him
I see a lot of people saying this seems not a big deal, or that his leadership deserved promotion.<p>It’s because this is a second order article. The original, most substantive source that I could find is quite thorough:<p><a href="https://archive.is/wqdkF" rel="nofollow">https://archive.is/wqdkF</a><p>> "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."<p>I originally made a joke in a now-deleted comment, but then was slightly horrified to hear people excusing this behavior.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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.