> 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.

Imagine a company with the official policy that feeding your kids is not important. Can employees off that company now starve their children without fear of legal consequence? How about beating up fellow employees - oh too bad, you should have worked somewhere with a policy against assault?

So managers should be allowed to require their employees to have sex with them as a condition of their continued employment?

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.