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Google Employees Explain How They Were Retaliated Against For Reporting Abuse (vice.com) 218

Posted by BeauHD from the show-and-tell dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Sexual harassment, gaslighting, broken promises of promotion, gender-based discrimination, and racism. Motherboard has obtained a document written by 45 different Google employees alleging they've experienced of all the above. The document lays bare how working at Google -- a company whose motto was once "don't be evil" -- has become really hard for a lot of people. The document is a collection of stories submitted by Googlers as part of an internal campaign to highlight cases of retaliation. The stories in the document were collected after the organizers of the Google Walkout, Meredith Whittaker and Claire Stapleton, published an open letter about being retaliated against after speaking out, according to a current Google employee.

"I identify as a LatinX female and I experienced blatant racist and sexist things from my coworker. I reported it up to where my manager knew, my director knew, the coworker's manager knew and our HR representative knew. Nothing happened. I was warned that things will get very serious if continued," one Googler wrote. "I definitely felt the theme of 'protect the man' as we so often hear about. No one protected me, the victim. I thought Google was different." You can read the full document here. Below are just some of the quotes shared by Google employees in the document. Each story goes under a heading. Some examples include: "Punished for reporting sexual jokes"; "Fearful of physical retaliation," "My 10+ years of experience and trajectory was sabotaged for reporting unethical behavior," "I reported my abuser and found I wasn't the first one," and "Ethics & Compliance aren't always so ethical." Eileen Naughton, Google's vicepresident of People Operations, the company's name for the human resources department, said: "Reporting misconduct takes courage and we want to provide care and support to people who raise concerns. All instances of inappropriate conduct reported to us are investigated rigorously, and over the past year we have simplified how employees can raise concerns and provided more transparency into the investigations process at Google. We work to be extremely transparent about how we handle complaints and the action we take."
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Google Employees Explain How They Were Retaliated Against For Reporting Abuse More

Google Employees Explain How They Were Retaliated Against For Reporting Abuse

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  • It's a real coincidence... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by RightSaidFred99 ( 874576 ) on Monday September 23, 2019 @06:47PM (#59228670)

    It's just such a coincidence that the people Google tends to hire would be so high maintenance. Just one of those weird things I guess. Google should keep hiring the same people, I'm sure it will turn out different!

    On the other hand, as someone over 40 who isn't a dramatic, hysterical weirdo like at least 30% of those under 35 are, I'm liking my job prospects over the next 15 years as employers get sick of this shit and notice a pattern. Wonder if they'll make "reverse age discrimination" a thing.

    • Re:It's a real coincidence... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Monday September 23, 2019 @07:14PM (#59228786)

      It's just such a coincidence that the people Google tends to hire would be so high maintenance. Just one of those weird things I guess. Google should keep hiring the same people, I'm sure it will turn out different!

      I'm no fan of Google (anymore) but to be fair, Google employs 103,459 people as of Q1 2019. 45 people throwing a fit is an acceptable margin considering their overall size.

      I agree their is an issue with ageism but I disagree with the idea that it would reduce the number of people throwing a fit because nutcases come in all ages.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Shh, but the whole Google image thing, an exercise in marketing, all an illusion, the number one thing Google advertise is Google, treat everything as a lie coming from that organisation, much of it will be. A lot of the hype to access staff cheaper, get some religious fanaticism going, all lies. They are a greedy nasty advertising agency who will sell any product with any lie, Google is the worst of the advertisers. We they talk about don't be evil, they mean upon the basis of, 'In God We trust' as on US c

    • Re:It's a real coincidence... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by swillden ( 191260 ) <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Monday September 23, 2019 @07:37PM (#59228890) Journal

      It's just such a coincidence that the people Google tends to hire would be so high maintenance. Just one of those weird things I guess. Google should keep hiring the same people, I'm sure it will turn out different!

      OTOH, consider that Google has over 100K employees, and in a few months 45 such stories were collected... and the stories themselves cover a period of a couple of years. I don't want to minimize the issues suffered by any mistreated employee, but I find it hard to believe that any company could be so perfectly well-managed as to not have a couple dozen cases per year where employees were pretty badly treated. Or, as you imply, that a couple dozen employees might feel mistreated even when they aren't. I prefer to give the benefit of the doubt to the individuals.

      As a Google employee myself I do have some concern about the alleged retaliation against the organizers of the walkout. That sort of thing could have a chilling effect on future protests (though I've seen no evidence of it so far), and I think that's a potential problem. It's important that employees feel free to protest actions by the company if a large enough percentage of them are bothered by it. Personally, I didn't join the walkout, but some others on my team did and I supported their action even though I didn't agree with their complaint.

      On the other hand, as someone over 40 who isn't a dramatic, hysterical weirdo like at least 30% of those under 35 are, I'm liking my job prospects over the next 15 years as employers get sick of this shit and notice a pattern. Wonder if they'll make "reverse age discrimination" a thing.

      FWIW, in my nearly 10 years with Google I've seen no evidence of age discrimination. A large percentage of new hires are straight out of college (mostly grad school), which does skew the employee population young, but I'm in my 50s and I've worked with guys in their 60s and one in his mid-70s. Of course, my experience is anecdotal.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Hodr ( 219920 )

        It's important that employees feel free to protest actions by the company if a large enough percentage of them are bothered by it.

        Why is this important? I understand protected worker rights, etc. but why should people feel entitled to protest who their employer does business with, or what type of products they sell (assuming no laws are broke)? They are free to get another job if it bothers them.

        Why would they expect a business to be welcoming or not "retaliate" when they do things that hurt the bottom line. You live in one of (if not THE) densest area of venture capital and IT talent in the world. If enough of you truly feel this w

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Shaitan ( 22585 )

        "As a Google employee myself I do have some concern about the alleged retaliation against the organizers of the walkout. That sort of thing could have a chilling effect on future protests (though I've seen no evidence of it so far),"

        I think that is a good thing. Anyone who protests at work should be fired. It isn't government. It isn't a democracy. You aren't ENTITLED to anything there except pay for what you've already done. Employees walking about and staging protests are disruptive influences. It doesn't

    • Reverse sexual orientation discrimination is already a thing. You're gay? Great. You're hired. You're far less likely to have kids, that alone is more than enough reason to want you.

      • It's a thing, see, I can define it therefore it exists.

        You haven't added anything to the discussion except your private conspiracy theory about why some people got hired.

        • I don't believe IT corporations actively seek out and prioritize certain sexual orientations over others. They are, though, forced to actively seek more females than males, and are much less likely to fire certain sexual orientations over others, the reason being simple: fear of retaliation.

          My experience is anecdotal as well, but there are a few transgenders in my company, one of them worked less and less as time went by and there was an attempt to fire that person, however after one visit to HR that person

          • You know people who are worse than mere wastes of oxygen? The ones that actively fuck things up and make much more work for other people, and are obnoxious about it too? I know a few of them and they're all dudes. The division keeps hiring more people because they're not productive enough.

            Companies make lots of poor decisions for lots of poor reasons. In tech most of those involve men because we're heavily in the majority.

            As for not actively seeking out anyone not of the pattern, sure, I mean there are like

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Hodr ( 219920 )

      . Wonder if they'll make "reverse age discrimination" a thing.

      Uh, I think that's just called age discrimination. And just because you work in a field where it's commonly the old discriminated against doesn't mean the other way isn't prevalent other places. Try being a young manager in a financial institution, or a young lawyer, or a young doctor. Hell, even surgeons shit on their young despite a steady hand and keen eye being critical to their profession.

  • We struck that motto off our charter and made sure we burned every document that had that motto. We are now working on Google Time Machine to go back to the past and stop ourselves from using that motto to begin with.

  • Happened to me (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ryzilynt ( 3492885 ) on Monday September 23, 2019 @06:50PM (#59228678)

    I was never an employee of Google.

    But I did exercise FMLA when my youngest daughter was born at 29 weeks.

    I had arranged coverage for everything except Wednesdays. So I followed the FMLA procedure and paperwork to be able to care for my daughter on Wednesdays.

    My daughter did well , and when we were out of the woods i returned to full time employment.

    Once enough time had passed to preclude any sense of "retaliation" they manufactured a reason to let me go.

    And yes it was certainly manufactured.

    • I think one of the problem is that Google claims to be different but the reality has always been, even at google, that the reporting mechanism exists solely to protect Google, not the employee. Just like any other company, the existence of these reporting mechanisms is to protect the company from lawsuits, it's not to correct problems or prevent harrasement.

      Many Millennials don't tend to know this because they aren't old enough to have seen the transition and the roll out of these campaigns and/or the lawsu

  • "I identify as a LatinX female" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Jarwulf ( 530523 ) on Monday September 23, 2019 @06:56PM (#59228698)
    Anybody who says something like this unironically is probably not someone destined to be a happy camper or easy to get along with regardless of whatever situation they find themselves in. Also; Google, Sweden, California...I think we have more than enough evidence now to put to bed the notion that catering to these people will ever satisfy anyone or solve anything long term. The more you give, the more they'll take. The most 'woke' corporations and countries have the most rabid SJWs.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday September 23, 2019 @07:24PM (#59228838)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: "I identify as a LatinX female" (Score:5, Funny)

        by poity ( 465672 ) on Monday September 23, 2019 @08:55PM (#59229134)

        They dislike the genericized "Latino" as they perceive it to not include women (never mind that it is gender neutral when used generically). They also dislike "Latina" as they perceive it, in combination with "Latino", to reinforce the idea that there are two genders (and also grammatically clumsy as a genericized term). So they use "LatinX" to maximize perceived inclusively in both the ethnicity and gender. Notice it's really just about their own perceptions, since for ordinary people "Latino" was already flexible and broad. It's the equivalent of the evolution from "mankind" to "womenkind" to "peoplekind".

        Due to the infinite permeability of special cases provided by intersectionality, and in combination with the overriding desire to not be perceived as noninclusive, labels like "LatinX" will always be short-lived, needing to be replaced by evermore "inclusive" terms as the proponents of such language simultaneously divide themselves into evermore finer grained identities. Imagine a magnet powered car with the other magnet on a stick attached to it. It accelerates to nowhere really fucking fast. In this instance, "Latino" was their former location, and "LatinX" is the location they have now accelerated to in the magnet car of inclusively.

        At the G's they're pulling (or rather, perceive to be pulling), they'll fling past "LatiNativeX" in no time. And then, to infinity. Good luck everyone. No need to buckle up.

        • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Latina and Latino are gendered where as most racial/cultural designations are not. Latinx just makes speaking easier because you don't have to worry about using the wrong one, and as you say it also offers a word for non-binary people too.

          Honestly if the use of the word Latinx is enough to trigger you, this story may not be for you. There are serious issues at Google it seems, worthy of discussion.

          • Are you a Spanish speaker? 'Latino' is not necessarily gendered. It can mean both sexes. SJWs are apparently trying to change the language to be more victim friendly. More things to be victimized and fake angry about.

          • Re: "I identify as a LatinX female" (Score:5, Insightful)

            by sabbede ( 2678435 ) on Tuesday September 24, 2019 @08:33AM (#59230400)
            Those are Spanish words. Spanish is heavily inflected for gender, English is weakly inflected in general, and effectively uninflected for gender. In Spanish, German, Italian, French, and most other Indo-European, Semitic and African languages, nouns have gender.

            The invented term, "latinx", appears to be the result of a political decision to alter or ignore the rules of another language. This is rather disrespectful, and would seem to indicate that some people think Spanish is somehow inferior. Something they can toy with or discard to further an agenda of cultural destruction.

            It's appallingly arrogant.

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by serviscope_minor ( 664417 )

              This is arguably one of the most histrionic posts in the entire thread. I'd be careful about clutching your pearls quite that hard, you might actually crush them.

              Yes English is not going to use the rules of Spanish because it's English not Spanish. Neither superior not inferior, but it is different and has different rules.

          • Latinx just makes speaking easier

            I don't see how that could be true; it's unpronounceable in English and Spanish.

    • Re:"I identify as a LatinX female" (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sabbede ( 2678435 ) on Tuesday September 24, 2019 @08:09AM (#59230350)
      Yeah, that string of words is a big red flag indicating that it isn't worth listening to anything that follows. For one, saying, "I identify as", instead of, "I am", suggests one is just playing pretend; that it is not what they are. To immediately follow that up with a non-word, "Latinx", indicates that they care more about some political agenda than how the Spanish language works; that non-English languages are not worthy of respect. It's an example of something the "PC" crowd likes to complain about - cultural appropriation.

      • Not just that, but you don't get to change whether you're Latin[x] by identification. If you could be trans-racial, Dolezal would still be running the NAACP.

        (Then again, if you can be trans-gendered, why can't you be trans-racial?)

  • I ignored (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23, 2019 @07:03PM (#59228736)

    Everything following ""I identify as a LatinX female and I experienced blatant racist and sexist things from my coworker. "

    The moment you start a line with "I identify as", I"m ignoring you.
    If you have to tell me how you identify, and that is supposed to influence my belief in the veracity of your statement, you've already lost.

    For example:
    "Your honor, I identify as a black man, and I saw the defendant shoot his wife".
    The race and gender has nothing to do with the act.

    Yes, yes, I know "but she's part of a marginalized group'. stop marginalizing yourself.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • The correct English phrase is "I am a",

        Yeah about that... that phrase has been rendered thoroughly meaningless for decades in America.

        Howdy y'all I'm Irish!

        Really? Where are you born?

        Arkansas, like me pappy, grand pappy and great grand pappy before him.

        Ok, so...

        My great grand mother on my father's mother's side sailed in from Bristol (via Dublin).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        What is the difference between an African and an African American? They could be twins with near identical DNA, separated at birth with one taken to America.

        The difference is in the culture they identify with. Hence "I identity as" is used.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Livius ( 318358 )

      "I identify as a LatinX female and "

      ...from that point on she has zero credibility regarding racism and sexism.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The implication here is that being a LatinX woman is related to the racism and sexism. That's why it's mentioned.

      Note that she doesn't provide evidence to convince you of the veracity of her statements, because she isn't trying to convince you at all. She probably doesn't give a shit if you believe her or not. What matters is how Google reacted to her complaints and I'm sure all she wants is fair treatment by them, not you.

      • Fair treatment would be for no one to ever hire her whiny little ass again for a good job. She should be frying burgers or washing dishes. Although I wouldn't hire her for either job because people like that are toxic to any work environment and will inevitably try to get extra money in the courts just for being born gloriously as a privileged female.

        The real problem with these selfish hysterical unstable women is that they will eventually ruin things for all women. I would not hire an American female under

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Sheesh, I hope you aren't anybody's boss. Good thing your account is semi-anonymous too as you just admitted to breaking hiring discrimination laws - ageism and sexism.

          Did it ever occur to you that any issues you have are because you are a terrible person and anyone good is pushed away by that, meaning you end up with the desperate ones who couldn't find a better job and are constantly looking for something better?

    • More, this person may be either female nor Hispanic. If she cannot truthfully state "I am" instead of "I identify as" then we are in the realm of delusion and mental illness.

  • Alternate discrimination explanation (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Empiric ( 675968 ) on Monday September 23, 2019 @07:03PM (#59228738)

    "I identify as a LatinX female..."

    Maybe Google just recoiled at the data inefficiency of using an X to obscure one's gender, then adding six more characters to immediately re-specify it.

  • HR (Score:3)

    by jebrick ( 164096 ) on Monday September 23, 2019 @07:10PM (#59228770)

    As many people fine out, HR is for the company, not for the employee.

  • "Punished for reporting sexual jokes" (Score:3, Interesting)

    by beepsky ( 6008348 ) on Monday September 23, 2019 @07:19PM (#59228814)
    "Punished for reporting sexual jokes"

    Please keep doing this. People without a sense of humor are the worst, especially when they're cunts who report everybody whenever they don't get the job

    • Re:"Punished for reporting sexual jokes" (Score:4, Insightful)

      by imidan ( 559239 ) on Monday September 23, 2019 @08:07PM (#59228982)

      I'm a straight white guy, and I have worked with a guy who was a never-ending source of sexual and racist "jokes." I never reported him, but after a couple of months, I wished every time I worked with him that he'd just shut the fuck up and do his job. Any tactful suggestion that he do just that was met with more laughing, sneering, "it was only a joke" or "no, you don't get it." Yes, I got it, man. Your shitty old boomer joke about how you hate your ugly wife but want to fuck her anyway just wasn't funny. God, it was like a goddamn clown show you couldn't turn off. It wasn't even so much that I was offended by his shit; it was that he seemed to genuinely believe he was hilarious, and if you didn't think so, too, you had to endure his constant, pathetic attempts to make you feel somehow inferior for not appreciating his humor.

      Anyway. People who mistakenly think they have a sense of humor are, indeed, the worst.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bert64 ( 520050 )

        But it sounds like it wasn't the fact that his jokes were sexual or racist, just the fact that his jokes weren't very good and he wouldn't shut up about them...

        There are plenty of people like that who make non sexual, non racist jokes and they are just as annoying.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by imidan ( 559239 )
          Well, you're right. And they weren't all sexual or racist. He had a never-ending supply of blond jokes, for example.

  • LatinX female (Score:5, Interesting)

    by anarcobra ( 1551067 ) on Monday September 23, 2019 @07:33PM (#59228878)
    What's the point of not saying latina if you're going to put female right after it?

    • Re:LatinX female (Score:4, Funny)

      by JoeDuncan ( 874519 ) on Monday September 23, 2019 @07:47PM (#59228916)

      It's a conflict between knowing the facts of what you want to say, and not being competent enough in Orwellian "doublespeak/newspeak" to render it completely obfuscated and nonsensical.

      If you are good enough add it, you can completely remove any truth whatsoever from what you're saying, if you suck at it, the truth will show through.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Maybe she's a programmer and realizes that using an identifier that actually implies two values (race and gender) is a bad idea, and that instinct to normalize data kicked in.

      Also the availability of Latinx is useful for non-binary people. Again, maybe she's a developer and knows that bool isn't a good data type for gender.

  • Poor Communication skills (Score:3)

    by Martin S. ( 98249 ) on Monday September 23, 2019 @08:00PM (#59228952) Journal

    It seems that many of them complain about get criticised for poor communication skills, which seem justified by the low quality of their write ups.

  • I wonder if any of these people have considered that they were, in fact, the problem.

    Some of the stories in the document sound to me like the individuals had poor managerial skills and were dealt with accordingly, or perhaps care more about "identifying" who they are than getting their job done.

    • Nope, from what I have read in the doc., none of them have the level of self-awareness to even consider their own behaviour as relevant.

  • I hate what Google turned into, and for most all the reasons from complaints I've read here and on other sites like ycombinator. But I was looking through these "anonymous employee complaints" and I cracked up.

    Most all the folks with these type complaints need to grow a thicker skin or get a job from home, or move back in with parents or something.

    People at work as time goes by tend to form friendships, and friends can say shit around each other that they wouldn't say to a complete stranger. On top of that

  • Have any of you read the actual document?

    Holy hells is it a steaming pile!

    Most of the complaints amount to:

    "I felt X was discriminatory, and reported them to HR, who *investigated the incident* instead of simply believing me and firing X right away!"

    Seriously, these people are mostly complaining about the fact that HR actually investigated their complaints (instead of simply taking them at their word) and that when disciplinary action *was* taken, it wasn't "immediate firing".

    This is a whole boatload of peo

    • They have to learn the hard way that the real world doesn't hand out participation trophies and that employees have other priorities than teachers. Teachers first and foremost want that everyone is quiet and that there is nobody causing a stir, productivity (i.e. learning) comes later. It's the opposite out in the reality where productivity is paramount.

    • Well that's how it works on Twitter. Why wouldn't it work the same way within Google?

  • ... when you let gender-studies and hashtag pseudo-feminists run your agenda.

    The recent restrictions on open discussion at Google are a reaction to wackos taking "open culture" overboard.

    Maybe they should update and trim their code of conduct.
    My suggestion:
    1.) Don't be a douche.
    2.) Don't be a whiny wimp.
    3.) Treat others with fairness and respect.
    4.) Do your job and strive to do it well.

    My 2 eurocents.

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