
Google Employees Explain How They Were Retaliated Against for Reporting Abuse - ForFreedom
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vb53wy/45-google-employees-explain-how-they-were-retaliated-against-for-reporting-abuse
======
TallGuyShort
I don't really know what anyone* can do to address some of these, as
unacceptable as the occurrence of these stories are. Reading through the
document (linked to by SolaceQuantum), there's one case where someone felt
unprotected by HR because they asked HR not to investigate and HR did, and
claimed to have fired the person for other HR problems. I'm not sure what HR
should have done there. Are they supposed to not at least investigate serious
accusations so they know what happened, even if they never reveal who reported
the manager?

There are other stories where someone claims something that can't be proven
and that was either not witnessed, or must have been denied by everyone. Yeah
it sucks if everyone on your team is protecting a douche, but... is HR
supposed to intervene and fire someone because only one person claims
something happened?

edit: *I mean anyone in HR. Obviously the team members protecting people are
at fault in the first place. If you're on the victim side of this, you have to
have a paper trail. Even messaging a coworker, "Didn't [boss]'s joke bother
you? Where he/she [dropped the N-word | kept talking about sex]?" Then HR
investigation can't say there's no evidence. If it progresses to the point of
a lawsuit, now you actually have evidence.

~~~
jm4
That's a complaint from someone who doesn't understand the function of HR. HR
isn't there to protect the employee. They are there to protect the company
while giving the impression they are there for the employees. Sometimes that
means they protect both at the same time. It always means they operate in the
company's interests, sometimes to the detriment of an employee or employees.

A lot of what I hear about google sounds like what you get when you let the
inmates run the asylum. For example, allowing political discussions on company
forums or letting employees get the impression they have some social
responsibility or a responsibility to take a position is just a recipe for
disaster. What you end up with is conflict and immaturity in the workplace
because politics and career have combined to become part of their identity.
That's toxic in the type of organization that has historically been
disconnected from politics and social causes. It's no surprise this kind of
stuff is going on and people are chalking it up to retaliation for this, that
or the other thing. In normal companies, people get moved around, demoted or
ignored all the time and they don't always blame it on retaliation for
political beliefs or for reporting abuse. They blame it on some asshole
manager or decide the company isn't for them and they move on. Sounds like
google needs a higher degree of professionalism.

~~~
reccanti
> In normal companies, people get moved around, demoted or ignored all the
> time and they don’t always blame it on retaliation for political beliefs or
> for reporting abuse. They blame it on some asshole manager or decide the
> company isn’t for them and move on.

Even if what you’re describing is normal corporate behavior, it’s still not
great. Maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to accept the idea of “asshole managers”
or toxic corporate cultures, and we should be reporting on this sort of thing
more? As a single individual, it’s difficult to change a culture that spans
across different companies, and sometimes you’ll need to pick your battles,
but I don’t think we should tear down people who are trying to change the
status quo for the better. Google employees are in a good position to do this
too, since their protests will draw more attention than from someone in a
small, unknown company and can shed a light on these practices in other places
as well.

~~~
i_am_nomad
I believe the OP means that the people who are demoted/reassigned blame it on
“asshole managers,” not that the managers are in fact asshole. The reality is,
in any organization, you’ll have people who are incompetent, and people who
are simply unwilling to do their jobs.

------
wolco
Many of these sound like they come from junior members disillusioned with how
things work.

Things like my manager didn't listen to me so I feel belittled. I have the
second most experience so he should have. The company then moved me to a
different team and I wasn't second in command so I lost my leadership.

Doesn't the manager pick the team? If you don't support his vision and want to
use a different approach being moved to a different team may be the best
solution. What does this person want Google to do? Talk to the manager and
tell them to listen to change the approach and listen to this team member
because they have different ideas and they need to feel heard.

Google can't get involved at that level and start second guessing technical
details just because someone needs to be heard. They will judge the manager by
the project's overall goals.

The problem is google is giving too much freedom to employees who are use to a
little bit more handholding and structured interactions.

~~~
jakelazaroff
That’s not what the article says:

 _> “I witnessed first hand (and was told second-hand) of several situations
where women were being belittled, insulted and ignored. As the person with the
second-longest tenure on the team, I suggested in a few 1:1s that my manager
confront some of these issues,” wrote another Googler. “Because of my advocacy
I was removed from my tech lead position and moved to another team along with
the only woman left under my then-manager.”_

Is it a smoking gun? No, but it’s curious that one of the longest tenured
members of the team was removed from their leadership position and moved to
another team only _after_ speaking up about harassment.

~~~
manfredo
It's only curious because we're selectively viewing the stories of the subset
of people who protested or reported bad behavior and subsequently received
poor ratings. The people who speak out and don't subsequently receive poor
performance ratings or get moved to a different team are not displayed here.
Thus it produces an illusion of causality.

------
dvt
HR is not your friend and HR will _never_ be your friend. In a post-2008
world, it baffles me that people still think that somewhere, deep-down, multi-
billion dollar conglomerates have employees' best interests at heart. How
quickly we forgot people losing their lifelong savings and entire pension
funds going bust. Only to have the government bail out the exact same
charlatans that dropped the ball in the first place.

Corporate culture is very much a zero-sum game, and I think a pinch of
cynicism (or heck, realism) can go a long way.

~~~
trthomps
I completely agree. If I ever find myself in the situation of one of these
stories, aka the victim, I will be going straight to an employment lawyer
before HR to discuss my options. Hopefully meeting with HR with my lawyer
present.

~~~
alexis_fr
I’m curious, how do the pricing compare? Having a lawyer at an HR interview is
certainly $800 already (at $300/hr), with what, 2% chances of succeeding a
trial, and say 15% chances of getting a settlement, but also months of
dragging. lawsuit and difficulty to focus on a new job, assuming you find a
new employer. Do people really get settled for dozens of thousands of dollars?

~~~
staticautomatic
If the suit survives a motion to dismiss, all the time.

------
SolaceQuantum
This is covering a full document of 45 google employees' claims of
sexually/racially motivated abuse, toxic workplace experiences, and
retaliatory behavior upon attempting to report such. Here is the link to the
full document: [https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6427199-Examples-
Ret...](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6427199-Examples-Retaliation-
at-Google.html)

~~~
seph-reed
I was speaking with some friends about this recently, and how it seems a lot
like the uncanny valley effect. Relatively, Google has made a lot of effort to
not be racist/sexist. They're working towards not being those things (though
still evil for other reasons), but somewhere in between the start and finish
is this uncanny valley where scandals are super likely to happen.

My friends and I all had different theories on why it's so prone to scandals,
but we could agree that:

1\. it still wasn't fully equal

2\. it was equal to empower people to retaliate against the inequalities

3\. there's a good chance some people were patting theme-selves on the back
without fully achieving the goal

When we were talking about it, it was in the context of Meow Wolf. But it also
seems to scale to a lot of West Coast politics.

~~~
nabnob
Google has mostly focused on hiring more diverse candidates, and investing in
bootcamp type projects. These initiatives help Google by increasing the pool
of workers from which they hire, so they can look progressive while saving
money.

Now, actually fighting misogyny and racism within the company has the
potential to affect their bottom line, because it involves holding people in
power accountable. If they have a staff engineer or VP who's accused of sexual
assault, firing him or putting him on leave could impact productivity.

------
claudeganon
I hope that Googlers can work toward creating a labor organization that helps
them resolve these issues, because in light of all this and after Google HR’s
involvement in the wage-fixing scandal, it seems obvious that things are
pretty rotten in terms of their internal governance.

~~~
Nasrudith
That raises some interesting questions about dynamics and alternatives. HR is
infamous for their primary role being liability prevention or more crudely
stated ass-covering.

Do you know of any alternative systems in place to resolve issues?

Even if Google wanted to form some sort of employee handled board or
arbitration to decide how to handle accusations they would still be liable.
And that is ignoring messy office politics involved in that sort of
empowerment, bad actors, or just flaws of many parajudicial systems.

That companies would still be liable isn't neccessarily a bad thing as
otherwise it could be delegated into a bigotted council and violate all sorts
of discrimination laws at will. Any innovative system would need to address
those issues as well.

~~~
hardlianotion
Possibly: recognise a union.

~~~
wolco
Honestly at the highest paid tech company in the world a union isn't the
answer.

They need to hire people that fit their culture better or change their culture
to match their people.

~~~
claudeganon
Many of the highest paid industries (professional athletes, entertainment) are
unionized, so I fail to see what’s special about Google/tech. All this talk
about “culture” is just intended to prevent workers from joining together and
having an actual say in the companies for which they make so much money.

~~~
Nasrudith
There is some culture elements in there even if the cynical reasons are the
same - those other higher paying occupations are require working with people
instead of their products. The dynamics change. Actors need to work with
directors and any other actors in scenes. A union's arbitration there appeals
as protection for the workers from each other. Workers would agree that they
don't want to have to work with a guy who regulary assaults them for instance.
A very reasonable case.

This structure like most tools also has a dark use. Not as a "is bad" but "not
automatically good". It could be used to perpetuate discrimination as the
members don't want those <slurs> working in <their occupation>. As common for
bigotry it is not a good move for long term health.

Anyway the sociality seems to be an underemphasised factor to unions. This
isn't to say that the non people-to-people jobs should never unionize just
that it is especially artifical like say the practice of putting rubber duck
covering a fence post point - it is harder to set up and maintain as norm when
the first question everyone asks is "Why bother with the duck?"

As far as I am aware there are no serious scientest unions - doctors boards
are the closest thing but there are many significant differences.

~~~
claudeganon
Most scientists in academic institutions in the US belong to faculty unions
that negotiate on their behalf. If you want to split hairs about whether this
constitutes a “scientist union,” feel free, but the larger point that
scientists are largely non-union does not seem to bear scrutiny. In addition,
Australia has a scientist trade union:
[http://www.professionalsaustralia.org.au/scientists/](http://www.professionalsaustralia.org.au/scientists/)

------
throwawaysea
What came of the employees threatening physical violence against James Damore?
Were they fired?

~~~
gowld
Link to more info?

~~~
busterarm
Just look at the documents submitted as discovery for his lawsuit. The chat
logs and emails are all there.

------
zimbatm
To put things in perspective, 45 employees represent ~0.14% of all the women
working at Google (based on wikipedia and [1]). Given my perception of humans
and abusive corporate structures, I am actually quite impressed!

Obviously the article doesn't tell us anything on the collection methodology,
or try to put things in perspective. The reader is free to apply their bias
and infer the meaning that suits them the best.

[1]: [https://fortune.com/2017/06/29/google-2017-diversity-
report/](https://fortune.com/2017/06/29/google-2017-diversity-report/)

------
oliverx0
I realise I might get downvoted here because of an unpopular point of view,
but some of these comments raise a few flags:

“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,”

So EVERYONE knew and they still disagreed with their point of view. Warned
them that accusations without proof like that would get serious. Does that
make them evil?

“I whistle blew a colleague who used the N-word in jokes. HR found nothing
conclusive”

So HR investigated, found nothing conclusive. What is the alternative? The did
their job and arrived to a conclusion. Just because the conclusion did not
match the accusation, now Google is evil?

“when I was sexually harassed on my former team by my [team lead] I quickly
reported it to my manager. I was told I was ‘overreacting’ and that I should
just ‘get over it.’”

Again, this seems to be a subjective stance. Your manager thought you were
overreacting, given whatever proof / accusations you provided. Just because he
/ she did not agree with it, does not mean they are evil.

~~~
aaomidi
> Your manager thought you were overreacting, given whatever proof /
> accusations you provided. Just because he / she did not agree with it, does
> not mean they are evil.

In a company the size of google, managers aren't the people that should have
an opinion on this matter. What that manager said, assuming this document is
valid, is absolutely terrible. Heck, if some manager in my hypothetical
company told someone that their report of sexual harassment is an
"overreaction" that person wouldn't be manager for long.

~~~
oliverx0
Fair enough. Perhaps a process needs to be in place in which no matter what
the accusation is, it needs to go through a proper HR process. Having said
that, if a manager should have no opinion on a sexual harassment accusation,
then the accuser should have gone directly to HR.

~~~
wolco
A manager can be in an advisor role with some employees. In a mentor
relationship I think giving an opinion should allowed.

If a manager knows this person's goals and understands the harassment process
and resources involved then they may suggest not reporting. Most of the time
its to save themselves but this could be a wise strategy

------
Mathnerd314
Back in 2007 Google was apparently a decent place to work, not much going on
politically and mostly developer-led:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=75470](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=75470).
In 2009 it was about the same, but managers started complaining:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=552976](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=552976).
In 2010 a lot more managers were hired. In 2011 Google started killing
products and developers lost a lot of credibility:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2557672](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2557672).
Managers suddenly gained the upper hand and started pushing revenue as the
bottom line. The smarter or well-connected developers started leaving:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3700277](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3700277).
By 2013, 20% time was "dead":
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6223466](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6223466).

I didn't follow Google workplace standards much after that, but my general
impression is it continued declining, more management pressure and relatively
lower pay/benefits for new workers. Then we started getting leaks from inside
Google in 2017 and life at Google has been "miserable" since then.
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20684463](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20684463))

The only obvious solution is to start firing people; Google has been in growth
mode for a long time and managers perform their jobs a lot better when they're
worried about themselves. This could happen naturally as a reaction to ad
revenue flattening out or maybe Google will shift to a high-turnover culture
like Amazon.

------
rnernento
For this to be meaningful in any way I'd love to see some statistics as to how
many people Google employs (broken down by gender/cultural background/etc.)
and then see their complaint rate. I'd then like to see it compared against
other companies.

While the anecdotal evidence is salacious it's not really useful in
determining whether or not they're "evil".

------
a4e329e1270a
This boycott and these comments are being orchestrated by Liz Fong-Jones. Liz
Fong-Jones is a transexual activist, and an offender in sexual harassment
themselves. I'm posting this on a throwaway for obvious reasons.

I worked at Google from 2010-2014. Over the summer of 2012 or 2013, I joined
an Eve Online "Corporation" (guild) with Liz, and another one of my coworkers.
It was a crazy place. Liz had a fanatical hatred of "Rape Jokes". Rape was not
a joke to Liz. Rape was a fantasy that Liz was all too happy to describe in
great detail. The corporation was "Kink Friendly". I'm embarrassed to say that
that was part of the appeal to me - I'm happy to tie my girlfriends up as part
of roleplay. Liz's fantasies were a great deal more detailed and a great deal
less fantasy oriented than I would like. I left that corporation after a
while, though not as quickly as I should have. I was young, I was confused,
and based on the success of her "Real Names Considered Harmful" letter, I
believed that Liz was a credible, accredited leader.

The same coworker who introduced me to Liz would, several times, invite me to
join them for lunch at "Club Z". I declined - Partially because something
seemed off, mostly because I was satisfied with the lunches at Google. I would
only later find out that "Club Z" is not a lunch place - It's a (rather
infamous) Gay Bathhouse here in Seattle.

While I was in that corp, though, I was sexually assaulted by a former friend.
About a year I knew and had considered a friend had some out as bi, and had
"Confessed their love" to me... by forcefully kissing me at a party. I was
embarrassed, I was not interested, and I made it pretty politely clear, to
which they reacted badly. Now they had come out as "trans", and received an
outpouring of support from mutual friends. Said friends convinced me to give
them another chance. At their urging, I agreed to hang out with this friend,
at a "Movie Night". A movie night which no-one else showed to. Said former
friend pressured me to try weed, which I had never done before. Okay. Red
flag. I was dumb, and I regret it. Said friend offered to show me his
"Uncle's" stash of Child Pornography. I already suspected they were a pedo,
but, yeah. Should have run right then, was drunk. Said "friend" then tried to
force himself on me. I am not bigger, but I am strong, and I forced them off.
I was also drunk, and spent several uncomfortable hours waiting to sober up,
repeatedly fending off unwanted advances.

Anyway: Being dumb, having listened to too much of the bullshit excuses, I
went to the only Trans* person I knew to talk about it. Liz. They told me how
much I was in the wrong, how important it was for Trans* people to explore
their sexuality, and called me a monster for not having responded positively.
"What if a biological woman had hit on you?" \- The tired old canard was
trotted out.

I do not have any direct evidence of wrongdoing by Liz Fong-Jones. I only know
that they hang out with, and are supported by, people who were long overdue
for censure. People who were repeatedly able to convince others that they were
the victims despite their clear aggression.

~~~
harryf
Not to belittle you but the level of WTF in this comment makes me check out.
If you’re serious you could start by gaining some credibility here...

> This boycott and these comments are being orchestrated by Liz Fong-Jones.

Do you have _any_ evidence for this? The comments seem fairly normal HN to me.

