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Former Google Employee Files Lawsuit Alleging the Company Fired Him Over Pro-Diversity Posts (theverge.com)
According to court documents filed today, a former Google engineer is suing the company for discrimination, harassment, retaliation, and wrongful termination. "Tim Chevalier, a software developer and former site-reliability engineer at Google, claims that Google fired him when he responded with internal posts and memes to racist and sexist encounters within the company and the general response to the now-infamous James Damore memo," reports The Verge. From the report: Chevalier said in a statement to The Verge, "It is a cruel irony that Google attempted to justify firing me by claiming that my social networking posts showed bias against my harassers." Chevalier, who is also disabled and transgender, alleges that his internal posts that defended women of color and marginalized people led directly to his termination in November 2017. He had worked at Google for a little under two years. Notably, Chevalier's posts had been quoted in Damore's lawsuit against Google -- in which Damore sued the company for discrimination against conservative white men -- as evidence Google permitted liberals to speak out at the company unpunished. Chevalier's lawsuit alleges that his firing is, in fact, a form of punishment. The lawsuit was filed in San Francisco County Superior Court and Chevalier is seeking damages for lost wages, emotional distress, punitive damages, and injunctive relief against those alleged harmful acts. Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
And not just the internal day-to-day nonsense?
"Chevalier, who is also disabled and transgender, alleges that his"
So this thing was born with a vagina. Do I have that right?
It's at-will employment.
Through Chevalier’s conversations with his manager and Human Resources, he learned that Google defines appropriate workplace speech by the standard of what someone with a cisgender, heterosexual, white, male, upper-middle-class background would say.
This is just the opposite end of the spectrum from James Damore. Apparently Chevalier feels that this kind of enforcing of stereotypes is ok because all cisgender, heterosexual, white, male, upper-middle-class people would say the same thing.
Regardless of you gender, race, beliefs, whatever, there are some unspoken but very obvious rules about what you say and don't say on company time. Especially in written form. But apparently some people didn't get the memo..
Do they do any real work at Google anymore or just write weird memos about social justice all day?
It seems that Google is attempting to establish some kind of 'even-handed' approach. The company remains overwhelmingly liberal, but it seem they're cutting the edges off for provocative discussion. The most radical 10% liberals are edged out but still 50% -> 100% on the conservative scale are edged out leaving only the most centrist conservatives as 'last ones standing'.
Google has a right to cultivate their own corporate culter, you can't tell a private company how to run its business. I'm just enjoying the view into the fishbowl here, and seeing a mini culture war.
I don't read AC
Stupid Arabs purchasing Slashdot and running it into the ground. The buyers have so much money they could buy their own server farm......but THIS.
BTW, never saw that movie before, but it looks hilarious. I love how the chick is trying to say "BUSTED!" but no bust occurs, so she changes her wording midstream and ends up with something that sounds remarkably like Buzzard with a T in it.
this just goes to show how immensily instable a SJW-based system is. I predict we will see the implosion of google pretty soon because they will have terminated the last capable engineer for social misconduct, probably because she "killed" some server or virtual machine that was showing erronous behavior. Just gotta love this.
So where's the popcorn?
I think the main issue here is that Google doesn't want people arguing this stuff on company time instead of working. Fighting against social ills like sexism and discrimination is a noble cause, but if employees are spending half their time doing so instead of working, the company will suffer.
Better to rid of toxic people on both sides than to allow them to rile up others and cause big social problems within the company. A lot of times a group of people will work quite well as a team until politics is brought up, then it's practically World War Three.
Just quickly post some things like these. Not saying this is what happened here, but seems to be a flaw in the system.
It is also quite possible the actual problem here is these companies having styled themselves too much as a "home" and "welcoming place" in order to attract talented people (and have them work long hours uncompensated) and people working there are less and less aware that it is a place of work. You know, one of those places were you keep politics out and are expected to behave professionally all the time ...
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
FTFA:
"A Google employee allegedly responded to the post by noting that asking for ID was just part of the job, Gizmodo reported. Chevalier then made a privilege-denying dude meme using Google’s internal meme generator with the caption, “I have opinions about forms of oppression that don’t affect me.” "
Google has an internal meme generator. I'm sure it provides hours of laughter and cohesive working.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
Would Damore's lawsuit actually be more difficult to win after this firing because google can just say that a nasty email/doc/... is from an X employee and does not represent google?
this is getting magnified by two thing:
a). It's click bait. I predict 300+ comments on this post if not more.
b). These lawsuits are being funded by the Republican party. This is a major political issue for the Republican party. It's part of a larger narrative they're building that white males are under assault.
Now, the fact is white males are... by declining wages due to outsourcing, H1-Bs, economic crashes caused by widespread deregulation, vulture capital firms killing off their jobs, etc, etc); but they're no more so than any other member of the working class. It's basically the right wing version of identity politics. Something to distract from the broader issues and keep the various groups of working class people at each other's throats. A caste system.
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I'm constantly being harassed because I'm a transgendered lesbian person of no-color - although I identify as Asian. People just assume that because I look like a white man and act like a heterosexual man, that I'm white heterosexual guy. When I tell them that my wife is a transgendered homosexual man of no-color but identifies as Black and that I'm in a non-traditional marriage, folks don't take me seriously. I get thrown out of LGBTQ groups and made fun of. Just because she has a vagina and breasts and can get pregnant doesn't mean he is a woman. And just because I can get erections doesn't mean I'm a man.
People really need to stop this bigotry.
That is where most workplaces will document, thoroughly, legally supportable reasons to fire you. It usually involves a "recovery plan", which gives 30 days to meet a whole stack of recovery goals before termination. Ran into that once when a new manager didn't like me because I kept catching his hand in various cookie jars, and was *exhausted* by a long short-staffed time. I took it as time to find a new job, and accepted the recovery plan while I found a new job. (It is *much* easier to find a new job while still employed, trust me! It's like getting a date while you still have a girlfriend, they employers can *smell* that you're worth keeping around!)
and you get a sex change and 'become' a woman, are you still considered GAY by Google?
Does anyone get any work done at that fucking place? With all the memo-ing and meme-ing, I'm shocked that this Chevalier or Damore were able to keep their jobs at all.
Knock off all the bullshit, you two. You're here to work for a living, not make spectacles of yourself. If you have a problem with your company's policies, feel free to go work somewhere else (unless there's something criminal going on, of course). Starbucks is always looking for baristas. EVERYTHING ISN'T ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'm confused!!
They're not anti-diversity.
They're not pro-diversity.
C'mon guys, you're young, well educated and talented. Go find another job and get to work kicking Google's ass in an arena you can be proud of - using code and IT architecture, not in the courts.
One might think the unwanted attention from outsider interlopers has forced Google's hand and they're quietly trying to clean house. Then again, one George Wallace and one Bull Connor and for two generations most of America has been assuming automatically all white Southerners are racist to the bone. So maybe Google doesn't get out from under this one for a good long while either.
Chevalier’s supervisors were critical of Chevalier’s political participation and dismissive of his attempts to change Google’s culture. Ultimately, Google fired Chevalier. Human Resources explicitly told Chevalier that Google was ending his employment because of his political statements in opposition to the discrimination, harassment, and white supremacy he saw being expressed on Google’s internal messaging systems
The proper recourse for harassment is to report it to HR and let the company deal with it -- you don't get free reign to try to change the company's culture yourself. If the company doesn't deal with it, *then* you sue the company.
Who'da thunk that in that beautiful valley was toxicity.
The end-game to ever-expanding worker-against-worker protections has always been obvious: companies getting sued (and even losing those suits) no matter what action they take.
Any large organization falls apart if professionalism isn't maintained to some degree (see current White House). Groups of people don't work together well with lots of emotional outbursts from its members. This is pretty consistent across most cultures. If somebody can't keep their shit together at work, then they gotta go. It's as simple as that.
I don't respond to AC's.
I'd write something pro-white, pro-male... would it matter? We don't communicate about these things, we're just stalling for time. Civil war when?
What could possibly go wrong?! My God, they raise these kids stupid af today. If your job isn't HR don't get involved with HR issues.
Chevalier led the campaign to get Brendan Eich fired from Mozilla. https://www.fastcompany.com/3028664/lgbt-programmers-speak-out-on-mozillas-anti-gay-marriage-ceo
Karma if you ask me
Can't imagine why he'd be fired. https://pics.me.me/nd-punch-al...
Stupid sand n1ggers bought /.? When?
Anonymous for obvious reasons.
I reported Tim to HR several times. Good to see that the system works.
Tim posted a lot. A lot. Pretty much all of was abuse.
I never saw any good faith pro diversity posts from him, so the article is wrong in that regard.
Instead, his usual posting style consists of jumping into a discussion and start hurling serious abuse and personal attacks against whomever he thought was in the wrong.
He regularly calls other work colleagues Nazi, Racist, Rapist. Relentlessly and over and over.
He is very toxic and abusive. Shame it took this long to get rid of him.
I don't think his lawyers really know what kind of stuff Tim was writing when at Google. If they did they would know that this whole "fired for being pro diversity" angle will crash and burn almost immediately once Google starts showing what really happened.
Around the time you showed up.
Wait, hang on...
Fuck that guy. Nobody wants that shit at work.
Shut up and do your job.
You went full-SJW.
Never go full-SJW.
I think Google changing the "Don't Be Evil" corporate motto was the signal that SJWs inside Google reached critical mass, and they're now in a runaway chain reaction that will eventually doom Google in a metaphorical mushroom-cloud of lawsuits, accusations, bad PR, government investigations, protests, etc etc...oh my, the spectacle should be glorious!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Why do white males like yourself bitch and moan so much?
You need to find a hobby. Preferably one not involving speaking. Maybe take up video games?
Or perhaps masturbte more often?
What do you mean, things like these? No, Chevalier was not fired for being too liberal. He was fired for advocating violence. Quotes from the Damore lawsuit file:
Chevalier: "Getting punched for participating in a white supremacist rally is not opression, it's reasonable social consequences"
Chevalier: "It's perfectly reasonable to expect a violent response to the expression of hate speech because hate speech is itself violence"
His views on hiring are highly inappropriate too, but that pales in comparison to justifying punching people.
Chevalier: "Alternate proposal: moratorium on hiring white cis heterosexual abled men who aren't abuse survivors." (responding to a proposal that Google should not hire directly from university, so that people have experience with the way things are at other companies, to make Googlers appreciate the available infrastructure more and use it more responsibly.)
I saw many of his tweets (@fatneckbeardguy) before he went into hiding (locked account). I'd venture to say that he needs to take one of Trump's dementia tests. After he passes these psych tests, we'll know better what kind of people Google employs in the name of diversity! I hope Alex Hidalgo gets the sack too (@SometimesAlex) for emailing James Damore about he would harass and hound him until he was fired (and he didn't care either if he got fired). Funny to note that instead of going in lock-down, Alex just removed all connections to Google on his profile (deleted "Customer Reliability Engineer" - https://twitter.com/KittyLenoir/status/950614265945313281 ). Would appear that the cancer in Google lives in their Customer Reliability Engineer as I counted at least 4 violently vocal members. Shame on google for creating such a toxic work environment. No doubt leaker of thee Damore memo was from that toxic dept.
Do they get any actual work done? :D
Must be a touch workplace for people who just want to focus on working.
L'Idiot
Lol this is some poetic justice at play.
What is this girlfriend thing you speak of?
What if this is the....uh....guy....girl...whatever that leaked Damore's memo?
Google surely would love to get rid of such employee...
WAHHH we want social justice for James Damore!
Good morning, Comrade Wang! How's the air pollution in Beijing today?
Valve is quite different, that is due to a flat management structure (no bosses) and wheeled desks.
Valve changed to episodic gaming to try and avoid crunch time (gabe freaked out over his employees health and overtime). When that didn't work, they completely restructured how the company was run.
Now, with no management, there's no pressure on deadlines. I have no doubt HL3 is being worked on by 1 or 2 people at a time, but things like hats in TF2 are far more interesting to most devs, or DOTA stuff, etc.
All of this has been discussed often in interviews with valve multiple staff, and revealed in other ways.
What they really need to do is outsource games to a third party (like they did with the HL1 expansions) that have management and structure.
...so little time.
So my point is that this clap trap about SJWs is a smoke screen promoted by the Republican party to distract white working class males from the real cause of their economic problems (to wit: Right Wing economic policies that destroy middle class jobs and wages while dividing the working class).
Your response to that point isn't to attack it on it's merits, but to say that my point is irrelevant because there might be a conspiracy by Google to fund lawsuits against themselves as a false flag operation to discredit further criticism of their diversity policies
Seriously, read what you wrote and think about the absurdity of it. Also, if you're going to attack my post do it by attacking the content of my post, not by engaging against random attacks on Google. I realize the latter is much, much easier (nobody likes Google right now because everybody hates SJWs), but you're not helping what should be your actual cause (e.g. helping white working class males address the issues confronting them).
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The sole purpose for businesses to exist is to make money and drama interferes with that purpose.
Just ask Chris Kluwe. He has an opinion on the matter.
If you are incompetent?
There are two types of employees at Google: cis-het-white-males with mad skills and non-(cis-het-white-male) diversity hires.
It is just a logical consequence of diversity-focused affirmative action, the only way you could work at Google as a cis-het-white-male is if you had mad skills; otherwise, they would find any excuse to fill your position with a diversity hire.
Justice for the social justice warrior. Hope in humanity is not yet lost.
"I'm a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude."
I don't understand why Google would fire somebody over promoting the exact kind of cancer that they're infected with. If anything, their work environment is hostile to anybody who doesn't spew inane diversity bullshit. I have a feeling the truth will be radically different than the version of events we've been presented with when it comes out.
This doesn't pass the sniff test.
The cynic in me thinks this is about Google recognizing that it has earned the reputation of an extreme, fundamentalist, intolerant, cult-like organization and is trying to fluff it's image by pretending that it is balanced.
However, the idea that a company as uni-dimensional as Google would ever turn on a fellow liberal is pretty laughable. That'd be like the NRA waking up one day and claiming they embrace gun control and gay marriage.
Leopards don't change their spots.
is a good example that nobody is good at everything. For all the great stuff being done by Sergey and Larry's people, the nontechnical stuff (such as HR & Youtube Censoring) shows their weak side.