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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.

4 of 308 comments (clear)

  1. Re: Just plain hypocrisy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    In my opinion, if you are openly contributing to a toxic work environment, you deserve to be fired.

    This applies to conservatives or this person.

  2. He never wrote any pro-diversity posts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  3. Re:Just plain hypocrisy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    > 'Normal' may well have literal and specific meaning, but in common usage there's an implied positive value in 'normal and a negative one in not.

    Yes, there is, and that implied value is attached to the meaning, not the word. This is why we migrate to ever newer words to avoid causing offence, yet land right back where we started.

  4. Re:There are many ways to get fired. by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's at-will employment.

    "At-will" means you can be fired for ALMOST any reason, or for no reason. But even with "at-will" there is are reasons that cannot be used to fire someone. For instance, you cannot fire someone for belonging to a protected class. California has state restrictions in addition to the federal restrictions. The city of Mountain View may add even more.