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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.
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?
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."
This is just the opposite end of the spectrum from James Damore.
Maybe if you're looking at it as the irrational bigotry in this chick's rants being the polar opposite of the kind of rational, nuanced case put forward by Danmore. But if you're talking about politics and particular stances, then no, there's no "opposite spectrum" to a centrist.
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.
I'll bite. Where did you get those numbers from?
Not saying you're right, not saying you're wrong. Just looking for source data.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
The only reason why they ever created the term "cisgender" is because they simply cannot bring themselves to call it what it really is: normal.
Admitting this through word choice would remove much of the wind from their proverbial sails.
Sure, the Republican party is funding the Damore lawsuit, but this lawsuit, the one started by this transgender person, I doubt that's being funded by the Republican party.
That last lawsuit against Google could be funded by Google against itself for all I know, to show that they're not showing bias in firing people since people from both sides are suing them.
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.
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.
How the hell do you "identify" as disabled. You either are able-bodied or you aren't.
There can be literally hundreds of objective measures of physical performance that can screen for physical infirmity. Some of them are even codified into laws and regulations, like what criteria you have to meet to get a handicap placard for your car or whether you're capable of operating a motor vehicle at all.
This phrasing is retarded. And while I'm at it...what the hell is 'queer' exactly?
No it isn't