Google's 'Bro Culture' Led To Harassment, Argues New Lawsuit By Software Engineer (siliconvalley.com)

An anonymous reader quotes the Mercury News: As a young, female software engineer at male-dominated Google, Loretta Lee was slapped, groped and even had a co-worker pop up from beneath her desk one night and tell her she'd never know what he'd been doing under there, according to a lawsuit filed against the Mountain View tech giant... Lee's lawsuit -- filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court -- alleges the company failed to to protect her, saying, "Google's bro-culture contributed to (Lee's) suffering frequent sexual harassment and gender discrimination, for which Google failed to take corrective action."

She was fired in February 2016 for poor performance, according to the suit... Lee started at the company in 2008 in Los Angeles and later switched to the firm's Mountain View campus, according to the suit, which asserts that she "was considered a talented and rising star" who received consistently "excellent" performance reviews. Lee claims that the "severe and pervasive" sexual harassment she experienced included daily abuse and egregious incidents. In addition to making lewd comments to her and ogling her "constantly," Lee's male co-workers spiked her drinks with whiskey and laughed about it; and shot Nerf balls and darts at her "almost every day," the suit alleges. One male colleague sent her a text message asking if she wanted a "horizontal hug," while another showed up at her apartment with a bottle of liquor, offering to help her fix a problem with one of her devices, refusing to leave when she asked him to, she alleges. At a holiday party, Lee "was slapped in the face by an intoxicated male co-worker for no apparent reason," according to the suit.
Lee resisted reporting an employee who had grabbed her lanyard and grazed her breasts -- and was then written up for being uncooperative. But after filing a report, "HR found her claims 'unsubstantiated,' according to the suit. 'This emboldened her colleagues to continue their inappropriate behavior,' the suit says.

"Her fear of being ostracized was realized, she claims, with co-workers refusing to approve her code in spite of her diligent work on it. Not getting her code approved led to her being 'labeled as a poor performer,' the suit says."

Comments

Sadly, I Can Believe It

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not a woman, and I wasn't sexually harassed, but I worked at a large biotech company in the SF Bay Area where for several years I had great reviews, I became the department's primary point of contact for one of the two segments of that business unit, I was given all of the projects that were large/complex/time sensitive because I always got them done... Then my manager's boss forced one of her personal friends on the department, a master manipulator, and true to form, it wasn't more than a couple of months before the complaints started rolling in as she set her sights on my job. Over the course of 6 months, I complain to my manager multiple times, alleging harassment on the part of my coworker, and his response is to retaliate against me. I was forced to sign a written warning, where he verbally told me he had made up a complaint from another employee in a different department. I go to the HR department, and they tell me not to worry about it and to just let it go. So I take it to the company's Ethics Office (sort of like an HR department that only investigates possible wrongdoing within the company) and despite being the one who brought the issue to their attention, I'm treated like the asshole and then fired two days later, in part because my complaint was considered "unsubstantiated."

I feel for this woman, and her mistake, like mine, was in going to the HR department instead of straight to California's DFEH. You file a complaint with them alleging some of these things, and make sure the head of HR, your manager, your manager's manager, and maybe even your manager's manager's manager, all know that you have filed this complaint, odds are they will be tripping over one another trying to resolve the problems quickly because they don't want a government agency sniffing around and finding any number of other illegal activities taking place that they turn a blind eye to.

Based on all the stories coming out recently about Google, it sounds like the company has definitely become a victim of its own success. Any time a company gets sufficiently large, these kinds of things happen. Employees aren't seen as human beings, just ID numbers in a database table, and any one of them is expendable if they start getting full of themselves, thinking silly things like they deserve to be treated like a human being and in accordance with state and federal law.

Re:Schizophrenia

[hawguy]

You're being snarky, but look at the big picture. This person is alleging that she was outright sexually harassed multiple times, and her superiors did nothing. Damore is alleging that he simply voiced an opinion outside the PC party line, and was immediately fired. Not both of those things can be true. Somebody is lying, and lying poorly.

Have you ever worked in a large company? Despite being under the same corporate umbrella, different departments handle things *much* differently -- especially when some departments have come from acquisitions.

Re:Words vs. actions

[Mashiki]

He wasn't public about his views until Google someone in the clique decided to dump his memo online and attack him. Then all bets were off, go read his court filing. They(google) directly asked for things from employees, he directly responded. Got no response. Asked again, got no response. Then had multiple altercations with people who attacked him on the memo.

Re:I generally side with the woman in these cases

[f00zbll]

I have plenty of female friends who have experience the same thing and they didn't report it because they knew the blame would be turned on them instead. In the 18 yrs of working in IT, I have seen men act like total freakin jackasses around women. I've also seen guys act like total gentlemen around female co-workers. One co-worker had to be lectured by the HR department for harassing women at work. His excuse was "I was just talking to them at their cube". A few of us called him out and told him "you're being a creep man, it's going to get you in trouble."

In his mind, he was just a "flirty" and out going guy. He also took yoga classes to hit on women. A few of us made fun of him, but he kept on doing it. Guys like that just don't get it and think it's ok to act like creeps with women.

That was just one case, I know of several more. I don't doubt her account of what happened.

Re:Schizophrenia

[PaulRivers10]

Please, the reaction to the Damore pdf was something out of a grade school popularity contest with all the lying and careful manipulation trying to reframe his document into the feminist narrative. - They claimed he "sent out a memo" when on one in an organization actually calls these things memos - They claimed he was a manager distributing google's company-wide policy when in reality he was just some random guy inside the company - He cited scientific sources for the things he said but the released verison mysteriously had those sources edited out (and who knows if other things were edited) - It just goes on an on like this Google fired him because sheep went along with whatever their feminists master said. Then google got hit with a lot of backlash it didn't expect. Now it's firing the people who stirred up the pot in an attempt at damage control over the whole situation. They can't come out the good guy but they're trying to come out as not taking a side in an insane political war.