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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."
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."
It strikes me as odd that James Damore was immediately fired for his writing, but other Google employees apparently engage in direct, physical harassment without consequence.
Perhaps the PC police fear the spread of wrongthink more than the actual crimes themselves.
Good. You need to toughen up. You need to learn to defend yourself in simple social situations without calling in an authority.
Your emotions do not matter. You need to be more pragmatic. You need to undertake social sanctions against people who wrong you, not legal sanctions.
You are polluting our society with your self-centeredness. If you can't manage your own personal life, as you have already proven, you need to be expelled. You are rotten.
My karma was manually wiped by site staff https://slashdot.org/~slshdtisctrldbysjws 18 mod up, 10 mod down = bad karma
This has become a nation of schizophrenics. I'm not able to believe that both this woman's sob-story and James Damore's sob-story are both true. At some point in the information pipeline, data is being distorted, or wholesale invented.
The issue here is that women are also human, and are capable and willing to lie, abuse other people, and use their physical characteristics to get what they want. So there are bad actors out there who are not men, and modern feminism ideologically unprepared to deal with this realization.
Here is the thing. If you or your coworker doesn't want to be hit by darts. Then that is harassment. If you or someone asks them to please stop then they should stop. Because you are at work, not play.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I was hoping for a copy of the lawsuit, as it will contain what evidence she has. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to have been posted online yet.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It's funny how the comments here mostly seek to minimize and dismiss her complaints (or outright accuse her of lying) while the comments on the James Damore story were mostly supportive.
I wonder what the difference could possibly be.
At large successful companies, there is a major sea change after the company becomes successful. People like you are the foundation that builds the companies success, but after the bells start ringing and the company becomes rich and successful, a different sort of people climb aboard.
Maybe all parties are lying or maybe none of them are.
It's entirely possible for the place to be a complete frat house all around: men grabbing at women, SJWs pissing on normal people, HR treating all complaints as grounds for terminating the complainer, and upper management adrift in the clouds making high-minded paeans to whatever gods they believe themselves to be the Earthly manifestations of.
I had a friend who used to work at an East Coast Google office a while back. He quit after a few years because his direct supervisor wouldn't let him take any vacation. He also loved his coworkers and the camaraderie of his peers.
Why should anyone be SOL for not immediately reporting a problem? Is there some kind of statute of limitations that absolves the perpetrators from liability simply because those who are targeted do not complain right away?
That kind of thinking is exactly why workplace harassment is so pervasive, because what happens is that a culture is created in which prompt reporting is discouraged. You claim to understand why someone "might be uncomfortable reporting these problems." But it's clear that you don't because you immediately follow that with this absurd notion that the victim is not entitled to redress precisely because of those reasons you claim to understand.
These reasons for not immediately reporting are well-known and researched, for example, in cases of rape. While vastly different in severity--by no means do I claim that rape is the same as workplace harassment--the underlying psychology of not wanting to report such offenses is similar. The emotional trauma of being targeted and victimized, compounded by the additional trauma of not being believed, having to immediately retell your story, being expected to remain level headed about your experience, then being isolated from your peers, the focus of gossip and suspicion and talk about whether you did anything that caused you to "have it coming" or "deserve it"--these are just the beginning of a litany of reasons why people do not always do what you seem to blithely suggest one must do in order to be deserving of justice.
This has become a nation of schizophrenics. I'm not able to believe that both this woman's sob-story and James Damore's sob-story are both true. At some point in the information pipeline, data is being distorted, or wholesale invented. And folks are surprised that Americans don't trust their media, and elect con-men celebrities to high office.
What has happened is Identitarian politics of groups and group-identities. Google's problem with Damore, this person, and the rest that are certain to follow, is that Google themselves embraced Identitarian ideas. Google, to a large extent, brought this on themselves and in so doing, helped spread and give such broken ideas more power.
Identitarian politics of group identities feeds on and exacerbates the tribal behaviors inherent in human nature and enables the "Other-ing" of those who disagree, allowing for their dehumanization.
Once dehumanized, opponents can be dealt with expediently by any means as "the Enemy" without needing to listen to anything the Enemy has to say. They're Evil, after all, being the Enemy.
Identitarian politics have had an enormous effect upon culture. Even comedy. Can you imagine if today Steve Martin joked as he did in his movie "The Jerk" "I was born a poor black child." That would be the end of his career. Many top comedians won't do university/college tours anymore because of the intolerance.
Stop looking at what "group" somebody may be a part of and deciding on that basis whether to listen to what they're saying, and look at the person.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Damore got fired due to public outrage. His memo circulated for a while and nobody gave a shit. It wasn't until it was leaked, and an explosion happened, that he got fired.
Google reacted to the public outrage, not to the memo.
The public outrage was firmly rooted in a misreading of the memo, too. People thought, and still think, that Damore wrote that women were less suited than men to be software developers. I read the memo myself, and he simply did not say that. He said that common female attributes might explain why few women want to be programmers. Such a statement *in no way* suggests that they are less suited, nor does it create an unwelcoming environment.
But in the court of public opinion, Damore is a sexist who thinks women are inferior. And so, that is why he got fired.
HR isn't there to help the employee. They are there to protect the employer. So of course they said her claims were unsubstantiated.
If her claims were backed by evidence, and HR said they were not, that is not "protecting the employer". It is setting them up to lose a lawsuit.