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

I generally side with the woman in these cases

[93 Escort Wagon]

And on the face of it, based on what I've seen from particular (and blessedly former) coworkers, I believe this woman. But, with this lawsuit, I have some problems because of this paragraph:

"Lee’s superior and the firm’s human resources department learned of that incident and repeatedly tried persuading her to officially report the alleged groper, but she resisted out of fear of being ostracized as an “informer,” she claims. After she was written up for being uncooperative, she relented and reported the man, but HR found her claims “unsubstantiated,” according to the suit."

So the impression I get is that she wasn't reporting any of these incidents.

I do understand why someone might be uncomfortable reporting these problems... but, if you're not at least documenting them at the time they occur or - better - filing complaints as they happen... then you should be SOL.

Re:I generally side with the woman in these cases

[wickerprints]

And if you think that I'm just some feminist SJW snowflake, the same thing applies to bullying, something I imagine a lot of Slashdot readers have had experience with. How many of you remember being bullied in school? Having someone more popular, more athletic, more socially adept, treat you like shit just because they thought it would be "fun?" That your day-to-day existence was turned into a living hell for no other reason than the amusement of others?

What was the first thing you thought of doing? You thought you could go to your teachers or parents or principal and tell them everything and that would somehow suddenly make all your problems disappear? How laughably naive does that idea sound to you?

So, why would you think that just because this is about men harassing women that such behavior is any different? That you might think that she did something to deserve this kind of treatment, or that now you expect the victim to write everything down and tell HR right away, when we all know that HR is not there to protect the rights of the employees, but of the company? Now how realistic does that sound, to say that you have to tell HR right away when some asshole spikes your drink with whiskey at work?

Re:Sadly, Similar Experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically this one team leader decided he didn't like me and wanted me off the team so he set me up for failure by tasking me with finding a memory leak in code the source of which I wasn't given access to, and even though the previous team leader had given me glowing reviews I was eventually let go because I couldn't find the leak anywhere outside of the code I suspected.

HR was worse than useless.

This sounds like a ridiculous bullshit story but I assure you it is true. I only had that experience once in my career but it stuck with me as an example of how office politics can just spontaneously cost you your job if someone higher up gets a whim up their ass.

Re:Schizophrenia

[Anonymous Coward]

And folks are surprised that Americans don't trust their media, and elect con-men celebrities to high office.

Get it through your thick skull, we elected that asshole because the asshole running against him was a bigger liar. She stands for women, but fired a victim of harassment and kept the harasser on her campaign. She stands with victims, but repeatedly attacked a rape victim in the media because her husband was the rapist. She's a strong woman, but doesn't have the self-respect to divorce his cheating ass.

The media had nothing to do with her losing.