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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."
TIL my coworkers are harassing me and I've been harassing them, every day too. In fact, one day I'm going to get as good at it as that guy with the really good aim who always seems to get me on the head.
25 years ago someone in my office told a dirty joke. A female employee overheard it, reported it to HR, and we all went through harassment training.
In other words, there is no fucking way on this planet that Damore gets fired for suggesting in a memo that their diversity program is misguided, and all these events happened to one woman and nothing was done.
BS. Complete and utter crap. I do not believe her for one second.
And treating people according to state and federal law...you mean firing them for expressing political views? You have a really weird viewpoint of Google as some sort of non-leftist entity.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Being that most of these posts here are on Slashdot seem to be against the idea that she was harassed, it doesn't really make too much sense for a woman to just accuse people of this stuff willy-nilly because as seen even with this sample of people that standing up and reporting harassment has a lot of blow back.
There is a degree of harassment in technology. Being a case where there isn't too many women in the field, they are already in the minority, and many employees just don't know how to treat the other sex as an equal.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Damore was public about his views. The other employees keep it quite. There are rumors at my work place that go on, X person is having an affair, Mr. Y will tend to be misogynistic. However if I haven't seen it or have a concrete example I am not able to go to HR and let them know. At best I just warn other people about the people. For most of these people if there is a smoking gun, then HR can do something about it. However systemic problem are harder to just fire people.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
> "a different sort of people climb aboard"
Yep. The money-sniffing Jewish rats and their throng of ugly sexual degenerates.