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.

Bro Culture lol

[Anonymous Coward]

I got into programming as a kid in the 80s, university in the 90s and programming as a day job ever since. I absolutely love reading these insane words they come up with. "Bro culture", "brogrammers" and the like. It is the most insane goddamn thing in the world. But it's only that way to me and people I know, when I step out side my circle and profession I meet people who actually believe this tripe.

Remember the movie Revenge of the Nerds, it's like if they remade that now in 2018 and reversed the jock/nerd stereotype characters and the nerds are now the out-of-control womanising bully asswipes, and people buy it.

Re:Bro Culture lol

[Bing Tsher E]

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.

Re:Nerf balls and darts?

[jellomizer]

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.

Re:GOOD

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to toughen up. You need to learn to defend [...] Your emotions do not matter. You need to be more [...] You need to undertake [...] You are polluting [...] you need to be expelled. You are rotten.

I know you're just venting at the internet right now, but I'm guessing you're also somewhat serious and apply this ethos to the people around you. It's belligerent and bullying, and doesn't show any recognition that people are fundamentally different from each other, or that technical skill, experience, and productivity can be completely separate from the tough personality traits you're demanding.

If you were on my team and talking like that, we would be having a very serious discussion about how your hostility impacts your co-workers. In my experience, software engineers who talk like you do tend not to make it very far. Maybe you're technically skilled in some focused area, but I bet your willful lack of empathy would impact your ability to work on a team, become a leader, design for your customers, and even architect code in a way that your co-workers would enjoy interacting with and learning from over time. After all, if you're not building up your teammates, then you're ultimately dragging everyone down.

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]

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.

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?

Slashdot being slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Slashdot being slashdot

[Mashiki]

I wonder what the difference could possibly be.

~25 years of sexual harassment training, that point becoming narrower and narrower as a definition every year up to this point where the #metoo moment declared that talking is now harassment?

Or would you like to roll with the point that everyone who's ever worked in a workplace knows that gaggle of women who go out of their way to make everyone else's life a living hell, and know that if it had been a man doing the same thing - under those same rules he would have lost his job 3 years ago.

Or can we roll with the claims of "it happened years ago, my word is my truth, but I have no actual evidence." But you really gotta believe me, because female, and listen and believe. And if you don't, you're a dirty white male, a misogynist, and probably commit sexual assault too! Where a male who made the same claim would be laughed at and rightly so.

Re:Slashdot being slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Damore did not accuse specific people of criminal activity. Whereas she did.

Damore was fired *after* his views went public, and specifically because of that event. She was fired *before* she made these accusations, and for reasons that she is challenging by making these accusations (that is to say, fired for poor performance, she says her performance only seemed poor due to the harassment).

So, she might be telling the truth. But, she also has an incentive to lie. So we don't know.

Damore simply put all his cards on the table, and got fired for it, and that was that.

These differences are far more relevant than the difference that you are alluding to.

Re:Schizophrenia

[RightwingNutjob]

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.

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:Schizophrenia

[BlueStrat]

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

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:Nerf balls and darts?

[ShanghaiBill]

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.