45 Google employees told their stories of alleged retaliation, sexual harassment, and racism in a leaked document
- Earlier this month, Recode reported that Googlers were pooling personal accounts of what it was like to work at the Silicon Valley giant - specifically, times that they felt they had been retaliated against.
- On Monday, Motherboard's Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai released a collection of 45 stories from Google employees, apparently gathered from an internal company forum.
- The stories in the document include those of employees allegedly being held back from promotions for reporting workplace issues, or for their involvement in organizing efforts.
- They also include instances of sexual harassment and racism that employees say they have experienced at the search advertising company.
- Eileen Naughton, Google's VP of People Operations, told Business Insider on Monday that the company aims to "provide care and support to people who raise concerns."
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Earlier this month, Recode reported that Googlers were pooling personal accounts of what it was like to work at the Silicon Valley giant - specifically, times that they felt they had been retaliated against for speaking out against corporate decisions or otherwise complained to management.
On Monday, Motherboard's Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai released that collection of retaliation stories from Google employees, apparently gathered from an internal company forum.
The 45 stories recounted in the document include allegations from Googlers of being held back from promotions for reporting workplace issues, or for their involvement in organizing efforts. The stories also include instances of sexual harassment and racism they experienced at the search advertising company.
"I identify as a LatinX female and I experienced blatant racist and sexist things from my coworker. I reported it up to where my manager knew, my director knew, the coworker's manager knew and our HR representative knew. Nothing happened," one story reads. "I was warned that 'things will get very serious if continued.' I definitely felt the theme of 'protect the man' as we so often hear about. No one protected me, the victim. I thought Google was different."
According to a current Google employee who spoke to Motherboard, the stories were collected on an internal site called "go/retaliation-stories." Googlers started posting their store after employee activists Meredith Whittaker and Claire Stapleton, known as co-organizers of the Google Walkout, publically declared they had been retaliated against, per the report.
Eileen Naughton, Google's VP of People Operations, told Business Insider on Monday that the company aims to "provide care and support to people who raise concerns."
"Reporting misconduct takes courage and we want to provide care and support to people who raise concerns. All instances of inappropriate conduct reported to us are investigated rigorously, and over the past year we have simplified how employees can raise concerns and provided more transparency into the investigations process at Google. We work to be extremely transparent about how we handle complaints and the action we take," said Naughton's statement in full.
On May 1st, around 1,000 Google employees staged a sit-in in offices around the country to protest what they said was a pattern of retaliation against workers who speak out for change at the company. It is unclear whether the stories shared at the sit-in coincide with those leaked on Monday, though the document released by Motherboard did say that it was last updated on May 8th, which would have been shortly after the protest.
More recently, former Googlers have spoken out about their time working at the tech giant, describing the racism they experienced at the company, and instances of retaliation for being pregnant.
Read the full Motherboard report here.