Comment by jiveturkey
7 years ago
Very disappointed with mainstream media coverage here.
The walkout is being headlined as a complaint against harassment. It's not. It's a complaint against the company (rightly so) valuing its corporate reputation in the world in which we live vs standing behind the victims as if they were family, and going medieval (eg excommunication) on the harassers.
Certainly there's a balance and perhaps google is on the wrong side of it, but don't kid yourself, google isn't going to take your insignificant side of it when the other side is a $100MM liability to an executive.
That a walkout like this only happens at Google and not, say, microsoft, where surely sexual harassment also occurs and is also brushed aside, is telling about the employee culture at Google. It's sad that the media coverage is so trivial and can't look deeper.
And to the organizers: you should have recruited tech workers at all FAANG to support this walkout. You missed a moment.
> That a walkout like this only happens at Google and not, say, microsoft, where surely sexual harassment also occurs and is also brushed aside, is telling about the employee culture at Google.
There's a much simpler explanation than you are implying. The trigger for Googlers is the story from last week in the NYT about a former Google exec.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/technology/google-sexual-...
Yes of course. I recognize that, but I don't understand your argument. Are you saying that from the cause of mainstream media (NYT) exposure of this payment, to the effect of a walkout, there is no aspect of Google-specific culture that makes this a unique Google occurrence? This was primed by previous walkouts such as the protest against the Trump immigrant travel ban nearly 2 years ago, and previous Google-internal petitions against things such as G+ real names (which people actually quit over) and the now infamous Damore memo.
Your comment seemingly argues that the story is just a simple one and I'm a fool (rhetorically) for thinking there's anything deeper.
I submit, again, that there is a deep story here that was missed.
How do you know sexual harassment at Microsoft is brushed aside? (I haven't heard reports either way.)
I don't know it for fact, but let's not be naive.
The last reported (2017) makeup of $MSFT in the US was 75% male, overall, and 81% for tech workers. 63000 employees in the US and 131k worldwide.
Do you really think that in an org that size with a demographic overwhelmingly skewed male, that there isn't sexual harassment going on? And lots of it unreported and lots of it dismissed?
I assume there is harassment going on. I have no idea how much of it is and reported or dismissed. I worked there and saw absolutely none for four years, although that is not dispositive. Being old and a citizen of the USA I believe in the old-fashioned notion of innocent until proven guilty.
>is telling about the employee culture at Google.
How so? They have risked nothing by participating because Google isn't a high school where you break a rule by going outside.