Google Workers Furious, Want Answers Over Executives’ Payouts After Sexual Misconduct Claims
During Google’s weekly staff meeting Thursday, the number one question employees voted to ask Larry Page, a co-founder, and CEO Sundar Pichai, was one concerning sexual harassment.
“Multiple company actions strongly indicate that protection of powerful abusers is literally and figuratively more valuable to the company than the well-being of their victims,” read the question, which was displayed at the meeting, according to people who attended. “What concrete and meaningful actions will be taken to turn this around?”
The query came after a New York Times article that published Thursday reported how the company had paid millions of dollars in exit packages to male executives accused of misconduct and remained silent over their transgressions.
When it came to Andy Rubin, “father of the Android” mobile software, Google gave him a $90 million exit package, even after finding that the misconduct claim against him was credible.
Read more on Rubin’s exit package:
The employee rebuke on Thursday and Friday played out on internal message boards, company meetings and social networks, as well as on Twitter.
Jaana Dogan, who works in the company’s cloud computing business, Google Cloud, tweeted:
“If you are worth of millions of dollars, you should be able to show the door to authoritarian governments and serial abusers. If not now, then when?”
If you are worth of millions of dollars, you should be able to show the door to authoritarian governments and serial abusers. If not now, then when?
— Jaana B. Dogan (@rakyll) October 26, 2018
Interaction designer for Google, Sanette Tanaka Sloan referred to the way Google handled Rubin’s misconduct claim as “crushing,” adding, “We can do so much better”:
“News like the @nytimes report on @google‘s handling of Andy Rubin and other top execs is crushing. As much as I believe in supporting the company you work for, it’s equally important to voice what you vehemently disagree with. We can do so much better”
News like the @nytimes report on @google's handling of Andy Rubin and other top execs is crushing. As much as I believe in supporting the company you work for, it's equally important to voice what you vehemently disagree with. We can do so much better https://t.co/PUNMQz9Y0T
— Sanette Tanaka Sloan (@ssktanaka) October 26, 2018
On the internal Google photo-messaging board popular among employees for its humor, Memegen, one of the top posts on Thursday featured a GIF of an overjoyed game show contestant showered in confetti. Below the image was the text ‘got caught sexually harassing employee,” according to one employee who saw the post and asked not to be identified since she was not authorized to speak publicly.
Liz Fong-Jones, Google engineer for over a decade and activist on workplace issues said in a tweet:
“Your boss or skip boss is biased by your contributions and “can I afford to lose that person” because it’s made their decision rather than a neutral arbiter’s. And in the case of many of these execs, the decisionmaker must have been Larry Page. The buck stops there.”
Your boss or skip boss is biased by your contributions and "can I afford to lose that person" because it's made their decision rather than a neutral arbiter's.
And in the case of many of these execs, the decisionmaker must have been Larry Page. The buck stops there.
— Liz Fong-Jones (@lizthegrey) October 26, 2018
According to employees at the meeting on Thursday, Page and Pichai did not comment on specific misconduct cases. Pichai noted that Google has made some “important changes” in how it handles harassment cases, according to the remarks.
“We want to get better, and we want to get to a place where it truly reflects our values of respect, particularly respect for each other,” Pichai said.
Page if employees were suffering harassment while at Google, then the company was not “the company we aspire to be.”
He also offered an apology to employees:
“I’ve had to make a lot of decisions that affect people every day, some of them not easy. And, you know, I think certainly there’s ones with the benefit of hindsight I would have made differently,” Page said. “I know this is really an exceptionally painful story for some of you, and I’m really sorry for that.”
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