Google ‘bro culture’ led to violence, sexual harassment against female engineer, lawsuit alleges
Google ‘bro culture’ led to violence, sexual harassment
against female engineer, lawsuit alleges
By ETHAN BARON February 23, 2018 at 3:58 pm &
February 24, 2018 at 2:43 pm
MOUNTAIN VIEW — 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.
The lawsuit comes as Silicon Valley’s tech industry,
dominated by white men, has been roiled by a series of sexual-misconduct
scandals and gender-related upheavals as the MeToo movement against sexual
assault of women has prompted a nationwide cultural reckoning.
Google has been the focus of considerable gender-related
controversy. It fired engineer James Damore over his memo claiming a biological
basis for the gender gap in tech. It sacked a transgender man who then sued the
firm, claiming he was ousted for opposing bigotry in the workplace. And
lawsuits by the U.S. Department of Labor and a former Googler have accused the
company of paying women less than men.
Now, 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.
Google said Friday that it has “strong policies against
harassment in the workplace” and reviews every complaint it receives.
“We take action when we find violations, including
termination of employment,” a company spokesperson said.
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.
In January 2016, while working late one night, she was
approaching her work space when she saw a male colleague whom she had never
spoken with “on all fours, underneath her desk,” she claims. When he saw her,
the man “jumped up and shouted, ‘You’ll never know what I was doing!’ ” according
to the suit.
“She was frightened by his comment and believed he may
have installed some type of camera or similar device under her desk,” the
lawsuit states.
The next day, a co-worker grabbed the name badge hanging
from a lanyard around her neck, asking her name and grazing her breasts with
his hand, she claims.
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.
“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.
Lee also alleges that Google failed to accommodate her
after she suffered a disabling back injury from a car crash, with the company
telling her she must get treatment and therapy on her own time.
Lee is seeking unspecified damages in excess of $25,000
for harassment, gender discrimination, failure to prevent sexual harassment,
disability discrimination, wrongful termination and retaliation.
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