Ex-Google worker claims tech giant plagued by ‘drinking culture and sexual harassment’
A FORMER Goole employee has spoken out against the company, alleging a toxic culture of excess drinking and sexual harassment.
Last Friday, Donald King, a 41-year-old former Google engineer relived his experience at the company in a 4,000 word Reddit post, titled "Working at Google made me suicidal."
King, who identifies as gay, specified that he worked at Google from 2008 to 2015 as a Site Reliability Engineer out of the San Francisco satellite office.
He began the post by reporting his salary, and even though he said he was underpaid for his work at Google, his real frustrations with the tech giant were "the toxic culture, the Kafkaesque hiring, performance review, and promotion processes."
King listed "rampant sexism, deep discomfort with anyone under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella, unhealthy levels of stress treated as acceptable, and a binge drinking culture so bad that it has probably killed people," as some of the problems he believed he had experienced while on the Billing SRE team.
King then detailed personal scenarios he found himself in, including one with a former coworker who he claimed "flirted with and then sexually assaulted" him on an annual work trip to Zürich.
He also went on to share that he believed he was sabotaged, which led to a missed promotion and severe depression.
"Missing out on that promotion triggered deep C-PTSD from childhood abuse and neglect, basically, I felt like my life was not under my own control and that there was no accountability for the people who were supposed to be looking out for me," King wrote in the post.
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"This started a downward spiral into depression that made me seriously consider suicide several times," he added.
King further stated that he was unaware at the time that he should have been gathering evidence for the sexual harassment and workplace discrimination he claimed to have lived through -- so none of his experiences could be confirmed.
Since going live on Reddit, the post has gathered more than 140 upvotes and several comments from users who sympathized with King, who also revealed that he has autism.
Some of the Reddit users also encouraged King to take legal action against his former manager as well as Google, with one user writing, "all of this constitutes claims for a major sexual harassment and gender discrimination lawsuit."
A Google spokesperson told The Sun that the company aims to "promote a safe and productive working environment for all our employees," and "has clear policies related to alcohol and harassment."
The spokesperson added that "employees who are found to have violated our policies are subject to discipline up to and including termination."
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