A former Google engineer who is also a transgender man with a disability sued the tech giant for firing her over diversity issues. Tim Chevalier claims she was ousted for challenging her colleagues sharing white supremacy views in the workplace.
Chevalier thinks Google fired her to avoid putting up with workplace discrimination and coming with a real solution to it.
According to court records, Google terminated the engineer in November 2017 for getting in a heated debate about gender equality, Hispanic people, and LGBT members on the company’s message boards.
In 2016, one Google employee asked his colleagues what the reasons for Google not hiring more Hispanic and black people were. Some employees replied that the tech giant would have had to lower its standards to get those people on board.
Chevalier fired back to her colleagues that replied to the issues with the ‘we can’t lower the bar’ refrain. She slammed her white male colleagues for implying that women, black and Hispanic people, and non-binary people are “incompetent.”
Google’s Diversity Issues Far From Being Solved
Google allegedly told Chevalier that the firing was triggered by her “political statement” on the company’s messaging systems. The lawsuit is the latest chapter in Google’s diversity saga.
The web search giant has been accused of not hiring enough female or minority engineers over the years. In 2017, Google fired another engineer over diversity issues. James Damore lost his job after trying to explain the low presence of women in Google’s workforce by saying that men and women are not created equal, and that men are better in technical fields than women are.
Damore sued Google too, citing biological differences between women and men to back his case. He accused Google of running a bias against white conservative men, which prevents his former colleagues from voicing similar views.
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