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Attendees watch as Google CEO Sundar Pichai delivers the opening speech.
JUSTIN SULLIVAN, Getty Images
SAN FRANCISCO – Google takes a tougher stance on workplace harbadment following a campaign of intimidation and intimidation that lasted nearly a year and was triggered by the dismissal of the company. 39, Google engineer, James Damore.
The new rules sent to employees last week and revised by USA TODAY aim to reduce online attacks and internal conflicts, especially on the very important issue of diversity in the business. According to the documents, Google will discipline employees who "troll" (deliberately provoking) or "dox" (leakage of private information online such as personal addresses) from their colleagues.
With more explicit rules governing harbadment and how Google employees can interact with each other in internal discussion forums, Google is attempting to preserve an open discussion within the company while creating a more workable environment. sure for its 80,000 employees.
These forums have increasingly become hotbeds of harbadment, according to employees, who volunteer to defend diversity. In January, they told USA TODAY that they had been targeted by their colleagues, who leaked personal information and comments from internal forums to far-right websites, leading to violent threats and to insults.
The situation has become so tense in recent months that Google has applied for a protection order against Damore, which Google sued in January, to prevent future lawsuits to name Google employees who were not parties to the trial.
Screen shots of employees' discussions that had been included in Damore's suit led to doxing, according to Google. Damore slapped Google with the lawsuit after the company fired him last year for an internal memo arguing that gender differences could explain the shortage of women in technical roles and leadership in the technology industry.
Nearly a year after Damore's dismissal, the new rules introduced by Google last week are "better than anything Google has ever published before," said Tariq Yusuf, software engineer and diversity advocate, a member of A small group of Google employees. management to protect employees against harbadment.
Much of the reaction to the new rules within the company has been positive, but Yusuf and a handful of other Google employees say the rules may not go far enough to stop the waves of toxic harbadment.
"I feel a bit safer myself, but I doubt that most of the targeted people will be able to relax until Google has a good reputation for dealing with difficult cases," said software engineer Irene Knapp. at Google. "There is a lot of history to overcome."
Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced the new workplace rules last week in an email to all employees. A small group of employees shared them with USA TODAY.
The lack of civility in internal debates on both sides of the diversity debate has prompted Google to update its policies, the company said. In a FAQ, Google informed employees: "The important aspect to consider is how you communicate your views. You should debate the issue and not attack the person.
More: Google employees say the company is not doing enough to protect them from harbadment and threats
More: The Google employee activism on diversity, the Pentagon contract shakes the Internet giant
More: Google says it will focus diversity efforts on black and Hispanic women
More: Google accused in the lawsuit to exclude white and Asian men in hiring to boost diversity
Damore's memo and subsequent shot revealed deep flaws in Google.
Faced with pressure to diversify its workforce – nearly 70% male and 89% white or Asian – Google began publicly sharing data on the racial and badual makeup of its employees in 2014. The Silicon Valley society's attempts to white and Asian men's demographics to include more women and people of color have put Google in the reluctance of the nation's culture wars.
Employees who spoke with USA TODAY claim that Google's vaunted culture, where staff members are encouraged to freely share their views on internal forums, has become as polarized as the national political debate was going on before Expulsion from Damore.
After the dismissal, some employees accused the company of wrongfully dismissing an employee simply for expressing his personal beliefs. Others have argued that Google has done too little to promote women and other underrepresented groups or to regulate hate speech and harbadment at Google.
A disabled transgender engineer sued Google, saying he was thanked for defending women, people of color and LGBTQ employees against attacks and for defending the rights of transgender people and people with disabilities on the forums. from Google. A former recruiter claimed that the Internet giant had dismissed him for complaining about hiring practices aimed at enhancing diversity, which he said discriminated against white and Asian men.
But that is the pursuit of Damore against Google that has raised the most problems. In the lawsuit, where he claimed that the company discriminates against conservatives and white men and that he was harbaded for his beliefs, he included the names of Google employees.
Google claims that these individuals have been the target of hateful comments and death threats on their social media accounts and online forums. "Does anyone realize how easy it is to poison food (the Google employee) or drinking water?" an anonymous person wrote online.
Google is looking for a protection order
According to a protection order sought by Google, some members of the online group supporting Damore advocated armed violence, not only against the Google employees "liberals" or "anti-conservatives" mentioned in the complaint, but against all employees of Google. In April, a woman shot and killed three people inside Google's YouTube headquarters in the Bay area.
Responding to a post about a Google employee, one person wrote: "2 in the chest, one in the head." "You want to know who's working at Google?" "Easy … configure and watch their office and server buildings … then follow them home and google their personal address," wrote another .
Google has asked the court to ban Damore from including the names or identifying information of Google employees in future filings. A hearing is scheduled for July 13th.
The fact that Google has new rules governing how employees treat each other is largely the result of an unprecedented campaign by a small group of Google employees.
They rallied their colleagues with a petition that they circulated by collecting signatures from 2,600 employees. They met with management for months to push for the creation of new standards of community moderation, to put an end to information leaks about employees, to clarify how complaints of malicious behavior are handled and to improve complaint management. .
In March, at a meeting with several executives, including Ruth Porat, Google's Chief Financial Officer, Alphabet, and Danielle Brown, Google's Diversity Officer, employees said they were alarmed by threats to the company. 39 against Google employees. The emails were leaked and the personal addresses were leaked and were the subject of violence in the YouTube videos The same employees also publicly voiced their concerns at the shareholders' meeting of the parent company Alphabet this month.
One of them, Liz Fong-Jones, reliability engineer for the Google site, says that Google is making progress to address its concerns, but she fears that the company will not be safe. does not attack systematic targeting of protected groups. And Google has not responded to employee demand for a company-wide discussion on how to make Google more inclusive.
This was to be the subject of a Google town hall the same week that Damore was fired. City Hall was abruptly canceled 30 minutes before the start of the session after employee questions were leaked to the public and those employees began to receive threats online.
With all that has happened, Knapp adopts a wait and see attitude.
"We should know in a few months whether it's a real step or empty words, but rebuilding trust will take a long time," Knapp said. "There are a lot of people who have been touched."
Copyright 2017 USATODAY.com
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