Google fires software engineer over protest – he says he didn’t participate in it
A software engineer who was fired from Google in connection with internal protests at the company’s office claims that the tech giant retaliated against him for simply observing a protest against the Israeli contract. This was reported by The Verge.
The former employee, who preferred not to be named, described the situation on the day of the protest. Around lunchtime, he went to the break room on the 10th floor of Google’s New York office to watch the action.
“When I got there, there were probably 20-ish people sitting on the floor. I didn’t talk to any of them, I talked to folks who were standing up, passing out flyers, doing other roles,” he said.
Then, according to the interlocutor, he returned to his workplace, and around 17:00 he came back to the protesters.
‘Oh my gosh, you’re still sitting here! How’s it going?’” he said.
He finished the day sitting on a nearby couch and returned to work the next day without any problems. But in the evening, he received an email from Google announcing his dismissal.
At the same time, the dismissed software engineer says that he was not contacted by the HR department and was not asked whether he participated in the protest.
“They didn’t even reach out to me,” he said. “This was a total shock; I had no hint that this was coming.”
Google recently fired 28 employees who took part in a 10-hour sit-in protest in its New York and Sunnyvale offices against the company’s ties to the Israeli government.
Later, it became known that Google was firing about 20 more employees who, according to the company, had participated in the protest.