Google Cloud fired its developer relations vice president after he published a manifesto on LinkedIn about his anti-Semitic past and the Israel-Palestine conflict.
“I wanted to share that today is Amr Awadallah’s last day at Google,” Eyal Manor, Google Cloud vice president of engineering and product, said to employees in an internal mail, CNBC reported.
The announcement comes a month after Awadallah published his 10,000-word manifesto that kicked up a storm. Awadallah, who co-founded Cloudera before joining Google in 2019, wrote: “I hated the Jewish people, all the Jewish people! and emphasis here is on the past tense.”
An employee told CNBC that frustration with Awadallah’s leadership style had already been building and coupled with the post, it became harder for employees to perform effective developer relations. Awadallah was confronted by some of his colleagues at an all-hands meeting that preceded his termination, reported The Verge.
“This has made my job as one of your colleagues much harder. The previous situation has made being a Jewish leader at Google tough. This has made it almost untenable,” a senior colleague commented on Awadallah’s LinkedIn post, without explaining what the “previous situation” was.
“I’m unsure why you would write this under your title and company affiliation and it frustrates me. You could simply have done this as a private person,” he added.
Awadallah, an Egyptian-American technology professional well known in the cloud industry, said he belonged to the Jewish ethnic group, citing a 23andMe DNA analysis that he had 0.1 percent Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry. Employees told CNBC that he had previously cited the DNA analysis report to justify his opinions.
“I admire many Jewish people as I shared earlier, but I will also tell you this with unwavering conviction: The Jewish people aren’t any more special than the Christian, Black, Hispanic, White, Muslim, Asian, Arab peoples or any other group of people for that matter,” wrote Awadallah in his manifesto. “We are all special, and we need to see all others as special, because, scientifically speaking, we are 99.9% genetically the same, and if we come from the same land within the last 1000 years, we are more like 99.999% the same.”
Source: IBTimes
Also Read: Google CEO to meet with Black college leaders following racism allegations
Leaders from some of the nation’s top historically Black colleges and universities are meeting virtually with Google CEO Sundar Pichai next week to discuss the future of their schools’ relationships with the tech giant in the wake of racism and sexism allegations made by two Black former employees.
In December, ex-Google artificial intelligence researcher Timnit Gebru and former Google diversity recruiter April Curley both tweeted that they had been fired by the company after raising concerns about the lack of Black people working there and how those who currently work there are treated.
Google has maintained that Gebru voluntarily resigned. Curley, who says she was responsible for Google’s HBCU recruitment, said her superiors believed HBCU computer science grads didn’t have the technical skills to work at Google and repeatedly undermined her efforts.
Read the complete article at: Mercury News
In December, ex-Google artificial intelligence researcher Timnit Gebru and former Google diversity recruiter April Curley both tweeted that they had been fired by the company after raising concerns about the lack of Black people working there and how those who currently work there are treated. Google has maintained that Gebru voluntarily resigned. Curley, who says she was responsible for Google’s HBCU recruitment, said her superiors believed HBCU computer science grads didn’t have the technical skills to work at Google and repeatedly undermined her efforts. In December, ex-Google artificial intelligence researcher Timnit Gebru and former Google diversity recruiter April Curley both tweeted that they had been fired by the company after raising concerns about the lack of Black people working there and how those who currently work there are treated. Google has maintained that Gebru voluntarily resigned. Curley, who says she was responsible for Google’s HBCU recruitment, said her superiors believed HBCU computer science grads didn’t have the technical skills to work at Google and repeatedly undermined her efforts. Black college leaders Black college leaders Black college leaders
April Christina Curley, a queer Black woman and former Google employee, spoke up this week about the injustice she faced at the company while working there as a diversity recruiter. Curley recounts many instances of blatant disrespect from peers and managers — up to and including inappropriate and, at times, intense questioning of her identity.
Curley’s contract with Google was terminated in September despite “stellar performance metrics,” she writes in a Twitter thread. She believes her firing was “the best way to shut [her] up.”
Curley’s six-year stint at Google was focused on partnerships with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), specifically by recruiting HBCU students for engineering roles. Before her addition to the company, Curley says, Google had never hired an HBCU student into a tech role.
What Curley witnessed in her time at Google is nothing short of damning for the tech giant. We can only hope Google is taking serious action in the wake of the allegations.
Read the complete article at: Input Mag
Curley’s six-year stint at Google was focused on partnerships with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), specifically by recruiting HBCU students for engineering roles. Before her addition to the company, Curley says, Google had never hired an HBCU student into a tech role. What Curley witnessed in her time at Google is nothing short of damning for the tech giant. We can only hope Google is taking serious action in the wake of the allegations. Curley’s six-year stint at Google was focused on partnerships with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), specifically by recruiting HBCU students for engineering roles. Before her addition to the company, Curley says, Google had never hired an HBCU student into a tech role. What Curley witnessed in her time at Google is nothing short of damning for the tech giant. We can only hope Google is taking serious action in the wake of the allegations. Google employee Google employee
Who Googles ‘Human Rights’ The Most In The UK?
It has been said that many of us are more honest with search engines than with our fellow human beings.
As UK residents take to Google in droves to find out answers to their human rights questions, RightsInfo takes a look at what we can learn from the patterns in their queries.
Analysis of Google Trends data over the past 12 months reveals the term “human rights” was most popularly searched in Northern Ireland.
This is followed by England and then Scotland, with Wales in last place.
However, when breaking the data down according to cities, Belfast comes fifth.
Oxford tops the table of human rights Google-ing cities, followed by Cambridge, Nottingham and Brighton.
The market town of Halesowen, in the West Midlands borough of Dudley, comes in at last place.
The Google Trends statistics analyse the popularity of certain search terms before giving it a value between zero and 100.
Looking at the trends of time, searches for ‘human rights’ spike in Northern Ireland, far beyond its neighbouring provinces, in late October and early December last year as well as March this year.
As of July this year, those searching human rights across the UK are increasingly looking for information on the “2018 Data Protection Act” – which was introduced in May last year – especially those in Scotland.
Other rising queries include “where are human rights set out?”; “GDPR” – an EU Law known as the General Data Protection Regulation which came into effect last summer and sits alongside the Data Protection Act; and “human rights after Brexit“.Other rising queries include “where are human rights set out?”; “GDPR” – an EU Law known as the General Data Protection Regulation which came into effect last summer and sits alongside the Data Protection Act; and “human rights after Brexit“.
As responsible digital citizens, here’s how we can all reduce racism online
As responsible digital citizens, here’s how we can all reduce racism online
Have you ever considered that what you type into Google, or the ironic memes you laugh at on Facebook, might be building a more dangerous online environment?
Regulation of online spaces is starting to gather momentum, with governments, consumer groups, and even digital companies themselves calling for more control over what is posted and shared online.
Yet we often fail to recognise the role that you, me and all of us as ordinary citizens play in shaping the digital world.
The privilege of being online comes with rights and responsibilities, and we need to actively ask what kind of digital citizenship we want to encourage in Australia and beyond.
Google Has a Striking History of Bias Against Black Girls
My first encounter with racism in search was in 2009 when I was talking to a friend who causally mentioned one day, “You should see what happens when you Google ‘black girls.’” I did and was stunned.
These are the details of what a search for “black girls” would yield for many years, despite that the words “porn,” “pornography,” or “sex” were not included in the search box. In the text for the first page of results, for example, the word “p-ssy,” as a noun, is used four times to describe black girls. Other words in the lines of text on the first page include “sugary” (two times), “hairy” (one), “sex” (one), “booty/ass” (two), “teen” (one), “big” (one), “porn star” (one), “hot” (one), “hard- core” (one), “action” (one), “galeries [sic]” (one).
It was troubling to realize that I had undoubtedly been confronted with the same type of results before but had learned, or been trained, to somehow become inured to it, to take it as a given that any search I might perform using keywords connected to my physical self and identity could return pornographic and otherwise disturbing results. Why was this the bargain into which I had tacitly entered with digital information tools? And who among us did not have to bargain in this way?
Google just got hit with another gender discrimination suit
Google is facing yet another discrimination suit, the latest in a long series that’s been keeping its legal team busy.
A transgender former Google engineer filed a lawsuit alleging gender-based discrimination, harassment, retaliation, and wrongful termination, the same week the National Labor Relations Board dismissed James Damore’s complaint of being illegally fired over his much-publicized “diversity memo” last August.
And these two cases are only the latest legal twists in a long series at Google over sexual harassment, diversity, and alleged systematic discrimination against women and LGBT minorities. Other recent developments include a class-action filed by women formerly at Google who claim the company paid them less than male colleagues for the same work, and an ongoing Labor Department suit against the company based on preliminary evidence showing systemic pay inequality between men and women.
Google is facing yet another discrimination suit, the latest in a long series that’s been keeping its legal team busy. A transgender former Google engineer filed a lawsuit alleging gender-based discrimination, harassment, retaliation, and wrongful termination, the same week the National Labor Relations Board dismissed James Damore’s complaint of being illegally fired over his much-publicized “diversity memo” last August. And these two cases are only the latest legal twists in a long series at Google over sexual harassment, diversity, and alleged systematic discrimination against women and LGBT minorities. Other recent developments include a class-action filed by women formerly at Google who claim the company paid them less than male colleagues for the same work, and an ongoing Labor Department suit against the company based on preliminary evidence showing systemic pay inequality between men and women. and an ongoing Labor Department suit against the company based on preliminary evidence showing systemic pay inequality between men and women.
Google refuses legal request to share pay records in gender discrimination case
Google is resisting a legal request to disclose salary records in a class-action gender discrimination lawsuit, marking the technology company’s latest efforts to prevent scrutiny of how much it pays its female employees.
Google attorneys argued in court on Friday that a judge should block a suit brought by former employees alleging systematic pay disparities on behalf of all women at the company. The company is also arguing that it should not have to provide information on the salaries of men and women or disclose wage policy documents until a first ruling on the class-action status.
The judge has not yet made an official decision but on Friday appeared to side with the tech giant on a number of issues.
The class-action complaint filed in September provided the most detailed formal accounts to date of gender discrimination at Google, alleging that the company denies promotions and career opportunities to qualified women and “segregates” them into lower-paying positions. Google’s latest efforts to thwart the lawsuit and avoid disclosures come at a time when the tech industry is reeling over allegations of misogyny, sexual harassment and an overall lack of diversity.
“Clearly the data is not good for them, and they don’t want to turn it over,” James Finberg, a civil rights attorney representing the employees, said after the hearing in San Francisco. “Eventually, the truth will come out, and the truth will show that they do in fact pay women less than men in the same job title in nearly every job.”
The suit – which provides accounts of alleged discrimination against a former engineer, business manager and sales employee – builds on claims by the US Department of Labor (DoL). Earlier this year, the federal regulator alleged “extreme” pay discrimination in positions and departments throughout Google and sued the Mountain View, California-based company for salary records as part of its audit.
Former employees file suit saying they were put on career tracks where they would have lower pay
Former employees file suit saying they were put on career tracks where they would have lower pay
Google faces a new lawsuit accusing it of gender-based pay discrimination. A lawyer representing three female former Google employees is seeking class action status for the claim.
The suit, filed Thursday in San Francisco Superior Court, follows a federal labour investigation that made a preliminary finding of systemic pay discrimination among the 21,000 employees at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California. The initial stages of the review found women earned less than men in nearly every job classification.
Google disputes the findings and says its analysis shows no gender pay gap.
The suit, led by lawyer James Finberg of Altshuler Berzon LLP, is on behalf of three women — Kelly Ellis, Holly Pease and Kelli Wisuri — who all quit after being put on career tracks that they claimed would pay them less than their male counterparts. The suit aims to represent thousands of Google employees in California and seeks lost wages and a slice of Google’s profits.
“I have come forward to correct a pervasive problem of gender bias at Google,” Ellis said in a statement. She says she quit Google in 2014 after male engineers with similar experience were hired to higher-paying job levels and she was denied a promotion despite excellent performance reviews. “It is time to stop ignoring these issues in tech.”
Charges of gender discrimination have swirled at Alphabet Inc.-owned Google since the U.S. Labor Department sued in January to bar Google from doing business with the federal government until it released thousands of documents related to an audit over its pay practices. The sides have been battling in court over how much information Google must turn over.
The lawsuit also follows the firing of male engineer James Damore, who wrote a memo circulated on internal message boards that blamed inherent differences between men and women for the underrepresentation of women in engineering roles.
3 female former Google employees seek class action status over pay discrimination.
Google faces a new lawsuit accusing it of gender-based pay discrimination. A lawyer representing three female former Google employees is seeking class action status for the claim.
The suit, filed Thursday in San Francisco Superior Court, follows a federal labour investigation that made a preliminary finding of systemic pay discrimination among the 21,000 employees at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California. The initial stages of the review found women earned less than men in nearly every job classification.
Google disputes the findings and says its analysis shows no gender pay gap.
The suit, led by lawyer James Finberg of Altshuler Berzon LLP, is on behalf of three women — Kelly Ellis, Holly Pease and Kelli Wisuri — who all quit after being put on career tracks that they claimed would pay them less than their male counterparts. The suit aims to represent thousands of Google employees in California and seeks lost wages and a slice of Google’s profits.
“I have come forward to correct a pervasive problem of gender bias at Google,” Ellis said in a statement. She says she quit Google in 2014 after male engineers with similar experience were hired to higher-paying job levels and she was denied a promotion despite excellent performance reviews. “It is time to stop ignoring these issues in tech.”
Charges of gender discrimination have swirled at Alphabet Inc.-owned Google since the U.S. Labor Department sued in January to bar Google from doing business with the federal government until it released thousands of documents related to an audit over its pay practices. The sides have been battling in court over how much information Google must turn over.
The lawsuit also follows the firing of male engineer James Damore, who wrote a memo circulated on internal message boards that blamed inherent differences between men and women for the underrepresentation of women in engineering roles.