Rivers had only recently come out as transgender and was pursuing a medical transition. Rebecca Rivers, a software engineer based in Boulder, Colo., was dismissed over the phone after accessing internal documents. Customs and Border Protection.īerland’s terminated colleagues were even more shocked by the turn of events than he was. All four were locked in an ongoing conflict with the company, as they and other activists had stepped forward to denounce both its treatment of workers and its relationship with certain customers, like U.S. “When the suspensions and the rally were no longer on people’s minds.” Instead, at a moment when the spotlight was shining brightly, Google had escalated - as if to make a point.īerland was one of at least four employees Google fired that day. “I thought they’d do it when all the media attention died down,” he said. Then, the Friday before he was fired, he had spoken at a well-publicized rally of his co-workers outside Google’s San Francisco offices, accusing the company of silencing dissent.Įven so, the timing and manner of his dismissal surprised him. During a subsequent meeting at which he was questioned by Google investigators, he had the feeling that they were pressuring him to say something that could be grounds for termination. He had been suspended a few weeks earlier after subscribing to the open calendars of several senior Google employees, whom he suspected of meeting with outside consultants to suppress organizing activity at the company. It did not elaborate on what he had done to violate these policies.īerland, an engineer who had spent more than a decade at the company, had reason to expect he might be fired. “Following a thorough investigation, the company has found that you committed several acts in violation of Google’s policies,” the note said. It was the Monday before Thanksgiving, and the news came to him, bad-breakup-style, via email. Laurence Berland had just gotten out of the subway in New York, some 3,000 miles from his desk in San Francisco, when he learned that Google had fired him.
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