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Unlike in many countries, in US in most states employment is "at-will" this sounds nice and friendly but it means officially they can let the employee go for an
by rdtsc 9y ago
Unlike in many countries, in US in most states employment is "at-will" this sounds nice and friendly but it means officially they can let the employee go for any reason at any time unless that reason is one of discrimination due to a limited set of categories. Of course people are discriminated all the time based on religion, race, sexual preferences, age, gender etc, it is just that is not the official reason. It can always be molded into some "performance review", "downsizing", "business goals" etc. kind of thing. Proving otherwise requires an expensive lawsuit looking for patterns over a longer period of time and candidates or requires someone to blow the whistle and say "oh when the CEO say 'culture fit' we really mean they are of a wrong race or gender, everyone knows that around here..."
- jquery 9y agoYou can't be let go for being a whistleblower or someone who wants to improve hiring practices. The author has grounds for a lawsuit and was likely fired illegally.
- rdtsc 9y agoBut they can always find another reason to let him go. "Restructuring" or some similar thing would work. They just fired him, I presume the lawyers looked at it and probably didn't see much of a risk.
- jquery 9y agoDoesn't pass the sniff test. His memo was open, notorious, and even received a response from senior management. More likely than the lawyers saying the firing was legal, is that Google decided the cost of an illegal firing was less than the cost of keeping him onboard.