Google Fires Republican Engineer Who Exposed Alleged Bias Against Conservatives - Report
Software engineer Mike Wacker, who for the past few weeks has pilloried Google’s corporate culture as hostile to conservatives, has been fired by the tech giant, according to a published report and his comments on Twitter.
The Daily Caller reported that Wacker was placed on administrative leave on Wednesday, May 29, and then fired on Friday, May 31.
Wacker noted his status on his Twitter account, referring to himself as a “Software engineer, Ex-Google.” Wacker also retweeted two posts that discussed his firing and mentioned it in one other post.
In all fairness, I tried the persuasion and engagement strategy. It worked at Cornell, but it got me fired at Google.
— Mike Wacker (@m_wacker) June 7, 2019
Shouldn’t Mike Wacker be given “whistleblower” protections. https://t.co/iVpRGCnCMo
— Charles Long (@Paw___Paw) June 6, 2019
Word of Wacker’s firing emerged as a lawsuit against Google claiming it was biased against conservatives received a judge’s approval to move forward, The Verge reported.
“This ruling is a significant step forward for all California workers, and sends notice to Silicon Valley that discrimination of any kind will not be escape legal scrutiny,” attorney Harmeet K. Dhillon of The Dhillon Law Group, who represents the plaintiffs suing Google, said in a statement.
“It is illegal in California to discriminate against an employee for his or her legally protected characteristics, and we are excited to move forward with discovery into Google’s challenged employment practices that our clients allege discriminate on the basis of political orientation, race, and gender,” the statement said.
The lawsuit claims that Google is biased against conservatives, men, white people and Asian people.
Wacker began his salvos against Google on May 21 with a post on Medium.
“Google has become a company where outrage mobs and witch hunts dominate its culture,” he wrote. “These outrage mobs and witch hunts have become an existential threat not only to Google’s culture internally, but to Google’s trust and credibility externally.”
Wacker foreshadowed his departure from Google in the post, in which he noted he was the founder of an email list for Republicans, which he wrote “has also made me a prime target for the outrage mobs and witch hunts.”
“On March 6, 2019, I was pulled into a meeting of my own with my management and HR. During that meeting, I received a final written warning, and I received a verbal offer of 8 weeks of severance pay if I left the company. That verbal offer of severance was an implied threat of termination.
“While they never said it explicitly, it was clear that if I didn’t take that offer, they would invent some pretext to fire me shortly thereafter. (Due to an unexpected series of events, this process was put on hold, but that would only delay the inevitable),” Wacker wrote.
When Wacker appeared on Trish Reagan’s Fox Business Network show, he said it took very little to run afoul of Google’s HR office, noting that a Google employee was called on the carpet for sharing a National Review article.
“You don’t know what’s going to offend somebody next and a lot of time they are going to HR over these trivial things,” he said.
He relayed what he was once scolded by an HR staffer for expressing his conservative opinions.
“He basically said, ‘Hey, you should either keep these to yourselves or you should get out of the company,’” Wacker said.
Mike came on television for the first time w/ me to expose what he says is #Google’s MASSIVE bias against conservatives. The next day—Google FIRED him. @m_wacker maybe you should start a search competitor? I hear the DOJ wants to see some competition for ur former employer. https://t.co/u0tkbXTuqc
— Trish Regan (@trish_regan) June 6, 2019
In his May 21 post on Medium, Wacker said efforts to stifle conservative thought at Google were more than just internal politics.
“As I said before, once you control who belongs at Google, you can control what content belongs on Google,” he posted.
He also said that within Google, things are getting worse.
“If left unchecked, these outrage mobs will hunt down any conservative, any Christian, and any independent free thinker at Google who does not bow down to their agenda. Anyone who stands up to them will be hounded until they either shut the f— up or they “get the f— out”. Furthermore, Google HR has clearly shown that they function as an accessory to these witch hunts,” he wrote.
The Western Journal has reached out to Google for comment, but no response had been received as of Friday night.
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